The Corner. David Simon

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СКАЧАТЬ compromised, a parent without proper standing. But neither will she give it the sanction so many others do.

      Nor will her sons be seen eating at the soup kitchen at St. Martin’s so that their mother can spend the food money on drugs. DeAndre will not suffer Easter without a new outfit and a new pair of Nike Airs; DeRodd won’t mark his birthday without a cake, or Christmas without some kind of toy. These things matter to Fran, who can tell herself that she manages to keep just enough balance in a world that is tumbling all over the place. And by that thin standard, she’s entirely correct: Where so many others have given up entirely, Fran Boyd is still a mother to her children.

      Not that Andre acknowledges it. Now that he’s out from under her wing, taking what she’s given as his due, he demands more, and his manner turns sullen and pouting when more isn’t forthcoming. I’m on my own out here, DeAndre likes to tell his friends. Nobody does nothing for me.

      He just doesn’t know. Fran is tempted to put him out again like she did last summer, or at least charge him some rent if he’s not going to go to school. What she ought to do—what she would like to do—is whip his ass good. But those days are long gone.

      So all right then, she tells him in an imagined rant, you’re a big boy now. You’re the man. You just go ahead and play it like that and the next time Collins gets out of a police car to kick your ass, you’re on your own. And the next time they call me from the school about one of your fuck-ups, you’re not going to have me down there lying for you. And the next time you’re downtown for a juvenile hearing, you won’t see me. Your ass’ll get flat on that courthouse bench waiting for your mother to show.

      Fran pumps herself full of indignation, squirming on that crushed couch cushion now, aching to pounce the next time he rolls past her steps. She’s had her fill; her eyes flash anger as she looks up toward Mount Street and sees DeAndre stepping from the carryout. Look at him, she thinks, all wrapped up in himself, as if it’s all about him. Fuck that.

      Halfway down the block, DeAndre seems to sense her glare and quickly locks into it, goading her with a blank stare of his own as he moves toward her. He slows his pace, but his eyes never waver. Fran rises as DeAndre nears the foot of the stoop, his hands buried deep in his coat pockets. He barely breaks stride as one hand snakes out and tosses her a small paper bag, which she catches instinctively.

      Smokes. She shakes her head. “Why you play me that way?”

      DeAndre laughs, walking on toward Fairmount.

      “Damn you, Dre,” she shouts. “Get back here.”

      But DeAndre ignores her.

      Shit, says Fran to herself, glumly peeling the cellophane from the pack. Why he got to be like that? Always setting her up just to knock her back down. Always letting her see the worst in him, and then, at the last possible moment, coming through with a little bit of heart.

      Like this last Christmas Eve, when the money was gone and DeRodd had his Santa list of toys all written out. Fran felt like she had no choice and rode the bus out to Reisterstown Mall, then raced through the stores on a last-minute boosting spree. She was just starting to get it done, too, until she forgot to take the security tags from several items, setting off alarms as she left one store. One mall guard actually chased her into the parking lot and Fran just managed to get on a southbound M.T.A. Scared and breathing hard, she looked back over her shoulder and saw one of them jawing into his walkie-talkie. A few blocks farther, when a police cruiser pulled alongside the bus, Fran slipped out the rear doors, turned a corner, and got so damn lost in Northwest Baltimore that by the time she made her way home, the stores were closed.

      Thinking on it now, she can remember climbing the steps to that back room in the worst kind of mood, kicking herself for letting it slide to the eleventh hour, dreading the look in DeRodd’s eyes. She went drag-ass into the bedroom to find DeAndre on the bed watching television, a pile of shopping bags on the floor in front him.

      “Wassup,” he said.

      It was all there—everything on DeRodd’s wish list and more besides, all of it purchased with the cash from Fairmount Avenue. Fran was overwhelmed.

      “Thought you might be havin’ some trouble,” her son said.

      “I was.”

      And that time, DeAndre didn’t play it for pride or advantage. He didn’t shame her. If anything, he was a little embarrassed by it all. She reached across the bed, tugging on his shirt sleeve, pulling his head next to hers. No words, but a quick embrace. A connection.

      Damned if that wasn’t DeAndre, too. Hardheaded, arrogant, sullen —but at moments he could step outside of himself, drop the game face, and be capable of anything. Fran smiles at the memory; her boy is a trip.

      She watches him turn the corner at Gilmor, pulling his denims back up over his ass and hunkering himself into his lock-legged strut. If I could get past this, she thinks, if I could get myself clean, there would still be time and I could make it right with him.

      She’s so wrapped in her thoughts that she’s holding the cigarette pack in the open, tapping one out with half the corner watching. Damn.

      “Can I get one?”

      “Huh?” she says, slow to recover.

      “A smoke?”

      “Hmmm,” she grunts, giving it up.

      “Hey Fran …”

      And another.

      “Borrow one?”

      And another still. This corner soaks up Newports like a dry sponge; she had to be a damn fool to be sitting out here with a whole pack in her hands.

      “Yo, Fran …”

      “Got-damn, Stevie, I done gave away half the pack.”

      Her brother shrugs, wounded.

      “Here,” says Fran, pulling out a last giveaway and putting the rest in her pocket. Stevie lights up off her own.

      “Ronnie’s back,” he says.

      That he is. Fran watches Ronnie Hughes and Michael Hearns roll up Fayette and park the Buick just across the street. Car doors swing open and the two men get out slowly, smiling, stretching like athletes on the sidewalk before walking back to the car trunk. Must be good, thinks Fran.

      Ronnie opens up and the two men lift out the items on the very top of the pile—women’s dresses and men’s sportswear, the store tags flapping up in the winter wind. They’re standing there in the middle of Fayette Street, holding the shit up in the air by the curl of the hangers, displaying it with pride for the crowd at Mount and Fayette. The day’s catch.

      “Ain’t this a bitch,” says Fran, smiling.

      Michael walks toward her, his arm extended, his hand gripping an evening dress as if it’s a five-pound bass. Fran notices the Macy’s label. Not bad at all, she has to admit.

      “Look at you,” she says.

      Michael grins. A breadwinner.

      “We can sell this shit,” she assures him.

      Already, СКАЧАТЬ