CHAPTER THIRTY
Just outside the basketball cage at Roosevelt Park, an opportunistic huckster was planted on a cooler of water, holding up a sweaty plastic bottle.
"Ice is melting," the huckster hollered "Get your water while it's still cold. 20 dollars, folks!"
Staring down the icy refreshment, Rube sat on the stairs of the caretakers' shelter across from the courts in disbelief, a tiny baby girl, dressed all in pink, bouncing on his knee.
"Twenty motherfucking bones. Shit is usury," he said under his breath.
It was just too damn roasting hot, mixed with the jagged edge of post-blunt burnout, it was a real agro combination. He was ready to start drinking, throwing down hot beats, or at the very least loaf in front of the TV with some AC blasting. Damn blackout was played out.
"I ain’t doing this no more Nastassia."
The child's mama, Nastassia Arias, pushed the short burgundy colored braids out her eyes. The ankle length A&D dress she was sporting did nothing to mitigate the toxic disapproval plastered on her face.
"Like shit you ain't," Nastassia said whipping back to face him on the step above her own.
"Na. Na," Rube said. "I'm not doing this no more. I'm not babysitting no more." His foot gyrated madly, turbo bouncing the tot so she wouldn't start wailing again.
Nastassia shook her head, making it clear shit was about to gets hostile, "It's not babysittin' WHEN IT'S YOUR KID!"
She had a point, but Rube still didn't appreciate the way a couple of courtside sluts were sizing him up like he was some kind of Mama bicho.
"Na, this is babysitting. I ain't doing it. Shit is over."
And aside from that, it felt like every time Rube snatched the little nena up, her head rammed into a dresser, or she started balling cause Rube called out across the avenue and her tiny eardrums were all stunned or some shit. Not to mention the titty-milk puke everywhichway, her stank ass nappies, the swimming pool o' drool on her clothes. Too much.
"Ruben you are so stupid. Besides, what the hell else you gonna do? Ain't no electricity in the entire city."
"I got plenty to do," Rube objected. "Gonna be running this neighborhood soon. My man Axlerod's got big plans."
"Ain't nothin' but a gang-banger fantasy. You keep this shit up, all you'll be runnin' is garbage detail at Riker's." Nastassia's voice was rising now. The sluts were laughing, playing like they weren't talking some shit about Rube on the other side the fence.
"Think you're a big man? Your baby girl’s being raised by my mama. Food, clothing, education? We're eating your damn pizza every meal. One pretty dress don't cut it. My moms sold her flatscreen; what are you good for, Ruben?"
"Yo, don't sweat it, I told you, I set you up Stass."
Nastassia rolled her blue eyes, her inch lashes fluttering, reaching a hand underneath the stroller.
"Just give her the damn bottle and shut your face."
Rube accepted the bottle, popping off the top as he looked back at the tiny gurgling inconvenience in his lap--wondering for the hundred millionth time why he couldn't have just used a damn poon balloon when he had the chance.
Chisulo and Alile played a heated game of tag outside the tenement, ducking and weaving through the overheated pedestrians, hiding behind parked cars, wheeling around signposts. Laughing hysterically as he came within inches of his sister's outstretched arm, Chisulo peeled off and rammed through the glassless front door of A&D Dress Co.
Alile bust in after him, sweeping past Dwyer's broom as she did her best to gather glass from the broken window.
"Careful!" Dwyer yelled out, surprising herself with how much she sounded like her own mother.
Stella timidly followed the children into the shop, stepping carefully past Dwyer.
"Sorry."
Dwyer wasn't sure what to make of the invasion, "We're not really open."
Reaching Alile and Chisulo, Stella struggled to keep the kids wrangled, but Chisulo squirmed away. Alile ran her hands over all the dresses on the wall.
"Much too expensive, Alile. Do not touch that." Stella admonished the teen in Chichewa.
Alile disregarded Stella, grabbing each dress she fancied and holding it to her body to check herself out in the mirror.
Althea was perched on a stool behind the glass display case looking through the empty cash register, which she and Dwyer had wrestled back onto the counter. A half eaten takeout cheeseburger sat in styrofoam nearby. A young shop girl in her early twenties--a Xerox copy of her elder counterparts--lazed in a chair behind the counter, distracted by her phone. Althea took a sip from her soda watching her incongruous visitor.
Chisulo stared up at Althea with his huge eyes while keeping his distance. He smiled a toothy grin, but then quickly returned to a cautious stare.
"Give him a French fry," Dwyer said.
"I feel like I'm the animal in the zoo, here." Althea said. "He should be feedin' me a peanut."
Stella hesitantly approached the sales ladies and Chisulo, who inched ever closer to the checkout. Stella wrapped an arm in front of the boy's chest. Then spoke quietly in her broken English, "Come. We must go so that I can prepare your lunch."
"You speak some English?" Althea said, smiling but kindly, "Can I ask you a question? About your country. Malawi, right?"
Stella froze, she was suddenly feeling self-aware and therefore rather out of place in the designer boutique.
"A question. Yes. I am sorry."
"Is it real different over there?" Althea asked.
"In Malawi? My home place?"
"Is your life the same here?"
Stella wasn't sure where to begin. Of course it was different, but she didn't want to be rude or disparaging about the West. So much of the simple beauty of life was missing here. All of these people seeking and searching, but rarely finding, it seemed to her. The poverty she'd known as a child was certainly far from a blessing, but something as simple as sitting in the fields after the first rainy season downpour and watching termites hatch and fly to the sky. The perfect balance of nature visible to the naked eye. Uncomplicated, delightful and ever-present. This place of concrete and computers, big dreams and gruesome nightmares, was jam packed with humanity, but somehow felt so entirely lifeless to her.
"Yes. The Same. I am tending to the children. The laundry. I prepare the food for my Mr. Muluzi's and his big wife."
Dwyer turned her head sideways, trying to understand. "He brought you here, like as a babysitter?"
"But also Ndusen, he would miss the warmth of his beloved one," Stella tried to explain. "His bed at night. His little wife."
The sales ladies eyes grew wide, even the young shop girl set aside her phone.
Althea was almost afraid to ask, but she couldn't resist, "What's his little wife?"
"I am his little wife." Stella said.
They leaned forward in their seats.
"Y'all Mormons or something?" Althea quipped.
The other gals snickered.
Stella wasn't sure if the remark was at her expense or not, until Althea smiled reassuringly, then turned to the other ladies. "I knew there had to be someone in this neighborhood with a more distorted approach to women than Dorian."
Above the shop, Mioko, drowned her conflicted feelings with a stiff shot from a newly purchased fifth of Jameson. She would be the latest judge of Dorian’s distorted approach to the fairer sex, as she climbed the sweltering tenement stairs towards his apartment, unable to ignore her anticipation.
If you missed the first three chapters of Dwelling the Novel, here is the table of contents:
BEHIND THE KEYBOARD
I wrote the bulk of this chapter long before the #metoo movement kicked in, and I'm thrilled that western society is finally having a reckoning on the subject. I don't want to say much beyond that on the subject, because I mostly think it's time for men to shut up and listen.
Yours In The Chain,
Doug Karr
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife 
DWELLING BLOCKCHAIN COPYRIGHT © DOUG KARR, 2018
I am a Brooklyn based writer, film & commercial director, and crypto-enthusiast, my projects include @HardFork-series an upcoming narrative crypto-noir and my novel Dwelling will soon be premiering exclusively on Steemit, and you can check out more of my work at dougkarr.com, piefacepictures.com, and www.imdb.com/name/nm1512347
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10% of all profits from Dwelling will be donated to Amnesty International.
