On
days off, usually Mondays like today when the restaurant's closed, I take
showers as long as the hot water lasts. When I get out, I drip all over the
floor because I never got around to buying a bath mat, but it’s okay. It always
dries up by the next time I get in the shower, especially in one of these bad
Pittsburgh summers.
The
mirror’s already clearing up, the steam leaving like clouds the way they do
sometimes after it rains. That thought, you can’t wash ink away, Will,
it slips through me like it always does when I look in the mirror. It’s been a
while since I could remember the way Ma’s face looked when I was being bad, but
I can hear her voice clear as day, you can’t wash ink away, every time I
see myself. I never thought to listen to her and now the past is written all
over me. When Rich brought me in for my interview at the restaurant, he said it
was a good thing that a tattoo doesn’t show up much on me. He said it’s the
first time he’s ever seen a black man’s skin help him get a job.
I
got the dragon on my back when I was fifteen, and I used to pretend his wings
were my wings, and together we could fly. Now, he's a little wrinkled. A little
lower down than he used to be, just like the rest of me. His back is cut in
half with the big scar. They had me open for seven hours. I don’t like to
imagine what that looked like, the doctors’ hands all over my back and in my
brain, but they say I’m lucky to be walking after what happened to me, so I
can’t complain. They say I’m lucky to have a memory. But when I woke up in the hospital I
remembered everything about my life before, and remembering felt like something
else, not luck.
The
snake wrapped around my neck hurt the most, because I got him done inside. My
cell mate was a real artist, but it took a long time, night after night of him
dipping a needle into a puddle of pen ink and dipping the needle into me. He
used to sing real quiet while he was working. Way over yo-onder is a place
that I know, where the sweet-tastin' go-od life is so ea-s-ily found, that's
where I'm bound.
---
I’ve
been working at the restaurant for almost two years, and my favorite part is
still the end of the night. After they stop taking tables, after Rich and the
line cooks have gone home, it’s just one waiter in the front, serving the
dessert, and me in the back, finishing up the plates. I keep most of the
kitchen lights off and let the dishes soak slow.
I
don’t go out onto the floor anymore. Once, right after I got the job, we were
short a busboy and when I went out to clear tables an old woman with yellow
pearls on her ears looked at me for a long time, and shut her eyes tight when
they came to the snake on my neck. She
left before the check came out, and Shelly, the owner, hired a new busboy real
quick. I told Rich I thought maybe I
should’ve reminded the old lady to wait for her check, because she was old and
probably forgetful. He laughed and said,
go look in the mirror and then stick to the kitchen from now on. I still don't know what he meant because I
saw the same thing as always when I looked in the mirror that day, but I took
his advice because the kitchen works just fine for me.
When
Shelly comes around, she doesn’t look at me much, and usually asks Rich if
everything is “okay” with me. I think it’s good of her to care, when she’s so
busy. She usually has darkness under her eyes, and sometimes her hair is curly
in the back even when she makes it straight in the front. I think it's a gift I
got from my accident: ever since I woke up in the hospital I’ve noticed things
like that, things I never noticed before. I see how good people are, or how
scared, and how nobody else sees what I do.
Maybe
that’s why I like closing up with the new waiter Liam. He’s quiet in the
kitchen, double-checking his orders before he brings them out, but I can tell
he’s been doing this a long time because he can handle five dishes on each arm
without even a little wobble. Tonight, he keeps his head down when he backs
into the kitchen with a stack of dirty dessert plates, like he’s got something
heavy resting over him.
“That’s
them done,” he says.
The
first time Liam told me where he was from, the word “Dublin” came out of him
like two marbles he kept tucked behind his lower lip. He never talks about his
home, but I hear it in his voice all the time.
“Did
the last table go?” I ask, making room on my counter for the plates.
“They’re sorted. Just left,” Liam says, and
unbuttons the top of his shirt. The skin on his neck is white like the dishes,
and clear, so I can see his veins like thin blue roads.
“Be
back in a few,” Liam says. “Got to close up the front.”
The
plates are quick and easy, just cream and crumbs, but I’ll have to wrap my
hands again tonight. When I work alone, my knuckles crack so deep I swear I
could store pennies in them. It used to hurt something bad, but either I’m used
to it now or my fingers just don’t feel it.
Liam
comes back into the kitchen, closing the door quietly behind him. He looks
around and comes over to me, picks up a wet fork and starts drying it off.
“No
man, I got it,” I say.
“It’s
grand,” he says, sitting down on a stool. “I’m all done out there anyway.”
Never
ask a man to do your job for you,
Ma always said, but I didn’t ask and Liam doesn’t seem like he wants to stop. I
don’t think I knew what people meant when they said “happy to help” until now.
Liam
doesn’t say much, and neither do I. We listen to the water draining and people
walking outside and the light in the bathroom buzzing like it’s a radio. He’s a
different kind of waiter. He’s the only one who sits out in the alley with me
and Rich during break time, and now he likes to help with the dishes. Sometimes
when I look at him I don’t see a white man.
Liam’s
got the keys and I don’t, so we close up the kitchen together. The night is so
hot I think I could hold the air in my hand and carry it around with me. When
he’s done jiggling with the lock he tells me safe home and I know it’s not just
something he’s saying to be polite.
---
This
morning, I took three beach chairs on the bus with me and put them in the alley
behind the restaurant. I like them better than the plastic ones we used to
have. Better for my back. Rich thought it was stupid. This isn’t the beach, he
said. But my beach is anywhere, and I know Rich doesn’t care as long as all the
dishes are ready when he needs them. Plus, Liam seems to like the new chairs,
which is what I wanted after him helping me last night.
This
time of day, the street wiggles in the sun and nobody comes into the restaurant
because nobody wants to eat Italian food in the summer. If I’m being honest,
and these days I always try to be, I don’t know why anybody would pay $15 for
pasta, no matter how good a cook Rich is. Shelly says that people pay for a
good experience, but I had a good experience with my Spaghetti-O’s last night,
sitting on my porch listening to the crickets and the cars. That cost me less
than a dollar.
Liam
rests his head back and lets his smoke go free. He’s sucking on the end of his
cigarette like he doesn’t know you can’t smoke the filter. It burns out and he
grinds it slowly under his shoe, even though there’s no light left to it, then
leans forward and picks up the butt, puts it in his pocket. I know he’ll throw
it away in the bathroom, instead of leaving it outside like the rest of us do.
I’ve seen piles of little flat filters in the trash, seen him lean into the
bathroom real quick and throw them in before heading back onto the floor. He
likes to clean up after himself, and I think that means he’s careful, and kind,
and maybe a little scared of something I don’t know about, like he doesn’t want
to leave any of himself behind.
I'm
telling him about this documentary I saw on TV a couple weeks ago. “So they found dinosaur blood in a mosquito,”
I say. “They took the blood and they
used it to make real dinosaurs.”
Liam
looks at me the way people do when they're trying to decide something. “Are you sure it was a documentary you were
watching?” He asks.
“Yes,”
I say. And the documentary bothered me,
too. I have enough problems with
raccoons getting into my trash, and I definitely don't need dinosaurs in my
yard.
“What
was the name of this documentary?” Liam
asks.
Rich
comes out of the kitchen, banging the screen door behind him as usual. I always
know when he’s coming and going because of the bang, bang, bang.
“Is
he telling you about that 'documentary' he likes?” Rich asks Liam. He lights up one of those Chinese cigarettes
he gets from his cousin in New Jersey. You should switch to these, he always
tells me. But I don’t see why I should smoke Chinese cigarettes from New Jersey
when I can get good American ones here in Pittsburgh.
“It's
called Jurassic Park, if you ever want to take a look for yourself,”
Rich says, and winks at Liam. He takes a
seat. He doesn’t seem too good for my beach chairs now.
“See?”
I say. “It’s good, right? More comfortable. I’ve got a bad back,” I tell Liam.
“That's
what happens when you break a forklift,” Rich says, grinning now.
“Break
a forklift?” Liam looks like he doesn’t know whether to laugh or not.
Rich
likes to tell my story more than I do. I don't mind, because he does such a
good job. He starts off slow, like
always. “So Big Will was inside for a while.” Liam nods. I wait for him to look
at me, like people usually do at this part of the story, but he doesn't. He just
plays with the cigarette butt in his pocket.
“Right
before he got out, Big Will was in the work program, making benches. Did you
know that most of those benches in the park were made by men on the inside?”
Rich takes a long draw off his cigarette, holding it like a joint. “Fuck slave
labor in China, we've got it over at Allegheny Correctional.” Rich sometimes
likes to get political with my story.
“Anyway,”
he points at me, “So Big Will's working in the wood shop for five cents an
hour, but one day he doesn't look where he's going – Will, why weren't you
looking? – Doesn't matter. He walks right behind a forklift that’s backing up
too fast, and – BAM!” He smacks his hands together and I swear the whole alley
shakes.
Liam
looks at me. “Forklift,” he says, real quiet.
“Yup,”
Rich says. “And Big Will, obviously, he's motherfucking big. So when the
forklift runs into him, he bends its fucking frame – ” he's already laughing.
“Taught the foreman to look behind him when Big Will was coming.”
Rich
always laughs for this story, but I don't mind. It's one thing I don't
remember, and anyway, what I've got now is better than what I had before. Liam
looks at me and I must be smiling because he starts to laugh, too.
“Is
that true, Big Will? You really broke the forklift?”
“Oh
yes,” I say. “Always look both ways, you dig?”
“Always
look both ways, he says,” Rich howls, wiping his eyes. “That's true, Big Will,
that's true.”
“You
know,” Liam says, still smiling, “‘You dig’ actually comes from Irish.”
Rich
lights up another cigarette. He plants it in the corner of his grin. “Now
you're just bullshitting, man. We’re telling real stories here.”
“No
bullshit,” Liam says. It comes from 'An dtuigeann tu?' It means, 'Do you
understand?'”
“An
diggin too,” Rich repeats slowly, like he's tasting the words. “It sounds
similar. But that could just be coincidence, man.”
“No,
that's what I'm telling you.” Liam's leaning forward now, like he's Rich with
something up his sleeve. But he's not smiling. “There were Irish slaves in
America, too.”
Rich’s
lips tighten around the end of his cigarette.
“Most
of them were just people who couldn't pay their debts, but some of them were
criminals,” Liam says. “Instead of putting them in prison, they shipped them
off – mostly to the Caribbean. The slave owners usually made them foremen,
because most of them understood English, so they could understand what the
slavers wanted.”
He
takes that cigarette butt out of his pocket and starts to pull apart its ends.
“So they were the guys explaining the tasks to the African slaves,” he says.
“And that's where 'you dig it' comes from – they used to go out in the fields
and say, an dtuigeann tu, like do you understand what we're doing
today, do you hear me, and everybody picked it up, and started saying, you dig
it.”
He
sits there looking from me to Rich like he's just served up a meal that might
not taste right.
Rich
stubs out his cigarette and looks at it, like it might want to say something
first. “Where'd you hear that from?” He asks Liam.
“I've
got a friend at home whose family is from the Caribbean. They can trace their
history all the way back to slave times.”
“Pretty
crazy,” Rich says. “But it sounds like the Irish down there were just more
white guys. If they worked for the slavers, they were a problem, too.”
Liam
folds his hands in his lap and looks down, like he was afraid that's what Rich
would think.
“I
think that's a very good story, Liam,” I say.
“You
know, Will,” Rich says, “before that forklift got you, you would’ve said
something different.”
I
want to say it doesn’t matter what happened before because I’m a man who sees
and says the right things now.
Liam
looks up, but he’s staring at something behind me, something skipping gravel
all over the road. I turn around to look and suddenly my back hurts, suddenly
it’s too hot outside. I want to go back to the kitchen, where the sun doesn’t
pump through my do-rag and people don’t come up behind me, kicking stones.
Gary
shuffles – he always shuffled – up around the side of my chair. He's standing
too close. His hands in his pockets, moving like he's got mice in there trying
to get out.
I
look at my hands. When my hands were smooth, my knuckles were big and hard and
I don't like that I'm thinking about what I used to do with them.
“Big
Will,” Gary says. “You carryin'?”
Rich
says, “Get out of here, man.”
Gary
doesn't listen to Rich. “Big Will,” he says, “I know you got some. You always
used to hook me up, man.”
“Go
on,” Rich says. He's standing now. “You know Big Will doesn't do that anymore.”
“For-real,”
Gary says, kicking more stones up around my chair. “Big Will's retired? I don't
believe that for a minute.”
He
yanks a hand out of his jeans and holds it in the air above my shoulder, like
he's thinking about touching me, like he might actually touch me, and I push my
hands in between my legs because I don't like what they want to do. I'm not
gonna look at him, because my life is better now. I am better now. Stop
running with those boys, William. If I’d listened to Ma, I'd have been
there for her when she went. Stop it. I am better now. I can't look at
Rich and Liam.
Gary’s
hand comes down on my shoulder and Liam's out of his chair so fast it throws up
its own gravel when it hits the street. He pushes Larry off me, and now I look.
People
call me Big Will for good reasons. If I didn't think it would hurt his
feelings, I'd call him Little Liam and that would be the truth. He's as skinny
as Gary, but he's got Gary up against the wall, his phone unflipped in Gary's face.
“I
swear to god, if you don't fuck off right now I'll call the cops,” Liam says,
shoving his palm into Gary’s neck so his head smacks against those bricks and I
don't like how much I love that sound.
Rich
is on his toes, talking so low. “No, no no, no.”
“That's
the number. You want me to press send?” Liam waves his phone in front of Gary’s
closed eyes.
Gary's
shaking his nappy head, making a scrubbing sound on the walls. Liam shoves Gary
sideways. I don't look, but I listen to the gravel scrambling under him all the
way back up the alley.
Liam
picks up his chair and puts it right and sits down like he can't stand for
another minute. His face is all red. He takes the last cigarette out of his
pocket and tries three times to light it before it starts to burn. I fold my
hands in front of me. I don't know what to say.
Rich
is rocking back and forth on his still-dancy feet. “That was great and
everything, Liam,” he says. But you know you can't go calling the cops. Shelly
finds out they were here, 'cause of a guy like that? I can't lose my job, man.”
“You
think I was gonna call the cops?” Liam says, letting cigarette ash fall on his
knee. “What would I do if they asked about my work permit?”
Rich
laughs so much he's coughing, and I almost want to pat him on the back to see
if he's okay. “Oh man,” he says. “You're it, man. You're just it.” He pulls
Liam up and starts walking him back to the kitchen. “White boy calling the
cops. We've gotta keep you around.”
“But
Liam's not white,” I say. “He's Irish.”
Rich looks back at me, his head going side to
side like he's throwing something around in there to see how it feels. He
shrugs and turns back to the door. Maybe he didn't understand me. But Liam puts
his hand on my shoulder and leaves it there for a minute. He knows what I can see.
___
Shannon Azzato Stephens holds a BA in Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin. She lives in New York City, where she teaches writing at Baruch College and Columbia University.
