New to Tricks and Stones? Start from the beginning!
Candy and I spend a day getting manicures and pedicures at a place around the corner to her old neighborhood. She introduces me to a few people who I promise myself I will never hang out with. Candy is a fast talker. She talks with her hands. At times, I don’t know whether to listen, or whether to help her fight off the invisible swarm of gnats that seem to be surrounding her.
She carries on conversations with the other black girls around us. There were only two black people at my high school. Two guys, one of them played basketball and the other one played football. I don’t think I ever heard them speak. I kind of wish I did talk to them, though. After all, I was an unidentifiable race, therefore, a minority in my own right. I was the only one that looked like me. I study their features, their wide noses and thick lips in search of similarities but find nothing. I’m not one of them.
These girls are talking, screaming at times, and cracking up about the craziest of things, most of which I’m completely clueless about.
“Cookie,” Candy breaks away from the conversation she’s having while our feet are soaking in the tubs of blue water. “You eva been wit a black guy?”
My eyes grow big. I know what she’s asking me, but I can’t believe that she would ask me something like that with fifteen other sets of ears and eyes around me. “No.”
“Why you gonna ask her dat?” The lady down at the end of my tub laughs while preparing her tools to attack my never-seen-a-pedicure feet.
“’Cause I wanted to know,” Candy snaps back. “Why else do you fuckin’ ask questions?”
“Baby girl,” the woman looks up at me and whispers, “don’t listen to dis bitch.”
Candy looks over at me and smiles, “Cookie. Don’t listen to her. I only ask questions of people pertaining to topics at hand. You was the only one everybody else was afraid to ask.”
“You hungry, baby?” My foot scrubber asks.
“No. I’m fine, thank you.”
“Oh, come on now. Ms. Ann’s in da back fryin’ up some poke chops. You ain’t had food ‘til you had Ms. Ann’s poke chops.”
“But I don’t eat meat,” I say.
Everyone in the shop pauses and looks up at me as if I had just asked them all to go pick my cotton. I look over at Candy, who’s staring at me with her lips perched in disbelief, and her eyes squinting as if she was trying to block out sun. Then, in unison, they all erupt in melodious laughter. I look around the shop to everyone clutching their stomachs, gasping for air.
Candy grabs my arm. She has a huge smile on her face. She holds it for a second, trying to compose herself. “Cookie,” she giggles, “don’t say that around too many black guys, or you ain’t never gonna get you a brotha.”
I agree and try laughing with them, though I have no clue what we are laughing about.
On another outing, Stitch takes me up to Wriggleyville to a batting practice. I find out that she’s a baseball fanatic. She had a few errands to run up over this way, so she let me tag along, but she is sure to let me know that some of her higher end clients meet her in this part of town, that Wriggleyville was her block, and she’ll gladly cut any other bitch that tries “walkin’ on her turf”. I take that as a warning.
“I don’t really like baseball,” I tell her, after leaving the field.
“Sucks to be you,” she says, plainly.
We stand outside of an old, abandoned department store for about fifteen minutes in silence. She is looking around, back and forth down the street, and every few minutes, down at her watch. A blue Chevy Impala slows to a halt on the opposite side of the street. A crooked smile forms over the place where Stitch’s pouty lips once resided.
“Wait here,” she tells me, as she takes off jogging across the street.
I watch her tall, slender body lank its way across the road. Her boots make heavy thumps on the pavement as she runs to the passenger side of the car and climbs in. Of all the girls in the house, I knew that Stitch’s would be the one to leave me, so I walk over to a nearby bench, keeping my eye on the vehicle about thirty feet in front of me, and wait. The windows are tinted and the rims gleam, rays of sun bouncing off of them like a prism.
The car doesn’t move. For twenty minutes I sit shivering, eyes glued to the front left tire of the car, before Stitch emerges from the vehicle. The car drove off and Stitch walked over to the bench and sat down beside me. She slid up her jacket sleeve, exposing her left wrist. She moved her arm closer to my face, I looked down and saw the most gorgeous sparkling diamond studded bracelet I’d ever seen.
“That’s beautiful,” I whispered.
“I know, right!” Stitch smiled.
“Was that your boyfriend?” I asked.
Stitch laughed.
I hated that everyone thought I was a joke. Every other word out of my mouth gave way to uncontrollable laughter. Either that, or blank stares. I crossed my arms and sat back on the bench, trying not to feel completely foolish.
“No, Cookie,” Stitch finally spoke up. “That was not my boyfriend.”
I looked over at her.
“We don’t do boyfriends in this business. Boyfriends are nothin’ but trouble. Jealousy has a strange effect on folks. That, my dear,” she said, pointing towards where the car was, “that was my sugar daddy.”
I shrugged, “I thought Cracker was—”
“Cracker ain’t shit,” Stitch said. “He’s a babysitter, really.”
I nodded.
I sit around the house exchanging bits and pieces of extremely small talk with Bonny. She was severely shy up until we somehow stumbled upon the topic of wines, at which point, I think I’m sitting through an infomercial on the food channel. After I learn about which wines go best with which entrees and cheeses, we lay there in her bed staring up at the ceiling, whistling the theme song to Jeopardy.
“I ‘ave not been so tired until of late,” Bonny says, interrupting our tenth circle of the chorus before we reach the climactic last string of spaced out note. “I am sick, I think.”
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I do not know.”
“Can you go to the doctor?”
Bonny laughs. “To tell ‘im what? De illegal immigrant is ill, deport me, s’il vous plait?”
“Isn’t health care free in Canada, or somethin’?”
“I cannot go back ‘ome.”
“Why not?”
Bonny’s quiet for a moment. I look over at her, searching her face as she either tries thinking of a way to avoid my question, or translate the answer. She turns to me and sighs. “Can you go back ‘ome?” She didn’t want to talk about it. I can respect that. She hasn’t pried into my private life, so we may as well leave hers to the dust too.
With Juney, from the jump, I felt like her little sister, even though I was about four inches taller than her. We walk along the streets of China Town, arms linked, playing with my hair, and pointing to outfits in shop windows that she thought I would look good in. We sit down at a restaurant, order what she claims to be the most authentic Chinese she’s experienced outside of San Francisco, where her mother owns a restaurant, and we talk for hours about everything and nothing at all.
“Do you like Chinese food?” Juney asks.
“Yeah,” I lie. I have never had Chinese food. There are no Chinese restaurants in Murphy City. They had only recently opened a McDonald’s.
“Good,” Juney sighs, realizing that she hasn’t bothered to ask me before we sat down, “Ms. Lee makes the best veggie fried rice.”
Juney is a vegetarian, too. Just another reason to love her.
“And it’s cheap as shit,” Juney grins, squeezing my arm.
Ms. Lee, a short, chubby Chinese lady, walks over to the table. It is hard to tell just how old she is, but then again, it doesn’t matter. Her blue apron hangs down to her knees and reads Ms. Lee Feed You; the name of her restaurant. A loose bun sits on top of her head and, she grins like it is her only dream, taking your order.
“Juney, you learn Chinese now?” Ms. Lee asks.
Juney smiles and shakes her head. “Sorry, Ms. Lee, no time.”
“You make time. I come dis country. I make time. I learn English. You make time.”
“Soon,” Juney tells her. “I promise.”
“I feed you. You eat what?”
Juney orders a double helping of veggie fried rice and veggie egg rolls.
“Not enough,” Ms. Lee insists. “I give you ong choy today. Green. Not healthy, this one. Need green.”
Juney looks over at me. “My friend is new here.”
Ms. Lee smiles and nods enthusiastically. “You like China?”
I think for a moment. The Great Wall of China looked pretty cool. The Ming Dynasty was a fantastic topic of debate in my World Civilization classes. The art is fantastic, so I nod. “Of course.”
“Oh, I like yo friend,” Ms. Lee says. “I give you donut,” she tells us. “You two too skinny.”
Ms. Lee leaves our table to yell our orders to her husband, who is hard at work in the back. Juney and I giggle together in between sips of our tea.
“She has some tiny apartments upstairs,” Juney starts. “She rents them for like, twenty bucks a week, or something crazy like that. When I first got kicked out of my dorm two years ago, that’s where I lived.”
“Really?”
Juney nods, then she smiles an amazingly wide smile. “I was an amazing skater.”
I want to ask her all the questions that are brimming in my mind, like, why did she start taking drugs? How did she get caught? Why didn’t she just go back home? Why did she end up with Cracker? But I don’t, for fear that she’ll clam up like Bonny, or that she’ll start asking me questions that I don’t want to answer either.
“I like ice skating,” I say.
Juney smiles. “I’ll take you sometime.”
Kitty’s in a strange mood. Hoss tells me that she is having withdrawals. She says that she’s trying to break her habit, and that I should just be supportive. A week had flown by, Hoss is out of town with some friends and I’ve circulated right back to a night off with Kitty. I thought we’d go out on some grand adventure, romp through Navy Pier like she’d promised, or explore more of the random messes in this city, but instead, Kitty and I stay in. Any other night her laughter was bouncing around the walls of this place, but tonight, sitting around in the huge living room, pretending to watch television, I can’t remember what her laugh sounds like.
“What’s the matter?” I finally ask.
Kitty’s biting her nails and staring up at the clock. “Nada, moza.”
I’m not afraid. I’m not anything really. I’m just a stain on this sofa in their life, a blot that they just had to learn to live with or to ignore, but she was making me nervous.
“I’m from Kentucky,” I tell her.
Kitty looks over at me.
“My name’s Ele.”
Kitty smiles. “Encanta, Ele.” Her hands drop to her lap. “I’m Katrina. Bronx.”
I nod and smile and go back to staring at the television. Jeopardy is on, and I’m on a roll—a silent roll in my head—but a roll, nonetheless.
In my peripheral vision, I notice Kitty staring at me. She stares at me a lot, actually. It is never enough to make me feel uneasy, but just enough for me to notice. And it’s never a creepy, stalker-ish stare either; it’s more like she was trying to answer a question about me, to herself. I glance over at her. Her eyes are sad and apologetic.
“You sure you’re okay?” I ask once more.
She sighs, then inhales deeply. “I can’t shake it, it’s not sellin’ out,” she says. “I’m just not strong enough. Not yet.”
“Okay.”
The doorbell rings.
Kitty’s eyes pop wide open. She jumps off the sofa and disappears around the corner into the corridor. When she opens the door, male voices drift in with a strong gust of wind. The voices chime in soon after, mostly deep rolling laughter, but I hear some mumbling conversation among them, also. I can’t tell how many there are, but I recognize one of the voices almost immediately.
“Move out da way, bitch,” Cracker says, “’fo’ I freeze my nuts off.”
“That’d take what, tres segundos?” Kitty jokes.
The other voices grow jaunty over Kitty’s comments, and a few seconds later they are all coming around the corner like a pack of hyenas. I sit up on the couch and pull my knees to my chest. Four large guys in huge black coats file in behind Cracker. All of them look just as intimidating as the next, with beady eyes peeking out from underneath skullcaps, holding bags of booze and snack foods. One of them, the tallest one of the group, is already elbow deep in a bag of Doritos.
“Cookie, Cookie, Cookie,” Cracker sings as he unbuttons his coat. “Lookin’ good there, baby girl.”
The other guys drop drinks and food on the table and get comfortable, taking off their coats and tossing them behind the chairs. Cracker sits down, put his arm on the sofa behind me, and looks me up and down like a dessert menu. Kitty comes back in and sits on the arm of the chair across from us.
“How ya feelin’, kid?” he whispers. “You all right? Can I do somethin’ fo’ ya?”
“I’m fine,” I whisper. “Thanks.”
He nods his head then looks over at his friend. “Yo, Tick. Where’s the fuckin’ music?”
“Jus’ chill, dawg,” a scruffy looking white guy standing over by the stereo yells back.
Within minutes music is blasting and beer cans are popping open. They are chugging them like juice boxes, one after another. I sit and watch in amazement as they begin rolling out joints and cutting lines of cocaine right there on the living room table. None of them really pay any attention to me after the initial hellos and greetings. They take over the TV straight away, turning it to the news to catch the latest sports updates.
Kitty sits on the edge of the chair, waiting anxiously for her to turn at the blow. When Tick, the scruffy one in charge of the music, motions for her to come over, she jumps to the floor and squats over the table like a begging dog. He hands her a straw and she inhales the white powder in one strong sniff. Every nerve in her body seems to relax. The tension in her eyes disappears.
“Ey,” Cracker turns to me, “try somma dat shit.”
“No, thanks.”
“Come on. Live a little.”
“Nah,” I go back to the latest scores scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
“Cookie,” Cracker says.
I try hard not to make eye contact. “Huh?”
“Cookie!”
I turn to him. He has his chin raised in the air and takes to staring down at me over his nose, which I quickly understand to be his power stance. “Dawg,” he speaks around me, “line up a li’l one.”
“Straight, straight.” Tick obeys.
“Cookie.”
I stare down at Kitty, she’s still on her hands and knees, waiting for her next turn. She doesn’t even look up at me as I’m begging with my eyes for her to rescue me, so I look back up at Cracker.
“You know who pays fo’ this house?” he asks.
I assume he does, but I shake my head.
“You know who pays fo’ food? Heat? Fuckin’ lights and wata in this bitch?”
Is he listing utilities one by one?
“Me.” He pounds his chest. “I’m boss ‘round here.”
I go to speak, to acknowledge his reign, but he interrupts.
“I ain’t been nuthin’ but generous. You been eatin’ my food. Usin’ my wata, my heat. Sleepin’ in a bed I paid fo’. And you gonna have nerve to turn me down when I offer you somethin’.”
“I just…”
“You just nuthin’.” Cracker slams his fist down on the sofa between us.
I jump.
His nostrils flare like a thoroughbred in the last neck of the Derby. His heart pulsates through a huge blue vein in his neck. “Get the fuck down there, and take that shit,” he orders.
Everybody is staring at me, everybody but Kitty. I look back over at Cracker. He is terrifying. Something tells me that it isn’t beneath him to bitch slap the shit out of me if he wanted to, so I slowly slide off the couch and inch my way over to the coffee table covered with empty beer cans and bottles of colorful liquors that looks more like magic potions than the disgusting alcoholic beverages I know them to be.
Tick hands me the tiny blue straw. “Jus’ stick it up ‘ere an’ suck it. Fast.”
“Yeah, quick and painless!” Chubs, the fat black guy, jeers.
I take the straw between my index finger and thumb and stare down at the thin line of snowy powder they have laid out before me. “Quick and painless?” I ask.
“Yep,” Cracker agrees.
I ready myself. All those Just Say No stickers from D.A.R.E. flash through my brain like traffic signals, but my instinct says different. Do as you’re told. I exhale then snorted the line just as Kitty did earlier. My nose and throat grow numb instantaneously. I cough and sniff, just to make sure everything is still there and functioning properly and roll back into the sofa where Kitty was sitting. A few seconds pass, my heart begins to race. The voices on the television grow louder. I feel an intense euphoria, unlike any I’d ever known; like my body is no longer mine, like I’m flying.
Everyone is laughing as I rock back and forth on the floor near the foot of the couch, clearing the imaginary phlegm from my throat.
“Okay,” Cracker laughs. “See that. Painless.”
“Here,” Chubs says, grabbing my shoulder and lifting me up. “Drink it. It’ll help.”
He hands me a cup of icy blue liquid. I take a gulp of it. It tastes like rock candy with a bitter aftertaste of actual rocks. I take another sip anyways. A bubble has grown in the back of my throat and the only thing I can think about is what I can use to pop it.
“What the fuck is that supposed to do?” I ask.
The boys are clutching their bellies with laughter.
“You got a dirty li’l mouth on you Cookie,” Cracker says, standing up and walking over to me. He takes a puff of his joint. I look up at him as the smoke rolls from his mouth and curls back up into his nostrils. “Take this.”
“Does this help, too?” I ask.
“I mean, maybe not now, but, shit, what else you gonna do? Roll ‘round lookin’ like a li’l pussy, or join da party?”
I sniff furiously and pull myself up into a normal sitting position. I don’t understand what’s going on inside my head and my body. My heart isn’t even beating anymore; it’s humming. I can hear it, like a faint melody inside my ears. I rub my nose hard. The sensation in my nostrils slowly settles into an uncomfortable tingle. So I reach up and take the blunt out of his hand. I’ve never smoked anything before, but I’ve seen plenty of people do it, so I put my lips around the base of it and take in a deep heavy drawl. Naturally, hacking immediately follows and, once again, I am the root of laughter in the room. Not only is my face anesthetized, but now it feels like I have swallowed a lump of burning coal. I sound like Amelia, hacking, fighting for air. Cracker hovers over me like God and stretches his hand out to help me. After a few more coughs, I take it.
He hoists me up effortlessly. “Damn, kid,” he says, taking the blunt out of my hand, “we gotta teach you everything, don’t we?”
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