All We Know of Love

  “What is it?” one of the other kids says.

  Funny you should ask, I think.

  “Fernando Street,” I say. It is the first time I have said it out loud. “One-seven-one-one Fernando Street.”

  Another little kid, a little girl, has moved closer, as if I were the main attraction of the morning. “There ain’t no street called that,” she says almost defiantly. She even juts out her chin. She reminds me of the kind of girl that never likes me, the kind of girl that has an attitude, and I, then, seem to reek of weakness. But at least this girl is younger than me. She’s probably five. Six, tops.

  “Nah, I know where it is,” the boy on top of the car says. He jumps down, and his sneakers slap the pavement. “It ain’t far.”

  I have no idea whether to believe him or not.

  “Maybe there’s someone else I could ask. A grown-up or something?” I say, looking around. There are a group of men, sitting on chairs outside a convenience store, all smoking cigarettes.

  There is a woman walking across the street with her child trailing behind. She is wearing shorts, high heels, and massive hoop earrings. She looks younger than me. She will definitely not like me. And there are two older teenage boys walking down the sidewalk toward us. I notice that several of the houses on this street are boarded up. Two spaces down, a car with no wheels is sitting contentedly on concrete blocks.

  “OK,” I say, turning back to the boy. “Can you tell me where?”

  “Oh, I’ll do better than that,” he says. “I’ll take you.”

  “Are you sure you know where it is? Fernando Street.” I start to spell it.

  “He ain’t dumb, lady,” the girl with the jutting chin says to me.

  It is the first time anyone has ever thought of me as a lady, a grown-up. And funny, it should be now, when I am completely lost and pretty much all alone.

  But it seems like a good idea to follow this kid. I don’t feel like making any more decisions, and I don’t feel like getting my ass kicked by a kindergartener.

  “OK,” I tell him.

  “C’mon, then.” He is already off and halfway the down street, skipping happily, high above the ground.

  The neighborhood changes a little as we walk. I finally get the kid to slow down.

  “I’m an old lady,” I tell him, and he seems to believe it. “I can’t run that fast.”

  There are a few more people around. There is a gas station on the corner. A women’s clothing store. A CVS. I haven’t seen any abandoned buildings in a while.

  “Don’t you have to tell your mother or something?” I say. We’ve gone about ten blocks or so.

  “My mama’s dead.”

  I am having serious doubts about this kid since he’s already told me five or six completely outrageous stories, including one about his cousin Taiesha, who is going out with Jay-Z, and how he himself tried out for American Idol. Simon wanted him, but the producers said he was too young. Then Simon and Paula got in a big fight about it.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. “About your mother, I mean.”

  “Don’t be,” he tells me. “My grandma takes care of me.”

  “Well, don’t you have to tell your grandma then?”

  “Nah, she don’t care where I am.”

  Seven or eight out of the ten things he’s told me so far have got to be lies; I just hope it’s not the one about knowing where we are going.

  “Where you live?” he asks me. We pass a post office and what looks like an office building. If he doesn’t know where the Fernando Street is, at least he’s taken me someplace I can probably get a cab or a bus from.

  “I live in Connecticut,” I tell him. “You talk a lot, don’t you?”

  “Yup,” he answers. “Keeps the devil away. My grandma says that.”

  I’m not sure what this means, but we stop walking at the corner and he points. Sure enough the sign that hangs over the intersection and swings in the wind reads FERNANDO STREET. The storefront on the corner is number 1681. 1711 Fernando Street can’t be far from here.

  “Hey, thanks a lot,” I say. “I wish I could give you something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.” I feel that offering him money would be insulting, even though that’s probably the thing he’d want most. I know I would. “But you really went out of your way. I mean, can you get back OK?” I add.

  The kid spins around on his toes and starts off back down the way we came. “I’m cool,” he says. “I don’t need nothing.”

  He certainly doesn’t seem to. But I do. I look down the block. There are apartments and flower boxes, garbage pails, plastic garbage bags tied, this morning’s newspapers lying on the stoops, waiting to be picked up. I can’t see the doors or the numbers, but I know behind one of them is my mother.

  Maybe.

  I am still not ready.

  I turn back down the street the way we came. “Hey!” I shout. I don’t know his name. “Hey, kid. You. Hey.”

  He stops, already a small figure halfway down the block.

  I cup my hands and shout, “Wanna get some breakfast? Coffee?”

  It takes me a half a second to finish what I am saying, but by the time I do, he’s standing next to me, smiling. He smiles like someone who is always smiling. I think he must have the happy gene, like Sarah.

  I like that.

  “What’s your name?” I ask him.

  “Tevin.”

  “I’m Natalie.”

  “I knew that,” he snaps. “I can read minds.”

  “Yeah, well, so can I,” I tell Tevin.

  He looks right at me and I look right back.

  Tevin’s mother was not dead.

  She was alive and well, and at home, worrying about him.

  Where is that boy? He is always running off.

  Tevin was her baby, her youngest of four. He was so quick in every way, mind and body, and Theresa loved him dearly, as a mother loves her last child, maybe differently from the way she loved the others. Maybe more freely. For longer, maybe. Hoping to hold on to something, but more able to let go because she knows she has no choice. Like watching a bird, a baby bird, openmouthed and begging for food in the morning, flying from the nest by the afternoon, landing splat in the grass and stumbling forward, flapping and flapping, and one day flying.

  Flying away.

  Theresa twisted her hands together, rubbing the skin until she could feel the bones underneath, and it almost hurt. She looked down. Her hands were big. They always had been. There was a time, when Theresa was younger, when her hands embarrassed her. She had worn press-on nails in spectacular colors to make them prettier. But now they reminded her of her own mother’s hands, ugly but capable. Not so dainty, but they did the job. Maybe better.

  When she couldn’t stand worrying anymore, Theresa got up off the couch, walked past the television, and looked out the window. She saw some of those kids Tevin hung out with: TJ and Christopher, and Victor, and that Williams girl. What was her name?

  “Hey, Yvonne! TJ! You seen Tevin?” Theresa shouted down to them.

  They had funny looks on their faces.

  “Where is he?” Theresa yelled. “You tell me, now, y’hear?”

  “He walked off with a white girl,” Yvonne shouted back.

  “What?” Theresa yelled out.

  Yvonne just stood there with her hands on her skinny little hips, thinking she was all that. She didn’t say another word, and those other boys were being like deaf mutes.

  “I’m coming down there. Don’t you move, girl,” Theresa told them.

  That Yvonne Williams didn’t know what she was saying. White girl. Tevin was probably right there, hiding behind that piece-of-shit car her brother had given them. Still, as Theresa made her way down the stairwell, her heart started beating faster.

  What if something had happened to Tevin?

  Her mouth went instantly dry, and tears stung her eyes with even the possibility. It isn’t like she didn’t have the thought a
ll the time with her older boys, every time they left the house.

  What would she do if something happened to Tevin, although God knows he asked for it — wild boy. Always acting too big for his britches. Theresa felt a sharp pain in her stomach, like she had been punched. Like she was going to vomit. And then, funny, as she tried to take the stairs two at a time, she suddenly had the memory of morning sickness. A wave of nausea that was almost like being hungry but, of course, you couldn’t eat. Theresa hadn’t been able to eat anything except Cheerios, with no milk, for nearly three months each time she was pregnant.

  Damn, where did that boy go?

  Theresa was sweating, out of breath. A white girl? Walked off with a white girl?

  She swore she would never let him out of the house again.

  “Nowhere. Never alone,” she mumbled to herself, not believing it but swearing on her life. Safe, that’s all she wanted him to be, until he ran away again. And again.

  Safe, this is what she was thinking as she pressed her wide hands against the two outer glass doors and stepped onto the sidewalk. The air assaulted her in one powerful blast of tropical heat. A warm February, even for Florida.

  Those kids were gone. Scattered, of course. They had run.

  “Tevin!” Theresa shouted. Her eyes smarted, and then there he was, walking toward her along the sidewalk, like nobody’s business.

  “What, Ma? I was just having me a free breakfast,” Tevin answered. “Whassup?” He moseyed. There was no other word for it. Swaggered, a full 180 degrees with each step.

  Theresa smacked him hard, but not too — right across the top of his head. Smack. She loved him that much.

  I told Adam about my mother just before I left.

  I used it. I played it for what I thought it was worth, like a face card in game of rummy, like the string section in an orchestra. It wasn’t that I was so desperate. I just wanted him to know me. I thought I deserved that. Especially as he was knowing me in that biblical way.

  I used to think that a person would not know who I was, not really know me, until they heard about my mother. Until they knew that I was a girl whose mother had chosen to leave her, who had not wanted her. Whose mother had walked out the door one night and never came back.

  Once upon a time, there was a little girl . . .

  It was more like a test.

  It was late. My dad was sleeping. He didn’t even know Adam was over, that we were in my room.

  In my bed. Trying hard to be silent.

  I told Adam because I wanted to create something that would hold him to me even after he went home. Even when I wasn’t in his presence and he wasn’t in mine. We could connect in this way, with a shared truth, a story told. A story heard.

  “My mom and dad aren’t divorced,” I told him. “That’s not why I live with my dad.”

  “Hmm?” He rolled toward me.

  “My mom. I never see her.”

  “Why not?”

  He was so sweet that night. I guess he had what people call puppy-dog eyes, battened down with long, dark lashes. He liked to look right at me, through me. He’d watch me blush with the attention.

  “Why not, Natty?” he went on — listening, I’m sure, more to his own voice than my words.

  So at first, I just shrugged. Lingering.

  “You are so beautiful,” he said, slipping a piece of my hair behind my ear, as if it were his own. “You are. Do you know that?”

  If I ever wanted to believe him, it was that night.

  “She walked out four years ago,” I went on. “I haven’t heard from her since.”

  “She did?”

  He was interested. I could tell. It made me interesting. Different. Not every girl has a story like this.

  “It hurts me,” I told him. “Still. I think about it. I feel like it was my fault. I feel different from other people. Sometimes . . . it takes me. I don’t know. It makes things harder. I get mad. Or jealous. Or scared. I miss her.”

  I was talking but not really hearing myself. I knew what I was saying but I didn’t feel anything. It was all true, but it wasn’t real.

  “So I think that’s why I need to know you’re . . .” I started. “Here for me, you know? That you’re . . .”

  It was a mistake. Different is one thing; needy is another. But I couldn’t help it. Once I had started, I needed more. I needed something from him that he could never give.

  “It’s in the past, Natty. You’ve got to get over it. You’ve got to be strong,” Adam said. He leaned over and kissed me.

  “I like a strong woman,” he said with his breath against my lips.

  Was that what happened to his last girlfriend? She wasn’t strong enough? Had I stumbled on the secret and it was too late?

  I called Adam on his cell phone just minutes after he left my house that night, imagining his car halfway down the road.

  And he couldn’t tell me when I’d see him again. He wanted to get off the phone.

  “Talk to you soon,” he said.

  “When?” I asked.

  When?

  “Lighten up, Natty,” he said.

  That’s when I decided to leave again, for real, for the first time, for the last time, for me. In defiance of, in search of, in need of, something I didn’t yet understand.

  Now I am standing here on her street.

  Tevin ran back home.

  I am thinking of that lovesick character in My Fair Lady singing that stupid song. Our high school did the play the year before Sarah and I got there. We were still in middle school then, eighth-graders, the oldest in our school, top of the shit-pile, and we went to see the last performance.

  In the song, the guy is content simply to stand on the street where the woman he loves is living. Even though she won’t give him the time of day, his heart is soaring, his feet lifting off the pavement, seven stories high, just knowing he’s on the street where she lives.

  “I’ll never be like that,” Sarah told to me at intermission.

  “He’s pathetic,” I agreed.

  “He’s hot, though.”

  “Who? The character? Or the kid playing him?” We had bought two bottles of water and one packet of Skittles at the concession. I passed the bag to Sarah.

  She hit me in the arm. “The kid. He’s in eleventh grade. It’s Nicky Laico. You know, Caroline’s older brother.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I took the bag of candy back. “You think he’s cute?”

  “Yeah.”

  We would be in high school in a mere three months. I hadn’t really thought of it. Nicky Laico would be there, I supposed. Suddenly, I thought of all the kids, and all the boys, that we would be thrown in with next year. Tons of them. Older than us. Sixteen-year-olds. Seventeen-year-olds. Eighteen.

  I didn’t think Nicky Laico was all that good-looking. How was it that Sarah did?

  For the first time in a really, really long time, I thought about “the list,” our list. What had happened to it? In retrospect, I was thinking, there may have been some important things on that list.

  “Let’s make a deal,” I said to Sarah just as the lights were dimming for act 2.

  “What are you, a game-show host?”

  “No, seriously. Let’s agree that we will always come first. To each other. That whoever gets a boyfriend, or if either one of us gets a boyfriend, we’ll still be best friends first.”

  Sarah looked at me, the water bottle tipped up to her mouth. “Of course, Natty. Why would you say that? You’ll always be my best friend. That comes before anything.”

  I felt better, but still I had to wonder. This lovesickness seemed to overtake people without warning. Make them do crazy things against their will. Stand on street corners.

  I mean, look at that idiot up there singing.

  And somebody writes this crap, don’t they?

  1711.

  The number is painted in green across the two glass doors of the apartment.

  The apartment buildings here in St. Augustine are different
from the ones back home, up north. It’s the colors, I guess. Some here are actually baby blue or the color of sand. There are even pink buildings and coral-colored doors. Turquoise balconies, seashell and sand-dollar motifs on the walls and awnings.

  Everything reminds me I am not home. None of the buildings are very tall here. They are like the younger siblings, so the sun breaks out over the tops and brightens everything, even the trash that is scattered in the corners and by the curb. I can see why people want to live in Florida. The sunshine is blinding.

  But nothing prepares me for seeing her name on the wall beside the doorbell. Even in the deep heat of the sun, I feel cold. I shiver. The only thing propelling me forward at this point is that I am here.

  I am here, almost a thousand miles from where I started. Where we both started.

  How many miles did she need to travel to forget me?

  Did she go a hundred miles but could still see my face?

  I watched my mother’s focus return to the mirror.

  Did she go five hundred and still hear my voice?

  Mom, I want the chocolate cookies.

  Did she get here, to this town, and stop when all traces were finally behind her? But I was still there. I still existed, even if she couldn’t see me. Even if she couldn’t remember me. Even if she didn’t want to.

  I didn’t disappear.

  It was a pair of earrings.

  In the package from my mother. It was a pair of crystal chandelier earrings, real crystals. Not glass. Beautiful colors, gold and mauve. And just the right size. Not too big and gaudy. Just right. I put them away and never looked at them again.

  It was the wrapper. Her tiny handwriting in the upper left corner. Did she put it there on purpose, to tell me something? Or did they insist on it at the post office?

  “Uh, ma’am. We need a return address. Don’t you want to write your address here?” He hands her a pen.

  My mother would have shaken her head, no. No need.

  “I’m not saying it will, but your package could get lost.”

  Lost? Wasted? That did it. She never could tolerate waste.

  She takes the pen and hastily writes in her address. 1171 Fernando Street, St. Augustine, Florida 32084.