Marrow (4 page)

Before my shift ends, I pay for the shoes and shove them in my new Groceries & Shit bag. I walk the two blocks to the bus stop with my head down. It’s raining—warm rain—not the cold kind that makes your bones ache. I wish I had money for a coffee, but I spent what I had on the shoes, and I need the rest for bus fare. I decide to walk the five blocks instead. I stop at a food truck and hand them my bus fare. In exchange, I get a paper cup of coffee with a dash of cream and three sugars. It’s delicious.

The police station on Bone Harbor Hill is always busy. I walk into the lobby and a dirty-faced toddler crashes into my legs. A baby cries, a woman curses, a man who barely speaks English is arguing with a clerk. “A meeestake! A meestake!” he cries. I look around, trying to decide if this is worth it, when I see one of the cops who came to the Rag O Rama to arrest the woman. He has a gym bag slung over one shoulder, and the look of a man who just ended his shift.

“S’cuse me,” I say. He is reluctant to stop. “Excuse me,” I say louder. He is wearing sunglasses despite the lateness of the day. I stare at my own reflection and say, “The woman you picked up earlier from the Rag O Rama. Is she still here?”

He sticks his thumbs in his belt loops like he’s some kind of boss, and looks at me like he’s trying to place my face. He won’t be able to.

“Yeah, why?”

I shove the shoes at him. “She left these there,” I say. And then I turn and leave without looking back. My own shoes, the ones on my feet, are the only shoes I own. Torn up sneakers from the Wal-Mart clearance rack. You can do without a lot of things in this life, but shoes are a necessity. If you’re stealing shoes, it’s a desperate necessity. And I will not stand in the way of people trying hard to survive.

I’M WALKING TO THE CORNER STORE
for healthy cigarettes, watching the way the fat of my knees bulge with each step, when I see him. He’s reading a book, his head leaning on his upturned palm. There is a glass of water beside him, untouched and filled to the brim, sweating. The fact that he looks so at ease with himself is what abruptly redirects my feet from the cracked sidewalk to the pathway that leads to his gate. I smile. I don’t smile. I wring my hands. I fold them behind my back. No one really knows if it was a car accident, or a tumor, or something like Multiple Sclerosis that made Judah Grant a cripple. We knew him when he walked on his legs, then one day he couldn’t. As I watch him, I have a thought that startles me in its clarity.
He wears his wheelchair
.
His wheelchair never wears him.
I’ve never had this thought before. As a general rule, I try not to look at Judah. Staring at someone in a wheelchair doesn’t seem polite—even if he is beautiful.

There is a fence surrounding his yard. It was once pretty; you can still see the remnants of eggshell blue paint in some places where the rust hasn’t eaten through it. I remember being little and thinking the fence looked like Easter. The gate groans loudly as I push it open with my fingertips. Judah’s head comes up, but not at once. He’s so casual as he sets his book aside and watches me walk up the ramp that Delaney had built for his chair.

“What are you doing?” I ask him. I glance down at the book he is reading. It’s a biography.

He holds up the thin joint between his fingers. It smells hella strong. Like weed smoking weed.

“Can I have some?” I ask.

His eyes lightly graze me. “I’ve never seen you smoke,” he says, and makes no move to pass me the joint. His voice is clear and deep.

“You never
see
me,” I say.

“Sure I do.” He puts the joint between his lips, sucks in a little. He exhales before he says, “You walk past here every day to go to work.”

I tuck my chin in, surprised. “How do you know I’m going to work?”

“Dunno,” he replies. “Maybe because you look miserable.”

He’s right, of course.

“Okay,” I say. “So you see me walking to work once a day and you suddenly know me?”

He smiles a little and shrugs, extending the joint toward me like he doesn’t care whether I hit it or not.

“No thanks,” I say. “I don’t smoke.”

His laugh is a slow build up. It pools in his chest and bursts forward. He laughs like he’s been laughing his whole life, and he knows how.

“I like your bag,” he says, extending a pinky finger and pointing to it. The remnants of his smile are still lingering around the corners of his mouth. “Groceries and shit. Is that literally what you put in there?”

“Literally?” I ask. “You want to know if I literally put my groceries, and my shit, in this bag?”

His teeth slide over his lower lip as he studies me. I can tell it’s a habit by the narrowing of his eyes, the side-to-side bobbing of his head.

Finally, he says, “I was testing you. I don’t like people who misuse the word ‘literally.’ Now we can be friends.”

“Literally?”

He sets his joint in a little ashtray at his feet and holds out his hand.

“I’m Judah,” he says. “And you’re Margo.”

“How do you know my name?” His hand holds on to mine a beat longer than what is considered normal. If I weren’t so ugly, I’d think he was into me.

“This is Wessex Street; we’re all parasites on the same vein in Washington.” He reaches his arms back and cradles his head in his hands while he waits for my reaction.
Look at him, sitting in his wheelchair all cool.

“I’m not a parasite,” I say calmly. “I’m not on welfare. I have a job.” I feel bad right away. That might not even be what he meant.
You don’t always have to be so defensive,
I tell myself.

“Don’t look so guilty,” he says. “I wasn’t accusing you of mooching off the government. I have a job.”

“I’m not guilty. You don’t know what I’m thinking,” I say defensively.
Oops.

Judah picks up his joint. “Yeah, I do. You’ve got the kind of face that speaks.” He makes jazz hands when he says the last part. I don’t smile. I want to though.

I scrunch my whole, entire face together because I don’t know what he means. Then I know.

“Oh,” I say.

I look down at him. What kind of job could he have? Maybe something at his school.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “What kind of job could I possibly have?”

“Ew! Stop reading my mind … and my face!”

We both laugh.

“So what do you do?”

He takes a hit of his joint. “Are you kidding?” he says. “I’m in a wheelchair. I don’t have a job.”

“Oh my God.” I shake my head at him and look up at the sky. It’s about to rain. “You can’t just steal my shit like that.” I need to get her cigarettes before it pours. “Gotta go,” I say. I head back down the path, my Groceries & Shit bag swinging on my arm.

“Bye Margo. Come see me again, you hear?” he calls after me.

When I get home an hour later, it’s already dark. I can hear voices from my mother’s room. I wonder if I have enough time to use the bathroom before he comes out. Whoever
he
is. I have to be back at the Rag first thing tomorrow, and I need a bath. I wish we had a shower like normal people, but the eating house was built before people washed themselves standing up. I grab a towel from my room and fill the bath. I’m halfway through washing myself when there’s pounding on the door.

“Margo,” my mother’s sharp voice calls out. “What are you doing in there?”

I know better than to answer her. What she wants is for me to vacate the bathroom. I do a quick rinse and jump out, being careful not to get water on the floor. She hates that. The next twenty seconds is me frantically pulling on my clothes. It’s not fast enough. I know that. I was stupid to think I had enough time, and now there will be consequences.

When I open the door she’s standing there in her red, silk robe with a cigarette dangling between her fingers. It makes a trail of smoke toward the gray ceiling. She glares at me, making silent promises for later. There’s a man standing behind her, looking as pleased as a newly fed baby. He leers at me as I squeeze past my mother and run barefoot to my bedroom. I didn’t even get to wash my hair. You can’t be ugly in this life and have dirty hair. For some reason I think of Judah Grant—the opposite of ugly, and the reason I wanted to wash my hair.

Judah Grant isn’t sitting in his yard when I walk to the bus stop the next morning. Delaney is digging around in her garden with a big straw hat on her head. She looks like one of those women you see on the cover of a gardening magazine. She waves at me when I walk by. Sometimes she gives me money and tells me to bring her things from the Rag. “I need a new pair of shorts,” she’ll say. “Size two.” Delaney’s whole entire body is the size of my thigh. I get things for her in the teen section of the Rag. “Hey Margo,” she calls. I stop. “Judah needs some shirts. Fancy ones. Something a man should wear to work.”

The liar!
I’m tempted to ask where he works, but she’s busy pulling money from her bra, and I’m distracted.

She hands me a ten and a twenty. They’re both damp. I hold them between my thumb and my forefinger.

“What size is he?” I ask dumbly. I wonder why Delaney can’t go to the Rag herself and choose his shirts. I wonder why Judah is such an effing liar.

“Get him a couple nice ones with collars,” she says. I want to ask her where he’s working, but we’ve never talked other than me taking her clothes orders.

“All right,” I say. “Something nice.”

I’m going to get him some really ugly shit just for lying to me. Besides, a person who looks like him doesn’t need to be well-dressed, working legs or not. You have to leave some room in the world for the rest of us.

I buy Judah four shirts: pink paisley, purple with tiny white hearts, and a white shirt with red stripes so he can look like a candy cane. Christmas is all about lies anyway. The fourth shirt is nicer because I found a little mercy in my heart. It’s just plain blue. Delaney acts like I’m America’s Next Top Model when I hand them to her.

“They’re perfect,” she says. “You should work in fashion.”

I can’t wait to see him in the candy cane shirt, but I doubt he’ll even wear it. Tough luck for him, the Rag has a very strict NO RETURNS policy. But, he can donate it back if he likes. I’ll make sure Delaney re-buys it for his birthday.

When I get home, my mother’s door is closed. She’s left a note taped to my door, though.
Pick up my medicine

Sure. Why not? I’m my mother’s unpaid errand girl. I crumple up the note and throw it at her door. It’s unfortunate that she chooses that very moment to exit her room. The note hits her left breast and bounces to the floor. She watches it fall to her feet, and then brings her eyes back up to my face. My mother doesn’t have to say anything to punish me. She’s not verbally abusive. She turns back around and shuts her door. The message is clear. I disgust her. She wouldn’t even keep me around, except she won’t leave the house anymore, and I get shit for her. I head back outside and walk to the crack house for Wendy’s medicine. At least she didn’t send me to the bad people house.

“Yo, Margo!”

“Yo,” I say.

Judah is wheeling himself back and forth on the driveway. He’s wearing a thin white t-shirt and all of his muscles are popping out.

“Ew, gross. You have muscles.”

“Yeah, I’m a stud,” he says.

“Why are you doing that?” I ask. He’s wheeling himself left, then right, around and around, as fast as he can go.

“Workin’ out.”

“Cool, I don’t do that.”
Like it’s not evident in the fat pockets around your knees,
I think.

I keep walking, but he follows me out onto the sidewalk. I can hear his wheels squeaking behind me. I grin.

“You don’t smoke or work out. What do you do?”

I don’t know what I do; I’m kind of a loser.

“I talk to you once … now you think we’re friends?”

“You’re kind of mean looking,” he says. “I was scared of you. Once you got things rolling…”

He’s full of shit. He can’t even say it and keep a straight face.

I fall back into step, and he has no problem keeping up with me.

“I read,” I say. I look at him out of the corner of my eye to see if he’s judging me.

“I do too,” he says. I remember the book he was holding, the day I walked up his pathway. “Mostly biographies.”

“Ew,” I say. And then, “I get enough of real life in the Bone. I want to go somewhere good when I read, not into someone else’s crappy life.”

“Good lives aren’t worth reading about,” he argues. “I read about the struggle. Other people’s growing pains.”

“I like happy endings,” I say. “Real life never has a happy ending.”

“God, you’re depressing. I don’t know why we’re friends.”

I turn into the crack house’s cracked driveway. “We’re not,” I call. “Now wait for me out here, and if you hear gunshots, call the police. They won’t come, but call them anyway.”

“I’ve got guns,” he says, flexing his arms. “I can protect you.”

I laugh. I didn’t know I had a laugh in me.

I stop laughing when Mo opens the door. I’m hit in the face with the smell of weed and cooking steak. He shoves his eight-month-old son at me. “Hold him,” he grunts. I take Mo Jr. and sit down on front step with him. I have to brush aside a bunch of cigarette butts. Mo Jr. smells like a week-old diaper. He looks up at me like I’m the most boring creature alive, before staring off into the bushes to the left of the house.