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up to a bald patch of oil-stained ground where there would have been a garage in a better part of town.
The wasteland of crabgrass that passed for a lawn was littered with cheap plastic toys. A little girl in
ragged pink shorts was kicking a soccer ball repeatedly against the side of the house. Each time it hit
the wooden siding, she said, “Chumbah!”
A woman with her hair in large blue rollers and a cigarette plugged in her gob shoved her head out
the window and shouted, “You keep doin that, Rosette, I’m gone come out n beat you snotty!” Then
she saw me. “Wha’ choo want? If it’s a bill, I cain’t hep you. My husband does all that. He got work
today.”
“It’s not a bill,” I said. Rosette kicked the soccer ball at me with a snarl that became a reluctant
smile when I caught it with the side of my foot and booted it gently back. “I just wanted to speak to
you for a second.”
“Y’all gotta wait, then. I ain’t decent.”
Her head disappeared. I waited. Rosette kicked the soccer ball high and wide this time
(“Chumbah!”), but I managed to catch it on one palm before it hit the house.
“Ain’t s’pozed to use your hands, dirty old sumbitch,” she said. “That’s a penalty.”
“Rosette, what I told you about that goddam mouth?” Moms came out on the stoop, securing a
filmy yellow scarf over her rollers. It made them look like cocooned insects, the kind that might be
poisonous when they hatched.
“Dirty old fucking sumbitch!” Rosette shrieked, and then scampered up Mercedes Street in the
direction of the Monkey Ward warehouse, kicking her soccer ball and laughing maniacally.
“Wha’ choo want?” Moms was twenty-two going on fifty. Several of her teeth were gone, and she
had the fading remains of a black eye.
“Want to ask you some questions,” I said.
“What makes my bi’ness your bi’ness?”
I took out my wallet and offered her a five-dollar bill. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no
lies.”
“You ain’t from around here. Soun like a Yankee.”
“Do you want this money or not, Missus?”
“Depends on the questions. I ain’t tellin you my goddam bra-size.”
“I want to know how long you’ve been here, for a start.”
“This place? Six weeks, I guess. Harry thought he might catch on at the Monkey Ward warehouse,
but they ain’t hiring. So he went on over to Manpower. You know what that is?”
“Day-labor?”
“Yeah, n he workin with a bunch of niggers.” Only it wasn’t workin, it was woikin. “Nine dollars a
day workin with a bunch of goddam niggers side a the road. He says it’s like bein at West Texas
Correctional again.”
“How much rent do you pay?”
“Fifty a month.”
“Furnished?”
“Semi. Well, you could say. Got a goddam bed and a goddam gas stove gone kill us all, most likely.
And I ain’t takin you in, so don’t ax. I don’t know you from goddam Adam.”
“Did it come with lamps and such?”
“You’re crazy, mister.”
“Did it?”
“Yeah, couple. One that works and one that duddn’t. I ain’t stayin here, be goddamned if I will. He
tell how he don’t want to move back in with my mama down Mozelle, but tough titty said the kitty. I
ain’t stayin here. You smell this place?”