Lydia was shaking when she dug in her purse and found the number that Ray the Fourth had given her. She called him and asked to meet at Mecca University’s library. And bring what he had brought last night to the party.
A House Is Not a Home
There was a familiarity in moving to a memory that included Dante. Lydia felt remorse when she met Ray the Fourth on Mecca’s campus and went to his car. She gave him money and he discreetly handed her the small plastic bag. And then there was joy in sneaking to a bathroom in one of the buildings and waiting until the bathroom door closed and she was alone. Joy in pulling out the pipe Ray had given her and smoking the rock. Oh, the forgetting Gandee’s hands and Dante’s death! Oh, the euphoria, the smoke in her mouth! There was no rousing of Lydia’s bear, though. Her animal refused to wake in its cave.
But there was such shame after her high came down, though she was doing everything else right. She attended classes and submitted her homework. She only got high twice a day: in a campus bathroom before classes, and at night, when she closed herself in the small closet of what used to be Coco’s room.
And then everything ended. Her parents sent her baby sister to Nana’s house. They wanted to have a talk, but Lydia was counting the minutes. Ray the Fourth was supposed to meet her in front of the library at noon. He liked her and wanted her to be his girlfriend, he’d told her, and that’s why he gave her a discount for her rocks. Lydia had run out of money, and she planned on walking to the pawnshop to see if she could get some money for the opal necklace her father had given her a few years ago for her birthday. She was grateful she’d left her keepsake box in the City. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have anything to barter.
Then her mother told her Daddy was taking her to rehab, and Lydia sat up.
“No, ma’am. Uh-uh. I’m not going back there.”
The shaking, the detox hadn’t been so bad, but traveling through pain was horrible. They acted as if once you understood what was tormenting you, you could get rid of the memories. But you couldn’t. The memories always would be there, hurting you. Lydia couldn’t talk about those with no respite in sight.
She couldn’t soak herself in that again. With no promise of smoke hitting the back of her throat and the high drowning out the pain.
But Daddy told Lydia, go upstairs and pack. Get her things. He’d wait for her outside. He wasn’t playing with her. In her bedroom, she made sure to empty her keepsake box into her suitcase. She might not have another chance. They would take her things in rehab, until she finished the program, but she could get them back. She hesitated, then crept to her parents’ room. She opened her mother’s jewelry box and pulled out two heavy gold bracelets that her mother never wore, except at holiday dinners. She didn’t have a plan. She just knew she would find a way out of rehab. She couldn’t stay there again. That’s what she told herself. But in the car, Lydia learned, her father had lied to her mother, but he wouldn’t lie to Lydia. The insurance wouldn’t pay for more rehab, and her parents had run through half their savings. He was taking Lydia someplace else, and telling Mama her daughter had run away. Lydia would have a roof and food and he’d buy her a bus pass every month. He was doing this because he was her daddy. It was his job to protect her, but he had to protect his wife as well.
“You can’t come back to this house, Lydia. I can’t see your mama’s heart broken, not again. I’m not giving you money, either. Whatever shit you want to smoke, you get on your own. I’m giving your car to Coco.”
As they drove to the other side of the City, Lydia recognized the streets. They’d lived in this neighborhood when she’d been a little girl. Her father pulled up to an apartment building. He got out and headed toward a handsome, dark man who rose from the stoop. The man kept her daddy from falling as he began to sob.
*
When it was pitch black, when no one could see, Lydia took the bus from her new neighborhood to the places where she would find her rocks. When her father first moved her into the apartment, she had called Ray the Fourth, and taken the bus to Mecca’s campus. She’d pawned some of her keepsakes, but he had stopped wanting her money. He wanted something else, and she just wanted to smoke in peace.
She didn’t want to buy the rocks in her own neighborhood. Zulu Harris was watching her. He knocked on her door to check on her and didn’t want anything more than that: Lydia knew enough about men. So she boarded a City bus, looking for sad, hollow-eyed passengers. It took her two days of riding the bus to overcome her fear, and by that time, she was sick and determined. When the sad people left the bus, she stalked them to their sources. She followed her instincts. If she got a bad feeling about a dealer, she didn’t listen to her need. She’d walk away and hop the bus again, following new tragic-faced people. Lydia brought her bounty home, hiding it behind the armoire that her father was proud to have bought at an estate sale. Rich people gave away such nice things, he’d said.