Hatch. You grown now. You defy my word. From now on you save all the money you make from yo route, and the next time you need a flanger or a phase shifter or octave divider or synthesizer or ring modulator or wah-wah pedal, or fuzz box, you better not ask me.
Don’t do that, Mamma. At fifteen, Hatch was already taller than Sheila, equal in height to Chitlin Sandwich, equally thin, with big boyish ears and a hairless face.
Sheila. What you doin here?
Sheila smiled. They had not heard her key turn in the lock. She closed the door behind her. Oh, I’m jus droppin by.
Mamma watched her, unbelieving, perhaps. She was forty and gorgeous. Tall — a good five ten — she stood out in her nice dresses and clean stockings and decent pumps. She wore her hair pulled back in a ponytail to accentuate her large eyes and high cheekbones. Her smooth dark skin, full breasts, small waist, big butt, and shapely legs drew comment. She thanked anyone who complimented her, even scandalous men. Sheila thought to kiss her but decided against it. Never kiss her when she’s mad. Never.
I was jus talkin to yo brother here. Hardheaded.
No, I ain’t, Mamma.
He think he grown now.
No, I don’t.
Go on and be grown. She spoke into Hatch’s face. And spend yo grown money.
Mamma—
Sheila saved her money when she was yo age.
Both Mamma and Hatch looked at Sheila for support. Sheila said nothing.
Go on, Mr. Grown, with yo grown self.
Please, Mamma—
I said all I’m gon say. Come on, Sheila. Help me wit dinner.
I’ll be right there. She waited until Mamma went into the kitchen. Mamma on yo case, huh?
Word.
She’ll calm down.
I hope so. Crestfallen, doomed, Hatch watched the floor.
Cheer up. She’ll change her mind.
Hatch said nothing.
She was secretly satisfied with Mamma’s tough stand — was it enough, and would it halt what was already in motion? — but she was careful not to show it. Guess who I saw today?
Who?
Chitlin Sandwich.
Hatch continued to watch the floor.
And you know what else?
What?
He was riding your bike.
Hatch raised his head and looked her in the face with protesting eyes. It wasn’t my bike.
Looked like it.
Couldn be. My bike’s in there. Hatch pointed to the closed patio.
Sheila weighed his words. He was lying. She was sure of it. She could see it in his eyes.
A white Jaguar bounced and swayed through nervous traffic. Animate ill will. Chitlin’s wrath seemed to buoy him. Bent and cramped, he floated in the space between steering wheel and hood. A relic. His mouth wide, almost too broad for his skinny face.
Her rearview mirror drummed with the sight. Witness, her eyes recorded, vision hurrying like venom through her body. She gunned the engine with a hoarse roar, turned at the corner, turned again, made several more turns, until she was back where she had started. Car, boomerang. She curved to the curb. Engine running, she sat, quiet, behind the wheel. Her head was numb. Lost him. So now he’s following me? Okay, I got something for him. Wait and see. He’ll think twice about messin wit me.
Boy, what’s wrong wit you? Roused from sleep, in her yellow housecoat with white flowers, Mamma watched Hatch from her reclined position on the couch, the cords in her neck tense, as if straining to contain air bound blood. Her red-house-shoed feet crossed. Ashy ankles like gray fish eyes. Lips puckered from toothless gums. She’d lost her teeth as a child in the Sippi South, when a reckless car struck her on a lonely dirt road. Specialists fashioned her a new set, which she had a hard time keeping track of. Once she’d left them on a friend’s dashboard and dispatched an embarrassed Sheila to retrieve them. Speak up. She switched her gaze to Sheila for a moment, the eyes like stones, scraping Sheila’s skin.
Head down, Hatch cried without wiping his eyes, tears running. A swelling reddened his brow, a small red knob. He attempted to speak between sobs, bubbled words and saliva.
Boy, speak up.
Chitlin Sandwich bit me wit a sock.
What?
Chitlin Sandwich hit me wit a rock.
Mamma continued to look at him, letting the wet revelation soak in. Her eyes slowly found Sheila’s face. She had been put in charge of Hatch. They shared a two-bedroom apartment — she and Mamma, one bedroom; Hatch the other — on the top floor of a three-story brick courtyard building, broad high picture window overlooking the Stonewall Projects, a single playground the center of three seven-story steel high-rises that bloomed into city sky. Flecks of waste. Free-floating rage. It was Mamma’s desire to spirit out of the neighborhood first chance.
Mamma rose from the couch, shuffled into the kitchen, house shoes slapping the bare floor, and returned with two potsherds. She took Hatch’s hand and raised it, palm upward, beggar-fashion. Placed the potsherds inside. Don’t let the serpent of hatred rise in yo heart, she said, but I want you to go back out there and bust that Chitlin Sandwich side his head.
No, ma’am. Hatch was eight, and tall for his age — threatening, even — but he was clumsy (Mamma forbade him to handle delicate objects) and gentle, and would wrap crooked Band-Aids around the broken wings of dragonflies. He would thank Mamma when she whupped him — her blows and words synchronized, his body jerking to avoid the rhythmic belt — and promise to do better.
You back-talkin me?
No, ma’am.
Then get out there and do what I told you to do.
I would prefer not to.
What? Get! She shoved him, stumbling, out the door. Stood looking at Sheila. What are you standing there for? Go wit him.
It was a day of filtered sunshine, half-cloud, half-sun. Chitlin Sandwich waited before the gray mass of the building. Chitlin Sandwich, waiting. Dark, red, sparkling, the child of unmothering and unfathering deeps. Anyone even remotely connected with the Abraham Lincoln Elementary School knew that his mamma dressed him from the Goodwill. She ran the streets in glossy hip huggers, a new man on her arm every week, and she aided and supported two grown brothers, Snake and Lake, criminals in hiding, pursued. She cooked every Sunday and used the leftovers for the remainder of the week. Her specialty was the chitlin sandwich: chitlins on white bread with hot sauce, onions, lettuce, pickles, and tomatoes. Chitlin rose a full three inches over the tallest kid in the neighborhood. (Perhaps the sandwiches fed his strange growth and behavior.) Feared, he was also called upon, since he instinctively understood electronics. He could repair a toaster and a computer, a television and a cellular phone, with equal ease. Word had it he never used tools.
Chitlin walked, the hinged arms and legs of a cardboard Halloween skeleton. Hatch closed his eyes and whirled both potsherds. One caught Chitlin — he made no attempt to defend himself — squarely behind the earlobe. Hatch opened his eyes to red sight. He ran back into the courtyard. Halted beside Sheila. She knew what he was thinking: stand his ground or answer to Mamma.
Chitlin crossed the street for Stonewall, blood trickling between fingers stopping his wound. He did not hurry. Steady and calm. Sheila watched from the courtyard, drawn by the clean power of curiosity. She had never seen such stoicism and determination in a child. She caught one last glimpse of him before Stonewall swallowed him.
Did you see that? she said.
See what?
Did you see that?
He bleedin. He gon beat me up.
You didn’t see it? As her brother’s fear weighed on her, Chitlin Sandwich reappeared, walking with swift firm steps, dragging with one hand some object that scraped the concrete behind him like a fallen muffler. She held up one hand to block the sun so that she could see better, but there was no light to block. Sight improved as he came closer. She felt a violent knocking in her stomach, neither fear nor anger. Comic disbelief.