If You Want Me to Stay Read Free Page B

and spilled out across the cab.
    â€œEat monkey, eat monkey.” Carter opened up his mouth, took a peel-and-all bite.
    â€œLet me hold one of them bananas, Cart, I’m starving,” said Tank. He laughed and laughed.
    â€œShut up now,” I told Tank. “That ain’t funny.”
    Daddy crammed the banana stem in Carter’s mouth. Carter’s face was wrinkly red. Tank’s crazy laugh sucked continuous into sobbing.
    â€œWhat’s he doing what’s he doing what’s Daddy—”
    â€œHush,” I told Tank. But he wouldn’t so I squeezed so hard he choked. I don’t know why. I guess because I knew I had to get out of the truck and stop Daddy and let me ask a question: What about those people who leave you with some sweet, ancient, set-in-their-ways, been-years-since-they-even-thought-about-children grandparents and claim they’re going to come back for you and you don’t hear jack from them for going on, what’s it been, eight or nine months? What about somebody who would drop you off one Friday at dusk and act like they’ll see you in a matter of days and then don’t even write or call or nothing? Who do they think they are? I felt Tank choking under my squeeze, looked over at Carter choking on bananas not ten feet away and I wondered why in the hell she ever named me after my daddy.
    Daddy had somehow one-handedly wrenched off his belt. He snapped the fat buckle against the porch boards. I let go of Tank and for a few seconds he was quiet, too stunned to know I’d hurt him. I was big-time wishing his silence would linger.
    Daddy had Carter up against the porch column, tightening his arms to his sides with the belt. Daddy was singing a loud tuneless something out of his head. I did not recognize it. I had not a clue about that song out of my daddy’s head.
    My lap grew warm and wet. Tank said, “He’s got somescissors,” and I looked up into Carter’s eyes, wild, trying to search out mine. I wanted to roll down the window, say,
I told you to stay in here with us,
but I could not say a word even to Tank who was crying all out of breath, “Joel Junior, Joel Junior.”
    Carter’s yellow hair, wavy down to his shoulders, turned porch boards into carpet. Daddy’s singing got louder. I did not understand note one.
    Carter’s eyes switched off. Any hope I would save him leaked right out of him. I could see it, hope sifting off the porch like cigarette smoke while I sat in warm stinking pee. Tank took to shivering. I palmed his forehead to see did he have a fever. Then he said the word “mama.” I said: “Babies say ‘mama.’” I said, “Anyway, that’s only a word.” He wailed, not like a seven-year-old, but in that desperate hilly way toddlers cry when something gets taken away from them. Blood dripped down Carter’s neck. Train’s brakes sighed and sighed as it slung right into the station. I said, “Let’s sing some Curtis, Tank. I ain’t going nowhere. I ain’t leaving on that train. It’s
been
decided, everybody knows it, I was born this way, I’m awful at love.”

TWO
    G IVE IT UP won’t y’all please for the Greatest All-Time Hits of Sweet Soul Legends. Slow jams to melt your bones, throwdowns to make you shake it. You can let your mind wander since there’s one song right after another, and besides, what is music for if not to make you remember?
    Some things I remember now that I did not yet explain:
    Tank had this Tonka toy tanker he used to pine for nights in his crib. Stuffed bears and blankets bored that boy. He clung to the bars of his cage, rattling that crib, walking it toward the middle of the room, wanting his tank. All night long he cried out for it. Used to it would have taken a graduation ceremony or an emergency room accident for me to remember his real given name which is bygod Lawrence.
    Carter dearly loved his