The floorboard creaked at the scurry of movement from the other room. Percy laid already awake, though never truly asleep. Not as long as there was another man in the house. A jumble of legs and arms, the three babies slept next to him. The family referred to his young charges as 'the babies' despite them all being in elementary school. Oblivious to the sounds from the next room, they slept with a hail of snorts and snores, under his guard, sprawled out like Power Rangers caught in mid-action. Percy tried to cover his ears to block the rutting sounds from the next room. The moment itched against his skin and ached his stomach; even his unintended eavesdropping intruded on something private. Something dirty.
It wasn't as if he had snuck into his mother's room and hid under her bed in order to divine why so many 'uncles' stopped by to stay the night. Or the hour. Or the quick fifteen minutes. It implied her having a bed, instead of the stained mattress hauled from down the street after it had been set out for heavy trash pick-up. A 'ghetto garage sale' Miss Jane called it, then she convinced several of her fellow partiers — she always called them partiers, with her always in search of the next party — to haul the thing back to where she stayed. They squatted in one of the dilapidated houses boarded up by the city which had long been zoned to be demolished. The plan was to build a few affordable houses, a Section 8 oasis among the older homes in the neighborhood. Those houses too run-down to be refurbished were to be razed. Until the paperwork went through, bids submitted then chosen, and contracts signed, the houses were free game for whoever chose to live there.
And Miss Jane never missed an opportunity.
A man, his voice gruff and low, called out her name as if he were in church and struck by the Holy Ghost. Percy all but pictured him jumping down the aisles caught up in the throes of the spirit that moved him. His mother's name. God's name. A stream of words people shouldn't use. All to the staccato rhythm banged against the thin wall separating them. His eyes squeezed shut even tighter, Percy acted as if that would block out the sounds. He began to sing softly to himself: 'Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…'
Finally, mercifully, it stopped.
The knob turned noisily, furtive whispers exchanged after the long creak of the door, barely on its hinges, opened. Attending to his final duty, Percy rose and positioned himself formidably in the hallway, his large frame shadowed by the dawn light through the cracks of the plywood boarding the windows. He was a looming shade in a faded Polo T-shirt stretched by his bulbous form and a pair of five yearold jeans, his size carried the day as the man paused upon seeing him. Disheveled, shirt unbuttoned and untucked, pants hastily put on, the man glanced back toward Miss Jane half-flustered. Percy nodded, the way his momma taught him. The man reached for his wallet and peeled off a few twenties.
'Later.' The man stumbled toward the door, carefully avoiding Percy's gaze.
'Later, baby,' Miss Jane said, an echo of exaggerated seduction to her voice. As easily as she turned it on, she turned it off. 'How's my big man?'
'Tired.' Percy rubbed his eyes. With the man gone, his body slouched in an exhale.
'Couldn't sleep?' Miss Jane played at naive innocence, the wisp of a devilish grin at the edge of her mouth.
'What we going to do for breakfast?'
'We got any cereal left?'
'No.' Percy had hidden the remaining half of a box before Miss Jane and her parade of would-be suitors returned from their nightly routine of running the streets foraging for highs. He would divvy it up among the babies for dinner, before the idea to sell the box occurred to her. He made that mistake last week after restocking the shelves with food stamp-bought groceries. What her paramours, his 'uncles', didn't eat, she sold the next day. Before then, he had to learn the hard way his lesson about letting her have the food stamps card directly. They went without food for a month, getting by on church pantries and neighborhood moms who pitied them and gave out of their own meager food supply.
'Guess we going to have to get to work early this morning.' Her breasts peered unapologetically through the flimsy material. She stretched, her shirt raised to expose her belly, fully revealing that she wasn't wearing any panties. A smile with too much knowing inched with devilish glee across her face. 'Send them off early, maybe they can catch a free breakfast at school. Then hook up with me at the spot.'
Miss Jane slipped into gray sweatpants and a matching jacket and pulled her hair up into a pink wrap which matched her slippers. Schemes already half-forming as to how to raise enough money to not only get right but also to get through the day, she marched out the house with nary a backward glance.
Percy roused the babies and found some clothes which had been aired out for a few days. Maybe tomorrow he would be able to scrounge enough change to make it to the laundromat or perhaps a teacher might do a load for them. He, too, bled a life full of maybes. He walked them to school, many of the children kept a mocking distance from them. The babies without combed hair who smelled funny were easy targets, even from children just as poor and just as crusty-assed. Percy waited until the school doors swallowed his younger siblings, before he was assured they were even somewhat safe for a time.
And he felt tired.
He wanted to go to school. If nothing else, it was a break from the world he knew. Some days, however, he had to put in work. Almost like skipping school to help out on the family farm… if by 'family farm' one meant a new way to get over on folks. Percy met up with her behind the Fountain Square Mortuary. She made a few extra dollars as a professional griever. The old man who ran the place gave her forty dollars to wail at funerals, especially when there were only a few mourners in attendance. For an extra twenty, she'd throw herself onto the casket.
'Boy, look at you.' Her hands on her hips, she eyed him up and down, a scorn-filled countenance displeased with the measure of the man.
'What, ma?'
'Shuffling around like you got nowhere to go. What, ma?' she mocked. 'Even when you talk, you sound beaten down. You radiate weakness like you the sun beaming down on all us folks. You ain't ever going to be half the man your daddy is.'
'Is?' His voice raised with hope. It wasn't as if he believed his father to be dead or even purposefully absent. Hope gilded Percy's thoughts of the man. With dreams of being wanted but his father being too busy to come around. Too important. Yes, he had one of those important jobs which had him constantly traveling. The word 'is' carried the promise that not only was he still around but that Miss Jane knew where he was. Hope was a death of a thousand small cuts, bleeding the life from him in a steady, painful stream.
'Boy, you too slow for words most days. You ain't built for this here game. You have to have hardness. You have to have heart. And you? You so…'
'Soft.' Percy sighed, eyes cast downward.
'Look here.' Miss Jane sidled alongside him, not putting her arm around him or anything too… maternal. But the boy, despite his obvious deficiencies, touched something within her. Maybe he was so simple, so pathetic, she drew near just to staunch his feebleness. He had a way about him, not his father's way, but a way. A purity, one which shamed her every time she approached. She stepped back. 'You see them boys over there.' Dollar and his crew stood about gearing up for the day's trade. These days, Dollar oversaw a couple of crews. He might be in line to rise to the next level. As it was, boys buzzed about, attending to him without so much as a word from him. 'You have to know a few things about folks. First, everyone is out for they self.'
'But…'
'Ain't no buts. This is all about survival and doing whatever it takes to survive, well, sometimes ain't a lot of room for pride left. You get over on them or else they will get over on you. That leads to rule number two.'
'What's that?'
'You can't trust nobody.'
'Not even you?'
'Not even me.' Miss Jane paused, struck by the honesty of her answer. Something about the boy just made folks… simple. 'Folks be stupid or too sneaky. Everyone's got an agenda, some angle they working. That's why you have to play or get played.'
'I don't think I like this game.'
'That's what I'm trying to tell you. Not everyone's cut out for this. See? Look.'
They turned to the scene drawn by someone hollering in pain. He probably got his ass caught shorting money, diluting product to squeeze out some side money, or selling burn bags as their product. All variations on the
