Blacked Out
July 3, 1977
The bearer of this certificate is entitled to one McDonald’s regular soft drink. Redeemable only from July 1 thru July 30, 1976. Present this certificate when ordering.
Junior was parched. He felt the dryness of each throat muscle as he swallowed. Hunched over, he used the fatty part of his palm to iron out the certificate’s creases, his bony thigh the most convenient surface. The paper looked pitiful. It had languished in his wallet for a year, sandwiched between a ticket stub for Ode to Billy Joe and a dog-eared black and white passport picture. Junior was eight in the tiny square. At the time, he had had no idea where Brooklyn was or why he was going there. He just knew it was cold, in foreign, and involved taking a plane. The closest he had gotten to any aircraft was when Cecil Senior took him to Palisadoes Airport to watch planes ascend into the clouds over Kingston.
“Come on, pal,” a burlap-rough voice growled behind him. Junior stood erect and rotated his head to see a beefy White man with an orange Afro chewing gum hard. His temples pulsated. “We ain’t got all day,” he said, scanning the room. “I know I don’t.” Junior continued to smooth out the wrinkles as he eyed the overhead menu. The mustachioed man began snapping his gum. Each pop grew louder. Junior turned around, watching the man’s jawline shift with each chew. “Fuck you looking at?” he asked in between chomping. Junior could smell the Juicy Fruit masking his adversary’s hot breath. The man’s eyes grew large. Junior’s were larger. The Muzak version of a tune he had learned in junior high concert band spilled through the speakers. Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. Junior ransacked his brain trying to remember the title. It was too cluttered in there. He winced in frustration. “A Taste of Honey.” He exhaled, suppressing a smile.
The man continued smacking his gum. Bursts, cracks, pops. Junior flinched. His muscles contracted, seizing with every sudden, ear-piercing snap. These triggers transported him back to a place he’d rather not revisit. A car backfiring. Fireworks. Firecrackers. A BB gun. Junior wasn’t sure how he would survive the following day or any other future Fourth of July. It wasn’t Independence Day for him, just the opposite. A day when he would feel forever trapped and unable to take a full breath from the mental prison he had been hiding in for a year.
Three hundred and sixty-four days since she left. He didn’t want to dwell on it, but it was a struggle not to. Everyone had assumed it was an accident. Joyce was a happy girl…most of the time. Junior thought so, at least. Never discussing the day with anyone, he felt equal parts anger and confusion. He probably would for life. His mind was littered with the ear-view mirror images of what-ifs. What if they had never left Brooklyn? What if they had just stayed in Jamaica like Uncle Winston, Auntie Vi, and Granddad? What if Cecil Senior hadn’t felt the need to protect his family with the same type of gun the news said a rabid serial killer was using? Why bother escaping the scourge of the city only to bring it inside the suburban home with the professionally landscaped lawn?
Junior’s indecisiveness bled into every nook of his life. He wore an anonymous t-shirt, (white or blue) every day with a pair of jeans or denim cutoffs and white tube socks. A sun visor with a rose-red plastic panel offered privacy from the world with enough visibility into it. The only variation was in sneakers. He would grab whichever was closer to the door after Granny cleaned tidied his room, pressed his laundered clothes, and removed the dirty ones.
“Patience is wearing thin, man.” Junior turned around again. The gum chewing continued, this time with more intensity as the man rocked back and forth on his thick boot heels. An acidic heat swept up from Junior’s feet, through the backs of knees, then his gut, and finally to the rim of his ears. He opened his mouth with the intention of putting the man firmly in his place. He would scold him in the most infantalizing manner, urging him to stop being so greedy, so impatient. Only silence came out. The man grinned, rolled his eyes, then laughed before tossing his head back and waving his hand to shoo Junior away.
“I can help the next customer,” a new cashier with a Blonde bowl cut said with a toothy smile that disappeared as quickly as it came. Junior had gone to West Northbrook High with her. She looked at him, expressionless as if they had never been lab partners in 10th grade chemistry five years before. She waved over the gum-chewer. The next open cashier said a curt “Next” before breathing loudly through her mouth. She crossed and loosened her arms as Junior made his way over. She did this twice. He counted.
“Gimme a medium orangeade,” he said, conjuring a bass in his voice he wished had been present during his standoff with the gum chewer. He placed the crumpled paper on the counter. Before he could let go, she snatched it.
“This expired,” she said, in between grabbing it then slamming it back down. Expired. Junior hated that word. It was too final. He now hated her, too. As intense a gum chewer as the man, she moaned, “This is from last year. Sorry.” She pushed it back. Didn’t she know how much it meant for him to be using this piece of paper? This final present from Joyce…even though it was originally a present from their little sister. It showed he was getting on in his life. The certificate and the theater stub were the last activities Junior tethered to Joyce. They had come to this very McDonald’s after the movie. Joyce shoved a Big Mac down her face. Junior hated how she ate. Always in a rush, never chewing properly. He would hold onto the stub a bit longer. But the certificate was a good first step. This rude girl had no idea what it took to get to this point. He wished she would choke on her gum. Not enough to kill her, just to cough violently. Then he felt guilty.
“Can’t you just put it through or something?” he asked. She shook her head side to side four times before saying no. He counted that, too. Junior rubbed his face vertically with his calloused hands, the scratches they produced a mix of pain and relief. He could still feel something.
Crystal-Ann had been proud of this paper present. After using her allowance on the essentials (clothes for her Barbies, TV Guide, jigsaw puzzles, bags of Funyuns and Munchos) she had bought Joyce a book of certificates. The two oldest Hardy children shared a birthday, one year apart. Junior got a pack of socks with red and blue stripes for the Bicentennial. A newly vegetarian Joyce spent the bulk of her certificates on Filet-o-fish sandwiches for her little sister before giving Junior the now-expired paper. When Junior reminded her that vegetarians weren’t supposed to eat dead things, she bought fries instead.
Kissing his teeth, Junior backed away and stood near a fake potted tree. He wanted to show them—the cashiers, the gum-chewer—that they hadn’t driven him out. He was leaving on his own accord. Both employees were preoccupied with new customers and the man with the red Afro had left with his little greasy bag of the same fries Joyce spent her last days eating. Junior’s stomach rumbled and cried. It was impossible to swallow his own spittle anymore. He checked his wallet again. Empty. He shoved his hands into each frayed pocket foraging for change he could cobble together. Nothing.
Defeated, he pushed open the glass door and entered into the heavy-handed heat. Junior rested against the multi-colored brick facade of the only McDonald’s in West Northbrook. A tension rose from his gut, twisting in multiple directions. He hoped no one had seen him slink in or out of the restaurant. They would ask when he was returning to school, or declaring a major, or pledging a fraternity. He didn’t have a concrete answer for those would-be questions. The semester he wanted to take off had swelled into his entire junior year.
Despite being snubbed by the cashier, if a former classmate did see him, Junior prayed that they wouldn’t recognize him. He didn’t find anything remarkable about his face. Nothing identifying, like the mole his mother had above the right side of lip. Or the gapped teeth shared by Crystal-Ann, their father, and grandmother.
He had the kind of complexion that made the old woman nervous. He was so close to being light again, she would remind him. Working on his car, going to Jones Beach, cleaning the gutters of their leaves topless, exposed to the scorching sun—these were all things that gave Hazel Hardy cause for concern, maybe even kept her up at night. She voiced her grievances before and after Junior’s time in the sun. Long after his melanin had deepened into a rich bronze, she complained that he needed to protect his color. He was born light, grew into olive, and settled into a tawny tone around puberty. “Toasted tawny” was the name of his mother’s liquid foundation and pressed powder. They shared the same complexion. Granny and Crystal-Ann were the darkest in the family. Why should she care if he got a little sun?
Inhaling the hot air, Junior closed his eyes and focused on the black of the backs of his eyes. People went in and out. He heard abbreviated conversations ranging from the oppressive heat to the madman shooting young people in the boroughs. Long Island was safe, but for how long? The killer seemed to be leaving Black people alone…for now. The South Shore wasn’t even that far from the most recent murders. Bayside, Queens was only 15.4 miles on the Cross Island and Southern State. That was twenty minutes in decent traffic. But traffic was never decent and Junior was beginning to feel more than the occasional pang of worry. He didn’t fit the target demographic. But someone was still out there lurking, preparing for his next prey.
Junior was ready to go home. Empty-handed with a vacant stomach, he opened his eyes and took his first step off the sidewalk. As his feet touched down on the roasting asphalt, a cold shock took over his body. He was wet.
“I’m terribly, terribly sorry,” the woman who bumped into him said. “I’m such a klutz.” A splotchy, dark brown stain soaked through his shirt. The same shade of brown his grandmother didn’t want for him. It was Coke. Millions of freezing ice cubes covered his feet. “Cecil…Hardy?” the woman asked, before apologizing again. “Is that you?”
The woman was close enough for Junior to smell the cocoa butter baking into her skin.
“Young man, I know that’s you.” She stared at him, twisting her neck in a serpentine manner in an attempt to get a clearer view. He hadn’t changed that much in a year: same helmet shaped Afro, not too big, not too cropped. He still hadn’t fully connected his faint mustache with the scruff on his chin. It wasn’t really a beard, another thing he couldn’t commit to. He had the same extra-wide shoulders and the thin body that hung from them.
Keeping his head down, he shook it and began walking away,“You’ve got me mixed up with somebody else, lady.” His eyeballs hurt from averting them so quickly.
“Boy, stop lying in this parking lot.” Sweat dripped down parts of Junior’s face as he surveyed the rows of cars. He tried to remember where he’d parked. He couldn’t remember if he’d driven his mother’s car or his. “Hello? Young man!”
A firm hand landed on Junior’s shoulder. Thrusting his body forward to free himself, the hand remained. It was a deep tanned hand, well manicured with a rich oxblood nail color. A turquoise cuff squeezed the wrist. It all belonged to Dr. Harriet Higgins, his former Modern Condition professor. Turning around to face her, he hoped there wasn’t any white residue on his nose or mouth from the glue he’d sniffed earlier. She raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms over the same ample bosom the guys would wax poetically about before and after her lectures.
“Now,” she said, lacing her fingers, “you ready to tell me what that was all about?” Her lip liner was too dark for the lipstick she’d paired it with. She wore her hair in a bouffant similar to that of his mother. Short, pressed, and picked out high from sleeping on dozens of sponge curlers probably. “I never forget a student’s face, especially when I spill a soft drink all over them.” She pulled out a fistful of napkins and began dabbing at his shirt. He pulled away again.
“I’m sorry, Cecil. I didn’t mean to…” she trailed, further crumpling the paper. “In any case, what have you been up to? It’s been a while hasn’t it?”
As she continued poking around, asking her invasive questions, Junior picked at the dead skin on his lips. It was a nervous habit his mother used to nag him about, once upon a time when she was present enough to notice. The sun sunk into itself. Junior followed suit. He pulled his shoulders forward and wrapped his arms around his torso. If he took up less space maybe she’d leave him alone and go eat her burger somewhere.
The last time he’d seen Dr. Higgins was at the mall. He remembered the date: December 23. He remembered lots of dates and times. Too many were stuffed into his brain, leaving little space for anything else. His former professor was leaving Alexander’s with two armfuls of shopping bags, while he was entering the store. He was skipping a special church service. Granny wasn’t pleased, his mother didn’t notice, and his father told him to take notes. Maybe they could steal some ideas for the men’s shop.
“See how they merchandise their ties with their vested corduroy suits,” was the direction he remembered most closely. Junior was certain his father had also mentioned Oxford shirts and V-neck sweaters. Which was more popular, argyle or plaid? Dr. Higgins did then what she had done just now. “Cecil…Hardy?” That extra space in between his first and surname. It was so pretentious. Why did she have to do that? It didn’t make sense. The only person who addressed him by his full name was his grandfather, technically the original Cecil Hardy. He was Cecil Neville Hardy. Junior and his father were Cecil Norman. Another thing that had no logic. Nothing ever made sense.
Junior spotted his mother’s nutmeg brown AMC Pacer, tucked in between cars twice its size in the McDonald’s lot. As he began heading over, Dr. Higgins grabbed the crook of his elbow. She was always grabbing, pulling. Touching.
“Are you on something, son?”
He shook his head and made a casual attempt at wiping the rim of his nose. No residue. “Ma’am?”
“Did you take anything?” She continued. “You seem out of it.”
Someone exited the building. A cool gust of manufactured wind came and went with them. Junior heard a snippet of Muzak. He kissed his teeth again, then cleared his throat to deflect. Even though he hadn’t sat in Dr. Higgins’ lecture hall in over a year, he wanted to maintain a modicum of respect. She was older and erudite. She enunciated every syllable, maintained eye contact, and had excellent posture.
“I’m fine,” he said, staring off into the distance, beyond the Pacer.
“You sure? You really don’t seem fine.” She was still holding his arm. All Junior wanted to do was get out of the house. The stifling house with its convulsive central air conditioning and shallow walls. He needed to get away from Crystal-Ann and her incessant TV watching. Away from Granny and her Bible study class with all of the geriatric women singing hymns an octave too high and off-key. Away from his mother, who was locked upstairs in her room or the en suite powder room with the large white wicker vanity. The mirror gave the illusion of a larger space. Lee Hardy must have needed that in her contained fourteen by sixteen-foot life.
Cecil Senior poured himself into his stores. The haberdashery in Bushwick was the crown jewel in his tiny empire. The ladies’ boutique across the street on Broadway was thriving. His latest obsession was bringing The Distinguished Gentleman and Lee’s Looks to Jamaica Avenue in Queens. If those went well, in a year or two, he could expand the business to Hempstead or some other village on the Island.
“You know you can take a class here and there,” Dr. Higgins suggested, finally releasing him. “That’s what I did as an undergraduate. I had to work.” Junior began to smell like the Coke that had soaked through his clothes. He wanted nothing more than a shower to peel the shirt off and rinse away the stickiness and humidity. “Why don’t you give me a call sometime?”
She reached into her large leather satchel until it had swallowed most of her arm. She pulled out a small silver case that stored her business cards. Van Der Garde University was Long Island’s most expensive private institution of higher learning. Its business program was okay enough. Really ambitious business students could graduate with their MBA if they committed to an extra year and two summers. Cecil Senior had urged his son to enroll in this program. Junior had spoken with his academic advisor in the spring of his sophomore year.
Carlton Samuels was Jamaican-born, too. Also a graduate of Van Der Garde’s MBA program. Each time Junior met him he wanted to know why he was advising coeds instead of making important moves on Wall Street, but he never got around to it. Like Dr. Higgins, Carlton checked in on him from time to time. More so to make sure he was alive than anything else.
“Give me a call and let’s see if we can find a class or two for you,” Dr. Higgins said, shoving the card into his chest to the point of bending it. “That sound good?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “You’re a smart young man. Don’t let that mind go to waste.”
Junior thought he should’ve corrected the professor’s misquoting of the United Negro College Fund’s campaign slogan. He also wanted her to leave him alone. Why wouldn’t this woman just let him be? She and the rest of the world needed to give him his damn space. He couldn’t breathe. Granny was always on his case to run errands. Pick up some beef at Waldbaum’s or extra milk at the Dairy Barn. Remember her purple dress with the paisley print at the dry cleaners. She needed it for church on Sunday. Cecil Senior always insisted on competitive shopping. If his father wasn’t harping on about other retailers, he was on him about going back to school and getting that degree. He ached for more space, more time. If he had more time he could distance himself from Joyce. A year was enough time. That’s what he had been told by family and the few friends he had left. Then there was Shirley, whatever she was to him. They all gave advice about moving on. Getting on with life. Everyone else had. Everyone except his mother. And him.
Junior had escaped Dr. Higgins’ grip by saying he needed to pick his grandmother up from Bible study. It was a half-truth. She was having a post-church service Bible Study that was just taking place in the Hardy living room, a space used exclusively for visitors. He needed to make a stop before heading home. The playground that he and Joyce used to frequent after dark to sit on the swings or suspend themselves from the monkey bars to see who could hang the longest. Junior always won by two seconds. Long after they had outgrown this part of the park, they would sneak off after dinner. Joyce said it was the city in her. There were no brownstone steps to sit on anymore, so the tip of a slide or a stationary merry-go-round was the next best thing.
Shirley, the young woman who advertised to Bushwick and the world that Junior was her boyfriend didn’t trust Dr. Higgins. She had met her at a homecoming game she’d invited herself to.
“You know she wants to get into your pants, right?” Shirley had said in her chronically congested voice. “I seen the way she looks at you.” The problem was that Shirley was always the one trying to get into his pants. She spouted terms like “liberated woman” and “sexual freedom,” terms Junior was sure she had picked up in some dogeared Cosmopolitan. Things he had no interest in.
As he neared the playground, Junior’s insides twisted and tightened, causing him to drive as slowly as the car would allow. Entering his house, Junior saw Granny seated on the middle cushion of the dark velvet sofa through the corner of his eye. The floral burnout pattern made it look more worn out than it was. Without looking at anyone directly, he knew which old woman would be sitting where. Joyce and Lee had pored over every catalog they could conceive of before picking out the set. Granny covered it all in plastic.
“You nuh have no manners, bwoy?” she bellowed as Junior softened his footsteps in an aborted attempt to go downstairs undetected.
Perched on what was Cecil Senior’s chair, Sister Moore’s legs dangled, crossed at the ankles. She wore the same squat white, old lady heels his grandmother wore when dressing up. Like Granny’s, flesh-colored stockings were for someone else’s flesh. The wrong tone for her ebony skin, the hosiery rolled down to her calves. Junior looked at the women in the room and squeezed out a smile, offering a quick wave. As he headed towards the kitchen, Crystal-Ann darted out of the family room at the other end of the house. She was still in the same pajamas she’d slept in the night before. The horizontal stripes, making her look like one of the Three Stooges dressed as an old-timey prisoner. The TV blared a game show theme song before zipping to a loud antacid commercial about overindulgent construction workers during lunchtime.
“Where’s my sandwich?” She asked, pulling at her stomach flesh. Her head bobbed from side to side looking at her brother’s empty hands. “You been gone all this time and you don’t have my sandwich?”
Junior sucked air through his teeth. When he raised his hand to hit his sister’s shoulder, she punched his arm first, laughed, then screamed.
“Daddy!” She cackled while running back to the TV set.
“Crystal-Ann, shet you mouth! You nuh see we in here having Bible study?” Hazel snapped, dipping her brows into a deep V over her thick frames.
“Sorry, Granny,” she said several volumes lower than the one she’d just used. Why couldn’t she be sent to the sleep away camps like the White kids in the neighborhood? If their parents could afford it, so could the Hardies.
Junior didn’t smell any meat cooking on the stove and Granny hadn’t asked him to go to the supermarket. It was either leftovers or every Hardy for him— or herself. Rare for a Sunday when Joyce was still around. A large metal Dutch pot would be bubbling something savory: oxtail, stew peas, curry goat. Granny would share out the rice first, pass a plate to everyone at the table, then ask them for their respective dishes back so she could spoon out whatever was in the pot. Cecil Senior would bore the family talking shop about the stores, Lee would say she would cook and clean more if she wasn’t at her boutique all the time, Granny would roll her eyes and mention how she did all of those things with more kids and a teaching job back in Jamaica, Joyce and Junior would be flashing each other looks that related back to some inside joke no one else would ever be privy to, and Crystal-Ann would talk about who she would write a fan letter to that week.
Now, if they were together at all, there was hardly any talking. There was an empty seat to Junior’s right. Joyce had always sat at his right. From the time they were kids until exactly a year ago, her last dinner, she sat to his right.
Cecil Senior would complain about work and retreat to his home office before Crystal-Ann took her plate on a tin try with a map of Jamaica back to the family room. Granny would mumble under her breath how everyone was lazy as she and Junior cleared the table. Most of the time he joined prematurely after she had taken a plate he was still eating from. Junior tried to recall one of Joyce’s jokes or her imitation of their father’s. The raw skin from biting his cheeks was the only thing he could remember.
On the rare occasion Crystal-Ann helped, she would turn the TV on loud enough to hear whichever sitcom or police procedural was on. Sirens, car chases, and live studio audiences were the sound that filtered throughout the house every night. During a commercial break, she would take a small, saucer-sized plate to her mother on the nice tray. It was bamboo with an illustrated map of Jamaica in the center. It was the kind that tourists bought. Cecil loved bringing back souvenirs from his trips back home. The house was filled with reminders that a Jamaican family lived there. Everything hanging had “Jamaica” emblazoned across the top. A velvet scroll with a Psalm and hummingbird underneath, ceramic ackees with seeds that looked like menacing, bulbous black eyes, a wooden cutout of the island with each parish bordered in thick, red glossy paint.
Granny would use dinner time to voice her concerns about how Americanized everyone was. Cecil Senior would talk about the latest inventory or a new storefront he considered leasing. As he did with the outside world, Junior allowed the conversations to circulate around him, like the concentric circles of Saturn’s rings. Multiple chats happening close and far. He would respond if he heard his name.
Once the dishwasher was loaded and running, Junior would retreat to the coolness of the basement. He’d turn on all the lights and move all of the clean clothes Granny had folded to the edge. Laying on his side, he’d fix his eyes on the clock radio’s flapping numbers. As the nine flipped into a ten and then an eleven, the twisting began. The twisting of his insides, his vision, his thoughts. Bad thoughts, like why couldn’t it have been Crystal-Ann or Cecil. He loved them, but not as much as he loved his sister.
In forty-three minutes it would be exactly a year. The last time he counted down to midnight was the family’s last Christmas in Brooklyn. He and Joyce never believed in Santa, but Lee said they could open their presents then. He remembered Joyce’s favorite gift was a green velvet mini dress. His was a BB gun.
As Junior’s stomach continued to cramp, he tried to slow down his heart rate by breathing slower. He had read about breathing exercises in a dentist office magazine. The numbers on the clock looked blurry. It was getting hotter down there. His breaths grew shorter again. He could feel his heart trying to explode out of his chest.
Junior was abbreviated. No one knew how his mind worked like Joyce did. It’s likely no one ever would. She knew what he was thinking before he even realized it. She was an extension of his brain. Junior could never dream of a relationship like that with his Crystal-Ann or their parents. They weren’t Joyce. There could only be one and she had taken herself out. Out of their home, out of this world, out of his life.
Junior inhaled bits of shame, indignity, and confusion. He was newly twenty-one and had made a habit of huffing his little sister’s glue. A smirking cow looked at him, judging him, every time he held the bottle. Scenes from a health class film on huffing would flash on the little screen in his brain that played all of his memories. The melodramatic actors with their flailing arms and blackouts failed to deter him. If anything, Junior was introduced to other inhalants: his mother’s towering can of Aqua Net, Cecil Senior’s paint thinner. The idea bounced from different parts of his brain that it would be less abhorrent to abuse an actual drug. One that other adults indulged in: cocaine, heroin. Angel dust was a decent bridge between an adolescent and adult drug. Joyce had smoked it.
The first time he’d huffed was with her, too. They were in her basement bedroom. Adjacent to his, a thin wood paneled partition separated their spaces. Flickering under the poster of a butterfly sat a thirteen-inch used TV set. A black, white, and gray Dolly Parton was on The Midnight Special. It was the day after Christmas. Boxing Day. Granny would be making a ham later. Leelee would feign helping, only to laugh and clap her hands as her mother-in-law kicked her out of her own kitchen. The one she and Hazel understood truly belonged to the latter. She would join her kids in the family room, looking up from her crossword puzzle only long enough to tell them to stop bickering. Joyce would be whispering about something older teenagers whispered about. Crystal-Ann would multi-task: playing with the Barbies her siblings thought she was too old for, thumbing through Dynamite magazines with Fonzie or Lee Majors on the covers, and watching whatever was on the television. Cecil Senior would settle in his home office in the basement, clicking away at his adding machine, smoothing out receipts while reels of fresh paper unfurled. This was how Boxing Day and most days were since the Hardies migrated to Long Island from Brooklyn.
Junior didn’t ask Joyce why she was sniffing glue or why she sampled other controlled substances. It made him uncomfortable when she dipped into Cecil’s bottles of Wray and Nephew white rum.
“Just a taste,” she would shrug. She said if she was ever questioned, she would blame it on Granny. The old woman used it liberally in her black cakes and sorrel, and doused it on her chest when she had a cold. As Junior took a deep breath a year and a half later, he wondered what he and his sister were trying to escape. They lived in a nice enough town in the suburbs, they had nice stuff—good clothes, large house, newish cars. Neither one was clear on what to do with their lives, but there was always the family business.
After Junior held a plastic bag to his face that first time, a convoy of 18-wheelers ran over his head. Standing up, he and the room moved in different directions. When he tried to speak, his tongue was too heavy to move. Forming words was impossible. He wanted to tell Joyce to stop cackling, and it wasn’t funny, and that he didn’t like feeling so weird and out of control. She covered her face, attempting to muffle her laughs. Walking over to steady her brother by his bony legs only made him topple over onto her desk. It was covered with her flowery stationery, a stack of college books she had never opened, and little bottles of drugstore perfume he had nearly knocked over.
“Hey, watch it!” She yelled. When Junior laughed, his sister’s face grew taut. “That’s ten cents an ounce.”
“Is that supposed to be expensive?” he asked. He was genuinely curious.
Soon they were replaced by more expensive bottles. Bottles made of crystal or opaque glass with elongated lines and curves. They had names like Youth Dew and L’Air du Temps and smelled like Lee. Joyce gave her other perfumes to Crystal-Ann and Hazel. Each time he smelled the more familiar scents on his grandmother or surviving sister, his lips curled and his nose dipped down into his face.
These private moments where it was just him and his drug of choice were becoming less frequent. Cecil Senior wanted him more involved with the stores and the expansion. But Junior needed this time. His memories were at their most intense. Like Joyce’s old TV, they flickered, growing clearer for a few seconds before growing distorted. The sounds, smells, and textures were hyper-real. The memories smelled like the baby powder or synthetic roses of her cheaper perfumes before she graduated to the premium stuff. Everything sounded like James Taylor’s voice or Earth, Wind & Fire’s horn section. Rarely was a specific song attached to any of the recollections. As time moved on and everybody with it, the memories grew lighter, like pictures that had been blanched by too much sunlight.
Junior didn’t reminisce openly about Joyce. How much he had missed her or their childhood. He stored it all, buried deep and padlocked only to be retrieved when he decided. He had kept it to himself that he missed the city, too. He sometimes ached for it. The smells and the sounds that couldn’t be experienced in North Westbrook. Sitting atop a parked car that didn’t belong to his family, while the Isley Brothers or Celia Cruz blared from another car and the aroma of freshly made mofongo wafted from a second-floor apartment. His Nassau County town had the McDonald’s, Dairy Barn, and an all-night diner that closed at eleven.
He also didn’t reveal that he wasn’t sure college was for him. Junior hated dorm life: the open doors with loud Led Zeppelin pouring through the halls over louder conversations. His roommate constantly cooked grilled cheese on the hot plate that residents were forbidden from having. The same roommate also kept a steady carousel of young women, whom he referred to as females, in and out of his bed.
Cecil Senior was unaware of his son’s secrets. Junior wanted no part of The Distinguished Gentleman, let alone helming its expansion one day. But he had even a bigger secret, a deeper one. A secret he wasn’t fully clear on himself. Junior wasn’t attracted to women. Sure, he knew that some were attractive. Dr. Higgins was one of them. He could recognize that. His mother, Joyce, and the neighbor Mrs. VanMal—all attractive women.
For a while, he thought he was attracted to men. That’s the impression he and Joyce had been under for a while. They even took the Long Island Rail Road into the city and rode the subway down to the Village to put this theory to test. When one man made eyes at him, he recoiled. The man with the eyes was older. He looked like a principal with his specs and combover. When a handsome, mustachioed man with a square jawline winked from a telephone booth, Junior had the same sensation in his gut. Joyce was convinced her brother was gay, just fully embedded in the closet behind a long row of thick hanging winter coats and boxes full of things no one really needs but refuses to part with. Joyce had insisted they go over to West Side Piers on the same trip. He asked how she even knew about this place. She said she knew a little about a lot of things.
They never made it to the derelict concrete slabs that rose above the Hudson, where beautiful men with beautiful bodies sunbathed and with other beautiful men with beautiful bodies. The Hardy siblings went to a record shop where Joyce dragged him by his collar to an adjoining head shop where they bought nothing but she admired a bong in the shape of a gargoyle. Before heading back to Penn Station, they shared a hotdog and a fruity soda with no fizz.
Back at home, they didn’t talk about the men or why Junior wasn’t normal. He had to like somebody, Joyce insisted, anyone. None of it made sense. As they sat in their subterranean space, while everyone slept, brother and sister breathed in and out of a shared plastic bag of glue. The volume on Joyce’s TV set was turned all the way down as the Late Movie flickered on Channel 2. It was Village of the Damned. He hated those old black and white movies. They left him unsettled and on edge for the rest of the night. But maybe it wasn’t the old films. Junior wanted to tell Joyce everything about how he had been feeling. No matter how many dirty magazines his friends showed him, no matter how much Shirley pressed him to take things further, no matter how many people thought he was weird, he couldn’t force himself. He tried. It, whatever it was, wasn’t there. Junior was slowly coming to the realization that probably couldn't be attracted to anyone. No one. Ever. The thought of physical intimacy with anyone left the pit of his stomach in a sour, acrid state. It vibrated with uneasiness, confusion. He wanted to tell Joyce this, now.
“J,” he said, as she sprayed something noxious into a little brown paper bag. “J?”
“Mm?” she answered without looking up.
“I need to talk to you about something,” he said in his baritone. “It’s kinda heavy.”
She cupped her mouth with the bag. “Okay.” She inhaled fully, deeply before handing him the bag. “Just try some of this first.”
Before heading out to evening service, Granny reheated a pot of stew peas she’d made on Thursday. Hazel ate her Sunday dinners at one o’clock, two if she was delayed. Anything later was too Americanized. When it was ready, she shared a plate for everyone. Crystal-Ann did her typical knock-and-run at her mother’s door, before bolting to the family room with a plate and small folding table in hand. The latter was for effect. The youngest Hardy laid on her stomach with her long feet dangling up in the air. Her older sister used to call them torpedoes. If she tried, she could fit into Joyce’s clothes, but Junior made sure she didn’t have access to the tall, cherry wood wardrobe. He had the key.
Cecil Senior ate at the square kitchen table with a stack of papers that looked like blueprints from a distance. Junior didn’t get close enough to confirm. He grabbed his plate. Standing at the kitchen counter with his back to his father, he could hear the papers rustling, Cecil Senior sighing.
“I don’t know how I gwain afford another store,” he thought out loud. “But I gwain see. Have to spend money to make money.”
Junior had been using his fork to trace the blue flower pattern around the parameter of the white plate before swiveling around.
“Why don’t you get a small business loan?” he blurted.
Cecil Senior raised his caterpillar-thick eyebrows, keeping them elevated while. He sat with the suggestion. He had been proud of partnering with his old boss in cash with the first store. He was even more pleased when the old man retired. Cecil Senior bought him out. Also in cash. The women’s boutique was another shrewd move. Aside from his mortgage, Cecil Hardy was debt free. And that was good debt, an investment. He was building equity and financial security for his family.
“No, no, no, no,” he said, waving his hands and frowning at his son. “I am a man who don’t like owing anybody anyting.”
Junior wasn’t invested enough in the conversation to persuade his father. The original intention was to not engage at all. Grab and go. Lingering, he stabbed a long, skinny dumpling with his knife and held it up to the light. Stew peas was his favorite meal. He had been meaning to ask Granny how to make it. He needed to learn all of her recipes. At the bottom of his gut he knew there would be no Mrs. Cecil Hardy, Junior. Mrs. Cecil Hardy, Senior was already a shell of a woman. He chewed a piece of the pigtail, its concentrated saltiness a comfort.
Junior rinsed his plate before placing it in the yellow dishwasher that was part of a yellow suite of major appliances in the kitchen. He looked behind him and saw that his father’s plate was clear. As he reached for it, Cecil Senior pulled the plate away.
“Leave it, mon,” he said, his bushy arms blocking his son’s hands. A gleaming gold Bulova watch nestled in the forest of hair. “Crystal will take care of it.” He craned his neck in order to see a sliver of the family room. “Crystal-Ann!” he yelled. “Come.”
The tangle of tumult and tension that had lived in the pit of his stomach for a year hadn’t loosened. A wrecking ball was attached to his neck. Pulling far away from him, it would swing into his gut, crushing his insides. In the few moments he could escape from himself, his mind wandered over to Crystal-Ann. She had lost her sister, too. She had youth on her side and the ignorance that comes with it. A blissful haven had been created by her binging on cops and robbers shootouts and laugh tracks. Granny had church and studying for her driver’s test. Cecil Senior always had his burgeoning retail empire. Building it, worrying about it—there were plenty of things to occupy his brain and wear it out. There was little time to dwell on a daughter who didn’t exist. Junior had glue and leftover little brown paper or plastic bags.
He thought he should be upstairs with Crystal-Ann, helping her clean up or even watching a show. The last time they sat together, fully engaged, were all eight episodes of Roots earlier in the year. The four of them on their own cushion, spread out across the sofa while Lee remained sequestered.
At the end of one installment, Junior woke up to a grainy American flag waving on the set. Trumpets blasted “The Star Spangled Banner.” Rubbing his fingers over the sleep lines he’d just created leaning on his grandmother, he wiggled his jaw. His face was sore. Crystal-Ann was fully passed out on Granny’s lap while the old woman and her son synchronized their heads bobbing. Eyes closed, mouths open. It was post-apocalyptic. Everyone looked kind of dead.
Now lying in bed, he wondered if he would miss Crystal-Ann if she were gone. She was a good kid. Like all the Hardy offspring, she got good grades. That was a non-negotiable. But Crystal-Ann was annoying, too. She had been enjoying her Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries when their father summonsed her to the kitchen earlier. If Joyce were there she would have spoken up, even dared to call Cecil Senior a male chauvinist. She wouldn’t have said it under her breath either. She was fearless. Rude, but fearless. Bold and bright. Junior just was.
The little hand crept closer towards the nine on the clock. Junior hooked his hand to fish around for a pair of fake leather slippers underneath his bed. His grandmother had bought them for him on Flatbush. Hazel Hardy was in Brooklyn every chance she got. She missed being there almost as much as her grandson. Seeing a church sister from the old congregation she used to take three buses to, visiting senior shut-ins ten or more years older than she. Aside from the church she had been attending since they relocated seven years before, there was nothing for her on Long Island. Junior understood this.
He went upstairs to the top floor where his mother lived—his first time in weeks. Junior Trotting back and forth passed his parents’ bedroom door, he recalled that it was always left ajar like a nonverbal way of letting him and his sisters into their parents’ lives. The Long Island bedroom had a lock and key, the same kind used to protect old PE equipment. Cecil had installed it earlier that year. Crystal-Ann insisted on bringing her mother’s food directly to her. That was too much for Lee. She didn’t want conversation with her youngest child. She didn’t want to talk to anyone at all. Probably ever.
The plate of food was gone. Junior imagined Lee on the other side of the wall, chewing the sinewy meat of the pigtail, savoring every morsel of its salty flavor the same way her son had. Maybe she was watching the thirteen-inch black and white set that had once been the family’s main TV. She must have watched something like 60 Minutes. Educational. Informative. There was a time she didn’t want her children to watch television at all. It depleted them of brain cells, ruined their intelligence, and turned them into zombies. Junior wondered how appalled she would be if she knew her youngest child spent her entire summer days in front of the flashing wooden box directly below her room.
Junior slipped into the bathroom Cecil shared with his mother and daughter. Lee’s bathroom was hers. Sacred ground not to be disturbed or even looked at by anyone else. The only person granted occasional access was Hazel. Once every week when Lee went to the salon to get a press and curl, her mother-in-law slipped in to coat hard surfaces in a lemon-scented cleaning solution that she would then wipe away before Lee’s return.
Junior bent down underneath the sink to find a tube of toothpaste. He had squeezed the last vestiges from his own supply in the basement. He opened the medicine cabinet and examined the contents. Running a hand under his shirt across his bare belly, his stomach cried. He was always hungry. His grandmother was convinced he had worms. A large plate of food could be consumed only to be forgotten in a half hour’s time. He took a swig of a pink substance that promised to aid in gastrointestinal issues.
When he emerged he saw that the bamboo tray with a map of Jamaica on it was back in the hallway. A tall glass that had just housed red syrup, water, and a little lemon juice was empty. The plate with blue flowers was there, mostly full. The white rice, large lettuce leaves, slices of tomato, beans, and pigtail were untouched. Lee had only eaten the long, skinny dumplings.
Junior squatted. His mother, who he hadn’t laid eyes on in weeks, had just put her mouth to the fork he was holding. She had touched this plate and this tray. He picked the tray up and began walking towards the staircase. When he got to the landing, he slowly dangled his naked foot over the carpeted step. Before bringing his other foot down, Junior turned around, walked back, and returned the tray to the space in front of his mother's door.
After taking a forkful of beans, rice, and some meat, he wiped his mouth with the unused napkin pressed under the plate. Standing up, Junior began descending the staircase. The difference in temperatures from the top floor to the bottom shocked his body.!
“Crystal!” Junior yelled as he neared the first floor landing..
“What?” She snapped with a shrill tone to her voice, clearly annoyed.
“Mommy’s tray.”
