Billy J’s got minimum verbal, as you can soon tell from talking with him. What’s happened is that the guy who knew the other guy who’s some far-off Billy J relative has come out of a side street and lost his brakes and piled into the back quarter panel of the Billy J family car.
“The bullet car was done professional,” says Billy J, like this is some sort of job, a career path like Mr. Dawkins is always going on about, how we need a “career path” to take us from where we are to someplace none of us can imagine. Perhaps I can put down “bullet car driver” next time.
“They hurt?” I ask.
Billy J gives me a look. It’s a scary thing, I tell you, to see a loser like Billy J in fancy gear with a scornful look. “I told you, done professional. Not a mark on them.”
“How you get money for that?” asks Kev.
“Whiplash,” says Billy J and nods his head. “The doctor said Wes was one bad case, and Meghan was almost worse. They had to have therapy and everything.”
“You got to pay for that,” says Mitch. “How they get health insurance?”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with them,” says Billy J. “And the auto insurance pays for everything.”
“Sure, you say,” says Kev. “I don’t think there was an accident. I think you lifted that jacket and run out of the mall.”
“No way. You ask my Aunt Bessie. She ‘bout hit the roof we didn’t add her daughter as a jump-in.”
“I wouldn’t want to jump her daughter,” says Kev and everyone laughs.
“A jump-in ain’t even in the car. Just on the accident report. I’m telling you them insurance companies got the money.”
Kev and Mitch weren’t impressed, but I could sort of see how it worked. ‘Course you had to have a doctor, and a lawyer was good, too, ‘cause nobody in their right mind would take Wesley Durfen’s word for anything with cash involved. Major connections required, and even with the LeBron shoes, I’d probably have forgotten the whole thing, if other guys around hadn’t started sporting fancy gear. Then the Ramondis got a hot tub, and Hector’s dad got his teeth done. Tanya Morris managed a new car, and her brother-in-law got a set of tools and started doing cut-rate roofing jobs.
Pretty soon everyone at school and around the basketball court is talking settlements and the finer points of rear-end crashes. I learn a whole lot about whiplash injuries and back pain and rear-quarter panel damage — human and automotive. One night when Mama is complaining about the electric bill and telling me for the millionth time I can’t get a cell phone, I come right out and say, “What we need is a settlement.”
“We’re already next to a housing project,” says Mama. “A settlement’s more than I need.”
The thing with Mama is you’re not always sure if she’s onto you and making a joke, or if like most folk her age, everything new and big’s passed her by.
“I’m talking about an insurance settlement. Like everybody’s been getting.”
“You’re talking about a bunch of no-good gangbangers,” says Mama.
“Mr. Ventilla’s no gangbanger. He got his teeth fixed ‘cause he was in a car accident.”
“He gets hurt in an accident, he deserves to get his teeth fixed,” says Mama, refusing to see what’s right in front of her.
“It wasn’t an accident. Hector was in on it, too, and I saw him last month with one of those cool little Kawasakis.”
“He’ll have a real accident with that,” says Mama, which I thought was likely but wouldn’t admit. “Then where will he be? Wishing he’d left the damn thing alone.”
This is off topic, for sure, but that’s how Mama talks till you find yourself blocks away from cell phones or a way to tap into insurance. I spell out the details for her about Billy J and the lawyer and New Life Chiropractic, Inc., a little storefront down on River Street that’s all of a sudden doing business like Wal-Mart. I’m getting into whiplash and why it’s the best injury of all, when Mama cuts me off.
“I don’t want to hear another word more now or ever,” she says. “We don’t have much, but we’re going to live honest.”
She stuck to that, although when she had to cut back her hours cleaning at the motel, we had lots of bean and rice dinners, and I had to put my can money and circular delivery cash into groceries instead of a cell phone or LeBron IIs.
“Be up to LeBron IIIs,” says Mama when I complain. “You get yourself a better pair by waiting.”
I grouse to Kev and Mitch, but they aren’t much better off. Kev’s dad’s been gone even longer than mine, and Mitch’s working the Wal-Mart loading dock. “We gotta get ourselves a settlement,” says Mitch.
“Mama’d about kill me. She’d tattoo my ass,” I says, and ‘cause neither Kev nor Mitch has initiative, the settlement stays just so much bull around the court and in the hallways. Then one day Mama’s home from the Hampton Inn before I get back from school. I open the door and I can tell right then that something’s wrong. The apartment feels different, like the air has gone out of it, and it’s quiet in a different way too. Not the quiet of the TV or my boom box waiting to be turned on or the fridge opened and a soda cracked. Something else was waiting.
“Who’s there?” I call. I’m maybe even a little nervous. You don’t always know what you come home to in our neighborhood.
“That you, Davis?” Mama’s voice sounds different, like when she took pneumonia three winters ago.
She’s lying on the bed in her room looking very white and very old. I never think of Mama as being any particular age except when she’s sick. “What happened? You get the flu that’s going around?” I’m worried, but I’m also thinking now I can’t crank up the boom box and have Mitch and Kev over.
“Maybe. Probably that’s it,” Mama said. But she doesn’t sound convinced. “I’ve got this pain.”
I forget my afternoon plans and start to get worried. When Mama says she hurts, it’s something serious.
“Should we go to the ER?” I ask.
She doesn’t know. She says yes and then no, and I have a bad feeling about deciding either way. Finally, so I don’t have to be the one, I says I’ll ask Mrs. Perez. She’s our next-door neighbor, a little short woman with neat black hair, who has a night shift job in the hospital laundry. By default, she’s the medical resource for our block. Mrs. Perez comes in, takes one look at Mama, puts her hand on her forehead, which I hadn’t thought to do, and says, “I drive you to the ER.”
“I don’t want to bother you,” says Mama.
“I drive you and Davis stays with you. I gotta be here for Luisa getting home.” Luisa’s in the elementary and gets home later ‘cause of the bus routes.
So we get into Mrs. Perez’s ancient Subaru. Mama looks green and winces every time we hit a pothole. In the ER, we meet Dr. Patel, an intern, who has a round brown face that gets serious when he talks to Mama, and we get a referral to an oncologist, which sounds like a funny specialty but which turns out to be as bad as you can get. It’s like Mama says, you think you have worries, then you get real trouble and you realize things weren’t so bad before.
Now I got to come home every day after school, pronto, to shop and do the dinner; no hanging around the basketball court, working on my outside shot and my quick moves to the hoop. I gotta consult with Mama on the shopping, of course, because I’m too young to get a regular job and she’s had to quit at the motel. “Just for a few months,” she says. “Till I get over the surgery.”
I don’t know about that, but in the meantime, we’re living on welfare. Mama scours the coupons and flyers and gets on me to take the bus out to the big supermarket instead of shopping the Jiffy Mart or the Vietnamese market. A trip like that takes up the afternoon, and I usually make it on check day.