Fortunate Son

When Tremont turned on the light, Thomas could see that the fat man’s eyes were half open and sightless, as Alicia’s had been.

“Mothahfuckah cut himself tryin’ to grab you, but he was so fucked up that he just did more rock. Damn. I guess you ain’t lyin’, li’l man.”

M on i que c leane d and dressed Thomas’s wounds, but the next day he had a fever. By evening he was talking out of his head.

She brought him to the emergency room with a story about them being brother and sister. He had forgotten his key and locked himself out of the apartment so he broke the window but cut himself climbing in.

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“I tried to clean it up, but then he come down with fever,”

she said.

The nurse saw her with the infant Lily in her arms and admitted Thomas without alerting social services.

The next day Thomas was weak, but Monique couldn’t keep him from going off to work.

“You gotta quit,” she told him.

“But who gonna pay for you an’ Lily?” the ten-year-old replied. “I’m the only one.”

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In the next two years Thomas got stabbed twice and badly beaten once. He’d lost the use of the baby finger of his left hand after being knifed in the arm, but that didn’t bother him much. “Baby finger don’t do much anyway,” he reasoned. He grew, but something about the damage to his hip made his limp worse. Lily was walking and talking and calling him Lucky. Monique had a job at Ralph’s Market as a checkout clerk, but she could only work part-time while Thomas stayed home in the mornings and some evenings with Lily.

They all slept in the same bed, snuggled up and warm, every night. Sometimes in the day, when Monique was working, Thomas would take Lily to the alley valley he loved so much.

He told her about Pedro and introduced her to Alicia’s tomb.

On the morning of Thomas’s twelfth birthday, he got up early to go to the toilet. When he came out, Lily giggled and said, “Look at Lucky’s peepee, Mama. It stickin’ out.”

Thomas was embarrassed. He went back into the toilet and came out wearing a towel around his slender hips.

“You want Frosted Flakes?” Monique asked Lily to stop her from laughing.

Thomas was grateful to his friend.

That evening when he got home from drug dealing, he found Monique there alone.

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“Lily spendin’ the night wit’ her grandmother,” Monique told him.

The apartment felt funny without Lily there to greet him.

But Monique said that the girl needed her grandmother and that they needed time alone sometimes.

“Come here an’ I’ma show you sumpin’,” Monique, now eighteen, said to her partner.

She made him take off his clothes and lie down on the bed.

She took off her top. When he saw her large breasts, he became excited and turned over onto his stomach to hide his stiff thing. But Monique said, “Turn back around.”

When she placed her cold hand on his erection, he giggled and sat up.

“Lay back,” she said.

Bolstering the small erection from behind with her four fingers, she began rubbing the underside with her thumb.

“Wh-what you doin’, Monique?”

“Givin’ you a birthday present.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“You know. I feel you gettin’ hard in the bed when I hug you sometimes at night.”

The boy put his hands to her wrist as if to hold her in place, and she moved her thumb lightly and fast. He came all at once and shouted, “Uh-oh!”

“It’s okay,” she said. “That’s what you supposed to do.

When you have a real girlfriend, you s’posed to do that in her coochy.”

She kept moving her thumb, using the greasy white come as a lubricant.

“That tickle,” he said, squirming now.

“It’a feel good in a minute,” she assured him. “I used to do this for Tony when I was pregnant. I’ma only do it this one 1 6 9

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time for you ’cause it’s your birthday an’ you been so good to me an’ Lily.”

Thomas came three more times. Then they lay together, his head on her naked breast. He didn’t know if he felt good or bad. He couldn’t slow his mind down, and in the middle of the night he went to the restroom and threw up. When he got back to bed he felt calmer. On his way to sleep he thought about Lily and wished that she was home with them.

The next day the bust came down on Tremont’s alley.

Police cars rolled up with their sirens blaring and their bullhorns commanding everyone to put his hands in the air.

When Tremont came out shooting his Uzi, the police opened fire. Tremont went down immediately, and even though he was the only one shooting at them, the police kept firing until there were three dead, including Chilly, and another five wounded.

Thomas was hit in the chest, another hole in his lung. He was kept in the police ward of General Hospital, unconscious and near death, for more than a month. When he regained consciousness he was still very weak. Monique came to visit him only twice because now she had to work full-time and take care of Lily too.