Nobody Cares

The old-heads on Sheridan Avenue said that all the time. Usually while cryin’ in their fifths of Night Train. Since they ranked about as low on the neighborhood totem pole as you could get before landing on top of the dope fiends, I never really paid attention.

As I got older, I began to hear other folks sayin’ it, too. Higher-ups, from the butcher who ran numbers out the back of his shop to the cats who somehow managed to pull up in gleaming Caddys and Ninety-Eights despite not knowing one word of English.

The landlord said it whenever he’d have to hear my mother’s complaints about broken elevators and tepid water during his monthly trek to our building. The cops said it that time they came and cracked heads out in front of Manolo’s bodega. My fifth grade teacher said it to another teacher once while talkin’ about the kids in her class.

And then one day, I heard my pops say it.

Whoa.

Here was a guy who worked, I mean, bust ass like a slave so moms could cook steak every now and then. Doin’ it since he was 12. Seven to 5, six days a week, not counting the side hustles. A cabinet here, some drywall there and hands like concrete blocks. You ever been smacked with a concrete block? He lived his whole life showing how much he cared.

He said it in response to one of my usual arguments against having to take the trash all the way down to the garbage cans in the alley. I’m sayin’, it was dark as hell down there, and the lights in the stairwell never worked. What with the damn dogs always waitin’ till I was almost down the steps to start barkin’ and scarin’ the shit outta me, and the older kids cursin’ me out for false-alarmin’ ’em into puttin’ out their funny-smelling cigarettes, the place was dangerous turf.

Wasn’t fair, I said, subjecting a little kid to that kind of treatment.

“Nobody cares,” he said.

“What if something happens to me? What if one of them dogs gets loose and comes after me? You see the teeth on them dogs?”

Same answer.

“What if one of them teenagers gets really mad at me for interrupting whatever it is they do down there? Or worse, makes me do it?”

Silence.

And so it went, my argument out the window, and the trash to the alley. My father had a way of winning debates with few words—those hands spoke real loud when they needed to—but I never forgot what he said.

Not when the dogs made me jump out of my skin. Or when them teenagers chased me back up the stairs.

I didn't forget it when moms made us kids go with her that time she found pops at her friend’s apartment building on the other side of the Bronx at 2 o’clock in morning.

Or when pops started to come home from work, eat dinner without a word and go out again until we were all asleep.

And not when he used his concrete blocks to give me a hug before leaving home after he and moms argued for the last time.

Gotta give it to him, though. He talked tough, but he lived by those words. Workin’ day in, day out, and even after he left, he’d still come around, give us money, buy us stuff.

He cared. He always did. I could tell he hated to be away. But he’d never complain. Kinda like he knew better. Like bitchin’ about it wouldn’t buy any more steaks than an honest day’s hustle. And if sharp-dressin’ Cadillac cats and cops with attitude didn’t complain, he sure as hell wasn’t sittin’ low enough on the totem pole to start.


**originally published (minus modifications and updated info) a long-ass time ago, at a plantation, far, far away...**