Stateway's Garden Page 13

  “Tracy?” my mother said with firmness.

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “Stop talking to yourself in there. Stop moving around. Turn the TV off. Go to sleep. You have school tomorrow. Go. To. Sleep.”

  I didn’t respond to her. Simply continued resting on my arm and looking for my brother against the wall. His breathing grew irregular. Seemed like he’d nearly disappeared. Jacob’s face in the dark didn’t seem youthful and bright anymore. I noticed there were speckles of a mustache growing and even some dreary hairs along the side that could have been sideburns forming. He was gaining weight as he sat there—him looking at me, me at him—and circling his palm on the floor.

  I must have fallen asleep analyzing my older brother. I often did. Because when I awoke nearly two hours later, he was gone. Sometimes when he came over, Jacob crawled into bed and slept with me just until Mother began getting ready for work. I couldn’t remember feeling him the next morning, though. And the space where he sat on the floor was so clean and dust-free it seemed he hadn’t been with me ever at all. Maybe he hadn’t. The tops from the bottles were gone. There weren’t even any trickles of beer on the floor. His mirror, comb, and toothbrush had vanished as well. I saw a few fully developed roaches in their places. The hospital television was facing inward and watching me in the bed. I wondered if I’d been dreaming about him, dreaming about it all. I’ll admit that I do remember the next day my mother not waking me for school, nor did I smell hickory bacon or pancakes or lemon starch for ironing. And I’m almost certain I saw a grown man’s dirty underwear just outside her bedroom door.

  SHIFTS

  There was a knock at the door. It initially came softly, a mere tap, almost unheard by anyone. She knew she’d eventually hear something from him, somehow, at some point. So yes, it was expected. That tap on the hard wood of Stephanie’s apartment door echoed in her mind as though someone were hitting it with a hammer. She sat on the couch in the living room, facing the door, with her bright forehead sweating slightly. She was biting her thin bottom lip. Stephanie decided to pretend she hadn’t heard anything. She repositioned herself while sitting, crossing her legs and locking them tightly. That didn’t help much. She couldn’t get comfortable, couldn’t get her mind to rest. She opened her palms, both as moist as her forehead, and began rubbing them into her jeans. She went back and forth, up and down along her legs to the knees. Then there was another knock. This time it was a bit louder, clearer, and Stephanie knew she’d have to answer or do something to quiet it. Someone else might hear.

  “Stephie, can you please answer the door?”

  She didn’t give a response to her sister in the background, only a muffled “humph.” She hoped the lack of reply would make the door-knocker go away as well.

  “Stephie!” Solane’s voice came down the hall again. “Can you please see who’s at the door? You’re sitting right in there.”

  Stephanie lifted her small and thin body from the couch, extending her legs fully. She lowered her head and stared at the floor another moment, analyzing the squared and concrete sections. The knocking came again, with a bit more force.

  “Stephanie, please!” Solane called to her again. “I’m really tired. I gotta get these kids ready for school then to sleep. It’s late!”

  Stephanie still didn’t reply. She turned her back and faced the couch, realizing that her print was still along the black sheet used as a cover. The knocking again. She inched to the open window, looking down the ten stories as though this were equivalent to peering through the peephole. Although it was rather late in the evening, with her imagination she clearly saw kids running around the building, jumping on swings, or possibly bathing in the sections of a sandbox, giggling, laughing. She blinked a few times. The image was gone. There was only a large dry spot where she remembered very little grass growing that summer. It reminded her of pictures displaying the huge craters left after bomb tests, which her science teacher secretly showed in school. The knock on the door continued echoing in her mind, although in reality it had stopped. It banged and banged away at her right arm, which was closest, like that hammer driving a nail. She slid a bit closer and placed her hand on the doorknob, running the back of her hand along its outer shell, then opened her palm, which was still sweaty, and pressed it to the door. The door felt cold enough to freeze the hand’s moisture. She extended her arm, then relaxed her elbow using that palm as the head of a stethoscope. She pressed her ear directly to the wood.

  Had to hear who was out there and know exactly what they were saying before opening the door. But she knew already. She knew.

  * * *

  “JACOB, WHERE WE GOING?” Tracy asked while standing in the hallway, just outside of their apartment. Jacob had turned the corner, heading to the stairs. He didn’t reply. He merely stood with his back turned. Tracy could barely see him but heard him breathing heavily. Even during daylight, the halls were rather dark but they were now standing there, Tuesday night, eight o’clock, in October.

  “Just come on, I need you to come with me,” Jacob finally uttered.

  “Come where? You never want me going anywhere with you.”

  “Shut up and come on, just shut up.”

  Jacob waited for his brother at the mouth of the fourteenth-floor stairs. He nodded at him and they began descending. Tracy hadn’t tied his shoes, and the plastic tips of the laces made a clicking sound that he could hear clearly as they went down flight after flight.

  “I need to use the bathroom first,” he said, interrupting their movement. They were standing on the eighth floor.

  “No, you don’t, come on.” Jacob paused for an instant. “Please.”

  “Man, I’m going back upstairs.” Tracy tried to pretend he hadn’t heard his brother use the word please. “The White Sox are playing in a li’l bit.” He turned slowly, using his heel as a swivel, and headed up the stairs. “And it’s the playoffs.”

  Before he made one full flight in the darkness of the stairwell, his brother was standing behind him, holding his right pant leg. Tracy tripped and almost fell in an attempt to continue.

  “Let me go, Jacob,” he blurted. “Why all of a sudden you need me to go somewhere with you?”

  “Tracy, come on, I need you to go, you got to.” Jacob said the words so quickly that they were indistinguishable.

  “Just let my leg go!”

  “Li’l bro, come on, man.”

  Tracy couldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard Jacob call him “li’l bro.” “Well, why won’t you tell me first?” Tracy lightly pulled his leg away.

  Jacob opened his right hand, quickly, yet one finger at a time, each finger making its own directional point. It was as if he wanted to throw Tracy’s leg up the flights of stairs and back into their apartment. He knew he couldn’t, though. He noticed Tracy’s untied shoes and tried to contain the smile he felt coming. He was remembering his brother as a younger kid, that black boy who just followed him anywhere and without question.

  “You used to want to go everywhere with me, you don’t remember that, do you?” Jacob scratched the side of his face as he spoke.

  “Dude, you ain’t been home in days. You gonna tell me or what?”

  Tracy’s back was still turned to him and he was rubbing his hands together in an attempt to warm them. He stood one stair above Jacob, who was at the eighth-floor entrance. After a few seconds with no response, Tracy shook his leg, one jerking yank releasing the wrinkles of the black pants Jacob once tightly held. He started hiking stairs.

  “Don’t go back, Tracy, come on, I need you to do it.”

  Tracy was now two steps onto the next flight, with his right and re-ironed pant leg on the second stair. He took a step backward and used a swivel to turn slightly toward Jacob. Jacob looked up then away. He noted his younger brother was growing a slight mustache. Tracy stared down at Jacob’s eyes as they seemed to travel each
corner of the hall without meeting his. He realized right then, standing one or two steps higher on a flight of Stateway Gardens stairs, that he was finally taller than Jacob. He turned completely around and even lifted his chin a bit, wanting to exaggerate the moment. Jacob could feel the energy of his brother standing above him. Yet he made no motion to move. He placed his hands deeply into his dark-jean pockets, looking for something safe to hold there. Possibly something he could twirl, giving him calm. Maybe his house key. Perhaps even a nickel. Or the safety pin he’d picked up earlier from the apartment floor reminding him of his mother heading to work. There was nothing. He pushed both hands so far into his pockets that his cold and reddened wrists disappeared. He looked down again.

  “Where you want me to go with you?” Tracy forced his voice to be stiff, knowing that he’d only asked again out of pride. His brother had never asked him for anything, let alone to go somewhere with him.

  Jacob parted his lips to reply but didn’t. Still breathing quickly, he was playing with the inside of his cheek using his tongue. He backed away from Tracy, then to the wall, to the orange casing where fire extinguishers were once kept in the building halls. As they both stood there, Tracy remaining one stair above his brother with hands dangling loosely at his sides, Jacob ironically felt something pushing him. Or was it pulling him? In his mind, it was his brother’s hands holding him in place and he was unable to release any force to push back. He was pressed tightly against the wide fire-extinguisher housing. The dust from the casing was slowly darkening the long sleeves of his white shirt. He then made a greater effort to move forward, to take the step on that stair and reestablish his height. There seemed to be a magnet inside the metal of the extinguisher’s housing, Tracy pushing, the magnet pulling.

  “I haven’t even checked the mail yet,” Tracy said, breaking their silence. “If Mother comes and I haven’t checked that mail, she’ll yell at me an hour.”

  Jacob finally gave in to the forces pulling him, firmly pushing him into place. He relaxed his shoulders and exhaled audibly. “Li’l bro, I really need you to come, like really.”

  Their eyes met for the first time since they had been in the stairwell. Tracy stepped from the stair but no longer acknowledged his being shorter than Jacob. He even ignored his hands as they froze in the cold. He drifted toward his brother, who had finally been released from the housing of the fire extinguisher.

  “Look, man, all right, all right, all right,” he said. “I’ll go.”

  * * *

  STEPHANIE CONTINUED USING her jeans as a dry towel for the sweat inside her hands. The knocking on the door had taken a pause, yet she somehow still heard it. She backed away from the door, keeping what was considered a safe distance. She leaned closer and placed her right ear against a spot along the wood where a fleck of the beige paint had been chipped away. She listened intently, but could hear nothing on the outside.

  “Stephie, who was it at the door?” Solane asked. Stephanie heard her sister’s voice a few seconds before she appeared from the hall.

  “Nobody.”

  Solane gazed into her sister’s face and tilted her head. She watched Stephanie’s eyes as they jumped around the room and never focused directly on her.

  “They surely were knocking a long while to be ‘nobody.’ ” She made quotation gestures with her fingers.

  “It was nobody, Lane.”

  “You should go wash your face. Your skin’s pretty dry. Use some of that good aloe vera lotion I bought you.”

  “I’m fine.” Stephanie spoke the words to the back wall where the couch was and used the moisture of her hands to wipe around her eyes. She dropped herself onto the couch, released a few deep breaths, and stretched her arms to the knees. She opened her hands again. Had those hands been dry she would’ve assumed herself all right. They weren’t.

  “I don’t remember the last time I saw you with your hair that messy. You had to be, like, seven.” Solane smirked as she talked. “Didn’t you just rinse your hair with that black color?”

  Stephanie abruptly reached those still-wet hands to her head, using the moisture as a relaxer, and began slicking her shortened hair to the back. Each time she made contact with her head, she pressed with a painful-looking amount of force.

  “You want a drink of water or something?” Solane asked. Her green T-shirt was crumpled along the bottom. She used two fingers to pull it free and darted straight ahead to the open area of the kitchen. While moving, she kept Stephanie in full view.

  “Nah, I’m okay. I don’t need anything.”

  “I’ll just put some ice in it for you.” Solane snatched a glass from the sink, which was placed mouth-down on a dark towel. She reached for the faucet and then shifted to Stephanie. “Hey, don’t forget, I need you to babysit for me tomorrow.”

  “I have school, Lane.”

  “I got this job interview, Stephie.” Solane sat the glass on the sink. She turned from Stephanie, waiting for a reply. The water was still running, filling the pause in conversation. She stretched her arms out along the sink and began taking steps backward. She then pushed her feet firmly into slippers. Her elbow popped. After straightening, she opened the refrigerator to her left. “Steph, you know I still need your help sometimes. You already promised me you would.”

  “I have school tomorrow, Lane.”

  “This is a decent job, Stephanie.”

  Stephanie turned her head left and began staring out the window she’d opened earlier. She heard ice as it landed in the glass. “I need to go to school tomorrow,” she said again. She returned her eyes to Solane, who was standing directly in front of her with the water.

  “A big test tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “Here, drink this.” Solane extended the glass to her.

  “Lane, I told you I was fine.”

  “You don’t look it. What’s up.”

  “The kids ’sleep already?” Stephanie asked.

  “Shit, I hope so. ’Cause I’m tired.”

  Stephanie took the glass of water, enjoying the chill along the inside of her warm hand, and leaned back along the couch. “Thanks for the water.”

  “It’s really a good job, Stephie. Temp to permanent.”

  Stephanie pulled a sharp sip of the water. She turned to Solane and focused on her small nose. “That’s what you hoped all the other times. Remember? That’s the same thing they told you. You ended up working that one place four years.”

  Solane didn’t reply to her immediately. She just sat next to Stephanie on the couch. “I think it’ll work.” She paused, collecting more thoughts. “They really like my experience. And I’ll be downtown if I get it. Won’t have to take all the Pace buses to Tinley Park.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “Aaaaaand you won’t have to babysit as much either.”

  “I don’t mind them kids. It’s fine.”

  Solane looked into her sister’s face, noticing her brown skin changing to a lighter color. “Tell me what’s wrong then.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Look, this interview will be the last time you have to miss days ’cause of me. I promise. Don’t be too mad about it.”

  “It’s fine, Lane.”

  Stephanie handed her the water and Solane took a long drink. Stephanie nudged herself closer. Their shoulders were touching and seemed to be using each other to balance their bodies. Stephanie allowed herself to relax, each second pushing her head just a bit closer to Solane. She imagined she could smell the perfume her sister wore on those job interviews.

  Right then, there was another knock at the door. They both sat there a moment, almost startled, and began staring straight ahead. Neither moved to answer. But then they heard the voices, muffled from the other side of the door. Solane looked left at her sister but knew not to move.

  “What’s happ
ening, Stephanie.” It was not said like a question.

  Stephanie didn’t budge her head from the side of her sister’s left arm. Without any wasted motion, she reached for the back of Solane’s left hand, which still held the water. She then grabbed her tightly at the wrist.

  “Please don’t open the door, Lane. Don’t let him in.”

  * * *

  THEY ARRIVED AT Stephanie’s building and walked the entire ten flights of stairs to her apartment without saying very much at all. The second they arrived on her floor, they paused in the hall and stood still. Jacob then ventured a few more steps but remained a considerable distance from the door.

  “Why you stop?” Tracy asked. Jacob didn’t respond. His head was lowered, eyes searching for something in a corner of unswept concrete. He was certain to find his courage there, wilting like leaves. “Dude, why you bring me to Lane and Stephanie’s? I’m not watching kids for her today.”

  “I know,” Jacob responded without looking at him. Tracy always paid special attention when his brother spoke slowly or to the point. It meant he was nervous or scared. “I just needed you here. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Man, it’s too cold to be playing.” Tracy shuffled backward as he spoke. He began moving toward the single elevator in the middle of the hall. “I’m gonna just head back. You still ain’t tell me why I’m even here.” He slowly took more steps, almost sneaking, without allowing his eyes to move from the wavy hair along his brother’s head. Tracy believed he saw him sweating in the fifty-two-degree weather.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m s’posed to do.” Jacob searched the insides of his pockets again.

  “What you talking about?”

  Tracy was almost at the other end of the hall and hardly visible. Jacob turned his head right, looking for him. He made quick and panicked yanks in each direction, scanning for some vestige of his brother, something letting him know he hadn’t left him. Through the long hall at the elevator he saw Tracy’s right pant leg, the one he’d gripped just a ten-minute walk ago. He stuck his arm out but couldn’t reach, desperately wanting to grab that same leg of black pants again, and hold Tracy securely in place. Although he couldn’t see him, the image forming in his mind came clearly; Tracy, newly mustached, long and upright, with his great posture and over-oiled dark skin, hair cut neatly in something resembling a crew. The more he envisioned his brother down the hall, standing there alone and waiting, he began to relax. But the elevator door opened. He connected the sound to a bag of bricks being dropped. Jacob searched for the corner of that pant leg, the wrinkle of comfort he’d created. And it was gone.