“So you never had your lights cut off?” I asked him.
“Well,” he said, trying to remember, “one time there was a storm that knocked out the electricity for a couple of hours. I had to use a flashlight.”
I don’t know if he was trying to be funny, but that shit cracked me up. I guess Michael liked talking to me, too, because the next day he came back to hang out, and again the day after.
Then one day I needed a favor: my car wouldn’t start and I wanted Michael to give me a ride home. I called him from the pay phone and asked him if he could come get me.
“Sure,” he said. “Where you at?”
“Working,” I told him, and gave him directions to Ashby Grove.
Michael worked at the Simmons mattress factory. When he told me about his job, he was real proud of his “benefits,” and his 401(k) savings plan. I told him nobody in my family had a bank account. “Then where do you keep your money?” he asked.
“My granddaddy put his cash in a gym sock and hung it down by his balls,” I told him. “He didn’t get robbed once.” Michael looked totally confused everytime I talked about my family. I didn’t think he could handle any more tales from the hood, so when he asked me what I did for a job, I kept it breezy. “Part-time entrepreneur,” I said, with a wave of my hand.
I was standing halfway up the block, near the laundromat, when Michael pulled up to the curb across the road in his grey Nissan Maxima. I started heading his way, but before I reached him, JaMarcus, one of my regulars, ran over and stuck his head in the passenger-side window of Michael’s car. JaMarcus had cracked lips and matted hair and stank like stale piss. He was holding a pair of brand-new Air Force 1’s.
“Yo, my man!” JaMarcus said, shoving the sneakers in Michael’s face so he could get a good look. “Twenty dollars! If you don’t like these, I got some of them Dennis Rodman joints. You know, with the pump. Pump up the jam, pump it up a little more . . . ! I can get them right quick. Those going for thirty. But you can have ’em for twenty-five. What size you is, brotha?”
“Nigga, get to stepping before I stomp a mudhole in your ass,” I called to JaMarcus as I crossed the road. “He don’t want none of that stolen shit.”
JaMarcus swiveled to face me, with his hands up, like he was surrendering to the cops. “No doubt,” he said. “My bad!”
“But what ’bout you, Rabbit?” he continued. “Girl, you need new kicks? A Guess watch? How about a brand-new coffee pot?”
I ignored JaMarcus, opened the passenger-side door, and slid into the seat. Michael turned to me, his hands gripping the steering wheel, his eyes wide. “What the hell is going on over here?” he asked.
I looked out onto the street. JaMarcus was standing in the middle of the road, cradling his stolen sneakers in his arms. Butterfly’s skinny ass was strolling the block trying to make some money, in Day-Glo orange bicycle shorts. At the end of the road a middle-aged couple, both of them higher than kites, were hollering at each other, ignoring the baby boy who was crying his eyes out and clinging to the woman’s legs. There were dope boys, crack fiends, and prostitutes all up and down the block doing deals, hanging out, and trying to get high. I didn’t know what Michael was talking about. The street looked fine to me.
“What you mean?” I asked.
“All these crazy-looking people out here . . .” he said, shaking his head. “I been living in Atlanta my whole life. I’ve never seen anything like this street before.” He paused, like he was taking it all in. Then he turned to me: “What are you doing out here, anyway? I thought you wanted me to pick you up at your job.”
“Yeah. This is where I work.”
Michael twisted his neck trying to see up and down the street. “Where do you work?” he asked. “In the laundromat?”
“Nah,” I said, laughing. “I work in front of the laundry.”
“Doing what?”
“Hustling.”
He looked at me, confused.
“Michael,” I said, taking a breath, “I sell drugs.” Most people I knew did drugs, sold drugs, or lived off drug-dealer money. But Michael was different. I didn’t know how he would take the news. I held my breath and waited for him to respond.
For a couple of seconds he just stared at me, his eyebrows in knots, not saying a word. Finally he opened his mouth. “You pulling my leg?”
“No,” I answered. “This is my trap. I run this whole block.”
He let out a long whistle. “Wow,” he said, shaking his head. Then he started the car and pulled away from the curb. We drove for a few blocks in silence, with Michael staring straight at the road and me wondering what the hell he was thinking. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “You think I’m a bad person?” I asked.
“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s just . . .” He trailed off.
“What?”
“I guess I never thought you’d be doing something like this.”
He went on to tell me about his cousin. The boy had been fine when Michael joined the army. But by the time Michael came back home, his cousin was hooked on crack. “He started stealing from his mama, and it just broke my auntie’s heart,” he said. “So you know . . .” He trailed off again.
The sad look on his face while he talked about his cousin made me think for sure he wasn’t gonna like me anymore. And why would he? I thought to myself. I wasn’t anything special. I sold drugs. He could probably get any girl he wanted. Like one of those bougie girls who worked the makeup counter at Macy’s, or even a dental hygienist. But a few days later he showed up at my door. “You came back,” I said, letting him in. “I didn’t think you would.”
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “I guess I like you.”
We’d been dating almost four months when Michael decided he wanted to introduce me to his mama. “What if she don’t like me?” I asked, lying in bed beside him. I imagined a church lady who’d stare at me with her church-lady eyeballs thinking about how I’m not good enough for her boy.
“Of course she’s gonna like you,” he said, laughing.
After a while he added, “Maybe don’t say your name is Rabbit.”
Michael took us to Red Lobster for dinner. I was so nervous, I couldn’t think of a thing to say, so I just put my head down and ate in silence. When the bill came Michael pulled a Visa card out of his wallet. I recognized it at as the same card Hood had shown me that day we’d talked in his office, the one with the high limit. “You can’t get anywhere in this life without good credit,” I said suddenly. Michael’s mama just gave me a funny look.
After dinner, Michael dropped his mama off then drove me back home.
“So listen,” he said when we got inside. “There’s something I want to show you.”
“Okay.”
“But I don’t want you to get mad.”
“Okay.”
He led me to the kitchen, opened the drawer, and took out a knife and fork. “Now don’t get mad,” he said again, handing them out to me.
“Just say it, I won’t get mad!”
“Okay, the thing is, you’re holding the silverware all wrong.”