You’ll have to forgive our friend, Daf said. He’s off in a zone. A part of him is permanently slapdrunk. There’s no rousing him when he’s like this. Give him a minute and he’ll calm. Look at him. You, me, that baby, even his own body. It’s all disappeared. He might not look it, but he’s at peace now. He’s lucky really that he has a place to go and just be. Most people don’t even have anywhere like that to go. That sort of peacefulness is what it’s all about, isn’t it, Nicolette? Nicolette?
Nicolette trembled, and tears beaded at her eyes. She didn’t hear Daf’s words; she only saw the slapsmith’s menacing taunts. I’m Slapking Of The World and who the fuck are you?
Nicolette remembered the train and the men snatching at her, baby be damned. She grabbed a cloth from the ground and wrapped it around her free hand.
I’m not down for the count, uh-uh, the slapsmith bawled, slapping at shadows. I can go another round. Another two. Uh-uh. That bitch nigga punched me! That bitch nigga punched me! Let me at him!
Nicolette sprung to her feet, snatched the skillet from the fire, and slammed it to the side of the slapsmith’s head. Bacon strips flew through the air. The baby roared as if cheering. The slapsmith dropped to the ground, out cold.
Daf rushed toward his friend. His movements reminded Nicolette of the men on the train. Before Daf could reach the slapsmith, she rammed her foot square into his testicles. Daf stumbled, holding his crotch. He fell, groaning and wheezing. As he tried to rise, Nicolette tossed the skillet toward him, striking him in the mouth. She could hear the clack of the metal against his teeth. He fell back onto the dusty ground. One hand cradled his crotch, the other his bloody mouth.
Nicolette bounded up the embankment and walked swiftly along the track, listening to the music the rocks made beneath her feet. She shushed her son and bounced him, and finally he fell asleep peacefully against her chest. Every so often she’d stop to adjust the sling and to glance at the flickering fire at her back. Soon she could no longer see the injured men, and then even the flame was no longer visible.
What a long walk it would be that night, and an even longer journey across that twinkling river to wherever she’d eventually rest her head. She paused again to shift the sleeping baby. She looked down. At her foot lay a rock, big and smooth, heavy to the touch. Nicolette rested it in the sling, a good luck charm, sitting right where the tightness in her chest met the untroubled child.
202 Checkmates
In my eleventh year, my father taught me defeat.
I sat with my back pressed on that old, scratchy brown couch. Tom chased Jerry across the television screen and then the image dissolved into a white dot in the center. I turned to see my father holding the remote control in one hand and a crumpled cloth cradled in the crook of his other arm.
What are you doing with that rag, Daddy? I asked.
It’s not a rag, girl, he said. It’s a mat.
He unfurled the dirty checkered mat onto the coffee table and dropped a handful of chipped and faded black chess pieces in front of me. He started setting up the white ones without looking at me. I tilted my head, watching my father curiously.
I tentatively set up mine, following his lead. Each piece looked like a veteran of many battles, with nicks and gashes exposing the wood beneath the paint.
Your queen always starts off on her own color square, he said. She’s a woman like you and your mother. She likes to match. He reversed the positions of my king and queen.
When my father explained the rules, I thought I’d never be able to keep them straight, especially the rules about the horse, because he moved like a ballerina, jumping to far-off squares, or rather he galloped. I grabbed hold of a horse and moved him to a vacant square.
Now hold on, little girl, my father said. Chess is like real life. The white pieces go first so they got an advantage over the black pieces.
With that I removed my horse and he inched a pawn one square forward. I was on my way to being checkmated for the first time.
He was the god of chess each time he spread the crumpled mat and set up the pieces with his haggard, dark brown hands. I used to look at the grime beneath his fingernails and the scars on his knuckles, wondering why his hands looked older than him.
And my father’s voice crackled when we played chess. Daddy often sounded like a kung-fu master in one of those movies me and my brother watched on Saturday mornings. He didn’t speak like that all the time, but he always spoke like that when we played chess.
Once, I was so deep in concentration that I didn’t look up when my father broke our silence. Instead I chose to imagine one of my horses speaking.
I used to play this game with your grandfather when I was your age, he said sitting hunched over the board, moving around the pieces he had captured, waiting for me to make a move. Pop was good, he said. I never beat him.
How come?
’Cause he was good. Naw, really, I could have beat him had I had the chance. He got real sick. Couldn’t even finish the game we had going ’cause we took him to the hospital. He told me to bring the game with me when I went to see him. Your grandmother wouldn’t let me take it to the hospital, though. Don’t bother your father with that foolishness now. Daddy’s impression of my grandmother was a high-pitched shriek that sounded like her only in spirit, and even then it was Granny as a cartoon character. You know how your grandmother is, he continued. Every time we went, he used to ask me about the set and—
My father paused as I moved my queen to a middle square. He swooped in swiftly and tapped it from the board with the base of a knight. It bounced once it hit the carpet.
Thought you had something, huh? Let that be a lesson, little girl.
With my queen gone, I made my moves lazily, waiting for the twentieth checkmate, and then my father said this: You playing like the game’s done. The game ain’t over until that king is pinned down and can’t go nowhere.
If a pawn makes it to the other side, he told me, it becomes a queen. I imagined a little pawn magically blossoming into royalty on that last square.
It became something I longed to see. Sometimes when all was lost, I’d just inch a pawn forward, but the piece would never make it. The fifty-seventh checkmate was one of those games.
We woke early in the morning before I went off to school to continue a game carried over from the night before.
While we played, my father told me that when he was my age he imagined he’d be the first black grandmaster. He was the best chess player in school, winning casual games as easily as drinking a glass of water. He became king of the tournaments.
Yeah, figured one day everyone would call me Grandmaster Rob.
What happened?
Just didn’t work out that way, I guess. After a while, I wasn’t worrying about being no grandmaster or nothing like that. You stop thinking about these things at a certain age.
I’m going to be a grandmaster, I said.
My father stared hard at the board.
You know, Daddy, it’s never too late.
He chuckled, and in less than two minutes my king stood pinned by a bishop, a rook, and a pawn.
Checkmate!
He jumped and shuffled across the floor like the Holy Ghost had slithered up his pant leg.
Robert, she’s eleven years old, my mother said, passing by.
The girl ain’t too young to learn, he replied. Then he turned to me. Ain’t that right?
I nodded, thinking about my loss rather than whatever I was nodding about. My impotent pieces stood meekly, no longer any use.
He stuck his hand out for a victory shake.
You cheated me, I said, raising my voice a little, ignoring his hand and frowning, damning him for phantom moves I was sure he had made in my absence. Daddy, you cheated.