“You got a phone?”she asked accusingly. I stopped in my tracks.
“Yes.”
“I need it.”
I wasn’t about to say no.
She punched in a number and started pacing. No answer evidently. She hung up, dialed again. No answer. She dialed again.
“I don’t know where they are,” she said to the person on the other end. “They were supposed to be here at 8:30 and it’s 8:32 now. I told him, I told him to be here at 8:30. I’ve got to see my probation officer and then the social worker and I don’t have time to be waitin’ around.”
My heart sunk. I lived above the apartment from hell, that was the long and short of it. Emily told me that an elderly lady had died in that place. Someone found her a few days after she had passed. Maybe it was her restless spirit drawing these people into that small gaff, people who could make do with a dorm size refrigerator and a hotplate because there wasn’t room for larger appliances. The outside laundry alcove wedged its way into what would have otherwise been living space, smooshing the kitchen into oblivion. I could hear people doing laundry day and night in the single washer and dryer. My bathroom was above it. It must be hellish to live right beside it.
She was dialing again. I wanted to ask for the phone back. The need to get upstairs and use the bathroom was increasing in urgency but I wasn’t going to leave her with my phone.
“Where you at?” she barked into the receiver just as a late-model sedan pulled into the parking lot.
“Here,” she said, shoving the phone at me, and then they were off, floating down the driveway in that way that big old cars can. The driver was getting an earful.
***
It wasn’t so much a knocking on the door as a command to answer. Looking out the peep hole I saw she was staring right back at me intently. I opened the door.
“I need your phone.”
I handed it over, hoping to explain that I was almost out of minutes and could she please keep it short but she was already pounding back down the stairs. I trailed after her. When I caught up at the foot of the stairs, she was standing in front of her door, staring at it. On a piece of notebook paper she had written T A N I S H A , underlined it numerous times and taped it with copious amounts of tape to the metal door for all to see.
“The door won’t unlock,” she was saying into the phone, still staring at the door. “The key is not working and I am stuck out here using the lady upstairs’ phone to call. No…why would I know the manager’s number?” She looked at me and rolled her eyes.
“I have their number,” I said. I ran back upstairs, wrote it down so she would have it, and came back down, knowing I was going to be paying overage fees to Sprint that month. Tanisha was already on to another call.
“The door won’t unlock. No, I can’t get in through a window.” She took the paper I offered, studied it and kept talking. I sat down on the steps and stared at the dumpster.
Finally the call ended and she rang Della.
“The door won’t unlock…” Della told her to go knock on Juan’s door and see if his master key would work. I heard all this as Tanisha repeated the instructions back to her. Good. Juan could sort this out. Tanisha hung up and handed the phone back to me.
“Thank you,”she said. “If I need to use it some more I’ll come get it.”
***
Our interactions were numerous but brief. Tanisha was almost always standing in her doorway when I came home from anywhere. She was waiting for people on a regular basis it seemed. She would say hi, tell me what she was about to be doing and then go inside to get ready. That was the routine. She had a phone now but had run out of tape.
“You got some tape?” she asked. “I’m having a yard sale and I need to put up some posters. You should come. You need any silverware? I’m selling a couple of extra forks I’ve got. I don’t need six, just four.”
I did have tape, the end of a roll, so I gave it to her. Her posters were on notebook paper that she filled with writing, most of it being directions on how to get from Guadalupe Street clear across town to some address on the east side where her friend was actually having the sale. The posters were crazy in that way of someone who was really enthusiastic and has a lot of faith in people, faith that someone would totally want to drive 20 minutes to a rough part of town after reading a sign scribbled on notebook paper with the fringe from the spiral binding still attached and buy some forks. I felt myself liking Tanisha because of it.
She put three posters on the wooden fence that enclosed the parking lot and put two more on utility poles on the side street. Clear cellophane tape doesn’t stay stuck to rough wood very long. The posters were soon blowing down the sidewalk.
***
“I’m real nervous,” she said before I even had the car door closed.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I crossed the parking lot.
“I have a meeting about getting my son back. The judge is going to let him stay with me this weekend maybe. I’m real nervous about the meeting though but I’ll be ok. I’d better get ready. See ya.”
I could hear them downstairs later, that sweet, carefree sound of a child’s laughter.
***
The last time I saw Tanisha she was dressed to the nines. Her hair was curled and glossy. Her lipstick matched the crimson dress and heels she had on. I had only ever seen her in torn sweatpants and t-shirts and quickly decaying sneakers and I was envious once again of those women who can be large and gorgeous at the same time. She was transformed.
“You look fabulous,” I said admiringly as she stood in her doorway waiting. “What’s the occasion for all this glamour?”
“American Idol is having auditions. My girl and me, we’re going down and show them all how it’s done.” She was confidence personified.
“I’ve heard singing down in your place but I always thought it was the stereo,” I said. “Where do you sing here in town?”
She shifted her weight from one stiletto to the other.
“We sing in church,” she replied, looking past me to a car that was pulling in.
“Well good luck,” I said enthusiastically as she sauntered past me.
“You don’t need luck when you’ve got talent,” she answered.
***
Della was putting a lock box on Tanisha’s door when I came home from errands one afternoon a few weeks later.
“What’s happened?” I asked, setting down my giant bag of grapefruit from the market.
“Tanisha’s had to move out. She called me and said she couldn’t afford the rent here anymore. She is going to move in with a friend. We had her paying month by month to see how her probation went but she just couldn’t swing it.”
***
I guess American Idol didn’t work out. I hope something did.
No comments:
Post a Comment