Black and Blue Ivy

Morningstar

I think it was a school day, but I could be wrong. It might have been Saturday, yeah, Saturday or Sunday morning when the cops broke down the door.

I hadn't been to school in weeks. I could have gone, and she told me that, viciously spat the the slurred words at me when I dared issue a complaint or just give her one of my looks. My looks, narrowed eyes making bright blue slits in a pale face just like hers, could get me smacked faster than if I said something cruel (and honest) like, "You're a loser," "You're an addict," or the worse, "You're a whore." All true, but no one wants to hear the truth about themselves, especially if the truth is unspeakable.

So I stayed in my room, if you can call it that. It was more of a closet with a bunk bed made of rough timber one of her more resourceful dudes had constructed one day on a meth high. I had many splinters and ripped tights from sliding out of the top bunk, which was my designated "space." The bottom bunk was frequently occupied by one of her "friends." Dudes, mostly, buddies of the "lucky one" who ended up on the fold-out couch with her in the other room. There was a small bathroom next to my room where I could hear through the thin wall the sounds of giggling but more often retching and sometimes sobbing moans that would slice through me like the thrust of a knife.

More than once, one of her dudes' shadows would linger near me late at night while I pretended to sleep. I'd press myself against the wall curled up in grandma's old crocheted quilt, trying to make myself even smaller than my one-hundred pounds. The dude would stand there, fingers curled on the edge of my thin mattress, puffs of his fruity beer breath making me gag. I could almost hear the thought rattling around in what remained of his poisoned brain. "Should I? Should I?"

Did any of those dudes know I kept a kitchen knife beneath the quilt? One dude found out the hard way. She screamed at me about that—I guess she lost her dealer—but I could tell she was also proud.

Wait.

Proud is the wrong word. Relieved. She was relieved I could "take care of myself" on the streets. It alleviated her guilt that might spring up whenever we'd passed by the stately double doors of Our Lady of Sorrows. She'd bless herself and quicken her step, tugging roughly on my arm.

What terrors haunted my mother? Her real name was Joan, after the saint, but everyone in Kensington knew her as Morningstar.

The real reason I stopped going to school is that I smelled. The landlord turned the water off, followed by the heat when she stopped paying the rent. Whatever money she got from her monthly check went in her arm or to buy stuff for one of her dudes if she felt charitable, which she sometimes was when flying high.

I spent my days at the FDR skate park, where the crust punks smelled worse than me. At first, the autumn days were warm and crisp, and I made friends among the other kids who blew off school to get lost on their boards, the repetitive ups and downs of the graffiti-laden ramps.

The probability of failure confronting any skater attempting their first ollie off the high ramp expressed a certain dignity, and I would sit mesmerized just watching them for hours. Sometimes I would skate around on a small board my buddy, Clem, fixed up for me. Clem was twenty, and his teeth were black, and his cheeks were pitted from a bad meth habit he had when he was my age but had somehow managed to shake. He smoked incessantly, shielded me from the dopers, and never tried to put the moves on me. Clem was cool that way.

But as November rolled around, the wind off the river chilled my bones. Clem and I had shared a smoke at the Skate Park, and I think he gave me a bad cold. I guilted him into buying me a bottle of Nyquil, and I swigged half of it on the train ride home.

Our apartment was even colder than the outdoors. I could see my breath in my room. I noticed several new holes in the walls on my way to the bathroom, and the pizza box on the floor was moving by itself. Cockroaches or mice? I didn't want to know.