The Residue Years by Mitchell Jackson Read Free Book Online

I’m so tired of them tossing me pennies. Mom scrounges for her compact, digs out a tube, and swipes her lips. Hey, I say. Whatever it is, whatever you need, I got you.
    More Mexicans show—a squad, and we watch the game till a fight breaks out over a foul, our cue to leave.
    We stand. I ask her if she ever thinks about the old house.
    Which house? she says.
    The
house, I say. Home.
    Mom swirls her shoe in a tiny treasure of leaves.
    But Champ we don’t own it. It’s not ours, she says. She turns to me her eyes oh so oceanic. Son, don’t get attached to what they can take away. And what can’t they take away?
    We link hands (to hell with old rules).
    But what if we did? I say, and squeeze.

Chapter 5
    You do it all once, do it all twice…
—Grace
    The department of community justice.
    Never mind the temperature, there’s always a draft in places like this, and never enough places to sit. A riot of folks pushed up against walls papered over with posters and announcements. Folks thumb pamphlets and screen papers—applications, affidavits, recc letters, pay stubs—and dash after restless kids, everyone resisting as much as they can the urge to look too much into each other. There’s a man posed by the restroom, holding a tiny cup, his feet dancing as if he couldn’t piss clean if you paid him gold bricks, and he’s who I trek past to a front desk helmed by a girl who don’t hide one bit being bothered. Wordless, she points to the sign-in and drops her head over what must be in no small way worth more of her precious, precious time.
    Thank you very much, I say, wishing I could crush her with the glint of my teeth.
    They call names. I find a speck of open space and listen for mine.
    It’s tough to find comfort here, takes but so long to know no one with sense would choose this for themselves.
    A woman calls my name—once, twice; she waits for me to rouse and sidestep bodies to where she stands. Grace Thomas.You are Grace, aren’t you? Come, she says, and hustles down the hall. She tells me her name, that she’s new to the county, that I’ve been reassigned to her load last-minute. She stops at an office that could be the office of any of them—too many papers and too little light—and takes a seat in a padded chair, and thrusts a thin manila file across the desk. This about sums it and isn’t much, she says. Can you catch me up to speed on the rest?
    Where to start? I say.
    Well, that, she says, you should know.
    She straightens her desk. You can’t help but notice she’s got her nails clipped and polished clear, wears a wedding ring sized for show. She opens my file, leafs through the top pages, leaves the folder splayed.
    Okay, Ms. Thomas, I’ve got a billion appointments, so let’s make this brief. UAs, we do them by color and yours is blue. You call in the morning. You call weekdays and weekends, and when it’s your color you come in. No excuse. Be warned as well, she says, and please don’t mistake this as an empty threat, that noncompliance carries consequence. Furthermore, you can count on house calls, she says, count on a number of unannounced visits. Now, employment, she says. Per the job search contract you’ve got sixty days to show a pay stub or we mandate job-readiness classes. Meanwhile, we’ll need to see job logs, one entry per lead, she says. And let’s not forget your substance abuse programming. For now it’s NA twice a week and a bi-monthly woman’s group, both of which require the group leader’s signature to count. Well, Ms. Thomas, that’s about it, she says. I believe that about does it for now. We shall see one another soon.
    * * *
    Daybreak the next day the hunt. You rise and search the cupboards and icebox, hoping to find food heavy enough to last the day, to spare yourself from spending the pennies you have left. You stuff yourself to a paunch and carry a day-old