Free On the Come Up by Hannah Weyer Page A

heard you, Ma, I know the story.
    Ever since Blessed had found out about the baby, it was like she was revived, on her feet asking AnnMarie how she feel, do she need something, asking where she going and when she coming back. And in between all the asking, she’d find a way to tell it, again and again—the story of her great escape. How he raped her. How he beat her with a pipe. A pipe used for plumbing.
    You is a rape child, Blessed would say. But I kept you, you see how I kept you?
    Like some kinda hero thief. Stealing past cornfields, past the houses made a concrete. Past the dirt yards and goats. Dogs barking, stray dogs so skinny they ribs show through. Snarling at any scrap a life that pass them by. AnnMarie pictured her without shoes on her feet, dress hem flapping, her neck twisted ’round, a look like fear turn to triumph in her eye.
    ’Cept she had shoes. Shoes and a bag full a clothes, AnnMarie remembered. A rainstorm had turned the dirt to mud, and therewas ants, millions of ants clawing their way to sunlight. Blessed walked five miles to St. Margaret, caught the bus to Port of Spain, her feet itching and burning, ants crawling out her shoes, up her thigh, hungry for blood. Traveling papers fixed by a lady named Miss Deacon for three hundred dollars. She’d spent a year saving. A year of broken ribs and fat lips and eyeballs hanging out their socket. Clinic man patch her up, send her on her way. If she stayed behind, she’d end up like Jahar, her firstborn. That baby got shook and banged by AnnMarie’s father. Shook and banged ’til he was dead.
    You got his blood, Blessed said. But you see how I kept you.
    Yeah, yeah. AnnMarie thought. ’Cept for all those years you didn’t.
    She remembered the first time her mother spoke about her father. In that narrow bed at the homeless shelter when she was a child. Wrapped around Blessed in the stillness, AnnMarie hadn’t understood all the words. But she knew sadness. Felt it in her mother’s chest rising and falling, in her eyes that refused to open. AnnMarie had reached up and patted her cheek, tried to pry an eye open, wanting her mother back.
    When had her love for Blessed changed? AnnMarie couldn’t remember.
    Carlton and Carlotta had gone visiting, so AnnMarie went into her room to change. She could smell the food cooking. Her mother’d been a good cook once, before the stroke. Now she hardly cooked at all, fingers shaking, recipes turned inside out. Maybe that’s what AnnMarie’s father had liked about her. She’d cook up the rice and peas, macaroni pie, curry goat. There weren’t no picture of her father. No way a seeing his face in her mind. Justa angry dude. She looked at herself in the mirror. Brown eyes staring. Was he in there?
    AnnMarie heard the knock and let him in. Darius stood in the doorway, smelling like Irish Spring. She leaned against the frame, smiling, seeing the flowers in his hand. She took the bouquet wrapped in clear plastic. For your moms, he said, his hand moving to her belly where the baby was forming.
    Blessed had sent AnnMarie to borrow a card table from across the hall and they all sat down, Darius’ hands folded loosely in his lap. But AnnMarie felt the flutterflies bouncing around. What she got to be nervous for. What the fuck I care my mother like him. I love him and he loves me.
    Are you in school, Darius?
    Ma, let him eat.
    No, I finished off with that. I’m interested in business opportunities and whatnot.
    Oh, really …
    Ma.
    Shh, we’re talking, AnnMarie.
    Yeah, I’d like to own my own business. A recording business.
    Oh, that’s nice. AnnMarie says you have a music studio at your house, you making a living with that?
    Little here and there but I got a fee schedule planned out, charge the artist for they recording time, and if I produce, I add on top a that.
    A fee schedule?
    You know, like money for my time.
    Oh, that’s smart …
    Blah blah blah blah blah
 … AnnMarie wanted to tell her to please shut