Soul Enchilada Excerpt

Soul Enchi­lada

Chap­ter One

The Rent Man Cometh

Most folks don’t know the exact minute that life’s going to be over. I wasn’t any dif­fer­ent. I had no idea the end was com­ing, so I didn’t real­ize when the land­lord woke me up by beat­ing on the front door of my apartment—a two-hundred-square-foot roach motel with a half bath, no phone, no cable, and no air conditioner—I only had sixty-one hours and forty-four min­utes before my soul was taken away.

“Wake up if you know what’s good for you,” the land­lord hollered in a thick peck­er­wood accent, repeat­edly ring­ing the door­bell. “Rent’s due!”

“Mr. Payne?” I groaned, and rolled off the couch, which I’d col­lapsed into at three A.M.

I stum­bled across the apart­ment, shak­ing my dreads out and wish­ing to hell I hadn’t slept in my work clothes, which were now more wrin­kled than my Aun­tie Pearl’s rear end.

I opened the door a crack. Light flooded into my eyes, half-blinding me, and I blinked at Mr. Payne like a groggy Gila mon­ster. “You know what time it is?”

“Yes ma’am, Miss Smoot, I sure do. It’s rent time.” He stuck a yel­lowed, liver-spotted hand inside and started grop­ing around. “You’re five days late, Eunice, for the third month in a row. Ow!”

“Sorry,” I said, because I’d leaned on the door, pinch­ing his wrist in the crack. But I didn’t give an inch.

Mr. Payne had pipe-cleaner wrists, a head shaped like a sapote fruit, and a long shank of hair he swirled over his bald spot like a hairy soft-serve ice cream. He was always get­ting in the ten­ants’ busi­ness, espe­cially mine.

Speak­ing of busi­ness, it was time to go to work. I had just an hour till I was sup­posed to clock in.

“Rent!” Mr. Payne said, try­ing to yank his hand free.

“Uh.” Did he think bul­ly­ing me was going to make a stack of Ben­jamins mag­i­cally pop into my wallet?

“Uh. Uh. Uh,” he said, mock­ing me. “Cat got your tongue, young’un? Cat got your rent? You sure ain’t got it, I can tell that much.”

If I had the rent, I would’ve already paid him and gone back to bed. “Like I done told you—”

“Talk is cheap.”

So was he. “Like I done told you,” I repeated, “my boss, Vin­nie, he don’t pay us but every two weeks, so I’ll get you the money tomor­row, a’ight?”

“Tomor­row, tomor­row, tomor­row. That’s what you peo­ple always say.”

No, he didn’t. He did not just go there. “You peo­ple? You peo­ple? Now lis­ten here, Mr. Payne.”

Then he said some­thing about me being so cranky all the time and why couldn’t girls like me learn to go along to get along. Girls like what? I wanted to ask him. Poor girls who wear dreads and sec­ond­hand Baby Phats from the Good­will? Mixed-race girls with hazel eyes and good hair, a pinch over five feet, with double-pierced lobes, who want some­thing more out of life than somebody’s prej­u­dice or pity? All my life, folks had been look­ing at me side­ways, espe­cially when I was with my mama. The Tejanos didn’t accept me because I was black. Black folks didn’t accept me because I was a Tejana. There was a nasty name both groups called girls like me—coyote. They could all kiss my ass because I didn’t need them to tell me who I was.

“Mr. Payne,” I said, “you best move your bony hand before you have to ‘go along’ with­out it.”

He yanked his arm out of the crack, and I took the chance to slam the door with all my weight—one hun­dred and two pounds sop­ping wet.

“Rent, Eunice. By five p.m. today. Or I’m start­ing eviction.”

Evic­tion? That sent a shiver down my spine. I couldn’t lose this apart­ment. It was the only thing between me and a card­board box beneath an over­pass on the Trans-Mountain Highway.

“What. Ever,” I said through the door, which was as thin as Mr. P’s comb-over.

“Tell that to the sheriff’s deputy,” he yelled, “after he chucks your belong­ings out on the street.” His slip­pers made a shuf­fling sound on the stoop, and I let out a ner­vous breath, thank­ful he was gone.

I lived in mor­tal fear of land­lords. Before Papa C died, me and him moved to a dif­fer­ent place every six months, each worse than the one before. This apart­ment was the crap­pi­est place I had ever lived, but I had promised myself when I moved in, there wouldn’t be no evic­tion notices nailed to my door. Which gave me less than six hours to get the man his money.

I pinched my bot­tom lip. Other than sell­ing my body, which ain’t ever going to hap­pen, there was no way I’d ever come up with that much cash so fast.

Bam! Bam!

I jumped back from the door, a hand over my thump­ing heart. He wasn’t serv­ing me notice already, was he? Bug, girl, I told myself, you been way too jumpy lately. Best calm down. All he wants is the rent money, and you’re get­ting paid, right? “What you want now?” I said through the door.

“Get that junker of yours cleaned up pronto before I call a tow truck to haul it off as a pub­lic nuisance.”

My car? My clas­sic 1958 Cadil­lac Biar­ritz? Wasn’t no tow truck ever touch­ing it. Over my dead body. “What hap­pened to my ride? And don’t you be call­ing it no junker.”

I swung the door open, slipped past Mr. Payne, and jogged around the cor­ner of the build­ing. My stu­dio apart­ment was the last unit on a long row house. The build­ing was yellow-brown brick with a flat roof and sag­ging awnings over the con­crete stoops. There were lit­tle patches of dirt yards in front, and a crum­bling side­walk. My unit had a long dri­ve­way with a car­port awning, which is where I had parked my ride last night at three A.M., right next to the No Park­ing sign.

I stopped mid-step, and my mouth dropped open. Some­body, some ass­hole, had egged my car.

Soul Enchi­lada. Copy­right © by David Macin­nis Gill . Reprinted by per­mis­sion of Harper­Collins Pub­lish­ers, Inc. All rights reserved. Avail­able now wher­ever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Soul Enchi­lada by David Macin­nis Gill
All rights reserved by the orig­i­nal copy­right own­ers. Excerpts are pro­vided for dis­play pur­poses only and may not be repro­duced, reprinted or dis­trib­uted with­out the writ­ten per­mis­sion of the publisher.