Team Seven by Marcus Burke

Author:Marcus Burke [Burke, Marcus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780385537797
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2014-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Ruby mushes me in the chest. She’s dangling the keys to the station wagon in my face. She’s in her bathrobe, silk scarf wrapped tight.

“I called Mr. Watson and told him Andre won’t be needing a ride to the tournament today. You will be taking him to his games this morning!” I clear my throat and wipe the sleep out of my eye. “What!” she says. “Act like you got something better to do.”

“Relax, I’ll take him.” I cough.

“Yeah, you will. You’re lucky your daughter is the one who found your sorry behind slumped against that basement door last night.” She sucks her teeth and walks over to the dresser. I smell the grease burning off the curling iron heating up next to her makeup tray and it’s turning my stomach. Her dress is hanging from the door. She drops her robe and she’s developed a little back fat, but, damn, she still looks good.

It’s always this way between us. We deserve each other. She’ll never leave me and I’ll never let her ass go. We ain’t right, but she’s my bottom bitch and we’re something and that’s all anyone ever needs—something.

A car outside beeps its horn twice and Ruby turns electric, patting over her face in the mirror, putting on her panty hose. She’s wearing a black lace bra and panty set and she’s got one of her gold necklaces on too.

“Where you going?” I ask her.

“Out.”

“Where out?”

She sucks her teeth and shrugs her shoulders.

“Eddy, don’t ask me no damn questions. It’s a women’s group at church. Roland’s taking me. The real question is where the hell you been the last four months—that’s the real question.”

“Out,” I answer her.

“Eddy, you’re insulting. You know that? I hope you run them streets smoking that stuff until your head pops off or someone pops you.”

She got her shit together and turned super Christian all of a sudden a couple years back. Roland’s supposedly one of her Christian brothers. He’s a fucking whitewashed Uncle-Tom-ass nigga if you ask me. He lives next door with his soon-to-be wife and stepdaughter. He likes to slick-eye me from afar and look down his camel nose at me. One of them dark, pretty, slim-waist niggas that makes white folks feel comfortable. Graduated college, uses SAT words, got big teeth.

I don’t like him meddling in my garden when I’m away, but Ruby allows it. Andre thinks the motherfucker’s cool. And I don’t like the way he likes to hug up and grin in Nina’s face neither. I been away a bit, but I know what I know. Andre’s standing in the doorway with his gym bag.

“Andre, where’s the game?”

“East Boston High School.”

He doesn’t even make eye contact with me and walks out. He’s always been her kid. First fucking word was “Mama.” Ruby trained it into him just to spite me. What the hell was I supposed to do with a kid that calls his daddy “Mama” everywhere we go? Wherever the time goes, it’s gone, ’cause he’s about my height, it seems, and the kid’s got a chest that looks like two couch cushions.

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