Uh-huh.
She’s cutting hair to make money, and Lenora’s at school, and I’m home most of the time and we even bought a new TV after I smashed the first one.
I don’t know, Angie. Maybe I was.
Shit, everyone’s a bit crazy, ain’t they?
What?
No.
Don’t leave.
Stay here. The sun’ll come up. Here, look, I got three pairs of socks. Put ’em on. Put ’em on your hands, I don’t care. I don’t care about nothing anymore. I never told nobody this story. Here. Put them on.
Why don’t you want the blue ones?
Oh. Yeah. No problem. I forgot.
But they ain’t washcloths.
Whatever.
Don’t get frostbit.
Look, look how it is. Ain’t it nice? Don’t leave, Angie. Just sit here till the sun comes up, then we see it real nice.
Uh-huh.
Tide’s out.
Yeah yeah yeah, cold sand, ain’t that something?
Don’t leave, Angie.
Elijah?
Elijah’s got nothing but a fucked-up shoulder. He’ll kill you anyway. You saw what he did to Castor. Just pull the goddamn blanket up and listen.
Angela. Listen. You gotta tell me something.
You gotta tell me that y’ain’t gonna hate me.
Just tell me.
’Cause I don’t want you to hate me.
Just tell me that, ’cause Dancesca she hates me, Lenora too. They went off, and I never even seen them since. So you just gotta tell me that you ain’t gonna hate me.
* * *
At the Port Authority bus station he meets Dancesca and Lenora. They have spent two weeks in Chicago with relatives. The three of them take a taxi home together. He asks the driver to stop near a parking meter and he does his trick, but Dancesca doesn’t watch; she keeps her head down as he moves from one parking meter to the other. He stretches his arms out, imploring her to watch, until Lenora rolls the window down and says, “Mommy wants you to get back in the car.”
* * *
It’s been bad, see. I been going a little crazy. Lenora, she’s been asking questions, like, Why you don’t have a job anymore? And, Why does Mommy say you’re sick? And, Why does Mommy want to go see her cousins in Chicago all the time? Little things like this. She’s about nine or ten and she’s looking up at me and asking me these questions. Sometimes, when I go to the bathroom or I’m watching TV or something, she’d go switching my photo around in her aquarium, so sometimes I’d be at the bottom where all the plankton was. That’s making me feel bad, but I don’t say anything, not a word. She’s got these small eyes for a little girl, most kids got big eyes, but hers are small. And a scar on her ear where she fell off a tricycle. She’s looking up at me. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s the little things break your heart.
Yeah, I remember the story. You were in the backseat.
Now you see it, Angie. Well, almost. When the sun is up fully.
Yeah. I remember that too. Your old man.
That Cindy girl sure can dance.
But listen. I have to tell you this.
Listen.
See, a lot of the time we go down the park and it’s all three of us, and if it’s wet I slide down twice with the towel underneath my ass and if it’s dry she climbs on up, but she’s getting a little old for the slide, she don’t like it too much, but she likes the swings, maybe they remind her of when times were all right with us, before I was so fucked up in the head. Maybe she’s remembering that. Sometimes Dancesca and me sit on the benches and she says to me, You gotta pull yourself together. And I know that. I mean, it’s not me that’s doing this to me. It’s just my head. It’s just, you know, the playground—
The one on 97th there.
Yeah.
All right, already. Just take it easy, okay?
Put your head on my shoulder. There you go. That’s nice. Don’t that feel good?
I ain’t whispering.
I ain’t crying.
Angie.
I’m in the room, ya know? I been in the room a few days. Just laying there. Alone. And then I hear all these kids coming in and I say to myself, What the hell’s that? I came outa the room and all these kids are there with nice clothes on and all. Lenora’s friends. It got all silent when I came out. And there’s this big cake on the table. Lenora, she comes up to me and says, It’s my birthday, Daddy. And then I get that hollowness in my stomach like I told you about, and I says, Happy birthday, happy birthday. And I see this huge cake on the table. So I go into the kitchen and get some money out of Dancesca’s purse, the last five dollars. We don’t have a lot of money, even our savings gone down. I weren’t working on the ’scrapers no more. Hid that money in my pocket. Went on outside and went to the supermarket where they got a cake shop. But when I came back it wasn’t as big as the first cake. So I go to the kitchen drawer, and Dancesca she grabs me by the wrist and says, Put that knife back. I’m only gonna cut the cake, I says. And she says, It’s Lenora’s birthday, let Lenora cut the cake. And I says, Please, I just wanna arrange the pieces.
I don’t know why. But Dancesca she gives me this smile like she understands and she kisses me on the cheek.
So I cut the cake and arrange all the pieces on two plates so that they’re equal size. Put ’em on large white plates.
’Cause I like things equal.
Yeah.
And I think that mighta been one of the times I felt the very best, just sitting there in that room watching the kids eat that birthday cake, even though Lenora didn’t have a chance to cut it and there was just one piece with all the birthday candles on it. And I was happy. Just sitting there, being a father. And after all them kids left, Dancesca she was cleaning up and she says to Lenora, Why don’t you go down the park with your daddy?
Now, she’s getting older, Lenora, but for some reason she still likes them swings. Getting taller and filling out and puberty coming along and all, but she loves them. She could go on them swings all day long. So we went down. It was summer. Garbage in the playground. Cherry blossoms out along the walkways topside. We’re at the swing together. Her hair is done in braids. She swings happily and calls for a push. All I wants to do is give her a greater lift. I stand behind her. She just about fits on the small wooden swing, and her feet make these curves in the air. At first I’m just pushing the metal chains forward. She’s laughing. It’s not on purpose.
I swear it.
It’s just that my hand — this hand — comes around the chain. I only brush her on the very edge, just a light finger touch, and she doesn’t even notice and she’s calling again for more height — she’s wearing her birthday dress — and, shit, I don’t mean to, I’m just pushing her, hands at her armpits, and Dancesca is coming along the pathway, carrying three cans of Coca-Cola, but I see her and my hands rest against the metal chains once more. But you see, I did it again.
And then I did it again. At the swings.