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Eric McKinley — This Story is Nobody’s Fault

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The Hive: APIARY Digital Edition

This Story is Nobody’s Fault 
by Eric McKinley

There were no certainties on the Chinatown bus. There were no assurances. Shit could’ve all ended right there. First, if we crashed, there was no one to put it on. There was no discernible company. It was a nameless, faceless outfit. I didn’t know if the driver had a license. I couldn’t say if he spoke English. I couldn’t say if the bus had passed inspection. The Chinatown bus people were not members of the Better Business Bureau. It would not have been a shock if they tried to bankroll Christmas with my debit card. But that wouldn’t have gotten them far. I had sixty-two dollars in the bank, and it had to last me.

The bus itself was a holding pen on wheels. It was like Central Booking. Everyone was cramped together. Everyone was on some edge. No amount of scrubbing could’ve abated the smell of piss and desperation. Anything could’ve jumped off. A random stabbing would not really have been that random. This was what came with five dollar interstate travel.

It was the week before Thanksgiving. Saturday. So my people were going to be uptight anyway. But there was no ideal hour. I had decided on Halloween, when identity was at its most certain, that I would do this. This weekend before Thanksgiving was the first time I had free.

The bus rolled out. A company representative, not the driver, announced something to us prisoners. It sounded like she was trying to speak as fast as possible while also eating a bowl of soup. The only word I caught was window. I looked out but couldn’t see anything. The two fattest motherfuckers in the tri-state area were seated next to and in front of me. My knees were at my neck. All I could do comfortably was blink. After the inaudible announcement, they cut off the lights. So now, for real, I couldn’t see in front of me. When we hit the first pothole, I thought the world was going to end. This was crazy. I was just beginning.

I didn’t pack much. I was not staying long. Making my way to Yvette’s place, the asphalt underfoot was unforgiving. I walked south. The same crew was out on Pierce Street, right where I’d left them in August. They ice grilled me like always. Harder now. I looked back, not intimidated, but not stupid. This was one more thing for the list of shit I would not miss. I buzzed the second buzzer on her narrow front door. 

Yvette was the second most beautiful girl in our high school. We went to CAPA — Creative and Performing Arts — where ninety-nine out of a hundred graduates forged successful careers in retail. I had lucked up. A teacher of mine entered a painting of mine into a contest. That contest got me a scholarship to a real live arts college. NYC. The most beautiful girl in our high school played the whorish daughter in a two-season sitcom. Yvette dropped out in March of our senior year. She was a vocalist. She also sang. She’d left school to tour, sang back up for an R+B dude whose hit single peaked at number eighteen. With that money, she rented this efficiency. Yvette worked as a barista and a studio session back up. Her heart resided next to bitterness. Yvette knew nothing about coffee.

She opened the door and I followed her up to her place. The stairwell was dark.

“I think the bulb is out,” Yvette said.

“Yeah, probably,” I answered.

These were the first words we’d said to each other since two days before Halloween. Her apartment was lit only a little better than the stairwell. She had left the door cracked open. The incense burning inside was stronger than any corner Muslim’s. Between the bus, the street, and this crib, my nostrils had been under grand attack.

The motif was pseudo-Asian. It was silk, bamboo, red votives, thin paper lamps, and no shoes. There was a blunt burning in the ashtray on her coffee table. I was reluctant to leave my boots by the door. But, if I had to, I would run back down the black stairwell without them.

“So, Mr. Kendrick, what brings you down here?” 

Yvette pulled a lighter out of her robe pocket. She leaned forward for the blunt. She had emphasized the ‘d’ in “down.” I wanted to put my boots back on.

“I mean, I’m here to see my people. Check in.”

“You couldn’t wait a week for Thanksgiving?”

“Well, I mean, I have this project for school and—“ 

“Here,” she said, passing me the blunt. I took it, already breaking one of my rules for this trip.

Three hits chilled me right out. I rubbed my feet into Yvette’s rug. She walked to the kitchen, asked if I wanted a drink. I was thirsty, but no alcohol was another rule. Watching her hips move, watching the light from the refrigerator shine into her loose robe, I was reminded why rules were necessary. Yvette handed me a Corona with a lemon slice. I felt something like comfort.

“You know this is supposed to be a lime, right?”

“Supposed to be,” she said. I couldn’t tell if this was a question or a proclamation. Her robe was pink and lush against her almond skin. Yvette leaned in lower when she handed me the beer. When she rested next to me on the couch, her thigh couldn’t help but press itself on my hip. Yvette’s couch did not have throw pillows. It didn’t need them. I stretched out my legs to take full advantage. This trip was already more difficult than I’d imagined. I no longer cared if my boots were on or not.

“So how’s school?” she said.

School was, in fact, fantastic. I was painting all day. Drinking and hooking up most nights. But it was more than that, more than I could explain.

“School’s good. It’s still crazy to me. Get a free ride to do art, which is what I would be doing anyway.”

“You’re lucky,” Yvette said. “You get to do what you want.”

“I don’t know if it’s luck. Or just opportunity.”

“Is there a difference?”

“I think so.”

She shifted her ass away. Her thigh was not on me anymore.

“Yeah, well, I suppose that explains why I haven’t talked to you in a month.”

“I suppose so.”

Yvette killed the blunt all on her own. I got three-quarters through the Corona. I was tired now, with a few more stops to go. My lids started to fall. My head dropped. When I did lift my eyes, I saw that Yvette’s apartment lacked a bookcase. There was no reading on the floor. I let my head go and got some sleep.

 

“Kendrick.”

Yvette nudged me. I sat up, coughed residual smoke. When I stopped, she said,

“Did you come here to fuck or did you want to tell me something?”

This worked. I was startled. I wondered how she knew I wasn’t there for both. I thought of that quote, something about doing hard things with speed before they paralyze you. Something about ripping off a band-aid. I placed my hands on my knees. I looked at her. She had lowered her eyes. I thought that if I bitched out now I could still at least get laid. I took a last sip of warm lemon beer and spit.

“Yvette, I’m out. I won’t be coming back here.”

She said, “Okay, but you know I don’t have hotel money.”

“No, not here, your apartment. Here. This place. Philadelphia. I’m not coming here anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m trying to do something new. Everything here makes me old.”

“I make you old?”

For lack of any bullshit to say, I said, “Yeah, you make me old.”

I pushed on my legs and stood. I bent down and kissed Yvette’s cheek for the first time ever. She fastened her robe tight. I put my boots back on in the dark hallway. Yvette threw the dead bolt while Pierce Street ice grilled me again.

 

II.

 

The subway banged against the Northern rails the way I knew Skip’s voice was going to bang against my brain. He had always been mouthy, ever since we were kids. He was worse than any girl. Skip and I were boys from K through the day I left for NYC. The night before I left, Skip wanted us to rob somebody. A college kid. I acted like I was down, like it would be one last time for the road. We were supposed to meet outside the Hi-Point Bar around the way. I didn’t show.

Later, on the phone, Skip wouldn’t shut up about how it all went. About the kid’s North Face jacket, about his face when he saw the gun. I said, “Yeah Skip, alright. But how about we don’t talk about this on cell phones, you know?”

“Yeah, you right. But let me come by and split this money with you. It’ll be my going away present.”

“Yeah,” I said, too stupefied to say more.

That night, Skip came through and gave me eighteen dollars.

On this night, Skip and I did meet at the Hi-Point. He was in his same all black outfit. Skully. Cargo pants. Black on black Air Force Ones. Hoody. Skip was shooting dice with some dudes who had to be twice our age. They all had their drinks outside the bar. They all were loud. There was maybe a thousand dollars on the sidewalk. They all looked like a cop’s wet dream. 

I called to him. “Yo, Skip.”

“Oh!” Skip said, hand over his mouth. “My dude. The prodigious son is back.”

The old heads scrunched up their faces at Skip. They scowled at me.

“Prodigal,” I said. None of them heard me.

Skip and I gave each other a pound. He hugged me like we had just won a championship. I returned it. This would be the toughest.

Skip said, “I thought you forgot about me, yo.” He picked his money up off the ground. Skip paid out. We walked toward my moms’ row house. The old heads grumbled, glad to see us go.

“Nah,” I said. “I had to go see Yvette.”

“Ah,” he said. “I feel you. Had to get it in.”

“It’s not like that,” I said, a small percentage of me wishing that it had been like that.

Skip ignored me. “So,” he said. “What do you want to do? You hungry?”

I was. I hadn’t eaten all day. I’d told myself that I wouldn’t have anything until my work was done. I’d convinced myself that this trek had to come with a fast. It was, after all, a cleansing.

“Nah,” I said. “I’m good. I’ll get something at my mom’s.”

As soon as I told this lie, the air in my stomach shifted and bounced and growled. 

Skip didn’t notice. He had already launched into the soliloquy I knew was coming. “Man, since you left, I’ve been on fucking fire. Coke, stick-ups, dice. I’ve been killing shit out here. I’ve been getting so much paper. So much paper. Like those geezers back there, I made three hundred in like a half-hour. And this is like every other night. And you know what that means. I am swimming in bitches . . .”

He had this way of talking with his hands like it was some sort of dramatic reading. Like he was Italian or something. After another minute, I cut in.

“I need to tell you something,” I said.

“ . . . I mean, I can’t keep these chickens off me. It’s like all of a sudden I got cute or something. It’s crazy. The more money I got in my pocket, the cuter I get.”

“I need to tell you something, yo.”

Skip opened his mouth to say something else. Then we both noticed the same thing. Four guys walked toward us two by two. They wore what Skip wore. Their heads were down. Less than half a block from us, these four were silent. Skip reached into his waistband.

“Go up the alley,” Skip said. “I’ll run across the street and hold you down.” He pulled out now.

“Yeah,” I said, knowing full well that he was right to split us up. Knowing even more that I was right. I could not believe this was happening. I’d been off the bus under three hours.

“I’ll call you at your mom’s,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, knowing that I would not take his call.

“Go.”

We took off. The four horsemen ran right at us. Up the alley, I thought of the glass and needles underfoot. I heard my heavy breath. I heard my jacket scrape against chain link fence. Big dogs barked. I heard five or six shots. The next thing I knew, I was bent over. I was gasping on the rail of my mother’s front stoop.

 

III.

 

Mom’s name was Alice. She had the whole house smelling like stuffing. Butter. Sage. Onion. Nutmeg. Alice was doing a test run for Turkey Day. She did that some years. The smell punched me in the face as soon as I opened the door. I didn’t care. I was not going to eat. Alice was in the kitchen. She was on the phone. I don’t know who was on the other end. It was not as if this mattered.

“Girl, the next time I see that son of a bitch, it’s going to be me and him.”

I stood in the doorway and collected myself. Alice wore a frayed yellow nightgown.

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “I know. He won’t be talking to me any old kind of way. That’s for sure.”

Alice cradled the phone with her shoulder. She was stirring a pot of greens. The neck bones within smelled so good, so smoky, that I got pissed. Alice’s face looked hard and creased through the steam. She reached for red wine vinegar. She saw me.

“Boy, don’t you know it’s rude to be sneaking up on people like that?” The metal spoon clanged on the stove. “And what are you doing here anyway? You aren’t due for four more days.”

Rather than be overwhelmed by the heartfelt nature of this greeting, I said, “I finished up early. So I decided to come sooner.”

“Good. Then you can help me do a couple of things around this house so we can be ready.”

The only people who came to our Thanksgivings were my Uncle Rich, his son Rich Junior, and whatever woman Uncle Rich was with that holiday season. I had no siblings. No living grandparents. Alice and Uncle Rich had five sisters. They all had spouses and kids. None of these people checked for Uncle Rich and Alice. Some years back, Uncle Rich did a bid for impregnating Rich Junior’s fifteen-year-old mom. It was all like out of some goddamned handbook.

Alice said, “The first thing I need you to do is mop these floors. Then, I need you to get some things from the store.”

“Alright, Ma,” I said, like a heartbeat.

Alice went back to the phone. “Hello? Cynthia? You there?”

Cynthia was one of my mother’s acquaintances who called but never visited. Cynthia was off the phone. There was nothing that needed to be ready.

“You know what, Ma? Why don’t I go to the store first? Before they close? I’ll mop when I get back.”

Before she could answer, I was back through the doorway. I took a final whiff of the kitchen. I went upstairs to my old bedroom. It was tiny. In two pillowcases, I threw some summer clothes, markers, and paints that were left behind. I tied the pillowcases together, slung them over my shoulder. I went into the bathroom, took off my hat, washed my hands and splashed cold water on my eyes. I checked my teeth. Back down, I heard, “Kendrick. Kendrick?” Alice called from the stove. Walking, I thought about Cynthia sitting on her end of the line, wondering what had happened. I took a glance at the hard wood floors. They were dusty. I emerged from the house that smelled like a feast so that I could, at last, return to Chinatown and get myself something to eat.

 

Eric McKinley is the author of Blessed Sons, a novel, published by WragsInk Publishing. He has an MFA in Fiction from Rosemont College. Samplings of his published work and other stuff can be found at ericmckinleyfiction.wordpress.com.

Image credit: WK Interact

 

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