'That's what divas do, huh?'
'All I'm saying is that I don't keep too many girl friends, especially around me and my man. One or two close ones I talk to-'
'Like Rhianna,' King slipped in.
'A few I hang out with-'
'Like that girl in the park from the other day.'
Lady G couldn't help but suppress a grin at the attention he paid to her life. She continued: 'But none I tell everything to. They the ones that come back and stab you. You ain't in love or anything are you?'
'I only ever fell in love once.'
'Oh, Lord,' Big Momma said.
'Your baby's momma?' Lady G asked.
'I ain't talking about her. I forget that girl's name.' King closed his eyes while Lady G picked at Big Momma's tangled braids.
'Shameika,' Big Momma answered for him. 'He was really young, they had a really good relationship. But then she switched to another church, fell in with a new group of friends, and started hanging around with them. It wasn't that he was jealous of her new friends. He wasn't even mad that she had a life outside of him, but he wasn't the type of person to put up with being exiled. First he was in, and then he was completely out. So he turned around and told her it might be best if they chilled for a minute. The worst break-up he ever had.'
That was what he thought then.
'That didn't sour you on women?' Lady G asked.
Big Momma answered again. 'It was the only time he fell in love. Other than that, all he had was 'girls' like his baby's momma: a girl for a jazz concert, a girl for a movie, a girl for prayer meeting. He didn't want them to get the wrong idea, so he always told them upfront.'
'A church boy at heart?' Lady G tugged at a knot causing Big Momma to grimace.
'Nothing wrong with that.'
A clearing throat interrupted them. Big Momma, Lady G, and King all turned to find Merle standing there as if he'd been there the entire time.
'What a pleasant scene,' Merle said. 'I hate to break up such an idyllic moment, but we have business to attend to.'
Loose Tooth awaited Tavon on the steps of the porch. On post. Even at night, under the sodium glare, Tavon loved the house. For him, it was almost sacred ground.
'What's up?'
'Same old foolishness,' Loose Tooth said with his gravelly voice and a sad, resigned smile. 'Miss Jane an' 'em's inside.'
Only then did Tavon notice the racket coming from inside. He went around to the rear of the house, Loose Tooth faithfully following, to the basement entrance. He bent the plywood covering enough for them to slide through. If night had a texture, it felt like the black of the basement. Only after their eyes adjusted could they use the residual glow from the street lamps to discern the foreboding shapes around them. They made their way past the rusted-out furnace, an antique from forty years ago. A pile of old window frames, still useable, littered a storage room floor. He blithely slid past the ad-hoc floor joists that leveled the bending floorboards. The rotted stairs croaked in protest with each of their steps. Tavon put his shoulder into the nailed-shut door.
Ship-wrecked lost souls lay about the living room floor. Too many times he came here to find out that Miss Jane had let a whole crew flop there, like a basement party that got smoked out. This time the sprawl of bodies used each other to stave off the cold. Miss Jane quickly explained that she charged each of them a few bucks — a take she was willing to split fifty-fifty with Tavon (which Tavon knew that he'd be lucky to see a tenth of the money) — to partake in the Black Zombie testing.
'Who he?' Tavon asked, nodding toward the lone white guy.
'He's my wigga.'
The scrawny burnout with a chest like a squirrel looked like a trailer park refugee. His bloodshot eyes danced like life was one big video game that he was desperately trying to follow. He rubbed his hand over his closely cropped hair. His shoes tied over bare feet and an unfinished tattoo of a dragon rearing to exhale flames glared from above his torn T-shirt. Tavon knew without asking where the money went that was supposed to finish the tattoo.
'I'm just out here trying to school him,' Miss Jane said of her latest dupe.
'Yeah, he's my nigger,' the burnout said.
The din of the room screeched to an immediate and deafening silence. Fearfully he scanned the room.
'What did I tell you?' Miss Jane asked sternly, stepping menacingly toward him.
'Not too much 'r'?' the burnout answered weakly.
'No 'r'. 'R' means business. 'R' means we obligated to kick your ass.'
'My n-nigga?'
Miss Jane put her arm on Tavon to steady herself from laughing too hard. 'We just shittin' you. Come on, fool.'
Tavon passed out the vials, and played big man and host. He enjoyed the moment of civility, a ghetto tea ceremony.
'You want me to set you up?' Miss Jane asked politely.
'Yeah, great,' Tavon said, still attending to his guests. He sat down and Miss Jane snuggled next to him, offering the spike like some champagne toast. She searched out a good vein and with his nod, she pulled back a pinkish cloud then drove the load home. She quickly filled her own and injected it, her head down in a dope-fiend lean, waiting for the blast to hit.
'You know any white Washingtons?' Tavon asked lazily.
'You thinkin' on what that wannabe Muslim be sayin'?' Loose Tooth said with a jaundiced glare from inside his heroin fog. 'That fool never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like.'
'I'm just sayin', you heard about Thomas Jefferson an' all his kids. George had to be screwin', too. You know all them mugs had slaves. An' Martha wasn't much to look at.'
'I guess that makes you practically royalty.'
'Well, we don't know our true names,' Tavon said with a wan plaintiveness.
'So you want we should call you Tavon X now?' Loose Tooth asked.
'An' give up the smoke? Them Muslims don't play,' the disembodied voice of the burnout chimed in from the shadows.
'Shit, he couldn't even give up pork, much less chasing the heroin.' The way Miss Jane pronounced it, the word came out 'hair ron'.
Too much thinking blew his high. Tavon fell silent, but an overwhelming sadness swept over him with the realization that he broke his mother's heart. All of his other siblings went on to college or the military and resented him for the life that he chose for himself. But he missed her, even though he didn't make it to the funeral because he took a charge and did an overnight in city jail. 'Life was full of mystery,' his mother often proffered as an explanation for their pain. 'You can waste your time figuring out the why, or you can let it grow you.' She absorbed suffering, especially his, like a sponge and he missed her most during times like this.
He'd been watered.
Why he trusted Miss Jane to be in the spirit of the occasion and not pocket his vial for later, he didn't know. He cursed himself for his stupidity. Turning to confront her, his movement knocked her to the floor. Her eyes rolled into her head. Foam bubbled from the corner of her mouth. Her breaths came in rasps and fits.
'Miss Jane, wake up!' Tavon yelled.
A moan escaped her lips.
'Miss Jane! There's something wrong with Miss Jane!' he repeated to no one in particular. He studied his friends. The burnout had stopped breathing. Loose Tooth still convulsed, his old body dying in wracked spasms. Tavon panicked, flitting from body to body, splashing water on some, trying to get Miss Jane on her feet. Call 911, he thought, letting Miss Jane crumple into a pile. From where? No phones around here. He backed toward the front door. The police wouldn't come anyway. Maybe if he could phone from the KFC.
So he ran.
