felt good, but her confidence that my mother wanted to see me left me feeling awkward, uncomfortable. At a loss for words, I hugged Joey, grabbed my bag, and made for the door.
“Thanks,” I said.
Maryanne waved her hand, dismissing her kindness.
Joey howled with disappointment.
Across the street, I tapped on my mother’s front door. After a few minutes, the curtain was pulled back. Mom; small, worn. A tight little knot of worry. Opening the door, she looked me up and down. Her hair was different now, short.
“Leave that there,” she said, indicating my bag. “No one will mess with it.”
I dropped the bag and followed her inside. One of my younger brothers was on the floor of the living room watching TV. Someone else was in the kitchen, but I couldn’t tell who. I was about to sit on the couch, but Mom indicated a kitchen chair she had dragged into the middle of the living room.
I felt uncomfortable and started to talk. Yammer, really. I told her about the weather in New York, how big Joey was, the furniture in Jack’s living room. Once I started, I didn’t dare stop. As I went on, I realized Mom was clutching her purse to her chest. This astonished me. I had never seen her act with such undisguised caution. One time when I still lived here, I had overheard her tell my younger brother that she thought I might be Satan. Not that I was possessed, but that I was actually Satan. “He goes through locked doors,” she’d said, her voice desperate, edgy.
“Okay,” Mom was saying, glancing at her watch. “You better go.”
My throat was dry from talking. About fifteen minutes had passed. More than anything, I felt relieved it was over. On the front porch, she wished me luck and gave me a quick hug, which surprised me.
“Write,” she said.
I was staying in a room over the Alva Restaurant, right next door to the train station, within walking distance of the court house. The kind of room prostitutes and their johns used by the hour. After my guilty plea was entered, I was duly remanded to treatment. I vaguely considered not going back to New York City, but the idea of staying near home gave me a bad feeling.
On the train ride back to Manhattan, I wondered about the unexpected visit with my mother. She’d asked me to write. Me. Write her.
I resolved I would.
Spring rolled in hot.
One afternoon at the rehab facility, I was sitting in the Vehicles Office with Aaron, one of the drivers. Aaron had a broad forehead, a quick wit, and thin brown hair that he wore pushed straight back. We had the morning shuttle route, which left at 7:00 a.m., and was usually done by noon, having us both back at the facility by 2:00 p.m. Vehicles was a cushy job.
Reading the New York Times, Aaron tipped his thick glasses up onto his nose. I sipped coffee from a paper cup. Another driver, Keith, poked his head into the office and shook the shaggy mop of blonde hair from his eyes. Keith tapped his fist to his chest, and then held up three fingers.
Looking up from his paper, Aaron grinned and made the same gesture.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Wehicles,” Aaron said, tipping his glasses higher on his nose. He held up three splayed fingers to make a W.
Keith grinned.
Creasing my brow, I shrugged. “Wehicles?”
Aaron looked surreptitiously out the door and then whispered: “Wehicles is for white people.”
I laughed. All the drivers were white. During the morning shuttles, the radio was a flashpoint for tension. Black people wanted Soul on one end of the FM dial, while the white people liked Rock down the other end. I tuned to Soul going downtown, and then Rock after the van had emptied. I hushed the occasional impertinent request for Rock on the downtown leg with a soft, “Oh, I want to hear this one,” regardless of what was playing, and then conveniently forgot the request soon after. Sometimes I patiently dialed in a baseball game on the AM band. Baseball was like a balm for the tension caused by the radio.
“That’s true,” I said. “Why are all the drivers white?”
“Brothers don’t need a license,” Keith said. He cut his eyes toward the hallway outside the office and kept his voice low.
I nodded as if this made sense. But I couldn’t imagine anyone not having a driver’s license, much less an entire race without a license. Aaron explained that public transportation in New York City was so good, you didn’t need a license unless you lived in a suburb. The few white people at Rockford other than me were from Staten Island, The Rockaways, or Throggs Neck. Mostly the white people were older, had lost their jobs, lost their health insurance, and then succumbed to some sort of addiction, typically crack. Rockford was the end of the line—free drug treatment.
Summertime—hotter. I got an official letter from the New York City Office of Child Support. I had a hearing in a few weeks.
Showing up on the appointed day, I found the courthouse crowded and loud. Mothers held crying infants to their breasts. Tile floors, crowded wooden benches, impossibly high ceilings, and dusty light fixtures. I met a thin lawyer with a soulful expression and an armful of manila file folders. He asked my name, and then shuffled through his paperwork.
“Welfare?” He studied my file.
I nodded. As we waited outside the courtroom, the heavy wooden doors suddenly burst open. A young man exploded into the lobby, swearing loudly, his face red, wet, and swollen.
“Bitch, fucking bitch!” he screamed. “Goddamn fucking bitch!” A large vein throbbed on the young man’s forehead, and his eyes bulged from his face. Were he not in such obvious distress, it would have been comic.
He continued to curse loudly even as a small man in a suit helped him toward the courtroom exit. The man in the suit spoke slowly and evenly, trying his best to defuse the situation. A number of uniformed men looked sternly in the young man’s direction. The small man in the suit waved the police off and herded his man out of the court.
“We’re up,” my lawyer said.
As I entered the courtroom, I saw the judge sitting theatrically high on the other side of the room. She was visibly upset—her brows knitted together, and speaking sharply and with much irritation to the clerks in the room— but she still showed much better composure than her last case. One of the clerks read my name. Turning her attention to my case, the judge scowled at the paperwork before her for a long time. My lawyer hesitantly spoke into the microphone on our side of the room, “He’s below the line, Your Honor.”
“I can read,” she sniped. She asked me to explain myself and I did the best I could. She grunted and set the monthly support to a nominal cost.
Although the amount was low, I reflected uncomfortably that I couldn’t pay it. And the thought of it accruing, perhaps accumulating penalties, as I languished in treatment stepped up my discomfort. I whispered as much to my lawyer. He looked surprised. But before he could
