Teddy laughed again, then he said, “I like the part when the crack addict guy says, ‘I’ll suck ya dick.’”
“You like that part?”
“Yeah, it’s funny because it’s just like this part from Boyz n the Hood, where this woman crack addict says, ‘I’ll suck your dick’—it’s like the exact same scene, but in Menace it’s a guy crack addict who says it. It’s like they’re trying to make the movie even crazier than Boyz n the Hood because a guy says ‘I’ll suck your dick.’”
“I guess,” I said.
“And then O-Dog shoots the guy. He thinks the offer somehow makes him gay. And it’s like the movie is saying gay people are the worst kind of people. Like even if everyone is living in a ghetto and it’s hell, the gay person is the worst. Like a man sucking a dick is the most desperate you could get.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But why the hell would that make you like that scene?”
“I just mean I think it’s funny, I don’t like it.”
“I just think it’s a stupid movie,” I said. “I think most movies and TV shows and video games are stupid.”
“Okay,” he said, and sucked his cigarette hard and then let out a big thing of smoke.
“You’re crazy, right?” he said through the smoke. I said I wasn’t and he said that I was.
“Why do you think I’m crazy?” I said.
He took another drag and said, “Because you don’t care about anything.”
“I do care,” I said. “I care too much, but it never works. Like now—I’m trying to be here, I’m trying to do things. But it doesn’t work, I can’t find anything, so maybe that’s what makes me crazy.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. I think you don’t care about anything, Teddy, not me.”
“I care about you,” he said quietly, then he looked at me from the side of his face.
“Oh, shut up,” I said. “You hardly even see me.”
“Well I wish I did. I try to call you all the time, but you’re always gone.”
“I have soccer and shit,” I said.
“I love you,” he said. I laughed because he was drunk. But I could also tell that he was a little serious. I looked right at him and it was in that moment I knew it meant nothing to say that. I got very quiet and looked away and we sat staring at our reflections. Then I said, “You remember that night in eighth grade, after Shauna’s bat mitzvah, we went to Gunn and sat under that tree? And I carved a heart in it?”
“Yeah.”
“I wish we could go back to that night.”
“Ivan and I cut it down.”
“The tree?” I said. He nodded in the reflection and smoked. “You cut down the whole tree? It was huge.”
“I know. One night last year we used his stepdad’s saw. Just me and him. It took a long time. That thing was probably there since the Civil War. Now it’s gone.”
Sitting there with Teddy, I knew I was making a decision, but I didn’t know what.
We smoked. The Camels weren’t my brand but they were okay in the night air.
After that I stopped seeing Mr. B as often. He said I was being a baby. I told him I needed to spend more time with people my age, but when I wasn’t with him I just ended up sitting in my room at home. Tiff wasn’t even around. One night Mr. B asked me to babysit Michael because he had something important to do. I told him no.
“Please. He likes you, April.”
“No he doesn’t.”
“Yes he does. If you don’t do it for me, do it for him. He’s used to having you around.”
“Are you really going out?”
“Yes. I’d rather spend time with you, but I guess you won’t let me.”
I didn’t even kiss Mr. B when he left. Michael was seven now. He may have been used to me, but he still didn’t talk to me. He was in his regular position on the floor playing a game called Street Fighter. I sat on the couch and smoked.
“You’re not supposed to smoke in here.” I didn’t answer. I ashed in my Diet Coke can and watched him fight different characters. After my cigarette I told him that I wanted to play. I sat on the floor next to him and picked up the other controller.
“You have to pick. Who do you want to be?”
“I want to be the girl.”
“Chun Li? She sucks.”
“I don’t care, I want to be Chun Li.” He told me what to press. “Now how do I fight you?”
“You press the buttons,” he said. He was this Chinese guy and he beat the shit out of me. I pressed the buttons and my girl punched and kicked but it didn’t do any good. He killed me twice and the game was over. “Two cookies,” he said.
“What?”
“I get two cookies, I won.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s the rules.”
“No it’s not. Your dad said you get four cookies and you already had them.”
“Cindy lets me.”
“Who?”
“My other babysitter.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s my other babysitter. She lets me have cookies.”
I stood up and walked to the kitchen. He was telling me he wanted one Oreo and one chocolate chip when I walked out the back door.
I didn’t know where to go. I drove. Nirvana was in the CD player and I turned it off. I just drove and smoked. I didn’t want to go home. I smoked four cigarettes. I had only one more left so I drove to 7-Eleven. I bought some more Reds with my sister’s ID and a Diet Coke. Outside, I used the pay phone. First I called my sister, but she wasn’t there. I called Shauna and then I called Alice. Alice said there was a party and gave me the address. I got in the car but I didn’t turn the key. The lights inside the 7-Eleven made everything look yellow. The light fractured when I started crying.
After a while I started the car and drove slowly back toward Mr. B’s. I had one more cigarette in the old pack. I had turned it upside down so I could make a wish. I put it in my mouth and lit it and made a desperate wish.
Tar Baby
This guy, A. J. Sims, and I, we got a bottle and drank it in his bedroom in the basement of his house. Vodka, clear and burning. We drank it straight from the big glass bottle.
A.J. had seven brothers, older and younger, so there were clothes, cups, and trash all over the house and some of the walls were flaking paint. There wasn’t much space, and all A.J. had for privacy was this shitty little underground room with a bed two inches off the floor, and his boom box and his hip-hop mix tapes.
I was pretty drunk that night. We were listening to the Pharcyde. I was drinking much more than he was. I sat in the one chair by the desk and he sat on the bed.
A bubble came up from my stomach and burned my throat. It came out rank and when I swallowed it tasted like acid.
Just then, I don’t know why, I said, “Oh, crap, A.J., fuck you.” I laughed and my esophagus was burning.
A.J. looked up from his deep thoughts on the bed.
“Don’t say that shit, bitch,” he said, and he was not laughing.
“What shit?” I said.
“Fuck you, Teddy. Don’t be sitting over there like a grinning baboon sayin’ shit. I’ll fuck you up.” He wasn’t really looking at me.
“Okay,” I said, and drank some more from the bottle. It was a great bottle, really smooth. Smirnoff. I took a sip of tap water from a little orange plastic cup.
Then A.J. was up and pacing around the room. Three big steps in one direction, three steps back, over and over again. He was hunched over in a white T-shirt that was grayed from washing, and his wiry forearms were flexing and unflexing.
He had moved to Palo Alto from LA the year before, so he thought he had a reputation to maintain. He was just a skinny little guy with a bowling ball head, but he arrived talking big. For a while he got a bit of respect because he wrote good graffiti and claimed that he liked big black asses. His tag was “Icer” for some reason, and then he changed it to “Ajay” because it was like his name but spelled differently. He always drank a lot of pineapple juice to make his come taste good. “Like cocoa butter,” he said.