Your mother’s boyfriend, Ronny James, brought the bike home a few years ago, back when he was still around. You had to call him by his full name, Ronny James, or he got upset, asked if you’d like to be called Marky Mark instead of Marcus, to which you shook your head slowly, kicking at pebbles you tracked into the kitchen from outside. His eyes followed you up and down, from your untied shoes to the spotty fade your mother gave you on the back porch, even in the winter, when she moved the clippers fast, precise, and etched the hair off your head with untrained hands. Ronny James took a drink, spilled drops from the bottle dancing through the thick stubble of his neck, soaking into the hair on his chest.
You remember the way Ronny James brought it in, grunting as he climbed three flights of stairs, curses singing softly under his breath, brown flakes from the rusted chain trailing him into the entrance of your apartment, which you shared with your mother.
“What is that?” your mother said, taking another drag from her cigarette.
“I got a bike for Marky Mark,” he said. He never stopped calling you that even though you said you didn’t like it. Every time the words passed Ronny James’s nicotine-stained lips, you gripped your waistband, hoping your pants didn’t fall to your ankles, revealing your own cotton briefs, which were not nearly as crisp and white as Mark Wahlberg’s.
She studied the bike, smoke curling from parsed lips. “It’s only got one wheel,” she finally said, gripping the collar of her robe at her chest. You all three looked at the bike, silent, as if none of you noticed its front wheel was missing until that moment.
“True,” Ronny James said, “but I can fix it. Marky needs a bike. We’ll get it fixed up, and I’ll teach him how to ride.”
Your mother nodded slowly, lifting her eyebrows as if wishing you both good luck with an impossible task leading to certain failure.
You didn’t care if it was impossible. You didn’t care if your mother didn’t believe the bike would be fixed, much less that you would learn to ride it. You didn’t even care that you had to complete this very important life milestone with Ronny James who, at this point, was spending less and less time with you or your mother. By now, just under a year since your mother started bringing him around, he barely left the bedroom. Your mother didn’t cut his hair on the back porch anymore. It was now bushy, matted in places and wild in others. He came out of the bedroom occasionally to raid the fridge or go to the liquor store. He always returned quickly, brown paper and clanging glass gripped in his palm.
Your mother started spending a lot of nights on the couch.
But you forgot about all of it as you looked at the bike, its back wheel high and front resting on the fork. It was a mountain bike with large shocks, deep chips in the paint running across the top tube. The reflectors were all broken, pedals filthy and cracked, and Ronny James licked his lips, a slight vibration running from his hand to his shoulder as he opened a bottle of malt liquor. Your mother looked at him, hatred in her eyes. You stared at the bike as they faded into the background, grasping your waistband, because nothing—not even a washed-up white rapper who everyone knew couldn’t rap or act worth a shit—could ruin a moment like this.
Ronny James swung his hips when he walked, invisible Hula-Hoop spinning like a metronome rhythm that felt almost mechanical. He pushed it out like he meant to, and he did mean to, because your mother went to visit her aunt in Philadelphia, leaving you home alone with Ronny James. He was suspicious of her trip from the beginning.
He said he didn’t need your mother or you, by extension, and he implied, in no subtle terms, that “your mother is in Philly doing God knows what with a bunch of mid-Atlantic trash.” With his feelings hurt, he started to give other women in the neighborhood attention.
Ms. Wilson, who owned the greystone two doors down, played along. Ronny
James rolled out of bed around noon. He had a few drinks before taking a shower and combing his hair, which was not unheard of but had become less and less frequent the last few months. He layered thick pomade over the tangled mess, two fingerfuls at a time. It dripped greasy from his long nails, landing on the bathroom linoleum, pooling like leaked oil in the gutter. He buttoned up a white shirt that had faint yellow stains under the arms. He left the two top buttons undone, a presentation of chest hair engulfing a gold chain that desperately needed to be polished. You knew this chain to be your mother’s, a gift given to her right before you were born from the aunt she went to visit in Philadelphia.
You followed Ronny James out the door of your apartment, down the flights of stairs, to the sidewalk, where your one-wheeled bike had been chained to a signpost for weeks with no attention. You came out daily to inspect it, hovering around the bike in hopes Ronny James would make good on his promise to fix it up, replace the front wheel, and teach you to ride. You pretended to fiddle with the chain as you watched Ronny James stroll down the block, slowing in front of Ms. Wilson’s Greystone, where she watered her plants in a flowing floral dress.
Ronny James swaggered, the rolled sleeves of his shirt hanging loosely, untucked back flapping in the wind. Ms. Wilson turned when she sensed someone approaching. You were too far to hear what she was saying, but she obliged him, smiling, laughter flowing with the wind as she tucked long salt-and-pepper hair behind her ear. Before you knew it, Ronny James was following her up the stairs of the greystone. He made eye contact with you, squinting, wiping the sweat from his forehead. For a moment, he hesitated, and you thought he may come back to you, talk about the bike or just take you back upstairs and you’d sit in front of the TV with the fans running, but you heard Ms. Wilson’s voice—muffled and just out of reach for you to hear, like the Peanuts teacher—and in a moment, he was gone.
You told him you didn’t think this was a good idea. Not because you thought your mother would be upset. You remembered the look in her eyes as she rolled her suitcase across cracked cement to the taxi, one wheel squeaking, and sat in the back seat, staring straight ahead, the car rolling away soft and slow. Watching your mother stare, face straight forward, not a glance in either of your directions, you thought the bike would have come in handy. You could ride up along the window, and she’d look at you and smile, telling the cabbie to pull over. The door would open, and you’d slide in next to her, heading to Midway, where you’d take your first plane ride, Ronny James left to wallow in the life he’d made for himself.
No, it wasn’t your mother’s wrath you were worried about but Mr. Wilson’s, who worked long shifts at a candy company not too far from where you lived. You wouldn’t think it, and you weren’t too sure what candy they made at the plant, but whatever work he did made Mr. Wilson’s shoulders broad, forearms thick, tattoos faded and crawling along thick muscle. He wore a mustache that your mother said reminded her of Magnum P.I.
You told this to Ronny James in the early evening, when he came in from a long afternoon at Ms. Wilson’s while her husband was on the clock, mouth tinged red from merlot. When you told him, he looked at you as if you were speaking gibberish; the thought of Ms. Wilson’s husband never crossed his mind. He shook his head slightly, kicked off his shoes, and started toward the bedroom.
“What about dinner?” you asked him before he got down the hall.
Ronny James stopped, came back to you, and pulled a handful of items from his pocket. He gave you everything he had, still not speaking a word, slamming the bedroom door behind him.
You looked down at crumpled bills, some loose change, and a cassette. You had a little over four dollars to eat. You flipped the cassette in your palm, the cover showing a group of mostly men leaning against a car in an empty parking lot. Wahlberg was in the center, head wrapped in a bandana. You looked at the back, and the name “Wildside” jumped out at you. You popped the cassette in the stereo, which was placed on top of the VCR above the TV. You turned the music down so you wouldn’t wake Ronny James. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, rubbing your palms over the carpet, fingering a stain you’d made after a spill—which you were terrified of when it happened but no one ever seemed to notice—the music started to flow.
When “Wildside” finally came on, you walked to the window. You heard Mark Wahlberg rapping about pom-poms and cheerleaders, Ronny James snoring from the bedroom, and saw your bike still lopsided, leaning against the post. You wondered how much worse this was going to get.
When you woke up the next morning, Ronny James was already in the kitchen. You heard metal clashing together in the kitchen, replacing the sounds of glass bottles or ice in a cup, and when you went out to check on him, to see what the sound was, he had a set of tools spread across the kitchen table, periodically knocking together on the table. He scanned them meticulously, index finger moving across the rows, as if counting.
Your stomach began to swell with excitement. Today was the day, you thought. Today was the day Ronny James would fix the bike, before there was anything with Ms. Wilson or the crack of a bottle. Ronny James looked at you, red still clinging to his mouth like faded lipstick. He put his hands behind him, on his lower back, grunting and letting out deep cracks. He threw the tools in his bag and made his way to the door.
You followed Ronny James down the stairs, out into the summer sun. He walked along the sidewalk, turned toward Ms. Wilson’s Greystone, and didn’t give the bike a glance.
“Hey!” you called to him, and he turned around, squinting at you, confused, as if you were a stranger on the street.
“You said you were going to fix it,” you said, pointing to the bike. “You said you’d replace the wheel and teach me how to ride.” You were angry, fists clenched, and felt tears beginning to well in your eyes. You didn’t think you could hold them in much longer.
Ronny James let out a sigh, shoulders slumping, and slowly made his way back.
“Okay, okay,” he said, palms out in a gesture of peace. He knelt to the bike, inspecting its rust, poking at the crankshaft. He opened his tool bag and began to tighten the back wheel, adjusting the seat to what he assumed was your height. He gave it a quick once-over with a can of WD40, taking a rag from his tool bag and running it over the chain. Much of the rust went with the oil. He told you to pick up the back section of the bike, and with the back wheel in the air, Ronny James spun the pedals with his hand. You could hear it all gliding smoothly.
“Drop it,” Ronny James said, and you dropped the back wheel to the dirt. “That’s about all I can do with it now.”
“Over here,” Ms. Wilson called from her front porch, where she stood in a floral dress. She smiled white teeth and waved to Ronny James, her salt-and-pepper hair flowing in the breeze.
“I have to go do some work for Ms. Wilson,” Ronny James said.
“What about the front wheel?”
“For now,” Ronny James said, dark black cracks between his teeth, “I guess you’re going to need to pop a wheelie,” and he turned and walked to Ms. Wilson’s porch.
You looked at the bike, which was halfway functional, and then back to Ronny James, who was walking through Ms. Wilson’s front door, and you realized that the face you were making looked just like your mother.
That night, the cicadas sang in the distance, and Ronny James was late. He’d been coming back later and drunker from Ms. Wilson’s house. You thought he was pushing his luck. With your mother’s flight landing in the morning, you just hoped he’d be here when she came home.
You sat in the living room, artificial laughter of a studio audience flowing from the speakers. At first, you weren’t sure if the noise was from the television or the window, but it grew louder, banging and groaning, the sound of a wounded animal, scratching and clawing outside the door. You turned up the television, static laughter drowning out whatever was in the hall. But it kept scratching, groaning, louder and louder, and you eventually went to the door to check the peephole. You saw Ronny James in a pile on the stairs, laying with his head on the top step, his work boots scratched against the old wood. He let out a groan.
You opened the door, expecting to see a passed-out Ronny James. What you didn’t expect was the amount of blood that dripped from his ears. You did not expect his eyes to be swollen shut or his head the size of a pumpkin. His lips were still red, but it didn’t look like merlot.
Ronny James groaned, mumbling that he couldn’t see because of his swollen eyes. You ran to the kitchen to get him a glass of water. He sipped it briefly, and you helped him up. He was dragging one foot behind him down the hall. He mumbled something over and over, and you thought he was saying that he loved your mother.
When you helped him into bed, you knew the sheets would be stained with blood, and you thought of the stain on the carpet, hoping no one would notice this either.
The entire room now smelled of blood and liquor and piss, and Ronny James was still mumbling. You leaned in close, right next to his lips, as he went in and out of consciousness.
He whispered, “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
There was only one small bottle of malt liquor in the fridge. It glimmered and poured yellow under the bulb, and you thought Ronny James would be up soon, and he would be down the block to the corner store to pick up more. You hoped he woke up, had a couple before your mother got home, and you’d see that big smile he always gave after the first couple drinks in the morning, because if he didn’t, there was no telling what may happen when she saw his face, what her reaction would be, or what kind of scene they’d make if both of them were sober.
Ronny James slept the entire morning, and you didn’t dare wake him. You popped the Marky Mark cassette in the stereo and played it on repeat all day.
When your mother came home, she gave you a hug and asked what you two had been up to while she was gone. You shrugged your shoulders, eyes on the floor. She squinted. “Where’s Ronny James?”
You pointed back to the bedroom. She looked at the clock on the VCR. Her face wrinkled, and she stomped down the hall. You braced yourself for the type of spectacle only your mother could make, and the fear of it all—the culmination of the entire week—sat heavy in your stomach. But there was nothing. Minutes went by, and there was only silence. Your mother walked back into the living room, pale. “Why don’t you go outside, Marcus,” she said, her voice low and cool.
You stood outside by your bike, unlocked it with the key that Ronny James gave you. You lifted the back, spun the pedals, and listened to clicks from the hub as the wheel spun.
It was about an hour before Ronny James stumbled down the stairs, tools in one hand and a black garbage bag filled with his things over his shoulder. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips, eyes swollen almost shut, but apparently he could see enough through the slits to make his way down the sidewalk. He walked past Ms. Wilson’s greystone, where the married couple sat on their porch. Both of their eyes were locked on Ronny James as he passed, his swollen head bobbing, face toward the sidewalk.
You watched as he walked away, scraping his boots against the cement, foot still dragging. You pulled the bike into the middle of the street, swinging a leg over the frame, “Wildside” softly playing from your living room window. You grabbed the handlebars and placed your foot on the pedal, but it slipped and the fork crashed in the street. You pulled it up again, placed your right foot back on the pedal, and popped the front up. You pushed a few feet on just the back wheel before the fork fell again, louder this time. Ronny James still didn’t look at you. You grabbed the handlebars, adjusted your foot on the pedal, and just as the song’s chorus hit, you pulled up, balancing your weight right on the seat, the perfect height Ronny James had adjusted it to. You pedaled and pedaled, swerving, holding the handlebars as tight as you could until you caught up with Ronny James, the front fork of the bike high in the air, your feet spinning.
He would not look at you with his swollen face as you rode alongside him. He would not look up from his boots and the sidewalk, the cracked cement. But you knew it. You could feel it. At that moment, he was proud.
***
Artwork by Stacey Knipe
