The Sweetest Things

In the hood, on good, clear days, when it wasn’t too hot outside, groups of pretty girls would put on shorts and lotion their legs, and take leisurely walks through the neighborhood together, just to pass the time; driving young boys insane with the discovery of themselves. On some days, not as often, but with their own quiet regularity, the two men would take that same walk.

Zeus had come to recognize them, even before they were close enough to be seen clearly. At eighteen, he was a tall, skinny artist, with a thin mustache, sprouting goatee and skin the color of ground coffee. He had taken art classes his whole life. Perhaps it was the sculptor in him. Perhaps it was the shy painter. But even from all the way down the street, he recognized something in the two figures that was too perfect, too delicate in the carriage of their heads, the tilt of their chins.

The day of the concert, they came down Georgia street, and the young sculptor saw them even before they could be seen.

Each of them wore very tight, cut off denim shorts: Tommy [the shortest] wore blue denim; Michael, black. Their slender shaved legs glistened in the soft, evening sunlight. Each wore a t-shirt with a knot tied around the waist and the neck cut a few inches down the middle to show off their hopeful cleavage. Tommy, brown skin, with specks of red and yellow, wore his hair in an afro that he adorned with a daisy or two when they went out. Michael wore his long black hair straightened, laying gently on the flawless dark black skin. Pretty little birds.

Zeus’s mother, Tonya, adored them. All the women did, even the church women who claimed they would spend a thousand lifetimes in hell, for not falling to their knees, and begging God’s forgiveness for the crime of breathing. Some of the men laughed and pointed, but Zeus’s step-father, Greg, shorter than Zeus, but thick around the arms and chest, would grab his beer, fold the armchair. Without a word, Greg would gather his belongings and go quietly into the house, retreating from the very sight of them.

They were known as The Girls, but they insisted on their original names. Men, they said, just more beautiful than the rest. And they were. Everyone knew The Girls. They lived in a white house on Tangier street that Tommy had inherited when his mother died years ago. The house had barely any grass in the front yard because of the shade cast by the big pear tree.

The Girls sold the most special pear custard pie: so light, the pears cooked so tenderly, that the memory of it was like a song. The pear cobbler was double layered. It was like two smaller cobblers stacked on top of each other: there was the sweet, crunchy crust on top, and another in the middle.

Everybody came by that white house on Tangier street for the pies, the cobbler: even the spiteful men. The women knocked on the door, smiled, greeting The Girls like girlfriends. Hugs. Kisses. They’d walk inside, happy to accept the offer of a cold beer; pass the time, share a laugh.

But the men spoke quietly and briefly. Gimme two pies. Y’all got any fresh made cobbler? Got change? Their visits were not hateful, but fearful; not of The Girls, but of what might be whispered by the other men if someone thought they had stayed too long or chatted too much or laughed too loudly. But even these men, too old to be victims of peer pressure, would praise The Girls for the brilliance of what they could do with a simple pear.

Zeus and his friends, Sam and Big Rahim, got fresh haircuts the day of the concert. Rahim had dreads, so he just got an edge up. They smoked the weed in Rahim’s old Honda Civic, windows rolled down. The concert was going to be in an area of Houston called Montrose. The neighborhood might be described as southern bohemian. Bars. Nightclubs. Straight. Gay.

There was one place in Montrose that had been there forever, before Zeus was even born. #’s was known for having concerts with acts that were not big enough to fill a basketball or football stadium, but were often better than many who could.

Two underground hip hop groups from New York were performing that night. The three high school seniors smoked, and drank in the car, because none of them was old enough to get the wristband that would allow them to drink in the bar. They got blasted, then had a blast, and rapped along to the songs like they were actually in the group. Danced until they’d sweated through their t-shirts. Screamed for the encore. Flirted with the girls. Pounded fists with the guys on stage.

Outside, after the show, after the girls, after the other boys from school had talked and bragged and smoked and drank; everyone started back to those places, blocks away, where they had found parking; those places where they had carefully checked for signs hidden behind trees, that said they would be towed if they parked there on a day that ended with the letter “Y,” or if you parked there between the hours of 12am and 12pm.

The fight they came upon, if it could be called that, had already gone on long enough for there to be blood. Four guys: angry, bigger, older. Three with short, neatly cut brown hair, one blonde. Two smaller, skinny black guys: tight jeans, pretty little blouses torn to shreds; the blooms and petals of fresh daisies laying in a pool of blood.

The Girls were already down. Their limbs jerking wildly as the four men kicked them. Zeus and his friends stood there in the small crowd. Someone had called the police, and Zeus listened for sirens, but there was only the cracking of bone, the dislodging of teeth. The boys had grown up in the hood; they had been in fights. But they stood watching, like strangers. They were as motionless and as silent as statues.

The four men took off running before the police came, disappearing into the night, more tired than afraid; and nobody followed or tried stopping them. When the single police car finally pulled up, there were no sirens, only lights. Blood was everywhere. The Girls were silent. Still. Broken wings. They laid in the street, as limp as blood-soaked rags, until the ambulance came, taking them away like stray dogs who had wandered onto the freeway.

On the way home, the boys smoked the last of the weed, talked; excusing themselves for what they hadn’t done. Told each other that if it had been one of them, it would’ve been different. They would have fought. They were friends.

But Zeus was sick to his stomach; his eyes blinded with the memory of what he had watched, not just seen. Every scream echoed in his ears. They couldn’t turn the music up loud enough to silence it. It chewed him up. It swallowed him.

Six days later, Tommy came home. Michael never did. He moved to New Orleans. He had family there. Tommy walked with a cane then. They said he probably always would.

Zeus walked over to Tangier street, in the hot sun, not long after Tommy came home from the hospital. He stopped by the old white house, with yellow trim around the windows and doors, and the short chain link fence surrounding the front yard. The pear tree was as big as ever, blocking the sun. Rotten pears had fallen to the ground. Of those that had not yet fallen, there were big, soft, brown spots on their skins. Flesh wounds. Festering sores.

On the left side of the yard, beyond the shadow of the great pear tree, the dark, blue-green St. Augustine grass stolons laid out in the sun like bathing beauties. And up near the porch, where Zeus stepped softly as he climbed the four cracked concrete steps, on his way up to the opened front door and the creaking screen door--the daisies were overgrown.

He knocked on the screen door, and it rattled. Tommy yelled for whoever it was to come in. Still, Zeus called out his name before entering. The house had old hardwood floors that had lost their polish long ago. The furnishings were still Tommy’s dead mother’s. He had changed little.

“I ain’t got no pies, no cobbler.” Tommy said from his mother’s couch.

“Yeah, I know. I was just coming to… just stopping by for a minute.” Zeus walked around the small living room, quiet, inside of himself, picking up an old ashtray then sitting it back down on the glass top of the coffee table, a candle stick holder, examining a figurine from the mother’s collection. Then he saw the picture of them together, Tommy and Michael, sitting next to the one of Tommy’s mother, upon the mantel that had no fireplace beneath it. Smiling, but not posing. They were the kinds of smiles that were simply expressions of joy.

“You ain’t never been in this house before?”

“When I was little. When your mama was living. When she used to bake the pies.” Eyes downcast, hands in pockets.

“Yeah,” Tommy breathed, exhaling the pain of her loss. Most of the swelling was gone, but as he spoke, Zeus noticed the teeth that were missing from the side of his smile.

“You know my whole family turned their backs on me because of who I was. But not Mama. She loved me. When my uncle George called me a fag at Thanksgiving dinner one year, and my own brothers laughed; Mama pulled me in the bathroom, hugged me tight, and told me she was going to leave me this whole house when she died. After she was gone, Michael was all I had.”

He squeezed the handle of the dark wooden cane, holding onto it like a tree branch that might keep him from falling. Zeus could see the veins on the back of Tommy’s hand slithering like worms. He thought how sad it was that he had known this man his entire life, and had never once stopped by just to see how he was doing. Never really talked to him. Never shared a laugh. They were currently in the middle of the longest conversation they had ever had. He had avoided him as if he had something contagious that might be caught if you came too close.

“I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry.”

“You’re just a kid; it’s not your fault the world is, the way it is.”

Zeus thought of all the jokes people had told about Tommy and Michael over the years. He had always laughed, even when they were not funny. He’d been afraid of what might’ve been said if he didn’t.

He thought of all the men who had driven to that white house under the cover of darkness; lovers who never stayed the night, afraid of what sunlight does to secrets.

The tears surprised Zeus. His own, not Tommy’s. Tommy seemed like he had spent his whole life crying. He was small, bruised inside, like he had never known a day of real happiness. Only a little more or a little less sorrow than the day before.

But Zeus didn’t wipe his own tears away. His hands felt wet, stained with Tommy’s blood. He had nothing to offer him. Nothing that might be given to help this human being, that all of them had abused in their own ways. He couldn’t imagine the pain that Tommy must’ve endured over the years. He only knew his own pains, his own struggles. So, he sat down beside him on the old couch, put his arm around Tommy, and the two of them, who had never even shaken hands before, cried together.