Kush for Squares

MY FIRST encounter with the drug was on an uptown train leaving 125th street in Harlem. Just as the doors began to close, two lanky men wearing basketball shorts leapt onto the train and took over the seats on either side of me. They spread their legs so widely apart you’d think they were giving lessons on childbirth.

I watched with amusement as they spoke loudly and without discretion, tossing their heads back and stomping their feet as they exchanged crude jokes. And then one of them pulled out cigarette paper and sprinkled some of the stuff onto it. He rolled it thinly, licking it from side to side and moaned as his tongue wet the paper.

“That’s dat sticky icky,” said the other.

“Mmhmm. Got this from my boy. Shit is guaranteed to fuck-you-up!”

After he rolled the joint he passed it to his friend who was holding a lighter. They both licked their lips in anticipation like children looking through an oven glass at a pan of freshly baked cookies.

It had an earthy smell to it, heavy and dense, and I could almost taste it in my mouth. And then my mouth started to water and so did my eyes because I was imagining what it would be like to take a hit.

One of the men, the one who rolled the joint, tipped his chin in my direction. The other followed his gaze. I was leaning against the train pole and suddenly feeling light-headed.

“My man,” said the joint roller, “You good?”

I perked up, “Yeah, I’m good,” I said.

They laughed. I laughed. Then they both stood up because the train was approaching their stop. The joint roller playfully punched me in the shoulder, “Stay blunted,” he said before ducking through the train doors and stepping onto the platform.

----

MY DESIRE to obtain marijuana has led to several failed attempts all due to my inability to appear casual. For instance, I was walking through my neighborhood when I ran into an old classmate from high school, Max B., a respected drug dealer who was too successful to smoke his own product. He instantly recognized me the second we made eye contact and walked over and greeted me warmly. We both graduated from Saint Mark’s Academy two years ago and since then Max B. decided to continue dealing while taking business classes at the local community college.

“I’m fittin’ to be the next Frank Lucas. Peep this?” he said, pulling up his sleeve to show me his watch. I noted the time.

“No fool, this is an Audemars Piguet. $30,000, fam.”

I pretended to understand. The watch looked pretty ordinary to me.

He pulled his sleeve back down and smiled proudly. We stood shoulder to shoulder. Max B. rarely made prolonged eye contact. Rather, he had a detached way of holding a conversation as if there was someone he was looking out for.

“Anyway, how you man? You good?”

I nodded.

“Haven’t seen you since graduation. Where do you go to school again?”

“Princeton,” I said, plainly.

He produced a descending whistle. “Shit! That’s great man. You like a fucken genius, right?”

I shrugged.

Max B. took a moment to size me up like a farmer would of a draft horse or a pair of oxen; only he did it with his eyes in a quick and unobtrusive gesture. “Let me hook you up? What you need?” he said, rubbing his palms together.

I hesitated. Although I’d seen Max deal drugs out of the boy’s bathroom and on the quad during homeroom, it had always been from a distance. Now, he was standing right beside me, legs shoulder width apart, in the cocky stance of a person who regularly defied the law. He didn’t seem to sense my growing nervousness.

“I got dat White Widow, Purple Haze, 4 Way. But you look like a OG Kush typah dude.” He then went off on a tangent explaining all the different strains he had, some with funny names like “Acapulco Platinum Haze,” and “Orangutan Ganja”. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to impress me or scare me away. He just went on and on, and the more he spoke the more frustrated I became.

“Damn it, don’t you have anything regular!?”

Max B. fell silent, completely stunned, “Regular?”

“Yeah, like generic. Normal.”

He crinkled his nose, “Man, I thought you smoked?”

“I do, I did,” I lied. “It’s just been awhile.”

He shook his head apologetically. “Oh, ok, cool.” Then he reached his hand into his breast pocket and nearly drew it back out but stopped himself, “How much you got on you?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet. Max B. elbowed me in the ribs so hard I nearly fell to my knees.

“Go into the store across the street and count your money.”

I did. When I came back Max B. was in a different spot, nearly a block away from where we had been standing before. I had a hundred dollars folded inside of a fist, a very tight and sweaty fist.

“Alright, I’m gonna pretend like I’m leaving, then I’ll shake both your hands, you pass it to me with your left, me with my right.”

I nodded my head, but my knees were already beginning to tremble. I was so jittery I had to tense my muscles to still myself. Max B. began to move away, “Peace out,” he said, bringing both his hands forward to shake mine. I extended my arms, feeling a shock of electricity running through the tips of my fingers. Max B. tried to unfold my hands, but they were both locked tight. He looked up at me blankly, confused, and almost hurt.

“Come on, be quick,” he said.

I froze. The baggy he tried to pass off to me fell on the ground and popped open. It was a dense green clump covered in white crystals and laced with fine purple and orange hairs. Max pushed my hands away, grabbed the baggy, stuffed it back in his jacket, and took off without a word.

I immediately gasped, realizing that I’d been holding my breath the entire time.

----

I DIDN’T REVISIT that moment until a year later during the summer prior to my senior year of college. It was around that time that my mother’s health began to fail. She would wake up and prepare to go to work only to return home a few hours later, nauseous and dizzy. She would complain of numbness in her arms. So I’d sit her down at the kitchen table and massage her arms or rub them with ice cubes.

She said that she’d seen a doctor, but when I asked her what the doctor said was wrong she simply sighed and said that she’d go “When the Lord was willing.”

For weeks I pressed my mother to speak on what was ailing her. She was in denial about it, and as the summer vacation drew to a close I began to question whether I should return to school. I couldn’t imagine my mother in our house all alone, cooking her meals, taking out the trash, remembering to pay bills; responsibilities which I had recently begun to take over for her.

There was an instance when she insisted on preparing dinner herself. I said that I would do it because I’d been sleeping all day and she’d just come home from work. But whatever ailed her, stubbornness must have been a symptom. So I stood back and watched as she prepared dinner, frowning at how her hands would tremble as she lifted a spoon from the pot, or how it would take her nearly a minute to set the flame on the burner. It was like watching a child.

While she was away, I searched through her purse, the glove compartment of her car, and all throughout her bedroom for a paper, a slip, some official document that would tell me what was happening to her. Eventually, I stumbled upon an old referral sheet. I called the local clinic and gave them my mother’s insurance number; the receptionist told me that my mother’s insurance had expired several months ago.

I asked the receptionist if there was a simple way to renew it, she paused for a moment.

“I recognize your voice,” she said. “I know you and your mother. You’ve been coming to our clinic since you were a baby.”

I said “Yes” that I had been going to the same clinic year after year for as long as I could remember, though recently I’d missed a few appointments. The receptionist told me that not too long ago my mother came to their offices and begged to be treated but couldn’t on account of her expired insurance and unemployment status.

I told the receptionist that I wasn’t aware of either and thanked her for her patience.

From then on, my mother stayed home, hardly ever getting out of bed except to use the toilet, as I’d assist her to and from the bathroom. I began to sit at her bedside and wonder what I’d do now that she didn’t have a job and the bills were coming in regularly. I’d already asked her for every single password or code she knew for fear that she’d forget them all.

I drove to the bank and withdrew all of the money from her accounts and used some of it to pay for utilities and food, mostly cheap dried goods that I could prepare quickly. Then I applied for a job working the night shift at the local supermarket.

During the day, I’d sit at her bedside, jacking the wireless connection from across the street to stream episodes of her favorite television shows.

“Look dear,” she’d say in her increasingly weak voice, “A new episode.” Her finger pointing to a small square on the laptop’s screen with a still from the most recently added show.

---

THE FIRST semester of senior year began without me. I took a day trip to campus and met with the college dean. When he asked me the reason for my not participating in the fall semester, I simply said that I’d finish my education at some other time, in a more sustainable way.

He looked at me oddly and wished me back in the spring though I had no intention of returning.

I sold off all the things I didn’t need; my drum kits, video games, television set, and stereo system. I moved my mother’s bed into the living room, where she’d get plenty of sunlight and could draw the shades to watch the traffic outside our apartment.

Every two hours, I’d reposition her body on the mattress to prevent bedsores. I learned magic tricks to engage her mind, though she lost more of it each day. Her personality seemed to fade like a far away voice grower fainter.

At night, I put her to sleep and drove to work. I didn’t tell anyone about my predicament; about my mother’s sickness or dropping out of school. My co-workers were ill-fated twenty-something year olds with crazy home lives and drug addicted lovers. They all smoked cigarettes during break and carried flasks in their pockets to get through their shifts.

However there was one boy, Omar, a baby faced kid who looked a bit too young to be working the night shift but blended in well with the rest of us when he needed to. During our breaks, he’d talk proudly about his older brother who worked on a marijuana farm out in California.

He’d brag about all the different strains of pot he’d tried, describing the varying tastes and highs like a true connoisseur. It reminded me of my long past encounter with Max B. and the failed attempt I’d made to buy a baggy from him. But Omar wasn’t a dealer, and despite all the incessant pleas and bribes he heard on a daily basis, the marijuana his older brother sent him from California was not for sale.

Omar and I were friendly. I think he enjoyed my company more than he did that of the others, mostly because I didn’t beg him for drugs and also because I read books that he found interesting:

“ ‘What is the What.’ Have you heard of it?”

Omar shook his head.

“Here, take it. Bring it back when you’re finished. I’ve read it already, twice.”

Omar finished books as quickly as I could get my hands on a new one. I imagined he took each book home, prepared a bowl of his brother’s special kush, and smoked his way from cover to cover.

He’d return the book the next day or after a long weekend, grinning widely and thanking me profusely. In truth, I only gave Omar the books I’d already read and saved the new ones for myself. He loved each of my recommendations. Then one day he mentioned that he’d tried his hand at writing a book of his own and wanted me to read the first chapter.

He handed me a copy of his story that he printed up at Kinkos. I read the story during the day at my mother’s bedside. It was actually quite good, and I wrote a few paragraphs of commentary on the back of the last page in red ink. Omar was so grateful he passed me a baggy of his brother’s marijuana.

Actually, he placed it in the breast pocket of my shirt after I handed him back his story. He said I was welcome to smoke with him anytime, and the baggy would be our little secret.

I remember driving home, all too aware of the bulge in my breast pocket, the smell of it rising to my nose and making my eyes water. I could taste it. I’d close my eyes and I’d dream of “getting faded”. Now was my chance, and it had cost me nothing.

The next day I bought cigarette papers from a convenience store. The dense clump of leaves fell out of the baggy and stuck to my fingers as I spread it like breadcrumbs across the thin paper. Then I rolled it up and sealed it with the tip of my tongue. I set it on the kitchen counter and looked at it for a while, unsure of what to do next. There were matches in a small draw beside the sink. I opened the book of matches and tore off two sticks.

My mother was lying in bed, starting blankly out the window, curled into a fetal position.

“Are you warm?” I asked, holding the joint in one hand and the matches in the other.

She took a moment to respond. I’d grown used to the delay as her brain struggled to keep pace with life. When she talked her words were slurred and often out of order.

I could only imagine the pain she was in, how she wrestled throughout her sleep and complained of ringing in her eyes. There was no pleasure in her life anymore, no joy, just pain all of the time.

I sat her up in bed. I lit the joint and almost suddenly her hand clasped my arm.

“No,” she said, faintly. “Lord, no.”

I told her it was ok, that’d she feel better, that it was safe. Then I lied. “It’s only tea leaves, Mom.”

She gave in because she was too weak to fight, and for the past few months that I’d become her caretaker she’d learnt to trust me like a child does a parent. She took solace in my presence.

I put the joint to her lips. She took a slow drag and exhaled. I kissed her forehead and drew the comforter up below her chin and watched her slowly disconnect from her pain. Her eyes dimmed like a burnt fuse.

Then I opened a book and read to her. And in the evening I put her to sleep and left for my night shift.

-END