Telling Martha I'm selling

I was painting my house on Martha’s side when she came out her door.

“You’re selling.” Her hard side was outside, on her face.

“Yeah.” I carefully stepped down from the ladder. “I’m going to China.” I put the paintbrush in the can. Martha laughed but not because she thought I was funny.

“Last year you been to Africa, this year you’re going to China, where you goin’ nest year, Alabama?”

I didn’t know what to answer. Was her geography really so bad? Or was Alabama as hard to get to as Africa for her? Or was she making fun of me?

The back door of her house banged and her son, Prince, bounced out. He ran towards us, stopped even with his mother. He did not go beyond her which would have brought him closer to me. “Hi! Where you been?”

“Where have you been!” corrected his mother. “You are going to school to learn grammar! You will speak proper English! None of this street talk!” Her six year old daughter came out carrying a child’s purse. She stood next to her mother and raised the purse toward me.

“It’s my birthday and this is my present.” She opened it and brought out a lipstick. “And this is my lipstick. It’s brown because I am brown and brown is beautiful.” She smiled coquettishly. I nodded and smiled back at her. I missed these kids and their childish ways.

“One got a birthday, another one dyin’. My aunt in Alabama is dyin’,” said Martha. “She was as close to a mother I had, though I hardly lived with her. I’m trying to go there, my kids never met her. If I had a car we’d just go, we’d be outa here.”

There was a pulse in the ground, a tremble, a heavy, dominating throb: a car stereo playing rap. A rhythmic bass announced an approaching snake. It was an anaconda. It was a blood sucker, a monster, it was a man. It was Darius Jefferson in his wannabe O.J. Simpson white Ford Bronco, Darius Jefferson, the maybe descendent of Thomas and Sally, Darius Jefferson the drug dealer who had won the turf battle for Thomas avenue.

He crawled down the street real slow, savoring his power; no, he glided, he oozed, he rode high in his chariot like a god.

He stopped in front of Martha’s house, a window descended silently, his voice, low and confident said, “You ‘member what I said, now.” He leaned forward slightly, his eyes hit mine, he sat back, the window ascended, the car moved on slowly. I watched him reach up, touch the rear view mirror, adjust the angle to catch us in it, a finger jab against the mirror, a warning. He crawled away, a wraith watching us, watching Martha and her children until he turned the corner.

I turned back to them. They were no longer brown and beautiful; they were gray and ashen.

“Darius, he got a good car,” said Prince.

“You go to school, you’ll have a better car!” shouted Martha. “Now, get in the house! You have got homework to do!” The three of them disappeared into their house.

I held onto middle class by my fingernails, but with the grace of god and my parents and my white skin and my college education, I held on. Martha had never been there, was trying to get there, would never make it.

Everyone has a fate that is hard to accept. I had mine, she had hers. Hers scared the wits out of me.