Nabisase walked with me, though not for the comraderie. I was on the sidewalk and she stayed at the lip of the street. She thought I’d betrayed her. On the drive up from Lumpkin I filled the car with gas and didn’t make one stop; she and Grandma didn’t speak.
Except when we were finally home and I got out, ran around to Nabisase’s side.
Then my sister said, — Don’t you hold any more doors open in front of me.
It’s harder to stay close when someone watches you betray them. She thought she understood me perfectly and I just couldn’t explain.
I smiled as we reached the corner of 229th Street and 147th Avenue. Nabisase went to hear sermons at the Apostolic Temple of Selwyn. A Church with Old Time Powers.
Watching her, I wondered how, exactly, a person finds religion.
After ten minutes a brown van stopped about a half-block past me. I waited for it to come back but the driver wouldn’t rewind so I had to walk over.
There are two kinds of vans used for this small-business public transportation. The difference is in the size of the passenger door. One has a great big hatch while the other’s got a portal the size of an airplane window. I will let you guess which this van had; it shouldn’t take long to figure. When I opened the tiny entrance the crowd inside muttered. I distinctly heard one man whisper, — Oh god damn, at the sight of me.
Ten passengers watched me struggle in. The inside of the cabin smelled like sweaty feet and cocoa butter. Each row of seats fit three people, but those were to capacity so I had to get past them, to the last back ass end where there was the longer seat that fits four.
I knocked a woman’s hat off her head with my big shoulder.
A teenager got so jostled as I passed that his whole damn magazine fell between his knees to the floor.
— Sorry, I whispered. Sorry.
Even the other fat people cursed me or rolled their eyes.
The driver was a fifty-year-old lady with a face like a betel nut. She waited until I was almost in the seat properly then pedal down, pedal hard.
There was dance hall music coming from the radio and the van’s CB spattered conversation or static. The driver’s name was Lorna Tintree and she picked up the microphone whenever her dispatcher called for her. They always used her full name. She yelled responses as she drove too fast.
Her voice had a thick island accent. I could imagine mango trees, but not any particular island. Slow down was the only message I wished her dispatcher would send. Her hair was a big loose spray of black semi-curls emanating from her skull like the sound waves of her rollicking conversation.
Each time she stopped talking there was a moment before the guy on the other end responded and the fuzz through the microphone sounded like a name:
— ledric- ledric-.
Please understand how dangerous a van trip is. Lorna Tintree took curves doing fifty.
When we hit bumps and dips in the road eleven people tossed in the air. Only our driver wore a seat belt.
My sister might have thought I was going to help Mr. Mayo, but I was not. I’d go apply for a library card at the Jamaica branch, have some lunch and then come home. I’d tell her that I lost the address.
But after each leap, as the van banged back to the ground, the gnash of chassis against roadway was a familiar proper noun: — ledric- ledric-.
My conscience sounded like my sister, her voice a guide in my head. Leading me past Rufus King Park. To Sutphin Boulevard and 88th Avenue where a certain fat bastard rented a room. Shit if I hadn’t been avoiding saving his life.
23
Ledric’s building was owned by a Nigerian woman who wouldn’t let me into her home until I said his name a couple times. When I did she looked at me closely, asked, — You are the brother?
— Of course, I said. Let me see him?
This was a private home that the woman owned. One of three on the block between a pair of six-story apartment buildings. — Go round the back, she said.
The lady rented single-occupancy spaces out of her basement. Three rooms at $400 each. Probably covered the mortgage so that her own paycheck might afford the large-screen television I’d seen through her front window.
When I knocked politely and heard no response she kicked the door to Ledric’s room so hard that it rumbled from the force of her boot. Eventually Ledric made a noise, but not for three minutes. In that time I watched the lady as she ran one finger across her gums then fed on a few remnant strands of beef.
Ledric was able to pull open the door to his room without getting up because he was lying on the ground. — Hey Ant. Nabisase just called me to see if you came yet, he whispered.
The Nigerian said, — I want money for getting Ledric’s vomit out of my carpet.
I’m not a creature. There are human feelings in me. I got down, set my arms around his waist, and helped Ledric onto the bed. That wasn’t actually a good thing because the whole mattress was wet through the sheets.
The Nigerian woman said, — And he’s going to have to pay for the mattress if it’s ruin.
Ledric’s room was only big enough for a bed and desk. The window was open, which helped relieve the moist smell of yuke, but this was November and pretty cold.
— You should keep the window shut, I said to him.
The landlord covered her nose. — He shouldn’t.
I helped him dress, but he couldn’t get his arms through shirt sleeves. — I’m seeing in two’s, he whispered.
His desk had nothing on it but work materials: envelopes, preprinted labels and form letters from SunTrust, a bank in Washington, D.C. I went through them like they were my own. Offers for unsecured credit cards, all applicants considered.
— This is your job? I asked.
— I’ve got to complete a hundred-fifty more this week.
— I’m not going to do it for you, I said.
On any subway seat in Queens there are these little red cards with phone numbers and bold offers: Lose Weight— 30 Lbs in 30 Days. Make Money— Assemble Products in Your Home. I never thought anyone was foolish enough to call the swindlers back.
I was angry at him, but he could hardly breathe. I sat him up while I filled a gym bag with his least grimy clothes. The boy just wasn’t neat, even before the tapeworms I bet. Where was that jar?
— I threw it out, Ledric said. I don’t know what I was thinking.
I helped him to his feet, but that was a losing proposition. He was having a bad time standing, but when he leaned against me we managed a kind of run that was basically the two of us falling forward under the combined weight. Six hundred pounds. Okay seven.
He was shorter than me and he had an enormous belly; the kind that suffocates genitals when the bearer sits down. But he had no tits at all and his legs were skinny.
Before we could leave the Nigerian woman said, — He still owes me for the last week. Your brother pays me last Wednesday.
— He’s sick, I said.
— One ’undred.
I paid her with the bills in my pocket. Ten ten-dollar bills and she counted them in front of me three times. I had no bank account only some paper money in my wallet and the rest hidden in one box of my books.
Getting to Jamaica Avenue took half an hour, though it was just three blocks. Ledric had been slurring his words for twenty minutes and each time he opened his mouth a little drool played down his chin. It got so disgusting that I tied one of his T-shirts, bandit-style, around the lower half of his face to absorb the saliva.
This made it harder to get a gypsy car; outfitted as he was and me with Ledric’s duffel bag on my shoulder taxi drivers probably thought we’d robbed a White Castle of its patties and buns.