Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
BOOK ONE - I’M NINE
ONE
TWO
BOOK TWO - FALLING
ONE
TWO
THREE
BOOK THREE - ASCENSION
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
BOOK FOUR - DIRTY 4 DIRTY
ONE
Acknowledgements
ALSO BY SAPPHIRE:
FICTION: Push
POETRY: American Dreams Black Wings & Blind Angels
THE PENGUIN PRESS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2011 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Sapphire/Ramona Lofton, 2011
All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works:
“Your Love Is King,” lyrics by Sade Adu, music by Stuart Matthewman and Sade Adu. © 1984 Angel Music Ltd. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission. “The Kid” from Vice: New and Selected Poems by Ai. Copyright © 1979 by Ai. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “Mother to Son,” and “Dreams” from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate Editor. Copyright © 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., and Harold Ober Associates Incorporated. Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor. Copyright © 1962 by Flannery O’Connor. Copyright renewed 1990 by Regina O’Connor.
“Have You Ever Been Out in the Country” by Mercy Dee Williams. By permission of Bug Music.
Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sapphire.
The kid : a novel / Sapphire.
p. cm.
Sequel to: Push.
ISBN : 978-1-101-52921-8
1. African American boys—Fiction. 2. African Americans—Fiction. 3. Harlem (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Bildungsromans. gsafd ]
PS3569.A63K53 2011
813’.54—dc22 2011001739
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For Angelica
And for the 16 million and still counting orphaned by HIV-AIDS
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three: but the greatest of these is love.
—I CORINTHIANS 13:13
BOOK ONE
I’M NINE
Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.
—FLANNERY O’CONNOR, Wise Blood
ONE
“Wake up, little man.” Rita’s voice is coming under the covers at me. It’s warm under the covers, smell good like Rita and clean like sheets. I curl up tighter, squeeze my eyes shut, and go back to sleep. In the dream it’s Mommy’s birthday party and she’s holding me in her arms kissing me and dancing with me. Our house is smelling like lasagna, wine, and people, mostly girls sweating and perfume. One girl is smoking weed. Everyone is laughing. Mommy puts me down and goes to open her presents. She’s sitting in the blue armchair under the light. All the people have presents in their hands and are holding them out to her. A lady, who looks nice but when she smiles all her teeth is black, is holding out a pretty present tied with a gold ribbon. No! No! NOOOO! I want to say, but no words come out my mouth, and Mommy takes the box. And I want to stay asleep, even though I know it’s a bomb and I’m not dreaming anymore, and if I was dreaming, the bomb would be exploding now. And now that it’s too late, my voice would be loud. “Abdul.” Someone is shaking my shoulder. Rita. I squeeze my eyes shut, ’cause when I open them, when I stick my head out from under the covers, my mother will be dead and today will be her funeral. “Abdul.” Rita shake my shoulder again. I try to go back to the music, people dancing, and our house smelling like lasagna again, but I can’t. “Nuh uh,” I tell Rita. “Five more minutes,” she say. The music is all gone now. There’s clear plastic tubes stuck in my mommy’s nose, they come out her nose and is taped to the side of her face, go up to a clear plastic bag hanging up above her head. Another tube is stuck in her throat, it has tape around it. Her hands got tubes stuck in ’em too and is all swole up. A machine is going whoosh-rump whoosh-rump whoosh-rump. The doctor is from Africa. He talks to me in French sometimes and looks at my homework. He tells jokes. But today he is not joking. “She’s doing her very best to stay here, little man.” He grabs me up in his arms. “But God may have other plans.” He hand me to Rita, but Rita’s skinny, can’t hold me, puts me down. He leaves, comes back with a stool. “Here, stand on this. Come on, little man, your mommy’s traveling. I want you to hold her hand.” In the hall the nurse say, “I’m very sorry her condition is critical, absolutely no visitors except—” “Let them in!” Doctor say. White lady and lady with long dreadlocks come in and stand behind Rita at the foot of the bed. I’m scared to touch Mommy’s hands with the tubes sticking in ’em. I look up at the doctor, frog eyes of his red, but he ain’t cry. I ain’t crying either. He walk over put my hand on Mommy’s shoulder. “Wake up, Mommy.” But her eyes don’t open, she don’t move. Then it’s like when you turn down the TV set and can see the pictures moving around but ain’t no sound. It’s quiet. Mommy cough then go like ahh-ahh. Her head raises up a little but her eyes don’t open then her head falls down. “Oh my god!” Rita say. Then the room is all noisy again, nurse in the hall talking, machine going whoosh-rump whoosh-rump, somebody drop something. The doctor pick me up like I’m a baby and carry me out the room. I look back as the door swing shut, the nurse is pulling the tubes out Mommy’s hand.
I FEEL RITA sit down on the side of the bed. She tr
ying to pull the covers down. I got ’em pulled over my head. “Come on, little man, it’s time to get up! We gonna have eggs and bacon, and I let you have some coffee.” I don’t want to get up. “Come on, I got the space heater on for you and everything. Come on, git up, go pee, and then come back and wash your face and brush your teeth. Come on, Abdul!” I let her pull the covers off me, she’s lucky I do ’cause I’m very strong. I hop out the bed, run to the door, Rita swing it open. “Hurry ’fore someone else gets in there. Put on your slippers! The floor might be nasty.” I put on my slippers and run down the hall to the toilet. Psssss, feels good to pee. “Close the door if you gotta number two.” “I ain’ gotta.” “You sure?” “No,” I say, and close the door, pushing the little bolt through the loops to lock the door. I doo-doo, flush it down, open the door, and run back up the hallway. Rita hand me a washcloth and point to the sink.
That’s all that’s in the room, really, a bed and a sink in the corner. Rita ain’t got no refrigerator, TV, or nothing, but I rather stay with her than Rhonda or any of my mother’s other friends. I like Rita, she’s nice to little kids. I’m not really a little kid anymore, though. I’m nine. I run the washcloth over my face. Rita come in, wet it, squeeze it out, hand it back to me. “Get your eyes, all that sleepy stuff, then behind your ears! Take off your pajamas and wash your booty and under your arms. Hear!” I nod, she heads down the hall to the toilet. The man in the room next door turn his music on. Tupac. The woman across from us is cussing in Spanish. She ain’t got no kids. The lady next door got three. I only been here for a week. Since my mother died.
Behind me on the bed, Rita gots my underwear and socks laid out. I like Tupac, but not that much. Man next door play him every morning. Rita say maybe that’s all he got, but I looked inside his door once, he got CDs lined up along the walls up to the ceiling almost. My white shirt and black suit my mother bought me is hanging on the nail on the door. I know everybody on my block miss me, my friends probably wondering where I am. I wonder where I am. I know my mother ain’t dead like they be saying ’cause I be talking to her all the time just like I always did. But I know we probably ain’t going to Callie, to Disneyland, like she said we was. Two more years—When I get outta school, we’re goin’ to California, to Disneyland! Where’s California? Don’t be silly, look at the map! But I mean where is it really? Whatchu mean, honey? On the map it’s long and orange, near water. Right, it’s on the coast, like New York, but the West Coast. We gotta get on an airplane to fly across all this land, she wave her hand, and then wham, Callie! Look just enter: www.google.com, then Disneyland, California. I do, it’s 1,560,000 listings.
“Abdul!”
“What?”
“What? Who you talking to? Don’t ‘what’ me! Put those clothes on.”
“Yes, Aunt Rita.”
Outside the window a train is passing by.
“What train is that?”
“Boy, you be asking some questions 24/7, don’tchu!”
“I only want to know, my mother say if you want to know something, ask.”
“Of course, Aunt Rita’s sorry.” All I gotta do is mention my mother and I can get anything I want. “That’s Metro-North going upstate to Scarsdale, White Plains, and Bedford Hills. We’ll get a schedule and see all the places it goes and go on a trip one day if you want. OK?”
“OK,” I say.
“Now, get your suit on and put some lotion on your face and hands. We wanna look nice.” Rita is getting out her perfume and stuff, putting it on her head, under her arms, then out the bottle behind her knees and neck. “C’mere, we wanna smell nice.” I walk over to the side of the bed where she’s sitting down. She got all her stuff on the windowsill and chair near the window. “Raise up your arms.” She laugh and spray under my arms. “Your mom do that?” I shake my head no. “Well, just for today,” she say, then she puts stuff from one of the bottles behind my ears. I don’t mind, it smell nice. I go put my clothes on while Rita is making her eyes black. I look over my shoulder at her when she get up from the bed and take off her robe. It’s not like girls in the magazines. Rita just look like a lady in her underwears, lumpy like. But when she puts on her black dress, what’s all shiny and got a ruffle around the bottom, she look beautiful. Now she making her lips red. I like that, my mother do that too sometime.
“Ready?” She finish zipping up her dress.
I get my leather jacket.
“That’s nice, your mommy got that for you?” Rita ask about my jacket.
“Um hm.”
“So let’s go get some breakfast and say good-bye.”
Rita put her Bible in her purse, she holding some pretty black beads. She look at me, nod at the beads. “It’s all good—rosary, Bible. Precious ever take you to church?”
“No.”
You ever gonna leave me, Mommy? Well, I can’t really say, baby. What I can say is, I never wanna leave you.
Rita close the door, lock it. Guy next door peep his head out. “Y ’all outta here?”
“Yeah, we gonna get some breakfast then hit it.”
“Try Bennie’s. You know my brother-in-law into delivery.”
“Uh, no I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, all up and down here; say he deliver more often to Bennie’s than any other place, so that mean his shit is the freshest, right?”
“Hey, sound right to me.”
“And you, little man, be strong!” He give me handshake on the black side.
Lady across the hall open her door. “Ay, Dios! Poor baby!”
“They going to breakfast, then to el funeral.”
“You shoulda tell me, I gots coffee here,” she say.
“That’s OK,” Rita say, and we tell ’em bye and walk down the stairs.
It’s warm outside even though it’s November. I look up at the sign over the hotel, PARK AVENUE HOTEL. We walks down 125th Street past Bennie’s to Mofongo’s. I order bacon for breakfast, my mother usually don’t let me eat bacon. But the waitress ask me what do I want. Rita done already ordered sausage and scrambled eggs please. I say bacon and eggs over easy please, then say no, scrambled. Restaurants ain’t like my mother, I don’t want no runny eggs. Waitress ask, You said bacon, right? Right, I say, and nothing happens like my mother saying, Bacon ain’t good for you. I put strawberry jam on my toast. Taste good. My mother is dead. Rita say one espresso and one café con leche. Here put some sugar in it. Why milk? ’Cause kids need milk, makes bones grow. Why? Why what, Abdul? I don’t know why milk makes your bones grow. I just know it does! So would you please shut up and drink the damn milk. You gonna be the death of me yet! The coffee taste good, sweet, like a kinda chocolate or something.
“Finished, little man?”
“Unh huh.”
“What ‘unh huh’ means?”
“Means yeah, what you think it means?”
She laughs, I smile. “Oh, we gots a smart one here,” she say, rubbing my head.
“Yeah.” I know I’m smart.
“It’s only a couple of blocks we can walk or take the bus then walk up Lenox, OK?”
Mommy, who’s that man? A friend of Mommy’s. Why, don’t you like him? No. Why not, he’s a nice guy. Mommy likes your friends unless they get you in trouble like you know who! Don’t you want Mommy to be happy? Yeah, with me!
“You thinking about your mami?”
Where was that train going? Beyond the subway, I been on all the subways almost. Metro-North, what’s upstate? I look down Park Avenue, tracks overhead as far as you can see. It’s busy underneath the tracks, people is getting they dope, ladies is standing around doing the wrong thing, and it ain’t even night yet. Across the street from the bus stop is a vacant lot surrounded by a high chain fence with dogs running around in it. The people at the bus stop with us is probably TGIF ’ing, as Rhonda would say.
Monday my favorite day, Abdul. I think I’m the only sistuh I know like Monday. Why, Mom? Jus’ do, maybe ’cause the weekends is so lonely. I’m not lonely, M
ommy. Well, that’s good, honey.
“You thinking about your mami?” Rita ask.
I don’t say nothing. The crosstown bus is coming, so we get on instead of walk and then get off at Lenox Avenue. The Black Israelite brothers is standing on the corner, one of ’em is screaming in a microphone. All of’em got on headbands. They got big Bible pictures set up on the sidewalk. They can stand up there and holler all day long, but the African merchants had to go. Go where, Mom? I don’t know where they went. I just know they went. Why? Cutting into the white and Korean merchants’ profits I guess. They complained to Giuliani, so he iced the Africans, Abdul. He can do that? He can put the Africans out of Harlem and let them stay? They vote, sweetie. We live here, but they own the property. Ever gonna change? Yeah, baby, that’s you and your little friends’ jobs. Do something beside throw water balloons and— I did not! I know, Ms Jackson just lyin’ on you. Rita squeeze my hand. “I loved your mami, Abdul! She was a good woman. Come on now, it’s almost ten o’clock. Oops! Here, let’s get this uptown 102. We can walk home later if you want to walk.”
We get off the bus in front of Lenox Terrace. I was raised up on this block. Right there, see that building, I used to live there. She’s pointing across the street from Lenox Terrace at a raggedy brick building with a black door. I ever been there when I was a little boy? No, thank God. Leaves falling from the trees in front of Lenox Terrace, ain’t no trees on the side of the street my mother say she was raised up on.