Fiction

The Hairbrush

Vernard Kennedy

Calvin Cumberland swaggered up the brick steps to Maureen’s apartment with the positive test results from the lab in one pocket of his yellow slacks. A hairbrush pressed against his thigh in the other. He watched an honor student talking on the pavement below. The warm bright sunshine glistened on the brown skin of the young man who was Calvin's pride.

He tugged at the lapels of his plum jacket, patted his S curl, checked his alligator shoes, and knocked on the screen door.

“Come in.” Maureen yelled in her Jamaican accent.

The small, airy apartment was dim and cool. Maureen sat on the couch against the wall with her younger son beside her. Frustration lingered on her face. She tugged at the dread locks that were tied at the back of her head. Her plump breasts jiggled in the skimpy halter-top.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” she said. By that, Calvin knew she meant that in all the twenty-plus years he had visited her at her places of residence, rarely had he ever returned to her in two days, unannounced and before midnight.

“I want to talk to you,” Calvin said, excitedly.

Maureen paused, her face expressionless. She regarded Calvin suspiciously.

Because she'd been afraid and refused him a month ago, he suspected what had immediately come to her mind. She was running through the implications of the young man outside being his and not John’s, the man who had helped raise him. But assuming it was impossible for Calvin to know that he was the father, she exhaled and let her shoulders fall.

Pow! The three-year-old who had been sitting curiously staring at Calvin hauled off and punched his mother in the chest. Maureen looked at Calvin with embarrassment as she hugged the boy to her. He shrieked and squirmed on his knees. “Let me go. Let me go, bitch.”

“I’m gonna tell your father,” Maureen warned. “Butch is coming tomorrow.”

“I don’t care, bitch!”

Calvin watched the disgusting gremlin wrestle himself free and run to the back room. He felt sorry that Maureen had to deal with Butch's monster.

“Maureen, I know we talked about this,” Calvin said in his sweetest most charming manner.

“Calvin,” she shook her head and waved a dismissive hand. “It’s too late. That boy outside's grown up now. I ain’t gonna mess up his head. He thinks John’s his father. Besides, you know what John would do to me? The only reason I told you that you might be his father in the first place was in case he got sick and needed a blood transfusion or something. It’s too late for a paternity...What’s this?”

She reached up and accepted the paper he'd taken from his back pocket.

While Maureen read, Calvin looked out the bay window next to the front door. It don’t matter what she thinks or what happens to her. I got a right to know. It ain’t my fault she got herself in this mess, he thought. With that, Calvin absolved himself.

He could barely contain his excitement at his luck. Last week he had been depressed about how his irresponsibility, including disavowing this young man six years ago when Maureen suggested the young man might be his, yielded nothing. Today, not only was Calvin Cumberland green eyed and pretty, he was also brilliant. He had produced the genius mind standing out there on the pavement. Accepted by Harvard! The Nuclear Science Program! How had Calvin Cumberland become so fortunate?

“One hundred thirty-two hair samples. Same DNA. Positive match with Type O Blood,” Maureen read aloud. She looked up at Calvin.

He watched the range of emotion on her face. First she realized that what she read referred to their situation. Then she realized what he, too, had not known before—that paternity was now also determined using a strand of a person’s hair. Her eyes watered. When her face scrunched up as she tried to determine how he had gotten such strands, Calvin pulled out the hairbrush that two days ago, he had swiped from beside the young man’s gym bag on the kitchen table and held it before her.

“Calvin.” Maureen blurted out in a gush of emotion. “Calvin.”

The screen door squeaked open and Calvin turned to see a tall, dark young man come in. The unsuspecting genius went to a mirror, patted his face, then brushed his waves down hard on all sides.

Calvin leaned over Maureen’s stunned face and whispered, “Oh, he got a new brush.”

“No,” she said. “He’s had that tan brush for years.”

Just then the three-year-old stormed out from the back room. “Brush! Brush!” he yelled, knocking things over. “Where’s my brush, bitch?” he said to his mother before throwing a heavy object at her.

“I told you to stop saying that,” she yelled as she straightened back up after ducking.

Calvin stood there in the middle of the floor, dazed.