Nightcrawling(25)
And Mama repeats this, goes on about all the things we’re gonna do together. I don’t say nothing else because her voice is here, breathing into me. I sit down on the tile floor, close my eyes, lean back against the wall, let the phone send her voice right to me, let the heat melt me away. Mama hangs up at some point, the bathroom lightbulb goes out at some point, and I drip into sleep at some point. The night blurs together into a stream of Mama’s voice.
The bus ride up to Mama is loud. The windows don’t open and the whole vehicle is a fever of noise and muck and bodies without destinations. I didn’t even know there was a bus to Stockton, but I looked it up and got on the first one this morning straight out of Oakland right through Dublin to Mama. When I boarded the bus, I already knew it would be hours of waiting to escape. I have a window seat, but this woman with three trash bags full of clothes decided to sit next to me and I swear those bags smell like the section of West Oakland right by the wastewater treatment plant.
Yesterday I went to the studio looking for Marcus and found him where he always is, rapping some nonsense. I begged him to come visit Mama with me, but he refused, over and over again, no matter how many of my tears escaped, said he’d already tried working at the club for me, that he needed space to record his album.
Not long after I left Marcus, Alé called and asked if I wanted to share a washer at the laundromat down the street with her. I haven’t seen Alé in a while, but after everything with Marcus I couldn’t imagine sitting and waiting in the apartment for night to come, so I said yes. Still, when I went to the apartment to fill a pillowcase with my dirty clothes, the only ones I could find were Marcus’s. So I took Marcus’s laundry to meet Alé and when I poured it into her basket, she looked up at me like a bloody knife had fallen in there with all the clothes.
“What?”
“These ain’t even your clothes.”
Instead of laughing at me or hollering or going over to one of the girls sitting in the line of the lavandería chairs and telling them, Look at this girl, she don’t even wash her own clothes, Alé hugged me. Came right up to me and enveloped me into the damp sweat of her shirt.
We sat there watching the water flood in on the fabrics, turning them all a darker color and then taking them for a spin. Alé tried asking me what was going on, why I haven’t been around, what’s up with our rent, but I kept my eyes on the suds of soap collecting on the glass. She dropped it and stared with me until it was time to change the load.
I get off the bus in Stockton, which looks like the desert has found its way to Northern California, reminding me of what it was like up in Marin County the day we reunited with Daddy. The dust in the air gets in my eyes and I hope Mama’s got enough heart left in her to disregard Marcus’s absence.
The day Daddy got released from San Quentin, Mama borrowed Uncle Ty’s dusty Honda and drove Marcus and me to Marin to pick him up. Marcus didn’t wanna come. Mama threatened him with everything she could think of until finally, when she said she’d take away his time with Uncle Ty, he said he’d go. We were sitting in the back of the car while Mama paced around the parking lot in front of us, the buildings uniform and cream-colored and industrial. I watched Marcus’s twelve-year-old fingers search the cracks separating the middle seat, coming up with cracker crumbs, remnants of weed, and a broken pencil.
Daddy walked out of those doors with his arms spread up, hands facing the sky, teeth so dazzlingly white I thought he must’ve been using whitening strips inside, but Daddy said it was just God keeping them clean so he’d look nice for his babies. His face was so unfamiliar, I didn’t even realize it was him until Marcus huffed beside me and Mama took off running across the parking lot toward him. She ran fast, sprinted into him, and he stumbled back, but held on to her waist. Mama gripped her hand inside his short ’fro, speckled silver, and we could see her shaking from afar.
After a while, they walked hand in hand toward us. Mama motioned for us to get on out the car, but Marcus told me to stay put. He gripped my hand. When the two of them climbed into the car, Mama looked back at us, strained her eyelids as wide open as they would get, and said, “You say hi to your daddy now.”
I squeaked out a “hi” and Marcus stayed silent beside me, his hand tightening around mine like he was worried I’d slip away.
“You ready to go home?” Mama’s voice was a wash of relief, her smile so wide all her teeth showed through.
Daddy shook his head. “Nah, baby, I can’t be going back inside yet. Let’s go to the lake, yeah? What you say, kids?” He looked back at us and, even though this strange man still didn’t feel like my father, the way his face spread open and lit up from the gums made me want to belong to him.
“Yeah, Mama, the lake!” I nodded.
Marcus shook his head, but when Daddy asked if he’d be alright with us going on an adventure, he said, “I go where Ki goes,” and even now I don’t think he’s ever said nothing about me that made me feel more special.
Mama drove back to Oakland and parked on a side street near Grand Avenue. We heard the sounds as we started walking to the lake. Daddy had his arm around Mama when he steered her toward the pergola, Marcus and I holding hands and following, the drums chorusing our arrival.
We should have known Daddy would hear the drum circle and gravitate right into it. Daddy sauntered up to one of the drummers and pulled him into a clap-back hug, mumbled to him in his sweet talk till the man handed his drum right over to Daddy, who joined the group’s rhythm like he was born into it.