Homegoing(92)

He wanted to shoot it before going back just in case Amani was there. She would take him for the next to nothing he had. Sonny went into the bathroom of a diner and shot up, and instantly he could feel the sickness moving away from him. By the time he made it back home, he felt almost well. Almost, which meant that he would have to score again soon to get a little closer, and again to get a little closer, and again, and again.

Amani sat in front of a mirror, braiding her hair. “Where you been?” she asked.

Sonny didn’t answer. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and started rummaging around the fridge for food. They lived in the Johnson Houses on 112th and Lexington, and their door was never locked. Junkies came and went, from one apartment to the next. Someone was passed out on the floor in front of the table.

“Your mama was here,” Amani said.

Sonny found a piece of bread and ate around the mold. He looked at Amani as she finished her hair and stood up to look at herself. She was getting thick around the middle.

“She say she want you to come home for Sunday dinner.”

“Where you going?” he asked Amani. He didn’t like it when she got dressed up. She had promised him a long time ago that she would never give up her body for dope, and, in the beginning, Sonny hadn’t believed she would be able to keep her promise. A dope fiend’s word didn’t count for much. Sometimes, for assurance, he would follow her as she walked around Harlem on those nights when she did her hair up, put makeup on her face. Every time he did, it ended the same sad way: Amani begging a club owner to let her sing again, just once more. They almost never did. One time, the dingiest joint in all of Harlem had said yes, and Sonny had stood in the back as Amani got up onstage to blank stares and silence. Nobody remembered what she used to be. All they could see was what she was now.

“You should go see your mama, Sonny. We could use some money.”

“Aw, c’mon, Amani. You know she ain’t gon’ give me nothing.”

“She might. If you cleaned yourself up. You could use a shower and a shave. She might give you something.”



Sonny went up to Amani. He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her belly, felt the firmness of its weight. “Why don’t you give me something, baby?” he whispered into her ear.

She started to wriggle, but he held firm and she softened, leaned into him. Sonny had never loved her, not really. But he had always wanted her. It took him a while to learn the difference between those two things.

“I just did my hair, Sonny,” she said, but she was already offering him her neck, bending it to the left so that he could run his tongue along the right side. “Sing me a li’l something, Amani,” he said, reaching for her breast. She hummed at his touch, but didn’t sing.

Sonny let his hand wander down from her breast, down to meet the tufts of hair that awaited him. Then she started. “I loves you, Porgy. Don’t let him take me. Don’t let him handle me and drive me mad.” She sang so softly it was almost a whisper. Almost. By the time his fingers found her wet, she was back at the chorus. When she left that night to go out to the jazz clubs, they wouldn’t let her sing, but Sonny always did.

“I’ll go see my mama,” he promised when she left the front door swinging.

—

Sonny kept a glassine bag of dope in his shoe. It was a reassurance. He walked the many blocks between his house and his mother’s house with his big toe clenched around the bag as though it were a small fist. He’d clench it, then release it. Clench it, then release it.

As Sonny passed the projects that filled the distance between his apartment and Willie’s, he tried to remember the last time he’d really spoken to his mother. It was 1964, during the riots, and she had asked him to meet her in front of her church so that she could lend him some money. “I don’t want to see you dead or worse,” she’d said, passing Sonny what little change hadn’t made it into the offering plate. As he took the money, Sonny had wondered, What could be worse than dead? But all around him, the evidence was clear. Only weeks before, the NYPD had shot down a fifteen-year-old black boy, a student, for next to nothing. The shooting had started the riots, pitting young black men and some black women against the police force. The news made it sound like the fault lay with the blacks of Harlem. The violent, the crazy, the monstrous black people who had the gall to demand that their children not be gunned down in the streets. Sonny clutched his mother’s money tight as he walked back that day, hoping he wouldn’t run into any white people looking to prove a point, because he knew in his body, even if he hadn’t yet put it together in his mind, that in America the worst thing you could be was a black man. Worse than dead, you were a dead man walking.



Josephine answered the door. She cradled her baby girl in one arm and her son held her other hand. “You get lost or somethin’?” she asked, shooting him a dirty look.

“Behave,” his mother hissed from behind her, but Sonny was glad to see his sister treating him the same way she always had.

“You hungry?” Willie asked. She took the baby from Josephine and started walking toward the kitchen.

“I’ma use the bathroom first,” Sonny said, already making his way over. He closed the door and sat on the commode, pulling the bag from his shoe. He hadn’t been there a minute, but he was already nervous. He needed something to tide him over.