Yall come eat.
The family blasts into the dining room like an express train. Porsha directs them: Mamma, you sit here next to Dad. Aunt Gracie, you sit over there next to John.
Jesus grins it over, grins cause Sheila and Gracie are sisters, but you must keep them apart. Can’t stand each other. Always been that way, always will be.
And you boys sit down there.
Boy? Hatch says. Who you callin a boy?
Yeah, Jesus says. We men.
Seventeen ain’t grown, Porsha says.
Don’t start, Sheila says.
Dressed to the nines, as always, John removes his glasses, sets them next to his plate. He whispers something to Lucifer—my uncle—who nods in silent agreement. Two brothers, their hair spotted gray, strewn with ashes.
Aunt Gracie, why don’t you say grace?
Okay. You must realize that in the last days the times will be full of danger. Men will become utterly self-centered. They will be utterly lacking in gratitude. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
Prayers circulate around the table. Sheila says, Let the peace of Christ control in your heart and show thanks. Porsha says her say. In connection with everything give thanks. Lucifer, John, Hatch, and Jesus mumble in unison, Christ wept.
Let’s eat!
Jesus tears into his food, though the sleeves of his thick winter coat slow him somewhat. He watches the others as he eats, prickly aware of himself.
I was jus remembering something, Sheila says over the clatter of dishes. When Porsha was little, she couldn get enough of Jesus and Hatch. Feed them. Bathe them. Take them anywhere they wanna go. I tell you. Sheila smiles and shakes her head in memory and delight. She used to drape their wet diapers across the radiator. And bring them fresh cookies from school.
Oh, Mamma, Porsha says. Why you have to bring that up?
Cause I—
Sheila, ain’t you got this boy tied to yo apron strings?
John, I don’t see nothing on my apron.
Look again, cause the way I remember it, when Hatch there was a baby, he was always ridin yo hip.
As tired as I was. How he gon ride my hip?
You go to the grocery store and he ridin yo hip.
John.
You go to the Laundromat and he ridin yo hip.
Please.
Well, he rode it. Yeah, while you cleaned up yo house.
Dr. Shipco, Lucifer says, told me himself that Hatch rode her hip while she cleaned his house.
Dinner over, the family retires to the living room with two fifths of Crown Royal. The women take glasses and a bottle and retire to one corner. The men take the other bottle and another corner.
Give them boys a drink, John says.
Just one, Sheila says. One glass apiece.
What about Porsha? Hatch says. How come she can drink?
Porsha grown and livin in her own house, Sheila says.
But I’m livin in my own house, you say.
You ain’t grown, though.
Don’t worry, John whispers to Hatch. Got something for you. He slips Hatch a shapely paper bag. Don’t let the women see that.
Time passes.
Lucifer and John grow louder with each successive tip of the Crown Royal bottle.
Liquor-possessed words slip from John’s slack mouth. So me and some of the fellas at the dispatch tryin to start our own company.
Yeah.
We got the cabs. Most of the guys own theirs.
Still ain’t gon buy yours?
John laughs, a laugh that begins little on his lips but expands to swell his stomach and chest.
Still ain’t … Lucifer kills the words, staring at the laughing John with his heavy, stone-cold eyes, then uplifting the bottle and the weight dropping from the eyes, the mouth slacking into a smile, adding his laugh to the other. Jesus sees recognition in Lucifer’s face, his own features and nothing else.
Brother. John shakes one bottle then the other. We empty.
Can’t have that, Lucifer says.
Be back in a flash. John’s slow fingers fit his spectacles onto his face, the sidepieces creating viselike pressure at his temples, pressure that scrunches up his face, features distorted, pained. He quits the house for two fresh bottles of Crown Royal.
Boy, you sho is tall. Smile gone, Lucifer speaks with his torso craned forward, the widow’s peak at his forehead like a scorpion’s tail. Jesus knows what is coming. The liquor helps bring Lucifer’s true feelings to the surface. Where you get all that height? Lucifer says. And that red hair? Can’t be from John. No. Can’t be from my brother.
Come on, Hatch says. He tugs at Jesus’s elbow. Hot, Jesus refuses to move, soldered in place. Come on. Hatch tugs.
Jesus and Hatch move to the bamboo patio with the big movie screen of a window overlooking shrubs, kept green and square by any wino willin to do the job for the buck or two John paid. Green but hidden today behind curtains of slanting rain.
Where you get that jacket? Hatch says. It’s the hype.
Arms out, Jesus twirls like a ballerina so that Hatch may admire it. Red down (goose feathers that flutter when he walks) with a black leather circle centered in the back. From Jew Town.
The hype. I gotta get me one.
Cool. We should go down there. I’ll take you to the store.
They slide their food-heavy bodies onto the oak rocking chair, feeling the baked ham and turkey, the candied yams, buttered corn, the collard greens and string beans, apple and peach cobbler settle into their bellies. Hatch pulls a brown paper bag from his blazer pocket, unwraps it, a brick of Night Train, the lil somephun that John had promised, that John had sneaked in under his jacket. Hatch crumples the paper, returns it to his pocket. Breaks the cap and offers Jesus the first taste. Jesus tilts the bottle twice, taking two huge swallows, a musical gurgle of liquor in his throat. The wine’s heat spreads fanwise out from his stomach, filling his entire body. He passes Hatch the bottle. Hatch hits it, eyes closed. Passes it back to Jesus. So it goes. They share the wine while their legs pump the rocking chair in motion. The liquid spills forward in the upturned bottle. Jesus gulps. Hatch gulps. Gracie’s plants lean into the absent daylight. They drink in silence, only the rhythm of the rocking chair and their breathing indicating that they are not asleep. Drink, until the empty bottle glints beyond their reach.
Guess they think we sposed to sit there and watch them drink.
One drink.
Yeah.
One.
One.
Won’t even let us drink like a man.
Check it.
I mean she let Porsha … Jesus’s mouth seems swollen, the words too fat to escape through his lips. He reaches up to examine them. Fingers tell him what no mirror can reveal.
Hatch brings the empty bottle to his lips. Damn!
Jesus recognizes in the gentle, absentminded movements of his hand something like a familiar melody. You remember?
Remember? Remember what?
Jesus shakes his head. Hard falling rain turns him to the window. Later. I’m out.
Where you going?
Business.
Business?
Peace. His legs carry him quietly out the back door, away from the loud adult voices in the front room. He stares down the deserted street back of the house. Somewhere in the distance, the thick-throated whistle of a freight train. Wherever he turns, he breathes water, drinks air. He throws his head back into steaming rain. Wind-whipped water pokes needles into his face. Yellow streetlights pop on.