crack

It's 3am.

Her flavor-of-the-week boyfriend runs screaming down the stairs, bellowing, "Crackwhore! You a crackwhore! Whore!"

He slams the front door, pulling on a t-shirt, stumbling down the street laughing and mumbling. He'll be back tomorrow, or not. I've seen this before. All of the neighbors have.

Or the time she called the cops on her 12-year old son for mouthing off to her and knocking over a lamp. She wanted the cops to take him away, take him out of her hair, her greased-back, jet-black mullet. She swaggered out of her apartment, stood there with one hand on her hip and the other pointing, "He no good! He dangerous! You take him away!"

The cops didn't take him away. He's 12. With no former complaints or case history. They said as much. He sped away on his bicycle, fast, faster, fastest, too fast to count the cracks in the sidewalk, transforming absolute details to a comforting grey blur.

She's been arrested for dealing crack. More than once. Police raided the apartment. Splinters of bright wood from the front door all over the front steps. Shiny white cops in black riot gear, like attack beetles thundering up the stairs. I could hear the duck quacking the entire time. Oh yes. They have a white duck. In a cage. I saw it once through their open window, flapping and dropping white feathers. White as blow.

The mother and son also recently acquired a pitbull puppy, female, white with fresh pink lips, jumbly-stumbly as she tumbles down the front steps to pee on the cement.

I haven't heard the duck lately. I haven't seen the son lately either. Every day I hear screaming, muffled shouting, and then silence. Every day. I see lots of different men coming in and out of the building late at night or early in the morning. I see the white, unmarked truck that stops in the street, and the driver who runs a parcel up to whoever is keeping watch.

I see her hurrying down the sidewalk sometimes, white tennis shoes and flowerprint dresses, seemingly incongruent with her tight mullet and severe expression. Well maybe the geometry of my perceptions is fucked up, did I ever think of that? Because as white as the cops, the puppy, the duck, the truck, her shoes, so am I. And she is not.

I only see what I see, but I don't know. Know her. I don't even know her real name. I know what people call her, but that's never the same.