Who ain’t had them? she says, and flips the sheet. The way I see it, you here now, and that’s what matters. You could be back in that welfare line just as easy.
I nod and feel a flash of buoyance.
Oh, I see here you graduated from Jeff, Pam says.
Yes, I say. I’m a Dem.
Did you know Ronnie Reid? she asks.
Ronnie Reid with those colored eyes? I say.
Yes, him, she says.
Who didn’t know Ronnie Reid? I say
He’s my cousin, Pam says.
Wow, I say. Haven’t seen him in years.
You aren’t the only one, she says. They got him down there in Salem, gave him ten, but he’s close to home now.
Pam lays the pen on top of the clipboard and pushes it across the table. Looks like you left this blank, she says.
And there it is again: Have you ever been convicted of a felony? — a blinking neon billboard.
The choice is yours: Choose wise.
We either are or we aren’t.
Where we go, there we are.
Oh, I say, and force a smirk and grab the pen — a weight.
Don’t let them tell you otherwise; there’s a big, big difference between lowering and adjusting. Sooner or later there aren’t but two choices for all of us. Will they check if I lie? How long will it take for them to find out the truth?
The first few times you tell the truth and hope for goodwill, but afterwards you take your chance on lie.
Must’ve overlooked it, I say, and check the wrong box.
She rubs a finger. The light catches on one of her gold rings.
She would have hired me anyway, would have. If I’d explained how I’d been broke, out days, and scheming on a hit, if I’d told her how some guys I knew, but didn’t really know, but had been out with, told me about a hustle, if I’d told her how they’d promised that returning the TV they’d heisted would go down without a hitch. No probs, baby girl, is what they said. No problemo. On the other hand, they couldn’t do it, cause they were men and they were in bad shape and no one in their right mind was going to let them return anything, return nothing at all, looking the way they looked. So all I had to do, they explained, was take it back to the store and say I didn’t want it. Take it back and, they promised, we could split the money three ways even. And puff till our heads burst. Smoke till our lungs collapsed. But of course they were wrong, and I was caught and charged and convicted. Pam would have probably still given me the job if I’d come clean about that first conviction and the fraud — collecting state checks in two states — that finally earned me a trip down-state. If I’d explained what I told the judge about the troubles of raising three boys who outgrew clothes by the month, boys who deserved new tenny shoes and the latest games, who were worthy of much more than I could afford on the funky few hundred Oregon was giving me, which is why I kept the Oregon address when I moved across the river to Washington, kept the address and the state checks, not because I wanted to, but because I had to, and even though the judge just shook his head and gave me a year and a day, Pam would’ve understood why I’d agreed to the TV scheme, why I’d kept the checks, and even why I’d just checked the wrong box.
The kids rush in with a breeze whipping behind them. The girl working the counter dumps dirty trays. Elsewhere, the soda machine churns ice, meat sizzles, a knife knocks against a cutting board.
Chapter 8
“That’s a good question.”
Dream within reach, that’s our motto (and by our I mean me and Mom) though over the years, once a year, we allow ourselves leeway. Most years that leeway’s named the Street of Dreams. What is it? It’s this showcase they hold every year for homes built for fools who could own the average life times over. They build these show cribs in the burbs (surprised?), blanket the city with ads, and for a month or so, lure an interminable stream of hella wishing gawkers. We got caught in the crush our first couple visits, but you learn what you learn or else and ever since, me and Mom, my bad — Mom and I, have took to sneaking a tour after the tour is officially closed.
Mom’s hunched outside her job, outside her normal perk, her uniform drooped over her shoulders and off her waist, her bag gripped by the handle, the long strap looped to concrete. She climbs in and wilts with her head leaned back.
Looking kinda beat there, Grace, I say. You sure you still want to go?
I do if you do, she says. Do you?
Don’t you know it, I say. Today’s the day for my ladies. First you. Kim later.
We strap in and hit the road. This year they built it up in the West Hills, way up past where Burnside becomes Barnes Road, up where you make a few turns and boom! it’s a whole new universe, a cosmology of its own. The tour’s been done (yes, we’re still on that) for weeks, but the sign is still up: WELCOME TO THE STREET OF DREAMS. You can see the first house, stories upon stories high, looming behind what must be the gates of heaven, see a sand-colored Mediterranean joint with a fountain out front, a landscape crew tending what’s damn near a forest in front of another. Most years Mom and me would be oohing and aahing by now, but we won’t and I know it and I pull over feet past the sign.
Nah, this ain’t it? I say.
What isn’t? she says.
Let’s make it a new start, I say. A new tour. And my vote’s for Northeast.
There? she says. But what’s to see?
Everything! I say.
Mom’s dull eyes brighten. She sits up. We strike a deal and the deal is, she has to show me spots from her day.
We float back to Northeast and get off on Kerby. We ain’t but about to hop out and hoof it, but if we did, no hype, on this side we could reach any place worth being in minutes on foot. I ask Mom where to first.
Well, since we’re close, she says, let’s start with the school.
Mom’s old high school is my old high school. She tells me in her day everyone she knew wanted to go there. That the ones her age, whose older brother or cousin or sister took them to visit the campus, would come back bragging of cool kids who were swaggered outside the gym, or by the bricked front entry, or near the bleachers by the track. Mom says when she went there (like when I did), the school was known for what happened in its back halls, for throwing the livest school dances, for basketball and football and track teams that were always among the best, for being the school every year that entered a black princess in the Rose Festival courts.
Let’s see, she says. Where should we go?
I’m thinking we should roll by where ya’ll used to kick it, I say. Where ya’ll went when it was time to shake a leg.
Mom titters, tells me she never snuck in the clubs before her time, not because she didn’t want to, but because she never had a fake ID nor looked old enough to not need one. But my friends though, she says, now they were a whole other story. She says they’d steal or borrow ID, hit a hot spot all dolled up, tell her to hold tight, and leave her iced in a car for hours while the partied. That’s exactly why when I turned twenty-one, I was everywhere, Mom says. All the trendy spots in Northeast and North, the one or two in Southeast, even the ones in the boonies: Earthquake Ethel’s, Turquoise Room, The Cattle Yard. I’d waited too long, she says. No one was going to stop me from having my time.
We cruise down Williams and stop outside the building that used to be a bar and lounge. Mom says this was where you went after a day at the beauty shop, where you’d go when you wanted to flash a new dress or jewels. She tells me the owner wore a uniform: a sailor cap, double-breasted big-buttoned blue sport coat, and wing tips polished to mirrors. He’d tip his cap and flash a smile, Mom says, that made you feel like you were the star.