The Quiet Parts Pt. 10
NINTH STORY
Five thousand extra dollars a month, divided between three master tenants. A woman thriving, Leigh lives the life she has always known in her heart she deserved.
“Rihanna me,” she tells personal shoppers. They clothe her in Gucci, Supreme, Off-White, and Louis Vuitton. She dines in expensive restaurants and grows indolent on designer drugs. Pushing herself past the limits of stimulation, she marvels at the mutability of her body. How her senses can heighten and deaden, her cells quicken and expand.
From the available pharmacopeia, of which she samples drugs that are new to even her, she comes to love speed. One snort and she becomes a vampire alert to the redwood scent off Sequoia’s sweater, or the artful patterns in the skid marks burned into Foothill Boulevard following a sideshow. In C10H15N she finds the best wing woman, a relentless party girl who helps her lose weight and keeps her up for days.
She backpacks Mt. Shasta; swims the Yerba Buena; sex parties in Muir Woods; an ashram rave in Sonoma; ecstatic dance on Half Moon Bay; underground festivals in the Sierras. Molly. Oxy. Percocet. Pot. Cocaine. Ketamine. Hiking!concerts!festivals!soundbaths!dancing!beach!music!yurts!food!nature! Gross and wonderful, she comes home in the early morning to spend her day in a state of bloated, flatulent sloth.
One Sunday she finds herself picnicking on late Merritt and everything looks so beautiful, the people every possible color of human, made more colorful inside her drug-heightened awareness. Capoeira drumbeats make earthy, indigenous colors that bleed from the lightly clouded air to rainbow the nesting ducks. Barefoot, in a short-skirted dress subtly shaded blues and yellows, she twirls to the drums, happy to entertain Sam and Drew, who sit with their legs outstretched on a kente picnic blanket, contentedly consuming Ethiopian takeout. She savors the smell of algae and rotting flotsam carried on the breeze over the water.
At last Drew returns from getting rolling papers. “Y’all niggas don’t know how to clean no motherfucking car,” he admonished. And, “I just had to take out a bum.”
“Oh no!” says Leigh. “Did he attack you?”
“Ain’t no big deal,” he says as he passes the papers to Andre. “I say I can’t spare no change and he wanna get up in my face like, ‘You a selfish brotha.’ I told him, ‘I ain’t yo’ brother. Do that guilt trip shit on the white people.’ And he try to get big. I tell him, ‘You too old to be doing that.’ But he wanted to go so I bitch-slapped his ass.”
There are three cuts in a straight line on his knuckles, like a red star constellation. It thrills her to watch him sanitize the wound with Hennessy. Just pours it on his hand like a badass.
After rolling a joint Andre takes first toke. “I ever tell you dad whupped my ass for giving a bum money one time?”
Cool and easy, Leigh slips into his arms so he can lather sunscreen on her neck and shoulders. “I don’t believe that,” she says. “He seemed so nice on the phone that one time.”
“Nice ain’t got nothing to do with it,” says Andre.
Staring at the water, Drew laughs. “Dad used to say that all the time. Now you using his catchphrases. Where was I when this ass whuppin’ took place.”
“You was probably at ball practice getting knocked on your ass. This was when Dad was teaching three back-to-back classes at Laney. He gave me money for a snack. So, I go down the street and this man outside asks me for change. I give it to him. Then when I get back Dad asks, ‘Where’s your snack?’ Soon as I tell him, he pulls me in his office, takes off his belt, and proceeds to whup my ass so bad I went through puberty. By the time he got done I was hollering like a grown man.”
Drew tosses a football to Sam. They proceed to play catch. “And then after Dad whups your ass he tells you the reason,” Drew smirks. “Always had to make it a damn mystery.”
Pensively Andre recalls, “He said it’s ‘cause I let him take advantage of me. He said no matter how down somebody is, a grown man should know better than taking money from a baby. After he whupped me, I never did it again.”
Leigh is startled at how casually they speak of this. “He punished you for having a kind heart!”
“It’s a lesson I had to learn.”
At that she eases him down into the grass. She kisses his brown neck. “Don’t ever victimize yourself. You’re perfect just the way you are.”
Momentarily it seems he might offer a rebuttal, before he relaxes, to enjoy her affections. She hears Drew grunt, “Don’t mind us,” and she laughs at his dry humor. No doubt their dad thought his brutality was helping Andre, a mistake common to blacks. Leigh, spiritually fulfilled, has the power to heal others, her hips, fingers, and tongue a tonic for generational trauma.
Late July, she dares the Williamsburg hall, alone, for a musical festival in Brooklyn. There she spends the weekend with Jo, thrilled to see her again, ecstatic to watch Cardi B strut the stage like some Obeah priestess sprung from the Jungian unconscious. And though Leigh wants to stay an extra few days, Jo wakes her up from the couch Monday morning telling her she should leave. The woman, whom Leigh associates with carefree girlhood, looks despairingly ordinary in the black pencil skirt and fuchsia blouse she wears to work.
“You can’t stay here,” Joe decrees. She adds, “Maybe slow down on the drugs.”
“Hypocrite,” Leigh moans on her bilious stagger through the tunnel, palms on the brick wall to stay upright. “You took all that molly with me, you cunt.”
Hours removed from Cardi B, the lingering chemicals mix poorly with her Xanax, and she feels like her heart will explode from her chest like an exuberant dove released from its cage. Coke has absorbed every nutrient in her bloodstream yet her brain says go somewhere, see something. Her mouth tastes of ash and wine.
Grateful no one else lurks in the tunnel to catch her looking ratchit in ripped jeans and a fur vest that looks like she killed and skinned Cookie Monster, she stares down the chute, which seems to lengthen the longer she stares. Palatial dread freezes her on the ledge. Inversely, she fears to linger in the tunnel, at the mercy of its whimsical geometry and shadowy desire. Decided on her course, she sits on her butt, slips off her pink heels and drops them clattering down. Slowly she eases onto the first shelf.
Fifty feet of aching descent later, she rests one set of aquamarine-socked toes on the floor. When she settles her other foot, vertigo brings her knees to the hardwood. Afraid she might faint, she curls on her side and waits for dizziness to pass.
Her phone says half past noon when she locks the Williamsburg door behind her. Atypical silence reigns over the hall, no men in sight. The Garfield and Wicker Park doors are closed. Good—the quiet suits her. Fortunately Jason is spending the week in Portland, one less person to give her headaches.
“Andre?” she calls to the open window, wanting him to nurse her. Still dizzy, she leans a hand on the East Austin door. It swings inward. With a startled yell, she falls and lands painfully on her chest.
“Andre!” she screams, crossing her arms over her aching breasts. “What the fuck!”
After convalescing for a day, Leigh feels well enough to wait for him on the living room couch in a sundress of authoritative crimson. She sips red wine to ease her exhaustion, her aprés-amphetamine sadness like black rot on the fringes of all she perceives. To confront Andre she’s taken humbler drugs, her brain a drum circle of a thousand reveling chemicals slinging mud at one another and grinding their libidinous bodies, promising her that any moment now they will end the party and provide her the courage she hired them for.
Half past three, he arrives in a faded T-shirt and bluejeans, Tims, a tool belt around his waist. One look at him and her heart inflames.
“Why was the East Austin door open?” she demands to know.
“Nice to see you, too.” Pithy yet cautious, he seems unsure how to read her. He recoils at her appearance. “Are you okay?”
“We ain’t here to talk about me. I put you in charge as a key keeper. Why was a door we don’t use wide open?”
“Oh, boo. Accidents happen and . . . You know what? Fuck it,” he shrugs. His demeanor turns cold. “I conducted business through the halls. And I’m finna do it again.”
“Drugs?” she asks in horror.
“Better to sell ‘em than use ‘em.” He sits across from her on the divan. She notices the room has been cleaned as if for an open house. “Some weed.”
“Weed?” She is sarcastic. “The plot flattens.”
“Excuse me?”
“I know a girl who makes ten grand a month transporting coke. Weed seems a little unambitious. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I put in the work on this place,” he pompously declares. “Now let’s talk about what I’m owed.”
She has to laugh. “I wouldn’t have guessed you had a chip on your shoulder. What you’re owed? Do you mean reparations?”
His antipathy chills her. “It doesn’t matter what you think. If I want to hook up a friend in Austin with weed, I’ma do it. Fact is, ain’t nobody even get in them open houses without dropping a few bucks to me. Everybody got they hustle.”
“You betrayed my trust,” she wails, fearing this man she calls lover. To let him know he scares her, she slides to the end of the couch, at which he rolls his eyes.
“I’ll double down,” he continues. “We’re starting a women’s hall. Stephen wants to move his wife in here and I agree. This week we’ll start interviewing.”
“No!” she shrieks, startling herself, because she knows and loves many black woman. From Aaliyah to Octavia to Zora, they occupy exalted places in her Hall of She-roes. Not to mention Dr. Kenya, or her friends from UCSC whom she still brunches with. But even those soulful, hopeful, wise, optimistic women bring a mistrustful undercurrent to every interaction. Their silent judgment makes her feel bullied, and, terrified at the thought of such antagonism in her home, she cries, “I am master tenant!”
“Of an illegal hostel,” grunts Andre, seeming impatient. “Know what? Let’s call it reparations. Good idea.”
His betrayal has her nearly speechless. “Y-you told me you loved me.”
“Love you?” he sneers. “Do you think I would let a woman I loved run around like a little drugged-out thot?”
“You said I was special!”
Miles of laughter erupt from his lips. “Special? Lady, I’ve met a lot of white women. Special?” he repeats with venom. “You are a meme. A copy of a copy. The only thing special about you is how un-special you are. Whatever,” he concludes, rising to his booted feet. “I’m going to fix this loft. You go do whatever, you fucking junkie.”
Watching him stride to the kitchen like a conqueror, rage turns her vision scarlet, a fire stoked at the indignity of usurpation. No sooner do black thoughts strike, she wraps her cobalt-nailed fingers around a fire poker by the mantle. Andre, standing at the key rack, perks at the sound of her footstep. “Woman, ain’t nobody got time for your bullshit—”
One swing buries the hook in the back of his skull. He slips to his knees, jarring the poker from her hands.
“Mama,” he calls weakly, clutching with both hands at empty air. Leigh wipes her arm across her eyes, cleans the blood off, to discover him convulsing on the square-tiled floor, the poker like an extra limb attached to his head. Fainter, he cries, “Mama.”
Cautious, because she fears he might pounce at her like an immortal demon, she kneels to curl both hands around the grip. Moans and blood froth from his lips. Her confidence restored in the nectar of righteousness, she places a bare foot on his shoulder, and with one good wrench cracks the back of his skull open. His brains vomit from the hole, then he stills, his arms and legs crooked as if he is running a race.
Catching her breath, she leans on the sink as her panic accelerates to vengeful triumph. “I’m a meme?” she yells, and, heaving the poker over her head, brings it down, again. “Think you’re smart? Not so smart with your brain on the fucking wall!”