Tenement Love

Tenement Love(Owen Douglas) Tenement Love

Sunday morning, two weeks before Christmas, the pealing bells, and the city buses, brought Jelly awake. He rubbed his eyes, inhaled the odour of overcrowding, and checked on his sleeping mates from the little light coming through the holes in the shuttered window and the cracks around the door. Everybody slept all of his seven brothers. Jelly was hungry and though they all chased the same morsel he loved his brothers and not because they have so many things in common (always hungry, having the same mother, and none of them knowing a father). He pulled up on his elbows. Poppa Jesus, such a hard-on and again he forgot to wash his feet. The dirty marks on the white washed wall stuck out like his boney ribs. His ma was bound to wring his neck. Under his breath, he swore, slipped from the bed, crept to the screen, and peered through a hole at his ma. Lord, he thought, she alone and naked and looked as smooth and as round as the single light bulb hanging above her bed. Little wonder, in the tenement yard, the men grinned and called her Fatty Boom-Boom. He was afraid to wake her up. So creeping to the door, slowly turning the key, he fled.
Jelly kicked the mangy dogs and took over the single step that led to their rented room. Across from him, the Williams and their two children sat down to breakfast. Etta, the cousin they brought from the country, cut hard-dough bread and slapped on chunks of butter. So rich, Jelly thought, and he spat a mouthful into the sand at his feet and groaned. Mrs. Williams raised her eyes, whispered to her husband, and jerked her chin in Jelly’s direction. Jelly smiled and swallowed another mouthful of spit. Mr. Williams, the rich man with his government job, dropped the paper from in front of his face and onto his table. He came to his feet, removed his glasses, dumped them on top of his papers, and walked to the edge of his rented veranda and near to where the smiling Jelly sat. He jammed his hands in the pockets of his robe and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. His big belly peeped out as if he was with child.
“What you are doing there, boy?”
Jelly smiled. “A sit me just a sit, Sir.”
He wrinkled his black forehead into furrows; he grimaced and jabbed a finger at Jelly. “You bother me missus. Get your arse outa there!”
Jelly swallowed and bit down on his lips. The only person he feared was his ma, not Williams who was so proud of his job, which he had to attend to under the cover of dark and with his face hidden. Etta, although he was fourteen and she eighteen, was his woman. She showed him everything a man was supposed to know and it started from he was twelve. He loved her, sweet Jesus, how he loved her. Now she raised her head, cocked an eye, and frowned. Mrs. Williams was sexy and when her husband was out at nights cleaning out the pit toilets, she was not averse to Jelly dancing with her and rubbing up against her when they played the single Bob Marley song repeatedly. Jelly loved her too, especially those times when Etta slipped away and Mrs. Williams forgot that it was him Jelly and she called him big man and held his iron and groaned, and he found out she wore no underpants. Lord such a delicious woman and the lessons she taught him. How he loved them both!
Jelly smiled, pulled at his earlobe, and studied him. “I not move.”
“Move before me kicks your arse!”
“A lie you a lie, sir.”
“But listen to the old boy.”
“Old boy, is that you call me? Me not no old boy, me is high school boy and me have government scholarship.”
He spun around, looked at his wife, and waved his hands in front of his face. “You hear how the dirty boy dissing me? You would a think say me and the boy sharing something private.”
“I not dissing you, you the one threaten me and call me names.”
Meanwhile the door behind where Jelly sat opened. Jelly came to his feet. All six feet two inches of him stood next to the fence that separated the tenement yards, and he dug his toes in the sand and stared up at his mother’s face.
She ignored him, waddled down the steps, and waved at the Williams. “Good morning!” Again, she waved. “Mr. Williams, the boy giving you trouble?”
Mr. Williams nodded and gave a look as if he ate something sour. ``Yes, Fatty…`` All me do was ask the man to move, and him bring fight to me.``
Fatty stretched her hands out and cracked her knuckles. Her eyes widened as she eyed Jelly and furled her lips into two brown slabs of liver.
Jelly dug his toes some more into the sand and watched her from beneath his brow.
``Make me tell you one thing, `` she said. ``You not go and disrespect Mr. Williams.``
“Whose side you on, Fatty?``
“Boy, mind you mouth!”
“Careful what you say, Fatty.”
As she rubbed her hands together, Fatty stared at him. “I’m not chasing you. Soon you come to dinner or to bed.”
“I is a man and I a go take me scholarship money and go.” He punched his chest. “No body lay a finger on this carcass anymore!”
Mrs. Williams came from her seat and walked to where Jelly stood. She held onto him, reached up, and pinched his chin. “You want to up and leave you brothers and you ma?” She pinched his chin again, swept her tongue against her full lips, and winked at him.
Jelly stared at his brothers crowding the doorway. “No I don’t want to leave Ma or my brothers.”
She smiled at him. “Wonderful. Come have breakfast with us. Mr. Williams is leaving to visit his brother in the country.” She winked and stared at his bulge. “Later I treat you good,” she whispered.
Her naked skin showed through her torn dress and from her hips and all the way down. He swallowed to still the rage below his waist.
Jelly followed her and as he stepped upon the veranda, he reached his hand out and looked down at Mr. Williams face. “I’m sorry, Mr. Williams. I got carried away, Sir.”
The wife glared and the man took his hand. “No worry. I not keep malice.”