Do The Right Thing

 “Oh, my god! Is that a new tattoo?” Alexandra asked. She made my stomach lurch. Next to us, Benjamin lay on a blanket in the grass at West Durham. He was too little to do much besides wiggle his arms and legs like a turtle on its back. For now, his eyes were closed in a quiet nap.

Alexandra’s eyes followed mine to the baby.

 “Is that a new tattoo?” She repeated, in a whisper this time. I glanced at the inner part of my left arm where the patch of ink camouflaged with the dark color of my skin. I said, yeah, it is a new tattoo, and shrugged.

She was beautiful. Her eyes, which seemed to take up most of her face, shone like emeralds - like my birthstone. Her skin was pale; the deep blues and purples of her veins crept throughout her body like spider webs. Her vivid red hair bounced in tiny waves, falling just to her shoulders; it was barely long enough to tuck behind her ear, but short enough to make her boyishly pretty.

 “Where did you get that one?”

“I got it a few days ago,” I mumbled, not answering her question at all.

“And?” She pressed. “Let me see, Lamar! Come on, we’ve been friends for years.” 

I scowled when she said that. We weren’t friends anymore. We hadn’t been friends for over a year, since she told me about her pregnancy. Yet here I was, sitting in the park with my ex-girlfriend and a baby that was laying in the grass like a useless animal. 

He may or may not be mine. 

Her nostrils flared in irritation when I didn’t respond right away. I used to love that. I turned my arm over in my lap so that she could see what the tattoo said: Benjamin.

Her lips pursed together when she saw it; her face became clouded with an expression I couldn’t read. She brushed her cold, brittle fingers gently against the raised skin. The ink was sloughing, and flecks of wet tar fell into the damp earth where she touched.

“It’s nice,” she finally managed to choke out, plastering a smile on her face that looked as fake as I know she felt. 

God, what happened to us? This used to be so easy, being with her. Alexandra watched the baby as it slept, but she looked every bit of uncomfortable as I knew she felt.

She couldn’t keep the kid in the orphanage, so she could only see him when we could meet up, and I’d bring the baby like some sick divorce agreement over custody. Though if it was up to me she could have had the damn kid.

She shrank back from the baby as if she read my mind, and I remember apologizing. She asked what for and I said nothing, never mind. Alexandra sat with the baby for what felt like hours. 

Whenever her eyes found mine there flashed a thousand apologies.

I never said anything about it. I wish I had. I would just close my eyes instead, and lean back to lay on the grass, uncomfortable in my own skin.

A year ago, Alexandra’s body was discovered in the orphanage where she lived. She was almost seventeen. Suicide, the police had said. She hung herself from the bars of the shower. Now, nobody will talk to me.

A year ago I lost her, and now everything is a struggle. Even something as simple as walking in the streets and dirt sidewalks on South Tenth Street near my house is tough. In this neighborhood, it isn’t uncommon to find yourself in danger. That’s what happens when you live here. Life is dirt and grime and grit. Cracks grow like weeds in the blacktopped streets, and strangers lurk around every corner of building, waiting in the shadows for their next drug deal, their next big high.

Even the dogs in my neighborhood are menacing. They are broad, and thick at the shoulders, with square faces and feral eyes. Some let loose in the yards. They rush up as close as parameters allow, sending all manner of spit and dirt into your face. They howl and bark and seem to never stop. Some dogs sit, lined in to the same place for days, weeks. Others lay dead, chained to their graves.

Life feels that same way sometimes. It howls and barks and moans in your face, then pins you down and roots you to your headstone.

Some dogs escape. I always wonder to myself where they go, if they find somewhere better. Who would take a dog from these streets? There ain’t no life out there for a dog from South Tenth Street. No life for anyone here, no life anywhere else.

It’s almost eleven and I have to get to the clinic by four. I have to get out of bed, I think to myself, but I don’t get up right away. I lie on my bed - well, mattress. I listen to the soft whir of the ceiling fan. The old fan is an old, ugly color, and missing a blade so that it swings from side to side. I lie on my mattress and I watch the fan swing right and left, right and left.

I have to get up.

I groan and stretch and force myself from bed. The floor sinks a little beneath my feet as I walk around the house and get dressed - a sweater over my dirty t-shirt and a pair of old jeans.

Benjamin is in his room when I get around to finding him. The kid's got this big grin on his face, holding a spoon and my dead cell phone, banging both against the bars of his crib. I pry these from him and lift him like a dirty sack of diapers. 

I walk him to the kitchen and I set him on the linoleum while I make myself cereal. 

Benjamin just sits there on the floor. I think that most babies must cry, when you put them down on the floor all alone. Benjamin doesn’t really mind. He never has. 

Shoveling a spoon into my mouth, I reach over to pour some cereal onto the floor next to Benjamin. He reaches beside him with his fingers to pinch the pieces of cheerio between his fingers. Then he shoves his whole fist in his mouth, trying to eat them.

I can’t help but notice that the counter doesn’t have any notes, again. I used to look forward to the notes, that my mama, she would write to me. She doesn’t write anymore. S’far as I know anymore, I have no mom really, just notes. She barely lives; just me. 

I live alone, here by myself with the kid. 

My mama used to write me notes, but she hasn’t written me anything since I told her about Benjamin. I tell her it wasn’t my fault. She says I will have to live with this mistake forever; she says it’s my fault for doing this to Alex.

I don’t tell my mom how much Alexandra hated being called Alex. Alexandra liked her name like it was, all long. I told my mama I loved her, and why would I want to hurt her? She won’t even listen to her son. I’ve seen how her eyes turn dark when she looks at me. 

S’far as she knows, the kid doesn’t even exist. I come home and he’ll be screaming his head off, locked up behind bars like his grandpa, alone in his room; and she’s in the kitchen making her own self dinner.

I can’t help but admire the patience of the woman, of my mama. To be deaf to reality though, I sometimes wonder if that’s a good or bad thing.

So there’s no notes on the counter and I’m eating my cereal and Benjamin is just sitting there on the floor smilin’ at me - Alexandra’s smile. Freaky kid is just standing there with this broad, sticky grin and a fistful of cheerios from the linoleum. He almost never sits down now that he’s grown enough to totter on his legs. They stick out from under him - all thick and chunky like an old couch. I say he is too fat to be mine anyway. I say there’s every reason to be worried that Benjamin is my kid. 

When I tell my mama that, I see her eyes go all dark again. I say look at his legs, all chunky " I don’t have chunky legs. 

She says I’m looking, but she never looks.

I don’t think Benjamin looks different from any other mixed kid. Shouldn’t he look something special if he’s mine? His skin is normal and tan, with regular light brown hair that curls in little rings on top of his head. His eyes are the color of rot; green mixed with smut and soot. Alexandra called it olive.

I s’pose if my best friend and I was a different color, then it wouldn’t be so hard to know whose kid it was. We’re both black, like the mud you find when you dig real deep into the Earth. I have a sick feeling though it could be his kid. I have a sick feeling it could be mine. I shudder to just think about it even.

I used to forget how fragile she was sometimes, like glass. Now the kid doesn’t even have a real dad. Benjamin couldn’t even know what I was wondering. How could a baby understand? I ask him, I say Benjamin how could you understand? He says nothing back to me. I don’t mind. I like thinking he knows what I worry about.

I don’t want to suffer having this kid be somebody else’s. I don’t want these eyes to be the ones lookin’ up at me at night when the kid has a nightmare. I don’t want his hand to be the one I hold on the kid’s first day of school. I am done with this, done with this, the kid. I’m ruined from it. 

I’ve got to get out of this house.

            I leave, and Benjamin wobbles behind. I don’t lock the door - nobody wants the useless s**t from this place. Me and Benjamin together start the long walk to Mill Street Health Clinic.

The stink of cigarettes in the streets kills my breath; it yellows the neighborhood. The air here is always thick with dust and smoke. The sun fights to green the grass, but it never breaks through the dingy overcast on South Tenth.

Benjamin teeters behind me. He isn’t so sure on his feet yet, but he does all right. Sometimes, I stop to listen that his feet are still putterin’ behind me. The dogs spooked him from his shoes at first, but he’s tuned their noisiness out. I think that’s a good sign.

To be able to ignore the ugly must be some kind of gift.

I wonder if the air here hurts him. I never been so sure if babies can tell the clean air from dirty air, but then I s’pose that it’s the only air he’s ever known, really, and how would he know if its bad at all? The breeze swirls, grungy and thick in the sky. I puff my chest and suck in deep. The air turns my breath musty inside of my lungs.

Every once in a while, the sidewalk ends. When that happens, when we have to walk through the fields to get to the next sidewalk, Benjamin wails. The wild grass here is filled with stinging weeds that reach up and electrocute your skin. The kid’s tiny, so the grass reaches up to sting his face, and so I cup my hands beneath his arms and pick him up to carry him. I tell myself that I just don’t wanna hear him cry. Truth is, I get afraid for Benjamin to be bitten by the weeds. I figure to do the right thing and carry the kid. I hold Benjamin above my head and he isn’t too heavy and he doesn’t fuss so much, so neither of us mind the fields.

Benjamin and I walk through three fields of stinging grass before we find ourselves at the West Durham Park on Seventh Avenue. We cross Seventh together; it isn’t that busy of a street. I aim for a small bench next to a water fountain. Above it, a wrinkled tree towers over the rusted jungle gym. This is where we used to meet with the kid, I remind myself. I sit on the bench and am grateful to rest.

I pour Benjamin some water from the fountain and he slops almost all of it onto the ground in his eagerness. He looks up at me, all apologetic, with those eyes of hers. Those big green eyes. The same eyes that looked with fear and pain into mine two years ago to tell me she was gonna have a kid, and I told her good for you. Forcing myself to blink, I swallow the lump rising in my throat. I tell Benjamin its no big deal to spill the water. I offer him some more and he gulps it down, and then putters off all distracted. I stay on the bench and lean back, eyes half closed.

It’s quiet, but there are guys here at the West Durham Park on Seventh Avenue that I recognize. They play basketball on the weedy courts. The blacktop curls in the heat beneath their sneakers. The back and forth motion of the ball that lopes between them reminds me of my ceiling fan back home and I sit watching. Back and forth, back and forth. The basketball net sags from the hoop, torn and weathered. The players whoop and holler and yell at each other. Sweat streams from their faces and it soaks their clothing. I know some of them. I used to play here. I sit and watch as they roughhouse, bicker, and argue about the game.

After a while, the players disperse and scatter. I see a few - ones that I do not know - walking together through the fields, back towards Tenth Street. I see them smoking before the sick sweet smell of weed finds its way to my nose, and for a second my thoughts flicker to Benjamin. 

It can’t be good for the kid to smell that.

My eyes rake the naked jungle gym for Benjamin and he’s not there, but when I finally see him he’s on the court with one of the basketball players that I recognize as one of my old high school friends, Julian. 

I jump up to get the kid, we gotta get going again.

When I get in earshot of the baby, Julian’s asking him for a high five. This ridiculous kid’s got that big grin on and he’s high-fiving Julian back with sticky hands.

“Ay Jules, what’s goin’ on with you?” I reach out and we slap our hands together in a quick handshake. 

I can’t help but grin because Benjamin’s just sitting there, all big-eyed, smilin’ at Julian.

“Nott’n, just got done playing ball.” Julian’s got these big eyes that show a lot of white and a wide smile that shows a lot of yellow. “Where you been? We need your feet on court.” His breath hits me like the smell of a rotten cigar, and a wave of nausea washes over me. I turn my head to choke and cough, and then take a deep breath.

“I been around. I can’t be out here playing with the kid.”

“Who, big Ben? He ain’t no kid! He all grown, ain’t you Ben?” 

Julian pats Benjamin’s back rough. The kid isn’t ready for that, and he falls forward at the concrete onto his hands. A quick second passes as Benjamin looks back up at me and then his eyes start to water. He whimpers and I can see the scrapes on his hands. “Aw Benny I’m sorry kid,” Julian says, leaning forward to brush Benjamin off.

I pick him up and rest him on one hip like my mama used to do with me.

“His name ain’t Benny,” I correct him with a mumble, “It’s Benjamin. Man, you know I wish I could be out here with y’all. I can’t just leave him. It’s just me and him.”

Those words ring in my ears while Julian throws his hands up in the air like he just lost the championship game. 

We say our goodbyes, but it’s really just a blur in my memory because the words keep flashing in my head, again and again. It’s just me and him.

The doors to the clinic whir open, automatic. I step through. I take a deep breath, sucking in the smell of rubbing alcohol and doctor’s gloves. The room is all quiet but for the clicking of computer keys behind the receptionist’s desk. All I could see of the desk-lady was the top of her bun, secured tightly to her head.

“S’cuse me?”

The bun shudders and ducks; then is replaced by a pair of dark, slant eyes.

“Mmm?” The eyes inquire. “Name?”

“Lamar Henderson. I’m here for Benjamin’s paternity stuff.”

“Of course you are.” She pauses, taking me in - I can tell. 

Her eyes slit, turning to beads, as she looks at my hand-me-down shoes, my ripped-up jeans, my dirty sweatshirt, and then up at my face. Her eyes flicker down again. This time, though, she looks at Benjamin. 

I watch her nose twist like she smells something nasty. Without looking at me again, she says, “The doctor will call you in when he’s ready.” 

She isn’t nice enough to earn a thank you, but I say thank you, and then I turn towards a cluster of chairs near the door. I reach behind me for Benjamin to follow, and my body slumps into one of the stiff chairs, aching and tired.

The walls are an ugly mustard color - like vomit. The only decorations in the room are framed pictures of potted plants and an alarm clock that sits on a table with some magazines. The clock flashes the time in a police siren kind of glow.

Benjamin bends over and picks up a crumb from the floor. He stands with it pinched between his fingers, looking it all over. I watch his eyebrows rise in discovery. Then, he lifts his hand to his mouth and pops the crumb in. I don’t know what it is. He probably doesn’t either.

From the corner of my eye, the clock screams three-thirty three-thirty three-thirty. More keys clicking behind the receptionist’s desk. A shuffling of papers. I watch Benjamin play on the floor and I focus on him. I focus on what he must want. What does a baby know about want? Does he know he’s missing out on a mama? Like the air, I suppose he can’t miss what he doesn’t know, but does he remember her? Benjamin finds three more crumbs and a tiny toy car. I let the red glare of the clock drown me in that room. Seconds turn in to minutes in to hours and still nothing changes. Four-fifteen four-fifteen four-fifteen. Nobody walks into the room and nobody leaves. My gut tightens and twists in my stomach. Heat rushes to my forehead and palms. 

At four-thirty, Benjamin starts to whimper. His eyes are drooping and his body begins to wilt. I reach down and cup my palms beneath his arms, pulling him onto my lap. Then I take my sweatshirt off and drape it over him while he snuggles into me. He finds comfort and nestles into my side beneath my arm, falling quickly into a quiet nap.

And then, as I watch him lay there in my arms, I know I can’t do it. I can’t know. 

Here he was. Not Benny. Not Ben. Benjamin.

Alexandra liked his name long. I shouldn’t call him anything else. Here he was - a piece of the best friend I’ll ever have. A piece of the life I’ll never have.

I close my eyes and sink further into the chair to pretend that I made Benjamin. I close my eyes to think back to the nights I spent with Alexandra. I remember our tangled legs and twisted sheets. I remember the striking arc of her back. I shudder to recall that way her lips parted just enough so to let my whispered name escape. We clung and heaved and sighed together, entangled in this secret. I knotted her hair in my fist and grasped at her - any part that I could reach I touched her; and I let her feel me at my most naked, most vulnerable state.

The words I said to her still ring clear in my head, I don’t think I’ll ever forget them: good for you. That’s all I could say to the girl I had loved about her pregnancy. Life became so much more difficult, so much more painful. I stayed by her side the whole time, through everything, but our relationship became strained, emotions became forced. I tried, God I tried to forget the looming question. I couldn’t forget. It plagued me. It turned me into a black person. I killed her.

My face is hot with tears that are too proud to fall and I whimper without meaning to. I rock Benjamin in my lap; I watch him sleep, and in this moment, I forgive Alexandra for what she did. I want her to know that I miss her. God, I still love that girl so damn much.

Without meaning to, I let my thoughts escape my lips, reaching out for Benjamin.

 “I’m holding on, Benjamin. I’m holding on to her and I don’t know why. God, I love her. Benjamin, I miss her so much.” I stifle my breath, trying to suppress the ache in my bones that threatens to drag me into misery.

I pause after a moment to look down at Benjamin, who lay on his back, motionless in my arms. He’s just so… breakable. I lift each of his torn hands, scraped raw where he had fallen, and bring them to my lips. My throat shudders as I try to choke off the sob that rises in my chest. I whisper into each of his scuffed palms that I’m sorry. He still doesn’t stir as I place his tiny hands back where they were, clasped onto my shirt.

And then suddenly, and without a single word uttered, I scoop my arms tighter around Benjamin, still sleeping, and lift him as I stand up. I hold him tightly to my chest. Together, we walk out of the clinic doors. 

The thick air looms outside the clinic like a coming storm, but I’m not scared of breathing anymore. I don’t know where to go; it doesn’t matter. We’ll walk until we find home. I will walk with my son.

Author's Note

A rough draft, straying from my typical style and genre, especially concerning narrative and dialogue.