“I've got renal failure,” he says. “I get dialysis. So I need a new kidney, or I'm gonna die.”
“You're not gonna die,” I say quickly.
“That's not what the doctor said,” says Dre.
“Yeah, but what's Marco mean, LeVon giving Dre a kidney?” LeVon says. “'Cause LeVon ain't giving away no kidneys.”
I could play this one of two ways. I could say Marco was just talk ing nonsense, making up crazy stories the way little kids do. Or I could tell him the truth. I always try to tell the truth, even when it's not pretty. I feel like in the long run it's the best way.
So I tell LeVon the truth: Dre needs one of his kidneys to live.
LeVon stands up. He's so mad he's shaking.
“This is sick!” he says. “I feel like I'm in one of them horror movies or something! You just wanted my
kidney
? You people is crazy, you know that? Damn! Get me outta here before y'all try to eat me or something!”
Marco is staring at LeVon. Dre is staring at me. LeVon is heading for the door. And I'm sitting with my face in my hands. Because I feel like I have royally screwed up.
“LeVon,” I say. “I'm really sorry.”
“Sorry my ass!” LeVon yells. “Stay the hell away from me, lady! Jesus! I had people come after my stash, and I had people come after my money. But ain't nobody ever come after one of my kidneys before!”
He slams the door. I can hear him still yelling all the way down the sidewalk.
My boys are quiet for a moment. Then Marco picks up his drumstick and starts eating his dinner as though nothing has happened.
“Don't be mad at me,” I say to Dre. He's looking at me like he's disgusted.
“That was uncool,” he says. “You invited him over just to get his kidney? Damn, Mom. That's messed up.”
“It wasn't like that,” I say, but the truth is, it was like that.
A
month goes by. Then another month. Then a third. Time has slowed down to the speed of an ant walking through syrup. It's just work, dialysis, wait. Work, dialysis, wait. I take Dre for treatment three times a week. That's twelve or fifteen hours of sitting and watching his blood run through this machine. Dre hates dialysis. He hates not going to school. He hates everything about his life right now.
I can understand that. I'm not too happy myself. I've been worried about money for so long now that if I won the lottery tomorrow, I would keep worrying just out of habit.
Every time the phone rings I jump a mile. I'm hoping it's Dr. Wendell, calling to say they found a donor. But it never is.
Miss Emily, my client, dies. I'm there with her, holding her hand, when she passes. It's a beautiful moment. She had a long life. It's not tragic when someone as old as her goes. It's just natural.
I get a new client. Mr. Varner is fifty and recovering from spinal surgery. He's grumpy and obnoxious, and he doesn't like people of color. Every time I go to his house he tells me he's going to check to make sure I didn't steal anything. Needless to say, I don't read to him from Barack Obama's book. I don't read to him at all. I go to work and do my job without thinking about it. Sometimes that's how it is.
But these hours don't cut it. I got the skills, but I can't pay the bills. So I keep looking for more work. No one else is hiring. I could get a minimum-wage job, but by the time I was done paying someone to look after the boys I would be deeper in the hole. This is why people go on welfare. The system makes it so you can't afford to work.
I have no choice. I go back to the welfare office. I tell myself it's not my fault. It's the economy. After all, I would crawl on my hands and knees over piles of razor blades to help my kids. I'm lucky all I have to do is fill out some forms. And put up with a lot of insulting questions. And surrender my dignity at the door. That's all there is to it. I'm not one of those who expects a free ride. It's not my fault there's no jobs.
Then one day, the phone does ring. It's not Dr. Wendell or the hospital. It's LeVon. I can hardly believe it.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“I'm in the joint,” he says. “Been here a little while. I caught a case after I saw you. Got locked up. We need to talk.”
If LeVon wants me to help him somehow, I will. I feel like it's the least I could do to make things right. I never felt okay about what happened. He got the wrong idea, but still.
So I go back to the prison, the same one where I last saw Terrell. I meet LeVon in the same waiting room. Once again I think about how much he looks like his father. And like Dre.
“What happened, LeVon?” I ask. “How'd you end up here?”
“Aw, somebody got shot over some drugs,” he says. “I didn't have nothing to do with it. But they trying to pin it on me. Looks like it's gonna work too. I'm gonna be here a while.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
He shrugs. He has no expectations from his life. He takes what he's given and he rolls with it.
“Listen,” I say, “about what happened. I was never gonna come right out and ask you to give Dre a kidney. It wasn't like that. I really did want you guys to get to know each other. Once you knew what was up, if you decided you could help him out, great. If not, we would understand. Nobody would ever hold a gun to your head about it. You know what I mean? We're not that way. I just didn't know what else to do.”
He nods.
“Yeah, I feel you,” he says. “It was just a little weird, you know? Anyway, I had plenty of time to think about all that. Some stuff has happened, yo.”
“Like what?”
“Terrell, he's dead. He got stabbed.”
LeVon's face is so flat when he tells me this that he might as well be talking about the weather.
“LeVon, I'm so sorry,” I say. “I had no idea.”
He shrugs.
“Ain't nothin' but a thing,” he says. “He wasn't nothin' to me. We hardly even talked to each other. I guess someone had a beef. That happens in the joint. Anyway, it got me thinking. What you said in the car. About doing something noble.”
I can't believe he actually remembers that. Hope begins to well up inside me. But I can't say a word. I just have to listen.
“And there was something else. I feel like I owe you one. I don't know if you knew me or not when you saw me the first time. But when you came up to me at the Fountain, I was, like, Uh-oh. There's that lady I done robbed a while ago.”
“So you did remember me.”
LeVon nods.
“And I just wanted to say, that wasn't right,” he says. “It was nothing personal. I had some numbers I needed to make up. Just business, you know?”
“You scared the hell out of me,” I say. “I thought I was gonna die.”
He nods again.
“Yeah, I'm sorry about that,” he says. “I'm trying to put things right in my life. Trying to turn things around. I don't wanna die in this place like old Terrell did. So I kinda feel like I owe you one. I'm looking at a long time here. Maybe we can help each other out. You feel me?”
“You mean⦔
“Dre can have it,” LeVon says. “He's my brother anyway. I never had a brother to do for me. I can live with one kidney, right?”
“Right,” I say. “You could have a totally normal life. And so could he.”
“Maybe it would get me outta here early too,” says LeVon.
“Maybe it would,” I say. “I can talk to the parole board. Tell them how you've helped us. Let them see what kind of a person you really are.”
“Yeah,” says LeVon. “So let's do this thing. Go ahead. Call who you gotta call. Let them know they can come get me whenever they want. I ain't goin' nowhere.”
I take LeVon's hands and squeeze them.
“No touching!” yells a guard from across the room.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “You're noble, all right. You're the most noble man who ever lived.”
T
here are tests that have to be done before we can be sure LeVon is a good match. These are the same tests Terrell failed. But LeVon passes them with flying colors. The drug question was an easy one, he says. He's never shot up in his life. He only sold it. He never touched the stuff.
So it's a go. There's nothing stopping us now. Dre is going to get his kidney.
LeVon has been told by the parole judge that he'll get a break on his sentence if he goes through with the donation. Seems they have some kind of special law about that. Besides, one of the witnesses who helped put him away is changing his story.
And it helps that I'm putting in a good word for him. I've told the judge that LeVon won't be going back out on the street when he's released. He can come and live with us if he wants to. He's not a kid anymore. He doesn't need anyone to take care of him. But everyone needs someplace to go.
LeVon has decided he wants out of the game. I guess seeing your father die in prison will do that. He wants to turn his life around somehow. He seems more scared about that than about the operation. Change is a scary thing.
The day of the surgery, they prep LeVon and Dre together. They have a few minutes to talk, lying side by side in their hospital beds.
“I just wanted to say thanks,” Dre says. “You know I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, I know,” says LeVon. “Man, I feel like I'm on vacation. Even a hospital is better than the joint.”
“What's it like in there?” asks Dre.
“You don't wanna know,” says LeVon. “Crazy. It's never quiet. Never safe. You got to watch your back every minute. People be screaming, crying, fighting, yelling, begging, all kinds of crazy stuff. Man can't hear himself think. It just goes on and on.”
“People be gettin' killed too,” says Dre quietly.
“Yeah,” says LeVon. “There is that.”
They are both reflective for a moment. Dre knows about Terrell. I made sure I told him right away. I don't believe in keeping things like that from my boys. They have a right to know what kind of world they're living in. And Dre has a right to know what happened to his own father.
“Anyway,” says LeVon, “you get yourself right again, you got to do somethin' with yourself. Not just sit around playin' Xbox all day long. You feel me? Take my kidney and make it work for you. Use it to do somethin' good.”
“Something noble,” says Dre, grinning at me.
“Yo, noble lady,” says LeVon, “you bring me any chicken? I never did get to finish my dinner.”
“After you get out, I'll make you all the roasted chickens you want,” I say.
“Yeah, that sounds good,” says LeVon. “Roasted chickens day and night. I can hardly wait.”
“What are you gonna do with yourself ?” Dre asks LeVon. “When all this is over, and you get back out?”
LeVon shrugs. I can tell it's bugging him he doesn't have an answer for this yet.
“I dunno,” he says. “I been in the game a long time. Hard to imagine what all I might do if not that.”
“You finish high school?” Dre asks.
“Hell, no. You kidding me? I stopped going to school when I was nine.”
“Nine?” Dre is in shock. “You been working that long?”
“Yeah, that's the way it was,” says LeVon. “I had to eat somehow. I wanna go straight, I'm gonna have to go back to school first. And that's gonna be hard.”
“Worry about one thing at a time,” I suggest. “Today is a big day. You don't have to solve everything all at once.”
Dr. Wendell comes in. He's wearing surgical scrubs.
“How you guys doing?” he asks. “Ready to get going?”
“Ready as I'm gonna be,” says Dre.
“Me too,” says LeVon. “Let's do it.”
“You're both going to be fine,” says Dr. Wendell. “When you wake up you're going to have sore throats and sore incisions. But you'll be up and around in no time. You're young and healthy. You have long lives ahead of you.”
It's true, I think. A month ago, you could not have said that about either of them. Now, thanks to what one is doing for the other, they both have a second shot.
A nurse comes in and puts a needle in LeVon's arm. They will use this to put him to sleep. They don't have to put one in Dre's because he already has one.
“All right,” says Dr. Wendell to me. “We're going to take them now. You can wait in the reading room if you want. We'll call you when they're out.”
I hug and kiss my boy. Then I hug and kiss LeVon too. He acts embarrassed, but I can tell he likes it. I wonder when the last time was that he got kissed by his mother. She doesn't even know what he's doing today. I asked LeVon if he wanted to tell her, but he said no. She's tucked into a bottle somewhere, dreaming her life away. Maybe she's even dead by now herself. LeVon doesn't know and he doesn't care. I can't understand how a mother could abandon her own son the way she did.
“I'll see you boys in a little while,” I say. “I'll be praying for you.”
“Okay, Mama,” says Dre. “Here we go.”
“See you, Linda,” says LeVon.
The nurses wheel their beds out of the room and down the hall. I skip the reading room and go straight to the chapel. This is where I'll spend the next few hours, until they come get me. On my knees. Praying as hard as I know how.
T
hese days, getting over an operation doesn't seem to take as long as it used to. I remember when I was a kid, they would keep you for a whole week if you had your tonsils out. Now they can remove a breast and send you home the same day. Not for a kidney transplant though. They want to keep both these boys in for three or four days, just to make sure everything went all right. And that won't be the end of it either. They will need regular checkups. They have certain restrictions. But they can lead full lives.