
Contents
TITLE PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE HURSTON/WRIGHT FOUNDATION
NOTE FROM E. LYNN HARRIS
NOTE FROM MARITA GOLDEN
The Dew Breaker BY EDWIDGE DANTICAT
FROM Erasure BY PERCIVAL EVERETT
FROM RL's Dream BY WALTER MOSLEY
FROM The Harris Men BY R. M. JOHNSON
The Boy-Fish BY DAVID ANTHONY DURHAM
The Way I See It (FROM A Day Late and a Dollar Short) BY TERRY MCMILLAN
FROM Pride BY LORENE CARY
FROM What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day BY PEARL CLEAGE
Mourning Glo BY LORI BRYANT-WOOLRIDGE
FROM These Same Long Bones BY GWENDOLYN M. PARKER
Your Child Can Be a Model! BY DAVID HAYNES
FROM Song of the Water Saints BY NELLY ROSARIO
Miss Prissy and the Penitentiary BY YOLANDA JOE
Luminous Days BY MITCHELL JACKSON
FROM Only Twice I've Wished for Heaven BY DAWN TURNER TRICE
Sonny-Boy (FROM Pictures of a Dying Man ) BY AGYMAH KAMAU
FROM Water Marked BY HELEN ELAINE LEE
FROM October Suite BY MAXINE CLAIR
Like Trees, Walking BY RAVI HOWARD
Weight BY JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN
FROM Thieves' Paradise BY ERIC JEROME DICKEY
FROM P. G. County BY CONNIE BRISCOE
My Heavenly Father BY DANA CRUM
Lion's Blood BY STEVEN BARNES
The Knowing BY TANANARIVE DUE
Luscious (FROM Loving Donovan) BY BERNICE L. MCFADDEN
FROM Crawfish Dreams BY NANCY RAWLES
Press and Curl BY TAYARI JONES
I Don't Know Nothin' 'Bout Birthin' No Babies (FROM The River Where Blood Is Born) BY SANDRA JACKSON-OPOKU
Draggin' the Dog BY ANIKA NAILAH
Museum Guide (FROM Black Girl in Paris) BY SHAY YOUNGBLOOD
School (FROM Miss Black America) BY VERONICA CHAMBERS
Ghost Story (FROM Slapboxing with Jesus) BY VICTOR D. LAVALLE
Clarity BY DAVID WRIGHT
My Mama, Your Mama (FROM Imani All Mine) BY CONNIE PORTER
FROM Rails Under My Back BY JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN
FROM Dakota Grand BY KENJI JASPER
The Dinner Party BY E. LYNN HARRIS
Meeting Frederick (FROM Douglass's Women) BY JEWELL PARKER RHODES
Eva and Isaiah (FROM Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do) BY VALERIE WILSON WESLEY
FROM Discretion BY ELIZABETH NUNEZ
An Orange Line Train to Ballston BY EDWARD P. JONES
Lucielia Louise Turner (FROM The Women of Brewster Place) BY GLORIA NAYLOR
Fortune BY R. ERICA DOYLE
$100 and Nothing! BY J. CALIFORNIA COOPER
Are You Experienced? BY DANZY SENNA
Group Solo BY SCOTT POULSON BRYANT
Love BY BERTICE BERRY
FROM Breathing Room BY PATRICIA ELAM
Love (FROM Drop) BY MAT JOHNSON
Antiquated Desires BY CRIS BURKS
FROM Rest for the Weary BY ARTHUR FLOWERS
FROM Church Folk BY MICHELE ANDREA BOWEN
FROM Commitment BY THOMAS GLAVE
Black and Boo BY MICHAEL KAYODE
Rossonian Days BY WILLIAM HENRY LEWIS
Helter Skelter BY MARITA GOLDEN
Here BY AUDREY PETTY
Summer Comes Later BY ROBERT FLEMING
The Bulging Bag BY UNOMA N. AZUAH
FROM Sap Rising BY CHRISTINE LINCOLN
Fire: An Origin Tale BY FAITH ADIELE
Tan Son Nhut Airport, Ho Chi Minh City, 1997 (FROM The Land South of the Clouds) BY GENARO KY LY SMITH
Between Black and White BY NICOLE BAILEY-WILLIAMS
Hincty (FROM The Chosen People) BY KAREN GRIGSBY BATES
To Haiti or To Hell BY ALEXS D. PATE
Mirror Image BY AMY DU BOIS BARNETT
FROM What You Owe Me BY BEBE MOORE CAMPBELL
Will Not Be Televised BY JEWELL GOMEZ
Fear of Floating BY BRYAN GIBSON
FROM The Queen of Harlem BY BRIAN KEITH JACKSON
My Girl Mona BY CRYSTAL WILKINSON
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT PAGE
Acknowledgments
From Marita Golden:
Clyde McElvene, my friend and fellow cultural worker, without whom the Hurston/Wright Foundation would not exist.
E. Lynn Harris for the zeal, dedication, and generosity with which he has supported the Hurston/Wright Foundation and for suggesting this anthology.
Janet Hill, for her energy, intelligence, and vision; and for making this big project more fun than I suspected it could be.
From E. Lynn Harris:
Thanks to Marita Golden and Clyde McElvene for their friendship and leadership of the Hurston/Wright Foundation and for allowing me to be a part of their mission.
Janet Hill, for her leadership---and for proving to me time and time again that she is among the best editors and people in the business.
All of the writers who didn't think twice when we asked them to contribute a story for free. This couldn't have happened without you.
About the Hurston/Wright Foundation
Since 1990, the Hurston/Wright Foundation has been in the forefront of developing programs that support the national community of Black writers. The Hurston/Wright Award, the country's only national award for college writers of African descent has recognized over thirty emerging writers, six of whose books have been published by leading national imprints.
Hurston/Wright Writers' Week is the country's only multi-genre summer writers' workshop for Black writers, held on the campus of Howard University. Over five hundred writers have attended Hurston/Wright Writers' Week, and three alumni of the workshop have had books published. The Hurston/Wright Foundation also offers classes in creative writing for high school students in Washington, D.C.
The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award is a new national award for published Black writers, presented by the Hurston/Wright Foundation in partnership with Borders Books and Music. Three winners in the categories of Fiction, Debut Fiction, and Nonfiction will receive, respectively, $10,000 for the winner and $5,000 each for two finalists.
The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award is the only award to published Black writers presented by a panel of their peers, and honors the works of Black writers who represent the tradition of excellence and innovation established by Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright.
For more information on the Hurston/Wright Foundation you may visit our Web site at www.hurstonwright.org Or email us at hurstonwrightlit@aol.com. Our address is P.O. Box 77287 Washington, D.C. 20013; our phone is 301-422-0152.
Note from E. Lynn Harris
Early in my career I started supporting the Hurston Wright Foundation because I believed in their mission. The Foundation was addressing a need that was missing by providing workshops and programs for writers of color. Judging from the outstanding collection we've been able to gather in the form of Gumbo, I'm happy that other writers feel the same way and want to show the same support. Black authors are at a very critical point right now in proving to mainstream publishers that African American literature is viable not only in the sense of temporary renaissance, but now and forever.
Imprints such as Harlem Moon will give voice to those writers perfecting their craft and will allow them to share their words with many hungry readers.
Gumbo includes a broad spectrum of current writers---from those who have established popular followings, to those writing with a literary or social slant, as well as some unpublished authors who may become the stars of tomorrow. Some of you will reacquaint yourself with old friends in the form of stories you've loved that were previously published but you'll also be able to meet some new friends and be introduced to authors who have been waiting for the chance to meet you.
By buying and supporting this collection, you'll ensure that there will always be entertaining, heartfelt and poignant stories by a wide range of writers who will always tell the stories of people of color.
Thank you so much for your support.
Warmest regards,E. Lynn Harris
Note from Marita Golden
Our mission is to tell the truth at whatever cost.
I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow damned up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all.
The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation was started with $750 and a dream. The money was mine. The dream belonged to every writer, everywhere, and it was the desire for recognition, support, and community. The African American writer has, of necessity, been visionary and witness, a channel for an individual sense of story even while recognizing that for Black people in America, writing is fighting. The most important and crucial lesson I have learned from other writers about the lonely, difficult, rewarding-beyond-measure, dangerous, amazing, misunderstood endeavor we undertake is the lesson of courage. Courage not only in the face of a society and a world that often seeks to silence the complexity and beauty of the experience of African people, but courage in the face of the fear and narrow-mindedness and orthodoxy that bedevils our own community. Writing is fighting. But it is also building and loving and confirming and creating. It's a job. A lifestyle. An honorable and even sacred way of living in the world.
Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright exemplify all the contradictions, all the peaks and valleys of the writer's life. They made their lives their epitaph, and their spirits remain vivid, combustible, energizing, and inspiring, continually altering the world. The more I learn about the life of Richard Wright, every time I read or teach his autobiography, Black Boy, I am rendered nearly mute with admiration for his guts, his bravery, and the powerful things that words became when he used them. Every time I read Their Eyes Were Watching God, or just think about how Zora Neale Hurston strode through her life as though it was a gift not only for her but one she was bound to share, I know that I can face today and tomorrow. The world doesn't create many writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. The African American community in America did, and I wanted to show that to the world.
It was 1990, and I was a faculty member in the MFA Graduate Creative Writing Program at George Mason University. Like many MFA programs, ours received few applications from Black students. Nevertheless, when I founded the Hurston/Wright Foundation, naturally I hoped that some of the winners of the Hurston/Wright Award for Black college fiction writers would apply to and enroll in the program at George Mason, where the foundation was housed (in my office) for the first four years.
I was watching with enormous pride and excitement what can only be called the third major wave of literary activity after the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, and wanted to encourage emerging Black writers. I'd had a little success with a novel, Long Distance Life, and I wanted to "give back." So with $750 I underwrote the first Hurston/Wright Award. With a cadre of several other "true believers" the foundation was incorporated, and we set about changing the American literary landscape.
Because we wanted to give as much encouragement as possible, after the first year, we decided to choose three winners, not one. The support of HarperCollins, publishers of Wright and Hurston, made this possible. In addition, from the very first award, the winners were invited to receive their prize at a ceremony at which they were recognized and honored by established writers. I wanted to create a ritual, a ceremony in which young Black writers were acknowledged and embraced by their peers, their elders, their fellow writers, on behalf of the Black community and the larger society. And so Nikki Giovanni, Maxine Clair, David Bradley, Colson Whitehead, Jewell Parker Rhodes, Gloria Naylor and others have spoken words of praise and encouragement to the winners. I wanted to model encouragement of activities that still gets short shrift in many pockets of our community---reading and writing. I wanted people to believe that it is as exciting for a young person to grow up to be a writer as it is for them to grow up to be Michael Jordan, or Mary J. Blige. I wanted to say to young Black writers that there was a group of people who believed in them, who would always "have their back." The prize winners check went into their bank account, but I hope the meaning and significance, the import of the awards ceremony, went straight to their hearts.
I will never forget how my father raised me on stories of Hannibal, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Cleopatra. These stories introduced me to larger-than-life heroes and heroines and, listening to my father, I subconsciously learned the tenets of good storytelling. My mother simply told me when I was fourteen that one day I was going to write books. And because I was an obedient child, I did. My parents were my first literary mentors. When I moved to New York City in the early seventies, Sidney Offit, who taught the first fiction class I ever took; poets Audre Lorde and June Jordan; novelist Paule Marshall, all gave me the charge to continue writing and to believe in myself. To this day I remember how much their words meant to me. The belief and support of this unofficial coalition shaped my sense of what was expected of me. I was to write, to fulfill my gifts. I was also expected to pass on the sense of possibility that I had received to others.
I named the award and foundation for Hurston and Wright to bring together the spirits of two major American writers who simply couldn't stand each other's work. Wright thought that Hurston's stories of rural Black life, drenched in folklore, humor, and emotional resilience, offered up characters who were buffoonish and played into the worst White stereotypes of Black life. Hurston felt that Wright, in his blistering condemnation of American racism, created Black characters devoid of humanity, dignity, and pride.
Of course the tragedy of this particular literary spat is that only through a close and complete reading of both of these geniuses of the American South do we get a clear picture of the African American experience and how it speaks to universal humanity.
When I started the foundation, the bitter gender-based cultural battles over feminism and The Color Purple, movie and book, while past, still cast a pall over the Black writing community and echoed the ego/cultural battles of Hurston and Wright. Somehow we had survived this cultural/literary Battle of the Bulge, the kind that plagues intellectual/artistic communities.
Because of the significance of the foundation and the new award, I felt its name had to symbolize the best writing we'd created and invite Black male and female writers to "sit down together." As an inheritor of the literary legacy of Hurston and Wright, I felt myself "called" to unite them, to join their legacies and their artistic boldness. As an inheritor and protector of their legacy it was my job, to perhaps be even bolder that they had been able to be. So I linked them. A legacy is a contract that obligates the recipient to rise to meet the best that the legacy symbolizes. Hurston and Wright were not saints. But they were major literary voices of the twentieth century. They were both rebels, opinionated individualists who gloried in re-creating themselves, and who at various times during their long careers were castigated, marginalized, and rejected as often by Blacks as by Whites. Maybe they had not been able to see that they were bound inextricably by all this, but I could.
I have been a literary and cultural activist for more than thirty years. Nonetheless, the growth of the Hurston/Wright Foundation into a major literary institution, I have to admit, caught me by surprise. This development was, of course, planned, hoped for, even prayed for; yet I still don't think anyone is ever really prepared for their dreams to come true. I also was not prepared for how much the hard work and long hours of working with others to build this foundation would enrich and positively transform my life. It has been enormously gratifying to see the foundation receive the kind of wide-ranging and diverse support that has kept us not just afloat but growing. Virginia Commonwealth University provided an office, and administrative and financial support for seven years. Publishers HarperCollins, Ballantine, and Doubleday recognized the significance of our mission. The National Endowment for the Arts, visionary and major support from Borders Books and Music and many corporations have made our work possible.
The national writing community bought into the idea of the foundation and supported it from day one. One of the most satisfying aspects of the work that I do is to work with other writers and to see how many of us are dedicated to cultural work. Terry McMillan, John Grisham, Connie Briscoe, John Edgar Wideman, Gloria Naylor, and many others have made the foundation possible. And it was E. Lynn Harris, the hardest-working man in the book world and one of the most generous, who suggested this anthology and who has been extraordinarily generous with time, spirit, and treasure.
The most daunting challenge I faced in the twelve years of the foundation's growth was how to balance my need and my call to write with my need and my call to build this institution. Fortunately there were so many role models for me to follow---the philanthropy of Gwendolyn Brooks; the fierce, nation-building/nation-time work of Amiri Baraka and Toni Cade Bambara; my friends Susan Shreve and Alan Cheuse, who worked with the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and who provided helpful advice about how the build the Hurston/Wright Foundation. I looked to these writers and others and saw that it could be done. In fact, the twelve years of the Hurston/Wright Foundation have been years of consistent and satisfying creativity for me. I have been charged, energized, renewed, and inspired by this work.
Gumbo arrives at an auspicious moment. Never before have more Black writers been read by more people, not just in America but around the world. And don't believe the old frequently flaunted notion that "nobody but Blacks" read books by Black authors. Black writers are raising Cain, moving mountains, rewriting the script, redefining notions of character, story, place, literature.
Who can forget the summer of 1998, when Terry McMillan, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker were on the national bestseller lists simultaneously? Black and White folks put them there. The works of scores of living Black writers are being taught in universities and colleges across the country, despite the assault on Affirmative Action and multiculturalism. Black writers are in the canon and ain't going nowhere. Several years ago, as part of a United States Information Agency tour of Turkey, I lectured at several universities there about contemporary African American writers. The interest among students and faculty was passionate. One faculty member had shared photocopies of Their Eyes Were Watching God with her students because the book was unavailable in the country. The Turkish people loved Hurston because in her wise, enduring rural folk they saw themselves. Paule Marshall told me of a Richard Wright Society in Japan, made up of scholars devoted to a study of Wright's work. We are a community that has traditionally created stories that speak to and nourish the world, and we still are.
Never before have Black writers mastered as many genres---literary fiction, (winning major awards from Pulitzer to Nobel), commercial fiction (making major money and racking up major sales figures), extending and enlarging science fiction, mystery, detective writing, wiping out the borders that separate genre and literary fiction altogether (à la Walter Mosley). In some quarters there is much hand-wringing about the "commercialization" of Black literature. And some have even charged that popular, clearly commercial fiction by Black writers is a threat to the future of Black writing. I think the only threat to the future of Black writing is a Black community that fails to understand and rejoice in the fact that it has a story that the world cannot get enough of, a Black community that fails to honor and read its literary writers as well as its commercial writers, a Black community content to let others define its story and establish the prevailing standards by which it will be judged. A Black writer getting a six-figure contract puts more money into our community. At least that's how I do the math.
Gumbo presents an enticing overview of where we are now. Gumbo is an African-inspired dish, and an African-inspired way of speaking. The stories in this anthology will nourish you and introduce you to a hearty stew of Black writers speaking a New World African language that mixes it all up and that calls on all of our traditions and creates some new ones.
Hurston/Wright Award winners David Anthony Durham, Tayari Jones, Nelly Rosario, Ravi Howard, Erica Doyle, Faith Adiele, Genaro Ky Ly Smith, Amy DuBois Barnet, and William Henry Lewis, whose stories you will read on these pages, are all carrying on and extending the tradition established by Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. Gumbo is also filled with many other writers, some of whom you may meet for the first time in these pages, who are working in that same tradition. But for me the significance of Gumbo is that it brings together a tasty, spicy sampling of all the stories we are writing now. It resonates with the sound of our longing from whatever vantage point we live out the African American and African diasporic experience. Gumbo is a literary rent party. And like the rent parties of old, everybody here had to pay to get in. This time, however, the currency was a story. And so the narratives in Gumbo are boogying in the middle of the living room floor with an audience circling them, egging them on; they are locked in the upstairs bathroom doing the nasty; sitting on the porch plotting the future of race; in the kitchen, eating jerk chicken and black-eyed peas; on the porch falling in love. And who's here? Danzy Senna, Eric Jerome Dickey, Van Whitfield, Tananarive Due, Edward P. Jones, and a whole lot more, including some surprise guests who brought totally new jams with them. What kinda party is this? The kind we've needed to have for a long time.
If you are reading this book you are attending the party. If you bought this book you are an investor in the future of Black writing, and the stories are your immediate dividend. The strong, assured future of the Hurston/Wright Foundation, down the line, will be, in the words of the godfather of soul, "The Big Payback." But for now, come on in. Let me have your coat. If you've got to smoke you have to do it outside. The bar is over there. Food's in the den.
Richard and Zora?
They're around here somewhere. I just saw them . . .
The Dew Breaker
Anne was talking about miracles right before they reached the cemetery. She was telling her husband and daughter about a case she'd recently heard reported on a religious cable access program about a twelve-year-old Lebanese girl who cried crystal tears.
From the front passenger seat, the daughter had just blurted out "Ouch!," one of those non sequiturs Anne would rather not hear come out of her grown child's mouth, but that her daughter sometimes used as a short cut for more precise reactions to anything that was not easily comprehensible. It was either "Ouch!," "Cool," "Okay," or "Whatever," a meaningless chorus her daughter had been drawing from since she was fourteen years old.
Anne was thinking of scolding her daughter, of telling her now that she was grown up she should talk more like a woman, weigh her words carefully so that, even though she was an "artiste," others might take her seriously---but she held back, imagining her daughter's reaction to her lecture might be, "Okay, whatever, Manman, go on with your story."
Her husband, who was always useful in helping her elaborate on her miraculous tales, and who also disapproved of their daughter's sometimes limited use of language, said in Creole, "If crystal was coming out of her eyes, I would think she would be crying blood."
"That's what's extraordinary," Anne replied. "The crystal pieces were as sharp as knives, but they did not hurt her."
"How big were these pieces?" the husband asked, keeping his eyes on the road. He slowed the car down a bit as they entered the ramp leading to the Jackie Robinson Parkway.
Anne took one last look at the surrounding buildings before the car plunged into the parkway. They were lit more brightly than usual with Christmas trees, and Chanukah and Kwanzaa candles in some of the windows. Anne tried to keep these visions of illuminated pines, electric candles, and giant cardboard Santas in her mind, as they entered the parkway.
She hated driving through the parkway's curvy narrow lanes, even as a passenger, and would have never put herself through the ride, on Christmas Eve of all times, had it not been so important to her to go to her daughter's apartment in New Rochelle and convince her to attend Christmas Eve Mass with them, something the daughter was probably doing out of guilt because her mother and father had shown up at her front door. While in college, her daughter had declared herself an atheist. Between her daughter, who chose not to believe in God, and her husband, who went to the Brooklyn Museum every week to worship, it seemed, at the foot of Ancient Egyptian statues, she felt outnumbered by pagans.
Anne was just about to tell her husband and daughter that the crystal pieces that had fallen out of the Lebanese girl's eyes were as big as ten-carat diamonds---she had imagined her daughter retorting, "I bet her family wished she cried ten-carat diamonds"---and that as crystal slid out of her eyes, the girl had visions of a man on a white horse telling her he was a messenger of God, when they reached the cemetery.
Every time she passed a cemetery, Anne always held her breath. When she was a girl, Anne had gone swimming with her two-year-old brother on a beach in Jacmel and he had disappeared beneath the waves. Ever since then she'd convinced herself that her brother was walking the Earth looking for his grave, and whenever she went by a cemetery, any cemetery, she imagined him there, his tiny wet body bent over the tombstones, his ash-colored eyes surveying the letters, trying to find his name.
The cemetery was on both sides of them now, the headstones glistening in the limited light, each of them swaying, it seemed---perhaps because the car was moving so fast---like white sheets left out overnight to dry.
She held her breath the way she imagined her brother did before the weight of the sea collapsed his small lungs and he was forced to surrender to the water, sinking into a world of starfish, sea turtles, weeds, and sharks. She had gone nowhere near the sea since her brother had disappeared, her heart racing even when she happened upon images of waves on television.
Who would put a busy thoroughfare in the middle of a cemetery, she wondered, forcing the living and their noisy cars to always be trespassing on the dead? It didn't make sense, but perhaps the parkway's architects had been thinking beyond the daily needs of the living to the fact that now and then the dead might enjoy hearing sounds of life going on at high speed around them. If this were so, she thought, then why should the living be spared the dead's own signs of existence? Of shadows swaying in the breeze, of the laughter and cries of lost children, of the whispers of lovers, muffled as though in dreams.
"We're way past the cemetery now," she heard her daughter say.
Anne had closed her eyes without realizing it. Her daughter knew she reacted strangely to cemeteries but Anne had never told her why, since her daughter had concluded early in life that this, like many incomprehensible things her parents did, was connected to "some bizarre event that happened in Haiti, right?," mysterious customs the daughter had never shown the least interest in.
"I'm glad Papa doesn't have your issues with cemeteries," the daughter was saying, "otherwise we'd be in the cemetery ourselves by now."
The daughter pulled out a cigarette, which the father objected to with the wave of a hand. "When you get out of the car," he said.
"Whatever," the daughter replied, putting the loose cigarette back in its pack. She turned her face to the bare trees lining her side of the parkway and said, "Okay, Manman, tell us about another miracle."
Anne had lost her two brothers, her only siblings, one to the sea, and the other, a grown man, to her husband, who had killed him in prison. That's the miracle she wanted to tell her daughter about on this Christmas Eve night, the miracle of her daughter being alive, but once again she could think of no reason to make herself do it. What was the use of disturbing her child's peace, of inciting her husband's constant sense of guilt?
She was not an adherent to the all-revealing culture here. What harm could it do her daughter not to know any of this? About the young brother who had drowned? About the older brother, a Protestant preacher, who had been tortured to death, but not before leaving three circular bite marks on the face of the man who would soon after become her husband? So rather than entertain thoughts of sharing, or clarifying these events, for she was worried that if the daughter ever found out about them she might think her an accomplice in both deaths, she told them about another miracle.
This one concerned a twenty-one-year-old Filipino man who had seen an image of the Madonna in a white rose petal.
She thought her daughter would say "Cool" or something equally meaningless, but the daughter actually asked, "How come these people are all foreigners?"
"Because Americans don't have much faith," the father replied.
"Faith is the evidence of things unseen," Anne concurred. "Here you see everything."
"Hello?" the daughter said as if calling them from some great distance on the telephone. "Maybe people here are more practical, so if I see a woman's face in a rose, I'd think somebody drew it there. But there where people see everything, even things they're not supposed to see---or if you see it, Manman---you think it's a miracle. Here we can make miracles happen. There, in Haiti, the Philippines, or wherever, people are always looking for miracles. I don't believe in those things. Maybe if they happened in a different place, I'd believe anyway, even if they happened here, I wouldn't believe them."
"Why not?" Anne's husband asked.
"Because it's like I told you, here we could make them happen, but there, in the Philippines, or wherever, they might not have the means."
"You could use vegetable dye to paint a face on a rose petal," Anne's husband said. "You don't need technology for that. So how do you know they don't have the means?"
"Because Manman is saying it is a miracle."
Anne hated it when her daughter dissected the miracles, coming up with critiques to explain them away.
"Let me add that I don't think Americans are faithless," the daughter said. "It reads 'In God We Trust' on the money, doesn't it? Besides here we are going to this Mass thing and I know we're not the only ones doing that."
They were coming out of the Jackie Robinson Parkway and turning onto Jamaica Avenue. Anne tried to bring her thoughts back to the Mass.
When her daughter was a girl, before going to the Christmas Eve Mass, they would walk around their Brooklyn neighborhood to look at the holiday lights. Their community associations were engaged in fierce competition, awarding a prize to the block with the most nativity scenes, lawn sculptures, wreaths, and banners.
Anne, her husband, and daughter would walk or drive around to see these holiday decorations because their house had none. Each year, Anne suspected that their neighbors detested her family because their house had been the only nonornamented home on the block, had perhaps been the cause of their section only receiving an honorable mention yet again.
She and her husband had put up no decorations, fearing, irrationally perhaps, that lit ornaments and trimmings would bring too much attention to them. Instead, as they would later discover, their lack of participation made them stand out. But by then they had settled into their routine and could not bring themselves to change it.
When her daughter was still living at home the only things Anne ever did to acknowledge the season---aside from attending the Christmas Eve Mass---were to put a handful of shredded brown paper under her daughter's bed and hang a sprig of mistletoe over her bedroom doorway. The frayed paper---put there without her daughter's knowledge---was a substitute for the hay that had been part of the Baby Jesus' first bed. The mistletoe was acquired from the Christmas tree vendor who parked himself across the street from her beauty shop each year, because she'd once heard someone on a Christmas television special say that mistletoe was considered a sacred plant, one with all sorts of reconciliatory qualities. So much so that if two enemy warriors found themselves beneath it they would lay down their weapons and embrace one another.
By not offering each other or their daughter any presents at Christmas, Anne and her husband had tried to encourage her to be thankful for what she already had---family, a roof over her head---rather than count on what she would, or could, receive on Christmas morning. Their daughter had learned this lesson so well that aside from the drive from block to block to criticize the brightest houses, Christmas disinterested her.
"Look at that one!" the husband would shout, pointing to the arches of icicle lights draped over one house from top to bottom. "Can you imagine how high their electricity bill is going to be?"
"I wouldn't be able to sleep in a place like that," the daughter would say, singling out a neon holiday greeting in a living room window. "It must be as bright as daylight in there all the time."
Even now, they were doing the same thing, her husband talking about enormous light bills, and her daughter saying that an extravagantly embellished house across the street looked like "an inferno."
Even though the Mass would not begin for another fifteen minutes, the church was packed. Anne and her husband found three seats in a back row, near a young couple who were holding hands and staring ahead at the altar. Anne sat next to the woman, who acknowledged her with a nod as Anne squeezed into the pew. Their daughter was outside in the cold, smoking.
The daughter soon joined them, plopping herself down on the aisle next to her father. Anne had tried to convince her to wear a dress, or at least a skirt and a blouse, but she had insisted on wearing her paint-stained blue jeans and a lint-covered sweater.
Anne thought the church most beautiful at Christmas. The nativity scene in front of the altar had a black Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus, the altar candles casting a golden light on their mahogany faces. The sight of people greeting each other around her made her wish that she and her husband had real friends, not just acquaintances from their respective businesses, the beauty salon and barbershop. She wanted to rethink the decision she and her husband had made when they came here, not to get close to anyone who might ask too many questions about his past. The only reason they'd set up shop on Nostrand Avenue, at the center of the Haitian community, was because it was the best chance they had of finding clients. But soon after the barbershop's opening, the husband had discovered that losing eighty pounds, changing his name, and giving Jacmel, a village deep in the mountains, as his place of birth, meant no one asked any more about him. He hadn't been a famous "dew breaker," or torturer anyway, just one of hundreds who had done their job so well that their victims were never able to speak of them again.
The church grew silent as the priest walked in and bowed before the altar. It was exactly midnight. Midnight on Christmas Eve was Anne's favorite sixty seconds of the year. It was a charmed minute not just for her, she imagined, but for the entire world. It was the time when birds began chirping their all-night songs to greet the holy birth, when other animals genuflected and trees bowed in reverence. She could picture all this as though it were being projected on a giant screen in a movie theater: water in secret wells and far off rivers and streams turning into wine, bells chiming with help only from the breeze, candles, lanterns, and lamps blinking like the Star of Bethlehem, the gates of Paradise opened, so anyone who died this minute could enter without passing through Purgatory, the Virgin Mary choosing among the sleeping children of the world for some to invite to Heaven to serenade her son.
Once again she hoped the Virgin would choose her younger brother to go up to Heaven and sing with the choir of angels. Technically, as he had never been properly buried, he was not sleeping, so his spirit was somewhere out there, wandering, searching. But perhaps if he were chosen to go up to Heaven, the Holy Mother would keep him there. She hoped too that her older brother would be allowed to slip into Paradise, even if it wasn't her idea of Paradise, but his---his Protestant one---which he had always told her included spending eternity in the same crystal palace as "His Savior."
The priest was incensing the altar, the smoke rising in a perfumed cloud toward the thorn-crowned head on the golden crucifix. Her daughter chose that exact moment to mumble something to her father while pointing to someone sitting diagonally on the aisle three rows down from them.
Anne wanted to tell her daughter to be quiet, but her scolding would mean more conversation, and her daughter's murmurs were already drawing stares from those sitting nearby.
When her daughter's garbled whispers grew louder, however, Anne moved her mouth close to her husband's ear to ask, "What is the problem?"
"She thinks she sees Emmanuel Constant over there," her husband calmly replied.
Now he pointed at the man her daughter had been aiming her finger at for a while now. From her limited view of the man's profile Anne could tell he was relatively tall---even from his seated position his head stood above those around him---had dark brown skin, a short afro, a beard, and a mustache. All this was consistent with the picture a community group had printed on the WANTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE HAITIAN PEOPLE flyers that had been stapled to lampposts all along Nostrand Avenue a month before. Beneath the photograph of Constant had been a shorthand list of the crimes of which he had been accused---"torture, rape, murder of 3,000 people"---all apparently committed between 1993, when Constant had founded a militia called FRAPH, to Christmas Eve 1994, when he had arrived in the United States.
For a month now, each morning while opening up and again at night while lowering their shutters, both Anne and her husband had been casting purposefully casual glances at the flyer on the lamppost in front of their stores. But they'd never spoken about it, even when---bleached by the sun and wrinkled by the cold---it had slowly begun to fade; the letters and numbers disappearing so that the word "rape" became "ape" and the "3" vanished from "3,000," leaving a trio of zeros as the number of Constant's reported casualties.
Even before the flyer had found its way to her doorstep Anne had followed the story of Emmanuel Constant through Haitian newspapers, Creole radio, and cable access programs. Constant had created his death squad after a military coup had sent the democratically elected president of Haiti into exile. FRAPH members had sought to silence the deposed president's followers by circling neighborhoods with gasoline, setting houses on fire, and shooting fleeing residents. Anne had read about incidents of facial scalping, where FRAPH members were said to have peeled back the skin from their victims' faces so no one would be able to identify them. Constant had been tried in absentia in a Haitian court and sentenced to life in prison, a sentence he would probably never serve.
And every morning and evening as her eyes wandered to the paling flyer on the lamppost, she had had to fight a strong desire to pull it down, not out of sympathy for Constant, but out of a fear that even though her husband and Constant's reported offenses were separated by more than twenty-five years, she might arrive at her store one morning and find her husband's likeness on the lamppost rather than Constant's.
Now that her husband had whispered that name so long unspoken between them, she found herself turning to her husband's face, not the supposed Constant; the circular bite marks reminding her of the three zeros on what was left of the WANTED flyer in front of their shops.
"Could that really be him?" she whispered back to her husband.
He shrugged as someone behind them leaned over and hissed "Shush" into her ear.
The man her daughter believed to be Constant was looking straight ahead, watching the choir sing a Christmas carol. It could not be Constant, Anne decided. Why would he come to a church filled with Haitians when so many despised him? Wouldn't he be afraid for his life? Why would he want to taunt his survivors, or the friends and relatives of his victims who might recognize him?
The daughter was fuming, shifting in her seat and mumbling under her breath, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on the man's profile.
Anne was proud of her daughter, proud of her righteous anger. But what would her daughter say if she ever found out about her own father? About how he had tortured dozens, hundreds of people; how he had taunted his prisoners before they'd taken their last breaths, bullying them into card games with the false hope that they could earn back their lives from him; how he had collapsed into Anne's arms outside the prison gates, after he'd murdered, among others, her own brother; how he'd tried at first to make her think he was an escaped prisoner even when she had seen him enter the church and remove her brother from his pulpit.
Because of the political sermons he was preaching at his church, her brother knew his arrest was inevitable, so he'd prepared for it by practicing biting "6s" on the back of his hands.
"My murderer will carry the mark of the beast until the end of his days," her brother had said. "I will brand him with three sixes, even more if I can."
When her husband, then a stranger, had collapsed into her arms with those marks on his right cheek, she'd known then that her brother had succeeded. As he raced out of the prison gates, his face bleeding, she'd run toward him to make sure the marks were there. But she and he had both whispered the word "Help" to each other at the same time. And believing, as she had often been told, that people who simultaneously utter the same word are meant to die together, she quickly grabbed his hand and held it tightly, as though it were her brother's fingers between hers. Since her brother was now surely gone, she wanted to become the guardian of his killer, and of the mark her brother had left on him. It was the last thread connecting her to her brother, and she was not willing to separate from it.
At some point while she was holding his hand, he asked her to see him home.
Soon after they arrived at his apartment, on the lower floor of a two-story house nearby, he crawled onto a bare mattress on the floor and fell asleep. She watched him sleep until dawn, sitting in a corner of his bedroom, trying to think of ways to take his life.
In the morning she stumbled to an open market to buy a knife to plunge into his chest, but next to the knife vendor was a seller of the fernlike fèy wònt, the shame plant, a Mimosa pudica in a small plastic bag with soil and roots still attached.
She bought the plant and carried it back to his apartment. By then he was awake, darkened blood caked over the bite marks, which she was suddenly desperate to see again. So she got some water and scrubbed his face as he closed his eyes and grimaced. The marks were still there, three large "Os" that looked more like circles than numbers.
He noticed her mimosa and assumed she had gotten it for the tiny leaflets, which could be used to heal cuts. He looked ashamed when he reached over and touched the prickly spines and the leaves bent, then collapsed onto themselves, as though to shut him out, but the plant's miniature leaves soon opened up like a baby's fist. His face lit up; he smiled, even while groaning from the pain. He spent most of the morning tapping the leaves to watch them close, then open and close again. She noticed that whenever he smiled the bite marks shrank and disappeared into the folds of fat on his cheek, and she wished she had never bought the mimosa.
Maybe this was when she lost her mind, watching him enjoy the shame plant. Seeing her brother's teeth imprints carved into his cheek, she felt as though she could hear her brother's voice speaking to her from the wound.
"Stay with him," her brother was saying, "and hopefully you will live to see shame and regret tear at him until he takes his last breath."
So she became a different person, a woman with no past, no present, and no future. She would do whatever was necessary to realize her brother's dream.
That afternoon when he went to the national archives to get the birth certificate of one of his victims, she followed him there. She went along when he got them passports and paid for someone to immediately get them visas for New York.
A week later, when an old army friend of his met them at the airport in New York and he introduced her as his wife, she did not disagree. During sex that first night, and other nights after that, she insisted he keep the light on so she could stare at the marks which grew smaller and less defined as they healed and slowly shrank in size as he lost more and more weight. But the marks were still like a grave she could visit every day. Each time she looked at them, she felt her brother near her, his entire life reduced to his final rebellious act. When she touched or kissed them, it was as though she were holding a part of her brother that he'd left behind, just for her.
The day their daughter was born, she realized some good could come out of their union. He had insisted on naming their daughter Ka, after something having to do with Egyptian statues, which he was becoming more and more interested in.
She agreed to the name Ka as long as her daughter's middle names could be Erica and Justine, after her brothers. She regretted that even if her daughter wanted to, she'd never be able to trace her paternal lineage, because he'd taken on someone else's name and has used it ever since. Though Anne knew his real name, she preferred to call him by the assumed one and did so until it became so natural that she sometimes forgot the old one.
As her daughter grew up, she had a recurring dream of her daughter returning to Haiti after her father's death to look for his family and confronting the dead man's relatives. But she never let on she was aware he was the one who had arrested her brother, even when he told about the people he had "worked on" at the prison, describing his interrogation methods in detail.
At first, she couldn't get enough of his stories, asking him question after question. Then she led him to the narrative of his last killing, to his wrapping his bare hands around the neck of the man who had leaped at him and in quick succession gnawed the three bite marks into his face. After that story, they never spoke of prisons or torture again.
Perhaps if her daughter knew all this, she would hate both her and her husband in equal measure, like Anne did at times. Perhaps they would repulse her for months, years. But maybe she would also pity them, even deny to herself that they had ever been anything but a barber and a beautician, a husband and wife, mother and father. Maybe their daughter would teach herself to forgive them over and over again, convincing herself that loving them was giving her life more purpose than she had ever dreamed it would have.
The congregation was now getting up to walk to the front of the church to take Holy Communion.
"How lucky we are," said the priest, "that Jesus has given of his flesh for us to take into ourselves."
When her turn came, Anne got up with a handful of people from her pew, including the young couple sitting next to her, and proceeded to the altar. Uninterested and unconfessed, her husband and daughter remained behind.
Standing before the priest, Anne opened her mouth as wide as she could to accept the wafer. She then took a mouthful of wine, more than the portion she usually allowed herself. Crossing herself, she followed a line of people walking back in the other direction to their seats.
As she neared the pew where her daughter believed Constant was sitting, she stopped for a second to have a good look at him. Though he looked enough like Constant to be a relative, he was not Constant. Constant was older, fatter, almost twice the size of this man. He also had a wider forehead, bushier eyebrows, larger, more bulging eyes, a longer nose, and fuller lips.
Anne lingered at the edge of the pew, glaring down at the man until he looked up at her and smiled, appearing uncomfortable.
Someone tapped her shoulder from behind and she continued walking, her knees shaking, until she got back to her seat.
"It is not him," she whispered to her husband, who relayed the message to their daughter.
"It is not him," Anne repeated under her breath, to herself. "I knew he would have never come here."
She felt strangely relieved, as though she, her husband, and daughter had just been spared bodily arm. Her daughter, however, was still staring at the man, looking doubtful.
Anne knew at that moment that she would never attend Mass at this church, or any other Mass again. What if someone were to sit there, staring at them the same way her daughter stared at that man?
She couldn't wait for the Mass to end. They would leave the church as soon as it was over, avoiding the meetings and greetings at the end.
As they stepped out of the church, ahead of everybody else, the first thing Anne noticed was the extravagantly embellished house across the street, the one her daughter had referred to as "an inferno."
Looking over the icicle lights covering every available inch of the property and the life-size Santa, sleigh, and reindeers on the rooftop, Anne had to agree. The place did look like an inferno. But at least it was a temporary inferno, unlike their own.
FROM Erasure
My journal is a private affair, but as I cannot know the time of my coming death, and since I am not disposed, however unfortunately, to the serious consideration of self-termination, I am afraid that others will see these pages. Since however I will be dead, it should not much matter to me who sees what or when. My name is Thelonious Ellison. And I am a writer of fiction. This admission pains me only at the thought of my story being found and read, as I have always been severely put off by any story which had as its main character a writer. So, I will claim to be something else, if not instead, then in addition, and that shall be a son, a brother, a fisherman, an art lover, a woodworker. If for no other reason, I choose this last callus-building occupation because of the shame it caused my mother, who for years called my pickup truck a station wagon. I am Thelonious Ellison. Call me Monk.
I have dark brown skin, curly hair, a broad nose, some of my ancestor were slaves and I have been detained by pasty white policemen in New Hampshire, Arizona, and Georgia and so the society in which I live tells me I am black; that is my race. Though I am fairly athletic, I am no good at basketball. I listen to Mahler, Aretha Franklin, Charlie Parker, and Ry Cooder on vinyl records and compact discs. I graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, hating every minute of it. I am good at math. I cannot dance. I did not grow up in any inner city or the rural south. My family owned a bungalow near Annapolis. My grandfather was a doctor. My father was a doctor. My brother and sister were doctors.
While in college I was a member of the Black Panther Party, defunct as it was, mainly because I felt I had to prove I was black enough. Some people in the society in which I live, described as being black, tell me I am not black enough. Some people whom the society calls white tell me the same thing. I have heard this mainly about my novels, from editors who have rejected me and reviewers whom I have apparently confused and, on a couple of occasions, on a basketball court when upon missing a shot I muttered Egads. From a reviewer:
The novel is finely crafted, with fully developed characters, rich language and subtle play with the plot, but one is lost to understand what this reworking of Aeschylus' The Persians has to do with the African American experience.
One night at a party in New York, one of the tedious affairs where people who write mingle with people who want to write and with people who can help either group begin or continue to write, a tall, thin, rather ugly book agent told me that I could sell many books if I'd forget about writing retellings of Euripides and parodies of French poststructuralists and settle down to write the true, gritty, real stories of black life. I told him that I was living a black life, far blacker than he could ever know, that I had lived one, that I would be living one. He left me to chat with an on-the-rise performance artist/novelist who had recently posed for seventeen straight hours in front of the governor's mansion as a lawn jockey. He familiarly flipped one of her braided extensions and tossed a thumb back in my direction.
The hard, gritty truth of the matter is that I hardly ever think about race. Those times when I did think about it a lot I did so because of my guilt for not thinking about it. I don't believe in race. I believe there are people who will shoot me or hang me or cheat me and try to stop me because they do believe in race, because of my brown skin, curly hair, wide nose, and slave ancestors. But that's just the way it is.
Saws cut wood. They either rip with the grain or cut across it. A ripsaw will slice smoothly along the grain, but chew up the wood if it goes against the grain. It is all in the geometry of the teeth, the shape, size, and set of them, how they lean away from the blade. Crosscut teeth are typically smaller than rip teeth. The large teeth of ripsaws shave material away quickly and there are deep gaps between them which allow shavings to fall away, keeping the saw from binding. Crosscut teeth make a wider path, are raked back and beveled to points. The points allow the crosscut saw to score and cleave the grain cleanly.
I arrived in Washington to give a paper, for which I had only moderate affection, at a conference, a meeting of the Nouveau Roman Society. I decided to attend out of no great affinity for the organization or its members or its mission, but because my mother and sister still lived in D.C. and it had been three years since my last visit.
My mother had wanted to meet me at the airport, but I refused to give her my flight information. For that matter, I also did not tell her at which hotel I'd be staying. My sister did not offer to pick me up. Lisa probably didn't hate me, her younger brother, but it became fairly clear rather early in our lives, and still, that she had little use for me. I was too flighty for her, lived in a swirl of abstracts, removed from the real world. While she had struggled through medical school, I had somehow, apparently, breezed through college "without cracking a book." A falsehood, but a belief to which she held fast. While she was risking her life daily by crossing picket lines to offer poor women health care which included abortions if they wanted, I was fishing, sawing wood, or writing dense, obscure novels, or teaching a bunch of green California intellects about Russian formalism. But if she was cool to me, she was frozen to my brother, the high-rolling plastic surgeon in Scottsdale, Arizona. Bill had a wife and two kids, but we all knew he was gay. Lisa didn't dislike Bill because of his sexuality, but because he practiced medicine for no reason other than the accumulation of great wealth.
I fancied occasionally that my brother and sister were proud of me, for my books, even if they found them unreadable, boring, mere curiosities. As my brother pointed out once while my parents were extolling my greatness to some friends, "You could rub your shit on a shingle and they'd act like that." I knew this before he'd said it, but still it was rather deflating. He then added, "Not that they don't have a right to be proud." What went unsaid, but clearly implied, was that they had a right but not a reason to be proud of me. I must have cared some then, because I was angered by his words. By now however, I appreciated Bill and what he had said, though I hadn't seen him in four years.
The conference was at the Mayflower Hotel, but as I disliked meetings and had little interest in the participants of such affairs, I took a room at a little B&B off Dupont Circle called the Tabbard Inn. The most attractive feature of the place to me was the absence of a phone in the room. I checked in, unpacked and showered. I then called my sister at her clinic from the phone in the lobby.
"So, you're here," Lisa said.
I didn't point out to her how much better So, you made it might have sounded, but said, "Yep."
"Have you called Mother yet?"
"No. I figured she'd be taking her afternoon siesta about now."
Lisa grunted what sounded like an agreement. "So, shall I pick you up and we can swing by and get the old lady for dinner?"
"Okay. I'm at the Tabbard Inn."
"I know it. Be there in an hour." She hung up before I could say "Goodbye" or "I'll be ready" or "Don't bother, just go to hell." But I wouldn't have said that to Lisa. I admired her far too much and in many ways I wished I were more like her. She'd dedicated her life to helping people, but it was never clear to me that she liked them all that much. That idea of service, she got from my father, who, however wealthy his practice made him, never collected fees from half his patients.
My father's funeral had been a simple, yet huge, somewhat organic event in Northwest Washington. The street outside the Episcopal church my parents never attended was filled with people, nearly all of them teary-eyed and claiming to have been delivered into this world by the great Dr. Ellison, this in spite of most of them being clearly too young to have been born while he was still practicing. I as yet have been unable to come to an understanding or create some meaning for the spectacle.
Lisa arrived exactly one hour later. We hugged stiffly, as was our wont, and walked to the street. I got into her luxury coupe, sank into the leather and said, "Nice car."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.
"Comfortable car," I said. "Plush, well appointed, not shitty, nicer than my car. What do you think it means?"
She turned the key. "I hope you're ready."
I looked at her, watched as she slipped the automatic transmission into drive.
"Mother's a little weird these days," she said.
"She sounds okay on the phone," I said, knowing full well it was a stupid thing to say, but still my bit in all this was to allow segue from minor complaint to reports of coming doom.
"You think you'd be able to tell anything during those five minute checkins you call conversations?"
I had in fact called them just that, but I would no longer.
"She forgets things, forgets that you've told her things just minutes later."
"She an old woman."
"That's exactly what I'm telling you." Lisa slammed the heel of her palm against the horn, then lowered her window. She yelled at the driver in front of us who had stopped in a manner to her disliking, "Eat shit and die, you colon polyp!"
"You should be careful," I said. "That guy could be a nut or something."
"Fuck him," she said. "Four months ago Mother paid all her bills twice. All of them. Guess who writes the checks now." She turned her head to look at me, awaiting a response.
"You do."
"Damn right, I do. You're out in California and Pretty Boy Floyd is butchering people in Fartsdale and I'm the only one here."
"What about Lorraine?"
"Lorraine is still around. Where else is she going to be? She's still stealing little things here and there. Do you think she complained when she got paid twice? I'm being run ragged."
"I'm sorry, Lisa. It really isn't a fair setup." I didn't know what to say short of offering to move back to D.C. and in with my mother.
"She can't even remember that I'm divorced. She can recall every nauseating detail about Barry, but she can't remember that he ran off with his secretary. You'll see. First thing out of her mouth will be 'Are you and Barry pregnant yet?' Christ."
"Is there anything you want me to take care of in the house?" I asked.
"Yeah, right. You come home, fix a radiator and she'll remember that for six years. 'Monksie fixed that squeaky door. Why can't you fix anything? You'd think with all that education you could fix something.' Don't touch anything in that house." Lisa didn't reach for a pack of cigarettes, didn't make motions like she was reaching for one or lighting one, but that's exactly what she was doing. In her mind, she was holding a Bic lighter to a Marlboro and blowing out a cloud of smoke. She looked at me again. "So, how are you doing, little brother?"
"Okay, I guess."
"What are you doing in town?"
"I'm giving a paper at the Nouveau Roman Society meeting." Her silence seemed to request elaboration. "I'm working on a novel, I guess you'd call it a novel, which treats this critical text by Roland Barthes, SI/Z, exactly as it treats its so-called subject text which is Balzac's Sarrasine."
Lisa grunted something friendly enough sounding. "You know, I just can't read that stuff you write."
"Sorry."
"It's my fault, I'm sure."
"How is your practice?"
Lisa shook her head. "I hate this country. These antiabortionist creeps are out front every day, with their signs and their big potato heads. They're scary. I suppose you heard about that mess in Maryland."
I had in fact read about the sniper who shot the nurse through the clinic window. I nodded.
Lisa was tapping the steering wheel rapid fire with her index fingers. As always, my sister and her problems seemed so much larger than me and mine. And I could offer her nothing in the way of solutions, advice, or even commiseration. Even in her car, in spite of her small size and soft features, she towered over me.
"You know why I like you, Monk?" she said after a long break. "I like you because you're smart. You understand stuff I could never get and you don't even think about it. I mean, you're just one of those people." There was a note of resentment in her compliment. "I mean, Bill is a jerk, probably a good butcher, but a butcher nonetheless. He doesn't care about anything but being a good butcher and making butcher money. But you, you don't have to think about this crap, but you do." She put out her imaginary cigarette. "I just wish you'd write something I could read."
"I'll see what I can do."
I've always fished small water, brooks and streams, and little rivers. I've never been able to make it back to my car before dark. No matter how early I start, it's night when I get back. I fish this hole, then that riffle under that undercut bank, that outside bend, each spot looking sweeter and more promising than the last, until I'm miles away from where I started. When it's clear that the hour is late, then I fish my way back, each possible trout hiding place looking even more exciting than it did before, the new angle changing it, the thought that dusk will make the fish hungry nudging at me.
My mother had just awakened from her nap when we arrived at her house on Underwood, but as always she was dressed as if to go out. She wore blush in the old way, showing clearly on her light cheeks, but her age let her pull it off. She seemed shorter than ever and she hugged me somewhat less stiffly than my sister had and said, "My little Monksie is home."
I lifted her briefly from the floor, she always liked that, and kissed her cheek. I observed the expectant expression on my sister's face as the old woman turned to her.
"So, Lisa, are you and Barry pregnant yet?"
"Barry is," Lisa said. She then spoke into our mother's puzzled face. "Barry and I are divorced, Mother. The idiot ran off with another woman."
"I'm so sorry, dear." She patted Lisa's arm. "That's just life, honey. Don't worry. You'll get through it. As your father used to say, 'One way or another.' "
"Thank you, Mother."
"We're taking you out to dinner, madam," I said. "What do you think of that?"
"I think it's lovely, just lovely. Let me freshen up and grab my bag."
Lisa and I wandered around the living room while she was gone. I went to the mantel and looked at the photographs that had remained the same for fifteen years, my father posed gallantly in his uniform from the war in Korea, my mother looking more like Dorothy Dandridge than my mother, and the children, looking sweeter and cleaner than we ever were. I looked down into the fireplace. "Hey, Lisa, there are ashes in the fireplace."
"What?"
"Look. Ashes." I pointed.
The fireplace in the house had never been used. Our mother was so afraid of fire that she'd insisted on electric stoves and electric baseboard heat throughout the house. Mother came back with her bag and her face powdered.
"How did these ashes get here?" Lisa asked, sidling up to the subject in her way.
"When you burn things, you make ashes," Mother said. "You should know that, with your education."
"What was burned?"
"I promised your father I'd burn some of his papers when he died. Well, he died."
"Father died seven years ago," Lisa said.
"I know that, dear. I just finally got around to it. You know how I hate fire." Her point was a reasonable one.
"What kind of papers?" Lisa asked.
"That's none of your business," Mother said. "Why do you think your father asked me to burn them? Now, let's go to dinner."
At the door, Mother fumbled with her key in the lock, complained that the mechanism had become sticky lately. I offered to help. "Here," I said. "If you turn the key this way and then back, it turns easily."
"Monksie fixed my lock," she said.
Lisa groaned and stepped down ahead of us to her car.
Mother spoke softly to me. "I think there's a problem with Lisa and Barry."
"Yes, Mother."
"Are you married yet?" she asked. I held her arm as she walked down the porch steps.
"Not yet."
"You'd better get started. You don't want to be fifty with little kids. They'll run your tail into the ground."
My father had been considerably older than my mother. In June, when school ended, we would drive to the house in Highland Beach, Maryland, and open it for the summer. We'd open all the windows, sweep, clear cobwebs, and chase away stray cats. Then for the rest of the summer we would all remain at the beach and Father would join us on weekends. But I remember how the first cleaning always wore him out and when it came time to take a break before dinner and play softball or croquet, he would resign to a seat on the porch and watch. He would cheer Mother on when she took the bat, giving her pointers, then sitting back as if worn out by thinking about it. He had more energy in the mornings and for some reason he and I took early strolls together. We walked to the beach, out onto the pier, then back, past the Douglass house and over to the tidal creek where we'd sit and watch the crabs scurrying with the tide. Sometimes we'd take a bucket and a net and he'd coach me while I snagged a couple dozen crabs for lunch.
Once he fell to his butt in the sand and said, "Thelonious, you're a good boy."
I looked back at him from the ankle-deep water.
"You're not like your brother and sister. Of course, they're not like each other, either. But they're more alike than they're willing to admit. Anyway, you're different."
"Is that good, Father?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, as if figuring out the answer right then. He pointed to the water. "There's a nice fat one. Come at him from farther away."
I followed his instructions and scooped up the crab.
"Good boy. You have a special mind. The way you see things. If I had the patience to figure out what you were saying sometimes, I know you'd make me a smarter man."
I didn't know what he was telling me, but I understood the flattering tone and appreciated it.
"And you're so relaxed. Hang on to that trait, son. That might serve you better than anything else in life."
"Yes, Father."
"It will also prove handy for upsetting your siblings." Then he leaned back and proceeded to have a heart attack.
I ran to him. He grabbed my arm and said, "Now, stay relaxed and go get help."
That turned out to be the first of four heart attacks he would suffer before just out and shooting himself one unseasonably warm February evening while Mother was off meeting with her bridge club. His suicide apparently came as no surprise to my mother, as she called each of us, in order of age, and said the same thing: "You must come home for your father's funeral."
Dinner was typical, nothing more or less. My mother said things that made my sister roll her eyes while she smoked an entire pack of imaginary cigarettes. Mother told me about telling all her bridge buddies about my books, asking as she always did if there wasn't a better word for "fuck" than "fuck." Then my sister dropped me at my hotel and perfunctorily committed herself to lunch with me the next day.
I was scheduled to present my paper at nine the next morning, so my intention was to get to bed early and maybe sleep through it. However, when I entered my room I found a note that had been slipped under the door that told me to return a call to Linda Mallory at the Mayflower. I went to the lobby for the telephone.
"I was hoping you would come to the conference," Linda said. "The secretary in your department told me where you'd be staying."
"How are you, Linda?"
"I've been better. You know, Lars and I broke up."
"I didn't know you were together. I suppose asking who Lars is at this juncture is pointless."
"Are you tired? I mean, it's early yet and we are still on California clock, right?"
"Is that Bay area talk? California clock?" I looked at my watch. 8:20. "My paper's at nine in the morning."
"But it's only eight o'clock," she said. "That's five for us. You can't expect me to believe you're going to bed at five. I can be over in fifteen."
"No, I'll come there," I said, fearing that if I declined completely, she would show up anyway. "I'll meet you in the bar."
"There's one of those little bars in my room."
"In the bar at eight-forty-five." I hung up.
Linda Mallory and I had slept together three times; two of those time we had sex. Twice in Berkeley when I was doing some readings and once in Los Angeles when she was down doing the same. She was a tall, knock-kneed, rather shapeless-however-thin woman with a weak chin and a sharp wit, a sharp wit when men and sex weren't involved at any rate. She zeroed in on male attention like a Rottweiler on a porkchop and it became all she could see. In fact, before her ears perked to male attention she could be called attractive, dark eyes and thick hair, lean and with an easy smile. She liked to fuck, she said, but I believed she liked saying it more than doing it. She could be pushy. And she was completely without literary talent, which was both irritating and, in a weird way, refreshing. Linda had published one volume of predictably strange and stereotypically "innovative" short fictions (as she liked to call them). She'd fallen into a circle of "innovative" writers who had survived the sixties by publishing each others' stories in their periodicals and each others' books collectively, thus amassing publications, so achieving tenure at their various universities, and establishing a semblance of credibility in the so-called real world. Sadly, these people made up a good portion of the membership of the Nouveau Roman Society. They all hated me. For a couple of reasons: One was that I had published and had moderate success with a realistic novel some years earlier, and two, I made no secret, in print or radio interviews, what I thought of their work. Finally, however, I was hated because the French, whom they so adored, seemed to hold my work in high regard. To me, a mere strange footnote to my obscure and very quiet literary career. To them, a slap in the face perhaps.
Linda was already in the bar when I arrived. She wrapped me up in a hug and I remembered how much like a bicycle she had felt in bed.
"So," she said, in that way people use the word to introduce beating around the bush. "We had to come three thousand miles to see each other when we live in the same state."
"Funny how things work out."
We sat and I ordered a scotch. Linda asked for another Gibson. She played with the onion in her glass, stabbing it with the red plastic sword.
"Are you on the program?" I asked. I hadn't seen her name, but then I hadn't looked.
"I'm on a panel with Davis Gimbel, Willis Lloyd, and Lewis Rosenthal."
"What's the panel?" I asked.
"'The Place of Burroughs in American Fiction.' "
I groaned. "Sounds pleasant enough."
"I saw the title of your paper. I don't get it." She ate the onion off her sword just as our drinks arrived. "What's it about?"
"You'll hear it. I'm sick of the damn thing. It's not going to make me any friends, I'll tell you that." I looked around the bar and saw no familiar faces. "I can just feel the creepiness here."
"Why did you come then?" she complained.
"Because this way my trip is paid for." I swallowed some scotch and was sorry I hadn't requested a water back. "I'd rather admit to that than say I came here because I care about the proceedings of the NRS."
"You have a point." Linda ate her second onion. "Would you like to go up to my room?"
"Smooth," I said. "What if we don't have sex and say we did?" After an awkward spell, I said, "So, how's Berkeley?"
"It's fine. I'm up for tenure this year."
"How does it look?" I asked, knowing full well it couldn't look good for her.
"Your family's here," she said.
"My mother and sister." I finished my scotch and became painfully aware that I had nothing to say to Linda. I didn't know enough about her personal life to ask questions and I didn't want to bring up her recent breakup, so I stared into my glass.
The waitress came over and asked if I wanted another drink. I said no and gave her enough for the two Gibsons and my scotch. Linda watched my hands.
"I'd better get some rest," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"Probably."
FROM RL's Dream
Inez used to kiss him at night when she thought he was asleep.
She'd come to his corner of the big room after he'd been in bed for a while. First she'd strike a match on a piece of sandpaper that was tacked up on the wall. Then she'd puff on the pipe in little gasps until Atwater could smell the sweet smoke of her cured tobacco.
Inez came very close but he kept his eyes shut, not even making a peep, because "li'l boys s'posed t'be 'sleep when it gets dark outside---an' thas all they is to it." But he wasn't asleep. He was wide awake in his cot, fooling Inez; and that made him want to laugh and dance. But he couldn't make a sound while she was still there.
Inez hovered over him. He could feel it like you could feel the harvest moon when it was over the frail sharecroppers' huts in the Delta. And like that moon she brought sweet smells and slight breezes that tickled his skin the way Kiki did over sixty years later up on the fourth floor.
The child had ants in his hands and feet. He wanted to laugh out loud and caper to let Inez know that he was fooling her. He couldn't keep it in, but if he moved, Inez would get mad. Inez got mad when children couldn't control themselves. She wasn't like Ruby. Ruby was rounder and darker and she smiled almost all the time. Inez was sweet-smelling but Ruby smelled like bread.
Ruby didn't get mad even when Atwater kicked over the bucket of cleaned and peeled turnips, or when he threw that rock and broke Ruby's grandmother's colored window (which Ruby's mother had given her from the deathbed). Ruby never got mad. She'd just let her eyes get real big and say, "Atwater! How did we let that happen?" and then they'd get together and work hard to clean up the mess before Inez could find out.
But it was Inez who came out to check on Atwater at night after the alcohol lanterns were turned down. It was always Inez. And Atwater was always scared that he wouldn't be able to control himself and would make a peep and then Inez would be mad and he'd have bad dreams.
But, just when he knew he had to let go, Inez would take a deep draw on her pipe and blow a sweet wave of smoke over him. The ants became long dewy blades of cool grass between his fingers and toes. The moon gave way to blue sky and Atwater was rising and falling like one of the great box kites that Fitzhew made for the windy days of fall.
Atwater Wise came out of the sky and hit the ground running. Faster than the dive-bombing bumblebees and with nobody to tell him when to come in. There was chest-high yellow grass to run through and a hundred different odors of earth. There was the blood from his ankle, once, from a sharp rock hidden in the moss of Millwater Pond. There were the hilly nests of fire ants that would swarm over grasshoppers and tired dragonflies.
Cold water was good. Blood, scabbing over and sluggish, was good. Even the fire-orange specks on the shiny green eye of the dragonfly were good.
The wind through the stiff yellow grass wheezed like an old woman. Hidden in there were all kinds of birds that were named for their colors and sizes and personalities. They sang and warbled and croaked.
Crows came from the devil but they couldn't catch him. They called his name in crow words but the little boy just laughed.
His dreams were full of colors and smells and music. There, under the blanket of Inez's sweet smoke, he ran and played while she sat back---too old to have fun anymore.
And then the kiss. Warm and moist. It was only when she thought that he was asleep that Inez kissed Atwater. The loud groan of a timber and the snick of the door told the boy that Inez had gone back to the big bed with Ruby. He could open his eyes, but now he was too tired to move.
The young boy fell asleep but the old man came awake. Tears saved up from over half a century came for the death of that poor dragonfly. The red bird, the gray fat warbler---lost. Soupspoon had tears over the great herons and the train that ran right through town carrying the big bales of cotton down to the Mississippi River.
He remembered the one-eyed cat that came to the window to look into the house; looking for Inez's praying mantis like Death searching for that one soul who slipped away behind some trees and was overlooked, half forgotten.
Soupspoon remembered days and days down by the river with his little boyfriends---fishing, rafting, swimming among the catfish and carp.
He remembered the cotton fields and all the men and women lumbering off to work from the plantation barracks. Hollers and calls came from the fields even before the sun was up. But it was silence he heard at the end of the day.
"I'm way past tired to almost dead," Job Hockfoot would say. But by midnight on Saturday he was dancing full out.
A Negro didn't own too much back then, but he had the ears to hear music and the hands and mouth to make it. Washboards, washtubs, and homemade guitars. Mouth harps from the dime store and songs from deep down in the well . . .
"No, daddy," Kiki cried. Her voice was small and helpless. Soupspoon wondered if it was her nightmare that woke him. He sat up to look. The blankets were all kicked off her bed. Her naked behind was thrust up in the air because she was hunched over the pillow and some sheet.
"No."
A white woman; skinny butt stuck out at me like a ripe peach on a low branch. There was nobody left to tell. Nobody left to understand how strange it was, how scary it was. Nobody to laugh and ask, "An' then what you did?"
An' then I died, Soupspoon said to himself. There was nobody there to hear him. And even if there was---so what?
That was the blues.
He was eleven years old the first time he heard the blues. The year was 1932. It was on a Saturday and Atwater had been hanging around at a barn party. He got to stay late because Inez forgot to send him home.
It was Phil Wortham playing on a homemade four-string guitar with Tiny Hill working a squeeze-box. It wasn't like anything that Atwater had ever heard. The music made him want to move, and the words, the words were like the talk people talked every day, but he listened closer and he heard things that he never heard before.
Your heart breaking or your well running dry. Things like cake batter at the bottom of the bowl and the mist clinging to the road on summer mornings.
The music made Atwater want to dance, so he knew that it had to be good.
A good friend of the boy's---an older man named Bannon---had been killed only a week earlier. Atwater hadn't shed a tear.
People died in the Delta; they died all the time. Atwater hadn't cried, but a dark feeling came over him. He didn't know what it was until he heard Phil and Tiny play at the barn party. He didn't know that he had the blues.
That music had changed him. From then on at night, after Ruby and Inez had gone to bed, he'd go out the window and make it down to the Milky Way.
The Milky Way was a beat-up old chicken barn that had been coated with tar and dotted with yellow splotches of paint that were supposed to be stars. It was a lopsided ugly building in the daylight. But at night, when you came through Captaw Creek and around the old elm, it looked like something magic; like, Atwater thought, a hill house of God.
He was too young to go into a juke joint, but he made up his mind to try on his birthday.
And so on a summer's evening, when the sun was still out, Atwater told Ruby that he and Petey Simms were going to set nets for crayfish down at the creek. But really they meant to take the quarter that Fitzhew had given Atwater for his birthday and get two glasses of whiskey from Oja, the midget owner of the Milky Way.
Petey made it as far as the old elm---where he stopped and gawked as Atwater walked on ahead.
"Wha' wrong wichyou, Petey Simms?" Atwater asked when he turned to see that he was alone.
Petey just shook his head. He was a long-necked heavy-eyed youngster who everybody but Atwater called Turtle.
Atwater followed Petey's gaze to two women who were standing out in front of the juke. They were big women wearing loose dresses that flowed in the breezes, flaring up now and then to expose their legs. They had very big legs. Petey was looking at those women (especially, Atwater knew, at those legs) and shaking his head.
Atwater was scared too but he thought that they'd be safe as long as they stuck together.
"Come on," he said. "They ain't gonna bite you."
He said it loudly to shame his friend, but he didn't expect the women to hear.
"Hey you," one of them shouted.
Petey took off like a scared hare. Shoop! He was gone.
"Hey, boy!" the voice called out again. "You!"
One of them was coming toward him. She had a kind of rolling motion in her thighs as she walked. She waved for him to come to her while her friend stayed back near the juke, shading her eyes to see.
"Me?"
"Come here!" the woman shouted---none too kindly. She was tall and heavy-chested with hair that was combed straight back from her head.
"Come here!"
Atwater's bare feet obeyed, but he didn't want to walk down there.
"Hurry up, boy! I ain't got all night!" The big woman was smiling, one meaty fist on her hip.
"Yes, ma'am?" Atwater said when he stood before the woman.
"Elma," she said. Her smile revealed that one of her upper front teeth was gone. Another one had been broken in half. "Elma Ponce is my name. What's yours?"
"A-A-Atty . . ."
"A-A-Atty," Elma mocked the poor boy. "What you doin' out here, A-A-Atty? Yo' momma know you here?"
"Elma, what you messin' wit' this baby for?" The other woman had come up to them.
They seemed like women then, but now, on Kiki's couch, Soupspoon remembered them as teenagers---maybe eighteen. But they were women to Atty Wise. They wore the same cut of loose dress. Elma's dress was blue while her friend's was a washed-out orange.
"Jus' playin' wit'im, Theresa." Elma took Atwater by the arm. "What you doin' here, Atty?" The sweetness in her voice was not lost on him.
"My birfday," he whispered.
"What? Talk up."
"My birfday today."
Elma showed her snaggle teeth again. "Yo' birfday? An' you come down to Milky Way to get a kiss?"
"N-no . . ." Atwater said. He could feel himself shaking but couldn't stop.
"You scarin' the poor boy, Elma," Theresa laughed. "Let him be."
"I come to get a drink on my birfday day," Atwater said. He said it fast to keep Elma from getting mad. He didn't want to see her mad. "I come t'get a drink wit' my birfday quatah."
"You got a quatah?" Theresa asked. She was black-skinned and good-looking the way a handsome man looks good.
"Uh-huh. Yes, ma'am."
Elma, still holding the boy by his arm, pulled Atwater toward the door of the Milky Way. "Come on," was all she said.
The dark blue front door had a big drippy yellow circle painted in the middle. That circle was supposed to be the moon.
Elma pushed the door open, dragging Atty in behind her. Theresa followed up the rear, holding on to his pants.
Elma went up to the bar and shouted, "Oja! Bring a pint bottle ovah here!" She pointed across the dark room to a row of makeshift booths hammered together against the far wall.
"The hell I will," small fat Oja replied. He climbed up on his stool to face her. "Where you gonna come up wit' money for a pint an' not ten minutes ago you couldn't even buy no beer?"
Theresa pinched Atty's butt and giggled in his ear.
He was thankful for her closeness, because the Milky Way on the inside scared him to death. The floor was black and sticky, covered with crushed peanut shells. It smelt of sweat and sour beer. The ceiling was uneven and low; at some points a full-grown man wouldn't have been able to stand up straight.
And it was hot.
"I can't pay for it," Elma hooted. "But my boyfriend here could."
Elma yanked Atty's arm, pulling him away from Theresa and up next to her.
"Well? Pay the man, Atty," she said. "You want yo' birfday toast, don't ya?"
Atwater took the quarter from the pocket of his cutoff trousers and handed it to Elma.
"Not to me. Give it to the barman an' tell'im what you want. That's what you do when you a man."
Oja had a mashed-in black face with a long cigar stuck out between his battered lips. He was too small to work in the cotton fields, so he had to go into business for himself.
"Well?" the bartender asked.
Atty pressed his quarter into the pudgy little hand.
"Yo' a'ntees know you down here, boy?" Oja asked once the coin was in his pocket.
"Yes sir."
"You sure?" Oja had this thing he did with his eyes. He'd open one very wide and close the other until it was just a glistening slit.
"Put that eye back in yo' head, nigger," Elma warned. "He done told you that they know an' he done give you his money, too. So pull down that pint. The deep brown stuff, too."
After they collected their whiskey and tin cup, Elma pushed Atty until she had him dammed up between her and the wall in the booth. Theresa sat on the other side. She held his hand from across the table. After tasting the first drink, Elma leaned up against him, rubbing his chest and holding the cup to his lips.
"Drink, Atty. Thas it. Take some more, baby. This here will make you into a man."
His tongue and throat burned. The fumes from that homemade brew made his eyes tear and his breath come short. But what Atty felt most was Elma rubbing and pinching his chest.
"We gonna grow some hair right ovah here tonight," she whispered.
Theresa's smile was bright against black skin.
They all drank. Atwater held his breath as he watched the cup go from Theresa's lips to Elma's mouth and then to him. Their hands were all over him and they laughed more and more with the liquor.
Elma was almost on top of him. She let her arm rest in his lap.
"I think A-A-Atty like me, Theresa," she said.
Theresa reached over and grabbed Atwater by the back of his neck. She pulled on him until they were kissing across the table.
"You better let up from him, bitch," Elma said in a serious tone. "I'm the one found'im. He mine tonight."
When they weren't fighting or feeling on Atty the women talked trash. Atty learned that they lived on Peale's Slope: a little shantytown where most Negroes slept under propped-up shelters with no walls or right outside on the ground if the weather was good. Elma stayed with her old uncle up there in a small cabin. Theresa had lived with them since her boyfriend had left her.
Atwater wanted to know everything about these women. He could repeat every word of what they said, but he didn't understand it all. For years after that night he'd remember things they said and suddenly, because of something that would happen, he'd realize what they meant.
As evening came on, people began to fill up the bar. It got noisier and smokier but Atwater hardly noticed. Theresa and Elma were enough for him. When Elma would lean close he looked down between her breasts and she'd give him her shattered smile and say, "Atty? What you lookin' at?"
"How you girls doin'?" A slender man slid in on the bench next to Theresa, but he was looking Elma in the eye.
"Who you askin'?" Elma replied. She took Atty's hand and held it tight.
"You, baby. Who else I'ma be talkin' to?"
"All I know, nigger, is that you was s'posed t'be here nine days ago."
"Nigger?" The man had a baby face, but when he smiled he looked evil. Elma's hand tightened under that smile, and Atwater's heart began to race.
"I don't know what you smilin' at. Atty here took me out for a drink, so he my boyfriend tonight." Elma's voice had lost all of its play.
The fine young face turned toward Atty. He smiled again without showing his teeth.
"Cody," Theresa asked, "what you doin' here?"
"I said I was comin'," he said.
"That was more'n a week ago."
"I had sumpin' to do, woman. I got here as soon as I could."
"What you had to do?" Elma asked.
"I don't see what's it to you. You done already got another boyfriend." Cody smiled and reached down beside him. He brought out of his overalls a full quart bottle of store-bought Old Crow whiskey. "I planned to say I was sorry wit' this here, but I guess I got to find me another girlfriend.
"You still wit' John, Theresa?"
The handsome black woman's mouth came open and she shook her head to say that she was not.
"Theresa!" Elma shouted.
"I ain't did nuthin'," Theresa screamed. She licked her lips and avoided Cody's smiling eyes. "He jus' axed an' I told'im."
"You ain't gonna go messin' 'round right under my nose," Elma said. She was crushing Atwater's hand.
"Come on, girls," Cody said. "Don't let's fight. They's whiskey for all of us. Right, Atty?"
"I-I think I had enough," the boy answered. The room was hot but his forehead felt like ice. "I got . . . I gots to go home."
Cody reached down into his pants again and came out with a long homemade knife. The blade was from a five-inch metal saw that had been shaped and sharpened by a grinding stone. It was black and jagged but Atwater could see that it was still sharp. The haft was wadded cork wound tightly around with fly-green fishing twine.
Cody put the knife down next to the bottle and said, "You not refusin' my hospitality now is ya, man?"
"Cody . . ."
"Shet yo' mouf, Theresa. Ain't nobody axed you. If this man here is man enough take my woman then he man enough t'drink wit' me."
Elma sat stock-still. She let go of Atty's hand. That was the scariest moment for Atwater, because he knew that if Elma was scared then he didn't have a chance.
"I drink it," Atty said.
While he was still smiling, Cody poured the tin cup full to the brim and then pushed it in front of Atwater.
"Cody, he cain't drink all that," Theresa said. "He ain't no man."
Cody raised his hand and Theresa flinched back so hard that she banged her head on the wall.
Atwater picked up the cup and started sipping. Fifty and more years gone by and he was still amazed that he had the strength to drink as much as he did.
Cody put a finger to the boy's throat to make sure that he was swallowing.
When Atty finally put the cup down, Cody smiled and said, "That's only half."
The room changed after Atwater drank. Most of what he heard was just noise but he could hear some talk, even from across the room, very clearly. Colors became stronger and the yellow paint on the walls really did look to be stars.
Elma was saying something but he couldn't make it out.
"I gotta go," Atwater said.
"See?" Elma pointed at him. "You done made the boy sick."
She moved quickly to get up off the bench and let Atwater out. He slid over with no problem, but standing up was a whole new experience. One leg gave way and then the other. He struck the table with his chin, but the feeling was more sweet than it was painful. He was afraid of falling to the sticky floor, but Cody caught him before he tumbled all the way.
The evil baby face came up close to his and said, "You go out an' do yo' business an' then come on back, ya hear?"
The boy thought about nodding---maybe he did.
"'Cause if you ain't back in two minutes I'ma come out there an' cut you bad."
Then Cody pushed Atwater toward the door. It was a crooked path to get there; bouncing off one body and then into somebody else. It was like a playful child's dance with everyone laughing and pushing. He didn't mind the horseplay though, because, even in that small room, he was too drunk to find the door by himself.
There was the moon again. About three-quarters floating in a thick black eye. The night clouds were golden shoulders for that cyclops. The air was chill and for deep breathing, not like the hell smoke of the Milky Way.
While Atwater relieved himself he laughed because it felt so good. Then he started walking. The leaves crackled and the stream sounded like baby bells. Every footfall was a bass drum going off.
He was lost but that didn't matter. He had a long talk with his murdered friend and said goodbye.
He scraped and scuffed himself and finally fell face forward in the cold stream. The water sobered him for a moment and he sat on a big rock and wondered where he was.
Once he heard somebody call his name. At first he thought that it was Inez out looking for him. He almost called out but then he worried that it might be Cody. So he kept quiet and played dead.
The next morning he awoke in Alyce Griggs's barn, just about a quarter mile from his house. A white hen was clucking and dancing around his feet.
"What you doin' in here, boy?"
When Atwater lifted his eyes to see the woman he felt sharp pain throughout his head and jaw.
"Sorry, Miss Griggs," he said to the elderly white woman. "I got drunk at Milky Way an' I landed here in yo' barn."
"That's the devil in you, Atty," the scrawny white woman warned. "You know that, don't ya?"
"Yes, ma'am," he said, and meant it.
"Go on now. I hope Inez hides you good."
He never did get a beating for that night. When Atwater came through the door he was staggering from fever. The chill and the whiskey had made him sick. For three weeks Ruby and Inez took turns sitting over him, covering his forehead with damp towels and feeding him foul home remedies one after the other.
His lungs filled up and his dreams walked around the house with a life of their own. He choked and coughed and finally accepted that he was going to die. He made his goodbyes to Ruby and Inez so bravely that even stone-faced Inez cried.
When Atwater got out of bed again he knew that he was a man.
"Daddy?" Kiki was sitting up in the bed.
"You okay?" Soupspoon asked.
Fully naked, she got up from the bed and came over to the couch. She sat spread-legged before him and held out her hands for him to hold.
It wasn't sex on her part. It was a frightened girl, no older than Atty at the Milky Way, holding out her hands to be saved.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know. I'm scared," she said all at once. "I'm scared of . . . of . . ."
"What?"
Kiki told him about her dreams of a stone boy stalking her with his knife.
"It's okay, honey," Soupspoon said when she was through. "He ain't gonna get in here."
"That's not all," she said, avoiding his eyes.
"What else is it?"
"I can't tell you yet. I . . . I have to wait."
"Okay," he said, trying to catch her eye without ogling her orange-brown crotch. "I'll be here when you ready."
"What's wrong?" Kiki asked. "Why you look away from me?"
"I don't know. It's just that you're a nice girl. You should cover up in front of a old man like me."
"You shy?" She smirked while trying to get him to meet her gaze.
"Naw, I ain't shy. I seen it all. But I like you an' I feel like I don't wanna get the wrong idea."
Kiki's face went smooth when he said that. Her eyes became perfect circles with tears beaded up on the lashes. She leaned forward as if she meant to hug Soupspoon but then she got up and went to the bed and rummaged around on the floor. She came up with a ratty brown robe and wrapped herself in it.
She held out her arms as she came back to the couch.
"Can I hug you, Mr. Wise?"
"Sure."
"I won't let anything happen to you," she whispered into the embrace.
Soupspoon was thinking about little Atty wandering through the wilderness over stones white as skulls.
FROM The Harris Men
BY R. M. JOHNSON
Caleb sat on a slab of rock and watched two old men play chess. One had a beard, and one was wearing an old fishing hat. They were both filthy. It was an interesting game, so Caleb couldn't just get up and leave in the middle of it, he had to see who won. He looked down at his watch and it read 11:52 A.M. He had gotten out of the house at eight o'clock, telling Sonya that today would be the day that he would find a job. He had even put on his only pair of real pants, a pair of cotton Levi's Dockers. They were a little big and a little long because he had bought them at a discount store, but they still looked kind of professional. Stuffed in his pants pocket was a clip-on tie that he had taken off during the intense chess game.
When the game was over Caleb moved to a park bench and opened the paper to the job section. He started to glance over the tiny blocks of advertisements. "Computer Analyst," one announced, and the ten blocks under it marked positions. Sales Manager, Nurses, Engineers wanted, Electricians, Marketing Executives. These were the ads that caught his attention and all they did was discourage him. There was no way in the world he could qualify for one of those positions with his limited education. He hadn't even graduated from high school, for God's sake.
He sank his face in his hands and wondered why he was even going through the trouble. It didn't make sense to look, get all dressed up and walk around like a fool panhandling for a damn job. Something would come along eventually, it always did. Somebody who knew somebody else would offer him a job, didn't really matter what it was, but he'd take it and everything would be cool. And if that didn't happen, he'd hit Sonya up again. She worked at the unemployment office, and she'd get him a couple of inside tracks just like she had last time, even though he screwed those up.
Happy with himself, his actions all planned for finding a job, he tossed the job section in the trash can near where he was sitting, and folded the rest under his arm. It was too beautiful a day to be out begging for a job. He looked at his watch again and it was only 12:15. Sonya wouldn't expect him back till at least three, so he would find something to do.
He hopped on the bus, showing the driver the crinkled little piece of paper he used to transfer from one bus to the next. He had to squeeze his way through the people because the bus was crowded with the lunchtime rush. A woman was getting up and he took the seat, even though another woman seemed to have been waiting patiently for the vacancy.
The bus was heading in the direction of the inner city housing projects, the many tall identical buildings that lined one of the major highways of Chicago. They stood there, hundreds of feet tall, as a constant reminder of how poor black folks were in this city. They were like building-size billboards, Caleb thought, screaming "Blacks folks be po'! Hey, just look where we live!"
The crowd on the bus started to thin because of the direction the bus was traveling. No one wanted to end up among the project buildings if they didn't belong there.
Across the aisle from Caleb was a man wearing one of those fancy business suits like Austin always wore, the kind Caleb hated so much. But he had to admit, of all the ones he had seen, this was one of the nicest. He was a man of about forty-five or fifty, Caleb figured, and on his lap rested, of course, a briefcase. The man was black, neat-looking, clean-shaven, with shiny shoes and those thin little black socks that you can see through. He wore a diamond ring on his right hand, a wedding band on his left, and on his wrist was a very nice watch. He sat facing Caleb, looking out the window behind him. Caleb looked him up and down; the attention didn't seem to bother the man. He reminded Caleb of Austin, so damn caught up with his suits and ties, watches and rings. He would have bet anything that this guy was just as much a joke as Austin was.
He looked him over again, and wondered what the man was still doing on the bus---they were closing in on the outskirts of the danger zone, and looking the way he was, Caleb figured he should've gotten off the bus long ago. But the man just continued looking out the window as if the surroundings were nothing new to him. Caleb wondered how much money he made, what he did, and what the hell he was doing so damn far away from the suburbs where all the other un-black black folks lived. The man must have felt Caleb's stare. He smiled slightly and nodded. Caleb nodded back, feeling the man was as phony as a three-dollar bill.
"Hey, what's your name?" Caleb asked, not feeling at all out of place.
The man looked up, raising his eyebrows as if to ask, "Me?"
"Joseph Benning," he said, seeming comfortable speaking to a stranger. "And what's your name, young man?"
Caleb thought about not answering, not liking the "young man" remark, but he figured compared to his old ass, he was a young man.
"Caleb. My name is Caleb Harris."
"Nice to meet you, Caleb Harris. Nice day, isn't it?" He smiled, looking out the window. Caleb looked out the window behind him, the same one Benning was looking out, as if it was the only one with the view of the nice day.
"Yeah, I guess so." Caleb looked over the man again, paying close attention to the watch, the big diamond that was where the twelve should have been, the shiny gold of the rings, and the expensive look of the briefcase. He wondered what the street value would be for all that stuff. That is, if he were still into robbing, which he wasn't. But he was sure it would've been reason enough to risk taking it off the old guy. Besides, he probably had it insured, and if he didn't, Caleb was sure he made enough to run out and buy replacements.
"How, how much you make?"
"Excuse me?" The man smiled, seeming embarrassed by the question.
"You know what I mean. How much money you bringing in? I know it has to be a lot if you're walking around with all that on," Caleb pointed a finger in the general direction of the man's hands and wrist.
"That's not the sort of question you ask someone you've just met. That's really not the sort of question you even ask a friend."
"Yeah, I know all that, but I wanted to know, so I asked. All you can do is say no, right? I'd just be right back where I started. So how much?"
The man laughed. He looked at Caleb, appearing to consider the question.
"I make enough," he finally replied.
"All right then, you don't have to tell me. All the people making the big money don't want the little folks to know how much it is, like they're ashamed of their big salaries 'cause they know we aren't making nothing."
"Well, how much do you make, Caleb? If you don't mind me asking."
"No. I don't mind you asking." Caleb paused for a moment, feeling a bit ashamed of himself. "I don't make anything. I don't have a job. I'm out here looking, that's why I got the schoolboy getup on." He reached in his pants pocket and pulled the tie out a bit so Benning could see.
"And how is it going?"
"It ain't. It's tight, man. I been all through this paper, and ain't nothing in here for me to do." He tossed the paper to the seat next to his.
"And what is it you do?"
"Damn, you ask a lot of questions."
"If I'm prying, just ask me to stop." He placed his briefcase to his side and crossed his legs.
"Yeah, well, I do the basic stuff, you know, hands work. Lifting boxes, washing dishes. Stuff like that." Caleb looked away.
"So do you think---"
"What do you do?" Caleb interrupted, taking the spotlight off himself.
"I'm a manager and partial owner of a large computer software supplier downtown. Main Frame Software, you heard of it?"
"Yeah, I think so." Never hearing the name before in his life. "So what you doing on this side of town? You a bit far from the Gold Coast, don't you think?"
"I'm visiting a friend, she's sick."
"Don't you have a car, making all the money you do?"
"Yes, I do, making all the money I do." He smiled. "It's in the shop getting the window replaced. Someone broke into it."
"Mercedes, Lexus, BMW, something like that, right?" Caleb asked.
"Something like that."
"Well, if you keep coming around places like this, it's going to stay in the shop. You don't belong out here, you think?" Caleb asked.
Benning looked out the window at what was passing outside.
"Why don't I?"
"Cause you . . . you know. You rich. You got all that. These people out here, we don't have nothing. You never know, man. They might try and knock you over the head. If I were you, I'd be scared."
"Why, are you scared?"
"Naw, hell no," Caleb said. "I ain't scared. Besides, I don't have nothing. I'm referring to you." He pointed a finger.
"Well, I'm sorry to say, but I disagree. I don't think that a man should fear places that his own people live in just because he has nice things. Besides you make it appear as though everyone here, or individuals without money, are bad people and can't be trusted."
"Well, I almost want to say that's right," Caleb said.
"I don't think you're a bad person, Caleb Harris. Are you?" He looked intently in Caleb's eyes.
Caleb looked back, then smiled and laughed a little. "Very funny, I see your point, but I'm just telling you, you should watch your back, that's all. I'm just looking out for an old guy," Caleb said, joking. "You know, you're out of your element. It's rough around here."
"I'm not as old as you think, but thanks for the gesture." Benning stood, grabbed his briefcase, then looked out the window. "Well, this is my stop. Interesting conversation. I wish we had more time to continue it."
"Yeah, me too," Caleb said, nodding his head.
"I tell you what." Benning reached into his jacket pocket, took out a tiny leather folder, and pulled out a little white card. "This is my business card. If you would really like to continue this conversation, give me a call and we can meet somewhere for lunch or something."
Caleb took the card, looked it over. " 'Main Frame Software, Joseph Benning, Dept. Manager.' Yeah, okay, I'll do that."
"Good." Benning extended his hand and Caleb shook it vigorously.
"Goodbye, Mr. Harris." Benning walked toward the front of the bus, but stopped. "Oh, yeah, and the remark you made about me being out of my element---I'm not. This is where I grew up." He smiled at the look on Caleb's face and stepped off the bus.
He grew up here? Caleb thought. He's lying. He's making too much money to come from this. It couldn't be. He looked down at the card again. He held it with both hands, almost caressing it. Department manager grew up in the projects, that's something. Caleb felt good that he had met someone that had actually made it out of the wretched place, that is if the old guy was telling the truth. He was a cool old guy, and he had a lot to say. Caleb was genuinely sorry that they couldn't keep talking. He could have learned a lot from the man, or at least found out how much money he made. But he had already decided that he would call him. He would call him and they would do lunch. He really didn't have much else to do during the day. Caleb Harris and this important, rich, money-making old dude that grew up in the projects would talk.
Caleb felt good about himself, felt proud, as though he had accomplished a great deal. He wanted to tell someone, but he didn't feel like going back home. He wanted to celebrate, get a forty-ounce bottle of beer or something. He got off the bus, stepped into the liquor store, and grabbed a bottle of beer. Miller High Life, his favorite. He paid for it with loose change, then set off to find a couple of his friends. He knew they'd be hanging out on a nice day like this, because they had no jobs, either.
He took off down the street, carrying the bottle of beer, small paper bag covering it halfway, exposing the neck. It was almost two o'clock and the sun was getting warmer. It was pretty bright and it seemed to improve the looks of everything. Even the streets of the projects didn't look that bad. The abandoned cars, the bits of trash that grew along the curbs as if they were flowers that belonged there, the areas of hard-packed gray dirt where grass used to grow. Nothing looked as bad as it did on glum, dull days when the sun wasn't out. When Caleb saw his friend Blue sitting on a park bench with a couple of other guys, he said loudly, "Hey, man, what's up with your black ass?" They called him Blue because he was so black---so black that he was blue.
Blue looked at him weirdly, as if he had never seen Caleb happy. "What's up with you? Finally win the Lotto or something?" He had a bottle of beer himself. He was sitting on the backrest of the bench, his feet planted on the seat. He reached down and grabbed the forty-ounce bottle from between his legs.
Caleb had known Blue since they were kids, the better part of his life, and like Caleb's, Blue's life seemed to be moving in every direction but the correct one. Blue's father hadn't cut out on him, but he was gunned down on his way home from work one day. Wrong place wrong time. So Blue knew what it was like to grow up without a father, and that was one reason the two of them were so tight. Whatever it was they were missing by not having fathers around, they found in each other, and Caleb could no longer count how many times they had saved each other's asses from sticky situations. Blue had always been there for him, just like a brother, even when Caleb's real brothers weren't.
"What you doing all spiffed up, looking like you coming from church?" Blue said, taking a swig from the bottle of beer. The remark provoked a chuckle from the two other guys, one standing and one sitting.
"Been looking for a job, man. Had to," Caleb said, slapping Blue's hand.
"Sonya been riding that ass again, huh?" He did his Sonya impression, raising the sound of his voice. "You better get your ass out there and find you a nine to five, or don't think about bringing your butt back in this house!" He took another swig from his bottle, this time a longer one. Caleb could see the tight little ball in his neck go up and down as the beer slid down his throat. Blue pulled the bottle away and smiled, the gold tooth in the front of his mouth reflecting sunlight.
"Naw, it ain't nothing like that. I got responsibilities, that's all," Caleb said.
"Well, did you get one? You find a job?"
"Naw, but I met this dude. Real cool dude. Grew up in the projects, got this software company, and make big cash. We talked on the bus. He got a lot to say, and I'm going to listen. I'm going to get a job from him, just listen to what I'm saying."
"Yeah, all right, that's cool," Blue said, with little enthusiasm.
"I'm for real. Look at this." Caleb reached in his pocket and pulled out the card. He held it in front of Blue's face, not allowing him to grab it.
"Let me hold it," Blue said.
"Naw, you going to get it dirty, bend it all up, just look."
Blue took a quick glance, then dismissed it. "All right, man, that's great. Happy birthday. Now why don't you put your toy away and crack that brew, 'cause if you ain't, you can pass it this way."
Caleb did what he was asked, and decided that his friend would never make more of himself than what he was at that moment: one more brother sitting on a bench, swigging on a forty. Sure Caleb was doing the same thing at that moment, but he wouldn't be there for the rest of his life.
They sat and talked, the four of them. They talked about life and women and the white man keeping them down, lack of job opportunities, the destruction of the world, and whatever else floated into their heads. One of the other guys that Caleb didn't know---his name was Pete---took out a small, crumpled piece of aluminum foil. He opened it up, then pulled out of his pocket a small booklet of thin papers. He proceeded to roll the contents of the foil into the paper, licked it a couple of times, then lit it.
"Now you talking," Ray Ray said. That was the other guy, big afro on his head. He was a huge lethargic guy. Pete passed Ray Ray the joint, and he took a long drag from it.
"See, the white man want us to work a nine to five. That's where he want us, see," Ray Ray said, already high. "Because if we work a nine to five, he'd have control over us. He'd be monitoring us, you see. Have us piss in a bottle to see if we be enhancing. They don't want us enhancing our minds with the herb, because they know that it gives us knowledge, it clarifies shit." He took another puff, pulled the joint from his mouth, and held it before him, staring at it, marveling as if it was the cure for cancer. "I'll fuck a motherfucker up, he try and take this from me."
"Just pass the shit and stop tripping!" Blue said. "I ain't working that shit, 'cause it's just like slavery. They want you to sweat, break your back for them, and what do they give you? Some money so you can run out and buy some insignificant shit on credit. Then they have you paying them, not just one time but for two years, or three years, or five years." He took a hit of the blunt and held the smoke in as he finished talking, his voice sounding strangled. "And then don't just have you paying them for years and years, but have you paying for more than the shit actually cost---interest and shit." He blew the smoke out through his nose and mouth. "Black folks think they arrived when they get a credit card and a car note, but they don't realize, they just jumped into a funnel, and it goes nowhere but down." He passed the joint to Pete.
"But what do you have?" Pete asked. "You ain't got shit but them gym shoes on your feet, and you need to be buying a new pair real soon, 'cause those starting to talk."
Everyone laughed a little, except Blue.
"That's cool, too. I ain't got no car, and I don't have no credit card either, but you know what else I ain't got? Debt. I don't owe no one shit. You hear me. Shit! Big fat zero. So yeah, I ain't making no money, but I sure as hell ain't spending none, either. Am I right, or what, Caleb?"
Caleb looked over at Blue and considered what he had said. "You right, man, for the most part. I don't like it either. I don't like no one telling me what to do, sizing me up, condemning me 'cause I put the square peg in the circle hole. And you right about folks being so far in debt that they never going to see they way out. They going to die still paying off that TV that they renting to own. But if you got responsibilities, if you going to live, you got to make money. That's just the way life is. White folks made it that way so we got to work, and that brings us back to them controlling us."
"I don't care what you say, I'm living, and I ain't working. I'm living, smoking this here joint, and it's what I'm going to continue to do until I find out what it is I really want to do," Blue said.
"And when is that going to be, when you fifty?" Ray Ray said.
"That's going to be when that's going to be. I ain't rushing for nobody."
"I'm glad you got it like that, but some of us can't be taking our time," Caleb said. He wanted to continue, letting them know that some of them, speaking of himself, had a girlfriend that practically was his wife, and a child to raise, plus rent to pay and food to buy, but they wouldn't have understood. All they thought about was sitting out, talking shit, and getting high.
There was a time when that was all that interested him as well, but lately he had been getting ridiculed from all sides. Sonya had done everything but come out and call him a complete loser. She'd leave the day's paper on the table with the job section open, things circled, things that she thought he should check out. She'd always ask him how things were going, had he found a job yet? It all seemed like gentle nudging, something that she referred to as "support," but he found it painfully annoying. Like she had to remind him every day that he had no job, that he brought no money into the household. He needed no one for that. He could simply dig in his pockets, and the lint there spoke loud and clear.
Caleb downed the last of his beer and looked at his watch. It was a little after four o'clock and he figured it was time he got home. He said goodbye to his friends. "Yeah, better get that ass home before you get in trouble," was Blue's farewell.
Caleb only had to wait about five minutes before he saw the bus slowly roll down the street.
He didn't like the pressure, not just from his girlfriend but also from his brothers. Marcus kept telling him that he should do this and do that. Maybe enroll in school, take the GED, and maybe he'd find out that he had a new liking for school. That shit would never happen. First of all, he wasn't the slightest bit interested. Secondly, he was scared as hell of all the book stuff. He could never get it. The math, the science, it was too far above his head, and he just felt like a fool even attempting to make an effort. It was just easier if he didn't have to bother with it at all, so he dropped out, and he would not return, no matter what Marcus said.
Then there was Austin. Caleb realized that Austin really didn't give a damn anyway, but he still felt pressure. Not pressure directly from Austin, but pressure from himself to do something, if for no other reason than to prove his brother wrong. It seemed from as far back as he could remember, Austin had written him off as a loser. He didn't know why, and it was something that had bothered him even as a child. He could remember his father would give him the same loser treatment, as if he wasn't as deserving as his older brothers, or as if he always got in the way of their time together. Caleb just figured that Austin's treatment of him stemmed from his father's treatment, considering how much Austin looked up to the man.
Caleb would do something. He would have to. He couldn't just continue to live the way he was living, freeloading off his girlfriend, not being able to contribute a single dime toward their expenses. He pulled out the card again and held it before him. "Mr. Joseph Benning," he said softly to himself. He smiled, then put the card safely back in his pocket.
The Boy-Fish
When Eldon spoke, his voice was slow and muffled. "Sutekh, go up and wash."
Sutekh looked up from the book in his lap. He stared, not at his father's face, but at his T-shirt. He pursed his lips, shaping them into a momentary, silent protest, and then he stood up and walked across the small room. In the hallway, he passed the pictures of old people captured in straight-backed postures, in shades of black and white, with eyes that seemed to follow him. He sought out the image of the woman who had been his mother. He knew her picture well: the creamy tones and fine lines of her features, her thin eyebrows and gentle eyes, the long black hair, so straight, cast over her shoulder as solid and thick as a rope woven of seaweed. And he knew her name, Anita, so often on his father's lips. But his memory of her was fading as each day of the last nine months pushed between them.
The bathroom was a cramped space, with an old bathtub and a slowly dripping sink. It smelled of mildew and of moisture trapped in towels. Faint city sounds entered through the tiny window above the tub. Sutekh closed the door, turned on the water, and undressed. His body was small, skinny, light brown, and smooth as an eggshell, gentle as a marble statue, marked only by a paisley-shaped slash of pink across his forehead, a birthmark. He had a face of delicate features, with a narrow, aquiline nose, and eyes so gray they seemed almost translucent.
Looking through the window, Sutekh caught sight of a gull swooping through a cloud-laden sky. He watched its erratic flight until he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. He stepped into the tub, scowled at the heat, and stood there, listening. The noise had stopped. He held one hand to his heart; the other rested on the cool yellow tiles. Finally, he reached for the cold-water knob. Just as he touched it the door opened. Sutekh looked up and there was his father. He shifted his eyes to his father's chest and sat down, wincing at the heat of the water.
The man swayed as he walked in. "Stand up," he said.
Sutekh rose.
Eldon touched Sutekh's head. He slid his hand from the boy's forehead, up over his hair, and traced his fingertips down the boy's spine. He cleared his throat, closed his eyes, and swallowed. "Let's clean you up," he said. "Okay? We'll just wash."
Eldon had a light chestnut complexion, with freckles under the eyes that jiggled as he talked. His features were well formed and evenly spaced, with the slightly pudgy quality of a young boy. He leaned on the wall beside the refrigerator, the phone to his ear. With one finger, he pushed plastic magnets around on the metal door: pears and apples and bananas; several alphabetical letters.
Sutekh sat at the kitchen table, a book in his lap. He ran his fingers over its smooth cover and along its edges. His gaze drifted around the wall near his father and settled on a dim stain on the flowered wallpaper, the splash of some liquid.
"Yeah, Gen," Eldon said into the phone. "Yeah. It's all right. I mean, I still have the same job. I don't know for how long, but it's all right . . . You know what I do. The furniture reupholstering . . . Right . . . Of course." Eldon glanced over at his son. "Yeah, Sutekh is fine." His finger knocked off an apple-shaped magnet. It fell to the floor, bounced off his foot, and twirled under the refrigerator. He kneeled down and slid his hand underneath the appliance. The metal grating at the bottom of the refrigerator dislodged and fell onto his fingers. He pulled his hand, and the grating clanged to the floor. "Damn it!" he said. "No, I dropped something and now the damn grating fell off the fridge."
He stood up, kicked it, backed away a few steps, and put his palm up to his forehead. "Forget it. So, Gen, why is everyone always after us to come visit? Jesus. It's either you or Momma, but somebody's always nagging. Told her we'd come out next week. Might just leave Sutekh with them for a couple days, let the old man play his granddad games."
Sutekh looked down at his book. It was a large, thin children's book. On the cover there was an illustration of a boy in a bulky yellow raincoat and hat. The boy held a duck out before him, grasped by the leg. The duck was captured in mid-squawk, and the boy appeared to be pulling back, surprised. Sutekh traced a line around the boy with his finger.
"Yeah, yeah. Okay. We'll come by soon. But first Momma wants to have Sutekh stay over there for the weekend or something." Eldon had been rubbing his injured palm with the fingers of his other hand. He stopped and his gaze shot over to Sutekh. "Okay, hold on. Sutekh? Come talk to your Aunt Genevieve." Eldon extended the phone toward him.
Sutekh rose and, holding the book under one arm, took the phone from his father. The receiver was warm and greasy with moisture. "Hello?"
"Hey, Sutekh!" said Genevieve, her voice exhilarated, almost breathless. "How are you?"
Eldon walked away and stood next to the table.
"Okay," Sutekh said.
"Okay? Well, all right. Great. I haven't seen you since the Fourth of July. Remember the Fourth of July? When we took that boat ride to Saint Michaels and had all those crabs?"
"Yeah."
"You were scared of them at first, remember?"
Sutekh tucked his head and smiled. "'Cause they had pinchers," he said.
"I know. They are pretty ugly. But they're good on the inside."
"Yeah." Sutekh nodded. He raised his book up as if just remembering it. "Gen, I have a book."
"Really? What book?"
"Um . . ." Wrinkles stood out on the boy's forehead. He looked down at the cover. "About a boy and a duck."
"Yeah? Hey, that reminds me---How's school? You just started school, right?"
Sutekh glanced over at his father. "No."
"No what? You didn't start school?"
"No."
"What?" Genevieve's voice grew serious. "Why not? Didn't your father take you to school? I can't believe this. You should be starting school. You're going to be behind already. Let me speak to your father."
Sutekh shook his head. He looked over at his father, who was watching him. "No. It's okay, Aunt Gen. Right? I don't want to go so much."
"Well, of course you don't, but that's just because it's something new. Once you try it you'll like it fine. And anyway, you have to go. It's not a choice. Let me speak to your father."
Sutekh turned toward the wall. "I have a book---"
"Sutekh, honey," Genevieve said, her voice both gentle and commanding, "put Eldon on."
The boy turned back to his father and held the phone out toward him. The corners of Eldon's lips dipped, but he grasped the phone. "Yeah?"
Sutekh walked back to the kitchen table and sat down, book balanced on his knees.
"Gen . . . I'm taking him. You just don't know how things are. It's not easy . . . He's been coming to work with me . . ." He listened for some time. He nodded, and when he spoke his voice had softened. "I don't know. It's just been these last nine months. I'll take him, but sometimes I'm afraid to have him out of my sight. Other times . . ." He ran a hand up over his hair. "Other times I just don't know. Anyway, fuck it, Gen," he said, not angrily, but with an exasperated sigh. "I'm hanging up now. You should watch what you ask for. Some day I might drop him on your doorstep for good." He hung up the phone and stood leaning against the wall for a few moments, one hand in a fist that slowly rapped against the wall.
He turned around.
Sutekh didn't look up at him, but said softly, "I just said I had a book."
Sutekh's bedroom was a small space, cluttered by articles of clothing, toys, and books. A single bed ran the length of the wall, its crumpled bedspread trailing across the floor. The walls were painted a thick, innocuous yellow, and were bare except for a poster of the Earth viewed from space and a calendar featuring football players frozen in motion. The room's one window opened onto the wall of the next row house, just below an opposing window.
Sutekh walked in, clothed in light blue pajamas, his bare feet padding lightly across the hardwood tiles. He tossed his book down on the floor and stood still in the center of the room. His eyes drifted up to the window across the alley. The light was on, and a person's vague shadow moved across the scarlet and gold curtains.
He took a few steps toward his bed, then jumped as he approached it, landing with a bounce on the mattress. The jostling of the mattress and sheets tossed several objects into the air: two Star Trek action figures, a miniature automobile, a small brass elephant figurine. The boy picked up the Star Trek figures and stood them face-to-face with each other, controlling their arms with his fingers. One figure gently touched the other on the forehead. Suddenly they began to wrestle, their bodies pushed clumsily together. Then Sutekh picked up the elephant and tilted it upward. A faint sound escaped his lips, a high-pitched, somewhat horse-like whine.
"You call that an elephant roar?" Eldon asked. He stood leaning against the doorframe.
Sutekh stopped moving. The brass figurine fell from his fingers.
"That's no elephant roar. That sounded like a mouse roar or something." He entered the room and sat down on the corner of the bed. He placed a hand on Sutekh's back.
The boy didn't move, his eyes fixed on a wrinkle in the blanket.
"If I was an elephant, I'd roar like this . . ." He let out a roar, a guttural cry that went from low pitched to higher pitched, ending with an expulsion of air somewhere between a laugh and a cough. "Well, something like that." He swiped in the air with a hand. "Something like that . . ."
The humor with which he had just spoken faded quickly, his expression changing to one of exhaustion. The bags below his eyes were more pronounced than usual, with a bluish tint to them. His gaze drifted around the room, over his son's back and shoulders. He moved his hand from Sutekh's back to his head and stroked his hair. When he spoke again, his voice was limp, each word falling heavily from his lips. "Have you ever seen an elephant? You never have, have you?" He stretched out on the bed beside his son.
Sutekh squirmed away a few inches and rolled over on his side, facing his father. The man's breath carried the stale scent of alcohol and onions.
"I went to see the elephants with your mom, at the circus," he said. "She didn't like the circus, but she liked the elephants. She talked about Hannibal and how he rode elephants across the mountains and fought the Romans. That must've been something . . . Anita could tell such good stories. I'll tell you about Hannibal sometime. But I can't tell it as good as her. I can't do anything as good as her." Eldon exhaled a long breath and looked past Sutekh at the wall. He closed his eyes and inhaled. "Sutekh, your dad's going crazy," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "He's going crazy, and he doesn't know what to do." With his eyes still closed, he reached out and felt for his son.
Sutekh moved back a little, but let his father grasp him around the arm. The man's fingers were firm in their grip, but still gentle. The boy watched his father's face, the lines around his mouth, the flutter of his eyelids, the movement of his lips.
"She shouldn't have gone. You didn't have to, Anita. You didn't . . ." He pulled Sutekh close to him. "I would have fought the snakes with you. I wouldn't have let them get you, never. We could have fought anything together. That's all I ever wanted. To fight back the world with you. To make a place for us."
Eldon opened his eyes and liquid burst forth from both of them, lingering momentarily on the rim of his eyelids, then sliding over the bridge of his nose, down his cheek, and falling onto Sutekh's head, which the man held under his chin. He closed his eyes again and rubbed Sutekh with comforting gestures, his hand making gentle circles on the small of his back. He said, "Shhh," softly, as if it were the boy who was crying. "Shhh." It was only very gradually that his own body began to move, that his comforting gestures became caresses, and he began to rub the boy's body against his own.
Eldon drove the car slowly down Frederick Avenue, a quiet street of lumpy asphalt, shaded by tall gum trees and an occasional pine. Sitting among the trees were houses of varying sizes and designs. Some had the aged look of antebellum estates, with large porches and fold-out windows. Others were modern structures, small houses of simple geometry, in pastel shades of light blue and mint green, with plaster shingles and fake shutters. They sat quietly among the trees, with the silence of a ghost town. Behind the houses on the right, the surface of a small harbor sparkled with the auburn shades of the setting sun.
"Hey, little man, remember you stayed down here last summer?" Eldon asked. "You do a lot of fishing then?"
Sutekh slipped his seat belt underneath his arm and pressed his face close to the car window. His eyes floated slowly over each object they passed, lingering on the wake left by a slow moving boat in the harbor, following the flight of a flock of ducks. The houses to the west momentarily thinned out, and the glow of the sun lit Sutekh's face. He watched his image reflected in the glass and saw his lips move. "Some," he said.
"Yeah, that's your granddad," Eldon said. "I guess he's got to do something with himself. I don't know why it's fishing, though. I never really liked fishing that much. Maybe it was the getting up early." He reached up and turned the rearview mirror toward his face. He looked at himself, drew his lips back from his teeth. "Your granddad will probably complain that I'm depriving you by not taking you fishing and stuff. I don't know if I would know how anymore." He moved the mirror back to its original place. "Like fishing really matters."
Eldon slowed the car down and pulled over in front of a small, single-level house. "Here we are." He turned off the car and reached into the backseat for a duffel bag. "Go on, get out."
Sutekh untangled himself from his seat belt and climbed out of the car. He stood on the concrete walkway and looked at the house. It looked back silently, a white, flat-faced facade, with two front windows set on either side of the door. The three steps leading up to the door stuck out like a protruding tongue. There was a light on near one of the windows, it cast a corrugated glow through the blinds. The only noticeable decorations were the three plaster kittens that clung to the roof's green shingles.
"Come on." Eldon nudged Sutekh forward.
Just as he began walking, the front door opened and his grandmother, Rosella, appeared silhouetted within the door frame. "Sutekh! Come here to your grandmother," she said. She pushed open the screen door and extended her arms toward him.
Sutekh walked steadily up the pathway, the stairs, and, when he reached her, was engulfed by her arms, pressed into her torso. She took his face within her two hands and looked at him for a long moment. Her face was pale and covered with delicate wrinkles. Her cheeks had the soft quality of half-baked dough, and her eyes were a deep brown, flecked with bits of yellow. She kissed him on the forehead.
"It's so good to see you. Every time I see you you've grown a few inches." She backed up and motioned for them to enter. "Hi, Eldon. Come on in. I've just about got dinner ready."
The interior of the house was cluttered with furniture: a couch, numerous chairs and endtables, and lamps. The walls were littered with plaques and awards from various clubs and organizations, framed photographs, and several aged needlework pieces. Each flat surface was occupied by something, an ashtray or magazines, wooden figurines and other items, the various knickknacks collected over a lifetime. The television was on, tuned to the news, and the scent of fried chicken was thick in the air.
"No dinner for me, thanks," Eldon said. "I'll just drop Sutekh off and get going."
"You sure?" Rosella asked. She leaned forward when she spoke, and furrowed her brow with a look of concern. "Your father isn't home yet, but he should be any minute. He just went to the store."
"Yeah." Eldon plopped the duffel bag down in a chair. "I have to meet someone in a little bit."
He looked from his mother to Sutekh, puffed up his cheeks and exhaled. "Hey, Sutekh, what do you say I just take off? Your grandmother will take care of you. All right?"
Sutekh sat down on a chair in the living room. He looked back at his father and shrugged. "All right."
Eldon's eyes flicked up to Rosella. She was watching the boy, her head tilted slightly to the side, her face fixed in a smile. "Okay," he said. "Um . . . So what, I'll be back Sunday night?"
"Sure," Rosella said. "Whenever. We'll be here."
"Okay. See ya, Sutekh. Have fun, right? Remember what I told you." He walked back to the front door and paused there a moment, looked back. Rosella watched him. "Okay," he said. "Bye."
"Bye, Eldon. We'll look for you on Sunday."
He stepped outside and shut the door behind him.
Rosella turned back to Sutekh. "I'm making your favorite---fried chicken for dinner. I should go check it. I'll just be a minute." She shuffled from the room toward the kitchen.
Sutekh turned and looked through the blinds, out the window. His father stood next to the car, saying something to Norman, Sutekh's grandfather, who had just pulled into the driveway. Norman held a grocery bag to his chest with one arm. He walked around the front of his car, as Eldon walked to the driver's side of his. They got no closer than this, and after exchanging a few words that Sutekh couldn't hear, Eldon waved and Norman turned toward the house.
Sutekh released the blinds when he heard Norman open the door. They snapped back into place.
Norman's skin had a smooth texture, a hue like raw sienna, marked by deep lines that etched his features. The edges of his forehead extended far up into his thinning hairline. He held up a spoonful of buttered corn and paused, leaning his elbow on the table. "So, you're ready to get up early, right?" he asked. His tone was serious, as if conducting official business. "You know that's when the fish are hungry. Early in the morning. If you go out much past sun up you're not gonna get much. It's the early worm that catches the fish." He smiled, slipped the fork into his mouth, and chewed rapidly, his thin, gray-flecked mustache jiggling up and down like a living creature.
Sutekh sat across from him at the dinner table, next to Rosella. He held a chicken leg in his fingers. He nodded and took a bite.
"Is that all you can talk about?" Rosella asked. "You'd think you fished for a living."
Norman wiped his mouth with a napkin, which he held crumpled in his hand. "That's why I retired, isn't it? A man's got to do something with his time. Can't just sit around doing nothing. Right Sutekh?"
Sutekh nodded. He wiped his hands on the napkin in his lap.
"That's why you work your whole life," Norman said. He pointed at Sutekh with his knife. "You work your whole life so that one day you can stop working and retire. Buy yourself a house by the water and do some fishing with your grandson. That's what it comes down to in the end. That's got to be what it comes down to, because thirty years spent working behind a desk, handling other people's money, ain't much of a life. But you've got to put in the time. Lord knows I've done mine and now---"
"Norman, don't lecture the boy."
Norman scowled. "I'm not lecturing. I'm talking to my grandson. Somebody has got to educate the boy. I'm just telling him what work is about. Figure Eldon don't tell him nothing."
"Norman---"
"Don't say you think Eldon knows anything about work. You know he doesn't. Never did. That boy never had an ounce of backbone in his body, not from day one. He's got a spine like one of them salamanders." He raised a forkful of corn to his mouth, but pulled it away, spilling a few kernels back onto his plate. "But Sutekh, you're gonna do better, aren't you? You know what you are, son?"
Sutekh looked up at him. He shook his head.
Norman leaned forward. "You're the hope of this family. You know that? You're the only one left to carry on for me. You're my only grandson, my right-hand man. The only one I'm ever gonna have." He lowered his voice. "You know why? Because your Aunt Genevieve only likes women. She's what they call a 'female fag.' "
Rosella's knife and fork clanked down against her plate. She watched Norman with her lips puckered, her cheeks drawn in.
"What do you think of that?" Norman asked. "My own daughter. Your own aunt. A woman's woman." He began to put the fork in his mouth, but, seeing it was almost empty, he put it down and picked at his chicken breast. "The hope of the family."
"Norman, give it a rest and let Sutekh eat."
Norman spoke while still chewing. "I'm not saying anything but the truth. Did everything I could in this world and I still ended up with two messed-up kids. If I had my way I would send them back and start over again. Just start from scratch."
"Thank the Lord you don't have that option," Rosella said. She turned toward Sutekh. "How's everything, Sutekh? Save room for dessert. Norman got some ice cream for you. See, when he's not in a grumpy mood he's really pretty nice."
"I'm not grumpy," Norman said. He wrung his hands on his crumpled napkin. "Not really. You hear, Sutekh? How could I be grumpy when I'm going fishing with my grandson in the morning? To tell you the truth, I'm feeling downright pleasant. Grumpy is another thing entirely."
Sutekh and Norman sat together on the pier, with fishing rods and hooks and worms. A steady flow of waves passed beneath them. Moisture from the chill air clung to their clothes, tickled their skin. The garbled hum of a clam boat crept across the surface of the water; the blanket of morning mist softened the sharp-edged cries of gulls. A pelican flew out of the void and glided low across the water. Its head was stretched intently forward and its wings were held still in motionless speed. "Well, look at that," Norman said. "That's a pelican. He's a fisherman, too." As quietly as it appeared it was gone into the distance.
Sutekh held his fishing rod between his legs, one thumb pressed against the fishing line. His feet dangled off the pier. On the surface of the water, the gray sky seemed to heave and undulate. Minnows swam beside seagulls through the clouds.
"Look," Sutekh said. "There's fish in the clouds."
Norman watched the water for a moment. He stroked his mustache with the tips of his fingers. "Well, yeah, I guess you could say that. You've got a funny way of saying things though."
Sutekh looked up at his grandfather. Norman looked down and slowly the crevices of his face stretched into a smile. He adjusted his hat and was about to speak when he suddenly jerked backward. "Hot damn! I got ya!" he yelled. He struggled to rise as his fishing pole bent and jerked. Sutekh put on the rubber glove from the tackle box and felt the metal spikes of its palm. He stood, holding his fishing rod in one hand and the glove in the other, watching the old man struggle.
Norman turned to him. "Come here. Stick that away and take this here."
Sutekh jumped, secured his fishing pole in a crack between the boards, threw off the glove, and took the man's fishing pole carefully into his hands. Instantly, he felt the vigorous tug of the fish shooting through the line. He wound the reel, bending forward and back. His heart pumped furiously, aroused both by the tugging and the fear of being pulled from the pier.
"It must be a big one," Norman said. He stood protectively close, slapping his hands frequently on his legs.
The boy's hands began to falter, barely able to turn the reel. Norman pointed over his shoulder and there it was, the fish surging against the string in a wide arch, a streak of silver in the water. "Keep her steady," the grandfather said. "Bring her in slow." Eventually, the boy slowed so much that Norman reached over and helped him bring the fish up.
The fight ended, but now began the futile flapping. The fish sparkled with tiny scales. It still tried to breathe. The mouth opened and closed rhythmically, showing rows of small teeth, sharp like bits of glass.
"Careful of her mouth. If she gets a grip on your finger, she'll take it," Norman said. He grabbed the fish with the glove. There was a crunch as the spikes dug in. The fish tried to wiggle free, but Norman yanked at the wire going into its mouth. The hook wouldn't come out. "It's a bluefish. Probably a foot long." He reached down into the tackle box and pulled out a tool the size of a screwdriver, a short pole with a corrugated bulge at the end, for extracting hooks. He shoved it down the fish's mouth and twisted. "Yeah, this'll be good eating," he said. Then he yanked out the tool, bringing with it the hook and pieces of gill and blood. The fish stopped fighting, only tried to breathe a little longer, then went limp.
"That'll do it," Norman said. He tossed the fish into an empty bucket. Its tail peeked over the rim. "What do ya say? You caught a real blue, boy. Catch another one like that and we got dinner."
Sutekh nodded. He looked at the pier, toward the bucket, at his grandfather. "We're gonna make you a fisherman yet," Norman said. "Check your line."
Sutekh turned slowly, as if he didn't understand, and pulled his fishing rod from the crack. As he reeled it in he looked back at the bucket, at the fishtail.
The kitchen's fluorescent light sputtered on. Sutekh and his grandfather walked in and set their things down; the fish by the sink, tackle box and rod on the floor.
"Your grandmother must be at Helen's," Norman said. He leaned back against the counter. "Okay, now comes the dirty part. I ever teach you how to clean fish?"
Sutekh said, "No."
"I haven't? Seven years old and you never cleaned a fish? It's your daddy's fault, you know. He's been in the city too long is what it is. He hasn't been out here in years, has he? He just comes and drops you off and is gone like a flash." Absently, he added, "Ain't been no good since your mother passed. That's got him messed up in the head."
Sutekh looked as if he was about to say something, but the words evaporated before they escaped his lips. Instead, he just looked up, his eyes searching his grandfather's features.
Norman motioned for Sutekh to pull a stool up to the counter, and dumped the bucket of four fish into the sink. "Now, you have to be careful with the knife or you'll take off a finger. Hear?" He turned the water on and let it wash over the fish, pulled a long, thin knife out of a drawer and dipped it under the stream. He put a fish on the counter and grabbed it by the tail. "Now, first you got to scale it." He scraped the blade up and down fish's side. Scales flaked off on the knife or popped onto the counter. He flipped the fish over and did the other side. "See, you gotta get these off. You wouldn't want to eat them." He put the blade of the knife behind the fish's gills and leaned down. The creature's head dropped into the sink with a dull thud. A rich maroon substance oozed from the hole where the head had been. He slit the fish's belly open and pulled out its insides with his fingers. He flicked them into the sink with a quick snap of his wrist. "You see what I been doing? Just slit it down here and pull out the mush." He turned the fish around and sliced the tail off with a quick thrust. "And there you go. Clean and ready for the pan." Norman held the fish up and smiled at Sutekh. "You ready to try?"
Sutekh stepped down from the stool and backed away a few steps.
"Whatsa matter, son?" Norman asked.
Sutekh looked him in the face for a moment, but then leaned back against the counter, with his head down.
"Son? Don't you want to scale your fish?"
Looking down, Sutekh saw the man's shoes, dock shoes, dirty from salt and fish and use, against the swirling pattern of the linoleum floor. "Granddad," he said. Sutekh closed his eyes and spoke without lifting his head. His voice was pained like bending wood. "Sometimes I think that's not supposed to happen."
"You think what's not supposed to happen? What are you talking about?"
"Daddy."
Norman stood up straight and cleared his throat. "What's wrong with your father?"
"He rubs on me," Sutekh said.
"What? You're not making sense."
"He rubs on me."
"Son, I don't know . . ." Norman began, but before he could complete the sentence some thought muffled his words. The questioning wrinkles around his eyes faded. His jaw went slack, and he seemed to pause in the middle of a breath. His gaze drifted away from Sutekh.
When Sutekh saw his grandfather's shoes step away a few paces, he looked up, his face tight, his lips quivering. "Granddad?"
The man was still, with his back turned toward the boy. His spine was crooked, one hand touching the wall, one shoulder higher than the other. His body looked broken and limp. He shook his head, said something under his breath, and placed a hand over his forehead. "Stop. Stop talking this foolishness."
Sutekh's forehead furrowed. He reached up and tugged at his lower lip, his eyes never leaving his grandfather. "He rubs on me. Sometimes in the bath---"
Norman moved. He turned and stepped forward and his hand rose, stiff as a board, and smacked Sutekh across the cheek. The force threw the boy's head sideways and knocked him from the chair.
"You dirty . . ." Norman stood above him, one hand raised as if to strike again, the other reaching down in a gesture almost comforting. He hesitated. Both hands trembled, and, when he spoke, his voice wavered. "I said stop talking that. You need to listen when I tell you a thing. You think I want to listen to---" He cut himself off and turned away. "That's enough. Your grandmother will finish cleaning the fish." Without another word, he left the room. The patio door banged shut behind him.
Sutekh lay still, with his arms wrapped tightly around his torso. There were scales on his face, but he didn't seem to notice. He had bitten the tip of his tongue, and a trickle of blood escaped the edge of his lips. He didn't seem to notice this either. When he finally moved, he did so carefully, silently. He placed his hands up to his throat, and gently probed the skin with his fingers, as if searching for some object lodged beneath the flesh.
The Way I See It
BY TERRY MCMILLANFROM A Day Late and a Dollar Short
Can't nobody tell me nothing I don't already know. At least not when it comes to my kids. They all grown, but in a whole lotta ways they still act like children. I know I get on their nerves---but they get on mine, too---and they always accusing me of meddling in their business, but, hell, I'm their mother. It's my job to meddle. What I really do is worry. About all four of 'em. Out loud. If I didn't love 'em, I wouldn't care two cents about what they did or be the least bit concerned about what happens to 'em. But I do. Most of the time they can't see what they doing, so I just tell 'em what I see. They don't listen to me half the time no way, but as their mother, I've always felt that if I don't point out the things they doing that seem to be causing 'em problems and pain, who will?
Which is exactly how I ended up in this damn hospital: worrying about kids. I don't even want to think about Cecil right now, because it might just bring on another attack. He's a bad habit I've had for thirty-eight years, which would make him my husband. Between him and these kids, I'm worn out. It's a miracle I can breathe at all.
I had 'em so fast they felt more like a litter, except each one turned out to be a different animal. Paris is a female lion who don't roar loud enough. Lewis is a horse who don't pull his own weight. Charlotte is definitely a bull, and Janelle would have to be a sheep---a lamb is closer to it---'cause she always being led out to some pasture and don't know how she got there.
As a mother, you have high hopes for your kids. Big dreams. You want the best for them. Want 'em to get the rewards from life that you didn't get for one reason or another. You want them to be smarter than you. Make better choices. Wiser moves. You don't want them to be foolish or act like fools.
Which is why I could strangle Lewis my damnself. He is one big ball of confusion. Always has had an excuse for everything, and in thirty-six years, he ain't changed a lick. In 1974, he did not steal them air conditioners from the Lucky Lady Motel that the police just happened to find stacked up in the back seat of our LeSabre way out there in East L.A. Lewis said his buddy told him they belonged to his uncle. And why shouldn't he believe him? All of a sudden he got allergies. Was always sneezing and sniffling. He said it was the smog. But I wasn't born yesterday. He just kept at it. Said he couldn't help it if folks was always giving him stuff to fix or things he didn't even ask for. Like that stereo that didn't work. Or them old tools that turned out to be from Miss Beulah's garage. Was I accusing him of stealing from Miss Beulah? Yes I was. Lewis was always at the wrong place at the wrong time, like in 1978 while he waited for Dukey and Lucky to come out of a dry cleaner's with no dry cleaning and they asked him to "Floor it!" and like a fool he did and the police chased their black asses all the way to the county jail.
For the next three years, Lewis made quite a few trips back and forth to that same gray building, and then spent eighteen months in a much bigger place. But he wasn't a good criminal, because, number one, he always got caught; and, number two, he only stole shit nobody needed: rusty lawnmowers, shovels and rakes, dead batteries, bald tires, saddles, and so on and so forth. Every time he got caught, all I did was try to figure out how could somebody with an IQ of 146 be so stupid? His teachers said he was a genius. Especially when it came to math. His brain was like a calculator. But what good did it do? I'm still waiting for the day to come when all them numbers add up to something.
Something musta happened to him behind them bars, 'cause ever since then---and we talking twelve, thirteen years ago---Lewis ain't been right. In the head. He can't finish nothing he start. Sometime he don't even start. Fortunately, he ain't been back to jail except for a couple of DUIs, and he did have sense enough to stop fooling around with that dope after so many of his friends OD'd. Now all he do is smoke reefa, sit in that dreary one-bedroom apartment drinking a million ounces of Old English, and play chess with the Mexicans. When ain't nobody there but him (which ain't often 'cause he can't stand being by hisself more than a few hours), he do crossword puzzles. Hard ones. And he good at it. These he do finish. And from what I gather, he done let hundreds of women walk through his revolving door for a day or two but then all he do is complain about Donnetta, his ex-wife, who he ain't been married to now going on six years, so most of 'em don't come back.
And don't let him get a buzz going. Every other word outta his mouth is Donnetta. He talk about her like they just got divorced yesterday. "She wanted a perfect man," he claimed, or, "I almost killed myself trying to please that woman." But even though Donnetta was a little slow, she was nice, decent. After I'd left Cecil for the third time, I stayed with 'em for close to a month. By the second week, I was almost ready for the loony bin. First off, Donnetta couldn't cook nothing worth eating; she wasn't exactly Oprah when it came to having a two-way conversation; cleaning house was at the bottom of her things-to-do list; and that boy needed his ass beat at least twice a day but she only believed in that white folks' "time-out" mess. She didn't have as much sense as a Christmas turkey, and how you supposed to lead a child down a path when you lost your damnself? I understood completely when that chile turned to God, got saved, and finally stopped giving Lewis dessert at night. A few months ago she sent me a pink postcard from some motel in San Diego saying she got married, is seven months pregnant and they already know it's a girl, and her new husband's name is Todd and he wants to adopt Jamil, and what do I think about all this? And then: P.S. Not that it should matter, but Todd is white. First of all, who she marry is her business, even though Lewis'll probably have a stroke when he find out. But one thing I do know: Kids love whoever take care of 'em.
Lewis been lost since she left. And he blames everybody except Lewis for his personal misery. Can't find no job: "I'm a threat to the white man," he says. "How?" I ask. "You more of a threat to yourself, Lewis." He huffs and puffs. "I'm a victim." And I say, "I agree. Of poor-assed planning!" And then he goes off and explains the history of the human race, and then black people, and then finally we get to the twentieth century and the castration of the black man that's still going on in society today because just look at how successful the black woman is compared to us! This is when I'd usually hand him another beer, which finally either shut his ass up, or he'd nod off into a coma.
Tragedy is his middle name.
For years I fell for his mess. Would lend him my Mary Kay money. My insurance-bill money. Even pawned my wedding ring once so he could pay his child support. But then it started to dawn on me that the only time he call is when he want something, so I stopped accepting the charges. Last week he come calling me to say another one of his little raggedy cars broke down on the side of the freeway, way out in redneck country, where Rodney King got beat up, and I guess I was supposed to feel sorry for him, which I did for a hot minute, but then I remembered he ain't had no driver's license for close to a year, and then he asked could I wire him $350 till his disability check came, and this time, this was my answer: "Hell, no!"
He got mad. "You don't care what happens to me, do you, Ma?"
"Don't start that mess with me, Lewis."
"You don't understand what I'm going through. Not one bit. Do you?"
"It don't matter whether I understand or not. I'm your mother. Not your wife. Not your woman. And I ain't no psychiatrist neither. What happened to Conchita?"
"It's Carlita."
"Comosita, Consuela, Conleche . . . whatever."
"We broke up."
"I'm shocked."
"I need your help, Ma. For real."
"So what else is new? You ain't even supposed to be driving, Lewis."
"Then how am I supposed to look for work or get to work?"
I decided to just pretend like I didn't hear him say the word "work." "I don't know. Call one of your friends, Lewis."
"I ain't got no friends with that kind of money. It's tough out here for black men, Ma, and especially if you handicapped. Don't you know that?"
"I didn't know you was handicapped."
"I got arthritis."
"Uh-huh. And I'm three months pregnant with triplets."
"How come don't nobody ever believe me when I tell the truth? I can't hardly ball up my fist, my knuckles is so swollen. And on my right wrist, the bone is sticking out. . . . Oh, never mind. Ma, please?"
"I have to go now, Lewis. I ain't got no three hundred and fifty dollars."
"Yes you do."
"You calling me a lie?"
"No."
"I'm telling you. All my money is spent."
"Where's Daddy?"
"Barbecuing. Where you think?" I say, lying my butt off.
"Could you ask him? And tell him it's for you?"
I just started laughing. First of all, I ain't seen Cecil in over a month, but I didn't feel like getting into it right then.
He groaned. "How about two hundred dollars, then?"
That's when I slammed the receiver down, because I couldn't stand hearing him beg. My hands was shaking so bad and my heart was beating a mile a minute, so I reached in the kitchen drawer, grabbed my spray, and took two or three quick puffs. Seem like he ain't gon' be satisfied till he use me up. That thought alone made me start crying, and I don't like to cry, 'cause it always do me right in. I couldn't get no air to come through my nose or mouth, and I clenched my fist and said in my head, "God give me strength," as I made my way to my room and sat on the edge of the bed, turned on my machine, grabbed that plastic tube, and sucked and sucked until my palms got slippery and my forehead was so full of sweat that I snatched my wig off and threw it on the floor.
I love Lewis. Would give him my last breath. Lord knows I don't want nothing bad to happen to him, but Lewis got problems I can't solve. It's some things love can do. And it's some things it can't do. I can't save him. Hell, I'm trying to figure out how to save myself.
Now, Charlotte. She a bull, all right. And I wish I didn't feel like this but I do: Half the time I can't stand her. I don't know how her husband can tolerate her ass either. I feel sorry for Al, really. He's one of them pussy-whipped, henpecked kinda husbands but try to pretend like he Superman in front of company. Everybody know Charlotte is a bossy wench from the word go. We ain't spoke this time going on four months. I think the record is five or six. I can't remember. But, hell, all I did was tell her she need to spend more time at home with them kids and she went off.
"When was the last time you worked full-time, took care of three kids and a husband, ran a household and three Laundromats, Mama, huh?"
"Never," I said.
"So how can you sit there on your high horse telling me what you think I should be doing?"
"Get some help and stop trying to do it all yourself."
"Do you know how expensive housekeepers is these days?"
"Oh, stop being so damn cheap, Charlotte. You don't have no trouble spending it."
"Cheap? Let me . . ."
"I heard Tiffany got expelled and Monique is running her mouth so much in class that she might be next."
"Who told you this---Janelle? With her big mouth? I know it, I just know it. Well, first of all, it ain't true."
"It is true, and it's your fault for not being there to keep their behinds in line."
"I'ma pretend like I didn't hear that. But let me tell you something, Mother. Tiffany did not get expelled. She got sent home for wearing too much perfume, 'cause half the class---including the teacher---started getting nauseous. And for your information, Monique just told a joke that made everybody laugh."
I knew she was lying through her teeth, but I didn't dare say it, so I just said, "Un-huh."
"And since Janelle's running her mouth so much, did she bother to tell you that Monique is also having a tough time 'cause we regulating her medication?"
"I got her medicine, all right."
"Mama, you know what? I'm so tired of your sarcastic remarks I don't know what to do. Sick of 'em! You never have nothing nice to say about my kids!"
"That's bullshit, and you know it!"
"It ain't bullshit!"
"When they do something good, then I'll have a reason to say something nice."
"See, that's what I mean! Has Dingus thrown a touchdown pass lately? And what about your darling Shanice: Did she get straight A's again? Go ahead and throw it in my face. I could use some more good goddamn news today!"
"You better watch your mouth. I'm still your mother."
"Then don't call me until you start acting like a mother and a grandmother to my kids!" And---bam!---she hung up.
The truth always hurts. This ain't the first time she done slammed the phone down in my face or talked to me in that nasty tone: Like I'm somebody in the street. I ain't gon' lie; It hurts and cuts into me deep, but I refuse to give her the satisfaction of knowing how bad she makes me feel. To be honest, Charlotte just likes people to kiss her ass, but I kissed their daddy's behind for thirty-eight years, I ain't here to pacify my kids. No, Lordy. Them days is over, especially since they're all damn near middle age.
Charlotte came too quick. Ten months after Paris. I did not need another baby so soon, and I think she knew it. She wanted all my attention then. And still do. She ain't never forgiven me for having Lewis and Janelle, and she made sure I knew it. I had to snatch a knot in her behind once for putting furniture polish in their milk. Made 'em take a nap in the doghouse with the dog and fed 'em Alpo while I went downtown to pay some bills. Had 'em practice drowning in a bathtub full of cold water. How many steps could they jump down with their eyes closed without falling. The list goes on.
Now, all my kids is taller than average, as good-looking as they come and as dark as you can get, and I spent what I felt was a whole lotta unnecessary time and energy teaching 'em to appreciate the color of their skin. To not be ashamed of it. I used to tell 'em that the blacker the berry the sweeter the juice, 'cause everybody know that back then being yellow with long wavy hair meant you was automatically fine, which was bullshit, but here it is 1994 and there's millions of homely yellow women with long straggly hair running around still believing that lie. Anyway, no matter what I did or said to make my kids feel proud, Charlotte was the only one who despised her color. Never mind that she was the prettiest of the bunch. Never mind that she had the longest, thickest, shiniest hair of all the black girls in the whole school. And nothing upset that chile more than when Paris started getting breasts and learned how to do the splits and Charlotte couldn't. She was the type of child you couldn't praise enough. Always wanted more. But, hell, I had three other kids and I had to work overtime to divide up my energy and time. What was left, I gave to Cecil.
Where's my lunch? I know this ain't no hotel, but a person could starve to death in this hospital. Would you look at that: It's raining like cats and dogs and here it is March. This weather in Vegas done sure changed over the years. It sound like bullets hitting these windows. I wish they would turn that damn air conditioning down. My nose is froze and I can't even feel my toes no more. I hope I ain't dead and just don't know it.
Anyway, it ain't my fault that right after we left Chicago and moved to California, Charlotte didn't like it and put up such a fuss that we sent her ass back there to live with my dinghy sister, Suzie Mae. She forgot to tell me and Suzie Mae she was damn near four months pregnant when I put her on the train. Young girls know how to hide a baby when they want to, and I'm a hard person to fool. I pay attention. Don't miss too much of nothing. But Charlotte is good at hiding a whole lot of stuff. She snuck and got married, and wasn't until another two months had passed when Suzie Mae come calling me saying, "You could send your daughter a wedding present or at least a package of diapers for the baby." What baby? Did I miss something? But I was not about to ask. I sent her a his-and-her set of beige towels from JC Penney, even though I didn't know nothing about the boy except his name was Al and he was a truck driver whose people was from Baton Rouge, so I couldn't get no initials put on 'em. I bought a mint-green booty set for the baby, 'cause they say it's bad luck to plan so far ahead, and right after her honeymoon (they didn't go nowhere except to spend the night at the Holiday Inn two exits off the freeway from where they live), Charlotte woke up in the middle of the night in a puddle of blood. She was having terrible cramps and thought she was in labor, except later on she tells us that the baby hadn't moved in two or three days. The doctors had to induce labor, and the baby was stillborn---a boy. I asked if she wanted me to come there to be with her, and she told me no. Her husband would take care of her. And that he did.
With so much going on, college slipped her mind altogether. She got that job at the post office and worked so much overtime I don't know when they found time to make anything except money, but somehow they managed to generate three more kids.
Now, Tiffany---that's her oldest daughter---got those big gray eyes and that high-yellow skin and that wavy plantation hair from her daddy's side of the family---they Louisiana Creoles---which is why she walk around with her ass on her shoulders thinking she the finest thing this side of heaven. She is. Ain't big as a minute, and prettier than a chile is supposed to be. But folks been telling her for so long that sometimes I can't hardly stand her behind, either. She thirteen going on twenty. Can have a nasty attitude. Just like her mama. Ask her to do something she don't wanna do and she'll roll them eyes at you like a grown woman. I threw a shoe at her the last time I was there and accidentally hit her in the eye, which is probably one more reason why me and her mama ain't speaking. The child stays in the mirror. Change her hairstyle at least two or three times before she leave for school, which is apparently the reason she don't have no time left to do her homework. Every time I see her she washing and rolling a ponytail or cascade and putting it in the microwave to dry, which is why the whole upstairs smell like burnt hair. I told her, Being pretty and dumb won't get you nowhere in this day and age. There's millions of pretty girls in the world. You just one. Put something else with it.
Now, Monique is on the verge of being sweet, but something stops her. She supposed to have some kind of learning disorder they giving out to every other child who don't pay attention, but let one of those music videos come on BET and she'll drop whatever she doing and go into a trance. Know the words to every rap record and hippity-hop song that come on the radio. And can move her behind so smooth she look like a pint-size woman practicing what she gon' do to her man the next chance she get. But I give her this much credit. She can play the flute so sweet it make you close your eyes and see blue. She know how to read all the notes, too. She taught herself how to play the piano. But once she get up off that bench, she too grown. I bought some videos for both of 'em when I was visiting last year and just slap me for buying PG-13s. "Granny, don't you know that all the best movies are rated R?" she asked me. Monique had her hands on what one day might be hips. "If ain't no sex, blood, or don't nobody get killed, it's boring, huh, Tiff?" And Miss Thang put the glue down and started blowing on her $1.99 Fancy Nails and said, "Yep." I couldn't say shit. At the rate they going, if these two make it outta high school without a baby, it'll be a miracle. This ain't wishful thinking on my part, it's what I see coming.
Now, Trevor is the only one in the house with a ounce of sense, but it's hard to tell what he's gon' do with it. He smart as hell---get straight A's and everything---but he don't seem to be interested in too much of nothing except his sewing machine and other boys, and not necessarily in that order. His mama refuse to believe that he's like that, but I saw it in him when he was little. He was always a little soft. Did everything lightly. But he can't help it. And even though I don't like it, Oprah has helped me understand it. He has a right to be who he is, and I'll love him no matter where he put his business. I just hope he don't grow up and catch no AIDS. He dance better than both of the girls, like ain't a bone in his body, and he been blessed with more than one talent. Besides clothes designing, the boy can also cook his ass off. It wouldn't kill his mama to take a long hard look in his room to get a few decorating ideas either, 'cause her mix-and-match taste ain't saying nothing. One minute she Chinese and the next she Southern Gothic or French Provincial. Some rules ain't supposed to be broken. Class is one more thing Charlotte think she can buy.
Trevor call me collect from time to time. "I can't wait to get out of here, Granny," he say each and every time we talk. "But it's okay. Two more years, Granny. And I'll be free."
Is that a reallive nurse coming in here carrying a tray? Yum yum yum. More babyfood? Who can swallow when you got a tube going down your throat and through your nose? I done already had two breathing treatments since this morning, what she want now? Nothing. All she do is look up at the numbers on those machines and then smile at me. "Comfortable?" she ask, and I shake my head no, since she know good and damn well I can't hardly mumble, but she just kinda curtsy and say, "Good," then turn around and walk out! If I was able to open my mouth I'd say, "Huzzy! I'm hungry as hell, cold as hell, and I could sure use a stiff drink." But I can't talk. And Lord knows I'm scared, 'cause I'm still here in ICU and I'm bored and I wanna go home, even though I know ain't nobody there waiting for me. Cecil been gone since the first of the year, but I don't feel like thinking about his old ass right now. That's another reason why I'm glad I got kids.
Now, Paris is the oldest. And just the opposite of Charlotte. Probably too much. Never gave me no trouble to speak of. And even though you love the ones that come afterwards, that first one'll always be something special. It's when you learn to think about somebody besides yourself. At the time, I was sixteen and watched too many movies, which is how I got it in my mind that one day I was going to Paris and become a movie star like Dorothy Dandridge or Lena Horne and I'd wear long flowing evening gowns and sleep in satin pajamas. I wanted to speak French, because Paris, France, seemed like the most romantic place in the world, and back then I craved romance something fierce. But I didn't expect it to come in the form it came in: Cecil. I used to close my eyes, laying right between my sisters: Suzie Mae on one side and Priscilla on the other. I'd smell bread baking and see red wine being poured in my glass and pale-yellow cheese being sliced and I could see the mist through those lace curtains and feel the cobblestone beneath my spiked heels. I heard accordions. Saw small wooden boats in dark-green water. But by the time I married Cecil and got pregnant---or, I should say, by the time I got pregnant and married Cecil---I knew the chances of me ever getting on a airplane going anywhere was slim to zero, so I named my daughter after the place I'd probably never see.
I made two mistakes: Married the first man who was nice to me, who showed me some unfiltered attention and gave me endless pleasure in bed. But because of my particular kind of ignorance, my second major mistake was dropping outta high school at sixteen to have a baby. It wasn't until five or six years down the road, when I was watching Casablanca on TV one night---alone---that I had to ask myself if I really loved Cecil. Would I go this far for him? Long before Humphrey and Ingmar even made it to the airport I knew the answer to that question was no. What I felt back then was comfortable---not comfort---just comfortable. There was no guesswork to our lives. But over the years all of it melted and turned into some kind of love, that much I do know.
Speaking of heat. All my kids are too hot in the ass---which they got from their daddy's side of the family---and Paris ain't no exception. It's probably the reason they all been divorced at least once (except for Charlotte, of course, but that's only 'cause she just too stubborn to admit defeat). All four of 'em married the wrong person for the wrong reasons. They married people who only lit up their bodies and hearts and forgot all about their minds and souls. To this day I still don't think they know that orgasms and love ain't hardly the same thing.
Paris sure don't know how to pick no man. Every one she ever loved had something wrong with him. Nathan---that's my grandson's daddy---scores very high on this test. I don't know why, but she seem to pick the ones that's got major wiring problems. They should've been wearing giant signs that said: "Defective" or "Lazy" or "Retarded" or "Not Father Material" or "Yeah, I'm Good-looking but I Ain't Worth Shit." I guess she think her love can fill in their blank spots, 'cause for some strange reason she gravitate to these types. The kind of men that drain you, drag you down, take more from you than they give, and by the time they done used you up, got what they want, they bored, you on empty, and they ready to move on to greener pastures.
She love too hard. Her heart is way too big and she's too generous. To put it another way: She's a fool. Ain't nothing worse than a smart fool. And she's smart all right. Got her own catering company. Well, it's more to it than just cooking and dropping the stuff off in those silver trays with little flames underneath. No sirree. This ain't no rinky-dink kind of operation. First of all, you need some real money if you want to eat Paris's food, 'cause she's expensive as hell. Say you having a big party---not just your regular weekend type of bash, I mean the kind you see in movies: like The Godfather Part I, for example, when the food don't look real, or too good to eat, and you too scared to touch it. Give her a theme: She'll cook around it. Give her a country: She'll transform your house. Make it look like you in Africa or Brazil or Spain or, hell, Compton. All you gotta do is tell her. She make all the arrangements: from the forks and tablecloths, to the palm trees, hedges, and flowers, to the jazz band or DJ. One of her assistants, and she's got a few of 'em, will even make hotel arrangements for the guests and have folks picked up in limousines at the airport.
Anyway, she got class, and she got it from my side of the family. She been in the San Francisco newspaper, and I think the L.A. Times, too. Been on a few of them morning talk shows, where she pretended to cook something in a minute that she really made the night before. One of the local TV stations asked her about doing her own cooking show, but like a fool she said no, because she said she had enough on her plate. Like what?
Food must run in our family. Me and her daddy opened our first barbecue joint, which we named the Shack, fifteen years ago. But Vegas ain't the same no more. With all the violence and gangs and drugs and kids not caring one way or the other that you the same color as them while they robbing you at gunpoint and can't look you in the eye 'cause you probably favor somebody they know, we had to close two down and ain't got but one left. It's been a struggle trying to make ends meet. Paris stopped cooking like us years ago. She think our kinda food kill folks. She right, but it's hard for black people to live without barbecue and potato salad and collard greens with a touch of salt pork, a slice of cornbread soaked in the juice, a spoonful of candied yams, and every now and then a plateful of chitterlings. Her food is so pretty that half the time you don't never know what you eating until you put it in your mouth, and even then you gotta ask.
In spite of all the money she make and that big house her and my favorite grandson, Dingus, live in---yes, I said favorite---she ain't happy. What Paris need ain't in no cookbook, no house, or no garage. She need a man quick and in a hurry, and Dingus need a daddy he can touch. Another baby wouldn't be a bad idea. She ain't but thirty-eight but swears up and down she's too old to be thinking about a baby. I said bullshit. "As long as you still bleed, you able." She rolled her eyes up inside her head. "And just where am I supposed to find a father?" Sometimes she make things harder than they really are. "Pick one!" I said.
I don't know how she's survived over there all by herself. Hell, it's been six years since her divorce. To my knowledge, Paris don't love nobody and don't nobody love her. She put up a good front, like everything just so damn hunky-dory. Only she ain't fooling me. I know when something wrong with any of my kids. They don't have to open their mouth. I can sense it. Paris spend so much energy trying to be perfect, trying too hard to be Superwoman, that I don't think she know how lonely she really is. I guess she think if she stay busy she won't have to think about it. But I can hear what's missing. She too damn peppy all the time.
I'm here to testify: Ain't no time limit on heartache. Cecil done broke mine so many times I'm surprised it still know how to tick. But forget about me. Paris been grieving so long now for Nathan that she done pretty much turned to stone. I think she so scared of getting her heart broke again that now she's like the Ice Queen. Can't nobody get close to her. They say time heals all wounds. But I ain't so sure. I think they run around inside you till they find the old ones, jump on top until they form a little stack, and they don't go nowhere until something come along that make you so happy you forget about past pain. Sorta like labor.
What time is it? I know my stories is off. I watch Restless and Lives and occasionally World, but some days they piss me off so bad that I can't hardly stand to watch none of their simple-asses. Ha ha ha. I'm "trippin'" as Dingus would say, laying in a hospital bed in intensive care thinking about some damn soap operas when what I should be doing is thanking the Lord for giving me another shot: Thank you, Jesus.
To be honest, I didn't trust Nathan from the get-go. Paris hadn't known him but two months when they got married. He was in law school for seven of the eight years they was married. Even I know it only take three. I just bit my tongue and gritted my teeth when she told me she wasn't taking him to court for no child support. "I don't want the hassle," she said. That was what, 1987? Here it is 1994 and I can count on one hand how many times he done seen his son since he went back to Atlanta. He don't hardly call. I guess he forgot how to write, and ain't sent nary a birthday card and not a single solitary Christmas present in the last three years that I know of. I ain't heard her mention nothing about no surprise checks either---not that she need 'em---but that ain't the point. She handled this all wrong. If a man ain't gon' be there for his kids then he should at least help pay for 'em. It's the reason we got so many juvenile delinquents and criminals and gangs running through our neighborhoods. Where was they damn daddies when they needed one? Mamas can't do everything.
The one good thing that came out of that marriage was my grandson Dingus. He's turning out to be one fine specimen. Just made the varsity football team. The first black quarterback in the history of his high school. He in the eleventh grade and I ain't never seen a C on his report card. He ain't never come home drunk and he told me drugs scare him. He say he gets his high from exercising and eating vegetables and drinking that protein stuff everyday. I got my money on him. That he gon' grow up and be something one day. Putting the boy in that Christian school all them years was the smartest thing Paris could've done. Going to church at least one Sunday a month wouldn't kill her though. I just hope I live long enough to see him in college. And mark my words: if he wins a scholarship or goes on any kind of TV, watch and see if his daddy don't come rushing out of nowhere to claim him then.
The day before I got here, Paris had called the house and after leaving three messages on my answering machine and she didn't hear from me, she called emergency and they told her I'd been admitted, that I was in ICU, and of course she was all set to hop on a airplane but I grabbed that doctor's arm and shook my head back and forth so many times I got the spins. He told her I'd probably be home in three to four days. That I was almost out of the danger zone. That if I kept improving they would move me to a regular room on Thursday, which is tomorrow, and if my breathing test is at least 70 percent I can probably go home Saturday morning. It don't make no sense for Paris to spend unnecessary money to come see me when I'm still breathing and she can take that very same money and slide it inside my birthday card in three weeks.
Sometimes I feel like they made a mistake in the hospital when they handed Janelle to me. She a case study in and of herself. Been going to college off and on for the past fifteen years and still don't have no degree in nothing. Hell, she should be the professor by now. Every time I turn around she taking another class. One minute it's stained glass. The next it's drapes and valances. But I think she was tired of being creative and now she wanna be a professional. Did she tell me she switched over to real estate? Who knows? Maybe all them years of comparing one child to another messed her up. Treating her like a baby is probably why she still act like one. Me or her daddy didn't have such high expectations of her like we did with the first ones, and maybe this is what made her not have too many for herself. I don't know. But I have to blame Cecil for the chile being so wishy-washy. He lived and breathed for that girl. Spoiled her. Janelle couldn't do no wrong. But back then neither one of us knew we was doing it.
Even still, Janelle is as sweet as she wants to be, a little dense, but the most affectionate child of the whole bunch. She even go to psychics and palm readers and the people that read them big cards. I don't know what lies they telling her, but she believe in that mess. And she say some of the dumbest shit sometime that you can't even twist your mouth to say nothing. The chile live from one holiday to the next. If you don't know which one is coming up, just drive by her house. For Groundhog Day, you can bet a groundhog'll be peeking up from somewhere in her front yard. On St. Patrick's Day: four-leaf clovers everywhere. On Valentine's Day: red and pink hearts plastered on everything. She had seven Christmas trees one Christmas, in every room in the damn house, and a giant one in the front yard! And now here come Easter.
Ever since Jimmy got killed back in '85, Janelle been a little off. He was her second husband. She wasn't married but twenty-two days the first time. He beat her up once and that was enough. But Jimmy is Shanice's daddy. Once Janelle finally got back into the dating game---the last few men she dealt with was all married. I told her it was wrong, but she said this way she didn't have to worry about getting too serious.
Well, guess what? She married this last one. He left his wife of a million years for her. His name is George. He's ugly and old enough to be her daddy. But his money is long and green and he don't mind spending it on Janelle. That's her whole problem: she always want somebody to take care of her. Ain't this the nineties? Even I know this kind of attitude is ridiculous in this day and age and I'm almost a senior citizen. This is the reason so many of us became slaves to our husbands in the first place, and why so many women don't have no marketable skills to speak of now. Can't no man take better care of you than you can take of yourself. Janelle is thirty-five years old and still ain't figured this out yet.
I have tried my damnedest to like George, be nice, act civilized toward him, but I can't pretend no more. He's head of security at LAX, but work for the LAPD. Janelle brag that he got over six hundred people working under him. I ain't impressed in the least. Now, Shanice, she's my granddaughter who's all of twelve, came to spend last Christmas with me and Cecil. That was three months ago. I knew something was different about her but I couldn't put my finger on it. First of all, she wouldn't take off that stupid baseball cap, but I know it's the style these days, so I didn't say nothing. She wasn't here but two days before I noticed how strange she was acting. Not her usual talkative self. She seemed nervous. Downright fidgety. Like her mind was somewhere else. Almost burnt up my kitchen frying a hamburger. Forgot all about it. Dropped three eggs on the floor and sliced off a chunk of her finger helping me chop up the celery for the dressing. When she wasn't the least bit excited after she opened her presents---some ugly clothes she asked for---I said, "Hold it a minute, sugar. Take that hat off and look at me." She shook her head no. "I know you're not saying no to me---your granny---are you?" She shook her head no again. I walked over and snatched that cap off her head, and when I looked down I could not believe my eyes. All I saw was big beige circles of scalp and strands of hair here and there. "Cecil, get my spray for me, would you?" But I forgot he went down to Harrah's right after the game, and I looked around till I saw one on the table next to the couch and I grabbed it and took two deep puffs. Shanice didn't move and I didn't take my eyes off her. "Why is your hair falling out?" She didn't answer. Just had this blank look on her face. "Is it from a bad perm?" She shook her head no. Shit. Then what? I looked at her hand moving up toward a strand and she started twirling it tight. "You pulling it out?" She nodded yes. "Why?" I'm waiting and trying not to cry, 'cause I want to know what the hell is going on here, but that's when the chile crumpled over all that wrapping paper like somebody had stuck her with a knife. "Tell Granny what's wrong, baby." She just kept crying. "You scared?" She shook her head yes. "Scared of what? Who?" She wouldn't say nothing. "Is it somebody we know?" She shook her head no, then yes. "Talk to me, Shanice. Sit your butt up and talk to me." She sat up but looked over at the Christmas tree. "Is it George?" She nodded her head yes. "Has he been putting his hands on you?" When she shook her head no, I wasn't sure if she understood what I meant. I put my arms around her and rocked her. When she finally stopped, she said that George is mean and sometimes he hits her and she's scared of him. "You got any marks on you?" She shook her head no. "You sure that's all he's done is hit you?" She nodded yes, but for some reason I didn't believe her. "Have you told your mama?" She shook her head yes. "And?" She started crying again, but by now I grabbed my spray and snatched that phone out the cradle and got Janelle on the phone. "Shanice just told me George been hitting her and she tried to tell you and you don't believe her. Tell me this ain't true."
"Mama, George has never hit Shanice. She's been lying about a lot of things lately. She's just being dramatic."
"Oh, really. What about her hair? How dramatic is that?"
"The doctor said some kids do this."
"Have you at least confronted George?"
"Of course I have. Mama, look. George is a good man. He loves Shanice like she was his own daughter. He's done everything to get in her good graces, but she has never really cared for him, so this is just another desperation move on her part to get him out of the house once and for all."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Look. Why don't you send her on home?"
I took a few more puffs off my inhaler, then slammed it down on the counter. I changed ears. "I'll tell you something. A home is where a child is supposed to feel safe, protected."
"I know this, Mama, and she should . . ."
"Apparently, your daughter don't feel this way."
"Are you about finished?"
"No. I'm just getting started. I'll say this. You better watch that motherfucker like a hawk, 'cause he doing more than hitting her. You may be blind, but I ain't. And I'll send her home when I'm good and damn ready!" And I hung up.
My granddaughter ain't no actress, and them tears was real. Since she run track and had a big meet coming up, I sent her home, but promised her I would look into this. I told her to dial 911 the next time he so much as bump into her. I just been patting my feet, trying to figure out what to do about this mess. Cecil told me to mind my own business. I told Cecil to kiss my black ass. This chile got my blood in her veins.
The more I think about it, I'm beginning to wonder if we ain't one of them dysfunctional families I've seen on TV. A whole lotta weird shit been going on in the Price family for years. But, then again, I know some folks got some stuff that can top ours. Hell, look at the Kennedys. Maybe everybody is dysfunctional and God put us all in this mess so we can learn how to function. To test us. See what we can tolerate. I don't know, but we don't seem to be doing such a hot job of it. I guess we need to work harder at getting rid of that d-y-s part. I just wish I had a clue where to start.
I won't lie: None of my kids turned out the way I hoped they would, but I'm still proud to be their mother. I did the best I could with what I had. Cecil worked two jobs back in those days, which meant I had to do everything: like raise 'em. I tried to teach 'em the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, being honest, having good manners, and what I knew about dignity, pride, and respect. What I left out they shoulda learned in Sunday school. Common sense is something you can't teach, which is why there's some things kids should blame their parents for and some shit they just have to take responsibility for on their own.
I still can't believe they all came out of my body. Grew up in the same house. I tried my best to spread my love around so none of 'em would feel left out. Even lied to 'em so each one would feel special. I've tried to steer 'em in the right direction, but sometimes they just didn't wanna go that way. They had their own destiny in mind, which was okay, except when ain't no clear path in front of 'em you kinda wonder where they headed.
I've watched 'em make all kinda mistakes over the years. Been scared for 'em. Worried myself gray. Prayed like a beggar. But I done finally learned that you can't carry the weight for everything that happen to your kids. For the longest time I have. But not no more. I'm letting go of the coulda-woulda-shouldas and admit that I was not the perfect mother, but I broke my neck trying to be a good one. I'm tired of mothering 'em. It's time for them to mother themselves. I can't do no more than I already have. And from now on I'm standing on the sidelines. I've made too many trips to this hospital from worrying about husbands and kids, which is why from now on the only person I'm worrying about is Viola Price.
That's me.
I'm pushing fifty-five. Twenty-three more days and I'll finally qualify as a senior citizen. I can't wait! April 15. A day don't nobody want to remember but can't nobody forget. Hard to believe that me and Charlotte was born on the same day. Them astrologers don't know what they talking about. We different as night and day. All I know is when I get outta here this time, things gon' be different. I'm about to start living. I can't wait to start doing some of the things I've been meaning to do but never have for one reason or another. The day after my birthday, I'm going straight to Jenny Craig so I can lose these thirty or forty pounds once and for all. When I look good, maybe I'll feel good. By then, maybe I can figure out what I'm gon' do with the rest of my life. Selling Mary Kay ain't exactly been getting it. I just did it to get away from barbecue and smoke---to stop myself from going completely crazy being home. As hard as I tried, I couldn't take the smell of all that perfume they put in their products, and at the rate I was going it woulda took me about twenty years before I ever sold enough to get me one of them pink cars.
That phone could ring. Paris shoulda told Charlotte's evil ass by now, and I know she called Janelle first, and somebody shoulda put out a SOS to Lewis, and Cecil of all people should know I'm in here. I just heard it through the grapevine that he over there living with some welfare huzzy who got three kids. He must really think he John Travolta or somebody. But his midlife crisis done lasted about twenty years now. Hell, he pushing fifty-seven years old. I can't lie. Cecil was driving me nuts after he took early retirement from bus driving for the school district, and on top of that, he had to quit putting in time at the Shack altogether, 'cause his sinuses took a turn for the worse. We had to hire strangers to run it, and we didn't need no bookkeeper to see that they'd been robbing us blind. Cecil didn't know what to do with so much free time on his hands. Vegas being a desert, and where our little stucco house is, ain't no grass to cut, no hedges to trim, no weeds to pull, no pool to clean, so this is when he started hanging around the crap tables and at the same time discovered he could still drive his truck: ram it into some little dumb cunt who probably thought she'd found herself a genuine sugardaddy. Unfortunately, Cecil's truck ain't had no pickup in years so what this chile is getting I don't know.
In all honesty, I really ain't missed him personally, but what I do miss is his presence. That raggedy house feel even smaller without him in it. Like all the moisture been sucked out. I can't even smell him no more. Ain't nothing to pick up. Or hang. Ain't washed but once this past week, but even that was only a half a load. And plenty of leftovers. Never learned how to cook for just two people, let alone one. If I thought about him long enough, I guess I could miss him.
He stopped by last month to pick up his little pension check, looking all embarrassed, and, boy, was he surprised when he saw all his stuff stuffed in old pillowcases and balled up in old sheets and stacked on top of each other in the storage closet right off the carport. The spiderwebs was already starting to do their business. I only did it to impress him. I wanted him to think I can live without him. I'm sure I can, I just ain't figured out if I want to or not yet. He didn't mention nothing about coming home, and I didn't bring up the subject either. I can't lie: right after he left, I was relieved, like I was getting a much-needed vacation. It was like the part of me that used to love him had been shot up with novocaine. I didn't shed a single tear. I been numb too long. Even still, another part of me is scared, 'cause I ain't never lived by myself. Always had him or the kids here: somebody.
"How you feeling, Vy?"
Well, look who's here: Cecil! At first I pretend like I'm already dead. I want the guilt to eat his ass up. But he can see the oxygen coming through this mask, hear me breathing through these tubes, see that monitor zigzagging with my life in green. He take my hand and I snatch it back. When I open my eyes, he look like a bear. He smell like curl activator. Cecil will not cut off his Jheri Curl to save his life. I told him a thousand times to look around: this "do" ain't been in style for years. But he don't care. He think, 'cause he dye it black, it makes him look younger, which ain't hardly true. He think he still "got it going on," as Dingus would say. To set the record straight, Cecil look like he about four months pregnant. He wearing his exciting uniform: them black polyester pants that don't need no belt, his Sammy Davis, Jr.--pink shirt without the ruffles (thank the Lord), and those lizard shoes he bought at the turn of the century, when we still lived in Chicago. He look like a lounge singer who just got off work. But other than this, I'd say he still might be handsome, all things considered.
"I was worried about you," he say like he mean it. "You doing all right?" If I ain't mistaken, them look like tears in his eyes. I know how to do this, too, which is why I ain't the least bit moved by this little show of---what should I call it, emotion? I open my eyes wide---like a woman who done had too many face lifts---grab the little notepad from my tray, write, "Take a wild guess," and hand it to him. He look somewhat hurt and sit down at the foot of my bed. The heat from his body is warming my right foot. I feel like sliding both feet under his big butt but I don't. He might get the wrong impression.
"Is everythang all right at the house?"
I nod.
"You want me to bring you anythang?"
I want to point to my mouth but I don't. I shake my head no. My friend Loretta promised to bring me my teeth, which I know is somewhere on the dining-room floor, 'cause I heard 'em slide across the wood when the paramedics picked me up and slung me onto that stretcher. But her car's been in the shop. Loretta is my next-door neighbor. She's white and nice and a brand-new widow. She even trying to teach me how to play bridge. I just hope she watering my plants and got the rest of that stuff out the refrigerator, 'cause I was cleaning it when I first felt my chest go tight.
"You looking good," he say. If I had the strength, I'd slap him. I look like hell froze over and he know it. My hair is still in these cellophaned burgundy cornrows, 'cause they won't let me put my wig on. Cecil just sit there for a few minutes, looking like a complete fool, like he trying to remember something only he can't. I guess the silence was starting to get to him, 'cause he take a deep breath and finally say, "So---when you get to come home?"
I hold up three, then four fingers.
He stand up. "You need a ride?"
I shake my head no.
"I can come back and see you tomorrow."
I shake my head no. He shake his head yes. "After I get off work."
My eyes say: "Work?"
"Just a little security job. Part-time. It's something."
I'm wondering if it's at Harrah's or Circus Circus or Mirage: his second homes. I write the word "SHACK" down.
"Shaquan got robbed again, so we boarded the place up. I can't take the stress no more."
No more barbecue.
"I'll stop by the house to check on things," he say and bend over and give me a kiss on my forehead. Either he still love me and don't know it or he feel sorry for me. I don't much care right now, but all I know is that his lips is the warmest thing I've felt touch my body since I was greasing Shanice's scalp and she fell asleep in my lap. I hate to admit it, but Cecil's lips sure felt good.
I turn my face toward the window and close my eyes. I'm hoping these tears can hold off a few more minutes. I hear the soles of his shoes squish against the tile floor. The door opens. A shot of cold air comes in, and then the click of that door. I look at the clock. Cecil was here for all of eight minutes. When that door pops back open, I turn, thinking he done come to his senses, done had a change of heart, wanna say something mushy to me like they do on All My Children: Something that gon' make me feel like I got wings and can fly outta this hospital bed straight into his arms, where I can sink against his soft chest and he'll hold me, rock me like he used to, and I'll be able to take one deep breath after another.
But it ain't Cecil. It's a nurse. Finally bringing me my lunch. Some thick green soup and mashed potatoes and it hurts when I swallow, but I don't care: I'm starving. I eat every drop of my tapioca, even though I can't usually stomach smooth-and-creamy nothing. I drink my apple juice, wishing all the time it was a beer. When I push the call button so they can take my tray, something metal hits the floor. They're Cecil's keys. Ha ha ha.
I musta dozed off for a few minutes after they picked up my tray and the doctors checked my numbers. I know I'm in bad shape. I hate having asthma. I wasn't even born with this shit. I was forty-two when Suzie Mae called me at four-thirty in the morning to tell me that Daddy's sixteen-year-old grandson by his first wife, who he had took in, had stabbed him thirty-six times and killed him 'cause Daddy wouldn't let his girlfriend spend the night. I had a anxiety attack and couldn't catch my breath. The doctors treated me for asthma, and I been on this medication ever since. Each time I try to stop taking it, I have a attack, so my feeling is the doctors gave me this damn disease. I can't win.
And I can't lie. This attack scared me. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking: Is this gon' be the one? In a split second you remember everybody you love, and in the next one you ask yourself: Did I do this thing right? Did I do everything I wanted to? What would I change if I could do it all over? Did I hurt anybody so much that they won't be able to forgive me? Will they forgive me for not being perfect? I forgive myself. And I forgive God. But then you feel your eyes open and you realize you ain't dead. You got tubes coming outta you. Lights is bright. Your heart is thumping. You say a long thank-you prayer. And you lay here thinking about everything and everybody, 'cause you got another chance to live. You ask yourself what you gon' do now. My answer is plain and simple: I'ma start doing things differently, 'cause, like they say, if you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten. Ain't that the truth, and who don't know it?
So this is the deal, Viola. First of all, if I don't do nothing else, I'ma get this asthma under control, 'cause I'm tired of it running my life. Tired of grown kids and husbands running my life. Tired of being smart but ain't got no evidence to prove it. I wanna get my GED. I don't see why not. It ain't never too late to learn. I just hope what they say about the brain being a muscle is true. The way I see it, I figure I owe myself a cruise to somewhere before I hit sixty, especially since I took Paris, France, outta my dreams a million years ago. Hell, I ain't been nowhere. How I'ma get the money is a mystery to me, but I'll get it. If it's meant to be, it'll be. I should try to get some decent dentures: the kind that fit and don't look false. But if me or my kids ever hit the lottery, I'ma get the kind that don't come out. Paris and Janelle think playing is a waste of time and money. Paris say only emigrants and legitimate senior citizens ever seem to win. But Charlotte play Little Lotto three times a week, and Lewis, whenever he get a extra dollar, which ain't all that often. Both of 'em promised that if they ever hit, they would split the winnings with me. I told 'em I'd divide mine three ways if I didn't win but twenty dollars, and I would.
The first thing I would do is buy myself a house that don't need no repairs, and walk around barefoot, 'cause the carpet would be just that thick. Hell, a condo would do the trick, as long as I had a patch of dirt big enough to plant some collards, a few ears of corn, some cherry tomatoes, and hot peppers to pickle for the winter. And I'd like to know what it feel like to drive a brand-new anything. I know I'm dreaming, but deep down inside, when you know your life is at least 80 percent over, you ain't got nothing left to live for but dreams.
More than anything, if something was to happen to me, I pray that each one of my kids find happiness. I want 'em to feel good. Live good. Do what's right. I just hope I live long enough to see Lewis get hisself together and start acting like the man I know he is. Lord knows I'd love to see Paris marry somebody worthy of her and I'd pay cash money to be there when my grandson throw a touchdown pass on nationwide TV. And Charlotte. I hope she stop getting so mad with me for every little thing and realize that she ain't no stepchild of mine, that I love her just as much as the other kids. I want the day to come when Janelle stand on her own two feet and get rid of that rapist she married. And if I don't get my old husband back, hell, I'll settle for a new one. One thing I do know about men and kids is that they always come back. They may be a day late and a dollar short, but they always come back.
FROM Pride
At this point in my life I don't think there's anybody I would have done a wedding for except Bryant. Maybe my son. My daughter we won't even discuss.
But once I took it on, though, you'd better believe that this wedding was going to be a very special affair, and classy too---even if the bride was pregnant and barely eighteen years old, and the wedding party put together couldn't have financed a used Chevrolet. I wanted to dignify and elevate their union, and show them what was possible. Hiram and I practically raised Bryant, and I refused to see him and his girlfriend stand up in some JP's office in their sneakers as if they didn't have anybody who was willing and able to do better. That's a terrible way to start out.
Plus, since they were getting married at our country house in Chester County, and since Hiram was looking toward Congress in a couple of years, this was my opportunity to invite a few of our neighbors and supporters out there. What that meant was that I had to keep a very firm hand on the proceedings. I told the kids they could bring their hip-hop music to the reception and all, but for the ceremony, at least, we were going to do this thing right.
Despite everything. Despite the fact that the bridesmaid arrived with her hair stuck out all over her head talking about her cousin was supposed to do it, but the cousin's boyfriend's house caught on fire, and the kids were staying over with him, so the cousin had to go get them, and now what was she supposed to do, and did we have a beauty shop out here she could go to?
Not hardly.
So I gave Audrey my car so she could drive back to the city to get my daughter Nicki's dryer. Audrey is my old, old girlfriend and Bryant's mother. We took him after she divorced her husband and went back to finish nursing school. When her drinking got bad we kept him. Bryant is like a son to both of us.
Audrey never did like Bryant's girlfriends and couldn't abide this one. She was not totally on board with the wedding, and she did not approach the hair dryer emergency like a team player.
"I got sober so I could watch my one son throw his life away for some big-face, big-titty, big-ass gold digger with a lisp? And then run my ass ragged because the maid of honor shows up to the train station with hair look like she had first-period gym? I don't think so, Roz. She'll have to march down the aisle with them nappy spikes lookin' just like that."
I would have sent my daughter, Nicki, but she was already upstairs trying to help take in the girl's dress where the bodice hung off her chest like it was pouting. I mean everybody had to pitch in on this one.
I wanted to light into Audrey point-blank, like: "Well, what the heck did you get sober for?" But at this point, better, I figured, just to stay positive, period, with everybody.
"You know what Hiram said, Audrey. With a girl like that, the boy's sort of livin' large." I had to laugh. It just made her madder.
"'That tho thweet. Y'all tho funny. . . .' "
"She does have some ambition," I said. "I've talked to her. I can tell these things."
"What ambition? To marry my son, that's her damn ambition."
Audrey was right, but I wasn't going to give in. "She tells me she wants to open a manicure shop," I said.
"Oh, piss."
"Now, I'ma tell you again, since you seem a little slow on the uptake, Audrey: The dryer is in Nicki's closet, up on the shelf. And take this money."
"What do I need money for?"
"You always need money, Audrey; even if you don't need it, it's good to have. And take the cell phone."
Audrey calls me "bourgie"; she calls me all kind of names, but I don't care. You see who was throwing the wedding, don't you?
In fact, quiet as it's kept, if this had happened any sooner, Audrey would've been out of the picture altogether. It hadn't even been a year since she'd called us at three in the morning to come get her from behind some bucket-o'-blood bar where two men supposed to be giving her a ride took her in the alley and raped her. Hiram went and took her to emergency, where they examined her and brought in a rape counselor, advised her to get therapy and get sober, and released her. Didn't Hiram drive her straight to the city's detox and rehab center---which is right behind Betsy Ross's house, if you can believe that.
Then Hiram being Hiram, he strikes up a friendship with the young black guys who admitted her. He bought them breakfast and listened to their dream of creating a community-based rehab afterwork program. Hiram's put them in touch with Neesie's church and some funders, so it may actually happen. And Audrey's sober; that's the main thing. She's part of our lives again.
I walked Audrey to the car and repeated my instructions about the burglar alarm system to make sure she understood how to work it. She wasn't hardly listening to me.
"Here," I said, reaching into the car for my traveling pad and pencil, "I'll write it down."
"You know that yellow heifer tricked him," Audrey said.
Written directions or not, it was even money she'd set off the alarm when she got there.
"God knows I am trying to get this pulled off with some semblance of dignity and style. Will you help me, Audrey?"
"You know she got herself pregnant just so she wouldn't lose 'im."
What could I say? Bryant is like a throwback---steady and responsible to a fault---and I'd be willing to bet money that Crystal had to maneuver to get him to slip up. I'm sure Audrey was right again.
"My grandmother used to say, 'Who knows what goes on when two people close the door to their bedroom?' "
"They didn't have a bedroom. Probably didn't have a damn door."
Forty-five minutes later she called from the house to say "No dryer." So I ask Nicki, and she tells me that after she and the new Boyfriend-Who-Could-Do-No-Wrong went native with the dreads, she lent her dryer I bought her to some girl at her school who's on scholarship from Camden. Which means I can kiss that hair dryer goodbye.
"You should've asked me."
Asked her? Who bought the doggone dryer? "I know you're not talkin' to me," I said.
She shrugged and kept working on the dress. That boyfriend was a real pain in the neck. A know-it-all. Got her acting like she was a woman grown, and the fact of my presence was stunting her growth.
The maid of honor is sitting there looking me in the face talking about "That's all 'ight. She don't have to bother. With the little veil, ain't nobody gonna see. Plus I got gel."
I used every trick in the book to get Audrey to zoom out to the beauty supply place. I didn't care: guilt, shame, bribery. She called me names. I told her to take that money I gave her and buy a Gold-N-Hot hard hat and extra-strength perm, too. The bridesmaid's roots were pure steel wool---I swear to God---and steady whining.
"I told you just some gel take care of that."
Now, you don't want to be rude, because children these days take such offense, but I had to let her know very politely that there was no gel in the whole wide world could fix what she had crawling down the back of her neck.
"I have a plan for this evening, honey," I said. "And one part of that plan is for you to be as beautiful as we both know you can be. Will you work with me on this?"
My daughter, Nicki, rolled her eyes, but people respond to that sort of appeal. Besides, my other girlfriend Tamara kept popping her head in every half an hour saying, "Cut it. Just let me cut it down to the roots. I'm telling you, with eyeliner and Fulani hoops, you'd be stunning. Aesthetically, this could be a real turning point for you."
When we were kids Tam would tease you until you almost wanted to hit her, except she'd hit you back. All this poor girl could do was look at me with those big eyes like: please don't let that five-foot-ten woman with the dreads get near me with no scissors.
I told her to put on a sweatshirt and come trail around and give me a hand putting out the flowers.
The place looked gorgeous, if I do say so myself. It's an old farmhouse, built by a black caretaker on land given to him in the eighteen hundreds by the family he worked for. He built the front section, I understand, from local stone that he dug out of his own fields. In later years, his children and grandchildren added rooms, but then, I guess, the gene pool ran shallow, because they messed over the building and then messed up their finances so bad that we got the property for next to nothing. The one thing I'd expect that living out here would have taught them is the advantage of inheritance. White people out here hold on to their land, and they hold on to their money, which is why they have no debt and why everybody else in America is fighting over what's left.
I told her that this land has been under black ownership for more than a hundred and fifty years. And I explained to her about the original owner and showed her the gravestone that he carved every day for fifteen years before he died out of a piece of quartz shaped like a cross he found in the creek. Fifteen years, a little at a time. He finished the carving and died a month later. It's a wonderful story. If the family didn't have the sense to keep the place up, well, too bad. I have no qualms about making use of the history they threw away. Whether it made any effect on the bridesmaid, I couldn't say.
Since everybody knew the kids didn't have any money, and the bride's family didn't have a pot to piss in, I tried to keep the presentation humble. Tamara hooked up this "whole village" theme. Tam being Tam, she did it tongue-in-cheek. But, ironic or not, Tamara understands the spirit of a thing like this, or what the spirit ought to be, and then she can translate that into something tangible. Tamara must have made fifty phone calls to get everybody in the bride's and groom's families to donate Bryant's and Crystal's favorite dishes. Then she made up cards with kinte cloth around the edges and that person's name, like Aunt Clara's Uncanny Corn Pudding or Uncle Sonny's Hot Sauce, with a big circle with a diagonal line through it like the NO SMOKING signs, except for where they put the picture of a cigarette were the words CANDY ASS, which is what Sonny always says: "If you're a candy ass, don't eat this stuff."
Now, she did all of this, mind you, even though she personally thought that half the food was "uninspired" (her word) and that only two dishes were "truly extraordinary"---the yellow mustard hot sauce and the black-eyed peas and rice with smoked turkey butts. So she filled in with her own creations, which are fantastic. I tried to get her to make this thing I read about where you bake a ham on a bed of fresh-cut grass, but she launched into a diatribe against Martha Stewart and the taste police and Ralph Lauren ads, so I let well enough alone.
She baked a gorgeous wedding cake with lemon custard in the middle and butter-cream icing and tiny broomsticks and candied pansies and mint leaves cascading down one side, which was about as far into haute cuisine, she said, as she was willing to go. It was plenty. That thing was exquisite. Tamara brought it down from New York in three cardboard boxes in the back of her little red Karmann Ghia and assembled it at the house. I mean, she outdid herself for this wedding.
I ordered twenty flats of purple and yellow pansies for the inside and outside of the house and, because it was Valentine's Day, red and white roses for the formal arrangements. The house is mostly muted beige and cream and yellow, so the color just popped.
Then there was the wedding party. I wanted little Empire-waistline dresses in red velvet with puffy taffeta sleeves for the bridesmaids. A classic look, young, but with style. But, no. Girlfriend had to have one of those black-and-white weddings. She thought it was da bomb, as the kids say. Well, you have to have a very good eye to pull those things off. And money.
And I'm sorry, but it was too late for white.
She wore it, though. Blue-white to hurt your eyes and shiny and tight. I always say: A place for everything and everything in its place---and that cheesy white satin dress was not the place for that big old pregnant belly and butt. God knows baby got back and front to begin with, which is why Audrey started calling her T&A.
By the time the deal went down, her three attendants dropped to one. To make a long story short, they were trifling. There's no excuse. The one attendant left was the pitiful girl who had brought us the original bad hair day---although she looked fine once we finished with her, thank the Lord---in a black off-the-shoulder dress. Despite Nicki's work, the pointed tips of the bodice stuck off her chest like some kind of crazy plumes. The shoes were so big, she wobbled. Somebody gave her the idea to wear some off-white stockings that went way beyond bad to comical. Child was so busy trying to do sultry, she ended up making herself look like a crow.
I tried to tell them that an evening wedding is not the same thing as a nightclub act. But the bride was marrying the most promising young black man she'd ever met, so, hey, she knew everything there was to know about everything. Put the B in bad taste, but how could she tell? I gave them like a Currier and Ives backdrop and they come on stage doing Heckle and Jeckle. Hurt your feelings if you think about it like that for too long.
So I didn't. I just sat up in the front in a red peplum jacket and---just to go along with the program---a black full-length straight skirt with a side slash, not to mention a long-line bra for control under the jacket, a long-line girdle for the skirt, and control-top panty hose underneath everything to try to control whatever was left. Dear God. My midsection was so bound up I could feel the gas pockets forming down in my gut before the service even began.
But they were happy. And I refused to be anything but. Bride's gown too white and too tight? The maid's dress too black and too big? Music out of a boom box while the groom's own mother could play piano like an angel? Hey, no problem. Therapist used to say I didn't have any boundaries with my kids, so guess what? I let them plan this whole mess by themselves. Don't come back to me ten years from now saying I made them do this or that, and they got the wrong start in their married life, and it's all my fault. I let them tack it up---some of it---to their hearts' content.
And they loved it. Or, as we used to say, they loveded it. All the kids, mine, too---my son, Hiram Junior, standing next to Bryant as his best man, and my daughter and her boyfriend, the so-called Afrocentric intellectual---I swear they acted like we were at the Penn relays instead of a solemn event. They put their hands up in the air and did those doggie hoots like the audience on the old Arsenio Hall show.
"They gonna make this thing into a fuckin' farce," Audrey said through her teeth. "It'th da bomb!"
I just put my head down and said a prayer.
When I looked up Arneatha was standing in front of the fireplace completely unperturbed. Arneatha can fall over her own shadow, she's so clumsy, but let her stand still somewhere and she exudes calm. I've seen her do it in a classroom: The peacefulness spreads right through the children. Bryant and Junior were so handsome in the tuxes Hiram got them, and Bryant looked so much like Audrey's father, I couldn't help remarking on it.
"Don't even say it."
Arneatha indicated with a finger that the bridesmaid should step back and give the bride room to squeeze in next to Bryant. The ring bearer started to have a fit because he couldn't see, so Junior scooped him up and held him in one arm for the rest of the service. When the wedding party was still and the guests were finally silent, Arneatha let out that beautiful voice. It is a voice that is rich and smooth, not overpowering, but intense. It's a gift and, when she wants to, Arneatha knows how to use it.
"Dearly beloved," she began, "we are gathered together here in the sight of God and the ancestors and in the presence of these witnesses to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony."
At the point in the ceremony where you can read something, the bridesmaid and Junior stepped forward. The ring bearer, who was spoiled rotten, wouldn't get down, so Junior shifted him to his left arm and read holding his papers in the right:
"'There is no sweeter name than that of my friend, my love, my soul's companion.' "
Then the girl read: "For the Bible says: 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard over the land.' "
Tamara leaned forward and whispered into my ear, "'The voice of the turtle?' "
"And the Bible also says," he continued, "'A faithful friend is the medicine of life.' "
Then the bridesmaid started to sing "You Are So Beautiful to Me." Her voice was husky and smallish, but right on pitch and from her throat, not all up in her nose like most of the children sing today. Audrey nodded her head. It was just right.
When she finished Arneatha went into her signature wedding prayer: "Father God, we ask your blessings on these two people. They are so very young. We ask that you teach them how to care for and care about each other, knowing that in a marriage nobody gets his or her way all the time, knowing that in many cases, Lord God, you will ask that they rise to the occasion when they swear they cannot, and share when they feel they do not have enough, and give what they never got themselves."
I commenced to crying right on cue. Like a big baby. I'd been keeping up a good front, but I was exhausted, and Lord knows that like Audrey, I wished he'd held off a few years. And sitting there I had another thought: That of all the people in the room, Arneatha herself was the one who should've had the babies. It wasn't too late yet, but it almost was. We were becoming grandmas already.
Why else was I crying? I don't know.
"Dear God, help them build a life for themselves and their children. We don't fall in love, we receive love from God and we use it in our lives. We know what's in everyone's mind at this wedding, Lord. You've already blessed them with fertility. Teach them how to make love work in the home they will now build together."
I probably wouldn't have boo-hooed like that had it not been for the cancer. And, as these things go, I had it easy---I contracted one of the good cancers. The girls teased me that I had the rich white women's cancer with the 96 percent cure rate. But something like that rocks your world. It just does. And then there's the other 4 percent.
What I did, the minute I was diagnosed, was I decided to fight this monkey. To my mind, that means not giving in. I like life rich. Like the kids say: phat, large. I made up my mind to that a long time ago. I am going to eat my beef and my pork. Sorry. Pigs' feet is what kept our people alive. I mean it. That's why God gave Adam dominion over the animals. And I am going to put cream in my coffee. I will not let this cancer dictate my every move. I will not live in constant fear. I swear, I think that makes it grow more.
I didn't go to the cancer support groups the hospital sponsored because of the same reasons. I do not want to sit up in a room with a bunch of baldheaded white women talking about how scared we are that the cancer's going to come back. Arneatha told me I was missing an opportunity for spiritual growth, and I told her that I loved her dearly, but that I was growing just about as fast as I could take. I told her, I said: "I got you; what I need the group for?"
So, as Arneatha was saying that marriage is an honorable estate, she looked at me and it felt like the look she gave me in the hospital when I asked if she believed in heaven. "All I know," she said, "is that life is short, and that this is no dress rehearsal."
Jesus have mercy.
This is the real thing, I kept thinking, and it's already half over. Half a lifetime ago, I was standing up there myself. I wasn't but nineteen when I got married to a grown man---Hiram was thirty-one---and I knew precisely what I was doing. I'd worked at his bar for eight months. He'd been watching me, but kept his distance. So one day I pulled him aside and told him that I knew his political ambitions. I told him that I knew exactly the kind of wife he needed, and that I could be that wife. I told him that not many women could think as big as I knew he was thinking, and very few could live up to the vision. But I had imagination---and I knew how to stick. Then I stood there waiting for an answer. Thinking that I couldn't possibly be serious, I guess, he told me that he had a thing for blondes. What about that? Could I be a blonde for him? He said it kind of offhand. I was awfully young.
Now, I was not some poor, pathetic child slinking around the world dying to be a wife. I was on a mission---we all were, our set, our little pride, as one of our teachers at Girls' High called us, us four lionesses lying out on our rock in the sun, watching the water hole, just seeing what was going to turn up for us. That makes it sound like we were going to gobble up whoever came along, but too bad how it sounds. If you're a black woman with ambition---or man, for that matter---you better be aggressive and expect that somebody's not going to like you. Because we are supposed to be sub. Subservient. Subsistent. Substandard. Subliterate. Subordinate. Subdued. America doesn't want us off welfare. They want us on welfare, right where they can keep an eye on us.
Far as women are concerned, a lotta men want you to be sub, too. Not Hiram. Hiram expects you to be on equal footing, which is hard sometimes because he is larger than life. It's why people vote for him. Hiram walks into the room and people turn to see who it is. He disturbs the air.
So, there are women, inevitably. I didn't quite figure that in at nineteen, but then, you don't at that age. It hasn't been so bad, really. Nothing I could ever really point to specifically. No disrespect.
He has very strong principles across the board, and where it counts. It wasn't enough for him to own a bar; he wanted to move the drug dealers off his corner so neighborhood people could come in for a beer without being afraid. We had a couple of little light-bright old schoolteachers on the block, lived together in a perfect little house with green shutters---I swear they were lesbians---and he made us make a pitcher of iced tea for them so they could stop in after school on Fridays and have a glass with us. That sort of thing. He brought in a local DJ so people could dance outside the bar on Saturday nights and sold soda and water ice and roast beef sandwiches from a sidewalk table. You have never seen a bar like Hiram created. It was like the family barbecue that most of us wished we had.
So when he said the blonde thing, I decided not to take offense. I didn't go off about how here's another brother wants white women and all that. What I did, I took it as a challenge. Everything with him is a challenge, a competition. I said---to myself, that is---OK, Negro, you want blond? I'll see you your blond, and I'll raise you.
I went home and bought some Dusky Sahara-something-orother and dyed my hair. Then I had my girlfriend, Audrey's cousin, give me a new cut and curl. I told her I wanted it bone straight, with just a bang at the bottom for movement so the highlights could catch the light, but short, sophisticated. And I'll tell you a funny thing---see, people think fashion and hair and all is frivolous, but how are we introduced to one another if not through our eyes?---when I picked up the mirror that night, it was as if the woman looking back was exactly who I was meant to be all along, as if that little girl with that rhiney red hair and freckles was the ugly duckling, and, now, I had become the swan. Blond swan. I swear. I decided who I was going to be for Hiram Prettyman, and I can look anybody in the face and tell them: I have lived up to it, too.
When Arneatha got to the part in the service about married people present renewing their commitment, I reached over and squeezed Hiram's hand. Twenty-one years. I remember thinking at that moment maybe that's when marriages, like people, came of age.
Arneatha told Bryant to kiss his bride, and, honest to God, he just went for it. Tamara leaned forward over my shoulder and said to me, "Remember you asked what he saw in her?"
And I have to say, until that moment I never could picture it. You don't, with your own children. Or at least I don't see them as, you know, sexual persons. Tam would. But then, she's the one went down on some little Negro at a house party---and we were only sixteen---so I figured, consider the source.
Audrey saw it, too, which is why she always called the child T&A. Audrey does have a nasty mouth on her sometimes, and that's no more than the truth. In fact, when we had our big falling out fifteen years ago over Bryant---that time she said she was coming to get him to take him to the zoo, but she didn't, and he fell asleep right there by the front door, in his own chair, dressed up in the little blue blazer Hiram bought him---we got into the fight of our lives, and Audrey said some things to me that to this day I will not repeat. But God knows she has paid for it. For every drink she poured down her throat, she has paid a terrible price.
I can't forget, but I surely can forgive, and it's as if I had saved a place for her in my heart all along. Bryant will take longer, though. He gives her her due respect, but he is very, very cool. I can understand that.
Tamara slipped out to get the food and the toast going. I swear, she should've been a caterer. Caterers make good money. College professors do, too, but I have always thought that she was trying to prove something. She said as much herself---that the only thing her Jamaican parents wanted was money and middle-class respectability, even though they couldn't stand respectable, middle-class Americans. So, her compromise was to teach college, drive a thirty-year-old sports car, and stay single.
But if you watched her constructing that wedding cake, putting in straws between the layers to hold the thing together, and then piping the butter cream like they blow insulation into a crawl space under the shed kitchen, you would have seen her whole body come alive. I mean, she twisted and turned and maneuvered. Then she'd put a dab on her finger and come over to me and put her finger to my mouth. The butter and lemon and some drops of raspberry liqueur blended on my tongue like I never could have imagined.
"Tastes like spring, doesn't it?" she asked. "You said you wished we could've had a spring wedding. So, here's the taste of May. And look---"
She opened a mail-order box from out of the fridge and showed me purple and yellow pansies crusted all over with sugar.
"They're crystallized," she said. "They'll match the ones you put out front."
They were so beautiful I didn't know what to say. So she tore one, popped half in her mouth, half in mine, and then went back to cementing the top tier of the cake with butter cream.
Tamara may dog Martha Stewart, but I say, if you don't like what she's doing, go out and do it better. I told Tamara that I think, in the nineties, America's ready for a tall, gorgeous, dark-skinned woman with her own TV show on cooking. Oprah has prepared them. Audrey went for the idea so much that she called cable companies and got information about every public access channel in the Delaware Valley.
Tamara wouldn't take us seriously.
"Oh, I get it," she said. "I'd be like a cross between Martha Stewart and Grace Jones. That'll make 'em take notice."
OK, I told her. We only have but so many schemes to make one another rich and famous, and she already threw away Audrey's idea to do a line of divorce cards back when she was in art school and nobody else was doing them. Now even Hallmark publishes divorce cards. But why listen to us? I'm just the high school graduate who does charity balls and Audrey's the temp nurse. Like what do we know?
FROM What Looks Like Crazyon an Ordinary Day
• 1
I'm sitting at the bar in the airport, minding my own business, trying to get psyched up for my flight, and I made the mistake of listening to one of those TV talk shows. They were interviewing some women with what the host kept calling "full-blown AIDS." As opposed to half-blown AIDS, I guess. There they were, weeping and wailing and wringing their hands, wearing their prissy little Laura Ashley dresses and telling their edited-for-TV life stories.
The audience was eating it up, but it got on my last nerve. The thing is, half these bitches are lying. More than half. They get diagnosed and all of a sudden they're Mother Teresa. "I can't be positive! It's impossible! I'm practically a virgin!" Bullshit. They got it just like I got it: fucking men.
That's not male bashing, either. That's the truth. Most of us got it from the boys. Which is, when you think about it, a pretty good argument for cutting men loose, but if I could work up a strong physical reaction to women, I would already be having sex with them. I'm not knocking it. I'm just saying I can't be a witness. Too many titties in one place to suit me.
I try to tune out the "almost-a-virgins," but they're going on and on and now one is really sobbing and all of a sudden I get it. They're just going through the purification ritual. This is how it goes: First, you have to confess that you did nasty, disgusting sex stuff with multiple partners who may even have been of your same gender. Or you have to confess that you like to shoot illegal drugs into your veins and sometimes you use other people's works when you want to get high and you came unprepared. Then you have to describe the sin you have confessed in as much detail as you can remember. Names, dates, places, faces. Specific sexual acts. Quantity and quality of orgasms. What kind of dope you shot. What park you bought it in. All the down and dirty. Then, once your listeners have been totally freaked out by what you've told them, they get to decide how much sympathy, attention, help, money, and understanding you're entitled to based on how disgusted they are.
I'm not buying into that shit. I don't think anything I did was bad enough for me to earn this as the payback, but it gets rough out here sometimes. If you're not a little kid, or a heterosexual movie star's doomed but devoted wife, or a hemophiliac who got it from a tainted transfusion, or a straight white woman who can prove she's a virgin with a dirty dentist, you're not eligible for any nostrings sympathy.
The truth is, people are usually relieved. It always makes them feel better when they know the specifics of your story. You can see their faces brighten up when your path is one they haven't traveled. That's why people keep asking me if I know who I got it from. Like all they'd have to do to ensure their safety is cross this specific guy's name off their list of acceptable sexual partners the same way you do when somebody starts smoking crack: "No future here." But I always tell them the truth: "I have no idea." That's when they frown and give me one last chance to redeem myself. If I don't know who, do I at least know how many?
By that time I can't decide if I'm supposed to be sorry about having had a lot of sex or sorry I got sick from it. And what difference does it make at this point, anyway? It's like lying about how much you loved the rush of the nicotine just because now you have lung cancer.
I'm babbling. I must be higher than I thought. Good. I hate to fly. I used to dread it so much I'd have to be falling-down drunk to get on a plane. For years I started every vacation with a hangover. That's actually how I started drinking vodka, trying to get up the nerve to go to Jamaica for a reggae festival. Worked like a charm, too, and worth a little headache the first day out and the first day back.
I know I drink too much, but I'm trying to cut back. When I first got diagnosed, I stayed drunk for about three months until I realized it was going to be a lot harder to drink myself to death then it might be to wait it out and see what happens. Some people live a long time with HIV. Maybe I'll be one of those, grinning like a maniac on the front of Parade magazine, talking about how I did it.
I never used to read those survivor testimonials, but now I do, for obvious reasons. The first thing they all say they had to do was learn how to calm the fuck down, which is exactly why I was drinking so much, trying to cool out. The problem was, after a while I couldn't tell if it was the vodka or the HIV making me sick, and I wanted to know the difference.
But I figure a little lightweight backsliding at thirty thousand feet doesn't really count, so by the time we boarded, I had polished off two doubles and was waiting for the flight attendant to smile that first-class-only smile and bring me two more. That's why I pay all that extra money to sit up here, so they'll bring me what I want before I have to ring the bell and ask for it.
The man sitting next to me is wearing a beautiful suit that cost him a couple of grand easy and he's spread out calculators, calendars, and legal pads across his tray table like the plane is now his personal office in the air. I think all that shit is for show. I don't believe anybody can really concentrate on business when they're hurtling through the air at six hundred miles an hour. Besides, ain't nobody that damn busy.
He was surprised as hell when I sat down next to him. White men in expensive suits are always a little pissed to find themselves seated next to me in first class, especially since I started wearing my hair so short. They seem to take it as some kind of personal affront that of all the seats on the airplane, the baldheaded black woman showed up next to them. It used to make me uncomfortable. Now I think of it as helping them take a small step toward higher consciousness. Discomfort is always a necessary part of the process of enlightenment.
For the first time in a long time, I didn't grip and pray during takeoff. It wasn't that I was drunk. I've been a lot drunker on a lot of other airplanes. It's just that at this point, a plane crash might be just what the doctor ordered.
• 2
I always forget how small the terminal is in Grand Rapids. Two or three shops, a newsstand, and a lounge with a big-screen TV, but barely enough vodka to make me another double while I wait for Joyce, who is, of course, a little late. I truly love my big sister, but I swear if she was ever on time for anything, I'd probably have a heart attack at the shock of it.
The bartender seemed surprised when the drink he poured for me emptied his only bottle of Absolut. He set the glass down in front of me on a cocktail napkin printed with a full-color map of Michigan.
"Sorry I don't have lime," he said. "Most people come through here just drink a beer or something."
"It's fine," I said, taking a long swallow to prove it. I knew that if he could think of something else to say, he would, but our brief exchange seemed to have exhausted his conversational skills. He headed back to the TV.
It feels strange to be sitting here writing all this down. The last time I kept a diary was when I first got to Atlanta in 1984. Things were happening so fast I started writing it all down to try and keep up. Just like now. I was nineteen. I had a brand-new cosmetology license, two years salon experience, and an absolute understanding of the fact that it was time for me to get the hell out of Detroit.
When I was growing up in Idlewild, my tiny hometown four hours north of the big city, the motor city had always seemed as close to paradise as I could probably stand. Two years of really being there showed me how truly wrong I could be.
I had heard that if you were young and black and had any sense, Atlanta was the place to be, and that was the damn truth. Those Negroes were living so good, they could hardly stand themselves. They had big dreams and big cars and good jobs and money in the bank. They had just elected another one of their own to the mayor's office, they were selling plenty of wolf tickets downtown, and they partied hard and continuously.
My first week in town, I hooked up with a sister who was going to work for the new mayor, and she invited me to a cocktail reception at one of the big downtown hotels. When we got there, I felt like I had walked into one of those ads in Ebony where the fine brother in the designer tux says to the beautiful sister in the gorgeous gown: "I assume you drink Martel." Folks were standing around laughing and talking and pretending they had been doing this shit for years.
My friend was steadily working the crowd, and by the end of the evening, I had been introduced to everybody who was anybody among the new power people. My first impression was that they were the best-dressed, best-coifed, horniest crowd I had ever seen. I knew my salon was going to make a fortune, and it did. I'd still be making good money if I hadn't tried to do the right thing.
When I got the bad news, I sat down and wrote to all the men I'd had sex with in the last ten years. It's kind of depressing to make a list like that. Makes you remember how many times you had sex when you should have just said good night and gone home. Sometimes, at first, when I was really pissed off at the injustice of it all and some self-righteous anger seemed more appealing than another round of whining, I used to try and figure out who gave it to me in the first place, but I knew that line of thinking was bullshit. The question wasn't who gave it to me. The question was what was I going to do about it. Still, when I think about all the men I slept with that I didn't even really care about, it drives me crazy to think I could be paying with my life for some damn sex that didn't even make the Earth move.
When I called Joyce and told her what I was going to do, she told me I was crazy and to let sleeping dogs lie, but I felt like it was only fair. I didn't even know how long I had been carrying it and I sure didn't know who I got it from. Atlanta is always full of men with money to spend on you if you know how to have a good time, and I used to be a good-time somebody when I put my mind to it.
So I sat down and tried to figure out how to tell these guys what was up without freaking them out. "Hey, Bobby, long time no see! Have you been tested for HIV yet?" "Hey, Jerome, what's up, baby? Listen, it might be a good time for you to get tested for HIV." I don't remember what all I finally said, except to tell them I was really sorry and that if they wanted to talk, to call me anytime.
To tell the truth, I was a little nervous. I'd heard a few stories about people going off on their ex-lovers when they found out, but nobody contacted me for a couple of weeks, so I figured they were all going to deal with it in their own way. Then one Saturday, the salon was full of people, and in walks this woman I've never seen before. She walked right past the receptionist and up to me like we were old friends, except her face didn't look too friendly.
"Are you Ava Johnson?" she said.
"Yes," I said. "What can I do for you?"
"You can tell me what you think you're doing sending my husband some shit like this through the mail." She reached into her purse, took out one of my letters, and waved it in my face, her voice suddenly rising to just short of a shriek.
As noisy as the salon always was on Saturday afternoon, it got so quiet so fast, all I could hear was the Anita Baker CD we'd been playing all morning. I tried to stay calm and ask her if she wanted to go into my office so we could talk. She didn't even let me finish.
"I don't want to go anywhere with you, you nasty heifer!"
I knew she was upset, but she was pushing it. I wondered if he'd given her the letter to read or if she'd discovered it on what was probably a routine wifely search through his pockets.
"All right then," I said. "What do you want?"
"I want you to take it back," she said.
"Take it back?" I was really confused now. What good was that going to do?
"You heard me, bitch!" She shouted over Anita's soothing admonitions about the importance of finding your own rhythms. "Take it back!"
I held up my hand to let her know she had gone too far, and she drew back and slapped me across the mouth. Two of my operators grabbed her and pushed her out the door, but all the time she's hollering at the top of her lungs, "This bitch got AIDS! This bitch got AIDS!"
I tried to play if off, but it really shook me up. I finally had to cancel the rest of my appointments and go home for the day. I was distracted, and that's when you run the risk of leaving the perm on too long, or cutting the bangs too short, or putting the crimp in sideways and your life isn't worth two cents. Sisters will forgive you a lot, but do not fuck up their hair.
The slap didn't do me any serious damage, but the rumors that scene started didn't help business any. I sent out a letter to our clients explaining the difference between HIV and AIDS, but they were scared. They started calling to cancel appointments or just not showing up at all. That's when I really started to understand how afraid people can be when they don't have any information.
All those folks who had been giving me those African American Businesswoman of the Year awards and Mentor of the Month citations and invitations to speak from the pulpit on Women's Day stopped calling me. When people I'd known for ten years saw me out, they'd wave and smile and head off in the other direction. Everybody knew, but nobody mentioned it. They acted like it was too embarrassing to bring it up in polite company. I guess we were all still supposed to be virgins instead of just stupid.
When I got a good offer from a hotshot young developer for the downtown land the salon building was sitting on, I figured this was a good time to take the money and run. It was time for a change. I wanted to open another business that didn't require doing heads or frying chicken, and I was truly tired of living in a place where so many people still thought getting AIDS was proof that you were a child of Satan.
I know as well as anybody that being diagnosed HIV-positive changes everything about your life, but it's still your life, the only one you know for sure you got, so you better figure out how to live it as best you can, which is exactly what I intended to do. I wanted to move someplace where I didn't have to apologize for not disappearing because my presence made people nervous. I wanted a more enlightened pool of folks from which to draw potential lovers. I wanted to be someplace where I could be my black, female, sexual, HIV-positive self.
The salon sale gave me enough money to finance a big move without stress. Add to that the money I made when my house sold immediately and I was set for a couple of years without working at anything but living right. From where I was sitting, San Francisco looked like heaven, earthquakes notwithstanding. Natural disasters were no longer my main concern. That's one of the things about being positive. It focuses your fear. You don't have to worry about auto accidents, breast cancer, nerve gas on the subway. None of that shit. You already know your death by name.
When I called Joyce to tell her I had decided to move to the West Coast in the fall and ask her if she wanted some company for the summer, she did the big-sister thing, got all excited and started talking a mile a minute. She started some kind of youth group at her church, and now that Mitch's insurance settled out, she's quit her job as a caseworker with the Department of Family and Children's Services so she can work this thing full-time. She said all the young people in Idlewild are going to hell in a handbasket and if we don't do something pretty quick, the town is going to be just as violent and crazy as the cities are.
I tried to say "What you mean we?," like that old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto, but she sounded so much like her old self again, all happy and optimistic, I didn't want to discourage her. After Mitch, her husband, died, I never thought I'd hear her sound like that again. She hardly talked at all for months after, but I should have known that was only temporary. Joyce always finds a way to make it better.
She's had some bad luck, too. In fact, until recently, I thought Joyce had been given our family's entire allotment. Two kids and a husband, all dead before she hit forty. One baby died in her sleep two weeks after they brought her home from the hospital. The other kid was walking home from the school bus and got hit by a drunk twelve-year-old who stole his mother's keys and then passed out behind the wheel of the family station wagon.
Mitch drowned two years ago this February, and in the dictionary under the words "freak accident," there would be a picture of that shit. A couple of years ago the lake in front of their house got real popular with ice fishermen. These guys would come out early in the morning, drill a big hole in the ice, and sit there all day drinking beer, peeing in the hole, and wondering why the "spose to be that stupid" fish didn't swim on up and commit suicide for a chance at a plastic cricket.
By evening, the fishermen were too drunk and disappointed to clearly mark the area with safety flags like they're supposed to do, so the lake was dotted with all these open holes. Once it got dark, they froze over with a thin sheet of ice, not enough to support your weight, but just enough to camouflage the hole.
Mitch and Joyce went walking beside the lake on this particular night and he started sliding around on the ice, doing tricks, showing off for Joyce. They had been married twenty-three years and he still acted like she had just accepted his invitation to the senior prom. So he got up some speed, slid way out, opened his arms into the wind, hollered, "I love my wife!" and disappeared. By the time they pulled him out, he was gone. Mitch was the sweetest man I ever knew, and for a long time after he died, I kept thinking how unfair it was for him to die that way. I was still naive back then. I thought fairness had something to do with who gets to stay and who gots to go.
In the bad-luck department, there's also the fact that my mother chose Joyce's wedding night to mourn my father's death five years earlier by taking all the sleeping pills she'd been hoarding for this occasion and drinking herself to death with a fifth of Johnny Walker Red. She left a note for Joyce, who was almost eighteen, saying she was sorry and that maybe Joyce would understand if anything ever happened to Mitch. I was still a kid and didn't even have a boyfriend yet, so she didn't leave anything for me.
I don't know whether or not Joyce finally understood when Mitch fell through that ice, but my mother's choice made a lot of sense to me when my doctor gave me the bad news. It occurred to me for the first time that there might be circumstances where what you don't know is infinitely preferable to those things of which you are already certain.
I was glad me and Joyce were going to get a big dose of each other before I moved three thousand miles away. I waited for her to take a breath and then told her I'd be on the four-o'clock flight to Grand Rapids on Tuesday and for her to swear she wouldn't be late to pick me up. She swore, like she always does, but I knew she was still going to be late.
Before we hung up, Joyce asked me if I ever prayed. I told her I had tried to start up again when I got sick, but I quit because I knew I was just hedging my bets. I figured if I was smart enough to know that, God must know it, too, and would probably not only refuse to grant my selfish prayers, but might figure I needed to be taught a lesson for trying to bullshit him in the first place. I know once you repent, Jesus himself isn't big on punishment, but according to all the Old Testament stories I ever heard, his father was not above it.
• 3
Joyce sent wild Eddie Jefferson to pick me up. I couldn't believe it. I'd been sitting there for an hour and a half, which is a long time to be waiting, even for Joyce, when I see this brother with a head full of beautiful dreadlocks, some kind of weird-looking Chinese jacket, and some Jesus sandals walk up to the gate and look around. Now, there is no reason for the look since everybody else on the plane has been picked up by their grandparents or caught a cab to meet their boyfriend and ain't a soul in sight but me. The way he's looking, you'd have thought it was rush hour at Grand Central Station and he was trying not to miss somebody in the crowd. He takes his time like he's got no place to be but here and nothing to be doing but looking.
At first I thought I recognized him, but I didn't want to stare, so I looked away. The last thing I needed was some wannabe Rastafarian thinking I wanted company for the evening. When he didn't move on, I took another look at him, just to be sure. He had one of those smooth, brown-skinned faces that could be any age from twenty-five to fifty. He had great big dark eyes and he was looking right at me in a way that you don't see much in the city anymore. Like he had nothing to prove.
When he caught me looking at him, he walked right up, stuck out his hand, and called my name like we were old friends.
"Ava?" he said. "You probably don't remember me. I'm Eddie Jefferson. Mitch's friend."
As soon as he smiled, I knew exactly who he was. Remember him? Was he kidding? The exploits of Wild Eddie Jefferson were beyond legendary. He had done everything from getting into a fistfight with the basketball coach to threatening his father with a shotgun for beating his mother. He drank, smoked reefer before I even understood that there was such a thing, and had two babies by two different women before he got out of high school. One of them graduated and moved away. The other one, a thirty-year-old divorcée, went back to her ex-husband, convinced him the baby was his, remarried immediately, and lived happily ever after.
Mitch was always so straight-arrow, nobody could believe they were friends, but they were so close, they might as well have been brothers. The last time I saw Eddie was at Joyce's wedding. He was Mitch's best man and he brought a date from Detroit who had on a red strapless dress and silver shoes at eleven o'clock in the morning. After that, he got sent to Vietnam, and by the time he came back, I had finished high school and headed up the road to Detroit.
I'm sure he was at Mitch's funeral, but I don't really remember. That whole thing is still a blur to me. Besides, he looked so different, I probably wouldn't have recognized him, although I'd sure have remembered that hair. I wanted to touch it to see if it was as soft as it looked.
"How ya doin', Wild Eddie?" I said before I thought about it.
He cringed a little like he'd just as soon I forgot the history that produced the nickname. "Just Eddie."
Joyce had sent him to pick me up because some woman had shown up on her doorstep in labor and had to be driven to the hospital in Big Rapids, more than an hour away. They left so quickly, Joyce didn't even have a chance to call Eddie until she got there, which is why he was so late.
That was typical. Anybody with trouble knew if they could get to Joyce, she'd take care of it. Her feeling was that all crises could be handled if someone would take responsibility and start moving. Joyce could get going faster in an emergency than anybody I ever saw. When I first called and told her I was sick, she was on a plane and at my door by nine-thirty the next morning. Once I explained everything the doctor had said, I think the hardest part for her was realizing that there was nothing she could start doing that would fix it.
Eddie's truck was so clean, I could see my reflection in the passenger door. The truck was old, but its bright red exterior was polished to a high gloss and the inside was spotless. The old fabric on the seat was soft and smooth when I accepted Eddie's hand, hopped in, and slid over to pop the lock for him.
I'm sorry automatic door locks eliminated the necessity to lean over and open the door for your date after he helped you get seated. In my younger days, I liked that lean because you could arch your back a little and push your breasts up and out just enough to make sure your boyfriend noticed. I didn't do it this time, though. It's a little late for all that now.
"Do you always keep your truck this nice, or were you expecting company?"
He smiled to acknowledge the compliment. "Don't you recognize it? This is Mitch's truck."
I was amazed. That meant this was the truck I learned to drive a stick shift on the summer I graduated from high school. I was on my way to Detroit as fast as I could get there and I was honing my survival skills. I didn't want to ever find myself needing to make a quick exit from someplace I probably had no business being in the first place and find I couldn't because the getaway car wasn't an automatic. Mitch agreed to teach me and we spent a day lurching up and down the road until I finally got the hang of it.
"Joyce gave it to me after he died. She knew I wanted it and I think she likes the way I restored it."
I guess she does. To say he restored the truck implies that it once looked this good and had now been returned to its former glory. No way. Mitch ran this truck so hard it would rattle your teeth. Now it rode soundlessly over the bumpy road.
I was wondering what Eddie had been doing for the last couple of decades, but I couldn't figure out a polite way to ask without opening myself up for a lot of questions in return, so I just looked out the window as we rode. Things didn't seem to have changed much around here, despite Joyce's conviction that her church group was all that stood between Idlewild and the Apocalypse. I was always amazed that Joyce had chosen to make her life here. You can't help where you get born, but as soon as I was old enough to know there was a world outside the confines of Lake County, I started making plans to get there.
"How long since you been home?" Eddie said.
"Almost two years," I said. "How about you?"
"This is home," he said. "I moved back for good."
"That sounds pretty final," I said, but he just shrugged.
"It was time."
He didn't offer to tell me why it was time and I didn't ask him. Timing is truly a personal thing. It's not such a bad place, I guess. Some people really love it. Look at Joyce and Mitch, but they're probably not a good example since when you're in love like that it doesn't matter as much where else you are.
The two-lane highway into town still offered cheap motels for vacationers on a tight budget, fast-food joints, and bait shops with vending machines out front where you could put in a dollar's worth of quarters and pull out a small box of live crickets or a ventilated container full of fat night crawlers. The smell of sweet grass was blowing in the window and I was remembering what I wrote on page one of the diary I bought when I first moved away: "Goodbye, Idlewild! Hello, world!"
• 4
When you first come to Idlewild, there are two stories the old-timers will tell you. It's strange, too, since it's an all-black town and both the stories are about Indians, but the place has never been known for making much sense. The first story is about The Founder.
The Michigan history books were always full of stories about courageous Indians and wily fur traders and white guys who wore stiff uniforms and built forts and thought there could really be such a thing as Manifest Destiny. We still said Indians back then. Not out of any disrespect. We thought they were cool. It was the word we knew.
Pontiac was one of the most famous of the Indian chiefs, according to the books we read anyway. He was also one of the baddest, but he still got tricked. When it came down to the final moment, he negotiated with the stiff white guys from a position of as much strength as he could muster and did the best he could, but it was all downhill from there.
Once Pontiac signed the papers and got his picture painted for the history books, nobody seemed to need him anymore and gradually his people died off, or moved away and left the guys in the stiff uniforms to their own devices. Except for one. This one Indian stayed around because he had decided to try and figure out what happened. He wanted to understand how his people had been defeated so rapidly and displaced so completely. And he wanted to structure his life in such a way as to avoid as much future contact with his enemies as humanly possible.
A noble quest, and one that still engages great minds from Atlanta to Capetown, but this one remaining Indian was not concerned about all that. He was looking to understand some things a little closer to home as he settled in for a long period of intense contemplation in the section of the Great North Woods that is bounded by towns with names like White Cloud and Wolf Lake and Big Rapids. Places where the lakes freeze solid and the first big snow is already old news by the middle of November.
One early fall morning, he was walking along through the woods and the day was perfectly clear and absolutely quiet and every once in a while he would see deer melting off into the trees of either side of him, and suddenly he understood. He went back to his house and took out all the money he had saved doing all the things he had been doing and bought up as much land as he could and wrote into his covenant that no white folks would be allowed to live in this small but identifiable sector he was bringing under his control. He welcomed his own blood brothers and sisters and any black people who would promise not to act a fool. And then he went back and sat down on his porch and sighed a deep sigh because he was finally at peace. He had not only figured out who and what the problem was. He had figured out a solution.
By this time, most of the remaining Indians had been moved farther west or had walked on over into Canada, but there were a lot of black folks with new money in their pockets crowded up in Detroit and Chicago and Cleveland who didn't know anything about The Founder's vision of an all-colored paradise, but who were soothed by the beauty of the lakes and moved by the mystery of the pine trees. First came one-room cabins for menonly fishing trips. Then, maybe a little reluctantly, summer cottages for the whole family. Enterprising Negro entrepreneurs opened businesses and stayed on year-round to keep things ready for the summer folks who always came flocking the first of June with lungs full of city grit and fists full of factory dollars, ready to enjoy the all-black paradise in the middle of the Great North Woods.
No one is sure how The Rajah came to Idlewild, but people always talked about his arrival as if The Founder had passed things on like Carl Lewis leaning into the last leg of the relay even though he and The Founder weren't even the same kind of Indian. The Rajah was supposed to be a Bombay Indian, as opposed to an Iroquois, or a Lumbee, or a Sioux, so he didn't come from generations of people who had lived and hunted and wandered in these woods. One day he was just there, his big square head wrapped in a snow white turban, and shoes on his feet that seemed to turn up at the toes even if they really didn't. He bowed low when he talked and he was traveling with a not-so-young white lady who seemed to be his wife or his business partner or both, but ultimately it didn't matter. She was white. That was the critical thing about her.
Everybody knew right off The Rajah was a regular Negro and not an Indian. Bombay by way of Hastings Street, they used to say. Why would a real Bombay Indian bring a white woman all the way to Idlewild, Michigan, to open a restaurant? He wouldn't. But this brother was laying it on thick, with an accent and everything, and what the hell? He wasn't the first Negro to opt for exotica as the most viable protective coloration and he sure wouldn't be the last one.
Back then, the place more than lived up to its name with idle men, wild women, and unlimited night life featuring stars like Dinah Washington and Jackie Wilson and Sammy Davis, Jr., before he went solo. For his part, The Rajah was convinced that Idlewild could support his establishment in much the same way that the community sustained The Paradise Lounge, The Flamingo Club, The Purple Palace, and a boardinghouse called The Eagle's Nest, renting exclusively to young Negro women, looked after by a large, handsome matron who never knew that after she rolled her hair at ten o'clock and went to bed, the ones who were working as shake dancers in the big nightclubs sometimes went skinny-dipping in the moonlight.
The Rajah's place was too small for shake dancers and too intimate for live musicians. There was only room enough for eight couples at a time, a modest number, but one that allowed The Rajah to treat each customer like the royalty he seemed to believe they were. Obsessed with service, The Rajah was the kind of host who hovered.
The place did good business right from the very beginning. The lighting flattered sun-kissed faces. The food was delicious, and the service, exquisite. Even when the place was full, The Rajah made each patron feel pampered. The water glass was never empty. The napkin was always freshly laundered. The butter rested in individual pats on beds of crushed ice in fluted silver dishes. The Rajah had class and a clientele who recognized and appreciated it. From the carefully made-up doctors' wives who no longer had to do their own manicures, to the misplaced romantics who spent all their time and hard-earned vacation money trying to impress the unimpressible showgirls, The Rajah's place was the place to see and be seen.
Now, the white woman was pretty much out of sight during this time, so everybody just assumed she was the cook because somebody was back there cooking up a storm and it wasn't The Rajah, who was forever out front being smooth. But nobody can say for sure whether that had anything to do with what happened. Everybody said it was a shame, too, because the place was doing so well.
The story is that one night, long after closing time and cleanup, a big party of folks came strolling over, drunk and happy and wanting something good to eat. Although he was locking up for the night and the white woman was already standing at the foot of the porch steps, he couldn't say no. He graciously unlocked the door, turned on the lights, and ushered them inside to a table.
The woman didn't move. The Rajah went to the door and spoke to her firmly. The woman still didn't move. The Rajah spoke to her again, more sharply this time, and it is at this point that the two versions of the story diverge. In one version, she hisses "nigger" at him from outside so loudly that the patrons can hear the insult from where they sit. In another version, she comes back in and shouts it at him from across the room.
In any case, wherever she was when she said it, she said it, and The Rajah narrowed his eyes and turned away from the chair he was holding for a bronzed beauty in a calico sundress and leaped at the white woman like a for-real Bombay tiger. They fought all the way out the door and down the steps and disappeared into the Great North Woods with her hollering and him hollering and that turban and that accent and that shouted charge of secret negritude flying every which-a-way, and nobody ever saw either one of them again.
Which just goes to show you, the oldsters would say, leaving you alone to consider all this while they eased off to pour themselves another drink, wherever you go, there you are.
Mourning Glo
What's happened? Clinton again?" Esme inquired following my lackluster hello.
"He just called to uninvite me to his client dinner tonight. He claims none of the other wives and girlfriends are going, so I shouldn't either. This is the second time this month," I explained, trying to wave off the niggling thought that Clinton was becoming a practiced liar. "Es, what's going on here?"
"I don't know, but I'll be over in a hour to help you figure it out."
"Okay, but it's going to be one of those nights. You bring the ice cream. I'll take care of the rest." I hung up the phone, grateful that Esme Bass, my best friend since the sixth grade, was coming over to rescue me from stewing in my own suspicions. With her uncanny knack for comprehending all the little nuances of people and situations that seemed to slip past the rest of us, hopefully I'd gain some insight into why it felt like my boyfriend of fifteen months was starting to give me the big ig.
Sixty minutes gave me plenty of time to whip up a pan of Esme's favorite double-chocolate chip brownies. More fat calories were the last thing my 5' 4", 171-pound frame needed, but I was depressed so my desire for chocolate was truly medicinal. Plus, serious fuel was required for the exhaustive and torturous evening of conclusion-jumping that lay ahead.
Half hour later, the glorious scent of cocoa saturated the air as I sat in front of the television taste testing the brownies and wondering about Clinton. I was enjoying my chocolate buzz when the ever perky voice of Mary Hart announced that world-renowned photographer, Glodelle, a.k.a. Glo Girard, was in the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, dying from an undisclosed illness.
At first I didn't really pay much attention when the nut-brown, dreadlocked-framed face of this art world icon filled the screen. She looked familiar, but I was sure it was because the woman was a celebrity. And of course I knew of her work. Anybody acquainted with black art knew that Glo Girard was famous (or infamous, depending on which conservative city official or museum curator you spoke to) for her outrageous takes on cultural and religious symbols that the world held sacred. Her lengthy career was filled with as much controversy as genius, and her reputation for being quirky and bold was legendary. Glo Girard was the black, female Andy Warhol, whose fifteen minutes of outrageous fame had audaciously spanned over two decades.
I watched disinterestedly as they flashed examples of her work across the screen, that is, until they displayed a photograph that I'd never seen before but shared an immediate connection with. Through a magical mix of light and technique, Glo had captured on film a winged archangel, adorned like an African warrior, holding an infant. The body was ethereal and otherworldly, but the angelic face was definitely human and instantly recognizable. It belonged to Michael Henry Taylor---my father.
My fork clanged on the floor as I hurdled over the coffee table to get a closer look, but by the time I got my nose to the screen, the image was gone. What was going on here? Why was my father the subject of a Glo Girard photograph and why had he never mentioned that he knew her? Another topic to add to tonight's agenda.
"So you held out on me, old man? What other secrets did you take to the grave with you?" I asked, my words floating toward the ceiling. God how I missed that man. Ms. Girard had certainly captured my father's true essence. He had been such a special person and certainly my angelic hero.
I was the only child of two only children. My mother died when I was three years old. I grew up with my father, a rock-steady tax accountant whose single mission in life was to keep his little girl safe and happy. He never remarried, but instead learned to expertly blend the roles of mother and father, and perform both with loving grace. He was the one who dried my tears when bullies teased me about growing up motherless and he held my hand through measles and menstrual cramps. It was Daddy who helped pick out my prom dress, guided me through the minefields of teenage love, and warned me about the delights and dangers of sex. There wasn't a day I regretted not having a mother to love, but my father tried so hard I never complained.
When he passed suddenly from a massive heart attack two years ago, I was devastated. Between his insurance and social security, I was financially set for life, but without a family. Six months after his death, I met Clinton. I was convinced that he was a parting gift sent from Daddy to keep me from being alone, which was all the more reason I had to figure out how to hold on to his love.
E.T. moved on to a story about Will Smith and I sat back to enjoy the man's charm and wit but was interrupted by a loud thumping. I jumped up and threw open the door to find Esme hugging a quart of vanilla Haagen-Dazs. For such a sprite of a girl, she had the knock of a lumberjack.
"No need to bang the thing down. Get in here. You won't believe who and what I just saw on Entertainment Tonight," I said and proceeded to tell her about the photo of my father.
"You're kidding me. When did Michael meet Glo Girard?" Esme asked, stepping inside and throwing her wrap on the nearest chair.
"I have no idea. He never mentioned he knew her."
"Do you think they were lovers?"
I could already see the wheels turning beneath Esme's mop of tight curls. Inside that pharmaceutical saleswoman was a mystery writer dying to be born.
"Who knows?"
"This is too good not to investigate further," Esme declared.
"Let's look her up on the Internet," I suggested. "If she took one picture of him, maybe there are others." Thanks to my status as a professional student (other than a one year break between graduate school and going back for my Ph.D. in history last year, I'd never not been in school), I was confident in my ability to locate anything on the Web.
I went to my makeshift office in the corner of my dining room and turned on my laptop. By the time Esme had fixed us both a plate of brownie a la mode, I'd logged on to Google.com and a long list of articles about the woman and her work appeared.
"These are incredible," Esme said, commandeering the mouse and clicking through the virtual gallery. Filling the screen in a dozen two-inch squares were several evocative portrayals of the female nudes that Glo Girard was famous for. We moved on to another site and pulled up further examples of the woman's contentious talent. It was a series of black angels, posed as winged guardians in a variety of positions---most compromising, a few divine. As with all the others, the light and shadows combined with her compositional inventiveness begat visual poetry.
"Wait a minute. I've seen these photos," I said, inspecting each image as it came through the printer. "They were on exhibit at the Whitney about five years ago. I thought they showed the entire series, but the one with my dad wasn't displayed. I wonder why?"
"Well, I wonder what she was thinking when she staged some of this stuff," Esme remarked, pointing to a set of winged pimps hovering over two prostitutes. Next to that was the curvaceous backside view of woman standing over a chalice and wearing a red lace corset and feathered wings.
"Maybe that even hos go to heaven," I suggested with a laugh.
"Actually she's really pretty deep," Esme commented as she quickly read through the accompanying interview. "These photos are her first body of professional work. She says she got the idea after the birth of her first child. She says she was tired of angels always being depicted as white and watching over blond, blue-eyed children. Apparently this anger pushed her to do a series of images depicting angels of color standing guard over black people in a variety of historical and cultural situations."
"Here he is. My dad," I said, suddenly spotting him. "Can you make it bigger?"
Esme clicked on the image, and in seconds it expanded on the screen. Together we studied the photograph, both noting details I was unable to garner during the television report, like how young and handsome he looked and the visible love he exuded as he gazed upon the infant in his arms. The baby was naked but for tiny shackles on its arms and legs and an ornate rosary around its neck.
"Oh shit." The words escaped my mouth on the tail of a sigh. "Can you zoom in more?" I asked Esme. She double-clicked once again on the image, bringing it closer. "Oh shit," I repeated, then jumped up from the table and ran straight to my bedroom.
I hurried over to the dresser and emptied the meager contents of my jewelry box, sifting through the costume earrings, bracelets, and necklaces before finally locating it. Clutching the black velvet pouch tightly in my hand, I hurried back to the computer.
"Look," I demanded, thrusting at her a soapstone cross bejeweled with cowrie shells hanging from a rosary of amber beads.
"Oh my God, it's the same cross. Where did you get this?"
"My mother gave it to me when I was baptized." A startling thought suddenly occurred to me. If the warrior was my father, could I be the baby he was holding?
"You know, I'm thinking that maybe your dad isn't the only one in your family in this photo," Esme remarked, reading my thoughts. "But here's what I don't get. According to this article, Glo didn't start her career until 1973, but this photo was taken in 1970, three years earlier."
"I guess that's why it's never been displayed with the rest of the series."
"It also means that they knew each other before she became professional," Esme said. "So, how did you and your father end up in a photo taken by Glo Girard before she was famous?"
"Unless she was a friend of my mom and dad's."
"Or unless she's your mother. Listen to this." Esme continued reading. "'I've always been attracted to the concept of angel power,' the outspoken artist proclaimed. 'Those who ride on the wings of angels ride in the arms of God. That's why both of my children are named after angels. I wanted them to be reminded of the strength and power they possess in this heaven on Earth.' "
"So?"
"Seraphim, work with me here. You're named after an angel. You're in a photo with your dad wearing a rosary your mother gave you, taken the same year you were born. You don't think this is more than a mere coinkidink?"
"The woman can not be my mother," I emphatically informed my friend.
"Why not?"
"First of all, my mother was a second-grade teacher named Etta Taylor, not a photographer named Glo Girard."
"Ever heard of professional names? Writers, actors, artists---they use them all the time."
"Second," I continued, totally ignoring her argument, "she died in a car accident twenty-eight years ago. Third, and most important, my father would never lie to me about something that significant."
"You're probably right," Esme conceded, though I could tell by her expression that she wasn't convinced. "So you've seen her death certificate?"
"No, but . . ."
"It wasn't in the safety deposit box with your dad's things?"
"No."
"No obituary? No funeral program?"
"Not that I know of. They were probably destroyed in the fire."
"Oh yeah, the same fire that burned up every picture that existed of her. A fire you can't remember."
"So? I was young, and anyway, it happened before we moved from California to Atlanta."
"You always said you didn't know much about your mother because your dad didn't like to talk about her. And you don't find it questionable that other than this rosary there doesn't seem to be a shred of evidence that the woman lived or died? You gotta wonder."
I sat there in silence, trying to find the words to defend myself against the onslaught of Esme's questions.
"I can wonder, but there's no way to ever know, so why bother?" I countered.
"You should call her in London and ask."
"Ask what? Are you my mother? This isn't some children's story. Esme, my mom is dead. Why are you trying to create all this drama around a stupid photograph?"
"Well, if you're a hundred percent sure there's no possibility, then forget it," she began before reaching into her pocket to retrieve her vibrating cell phone. "Okay, see you there." Moments later Esme was at the door on her way to meet Derek for an impromptu nightcap. I think it was more like a booty call, but who was I to judge?
"I have to go. You going to be okay?"
"I'll be fine," I assured her.
"Okay, but . . ."
"But what? Go on. Say it."
"Sera, the woman is dying. If there is even an inkling in your gut that I might be right, what's the harm in making that call before it's too late to ever know?"
"Thanks for coming over," I said, refusing to acknowledge her comment.
"Okay. I get the message. Case closed. Look, if I got a bit overenthusiastic about the Glo thing, I apologize. But you must admit, we might be onto something and even if we aren't, it did keep your mind off Clinton."
I closed the door, acknowledging the truth in Esme's words. The discussion had temporarily cleared my worries about Clinton, but Esme's line of questioning had left me feeling uneasy and off balance. And despite my insistence otherwise, a little voice in my heart was telling me that I needed to further investigate the connection between my father, Glodelle Girard, and myself.
Tidying up after Esme's departure allowed me to strategize how to go about looking deeper into this mother lode of a mystery. She had brought up several salient points that, if eliminated immediately, could quickly clear up this entire matter. Like a record of Etta's death. I looked at my watch. It was after eleven. It was Friday. The Office of Vital Statistics wouldn't be opened until Monday morning and I needed answers now. I'd have to begin elsewhere.
Start with the box, my mind suggested despite the fact that for two years I'd kept the lid on those memories closed as tight as a mummy's tomb.
"Back to the Web," I decided, ignoring my thoughts. I packed up my laptop, the prints of Glodelle, and with the remaining brownies retired to my room. I set up shop in my double bed, arranging pillows and bedcovers to make myself comfortable for a long night of Web surfing. Forget sleep. Forget class in the morning. And for now, forget Clinton. I had some serious questions and unless my Toshiba blew up before I got some answers, I was settling in for the duration.
Immediately I went to my favorite search engine, typed in the words "death certificates," and waited a miraculous 0.8 seconds for a list of starting places to appear. I began with the California Death Menu (how sick is that?) and after a click here and a click there, I came across several databases that looked to be helpful. I skipped the Social Security index, knowing that I had no clue as to Etta's digits. In fact, come to think of it, there was a lot I didn't know about my mother. The only two pieces of information I knew for certain were her birthday, October 19, 1942, and the date she died, January 3, 1973. Both occurred in Oakland, California. Every detail in between was an unknown.
I started with the obituary registry, which revealed nothing about Etta but led me to the California newspaper database, which also provided zip, but took me to the grave search, which directed me to search for burials on the cemetery database. By 2:30 A.M. I had found nothing to confirm that my mother, Etta Taylor, had left this Earth.
Suppressing a yawn with a corner of brownie, I unwound my stiff legs from underneath me and stood up to stretch. The Web was leading me nowhere. I felt like a mouse, seduced by the fragrance of some exotic cheese, running around a cybermaze where every corridor led to another dead end. It was time to move on to the one thing I'd been putting off since my father's death.
I took a deep breath and dropped to the floor. Slowly I wedged my thick frame in between the carpet and bed until I could reach the two long boxes I'd found in the attic of my father's house and brought to my apartment. The seals were still intact, proof that I hadn't been ready to review my happy life with him when I wasn't yet accustomed to living without him.
I sat on the floor with the box labeled "Seraphim" between my legs and carefully ripped away the packing tape. The box flaps bounced open, revealing a trove of memorabilia from my childhood: report cards, programs from school plays, artwork. They were simply thrown inside the box, but I knew that haphazard pile held the same love inherent in the neatly arranged scrapbooks owned by the kids with mothers. My dad had kept every scrap of my adolescence and this show of love brought me to tears.
Along with the souvenirs of my youth were photos of me costumed for various life events: ballet recitals, my First Communion, and the high school prom. There were also many snapshots of family vacations through the years: camping in Yosemite, shell hunting in Jamaica, and mugging with Mickey in Disney World. And, as usual, most of the prints had been sabotaged by my self-deprecating expressions.
I instinctively cringed as I inspected myself making a face in a Parisian café on my sixteenth birthday. Even now, as an adult, I hated having my picture taken. Clinton always got upset when we had film developed and the shots came back looking like publicity stills for Ringling Brothers, but I could understand why cultures in Northern Africa and elsewhere considered photographs to be a personal invasion---a stolen piece of one's soul---although I don't think I was that deep about it. I simply hated the way I looked in person, so why capture it forever on film?
After an hour tripping down the trails of my past, I pushed the contents aside and pulled the second box close. It was much lighter than the first and examining the exterior gave me absolutely no hint of the enlightenment within.
Inside a large manila envelope, I found a candid photo of my mother and father on their wedding day. The two of them were standing in front of the open doors of a church with another man and woman, obviously their witnesses. My parents made a striking couple. Michael looked tall and handsome in his dark suit and crisp white shirt. Positioned full face to the camera, his mouth was open in cheerful joy, his arm wrapped lovingly around his bride's waist. Etta's short white dress and veil were appropriately hip for the late sixties and she was holding a small bouquet of what looked to be white roses. Her face was unfortunately revealed only in profile, but I was still mesmerized by the features I could make out. She wore a wide and toothy grin of glee as she gazed upon my father. They looked genuinely happy together and truly in love. If this was the only photo saved from the fire, why had my father never shared it with me? Eager to see more images of my mother, I reached into the large envelope and pulled out a smaller business-size one.
Inside were divorce papers terminating the marriage of Michael Henry Taylor and Etta Glodelle Taylor. Also listed was their last address shared as husband and wife---265 Girard Place, Oakland, California.
"Glodelle Girard," I muttered with disbelief. My breath ceased to flow when I noted the date, January 3, 1973, the same date I had been told my mother had died, the same year Glo Girard, professional photographer, was born.
The scream of despair started in my toes and ascended through my body, playing pinball with each vital organ. By the time it reached my vocal cords it had evaporated into dead air that escaped my mouth not as a wail but a despondent whine.
Etta Taylor hadn't died. Only her marriage had. The realization caused a flurry of questions to invade my head. Why did she leave without me? Why had she chosen to divorce both my father and me? What had we done to make her stop loving us? And what had she done to make my father cut her out of our lives like she never existed?
I continued to sit, stunned into paralysis, not knowing what to think and having no one to call for comfort or further edification. Just hours ago I was parentless and pathetic. Now I was still pathetic but the daughter of a famous mother. What seemed like hours drifted by before I picked my emotionally weary body up from the floor and dropped it back onto the bed. I rummaged through the printouts until I found a head shot of Glo. Carrying it over to the vanity, I taped it to the left side of the mirror and studied her face next to my own.
Even though the image was grainy, I could see my mother was a stunning woman. Not in a glamorous movie star kind of way, but in the way that confidence and personal style could pick you up from the average heap, and deposit you among the femme fatales. There was a twist to her lips and a defiance in her eyes that was translated into her work. It was a look that told the world that Glo Girard had arrived to divide the observer from his comfort zone and conquer any preconceived biases.
Already I could see that my mother and I were vastly different. While she'd spent the last twenty years taking on the world with her camera, I'd spent them hiding in a classroom. My life had been one long preparation to do something, but I hadn't been brave enough to actually try anything. During my brief stint as a working girl I had realized that being in the real world didn't exactly live up to all the hype. After Daddy died I had gone back to school because I never felt better or safer than when I was in an environment of higher learning. But now I had to wonder. If I had grown up under the adventurous influence of Glodelle Girard, would I, too, be courageous enough to define and capture my dream?
I peered into the trifold mirror, into the betrayed eyes of the woman in the looking glass, trying to find something in my face to connect me with this larger-than-life woman. Aside from the color of my skin and the seductive slope of our cushiony lips, there was little resemblance. Glo's face was an exercise in aesthetic exposition---interesting bits and pieces mixed together to create a work of art. Mine, on the other hand, was an example of the universal principle: you've-got-to-give-some-to-get-some. The get: A smooth, supple light-brown complexion that actually looked better without makeup; perfectly arched eyebrows, and long thick eyelashes to fringe my wide, almond-shaped eyes. The give: Not a cheekbone in sight, a forehead big enough to advertise on, and a two-layer chin. My face, like my body, was a series of soft, round lumps and curves, nary a taut straight line to be found. Nothing like my mom's, but just like my dad's.
I pulled my father's photo from its frame and taped it to the right side of the mirror, then squeezed my own face in between, creating the family portrait I'd always dreamed about. My eyes traveled back and forth between the two, trying to register who was to blame for the drastically unfair way I had been treated. At that moment I had mixed emotions about her---a cocktail of admiration and anger. But the disappointment and rage toward my father was so intense I physically ached.
"How could you have done this to me?" The words slid from my clenched teeth as I cleared the vanity with one angry sweep. Watching my toiletries crash to the floor, I wondered how the one person I had trusted most in this world could have deprived me of knowing my own mother.
I had to talk to someone. Esme was with Derek, and I wasn't quite ready to share all of this with her anyway. Her flair for the dramatic would only complicate my already complicated emotions. That left Clinton. Hope and habit caused me to pick up the phone and dial his home number. It was nearly four A.M., but I wanted to hear his voice. I needed comfort and advice from the man I loved. It rang thirteen times before I hung up. I dialed his cell phone number. Another dozen jingles and still no hello. The echo of unanswered rings mingled with the sound of my sobs, plunging me farther into despair. I wished that I'd never met Clinton . . . never turned on the television . . . never seen that photograph . . . never learned that my mother was alive and my father was a liar.
A small voice whispering in my ear woke me. Call her, it suggested. I turned over to look at the alarm clock. Seven-thirty. I'd managed to escape this familial nightmare for less than three hours. Lifting my head from the pillow, I was greeted by a throbbing head, the apparent hangover of a long night of intense emotion.
Call her, the voice implored again. The phone rang, hurting my head but silencing the commentator inside.
"Sorry to call so early. I'm on my way to an all-day conference," Esme said, staying true to her habit of just diving into a conversation without even a hello, "but I couldn't leave without finding out what you're going to do."
"About who? Clinton?"
"We'll deal with that asshole later. I was talking about Glo Girard."
I considered pleading pain and hanging up, but decided I could use a sounding board. First, though, I needed relief. "Hold on a minute. I'll be right back." I crawled out of bed and into the bathroom in search of an Advil and some time to consolidate my scattered thoughts before Esme imposed hers on me. When I returned, I shared with her all the information I'd found last night. Esme listened with concern, stopping only to interject a few excited gasps here and there. "Anyway, I plan to apply directly to the Office of Vital Statistics for a death certificate, but it looks like she and Etta are one and the same."
"So, Glo Girard is your mother," Esme whooped, the I-told-you-so unspoken but strongly implied. "You know, it's a little after noon in London. A perfect time to make that call."
"For what reason? Esme, the woman wanted nothing to do with me my entire life. Why start now?"
"When people are dying they always want to get stuff off their chests. You know, clear their conscience before they do the heavenly meet-and-greet."
"My father certainly didn't," I angrily interjected. "Look, it's pretty obvious that I was the property settlement in their divorce. He got me and she got the chance to live her dream. Out of sight, out of mind. Everybody's happy."
"Maybe, maybe not. There could be a million different reasons why your mom never contacted you. Maybe she thought you were dead . . ."
"Maybe she just didn't want me and my father was trying to protect me," I interrupted, the sudden thought mellowing my fury.
"Maybe. But the only person who knows the truth can't tell you unless you contact her."
"I don't know," I replied, picking up the amber rosary from the nightstand and sliding the beads between my fingers.
"Well, then think about this. That article said that Glo named both her children after angels. Sera, you have family out there. If for no other reason, let her hook you up before it's too late."
We talked a few minutes more, but after Esme's comment about siblings nothing really penetrated my brain. My mind was consumed with the notion that with Clinton's apparent defection, I was teetering on the edge of total abandonment. It took another twenty minutes for the Advil to kick in, but once I could hold my head upright I booted up my computer and found the Web site for the hospital mentioned on television. Along with the phone number, I learned that the Royal Marsden Hospital had a worldwide reputation for cancer care and research. Another mystery revealed.
Even though she was a stranger, the thought of Glodelle dying of cancer in a foreign hospital depressed me. Was she in pain? Was she alone or surrounded by family and friends? Was my brother or sister with her? Was she thinking of me as she slowly slipped away? That thought caused my tears to flow, both from anger and concern. Defiantly I picked up the phone, deciding that if I wasn't on her mind, I would be.
I swear I could hear my heart beating as I dialed the number. When the operator answered I asked to be connected with Glo's room. In a clipped British accent she informed me that Ms. Girard was in a private room accessible only to family. I bit my lip and took a deep breath before giving my name and demanding that I be connected to my mother's room. I'm not sure where that audacity came from, but it worked, because within seconds she was transferring my call.
I considered hanging up at least a thousand times in the short span it took for my call to be connected. But my mind was too consumed with anxious queries to command my hands to act. Who would pick up the phone and would they believe my claim of relativity when I barely believed it myself?
"Hello." A female voice with no discernible accent answered.
"Uh . . . this is . . . um . . . Seraphim Taylor," I began, wondering if I could be related to the voice on the phone. "I'd like to speak to . . ."
"Who did you say you are?" My ears registered a mix of caution and disbelief.
"Seraphim Taylor. I live in America and I have reason to believe . . ."
"Oh my God. Phimie is it really you? How did you know? Where are you?" The woman's questions flew like bullets from an AK-47.
Phimie. The sound of that particular diminutive made me sit up straight. My father hated that nickname. He preferred the use of my full name, barely tolerated the use of Sera by my friends and teachers, and had always refused to allow anyone to call me was Phimie. Was it because my mother had used this name? My skin pimpled by the realization that the person on the phone knew of my existence. "Who is this?"
"This is Mame Anderson. I'm your mother's lawyer, and if you're Seraphim Nicole Taylor, daughter of Michael Taylor, born April 27, 1970, then you're her daughter."
"Then it's true. I am her daughter. How do you know me?"
"I've been helping Glo put her affairs in order."
"Then she's mentioned me?" My words were barely audible, even to me.
"Yes. We've actually been trying to contact you, but the last known address we have for you is Atlanta, Georgia."
"I live in New Jersey now." As I explained to Mame how and when I'd learned of Glo's existence, my mind raced ahead. My mother wanted to see me. She had tried to contact me. This realization, while doing little to erase my feelings of betrayal, seemed to take the hard edge off her lifelong denial. "Why did she wait so long to find me?"
"Glo alluded to the fact that she was estranged from both you and your brother, but I really don't have any further details."
I had a brother. Damn. Forget pouring rain. I was standing in the midst of a monsoon. Still, the confirmation of this fact delighted me. Suddenly alone didn't feel quite so lonely. "Is he there with you?"
"No, unfortunately we've been unable to locate him as well. Perhaps we'll get lucky and he'll see the news before it's too . . ."
"How bad is she?" I interrupted, hoping for a miraculous denial of the truth.
"It won't be long now. I'm afraid your mother has lymphatic cancer. She hasn't been conscious in days but the doctors are doing everything to keep her comfortable."
"I'd like to see her." My mouth released the words without contacting my mind for permission. But once airborne, retrieval was impossible.
"I'm sure she'd like that. But come immediately. There isn't much time."
I hung up the phone, my head a whirling blend of varying sentiments---curiosity and confusion reigned. What was I going to do? In less than twenty-four hours I'd located my mother, but unfortunately on the lost side of found. What was the point of flying thousands of miles to say goodbye to an unconscious woman whom I wouldn't recognize if she sat down next to me? Why, when she wasn't capable of answering the questions that I most wanted to know, like why had she and my father conspired against me and why had it been so easy to give up her only daughter?
The answers to those questions would die with her and there was nothing I could do about it. And just as potent was my regret over the lost opportunity to know if the adage "like mother like daughter" applied to Glodelle and me. Certainly, Glo Girard exceeded all of my childhood fantasies of what my mother had been like. She was dynamic, talented, fascinating, and famous---all the things I wished I could be. But perhaps if I went to her, held her hand, and looked into her face, some Glo would rub off. Maybe in London I'd find the piece of my mother that was me.
Those maybes convinced me to phone my travel agent and book a flight to London that evening. I hung up and immediately called Clinton to fill him in and let him know of my plans, but of course, he was unavailable. All the better, I decided. I'd simply leave town and let him wonder about me and my intentions for a change. I left a message for Esme on her cell phone, knowing she'd applaud my decision and zealously pump me for every detail when I returned.
I was busy packing when the phone rang. The connection had that long-distance crackle to it. I knew immediately it was Mame Anderson from London with bad news.
"Phimie, I'm sorry, but your mother died about an hour ago."
My eyes filled with tears as I realized what I had gained and lost in the span of a day. I was once again officially an orphan, but now I had a brother and a solid link to my past. I took a minute to allow my grief and disappointment to make room for gratitude, then told Mame I would be arriving in the morning to help with the funeral arrangements.
I walked over to the mirror and once again placed my head between the suspended photos of my parents. "Take care of her, Daddy," I requested, wiping away my tears. I smiled at my reflection, intuitively knowing the search for my mother had just begun.
FROM These Same Long Bones
BY GWENDOLYN M. PARKER
As if he'd been shaken, Sirus McDougald abruptly opened his eyes. There was a merciful moment of forgetfulness. The sheet was tangled about his long legs. He lay for a second at the center of a haze, moist and open from sleep, his limbs relaxed and peaceful, the recollection of a smile still puddled at the corner of his full lips. It was near dawn, and Sirus had been dreaming. He had dreamed that nothing would ever awaken him again. He had dreamed that he could stop life at his bedroom door. He had dreamed that he could force time to retrace its steps. But even as he turned to avoid it, the sun stole into his room, creeping into his sleep.
Sirus rubbed a broad hand across his face and looked drowsily around him. The dust in a beam of light that streamed through the blinds sparkled like fireflies near his slippers. Next to his head, on the small folding table he used as his nightstand, the light caressed the items he had laid out the night before: a small tortoiseshell comb, his pocket watch, his mother-of-pearl studs edged in gold, the loose pieces of paper on which he'd absently scribbled as he spoke to the reporter from the local paper. The light seemed to halt on the words on the top sheet of paper---"Brown, brown, 5´3", reading." What could the reporter he'd spoken to yesterday possibly print that would be news?
At once, Sirus's lingering ease was gone. His eyes widened, his chest swelled with air, and his mouth opened, gaping. He seized the piece of paper from the table, crumpled it, and stuffed it into his mouth.
A moan escaped. His daughter, his precious girl, his only child, was dead. Of what importance was the color of her hair and eyes, her height or favorite hobby, when even the paper boy knew more than that: Knew that she liked to sit in the narrow tunnel made by the honeysuckles between their house and the Senates', knew how she banged out of the house with her skates already on, how she stopped on the grass at the edge of the walk to tighten them, knew the way she posed to wave goodbye, one hand on her hip, the other straight in the air, an elongated little teapot.
No, there was no news to convey, talking to the reporter was just a formality, one among dozens that were expected of him. So he rented all ten of Jason's cars for the funeral and he called people personally with the news, and he readied his house as if for a party. These were the things that were done, and he did each of them, when it was time, in turn. He knew that his neighbors and friends were similarly busy: the women baking pies and hams and fretting over who might not know and still need to be told; the men collecting money, arranging for their own transportation and clean black suits; even the children, bent over basement tables, cutting construction paper to serve as backings for paper flowers and poems.
Sirus forced his legs stiffly to the edge of the bed. Get up, he said to himself, spitting the paper onto the floor.
Outside, cars slowly traveled past his house. Some carried strangers: a Northerner in search of a relative's home, vacationers from farther inland heading for the coast, a delivery truck with vats of sweet cola syrup. But most carried Sirus's friends and acquaintances, unable to resist taking an extra turn past his house in an attempt to catch a glimpse of him or to see the large black and purple wreath hung on the door.
How was he holding up? Why was his wife, Aileen, sleeping over at her mother's house? Had they, following the country way, covered the mirrors with black paper? Like Sirus, the people who had settled this part of town---the colored section, which butted up against the white part of town and then turned back on itself---were primarily the descendants and relatives of farmers. As they'd spread throughout the city, one brother and then one cousin following the next, they'd left the country but brought their country ways: an unflagging belief in cause and effect---after all, hadn't they always reaped what they sowed---leavened by a large measure of fatalism bred by bugs, fire, and a too hot sun, and bound together by clannishness based on proximity, shared cheekbones, and common values. For these farmers and their progeny, holding the line against the sorrow of history, there was absolute virtue in hard work, an education was a lifeline, and life was an inevitable mystery. These things were givens, like the choice of good land, from which everything else that was good would proceed. And to these descendants of farmers, death itself was both sower and reaper, an unreasoning though sometimes benevolent messenger from God.
Sirus himself was born on a farm that produced three hundred baskets of tobacco a season, in a town called Carr, in the upper coastal plain of North Carolina. It was a typical pocket of life in the South, crammed with contradictions and ellipses of time. There were the Cherokee and the Tuscarora, who had lived on the land for always; the slave and the free Africans who'd settled beside them; and the Scottish farmers, who had worked beside the others. Sirus's parents, like those of his neighbors, were descended from these Africans, Cherokee, Tuscarora, and Scots, and these people, when they were not farmers, were blacksmiths, barbers, cabinetmakers, grocers, and traders. They built everything they would have one day from these skills. And Sirus absorbed in his greens and hog crackling and corn bread the peculiar mixture of building and dreaming that was the heritage of these people. Now, in the wake of death, he was as much a part of this town of some five thousand colored people as the red dirt that ringed the manicured lawns, or the North Carolina light that was at once bright and hazy, or the ash, willow, cedar, and pecan that were native to the land.
Sirus stood now, some thirty-five years past his birth, in the late summer of 1947, in this town of Durham, North Carolina, which bustled with progress, in a house on Fayetville Street that was one of dozens he'd built, wishing he were the one who was dead. From his bathroom, the sun streaming in the window, Sirus could still hear the cars as they slowed to pass his house. He stood his shaving brush on its base, bristles up, to dry, and carefully shook the last drops of water from his razor. He looked at his face, now clean-shaven, in the mirror.
There was still the familiar broad chin, the wide cheekbones, the long thick nose, the thick black hair that formed a sharp contrast to his unbearably light, almost pearl-toned skin. The cold water had restored some color to his face; his gray eyes were smooth and clear. He marveled at his own composure. How could his features reveal so little while he felt as if every aspect of him, every thought and desire, every feeling and habit, was hurtling inside him at such speed and with such force that he could be an atom exploding, shattering into oblivion?
From the moment he had learned of Mattie's death, from each second that moved forward, he was dragged backward, caught in a great rush of time away from the present, away from the husband he'd been, the prosperous businessman the town had grown to rely on, the solid friend that so many came to for advice. And in his place loomed the specter of another Sirus, a youth, a boy he believed was long gone, a boy who was all quiet and softness. This boy, his eyes permanently wide, followed after him in his own house, relentlessly padded after him in his own shoes.
There had been nothing authoritative about Sirus as a child. He had been thin and too pale, his elbows always at the wrong angles, his energy too volatile, kinetic, as likely to lead him in one direction as another. But as the years went by his skin had gained a translucence and his energy had cohered, coalesced, so that it no longer erupted jerkily in his limbs but rode high in his chest, girded by his thickening muscles. As a man, he was loose-gaited, solid but warm. If he wanted to command attention, he had only to stand, releasing heat into the air like fire.
He dropped his gaze from the mirror to the basin and watched the spot where the water continued to run. A small green stain glinted at the bottom of the bowl. On any other day it was just green, a color, but today it summoned half a dozen memories: the color of new tobacco in the fields, the color of his mother's eyes when she stood in the light on their porch, the transparent color of an old penny, or the color, in spring, of all the land of his youth. The color, this green, came rushing up at him with its freshness and longing, setting off an embedded charge. Sirus doubled over, an intense wave of pain and nausea gripping his gut. He grabbed the sink, shaking.
Tears welled up and just as quickly receded. With careful steps he returned to the bedroom, took a clean shirt from his wardrobe, and slid his arms into the cool, crisp cotton. Then, slowly, he walked to the window. The starch in his collar was exactly as he'd requested, but now it felt like a gag. He watched the cars continue in an endless procession out on the street, until a black limousine appeared. It was Etta Baldridge's car, turning onto Fayetville from Dupree, already bearing down the road with that ominous cadence reminiscent of halting steps stumbling toward death. If its headlights had been on, it would have looked as if it were already part of the funeral procession.
As the car crept down the street, Sirus could easily imagine Etta's voice and her short, sharp fingers tapping on the back of the front seat right below her driver's neck. "Albert, Albert, slower," she'd be saying. From where Sirus stood at the window he could imagine Etta's head, peeping forward from the relative darkness of the back of the car, her mouth moving animatedly, her face nearly pressed against the window. "Albert." Etta had been the first person to call on him when he had moved into this house. "I'm Etta Baldridge. Welcome to Fayetville," she'd said, pressing her face against the inside screen at the front door, an unofficial welcoming committee. Etta was always one to be pressing.
He thought he heard his housekeeper's key in the lock downstairs. Thank God, he thought. Mrs. Johnson could talk with Etta if she insisted on stopping. He reached for his pants from his wardrobe and his suspenders from the back of the cane-bottomed chair by the window. He knew that if he went out to the porch, Etta would ask Albert to stop altogether, would wave her arms and hands frenetically until he came out to the car. Once he was there, she would clasp him with those same grasping hands, her eyes sweeping greedily over him, hunting for a stain on his shirt, a cut from shaving, some food left on his lips, some sign of his grief---anything she could carry away with her to the bank or the insurance office or the beauty parlor where she would find an ear in which to deposit her find. If Etta saw him at this moment she might also be able to spy the child who was hiding in his face. He reached for his suit jacket, feeling a wave of relief as the car passed.
Downstairs, Mrs. Johnson was at the back door, pushing it open with her hip as she always did. She held her key in one hand and, in the other, the bag with her change of clothes, her morning paper, and a pair of flat shoes. She was a sturdy, compact woman, with blunt fingers and short, thick legs, and when she hung up the light raincoat she wore, regardless of the weather, her roundly muscled forearms showed. Her face was diamond-shaped, a dark brown flecked through with magenta, crowned by a wide forehead and dominated by closely placed, expressive eyes. She had worked for Mr. Mac, as she called him, for over fifteen years, beginning when he first came to Durham from Washington after college, continuing through his marriage to Aileen Bryant twelve years ago, through Mattie's birth, and on up to the present day.
She tugged at the chain to the overhead light and lit the oven and the burner under the kettle in rapid succession. On any other morning, she would also have turned on the radio standing on the counter next to the sink, softly tuning in to The Sunny Days of Glory Hour, which was broadcast from eight till ten. This morning, however, as she had yesterday and the day before, she went about her work as quietly as she could. She gently closed the catch on the cabinet where the coffee was stored, took her flat shoes from the bag without rustling the paper, and turned off the heat under the kettle as soon as it began to whistle. She thought of Mr. Mac upstairs, still asleep, she hoped.
If asked, she always described Mr. Mac as a firm but fair man to work for, though in the privacy of her home or among close friends she usually elaborated on his kindness with great passion. To her, this tragedy, which was the precise word she used to describe Mattie's death, was not only God's will but also the work of the devil, the latter having cruelly shut out the light in Mattie's eyes, the former having blissfully caused them to reopen in the temple of His everlasting love. As she construed it, Mattie's death was also a test of a special and particular nature.
Mrs. Johnson had been the one to find Mattie lying on the ground in the backyard (a fall from her slide, the doctor later confirmed), her neck at an impossible angle. As soon as the housekeeper recovered her senses, her first thought had been, oh, my Lord, how will Mr. Mac survive? Mattie was his treasure, his precious girl. They blurred together in each other's company, he and Mattie, an edging of the hardness that was him into the softness that was her, until the exact point at which one finished and the other began was obscured, as if they actually shared one body and one heart. Mrs. Johnson could not begin to imagine how he would survive this loss. Certainly Mr. Mac would need help---everyone did in such circumstances, and Mr. Mac would be no exception---but she was hard pressed to say where it would come from. He seemed to value her opinion, but that was not the kind of holding up he would need. There was his friend Jason, but she had never known Mr. Mac to rely on him in that way. The logical place to look would be to his wife, of course, but Mrs. McDougald's own collapse had been immediate and complete. Yes, Mrs. Johnson concluded, this was going to be a trial, a difficult one, and she would do what she could to support him. After all, hadn't Mr. Mac helped her with her Cora's tuition? And with extra money for shoes and pants for the two boys those three years in a row when they both kept growing?
"Good morning, Mrs. Johnson," Sirus said, appearing suddenly in the kitchen. He was completely dressed; he looked severe in his black suit, his light skin made all the paler by the contrast.
"Good morning, Mr. Mac," she answered. "You're up early. I'd hoped you'd be sleeping at least another hour." She ran her gaze over him methodically, as if weeding a garden, looking first at his eyes, then at the lines around them, then at the slope of his shoulders inside his suit.
"I didn't sleep well," he began. "Why don't you bring the coffee to the front room so we can talk for a minute." He waited for her nod before he left the room. Mrs. Johnson shortly followed with his coffee, careful to use his favorite cup and saucer. He definitely hadn't slept well, she decided, looking again at the shadows under his eyes and the pinched set of his shoulders.
"I think we have enough food now," he said as soon as she sat down. He sipped some of his coffee, holding it in his mouth until it cooled, and let her know it was how he liked it. "Every lady from the church will bring something," he continued, "and I don't want it to appear as if we're not grateful." He fastened his eyes on an old photograph of his father, which sat on the table beside her.
Mrs. Johnson continued to watch him carefully, encouraging him to go on.
"It's okay if you go ahead and fry up those last two chickens in the freezer, but after that I think we have more than enough."
Mrs. Johnson still said nothing. Of course there was too much food. There were three hams and two turkeys and pots and pots of collards and turnips and cabbage, not to mention rolls and pies and cold salads. On occasions like this there was always too much food. But no matter how much there was, it always got eaten. They both knew this.
"It's not as though any of these people will make their only meal here," he added.
"No, Mr. Mac, I don't expect they will," Mrs. Johnson said. "But it's always been the way to have more than enough, as long as a body can see their way clear to that."
Sirus pointed at her with his cup. "Just because I can afford it is no reason to waste both food and money," he said sharply. The coffee in his cup splashed up on one side.
"No, I didn't say there was," Mrs. Johnson said evenly. She sought his eyes, but they remained resolutely fixed on the point to the left of her. "I merely said it's usually the way, that's all. The food will keep, at any rate, and not go to waste; you can rely on me for that."
"Then you'll just cook what I said," Sirus said quietly, and drained the last of his coffee. He reached into his pocket for his watch, and Mrs. Johnson took his pointed hint, picked up his coffee cup along with hers, and left the room.
As soon as she was gone Sirus realized that he'd sounded foolish. He never talked to Mrs. Johnson this way. Yet the thought of all that food amassing in the kitchen nauseated him. It also made him think of another wake, at another time, at the home of a carpenter he'd known a long time ago in Wilson County, a man who had lost his wife and two of his three children in a fire.
The fire that killed them had erupted suddenly, its origin a mystery. The flames were already extinguished by the time the carpenter returned from a night of hunting with his youngest boy. He and the boy sat in his shed as smoke hung in the air, the same shed in which, in happier times, the man had often boasted he could make or repair anything made from wood: a wagon wheel, a table, a sideboard---anything that a use was known for. Now, ringed by the neighbors who had battled the blaze, he sat quietly. A thick layer of soot was everywhere: on the tools and chips and wood shavings that lay all around, on his clothing, on those of his neighbors. He sat precisely on the edge of the chair someone had dragged to the center of the shed. His arm was loosely draped around the shoulders of his son. Later, at the wake, with the food spread from one end of a table to the other, he'd held his son in the same slack manner, his eyes fixed on the three coffins that crowded the front of his house, taking up the space where a worn sofa and two chairs normally stood.
It was only later that it happened, what people referred to as "the change." First he kept his son home from school; then, when he allowed him to go out, he tightly buttoned the boy's shirtcuffs and layered both a vest and a sweater underneath his overalls, even in the summer. And later, or so Sirus heard his parents whispering, he rubbed the boy every night with a mixture of tar and pitch. It was so strange, so secretive, these private protections, but no one intervened. Nor did anyone step forward when it ended, finally, with the slaughter and ritualized eating of his animals. It was a story that even the busiest seemed loath to tell: how he had begun with his goat, gone on to the spindly-legged mule that drew the cart in which he delivered his work, and then to their dog, a mutt, with one brown ear and one yellow. It was rumored to have taken him weeks to finish this grisly task, and no one said a word to him about what he had done. Later, when the spring came, the carpenter and his boy simply moved away.
It was the carpenter and his son Sirus had been picturing when he spoke to Mrs. Johnson about the food. He thought about the boy chafing and sweating under the vests and the sweaters, about his mumbled excuses when he tried to explain his absence from school, and about what the boy's skin must have looked like after being covered with that stinging tar and pitch. Most of all, though, he thought about those beasts, their large, surprised eyes blinking shut against the spurting blood, their flesh cracking and smoking. Sirus never saw the flames that licked the animals clean; he only heard of their agony. But now he saw the animals multiplied, walking into the flames, two by two. And those images became mixed with others---of food piled high, stacked like a funeral pyre; of people eating so much that their bellies became distended; of a ladder made of food on which Mattie disappeared into heaven. Sirus was sure that he had to draw the line somewhere, anywhere, as a cordon of order and reason. Death and even his young self might stalk him, but he was resolved that he would not go the way of the carpenter, would not find himself, in the middle of the night, clinging to another body, his hands raw and stained, rubbing and covering and praying, and killing and consuming, doing anything at all that was necessary to keep from facing the truth, that he had lost the thing on earth he loved best.
A few blocks away, Etta Baldridge was back at her home, leaning against a pillow she'd bought on her last trip to New York. "I've got a stomach like a cast-iron skillet," she said to her best friend, Ophelia Macon. The remark concluded the conversation about food and digestion and bowels that Mrs. Macon had begun some five minutes earlier. The women left a respectful pause before launching into the subject they had gathered to discuss.
"I've never felt such a sorrow," Mrs. Baldridge began, interrupting the sound of her own breathing. "Never," she added dramatically.
Mrs. Macon nodded.
"Now I can't say how I would feel if it were my own Lily, but you know what I mean. Nobody outside 435 Fayetville loved that child more than me."
Ophelia Macon added a high sound of her own breathing, whistling up her nose.
"Wasn't I her godmother? Didn't I go to every birthday, every church play, every little thing they had at school?"
Mrs. Macon again showed agreement, lifting her chest so that her whole upper body shuddered. The two women sat at opposite ends of the beige and blue couch Mrs. Baldridge had had recovered only a month before. They sat in almost identical poses: their hands folded in their laps, large upper torsos perched precariously atop narrowly proportioned waists, hips, and legs, lips momentarily pursed against the torrent of words each always carried in her mouth. Mrs. Baldridge sat to the right, near the entrance to her dining room, her feet flat and even on the floor. Mrs. Macon sat to the left, near the archway to the front hall, her legs crossed at the ankles. On the low mahogany table in front of them sat two glasses of iced tea, with a sprig of fresh mint in each. The two women had had their hair dyed the day before, Mrs. Macon's a dark red, Mrs. Baldridge's a paler red, like new mahogany finished with clear resin.
"Have you seen them? Do you know how they're holding up?" Mrs. Macon asked, leaning in Mrs. Baldridge's direction.
"I've given them privacy, of course," Etta answered, thinking of her calls to Sirus, how he had ignored her hints for an invitation to come over. "I called, but there'll be time enough for them to lean on their friends. In the meantime I've been praying to the Lord to fill my bosom with comfort."
Mrs. Macon looked as if she too had been filling her bosom.
Mrs. Baldridge continued, "There're the days right through now, of course. Holding up Aileen. Being a post for Sirus so he can carry out his duties. But what grieves me to think about is later."
Mrs. Macon bowed her head.
"Remember Fran Farmer, her poor daughter, lost to TB?"
Mrs. Macon looked up, her eyes wide. "Oh, yes. Poor Fran Farmer."
"And remember how we took turns sitting with her? I mean her with no family, and only here in Durham five years."
"Oh, yes, she had no one."
"And we all kept coming, till a week after the funeral I think it was, and then someone said, 'Maybe we shouldn't intrude.' Why, I think it was Evelyn Knight who said it first."
"Was it Evelyn? Oh, mercy."
"I believe it was. I can't think who else would say something like that, can you?"
"No, I'm sure you're right. I'm sure it was Evelyn."
"Yes, I know it was. But we have to share the blame, too. Didn't we take what she was saying to heart? I mean, she put it so well. 'Who really knows her?' she said. And she had a point. She kept to herself pretty much all those years."
"But all and still," Mrs. Macon interjected.
"Yes, that's just what I was saying," continued Etta Baldridge, "but all and still. We should have kept going but we didn't, and who's to say if we had, why, that poor Fran might not have gone and followed her baby."
The women gasped simultaneously, as if the horror of Fran Farmer, found lying with her head resting---"like on a pillow," the preacher said---on the door of her stove, had suddenly pressed itself, for an instant, against them, and then, as quickly, had retreated, leaving them just that one image and a story to tell.
"You don't think?" Mrs. Macon began after a respectful silence.
"No, no, don't even mention such a thing."
But for a few long minutes both women imagined the worst. For Mrs. Macon it was one sorrowful scene after another: the wailing sound of the ambulance from Lincoln Hospital, ladies at the church wailing and fainting, the large, beautiful house on Fayetville once again draped in black and empty. For Mrs. Baldridge the images were much more far-ranging. She saw herself and her daughter Lily not exactly ostracized, but no longer occupying a place of importance. No more parties for Lily with the daughters of the other leading colored families of Durham: the McDougalds, the Gants, the Wilsons, the Gerards. She imagined a pall settling over the families, over all their hard work and their dreams of "progress for the race," until the whole fragile structure wilted and lay dead. She imagined an edgy despair spreading through the town, so that when someone fell on hard times people turned away instead of coming by with a pot of greens or a pile of carefully folded clothes. No one lending money to anyone anymore. No eligible young men, with the right education and the right family connections, coming by for Lily when the time was right. In Mrs. Baldridge's mind, Sirus was the knotted thread that bound them together. As you ringed salt around a stain or stitched a wound with pig gut, you relied on Sirus to be the stanch, to keep the tear from spreading. Driving past his house today, Etta had asked Albert to slow down so that she could concentrate on this. She had seen it clearly, how he had to hold together, not just avoiding the way of Fran Farmer, but going beyond, going from bad to good. Sirus had to redeem this tragedy; that was how she saw it. He had to swallow it whole like a bitter root, not alone, but with the assistance of his friends and neighbors. And after the sweating from the poison was over and the shaking stilled, he had to rise up and be new. Mrs. Baldridge was as sure of this as she had been that her husband would die before fifty, and he'd died abruptly, as she had predicted, just two years before.
"Sirus will be strong," she said. "And with his strength Aileen will find her own. We just have to help him know his own resilience."
Mrs. Macon showed her agreement, staring at Mrs. Baldridge.
"I think we should arrive early. Not at the same time, of course, but within the half hour."
Mrs. Macon took a large swallow of her iced tea. "Are you going to read a prayer?" she asked.
"Well, nothing planned." Mrs. Baldridge let her shoulders fall against the back of the couch. "Of course I'll bring my Bible, and some subject may present itself."
"There are so many passages that bring comfort," Mrs. Macon observed.
In response, Mrs. Baldridge suddenly bellowed, "'And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.' "
"Oh, my goodness, yes. Amen," Mrs. Macon replied.
"'I will lay me down and take my rest,' " continued Mrs. Baldridge.
"Blessed be the Lord," echoed Mrs. Macon.
"'The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?' "
"Praise the Lord."
"'Weeping may endure for a night,' " Mrs. Baldridge nearly yelled, lifting her hands from her lap, palms lifted. "'But joy cometh in the morning.' " She dropped her hands back into her lap with a loud clap.
"Joy, oh, joy, oh, joy," Mrs. Macon said softly, clasping her hands.
"Yes, joy," Mrs. Baldridge concluded, staring ahead as if the word were printed in the air.
Upstairs, in her room, Lily heard the word joy erupt like a dissonant chord. Oh, God, what was her mother bellowing about now? She sat at her desk and looked at the words she had written so far:
Mattie was my friend so dearHer face so full of graceAnd now that she has left us hereNo one can take her place.
It was a poem she was writing to read at Mattie's funeral---her mother's idea, of course. She would have preferred to sit quietly in the back and do nothing, but her mother had insisted. "You were her best friend," she said, "and I was her godmother. How would it look if you didn't say or do anything while someone like Cottie Moore sings a song, or Jane Henson does a dramatic reading?" Lily didn't care what Jane or Cottie was going to do; she didn't like them anyway. And even though she was Mattie's best friend, she still didn't want to read a poem in front of everyone.
She stared at the blank space under the four lines. She wanted to say something about Mattie's hair, which was a thick bushy brown, or her eyes, which were dark dark brown and always alert, but she couldn't think of any rhymes for hair or eyes, or any adjectives to go with them. Why couldn't she just sit at the back of the church like she wanted to? She hated the idea of everyone staring at her while she read her poem. Lily knew she was what was called a funny-looking child. She looked like both her mother and her father, but all mixed up in a jumble. She had her father's nice full lips, broad nose, and thick kinky hair. But she'd also gotten her mother's fair skin and light hair, and together she knew she looked a little like a duckling, awkward and ungainly. The only feature that was truly hers were her eyes, which were wide and round and sparkling brown, and drew people to her. Lily knew, however, that up on the podium, raised above the pews, she would only look yellow and strange.
She shifted her gaze out the window, hoping to find an adjective to describe Mattie's hair. Why couldn't she just show one of the pictures she had sketched of Mattie? There was the one of Mattie sitting on the steps of her front porch, with acorns in her mouth. Or the one of the baptism, where she had drawn Mattie, Edie Senate, and Floyd Turner all sitting in a row at the back of the church altar, waiting for the preacher to call them down into the pool of water, where he would rest his hand over their noses and mouths and dunk them, fully dressed, in the water. Or even the one she had drawn of Mattie today, of the two of them, sitting on Mattie's front porch the night before she died. They put up flowers at funerals, so why couldn't they put up one of her pictures, like a little flower? And that could be that. It would mean telling about the drawings, of course, and if she did that, her mother would want to see them all. Maybe it would be easier to read the poem; at least it would be over quickly. If she told about the drawings, there'd be no end to it.
There was a quick rap on the door, and as soon as she slid a piece of paper over what she was writing, her mother was in the room.
"Oh, Lily, I'm so disgusted," her mother said, huffing from the flight of stairs. She dropped onto the edge of Lily's bed and immediately began picking at a loose thread on the bedspread.
Lily watched her mother's eyes frenetically sweep around the room.
"Really, I can't even begin to tell you," Mrs. Baldridge continued. "No one seems to have the vaguest notion of how to behave tonight." She stared at a pile of books on top of Lily's dresser and read the title of each one. She focused on Lily's shoes and then at the hem of Lily's dress. "And do you know what I saw today as I drove past the McDougalds'? No, of course you don't know. You couldn't even begin to guess." Her gaze at last rested on Lily's face. "Guess," she said sharply.
"I don't know, Mother. What?" Lily answered.
"A skate," she announced. "Do you hear what I'm saying? A skate."
Lily was puzzled. She was sure her mother could read her expression.
"You don't understand what I'm saying, do you?"
Lily shook her head slowly.
"It was her skate," her mother elaborated. "Right under the front bush."
Lily's eyes widened.
"Right," replied her mother; "that's just what I'm saying. It was as plain as day. I'm surprised Sirus hasn't seen it. But he hasn't. His mind has been too busy, I expect. But there it was and, I imagine, still is. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes, Mother," Lily said quietly.
"I mean, anyone could see it tonight. Sirus. Oh, God, poor Aileen. What a shock that would be."
Lily tried to imagine how the skate had gotten there. Had Mattie fallen, flung it there in anger, and then clumped into the house on only one skate? Or had she put it there on purpose; was there something wrong with the skate that she wanted to hide?
"I'm at a loss," continued her mother. "Completely. I can't very well go over there and pick it up myself. What if someone saw me in the bushes, for goodness' sake? And it can't be left there. What a cruel thing that would be."
Lily suddenly imagined running over to Mattie's house right now to pick it up, not so that it would be gone, but to make it hers.
"Well," Mrs. Baldridge said, leaning toward Lily. "Do you think I'm just talking to hear myself speak? What do you think we should do?"
Lily wished she had seen the skate first and had it now, under her bed, safely wrapped in a blanket.
"Can you really see it from the road?" she asked.
"Like buckshot in a deer's eye."
Lily winced. "Then I guess someone should pick it up." Her voice trailed off at the end of her sentence.
"Do what?" her mother fairly yelled. "Speak up."
"Pick it up," Lily said louder.
"Well, what do you think I've been saying? I mean, have you been listening to a word I've said?"
"Yes, ma'am, I'm listening." Lily made an effort to sit straighter in her chair and bring her eyes to her mother's.
"What have you been doing up here all this time, anyway?"
Lily wished they could return to the skate, but she knew her mother would not be satisfied with that.
"I cleaned my room," she answered, "and ironed my dress for tonight."
"Oh, really? Let me see it."
Lily took her dress from the closet and held it up to herself, holding it out at the hem so that the skirt flared.
"There's a wrinkle there, on the left side," her mother said, taking the material in her hand and balling it lightly. Lily knew that this would not only mark the spot that needed ironing, but make a new wrinkle as well.
"And your ears? Let me see them," she continued as Lily hung the dress back in her closet.
"Yes, ma'am." Lily returned and leaned forward so that her head hung just within reach of her mother's hands. Her mother took her chin in one hand and turned it first to one side, where she inspected one ear, and then to the other. "There's wax at the back of both of your ears," she concluded.
Lily backed her head away, willing herself to move it slowly. What was it her mother was moving toward?
"You might as well know, I'm worried about this whole thing."
"You mean about the skate?" Lily asked.
"That, and the whole thing." Her mother waved her hand listlessly in the air.
Lily wasn't at all sure what her mother meant. "You mean about the funeral tomorrow? What you're going to say?"
"No, not that . . . You think I'm worried about something so minor when this house, our car, all those fine things you wear, your whole future and mine is what's at stake?"
"No, I guess not," Lily ventured.
"No, of course not. Do I look like somebody's fool?"
"No, Momma, of course you don't."
"Oh, if your father were alive, it would be different. He'd still have his job, his position, and we'd have our place from his, but since he died, it's all dependent on everyone else. Did you know we get an allowance from the bank every month, something the bank board voted on after he died? Well, what do you think would happen if Sirus McDougald were not heading up that board? Do you think those others would be so generous? No, I don't think so. They'd just as soon forget we even exist; that's what I think. I wouldn't trust a one of them. And what about this house? Who do you think owns it? Do you think there's a deed with my name on it? Of course there isn't. And do you think it's anyone else down at the bank that argues for us to stay? Not for a minute. The rest of them don't think of anyone but themselves."
Lily had had no idea of any of this. It was the first she knew that everything they had wasn't really theirs.
"I don't understand, Mother," she began. "Why would anything change now? Is Mr. McDougald going somewhere?"
Her mother groaned loudly. "Don't you know anything? Must I spell everything out for you? Things change. Death changes things."
Lily still didn't understand. Of course death changes things. It meant she and Mattie would never go to the beach together again, or ride in the McDougalds' car. It meant there'd be no one sitting on the porch or standing in the yard that she could yell hey to when she rode past on her bike. Oh, a hundred and one things would change. But nowhere was there the kind of change her mother was talking about, and she couldn't see, even for a moment, why it should be so.
"Why am I talking to a child?" Her mother looked around the room as if there were someone else to talk to. "I mean, here is a child who doesn't have the sense the good Lord gave her at birth, and I'm expecting her to understand something as vital as her own future? The good Lord must think I've lost my mind."
Lily lowered her head. She knew her mother would be through soon---she always was when the good Lord began to have an opinion.
"Be downstairs and dressed in an hour," her mother added as she left the room.
"Yes, ma'am," she said quickly. But her mother was already down the stairs by the time she got the words out.
Just down the street from Sirus, Jason Morgan, Sirus's friend and the leading colored undertaker, climbed behind the wheel of his hearse. His two young assistants, Lucas and Earl, were in the seat behind him, and the small coffin that held Mattie lay in the cabin beyond them. Jason pulled the car smoothly out of the driveway and into the right lane. It would not take long to drive Mattie's body the five short blocks from the funeral parlor to Sirus's house. When he and Sirus were boys, back in Carr, the distance between their farms had been nearly two miles along a pounded dirt road. But back then, even that distance had flowed like water. Back and forth, back and forth, one or the other of them made the journey. Those two miles seemed no more than these five blocks did now.
Throughout their childhood, they had been best friends. Jason was more uniformly muscled than Sirus, with knobby wrists that sprouted from the cuffs of his cotton shirts, large, knuckled hands, small flat ears, and a long skull that curved back and away, giving his head an elfin look that matched the sinewy shape of his body. Sirus, by contrast, was made of pieces that seemed not quite whole; his feet were too large, his legs thin and muscled only in the thighs, his chest narrow and sloping inward, his light skin delicate and easily bruised.
Jason was the one who played softball well, who won when they raced each other, who vaulted over any chairs and logs in his way. Sirus was uneven and distracted at sports, lost his train of thought when something upset him. At school Jason was considered the regular fellow, jovial and good-humored, emotional but unaffected, so quick to recover from easy tears that by the time anyone might have begun a jeer he was all smiles and jokes again. Sirus was more likely to be confused, to cry and fall silent, or to feign indifference and then brood over an event long after it was finished for everybody else. Sirus enjoyed Jason's easy fit with others, his sincerity, his uncomplicated response to things; Jason enjoyed Sirus's curiosity, quiet intensity, and his energy, which easily matched Jason's own.
Whenever they were together as boys, it was as if there were no space between them, until that time when it changed. One late July day, the air thick with wet heat, he and Sirus had lain in the tall grass behind Sirus's house, beyond the four stripping barns, next to the woods that ran the length of the road. Their heads were cushioned by the matted grass; their sneakered feet rested in the red dirt path. Sirus had brought with him his collection of dried skins: a copperhead, a flat mouth, an Indian moccasin, and a tiny field mouse, treasures he had found in the fields or woods and carefully placed on a broken stripping shelf in a barn to dry. Jason had brought his new Sears, Roebuck softball, a present for his birthday; his handstitched glove, made by the tanner in town, was propped under his knees like the bump in an old sofa. They had had a game of catch and searched fruitlessly for more skins, and then lay nearly stuporous in the shade.
It was Sirus who decided it was too hot for clothes. He jumped to his feet and peeled away his socks and overalls and tightly buttoned cotton shirt with one unexpectedly graceful motion, as if he were shedding his skin. It was just the kind of surprising thing, back then, that Sirus would do. He stood in the path next to Jason's feet, the sun bouncing off the right side of his body, casting a shadow on the ground between them. As he stood there, naked, the skin under his clothes paper white, he looked not so much like a boy of ten as like a newly hatched creature that had been deposited on the narrow path. Jason was too lazy to stand, but he kicked off first one sneaker and then the other as he randomly unsnapped and unbuttoned his clothes. While Jason undressed, Sirus seemed suddenly set free. Pretending to be a Cherokee warrior, he pranced in the path and the grass, waving his arms, hooting, cawing like a crow, kicking his legs and flapping his arms.
He carried on for five minutes, a mist of sweat covering his body. "You going to catch the grass on fire, you keep rubbing those stick legs of yours together like that," Jason said, laughing, still not undressed. Then he heard a crackling in the pine underbrush. He sat up and hooked his arms around his knees, squinting into the dappled woods. He searched the path that wound between a stand of cedars, but he didn't see the two men until the moment they emerged from the woods, their rifles nosed toward the ground. Startled at first, he was quickly relieved to see they were men he and Sirus both knew.
Ezra Carter, short and the color of cocoa, owned a small dry-goods store and was a fanatical hunter. Hank Prinde worked in Ezra's store. Ezra wore a brown felt hat with the brim rolled up on one side, pushed back on his head. His mouth worked furiously on a large piece of chew. "Fool boy" was all he said as he gaped at Sirus, who stood frozen, his chest neither rising nor falling, his hands at his sides as if they were plumbed. Ezra spat on the path and shifted the heft of his gun.
"Looks like a bird; think I'll shoot it," Hank Prinde said, coming up behind him and laughing in three short bursts that sounded like a small dog barking. He raised his rifle from the ground, leveled it directly at the center of Sirus's thin chest, and cocked the trigger. He moved the barrel up toward Sirus's eyes, then down to his Adam's apple, which seemed to be shriveling in the boy's throat, and next to his private parts, which were indeed no bigger than a small bird. They stood like that for a full minute.
"Boy, put your clothes on," Ezra said finally. "You look like some goddamn savage." He motioned to Hank, who barked his laugh again, and they both turned, making their way back across the field, swaying with the weight of the rows of rabbits slung across their backs.
"Damn, nearly scared me," Jason said, turning to Sirus. Sirus stood without moving; the quiver in his lips had spread to his arms and legs, like a giant chill coursing from one end of his body to the other.
"That Hank's the one who's a savage," Jason said, "pointing his gun like that." He wiped his hands on his coveralls. "You'd think a grown man would have more sense than that."
Sirus continued to stare after the two men.
"C'mon, Sirus, let's start back." Jason stood and reached forward to swipe at Sirus's leg with his hand. Sirus jerked away.
"Don't," he said quietly.
"Well, okay." Jason let his hands fall beside him. He wished that he could just tell Sirus again that it was Hank who was the fool, but Sirus's stillness inspired his own. He felt uncomfortable in his own skin. A second ago, Sirus's dancing had made him glad, and now the men had taken that away. It was as if some rule had been broken, but neither of them could say what it was. He fumbled with his own clothes, buttoning and snapping what he had undone. A chasm had suddenly opened between them, and he felt himself on one side, with Sirus on the other. Ah, just forget them, he tried to say with his hands, willing the gesture to be nonchalant, but Sirus wasn't listening. He harshly forced his legs and arms back into his clothes, as if he might tear off his skin with the rough corduroy and cotton. Those men, Jason thought as he watched Sirus dress, have snatched something away from us.
He and Sirus didn't talk about what happened, but the two boys were never again so free with each other. A stiffness, a small measure of furtiveness insinuated itself into their physical selves. Jason sometimes looked back and wondered how it was that that had happened. And whether there was anything he could have done to make it different. And what about now? What special part of his friend would death chase away? Would he fail Sirus now as, he felt, he had failed him then?
He thought about the work he had just completed on Mattie's body, which lay nestled inside the molded pink couch of her coffin, underneath a spray of yellow roses, at the back of the hearse. The hands that gripped the wheel---a little more tensely than he would have liked---were the same large and knuckled hands he had had as a boy. He had a mustache now, thin but nicely curved, and sideburns, which came to the middle of his sloping ears. Though he did not cry quite as frequently as he had as a child, he still cried easily.
Despite the smell of formaldehyde that clung to him like burdock, and the sometimes quizzical looks he got from someone new when he identified his profession, Jason enjoyed his work as an undertaker. He liked working with his hands, liked to be as respectful and gentle to the bodies as his work allowed, liked particularly to let his own deep capacity for tenderness and empathy find a rightful and appropriate home. Unlike some undertakers, who needed to conjure up a display of sorrow, Jason had sympathy that flowed as naturally as his love for his wife and three children. He loved them and his work freely, simply, without reserve or conflict. And because he loved so freely, there was nothing to hold back his grief.
When he first heard the news about Mattie, he was at the drugstore, talking to the pharmacist, Dr. Gerard, about the smelling salts he thought he might need for an upcoming funeral. In the middle of their conversation, Dr. Gerard got the call. Jason left everything just where it lay on the counter: the box of salts, aspirin for his wife, Edith, and two comics for the girls. He rushed from the store and drove without stopping. When he pulled into the driveway at Sirus's house, the sight of Sirus's own car in the garage seemed suddenly to make the tragedy real. He jumped out of his car, ran up the steps of the porch, and rushed into the house. Dr. Gant sat in the foyer, his large leather bag at his feet, filling out the death certificate. Sirus sat opposite him in a high-backed leather chair, his head frozen to one side, his shoulders hunched forward. Jason had never seen Sirus look so small or so pale.
In one swift motion, Jason grabbed Sirus's hands, pulled him up out of his chair, and folded his arms around him. Without even knowing that he did, he rocked his friend in his arms, and for a moment Sirus's full weight collapsed against him.
Jason now knocked at the front-door screen of Sirus's house as Lucas and Earl waited with the hearse at the curb. Jason strained to see into the darkened front parlor, but Sirus got to the door before Jason's eyes adjusted so that all he could make out was Sirus's broad frame.
"Hello, Sirus," Jason said, stepping back as Sirus swung open the door.
"Morning, Jason," Sirus said, nodding also toward Jason's two assistants, who now stood in the middle of the sidewalk.
Jason turned slightly to include Earl and Lucas in his statement. "We've brought her home," he said. "Do you want to go upstairs while we bring her in?"
Sirus didn't move. "No, I'll wait here," he answered, sliding the metal hinge that held the door open along its rod.
"Are you sure, Sirus?"
"I'm all right, Jason," Sirus said. "Please, just go ahead."
"Okay," Jason answered. "It'll take us about five minutes to get things all set up."
He turned and walked down the porch and sidewalk, motioning to Lucas and Earl to precede him back to the hearse. They swung open the heavy black door, one of them on either side, and pulled out a folded metal cart. Watching them, Sirus remembered that until a few days ago he had been able to carry Mattie easily, sweeping her up in a second, her arms around his neck, supporting her whole weight with one arm. Now it would take three men and five minutes to bring her inside.
"Sirus, why don't you roll back the edge of the rug?" Jason called from the steps of the porch.
The coffin rose up in front of Sirus like a whale breaking from the sea. For a second, if he closed his eyes, he thought it could be a month ago, at Highland Beach: Mattie's face breaking the water, her mouth spouting salt water, laughing, her thick brown hair holding the water and salt like a sponge so that it caught the sunlight bouncing on the surface of the ocean.
"Catch me, Daddy, catch me."
She had flopped toward him, her arms stretched out over her head, her legs and feet beating the top of the water like butter. And he had caught her up, just under the ribs, swinging her around in the water so fast that there was, for a moment, only spray and motion, making a small circle in the middle of the ocean around them.
"Again, Daddy, again," she had called out in her high, breaking voice, pushing off with her feet against his thighs. She had flopped and smacked and dived and he had caught and swung and lifted until his arms felt there was nothing else they had ever done before but catch her and carry her and whirl her around deliriously in the midst of her zest and joy. When he asked Aileen that night to put salve on his shoulder, she had said, "Sirus, you spoil that child. Why didn't you just tell her your arms were getting tired?" "She's a lovely child, Aileen; we couldn't have asked for one better," was all he said in reply.
Jason cleared his throat.
"Of course," Sirus said, flipping back the edge of the carpet with his foot. Jason and the boys pushed the cart up the last step and through the doorway, steadying it carefully as the wheels ran over the threshold. So she was coming home, Sirus thought, stiller than she had ever been, with a stillness that felt more still than death.
"We'll put her here," Jason called, as they traveled across the living room like a small caravan, "by the window." By the time Sirus turned, the coffin was off its cart and resting on a pedestal the same color as the coffin.
"We'll be able to bank the flowers here nicely," Jason continued, spreading his arms out on either side like long sails. "And if we move these two chairs"---he pointed at the two wing chairs that flanked the coffin---"we'll have a walkway for people to spend their time with her to say their goodbyes."
Jason moved about the room, touching various pieces of furniture. There was something hypnotic in the way he spoke, as if the scene he was describing were not real. Behind his words, Sirus thought, another scene seemed to unfold. In that scene Jason's arms, raised and lowered, were a shepherd's arms; the square, slightly formal living room was a wide meadow; and Mattie's coffin contained not a dead child, but something magical, something created for a moment of worshipful celebration.
Sirus interrupted Jason, took him by the arm, and led him, Lucas, and Earl into the kitchen. There, Sirus pressed biscuits and coffee and eggs on them, encouraged by Mrs. Johnson. He left them there, Jason in the wide-bottomed oak chair he usually sat in, the boys scooted up to the table, their brown caps resting on their knees, as Mrs. Johnson turned to the stove and tended her biscuits, which were browning. Sirus, in the armchair next to the head of the coffin in the living room, could hear their voices.
"He's quite a man, that one," Mrs. Johnson said somberly as she lifted the tray of biscuits from the oven. "Not a better man to work for in this world." She dropped the tray on the counter, where the water beneath it made a hissing sound.
"He's a good man, all right," Jason agreed.
"You better believe it," Mrs. Johnson continued. "Don't let a person come anywhere near me saying anything different."
"Yes, indeed."
"Did I ever tell you about how my Cora used to do her homework, right here at this table?" Mrs. Johnson continued. "Mr. Mac would come in, take a look at it for her---I mean, sometimes reading a whole report, cover to cover, like it was an important paper from the bank---and when he'd be done he'd say, 'Well, Cora, that's really fine,' or 'You ought to try and change how you end it. I got a little confused along the way.' Whatever he thought."
"Umm-hmm," Jason murmured, taking a bite of the hot biscuit.
"And those Genene girls, didn't he have one, then the next, then the next, till all three of them lived here at one time or another, every one of those girls coming up from the country to go to school. And they went, too, every one of them, and their parents decent hardworking people. But you know what I'm saying, about the expense and all. And the whole time, Mr. Mac not saying a word to anybody, except something about how he needs help down at the real estate office. I guess there might have been something they could have done, but who could for the life of them say what a country girl would know about all that work Mr. Mac is always doing. You know what it is I'm saying."
Jason nodded, swallowing and chewing almost simultaneously.
"And don't tell me anything about loving that child," she went on. "Oh, mercy, think I'd like to die myself than have to live to see the day something happen to that child, then die again to keep from living long enough to see Mr. Mac have to go through it." She turned on the water in the sink full force. "He's been like something right out of the grave himself, walking and breathing, but not much more. Oh, Lord, I thought I'd never see this day."
Jason looked at her, soap rising from beneath her hand swirling under the stream from the faucet. His large eyes clouded over. "It's a terrible thing," he agreed.
"Terrible ain't even the beginning of it." Mrs. Johnson turned to face him and the boys. "If I weren't afraid of blasphemy, I'd talk about pestilence and flood; that's how bad this thing strikes me. Must be near on to hell and damnation."
Earl's and Lucas's eyes met across the table, their mouths motionless as they contemplated Mrs. Johnson.
"But I ain't saying nothing about that subject in this house." The boys resumed their contented chewing. "Got to remember the good times, especially now you've done gone and brought her soul's house on home." She stared at Lucas and Earl. "You boys brought her in here okay, yes? You been gentle and careful like with a lamb?"
They bobbed their heads.
"Good. I wouldn't want nothing more to disturb that child on her way to glory, and praise the Lord, I know that's where she's bound."
"Praise the Lord," Jason responded, bowing his head briefly as if in prayer.
Mrs. Johnson's words seemed to have caught up to her, and her eyes filled with tears. "Oh, Lord, that was one sweet child," she said mournfully.
"That she was," said Jason.
Sirus now heard silence in the kitchen. He had been aware of Jason's being there and of what his presence represented: the things they needed to discuss. But as long as he heard the voices, that moment seemed distant. Now, in the silence, it was a presence standing beside him. This was the moment he had been dreading, what he wished he could avoid, to face yet again this stillness that was supposed to be his Mattie.
When Aileen left the house yesterday, fled, really, she had insisted that she would never be able to sleep, knowing that her baby would be coming home in a box. She could not bear to see it, she told him. And she warned him, pleaded with him, not to let them make Mattie look like someone else. "They're always doing that," she said tearfully. "Remember my father's mouth, how they filled it with cotton and his cheeks were all puffed out so that he looked like he was pouting and angry? Or they get the color all wrong. She's our child, a bright chestnut, a happy child," she kept saying. And Sirus had promised that he would be careful, that he would handle this detail, make sure it was done right. But how on Earth could he do it, he wondered. Where would he find the strength to look in the coffin, much less talk with Jason about anything else that might need to be done?
He looked around the room. The sun was streaming through the window behind him; he felt it hot on his shoulders, spreading a warmth that his muscles yielded to in spite of himself. If he closed his eyes, with the feel of that sun, he could escape this room, he could once again be a small boy on his parents' tobacco farm, the sun reflecting on the tall grass that ringed the house. In that imaginary field, lit by this sun, he could keep his eyes closed, and what he sensed was not this coffin but something else, something more closely resembling a mysterious presence. He felt that if he were to turn and approach this inexplicable something, it would be with anticipation, a feeling tinged with yearning.
Drifting with the sun's warmth, he felt himself sink deeper into this scene. He became aware of an altered sense of time, a feeling of long hours, long days, no, long years, bringing him to this point. He kept imagining himself as the boy in that grass, looking to this future, and if he were to open his eyes, then or now, what he'd see would hold all of the years that had gone by. He could feel all of the tension held in his body over the past two days flow out of him. Gone were all the times he had held himself in check, all the movements toward or away from someone. All that was left was this thing, this something. As he drew nearer in his imagination, his heart swelled so that it nearly burst with anticipation.
Yes, that was what he was feeling, he thought giddily, a kind of rejoicing. Things were not as they seemed, he wanted to shout. Look, look, something wonderful has occurred, and he was the only one who knew or was allowed to see it. Privately, secretly, he alone was going to be given a glimpse, permitted only once in a lifetime, of something he couldn't name. And almost joyously, he opened his eyes and turned his head, and as he did, the living room slid into view. What was visible was not this magnificent presence, but the coffin, suspended. The vision faded, not all at once, but as a dream fades. His giddiness slipped away, and then his trembling hope, and the overwhelming joy he had expected to taste. One by one his senses returned him to himself, and what he saw and heard and felt was exactly what was here in this room---and no more.
He was alone. There were no sounds around him. He rose from his chair and lay his hand atop the coffin. She was gone. He ran his hand along the curved top of the molded lid. It was both smooth and cool. If he were to lift the cover, she would lie before him, lifeless. Her smile, her laughter, her smell of leaves and tart apples, her plumply muscled arms folded over her painfully angular legs would be shrouded, still. They would never move again, never explode from the center of the room. The cool, quiet body lying in this box would never again hurtle toward him, take his breath away. Now they were at an end. Now they were removed to a region of memory and shadow. Now he would never experience her again.
He heard Jason come into the room and felt his warm presence beside him as distinctly as a bell pealing in his ear.
"We have a few more things to discuss," Jason said quietly, resting his arm across his friend's shoulder.
"Yes, of course." Sirus's voice was close to breaking. He reached into his pocket for something, anything, and his hand came out empty. "I need my glasses, my pen," he mumbled. He backed away from Jason and the coffin, then turned, stumbling over his feet. He regained his balance, hurried across the front parlor, and disappeared up the stairs.
Your Child Can Be a Model!
Football pools. Rumor mongering. Daylong seminars on the changing face of the twenty-first-century consumer. Apparently this is what Americans did at work. Sheila had no idea. Eighteen months ago she'd been a housewife. Who knew the glass on top of a copy machine could support a grown man's behind?
When Whispering Pines Junior High School rings her cellular to tell her that her son Briggs has been sent home from school for misbehavior, Sheila is arrayed across the entrance from her boss's, Marketa Winthrop, office in the sort of pose a really bad exotic dancer might mistake for sexy. She is trying to keep the production manager from stabbing Marketa Winthrop with an Exacto knife. The knife is right there in his hands, its edges bristling with bits of rubber cement and trimmed copy. Marketa Winthrop wants the blushing beauties on the bridal announcement page arrayed in alphabetical order. Ralph Johansen has his own scheme. He waves the paste up in Sheila's face.
"Ugly, bootiful, ugly, bootiful." He fingers the alternating faces and assumes the bizarre and unrecognizable accent he adopts when he is angling after a date with her. Gypsy or marginally Latino, she thinks, but who could imagine? Ralph is from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
"It's ten o'clock in the morning," Sheila says to the assistant principal. "What do you mean sent home?"
"Dismissed. Until you bring him back for a conference."
"You can't just send children home," she says. She keeps Ralph at bay with her foot.
"I weel now keel her with my ber hends," he seethes. Olive-skinned and vaguely ethnic like the villains on daytime television, Ralph has steely black eyes and a goatee, the same look sported by pictures of the devil on low-budget religious tracts.
"Important call," Sheila mouths, but Ralph ignores her.
"Che ees evil, no?" He grabs her free hand and kisses the darker side, licking it with his tongue. Why did cute men have to be so nasty? Or maybe it was the other way around.
"I've got a district policy manual right here on my desk that says that I can send Briggs home. And my file says you agreed to this plan, two weeks ago."
She did? Sheila doesn't remember, but she might have agreed to anything John Antonio said. Twenty-five years later she could still be intimidated by junior high assistant principals.
"Jou are bootiful when jou are engry." The slobber on her hand tickles. She stifles a giggle.
"I'm sorry you find this amusing."
"I don't." Sheila clears her throat to indicate just how serious she is and also to stifle her laugh. These people didn't need more ammunition against her. She bares her teeth at Ralph. Ralph growls in response.
"Where is my child?" she demands.
"He should be landing on your front porch any minute now."
"Briggs doesn't have a key."
"That's for the two of you to work out. Can I expect you for a conference in the morning?"
"You can expect me in twenty minutes." She tumbles into Marketa Winthrop's office, mashing Ralph's fingers in the jamb, and locks the door behind her.
Sheila is Marketa Winthrop's personal assistant. Sheila gets her dry cleaning, her oil changed, picks up her snack cakes at the 7-Eleven. Marketa Winthrop is a victim of magazines like New Black Woman and Essence and Self. She reads in these magazines how successful entrepreneurs of the kind she imagines herself to be all have personal assistants: Camille Cosby, Linda Johnson, Jada Pinkett-Smith. Those gals snap their fingers and mountains of annoyance disappear. Marketa Winthrop believes this can happen to her. She believes that by modeling herself on rich and glamorous women, she, too, will become lithe and loved the world over. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air will move into her bed. Who is Sheila to disabuse her of this notion?
"I need to run up to school," Sheila tells her boss.
Marketa Winthrop flips the page of another magazine. "Did Ralph redo the wedding announcements?" she asks. Her boss subscribes to dozens of magazines. Sheila delivers them each morning with a jumbo coffee and a bear claw from the convenience store. Marketa Winthrop spends much of her day paging through the glossies, dreaming of the big move she promises Sheila they will be making soon to the national publications scene.
"ABC brides," Sheila lies. As if the order of suburban princesses mattered.
"Good girl. Because one thing Marketa Winthrop won't be having is a bunch of pissy mothers-of-the-bride." Marketa Winthrop always uses both her names, always introduces herself as if the person she were speaking with had been hearing about her for years. "Hello, Marketa Winthrop," she'll say, extending her hand. This despite the fact that, as the owner of a chain of suburban weeklies, the only place they might have encountered her name was on the masthead of one of her throwaway shoppers, just above the announcement for the garden club meeting and a full page ad for Cooper's Super Value.
"Pick up some Twinkies on the way back." Marketa Winthrop shoos her on her way with a trill of fingers.
Sheila makes a left by the trusty 7-Eleven, onto the road to Maple Villas, where she and Briggs reside. Washington County scares her. What were farm roads three crops ago are now lined with strip malls and condos and industrial parks, each cluster of buildings shamelessly jury-rigged---cheap Tudor veneer on Ye Olde Shoppes. Months old and the whole shebang already looked worn out. There are no landmarks here. Down in the city, where they had lived with the ex, you navigated using the brewery, the steeple of St. Cecilia's, the smokestacks at the auto plant. In Washington County not even the old-timers knew their way around. "I think you turn down by the old Jamison place. Go another mile or so to where they tore down the silo." Pale faces eyed her with mild contempt, as if a black woman didn't deserve a home on the grange. Or perhaps they blamed her personally for the distant city landing on their former cornfields in all its four-lane glory. Sheila turns past the crumbling sandstone cairns that mark the entrance to her apartment complex. There are no maples and the villas are peach-bricked, generic boxes, with opera balconies and too many yucca plants.
One thing for Briggs: He has the good sense to know when not to push his luck. He is waiting on the porch, just as he knew she'd expect him to be, one less thing to go off about. Fourteen years: She'd depleted her repertoire of responses to the boy. Hysterical mom. Frustrated mom. Blasé. Rageful. Shaming. She could mount a full season of one-woman shows---Hey, there was an idea: The Psychotic Divorced Mother's Repertory Company. Rent out a church basement. Sell gin and tonics and Prozac at the concession stand. Begin each season with Medea.
She rolls down her window. "Get in this car and start talking," she orders. She'd save the small talk for the suits at school. Climbing in, Briggs slouched down next to her.
"Well, you see, the thing is, it was just that me and Cedric . . . Oh, by the way: You're looking fine today, Ma. That's a really nice dress."
"Don't even, Briggs." Sheila rolls her eyes. Instead of a theater company, how about an anticharm school? She could make piles of money training philandering politicians and your garden-variety teenage-male alternatives to being unctuous when caught with their pants down.
"Out with it," she orders.
"Like I said. Me and Cedric . . ."
"Cedric and I." What did they teach in these damn schools anyway?
"Yeah, that. We were sitting in class, and we were just sitting there and this one kid said that Cedric had ashy legs and then Miss Stephes said turn around and then Cedric said your mama's breath smells like socks and cheese and then I laughed and then Ms. Stephes said go to the office."
Sheila monitors Briggs' face while she negotiates a turn. Sincerity to contrition, dissolving too quickly to oily self-pity.
"You don't even believe that story yourself," she chides.
"Yeah, I do. That's just how it happened. Except . . ."
And there it was: there was always an "except." Sometimes Sheila thinks she should carry in her lap posterboards with large numbers written on them that she could raise and vote on the most promising rendition. Version two of the story is parallel to version one "except" for the fact that Briggs had been the one making the comment about socks and cheese, and said comment had occurred after numerous attempts on the part of Miss Stephes to quell the squawk fest. Briggs looks gravely off into the distance as he delivers this tale, the same way the elderly grandfathers do on Masterpiece Theater. A gullible person would be moved to tears. Version three of the story, also fairly parallel, went into great detail about the baneful Miss Stephes, who evidently had installed a torture chamber directly beneath her classroom specifically for the purpose of making Brigg's life a living hell.
"She's evil, Ma. You don't know." Briggs quakes a little, remembering, no doubt, the grip of thumbscrews, the pull of the rack.
Sheila sighs. Another Briggs three-pack. Somewhere in the middle of all these words is the truth. Or a truth. The frustrating thing is that Sheila knows her son isn't really a liar. His father? Now that was a liar. There was a man who could drag himself in at three in the morning, reeking of knock-off Chanel, with a pair of panties slung around his neck, look you right in the eye and tell you he'd spent the evening at the bowling alley. Briggs on the other hand is basically an honest boy. It's the basically part that troubles her. Like filling out your income taxes, with Briggs it was a game of approximations. Round up a little here, round down a little there. This was America: You develop a poker face, tell your best story, and stick with whichever version doesn't get you audited. What Briggs and his father had in common is that they both believed every word that came out of their mouths. Sheila spent sleepless nights worrying about quarters she'd neglected to return to petty cash. Briggs slept the sleep of angels, as serene and innocent as his first nights on Earth.
Sheila makes a left onto a short and nameless freeway that had been constructed for the sole purpose of carrying people like her from one side of the county to the other. What was she doing in a place like this? People like the kind of person Sheila had intended to become lived in the city, in red-brick and ivy-festooned neighborhoods, with coffee bars and cute restaurants that served things like couscous and tiramisu. These days it was the ex and his various sluts who got to sit under the ailanthus trees, read the New York Times and sip espresso. Sheila got to go to the 7-Eleven and to junior highs and drive on nameless roads past buildings too slick for growing things.
"Honestly, Briggs," she says. "What am I supposed to say to these people?" That smug and priggish AP, who fired statements at you about your child and then dared you to come up with an appropriate response. Last time it was "We discovered your son and his buddies beneath the bleachers during a pep rally with a pair of binoculars and a flashlight," and then he sat waiting with his fingers folded on his desk.
"Boy, I'm sure you'd hate to do something like that" is what Sheila had wanted to answer, though this was not the sort of response that won you the prize money. "He'll be dead by sunset" was the sort of thing they had in mind.
"We were collecting the money that dropped from kids' pockets." That had been Brigg's excuse for the bleachers, though he really needed to work on his delivery. A truly unfit mother would have given some pointers. Smile and nod, son. Show some confidence. Try not to make each statement sound like a question.
Briggs, Briggs, Briggs. Just look at the darling boy. Wasn't it only yesterday he was burbling in his crib, taking his first baby steps? Now he was arguing with lunch ladies, cruising the hallways like a shark, firing off Vegas-style one-liners. Sunrise, sunset. A veritable storehouse of smarmy remarks, her son: "Hey girl, bring them twins over here." "Stop by my locker so you can meet my friend." "Baby, you know I could rock your world." Briggs could give Ralph pointers on gross. She considered sewing his lips together, but that still left the hands.
"Your son had better learn where those mitts of his belong," Antonio had warned.
Sheila remembers the sweet and endearing olden days at her own junior high, when squeaky-voiced boys would put an arm around you and maybe try to grab a feel. Silly things: They'd pretend to walk into walls. They'd bang their heads into lockers because you were such a knockout. But when you woke up one day and it was your son with the smart mouth and the fast hands and the too-smooth demeanor, the word "endearing" went the way of Quiana blouses and the Jackson Five.
"Understand our position, Miss Braxton. We're responsible for these young women." That's what the John Antonio had said, a leaky hiss on the "ss" in Miss. Well, Sheila thought, fine: but slap a dickey over the cleavage of Miss C cup over there, and tell the rest of these hussies to stop calling my house at all hours of the day and night.
Didn't any of these people have children of their own? Wasn't there one person at Whispering Pines who had ever been fourteen? Maybe everyone here had been like those AV club boys who at sixteen already wore white shirts and looked like they were about to knock on your door and sell you a subscription to the Watchtower. Maybe they were all like Miss Stephes, right out of teacher college and fresh off the farm. An ordinary brownskin boy like Briggs set her atremble. Imagine! Briggs! Harmless as a calf! What on earth would she do if she ever came across a truly tough customer?
No wonder they wouldn't help you. Sheila had pleaded with Antonio for advice.
"I'll do anything," she'd begged.
He'd inhaled sharply through the nose in that way that all former coaches had of letting you know that they were about to tell you something that anyone other than an idiot such as yourself would already know.
"Bottom line, Miss. Boys need a strong hand. You either find a way of getting him in line, or he'll have to find another place to go school."
What was it they were always saying about how it takes a village to raise a child. Sure sounded good, but try being a mother with a son. Then it became "You squeezed the bastard out, now you do something about him, or else."
Traffic on the nameless expressway is backed up at the last of its two exits. Traffic is always backed up here, as unfortunately there are no other non-dirt roads connecting the two halves of the barbell-shaped region. In the seat beside her Brigg's long legs have begun bouncing the way they always do when he worries.
"It's a beautiful day today," he cheers, brimming with false enthusiasm.
"I'm not doing nice," Sheila responds. "Does the word 'mortification' mean anything to you?"
"Ain't she the mom on The Addams Family?"
"Don't try and make me laugh." She gives him the evil eye and then laughs with him anyway. Damn cute boys. What could you do but shake your head, throw up your hands, and join the fun? She'd even gone to her boss for help.
"I'm having some problems with Briggs," she'd proffered.
Marketa Winthrop had riffled a page in her Black Enterprise. "This Briggs is your boyfriend, right?"
"My son." Which Sheila had told the woman a thousand times.
"And he would be how old?"
"Fourteen. The school called again and . . ."
Marketa Winthrop had cut her off by waving her hand. "Look, honey," she'd said. "Fourteen. Hair on the balls. I can sum this up in two words: military school."
Ralph, who that day had been compositing personal ads on the computer, shared Sheila's outrage at this comment.
"It would be my hunnor to keel for a bootiful wummun lak jou," he'd said, flashing and flexing his eyes at her. She'd recently had the misfortune of observing her own son practicing the same faces in the bathroom mirror.
"Oh, but you mustn't," she'd demurred. She wondered if the mothers of fourteen-year-old boys were allowed to be ingenues.
"Lat me tek jou avay to peredize," he'd cooed, and she remembers thinking, this is what Eve must have felt like when her big snake came along: scared and excited at the same time.
Sheila had declined. As a consolation prize, Ralph offered her a list of reputable, male-only boarding schools, the efficacy of which he could personally vouch for.
"Jes look vat thev dun for me."
Indeed, she thought. She received similar advice from her parents and even from Brigg's father. Everyone so anxious to dump adolescent males. What was up with that? Maybe there was something she wasn't being told.
"But he's such a sweet boy," she'd told Marketa Winthrop.
Marketa Winthrop had snapped her gum and taken a drag on her Kool and said, "Hun, that's about ninety-eight percent of your problem right there." Then she'd sent Sheila off to the 7-Eleven for more donuts.
Ahead, just off the unnamed freeway, Whispering Pines Junior High looks to Sheila like the sort of building where secret plans are hatched to assassinate third world leaders. Beige trapezoids of white-stuccoed concrete, no windows, sit in the middle of parking lots, which sit in the middle of bulldozed fields, which back up against farms, which still have cattle grazing in the field. No pines can be seen, and nothing and no one here whispers about anything. When they'd come to register, Sheila and Briggs had been escorted on a tour by a helmet-haired woman who was advancing her career in public education by spouting phrases such as "child-centered" and "high tech, high touch, and high teach." The woman was well put together for a school person, but around her eyes she had applied her makeup in a way that indicated to Sheila that at some point she had lived at least a marginally wild life. Did she ever imagine, back on those nights, haunting the bar at the TGI Fridays, that she'd be spending the rest of her life escorting herds of mothers and their sullen offspring on tours of a public school? Her junior tour guide had been one of those student council treasurer types, with a little too much enthusiasm for Sheila's taste.
"This is where we eat lunch. It's really neat. That's the library. It's really neat." Everything had been "neat," not just all the classes and teachers but also the girl's fingernails and hair and brand-name sweatshirt. She was the sort of girl that Sheila and her friends would have backed into a stall in the girls' bathroom and glowered at until she broke down in tears.
The former wild liver had described Whispering Pines as the Triple A+ Magnet School of the Future.
"Your children can take Aikido, Mountaineering, Reader's Theater, Cooking with Math. It's a rich and dynamic environment."
Did they have any regular classes here, anything resembling literature or history? These were the sorts of questions that Sheila had wanted to ask, but the whole business of finding a place to live after the divorce and a school for her son had numbed her into silence. She had discovered that in the years she had been out of circulation, the leasing offices and schools had replaced all the people who used to answer questions---simple questions such as where's the laundry room and does this school have bus service---with well-groomed robots who only knew the words memorized from scripts. If you interrupted them, they had to go back to the beginning of the tape.
"Your child will absolutely love it here," Helmet Hair had said, and for the most part Briggs did love it, but then Briggs could make friends anywhere. He'd probably win the congeniality award on death row, which is the place these people would like her to believe he was headed.
She should have known this was the wrong school. Too much perkiness in the hallways. Too many straight white teeth in too many expensive outfits. Too many Jennifers and Heathers and Jacobs and Sams. She'd had to resign from the Whispering Pines PTA after one too many conversations with parents who'd already put down deposits on their childrens' Ivy League educations. What do you have planned for Briggs? they'd asked. "I was kind of hoping he'd impregnate your daughter Brittany and move into your house," she'd thought. Sometimes Sheila wants the bumper sticker on her Neon to read "My C Student Kicked Your Honor Roll Student's Wimpy Ass."
Thank God Briggs was resilient. These Whispering Pines people could stamp their damn cookie cutters on him all they wanted and Briggs would still be Briggs, at least that's what she hoped. But didn't resilience wear down? Wasn't it like the rustproofing on your car? A year of rain, fine, but five years and all warranties were off.
She eyes him there in the seat beside her. Head nodding gently to some tune in his head, oblivious, whistling---against fear perhaps, but it was hard to say with Briggs. He had never been the whistle in the dark type. All Briggs knew of the hard streets he'd learned from the make-believe videos on MTV. Damn cute, silly, silly boy. He really believed he was the life of the party, everybody's best friend. He didn't even have a clue as to how much trouble he was in.
The point of all of this, of course, was to raise them up and send them off into the world, into their own happy families and into fabulous careers of their choosing, but thinking of this only causes Sheila shudders. Frankly, she was barely employable herself. Twelve years of diapers, volunteering at school, cooking nutritious meals, and then, just like that, she'd been out on the street. And while child support looked good on paper, she wasn't about to rely on regular checks from a man who couldn't figure out to at least take a cat bath before leaving some whore's motel room.
Publisher's personal assistant: that seemed like a glamorous enough position. On the days Sheila feels great she even believes that she is the glue that holds her office together. Most days, however, she knows this is hubris---a good former English major word. For the most part Sheila gets paid for returning clogged nail polish and to shop around for humane poodle groomers.
Even so, despite spending her days with a woman who believed it was a good idea to wear cruise wear to the office everyday, Sheila knew that there were many worse jobs. Winthrop and Rolle left plenty of time to make another plan and for her, as of late, weekly visits to Whispering Pines Junior High. The only really bad part were the hourly trips to the 7-Eleven. It had occurred to her only last week that the Pakistani man behind the counter believed that she herself consumed the mountains of junk food she hauled out of there each day.
"Not for me," she'd shouted last week, waving her hand over an assortment of Ding Dongs and packaged nuts.
"Very good, very good," he'd said. At the time she'd thought it polite, now she believes it's the Pakistani version of "Whatever."
That could be Briggs, she thinks. My son, spending his life trapped behind the counter of the convenience store, bagging up junk food for lying binge eaters.
She pulls into the visitor's parking space by the front entrance.
"Sorry I'm so bad," Briggs says.
Something in Sheila's chest does a somersault. She feels herself filling up with that sensation she remembers so well from when Briggs was an infant. She would get this way when someone, usually an older woman, would lean over the carriage and cluck over her adorable child.
"Yes, he is precious," she'd concur, despite his being covered at the time with chunky yellow bits of gummed Zwieback. She'd always found this emotion unnamable. What would you call it? It wasn't pride and it was something other than love. It was a kind of ecstasy, and mixed in with that the absolute conviction that if anyone so much as plucked a hair from her angel's head, she'd hunt the barbarian to the ends of the Earth and peel him alive with a dull vegetable knife.
The parking lot bustles with her fellow happy strivers, picking up their children for the orthodontist or delivering them from the pediatrician. Shiny, bright faces of the kind that Ralph pasted into ads suggesting "Your Child Can Be a Model!" Antiseptic and crisply pink, the children in those ads, you'd order them out of the catalog, you really would. Call in your Visa number and receive in the mail one perfect blank slate, ready to mold to order. Operators are standing by.
No, honey, she thinks, you're not bad.
Tomorrow Sheila will take some personal time and drive all over this God forsaken wilderness and find some sort of school that makes sense for her child. She will take the whole day, the rest of her life if she has to. Later today she will make sure the little stud in the seat beside her understands that he has gotten on her last good nerve, that he's not anywhere near as funny and cute as they both know that he is, and---on the off chance he thinks she's playing---that she has a list of junior service academies that will permanently erase that smirk right off his handsome brown face.
For now though she leans over to her son and hooks a fingernail beneath his chin. "Listen up, Al Capone," she says. "We're going in there and we're going with version two. Tell it so even I believe it's true."
FROM Song of the Water Saints
INVASIONS • 1916SANTO DOMINGO, REPÚBLICA DOMINICANA
Graciela and Silvio stood hand in hand on El Malecón, sea breeze polishing their faces. Silvio hurled stones out to the waves and Graciela bunched up her skirt to search for more pebbles. Her knees were ashy and she wore her spongy hair in four knots. A rusty lard can filled with pigeon peas, label long worn from trips to the market, was by her feet. Silvio's straw hat was in Graciela's hands, and quickly, she turned to toss it to the water. The hat fluttered like a hungry seagull, then was lapped up by foam. Silvio's kiss pinned Graciela against the railing.
It was a hazy day. The hot kissing made Graciela squint against the silver light. Beyond her lashes, Silvio was a sepia prince.
---That yanqui over there's lookin' at us, he murmured into Graciela's mouth. He pulled out his hand from the rip in her skirt. Graciela turned to see a pink man standing a few yards away from them. She noticed that the yanqui wore a hat and a vest---he surely did not seem to be a Marine. When she was with Silvio, Graciela forgot to worry about anyone telling on her to Mai and Pai, much less panic over yanquis and their Marine boots scraping the cobblestones of the Colonial Quarter.
Passion burned stronger than fear. Graciela turned back to Silvio.
---Forget him. Her pelvis dug into his until she felt iron.
Graciela and Silvio were too lost in their tangle of tongues to care that a few yards away, the yanqui was glad for a brief break from the brutal sun that tormented his skin. With her tongue tracing Silvio's neck, Graciela couldn't care less that Theodore Roosevelt's "soft voice and big stick" on Latin America had dipped the yanqui the furthest south he had ever been from New York City. Silvio's hands crawled back into the rip in Graciela's skirt; she would not blush if she learned that the yanqui spying on them had already photographed the Marines stationed on her side of the island, who were there to "order and pacify," in all their debauchery; that dozens of her fellow Dominicans somberly populated the yanqui's photo negatives; and that the lush Dominican landscape had left marks on the legs of his tripod. Of no interest to a moaning Graciela were the picaresque postcard views that the yanqui planned on selling in New York and, he hoped, in France and Germany. And having always been poor and anonymous herself, Graciela would certainly not pity the yanqui because his still lifes, nature shots, images of battleships for the newspapers had not won him big money or recognition.
---Forget the goddamned yanqui, I said. Graciela squeezed Silvio's arm when his lips broke suction with hers.
---He's comin' over here, Silvio said. He turned away from Graciela to hide his erection against the seawall. Graciela watched the man approach them. He had a slight limp. Up close, she could see that his skin was indeed pink and his hair was a deep shade of orange. Graciela had never seen a real yanqui up close. She smiled and folded her skirt so that the rip disappeared.
The man pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket and wiped his neck. He cleared his throat and held out his right hand, first to Silvio, then to Graciela. His handshake swallowed up Graciela's wrist, but she shook just as hard. In cornhashed Spanish the man introduced himself: Peter West, he was.
Peter. Silvio. Graciela. They were all happy to meet each other. The man leaned against the seawall and pulled out a wad of pesos from a pocket in his outer jacket. His eyes never left Graciela and Silvio.
---¿So, are you with the Marines? Silvio asked in an octave lower than usual, and Graciela had to smile secretly because her sepia prince was not yet old enough to wear long pants.
The yanqui shook his head.
---No, no, he said with an air of importance. His thumb and index finger formed a circle around his right eye. Graciela looked over at Silvio. They wrinkled their noses. Then more cornhashed Spanish.
With the help of a Galician vendor, Peter West explained, he had accumulated an especially piquant series of photographs: brothel quadroons bathed in feathers, a Negro chambermaid naked to the waist, and, of course, he remembered with the silliest grin Graciela had ever seen, the drunken sailors with the sow. In fact, the sun was not so mean to him when he wore his hat and jacket. And fruit was sweet, whores were cheap.
Graciela reached for the pesos before Silvio did; after all, Peter West had thrust them in her direction when he finished his convoluted explanations. But he quickly pulled the pesos away, leaving Graciela's fingers splayed open.
With the promise of pesos, Graciela and Silvio found themselves in the Galician vendor's warehouse, where Peter West had staged many ribald acts among its sacks of rice. How happy they had been to help this yanqui-man push together the papier-mâché trees, to roll out the starched canvas of cracked land and sky. Silvio straddled the tiger with its frozen growl while Graciela pried open the legs of a broken tripod to look in its middle. When West lit the lamps Graciela and Silvio squealed.
---¡Look, look how he brought the sun in here!
Silvio shaded his eyes.
---This yanqui-man, he is a crazy.
Graciela's whisper rippled through the warehouse when the fantasy soured. The pink hand tugged at her skirt and pointed briskly to Silvio's pants. They turned to each other as the same hand dangled pesos before them.
---¿You still want to go away with me, Mami, or no?
Silvio's whisper was hoarse.
Graciela's shoulders dropped. She unlaced her hair and folded her blouse and skirt. In turn, Silvio unbuttoned his mandarin shirt and untied the rope at his waist. Graciela folded her clothes along with his over a pile of cornhusks. In the dampness, they shivered while West kneaded their bodies as if molding stubborn clay.
They struggled to mimic his pouts and sleepy eyes. Instead of wrestling under heavy trees by Rio Ozama, or chewing cane in the fields near bateyes, or scratching each other's bellies in abandoned mills, or pressing up against the foot of a bridge, they were twisted about on a hard couch that stunk of old rags. Bewildered, they cocked their necks for minutes at a time in a sun more barbarous than the one outside. Their bodies shone like waxed fruit, so West wiped them with white powder. Too light. So he used, instead, mud from the previous day's rain.
"Like this, you idiots."
Where his Spanish failed, West made monkey faces, which finally made Graciela titter---only to reveal gaps where her teeth had been knocked out in a fall from a cashew tree. She found it difficult to sweetly gaze up at the beams of the warehouse as he had instructed. Her eyes remained fixed on the camera.
Then Graciela and Silvio watched in complicit silence as West approached the couch and knelt in front of them. Graciela's leg prickled with the heat of his ragged breathing. One by one, West's fingers wrapped around Silvio's growing penis. He wedged the thumb of his other hand into the humid mound between Graciela's thighs. Neither moved while they watched his forehead glitter. And just as they could hear each other's own sucks of breath, they felt piercing slaps on their chins. West ran to the camera to capture the fire in their faces.
As promised, the yanqui-man tossed Silvio a flurry of pesos. Graciela rubbed caked mud from her arms while Silvio, still naked, wet his fingers to count the bills. Graciela wondered if he would hog up the money, then go off to porches and storefronts to resoak her name in mud. As she wiggled her toes into her sandals, cigar smoke made her bite the inside of her cheek.
---Me amur, ¿qué pase?
This time the knotted Spanish was in Graciela's hair, the grip on her shoulder moist. Before she could demand her own flurry of colored bills, a crash echoed throughout the warehouse. Glass and metal scattered across the floor. The photographer ran toward the crash and in his frenetic efforts to salvage the film plate did not bother to strangle Silvio.
Graciela and Silvio ran from the warehouse and hid behind barrels along the dock, suppressing adrenaline giggles.
---You liked it, she said.
Silvio made a fist, then pointed to the pockets of his shorts.
---¡Gimme my earn, you! Graciela hissed. She clutched at his pocket. A puff of hair flopped over her eye.
---You liked it too, he said.
They wrestled, the strange arousal they had felt in the warehouse pumping through them again.
---I'll hold it for when I come for you, Silvio said in between breaths.
Graciela had to trust Silvio. She tied up her hair into four knots and ran to the market, where she should have been, before Mai sent her brother for her. Silvio kept his head down to try to hide the recently-paid-man brightness in his eyes. He should have been home helping his father with the coal. Graciela and Silvio did not know they had just been immortalized.
Absentmindedly, Graciela plucked four pieces of yucca for barter from the vendor's selection. Silvio's narrow back had disappeared into the market crowd in a swagger that thickened the dread in Graciela's throat. She was about to hand the vendor a lard can's worth of pigeon peas, only to realize that she had left it at the warehouse.
---Devil's toying with my peas.
Graciela bit the inside of her cheek. She turned away and fled.
---¡Ladrona! the ever-suspicious vendor yelled into the crowd, but today, as usual, no one listened.
Away from the mass of vendors, fowl, and vegetables, Graciela's chest heaved under the stolen yucca and her hair unraveled again.
Once her stride slowed down, she banged her forehead three times with the heel of her hand. ¡Sugar! She was supposed to buy sugar, not yucca, which already grew in her father's plot. Graciela sucked her teeth, almost tasting the molasses hanging heavy in the air from the smokestacks eclipsing the hills.
---Graciela, your mai looks for you.
A woman with the carriage of a swan and a bundle balanced on her head walked from the nearby stream. Her even teeth flashed a warning as she stepped onto the road.
---Mai's got eyes all over me.
---You be careful with those yanqui-men ahead, the swan woman responded with a finger in midair. Then she walked toward the whistling ahead, bare feet sure and steady.
Graciela shaded her eyes. Tall uniformed men in hats shaped like gumdrops sat on the roadside. They drank from canteens and spat as far onto the road as they could. Graciela squatted in the dense grass to see how the fearless swan woman would move safely past them. The yanqui-men's rifles and giant bodies confirmed stories that had already filtered into the city from the eastern mountains: suspected gavillero rebels gutted like Christmas piglets; women left spread-eagled right before their fathers and husbands; children with eardrums drilled by bullets. Graciela had folded these stories into the back of her memory when she snuck about the city outskirts with Silvio. The yanqui-man in the warehouse seemed frail now, his black box and clammy hands no match for the long rifles aimed at the swan woman.
"Run, you Negro wench!" The soldier's shout was high-pitched and was followed by a chorus of whistles.
A pop resounded. Through the blades of grass, Graciela could see the white bundle continue down the road in a steady path. The woman held her head high as if the bundle could stretch her above the hats. Another pop and Graciela saw the woman drop to the ground. The soldiers milled around the screaming and thrashing in the grass. Some already had their shirts pulled out of their pants.
Behind the soldiers, Graciela scrabbled away in the blades of grass. By the time the pack of men dispersed, they had become olive dots behind her. The yucca grated inside her blouse. Twigs and soil lodged in her nails. Half an hour later, with all four hair knots completely undone, Graciela was relieved to catch a glimpse of donkeys and their cargo, vendors with their vegetable carts, a rare Model T making crisscross patterns on the road.
The air was tight as she pulled herself up and ran past neighbors' homes. No children played outside. Graciela did see horses---many horses---tied to fenceposts along the way. She could not shake the urge to yawn and swell her lungs with air.
The main road dropped into a dustier, brushier path, leading to the circle of familiar thatched cabins. Two horses were tied to the tree by the fence. Graciela could not hear her mother yelling to her younger brother, Fausto, for coal, or the chickens clucking in the kitchen. Fausto was not sitting on the rickety chair making graters from the sides of cans, saying,---Mai was gonna send for you, stupid harlot.
Instead, from the kitchen came the clatter of tin. As Graciela moved closer, the stench of old rags flared her nostrils again. Inside, Mai knelt by a soldier whose fists entangled her hair and had undone the cloth rollers. Fausto, a statue in the corner. A man wearing his mustache in the handlebar style of the yanquis calmly asked Mai where her husband hid the pistols and why he was away in the hills. Mai's face was marble as she explained that her husband had no weapons, he was a God-fearing farmer, and there was her daughter at the door with yucca from his plot, see how dirty she was from working so hard with her beloved father, come Graciela, come bring the fruits of his sweat so these gentlemen can see how hard we work.
Graciela stepped forward with thin, yellow-meat yucca she was too ashamed to say her father had harvested. The interpreter shoved Graciela against the cold hearth and jammed his face against hers.
Must be cane rum coloring his bloodshot eyes, she thought, Devil toying with her peas again, trying to stick pins in her eyes to make her blink.
---Pai don't got pistols, he only got cane rum, Graciela said.
Her eyes still on the man, Graciela pointed to a shed outside. The man twisted the ends of his mustache. With the same fingers he clamped Graciela's nose and held it until there was blood, which he wiped against her blouse.
---Now you've got my aquiline nose, he said, then sucked the rest of her blood from his fingers. This overeager display of barbarism fueled in Graciela more anger than fear. Mai, Graciela, and Fausto watched as he helped the yanqui-men load their horses with bottles of cane rum. Before taking off, they rinsed their hands in the family's barrel of fresh rainwater.
The mandatory disarmament of the city and its outskirts left a trail of new stories that would find their way back to the eastern mountains. By 1917, the country fell prey to young American men relieved that their incompetence had landed them in the tropics instead of Europe, where fellow soldiers had been dropped into a bubbling World War. For the next eight years these men sparked a war, equipped with sturdy boots, uniforms, and rifles, against machetes, rusty revolvers, and sometimes bare feet. It was a battle between lion and ant. And when an ant pinched a paw, the lion's roar echoed: in Mexico, Panama, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic.
A passionate creditor, Woodrow Wilson, demanded that the country's debt dollars be paid back in full while World War I shook across the ocean. At roughly 23°30' north longitude, 30°30' west latitude, Graciela and Silvio could not distinguish the taste of gunpowder from salt in the air of El Malecón.
Graciela's swollen nose stung as she peeled away the yucca's husk. Yellow and gray veins tunneled through the tuber's white flesh.
---¡Sugar! I send you for sugar, and you take the morning with you, Mai said, panic still twisting her voice.
For a moment Graciela wished that the soldiers had worked harder on Mai, had left her eyes swollen shut so she could not notice Graciela's unraveled hair.
Of course Graciela could never reveal that in the two hours she had been gone the seasalt was good against her skin, and so was Silvio, and that she was even able to earn some extra money . . .
Mai blared about hard-earned peas, and money for coal, money for shoes, money for sugar, about what green yanqui soldiers do to girls with skirts aflame, how lucky they all were to have been spared. Mai whacked her daughter on the back with a cooking spoon, squeezed the tender cartilage of her ears, wove her claws into Graciela's knotted hair. And Mai sobbed at only having her own flesh and blood with which to avenge humiliation. Excuses for the lack of peas, or money, or sugar on the table were postponed until the following day, when Pai returned from the bush with better crop and a heavier whipping hand.
Pai did emerge from the bush with better crop, but with hands too blistered by a week of harvesting to draw out confessions. He unearthed the pistols from under the water barrels and, with a furrowed brow, oiled them in the privacy of the outhouse. Graciela was perversely relieved by his preoccupation with who had snitched him out to the yanquis, and she carried on with her household chores, rag-doll dramas, fights with Fausto. Whenever she thought of Silvio buying tamarind balls with their money, Graciela bit the roughened inside of her cheek.
---Get yourself a whipping branch, Pai said days later to Graciela after he had devoured an avocado. He sat in front of the house repairing his only pair of shoes while she reluctantly climbed the cashew tree. As she handed over a thin branch, Graciela saw where mercury still stained the cuts on his hands.
---I told you to get a thicker branch, girl, he said.
After she had chosen the branch and wet it as he had instructed, Graciela followed Pai to the back of the house; Mai had already laid out the rice and stood a few feet away with her arms crossed. Without being told, Graciela removed her dress and knelt on the grains.
---You beat her good so she learns, Mai said to Pai. Then she disappeared into the kitchen, where Graciela could see her spying between the wood planks.
The first strike of the branch burned across the back of her thighs.
---Cry hard, girl, and satisfy your mai.
Pai thrashed the dirt around them. Graciela kept the smirk that she knew could make Mai's voice turn to pieces of breaking china. Finally, Pai cut the branch across the soles of her feet and hurled it to the bushes. Exasperated, he set a brand-new lard can full of peas on her head.
---Girl, you stay there till you lose that insolence.
Rice grains cut into her knees and the can of peas ignited a migraine. Still, Graciela would not confess; nothing she could have said would put her in a favorable light. Better to withstand the bursts of pain in her knees than to tell of her travesties with Silvio and multiply the existing worries in the household.
To numb herself Graciela sang songs, counted to ten twenty times, made popping sounds and saliva bubbles, concentrated on the caterpillar by the outhouse. Her thighs pressed tighter to hold back urine. After the breeze had chilled her raw skin, she began to itch where Pai's forgiving whip had left inevitable welts. A bug tickled her ankle. A sneeze crippled her side.
---¡Move and I shoot! Fausto said. He wore a gourd on his head, pointed a long piece of sugarcane at her, and revealed his own gaps for front teeth.
Two lizards copulated behind the barrel of rainwater. And suddenly Silvio waved pesos across Graciela's mind. He had not snuck around to their grove of cashews with his telltale whistle since the day of the yanqui. The clouds above Graciela did not move. In her agony, her anger and longing for Silvio became interchangeable.
Had Pai known of what she did with Silvio, he would have let the whip open her skin. He might have had Silvio hunted like a guinea hen. Might have scared him with a fresh-oiled pistol. Or turned him over to the yanquis.
With the frozen clouds and the sun baking circles in her head and the can of peas tumbling to the ground and the rice grains up against her flushed cheek, Graciela decided she would hunt for Silvio herself and make him put a zinc roof over her head.
SILVIO • 1917
Silvio never gave Graciela her share of the earnings. He spent the pesos on spicy sausages, on the winning cock, Saca Ojo, and on his favorite patient whore. Nor did Silvio dare muddy Graciela's name on porches or storefronts. (---You liked it too, he remembered her knowing words.)
Silvio withstood a year of Graciela's demands for a house of their own. He joined the yanquis' new Guardia Nacional Dominicana, where he was outfitted in starched slacks and sturdy shoes. It was an accomplishment, Silvio insisted to naysayers, for a man as dark and illiterate as he to be entrusted with yanqui guns. He was not a traitor, he explained, but a quality man with goals, who had already started wearing long pants. At fifteen, his penis swelled when the same elders who had tattled on him took off their hats in his presence. And when, at the sound of his voice, porch girls fanned themselves faster.
A quality man of goals must also head a household. Silvio agreed to elope with Graciela. One night at last, he blew his telltale whistle among the cashews. Like sudden thunder, Silvio invaded her home in his fresh yanqui haircut and pushed aside Pai's machete while Graciela ran past her shrunken mother to gather her few belongings.
Silvio had cleared a plot of land for them. He knew Graciela was disappointed to find that, instead of the turquoise palmwood and zinc house behind her lids, their new place was not much different from the thatched cabins she had left behind.
---This will have to do for now, Silvio said and brushed off dust from the knees of his slacks.
Inhumane military training demoted many an eager cadet back to civilian status. Silvio's own starched slacks, real shoes, and arrogance disappeared after a Marine ordered him to string his own friend Euclides from a mango tree. Euclides, in his zeal for trouble, had stolen the Marine's shoes. Euclides had taken them in jest, Silvio explained to the shrimp-skinned Marine, who, in near-perfect Spanish, had called him in for "a little talk." By the time Silvio tracked down Euclides to warn him, he knew that despite three meals a day and an enviable uniform, belonging to the yanqui police force came with too many problems. As did life with Graciela.
Within a year of their eloping, the fever of Silvio and Graciela's clandestine meetings had dwindled to predictable lukewarm pleasure during siesta and after sundown. Graciela was no longer Silvio's, despite his having her under a roof and being able to hitch up her skirt at will. Just a year ago, she had been completely his when she let him pick off every baby tick that had stuck fast to her ankles from running through a field of grass. And Silvio certainly believed Graciela his shortly before the yanqui-man incident, when she confided about a deadly disease afflicting the women in her family, which causes them to bleed between their legs every month. But the patient whore he frequented recently told him that all women had the disease, and now, more than ever, Silvio felt he had lost Graciela to a world bigger than himself.
But those were crazy moonshine thoughts, because daily life itself seeped into Silvio and Graciela's bodies like cement. As when, throughout their meals, Graciela would chew her food slowly and stare at him with what Silvio increasingly saw as the wide eyes of a cow. ¿What? ¿What? he would yell, hoping she would not bring up again the goddamned turquoise palmwood and zinc house.
Graciela's cow eyes and Euclides' murder convinced Silvio that he preferred the unpredictable ways of the waters to the whims of shrimp-skinned generals and to Graciela's irritating company. Silvio planned to join a fishing fleet that circled the Caribbean. He let his hair sprout out from its yanqui haircut. One night he sat by the fire he had made of his uniform and shoes, and the next morning he kissed Graciela goodbye after a hearty breakfast of cocoa, breadfruit, eggs, and boiled bananas.
On the morning of his first voyage, Silvio had dragged Graciela to her parents' house. Even with his grip, Graciela stirred the dust around them.
---¡Don't need to swallow my own spit 'cause you wanna fish!
---Just for peace of mind, mi cielo, he said.
---Don't worry yourself, Silvio. Not one of your kids will look like you. Graciela punctuated her words with a fisted index finger.
Mai received Graciela and Silvio with crossed arms.
---You're a man of few words, Silvio, but you need to be firm with this one, she said and jutted her bottom lip toward Graciela.
Once Silvio left for the docks, however, Graciela walked back to her own house in another haze of dust, followed by a grumbling Fausto, whom she forced to help file down the series of padlocks. In turn, Fausto ran home to tell Mai of Graciela's hammock-rocking, and the idleness of his sister's broom, the cold in her kitchen.
In the evenings, neighboring women brought Graciela some food. Then they undid the kindness as if slowly unraveling a swatch of silk by a single thread.
---¿That you want to ride on a ship? ¿With feet in lace-ups and those raisins of hair under a hat?
Celeste, Graciela's childhood friend, always spoke the loudest and made the others cackle. She wondered aloud when the trail of daily chores left undone would catch up with Graciela and freeze over her dreams.
---Ah, but you'd wear lace-up shoes too if El Gordo had them for you, Celeste my love. Because Graciela knew how much Celeste would give to bed down El Gordo, who had more ranch cattle than Celeste's impotent husband.
There was also the not-so-pious woman they all called Santa, who brought Graciela lavish goat meat and vegetable dishes. After Graciela consumed her portions, Santa would sweetly say to the women gathered in the kitchen,
---Our dear Graciela's hearth is colder than a witch's breath.
One day, to everyone's surprise, Graciela invited Santa over for a midday meal of mashed plantains, ham, and cheese. Afterward, Graciela offered Santa a rock-candy sucker. Only after Santa' had sucked the candy down to a nub, did Graciela say,
---¿Was it all good, Santa?
---¡Oh by far the best I've had!
---Well, that sucker is what my armpit tastes like after a long hot morning at this hearth.
And though Santa did not speak to her for weeks, the rest of the women could not stop asking Graciela how she had managed to cook with the sucker lodged in her armpit the entire time. News of the prank spread, with camps dividing between those who liked Santa and those who didn't, between those who liked Graciela and those who were beginning to distrust her.
Still, the women liked to forget their work as Graciela wrung the rain out of their clouds. When there was no major news to chew on, they could always set their tongues on Graciela and her ways:
---That poor girl's lazier than an upper jaw.
---Show me her pots and I'll show you her bed.
---That fool's wasting her life waiting on that other fool.
For months after Silvio's departure, Graciela rocked in a hammock when visitors were not coming around. Out of loneliness, she would sometimes visit her parents, where she found herself having cordial, yet strained morning teas with Mai and clipped exchanges with Pai, when he descended from the hillside. He would occasionally slip a coin into the pocket of Graciela's apron; from the way Graciela quickly slurped her tea and darted her starved eyes when Mai clattered the dishes, Pai suspected that Silvio had not been sending any fishing money home after all. Pai's concern grew when he realized that Silvio would not be returning any time soon. He then forced a reluctant Fausto to go protect his sister from the "roaming men of low virtue" that had assaulted the city and its outskirts. Just two years younger than Graciela, Fausto had already mushroomed into an animal of a boy who, according to Pai, was built like a yanqui on an ox. Though Pai was giving up a much-needed workhand, he armed his bumbling twelve-year-old son with a pistol and sent him off to live with Graciela until Silvio's return.
---Learn now how to really defend a household, he told Fausto. Always careful, Pai had already sent word to neighbors to keep watch over Graciela.
Outside on her hammock, Graciela could ignore the disarray inside her home and stare at the wispy cirrus ships in the sky. In the clouds, she wore lace and carried a parasol in the park of a place where the talk was garbled but pretty. Rocking in her hammock, Graciela imagined Silvio on the high seas, sprawled on the deck, maybe looking for her in the clouds. Fool with ideas, she scolded herself. Her eyes closed against the humid breeze.
Forget dirty tongues, she told herself further. They were all over the place: in the town, in the soup, even in her own head. Always trying to stop her from doing what she wanted. She would sit and let her home shrivel if she wanted. It was hers. And if she wanted to wait for Silvio for months, she would. He was hers as well.
Graciela stood up and stretched until she heard a snap somewhere inside her body. Now that Fausto was here, maybe he could help her finish the little plot she and Silvio had started behind the main cabin a few months back.
---Fausto, she called out. He emerged from the kitchen shed, chewing on a piece of lard bread.
---¿Can't you do anything but eat 'round here? Graciela said. Fausto looked down at her, then brushed some crumbs from his lips.
---I got the pistol, so I do whatever I want. Pai says I run this house, Fausto said. From his shorts pocket he pulled out a piece of cheese and brushed the lint from it.
---And if a yanqui were to come here this minute, ¿what the Devil would you do to save us?
Fausto reached into his other pocket, then dropped the piece of cheese.
---¡My pistol! ¿Where the hell is my pistol?
Fausto turned in circles, patting himself on the hips. When he looked up at Graciela, he found himself face-to-face with the pistol's barrel.
---Donkey-face. I dare you to go and tell Pai. You tell him to send Graciela herself to defend me next time. She's a better son than you are.
In one deft move the pistol disappeared behind the neckline of her blouse.
Graciela had always been a fool with ideas, everyone said, long before she had waited for Silvio to whistle for her in the cashew grove and take her away.
---Mai, God willing, I'm gonna ride ships. Big ones with tiny waists, she had sung at nine years old.
Mai had not looked up from her ironing. A pair of Pai's underwear lay smoothed out on the table. Graciela stretched the underwear to show the width of the metal whale that could take her to where sky and water met.
Mai looked up from her ironing. A momentary glimmer. Then she saw Gracicla's idle hands.
---Ideas, ideas. That head in the clouds won't do your chores or fill your gut.
Mai spat and let the iron sizzle.
And then there were the three Spanish nuns with bunioned feet who had paid everyone in town a missionary visit when Graciela was four. Graciela had snuck behind the kitchen to hear the added s's in Mai's speech, the lisp reserved for rare visitors.
---I have always tried to instill God into this little girl, her mother had said, hands clasped at her chest.
The following week, Graciela found herself in the colonial church, hairline pulled taut with bits of cloth from old dresses. The church's dilapidation testified only to outward neglect; mission work was still going strong. Church beams spread out like protective arms above Graciela. Blocks of sunlight cut into the darkness to illuminate pews, statues, bits of floor. Graciela had the urge to stand inside the blocks of sunlight.
---¿That where Jesus is? Graciela had asked, pointing to the blocks of light.
---Jesus is everywhere, said the nun who called herself Sol Luz and led her toward a small room behind the altar. There were children already there, milling around an object in the middle of the room. They took turns spinning a colorful ball fixed to a metal arc. Graciela pushed and pinched her way through, until her fingers reached the ball, which she learned was called a "globe."
Only after she had sung all the holy songs and gulped down a hunk of stale bread with near-sour milk, was she allowed to return to the globe and turn it on its axis as if it were a rotisserie.
---You are here.
Sol Luz bent close to put Graciela's finger over a speck rising from the globe's surface.
---¿Me? ¿On the head of an iguana? Graciela narrowed her eyes. The iguana head was but a nick on her fingertip. She saw other animals: the haunch of a sheep, a goat, a dog. They encompassed as many as four of her fingers.
---I am from here---España---and came here.
Sol Luz dragged her finger to the left of the dog's leg, across an expanse of blue.
---I rode a ship all the way here, where you are, she said.
---¿Why did you come to this iguana and not go to the dog's ears over there?
Graciela moved Sol Luz's finger in the opposite direction.
---I came to bring Jesus, she said, leaving some spittle on the globe.
¿Why bring Jesus to such a small iguana when there were bigger animals? New questions prickled Graciela's throat before she could finish asking the last; the answers mattered less.
---Ah, the dilemma of mission work, the nun said, as if trying to sort out for herself why she was there on that speck of land with so much misery.
---¿And does anyone live here? Graciela pointed to blue bulls and horses.
---Not always good for a little girl to ask so many questions, Sol Luz said. ---No one lives in the ocean. Sure, the Lord created fishes and sea animals, but not the sinful women with fishtails, or pirate ghosts, or the water saints that you people talk about.
Sol Luz's eyes became fixed stones and Graciela thought for a moment that she looked like a fish.
Each Sunday thereafter, Mai would drag Graciela home by her pigtails.
---¿Can't I bring the globe home with me?
---Ask as many questions about Christ as you do about that pitiful ball, Mai said.
¿But how much bigger could the world be when the head of a tiny animal was her whole world? Graciela's fingers traced mountain ridges and the dips of rivers. ¿Would the people there be engulfed in a shadow and look up to the sky to see the swirls of her fingerprints hovering over their lands?
Graciela begged Sol Luz to run outside and watch the sun as she ran her finger over their speck on the globe.
---¿See my finger? Graciela's voice echoed throughout the church.
---No harm in humoring the poor child, Sol Luz thought to herself as she walked to the church doors. Indeed, it was unusually dark outside, and with her heart in her throat Sol Luz lifted her eyes. She was ashamed of herself when, expecting colossal fingertips, she found a heavy cloud hovering over the church. A cool breeze signaled rain, and with a grunt at her own foolishness, she ran back inside.
When Graciela thought she would pack her rags to break the monotony of her days, Silvio returned for the New Year celebrations. Sea breezes rushed ahead of him to their cactus fence. Fausto returned to Mai and Pai's home when he saw Graciela stuff her knotted mass of hair under a scarf and bury Pai's pistol near the rainwater barrel. Quickly, she stoked the fire for a meal, swept the yard, tried to erase the look of pining she was sure Silvio expected.
Silvio returned with kingfish and squid strung on his back. There was licorice for Graciela in his pockets and Madame C.J. Walker grease to replace coconut oil for her hair. A yellow-ochre tinge lit up his crown from the sun and salt of his travels, making his hair look like the macaroni he told her he had tasted in St. Lucia. Kisses and long stories made her forgive his absence---only to discover later the rash on his groin.
During his first stay at home, he complained to Graciela how the stillness of land, the permanence of the ground underneath his feet made him feel as if his joints were welded together.
---Devil's still dancin' in my head, he said when Graciela's chamomile tea failed to stop the hammer tearing apart his temples. In their bed, Silvio flopped over, long after Graciela had fallen asleep, then his ragged breaths would wake her before dawn. And twice a day Graciela had to send for Fausto to refill the water jug that would cure Silvio's insatiable thirst.
Despite Silvio's uncharacteristic neediness, Graciela was glad to have him back home. She was impressed by the skill with which he prepared barbecued fish, and conch soup, and vinegary ceviches. Unlike hers, his hands stayed uncut when digging out the meat from a crab, which he fed to her in slimy bits. ---Try it, you squid, he said, when she refused the seaweed and onions entangled in his fork. A strange man of the sea he had become to the land-anchored Graciela, and it made her proud. No, Silvio was not like all the other dull men in town, with his narrow back, his yellowed naps, his sea speech. But their three weeks of reacquaintance were over---just when Graciela had begun to get used to the extra salt in their food, just as she was feeling proud of herself for not harrowing him about the turquoise palmwood house.
So Silvio came and went with the tides. Twice a month, his weekend stays heated the kitchen with frying fish and boiling plantains. Folks arrived to hear tales of ghost ships abandoned at sea. Silvio told of real and invented ports where the crew stopped to sell their catch. He described his searches for pirate loot at the bottom of the ocean. And when Graciela was out of earshot, he confirmed that white women had the fragrance of the sea and its treasures. When the fish was sold, given away, and eaten; when the travel stories were told, and had worn thin; when people no longer exclaimed "¡Llegó Silvio!"; and when he was ready for brine again, Silvio would tie up his bags.
---Take me, Silvio.
He would put his finger to Graciela's lips, but later she followed him to the docks with her own bags. Each time, sea mates teased Silvio for his inability to wrest himself from his hound.
One afternoon in early February, Silvio departed for the sixth time, according to Graciela's tally. On this occasion, he hopped on the boat and turned to face the horizon even as Graciela waved. Long after the boatful of those leather-faced men sailed around the turn of shore, Graciela lingered by the water sucking salt from her lips.
---¡Thief!
She spat her bitterness into the water, whose currents drew Silvio away and lapped at the seawall; whose depths contained jewelry unhooked from the wrists of the wealthy, whole bodies of metal sea animals with fractured waists, and hundreds of ball-and-chained bones trapped in white coral.
Nausea came to Graciela. That February the goat had not been slaughtered; her rags remained bloodless for the first time since she was ten. No more waiting.
Graciela collected some belongings, and tied them up in the hammock. She wanted to leave the capital, perhaps head north to Santiago, the Heart of the Country. The new life inside her pulled her daydreams down from the clouds. Up north in the pulse of the country, they could build a bright turquoise palmwood house with a zinc roof for their new family. She would wait for Silvio's return, and then convince him, and if he did not join her, she would leave without him, and take up washing or cleaning until the child was born. Then she would make her palmwood house, and call on Silvio to show him that she was not a woman to be kept sitting and waiting idly for her life to happen . . .
Graciela's dreaming also set in motion Fausto's plan. He invited a friend over to help him till the small plot of beans he had been helping Graciela tend. As the boys rolled up tobacco joints, Graciela could hear Fausto's put-on baritone through the breadfruit trees.
---Once Sis leaves, I'll bring that little number down from Villa Consuelo to live here with me, you'll see.
But the moon went through its faces and still no Silvio. Common talk brought greetings from him, which Graciela knew were fabricated by pitying friends.
It was already August---half a year since anyone had last seen Silvio. In six months, the speculations surrounding his extended absence bubbled up like a foul gas. Out of consideration, someone suggested to Graciela that his boat had floated far out to the Mona Canal. There was talk of sharks and trouble with Marines. A lynching. Celeste, as always, offered the possibility of a distant woman, one who perhaps did not squabble as much.
The real story people feared.
---Those butchers left the fishermen hanging in a bunch like a hand of bananas, said Desiderio to whoever would listen at Yunco's.
The local bar was packed with Prohibition-free Marines, and Yunco, always out to profit from fortune and misfortune alike, covertly turned his home into the "locals' local" bar after curfew. Desiderio, a regular "yunquero," had heard the lynching story from his cousin, who had heard it from Flavia the johnnycake woman, who lived with El Gordo, who worked in the sugar mill of the Turks. And El Gordo, who was eating out of Celeste's kitchen unbeknownst to Flavia and Celeste's husband, heard the tale from the Turks themselves.
And the Turks, who seemed neutral enough in matters between Dominicans and yanquis, ran an information exchange out of their sugar mill. They bribed Dominicans for details on the gavillero rebels and any other anti-yanqui activities, then sold it to the yanquis. But to assuage their guilt in aiding the yanquis, they also bought information from yanqui-friendly Dominican spies to distribute freely among the people. It was in this web of information that Silvio's fate became enmeshed:
That one of the fishermen in Silvio's fleet deserted them because of a dispute over money. That he went to the Turks. That the Turks then gave the yanquis detailed information on a fleet of so-called fishermen who made trips to the Caribbean. That these fishermen would swing around the nose of the island to the east instead, where they unloaded weapons for the gavilleros hiding out in the hills.
---This is what I heard myself.
El Gordo pounded his chest in competition with Desiderio.
---And those yanquis then chopped them down from the tree. They say that in El Ceibo pigs were shitting buttons and bits of nails, Desiderio said, proud of his contribution to the grains of information.
---Now no one eats pork in El Ceibo, he added with a wink.
---Things are really bad in the east. Bad like purple gas. El Gordo sighed and took a swig of rum.
By September, Graciela had stopped rocking in her hammock. Her seven-month belly popped one of the cords, prompting her to fold up the hammock and tightly wrap up most of her belongings in it; she prayed she would not have to later unwrap it to wear her black skirt and mourning veil. If Silvio did not return before her labor, Graciela was determined to push out her child, pack up the rest of her things, and head north, wailing baby strapped to her back and all. ¿So what if it was a foolish thought not to wait out the forty postpartum days? Tired she was of waiting for her life to truly begin. A departure would be progress, she was sure. Living in this cluster of ramshackle shacks had not been part of her vision of life with Silvio, and now there were more than two futures to think about. Asking the clouds for mercy and ignoring the vivid memory of a straw hat being lapped up by sea foam, Graciela waited one more month for her own signs of Silvio.
It was an easy pregnancy, with Graciela sending Fausto all over town on errands. Water bread and not lard bread, she insisted, and Fausto had better make sure to sift any maggots from the sugar if he purchased it from Joselito. When Fausto was out of the house, Graciela would curl up in bed to work on a rag doll for the future baby. Then she cried herself to sleep when its uneven button eyes gawked back at her, one red and tiny, the other black and large.
Everyone who used to laugh at Graciela's ship-and-lace dreams knew that her baby must have been crying in the womb. They also knew that Silvio's body had been found so riddled by bullets, there was more kindness in saying sharks had devoured him.
The day her daughter was born, Graciela had rocked under anvils of cumulonimbus ships. Gray clouds tumbled after each other, herded by winds to where they could relieve their weight. Must be difficult labor, rain, she thought, rubbing her belly. Crows squawked over the waving trees, dipping over her as if flaunting their gift of flight. A blanket of smoke, of burnt ashes in the ominous sky---the death of her Silvio, she speculated. Thunder changed her mind. No, no, their fruit is life, a good sign. In the silver underbelly of one of the ships, Graciela was certain she saw Silvio. Alive. He was sure to return to her that night, she understood.
The air had cooled, causing land crabs to scurry out of their holes. Cashew leaves turned their waxy sides up and field mice ran up the trunks of trees. Fausto stabbed a spot in the yard with an ax, while Graciela shooed the chickens inside the house and closed all doors. The rest of the day she spent adorning her home and combing her hair tangled from the coming rains. Fausto's whistling and the sharp jabs in Graciela's womb kept her awake before Silvio's arrival.
In the October night, Graciela woke to rain dripping into the pot at the foot of her bed. Fausto was curled in a cot, sleeping soundly, despite heavy ozone in the air. Graciela waited for the sea breeze to enter through the creaking door. The tiny voice had echoed again, languishing at the bottom of her spine, then crawling to her forearms, where cold had already tightened the tiniest of hairs.
---¡Silvio! ¿That you?
For the first time she was afraid of what jumped inside her. She wanted Silvio to arrive before the child; for the pain of childbirth to be only in her womb and not in her heart.
---¡Fausto!
He snored louder than the thunder outside.
---¡Fausto! ¡Go get Ñá Nurca!
He snored louder than the thunder outside.
---¡Fausto!
Cold and whirring in her womb ate at her. The night howled when Graciela pried open the door. Rain cloaked her.
---¡Silvio!
Spongy ground sucked at her feet. The sky growled as she broke into a jog. A flash of blue lightning found the ax in the yard, and the nerves of the heavens seemed to converge at its handle. Graciela stopped; her feet were buried in unusually warm mud. The rain was saltier than her own tears. She whiffed a sharp sulfuric odor, then the undeniable smell of excrement. Graciela crossed a flooded ditch, wading to her shins in sewage.
The small cement house was a refuge at the end of the road.
---¡Ñá Nurca! She beat on the door until the elderly midwife opened and, without a word, led Graciela into the house by lantern light.
---Like the Devil himself you smell, Ñá Nurca said.
---And I'm about to have Juan the Baptist himself, Graciela yelled with the jolt in her womb. Used to the hysteria of life-givers, Ñá Nurca cupped Graciela's face and complained that Graciela should have sent word with Fausto to the yawning servant girl.
---Go boil water and prepare the birth bed, for the love of God, Ñá Nurca snapped at the girl.
Graciela's moans were muffled by the crackling of the skies. Ñá Nurca's teas and tinctures opened her womb, sending Graciela to the tenuous membrane between life and death. In the velvet behind her lids, she saw Silvio's muted face, then that of a child's.
---Come back, woman, come back, Ñá Nurca said to Graciela.
The servant girl, accustomed to the trials of childbirth, gathered the soiled cloths as fast as she could. Ñá Nurca's gnarled hands massaged Graciela's body relentlessly in an attempt to coax out new life with her own.
By morning, as the storm subsided, the bleating of Graciela's labor had alerted the neighbors. The elaborate word-of-mouth network eventually drew Mai away from her duties. With soup and clean linens she appeared at Ñá Nurca's---not before boxing Fausto's ears for having slept through the night.
That afternoon, Graciela's baby was born, healthy, kicking furiously out of the muting pillows of her mother's warmth. Ñá Nurca wrapped the afterbirth in a cloth for burying and saved the umbilical cord for Graciela's safekeeping. She joked about the child's big fists as she wiped her with warm water.
---Mercedes, Ñá Nurca, call the chichí Mercedes, Graciela mumbled.
---¿This little hurricane with the name of mercy? Ñá Nurca said, noting again the unusually large fists and discovering a mole on her toe.
Ñá Nurca swaddled Mercedes in a fresh blanket before putting her to Graciela's breast. The child latched on tightly to her mother, not letting go even after Graciela's breasts were drained of their milk.
Miss Prissy and the Penitentiary
MISS PRISSY,PRISCILLA EDGEWATER
It's mine!" I yelled at my best friend Penelope.
"Get for-real," she yelled back. "It's mine!"
How'd we get in this mess? Here we are in the hair salon, all by ourselves, straddling chairs, fighting over this big beautiful gold box with lilac and pink bows nestled on top. And I guess we got into this mess because this isn't just any present, but a present from SANDER.
I'm torn between my curiosity about what's inside and my anger at Penelope for trying to claim it. And I'm not giving up. I'm holding on for dear life, glaring across at Pen. She'd had the unmitigated gall to leave her computer analyst job early to come here and pick a fight with me. Her suit jacket and skirt are bunched up around her little body (clothes too tight as usual), and she's staring me down with those big, black, killer eyes, acting like a monster out of one of those sci-fi books she's always reading.
Why won't she let go?
I'm four times her size and can whip her little butt if I've a mind to.
Why won't she let go?
She's my business partner in this shop and supposedly my best friend, best friend since childhood, when everyone started calling me Miss Prissy and Penelope, Miss Penitentiary. That's when she promised, and now twenty-five years later, Pen is breaking that very promise.
PENELOPE PARKINS,MISS PENITENTIARY
Lies, lies, all lies! I am not breaking our promise, she is! Priss is. I'm not letting go of this box. What for? It's mine, period dot com. Sure it arrived with no name, addressed only to "The P&P Salon," but why would Sander send it to her? He loves me. Not her. I wonder if it's something sexy? Expensive? Oh, there she goes pulling at the box again.
"Priss!" I hissed at her.
"Pen!" she whipped back.
I don't want to be vain, but I can see through people like they're cellophane. Priss latches on to men like handcuffs because she's a big mama. Once a deliveryman came into the beauty shop to bring in a new dryer and he saw Priss and joked, "Damn baby, you big and fine, how much you weigh?"
Priss gave her trademark curtsey and cooed, "Good and plenty, and sweet just like the candy, thank you for asking." She practically rode the man's back out of the store trying to get his phone number just because he gave her a little flirt-flirt.
Priss gave that snappy answer because it was a Saturday and the place was packed and she didn't want to get her face cracked. But I know how self-conscious Priss is about being big. So when a man shows her the least bit of attention she turns into a heroine out of one of those romance novels she's always reading. Priss doesn't know fact from fiction. Just look at her, holding onto my present with that press-on set of claws! I grinned my sneakiest of smiles and jerked the box---and two of those press-ons popped off like smart bombs, flying damn near up to the ceiling.
"You did that on purpose," Priss said, giving me her standard dainty, indignant look.
"Damn skippy," I said right back with attitude. "C'mon Priss, give it up. Sander wants me, not you."
Priss growled, "Wake up. You always did throw yourself at men---even in second grade."
"Lies, lies, all lies!" I told Miss Prissy. "Tell me when?"
It was Good Friday. I had only been enrolled at Garvey Academy for a month, because my family had just moved into a new house. Mama and Daddy worked double shifts and overtime at their jobs for two years so they, their daughter, and three sons could live in a three bedroom, two bathroom house instead of a two bedroom, one bathroom, leaky faucet, warped floor, broken screen door, loose-latched, third-floor walk-up apartment.
It was tough for me to leave our old place. Grandma lived upstairs and my second cousin Willa lived downstairs. It was comforting having that much girl family around because my brothers were, well, brothers. Men are men.
But grown up or not, women are girls. And Grandma and Cousin Willa were fun loving girls. We played jacks and card games like pitty-pat and made stick figures out of Play-Doh. I didn't have a best friend then, they were my best friends even though my mother explained that this wasn't natural; that a child should have friends their own age. Well I was bigger than the other kids on the block, even those who were two to three years older, and it is a tragic situation to be too different as a child. If ever a person wants and needs to mesh in with a crowd, it's as a child. I didn't mesh so I stayed in the house, not wanting to be teased for being too big and too tall.
At my new school, it was a triple whammy. They teased me for being too big, too tall, and too new. Particularly this one little girl, Penelope, who resembled a nappy-headed kewpie doll.
Even our teacher, Mrs. Melton, and Penelope did not sit horses because Pen was a pint-sized terror. She wasn't big as a minute, but could wreak havoc twenty-four hours a day. She'd toss the games in the fun room if she lost, gargle with her milk, chew crayon, and spit chips like scud missiles out of that powerful mouth of hers. One kid's face looked like it was peppered with glitter when she got through. And Pen really hated me because I liked Noah and Noah liked me.
Noah was the funniest looking boy in class. He had a round head, sleepy eyes, a little gap between his front teeth, and an odd way of standing: one leg straight as a pencil with the other silly putty cocked inward to the right. He was so funny looking he was cute. But Penelope liked Noah too, so she was static on me all the time. And while Noah in the Bible was a one-woman man, Noah in the second grade was a playah.
When she wasn't dealing with Pen, Mrs. Melton was kindhearted. As Easter approached she decided to put me in the Good Friday play in an effort to boost my confidence. My part was this: after the crowd dropped palms in Jesus' path I was to scoop them up and run off the stage saying, "And the masses praised his arrival to Jerusalem and the palms he touched were blessed." And everyone was to leave the stage following behind me shouting, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"
Mrs. Melton put Pen's skinny butt on the floor with the other bad buggas, not trusting her to be in the crowd with the other children. Noah got the part of Jesus because he had a big head and the fake beard fit his face without falling off.
The day of the play we're all in our places and the play was going great. I was nervous but my grandma and cousin were in the second row so I wasn't shaking too badly. Standing in the wings, I was getting ready for my part. Penelope, sitting Indian style---though no self-respecting tribe would have her---was throwing static at me. "Hurry up and get off the stage, too. Don't nobody wanna see you!"
Here it was my big day and she was giving me the business. I had on my pink satin dress, pink ankle socks with lace, and white patent leather shoes with pink bows. There must have been one hundred plaits in my head, each with a barrette. I had had enough. When I got out onstage I looked out in the crowd at my relatives and instead of scooping up the palms, I started picking them up one at a time and giving a curtsey after each one. The more Penelope talked the deeper my curtsey got and the better I bopped my step. I looked good and the crowd cheered like crazy. I wasn't used to this so I spun around a bit. Mrs. Melton began jumping up and down shouting, "C'mon, c'mon!"
I did not care. I was a star. I did a split and picked up the last palm. The crowd was on its feet cheering and laughing. Grandma yelled, "That's my baby!"
Finally I said my line and started to run back across the stage leading everyone off for the curtain to close. I was skipping along, just thinking, I'm a star. I could be on the Cosby Show with Theo and Rudi. That's when some lowdown somebody stuck out her foot and tripped me.
Insert domino theory here.
I had a comic view of the entire thing.
Bah-boom, bah-boom, and boom: One right after the other, they rolled across the stage. Waxed for the occasion, the floor was slick as a giant slide and all of the kids went whoosh. The girls with those two big flat pointy braids sticking outta the sides of their heads? They sailed further 'cause those braids gave them a little Flying Nun action. But in the words of Chaka Kahn, AIN'T NOBODY, and I mean nobody, rolled like Priscilla. She looked like a pink beach ball. There was only one unfunny part about the whole thing. Priss, round as a beach ball, rolled right over me; knocked my one barrette off my bangs and the wind right out of my body. When she sat up and saw it was me, she commenced to bounce! It was a miracle, but Noah was the only one left standing. I wasn't too surprised though; after all, he was playing Jesus. Noah laughed at Priss bouncing on me, "Pen, she tearing you up!"
I started struggling then. I wasn't about to be shown up by HER. I pinched her leg, she jumped up, and the fight was on. Now Mrs. Melton was onstage trying to get the kids up, but kids kept sliding on the floor on purpose, pretending to be slipping, refusing to stand up. Priscilla and me had locked barrettes and were pushing each other back and forth. Poor Mrs. Melton was near tears, her play ruined. Finally the principal ran up on stage and closed the curtain. Over? Not yet. Priss and me, we had tussled forward and were the only ones left front and center. Mrs. Melton separated us and shook me out like a wrinkled sheet, "Miss Penitentiary!" Then she tried to shake Priscilla, "Miss Prissy!"
Trah-ble. We had no recess for the next month but had to stay inside, straighten up the cloakroom and clean the black boards. None of the other kids were talking to us either, mad now that we made them mess up the Good Friday play. Even Noah ignored us except for sticking out his tongue through the window in between getting hit in the head playing dodge ball.
Isolated like that, we got to be friends. One day while squatting on the floor of the cloakroom (who ever wore a cloak to school anyway?), cleaning away chewed up gum that some nut had stepped on and spread across the floor, Priss said, "Pen, let's make a promise. Never to fight over a stupid old boy ever."
"Yeah, they just trah-ble---always digging in their noses and wrestling on the floor. Forget them."
And we shook on it. Sure did. That was the promise. Now Sander was coming between us.
Now most of the girls in the beauty shop are wondering what the hell is so special about Sander?
Sander is a man's man. He went into the navy right after high school, did a double stint. I saw a picture Sander had in his wallet. The photo was of Sander and a friend after they'd won some kind of a competition. They were wearing their frog suits holding a trophy.
Heard that saying, Feel froggish jump?
Well I saw that sexy picture and my heart started to jump, not to mention the fact that I wanted to jump the man's bones. But che-che no-no; I am too sophisticated for that.
Pen knew that I was digging on the brother, but I saw him first. Sander was coming out of Independence Bank, across the street on the corner. Every business in the community used Independence. Sander was coming out of the bank carrying a sack of nickels.
But that body of his ain't no chump change.
Sander had come home to take over his father's hardware store business, and Miss Pen started running in their every other day---I mean damn, how obvious can you get? I mean Pen doesn't even own a hammer but she was throwing herself at the man like some Home Depot Harlot looking for a screw, excuse my French.
Anyway, I saw Sander outside the shop yesterday, that's why I know the gift is for me. He said, "Where are you off to looking so fine and cheery?"
The boy has an eye, don't he?
I said, "To get something special for Aunt Tilly."
"Oh," Sander said, those gorgeous eyes sparkling, "that's the nice old lady who checks your clients in, right?"
"Right, she's been working in the shop for ten years now. We're going to have a little anniversary party for her. Wanna come?"
"Depends," he smiled, the sexy gap in his front teeth exposing itself to me.
"Depends on what?"
"If you're doing the cooking for the party. Heard you can burn up some pots."
"Well," I giggled, "I wasn't planning on cooking. I'm trying to cut back, lose a few pounds."
Then I sucked in my gut.
"Aww woman, don't change. Big is beautiful."
Then he smiled and began walking away.
That was joy to my ears; I skipped behind Sander, shouting, "Come Saturday. I'm fixin' short ribs with red beans and rice."
Now tell me that gift isn't for me?
It's not.
Just because the man likes to eat, and isn't hating on Priss because she does too, doesn't mean Sander wants to start a relationship with her.
I'm the one he eyeballs when I walk past his business on the way to the shop after work. I'm the one Sander grins all over himself at when I go into the hardware store to buy some nails.
So here we are both latched onto this beautiful box. And I'm about to tell my best friend to get a grip when I remember: I remember our promise back in second grade. I remember that slope-footed, melon-headed Noah. And I laugh, laugh right out loud.
"What you laughing at Pen? Steve Harvey ain't in here cracking jokes."
I let go of the gift box and slide down off the stool. Priss's big butt almost flips over backwards, into the sink, but I grab and hold her, thanking God that I'd been working out, digging in so hard that my spike heels leave Dracula marks in the vinyl floor.
"Wheez! Thanks Pen. But I still don't know what's so funny."
"I thought about our second grade promise is all, that's why I let go. How are we going to let a man come between us, after all the drama we've been through?"
Priss thought hard for a moment, drawing her lips into a prissy pout, then said in a baby voice, "You right."
We hugged and both looked at the beautiful gift box.
"What are we going to do with that?" Priss asked.
"Go upside Sanders head," I answered, "for trying to come between us. He was playing games with us, had to know we both were digging on him."
"We can't beat the brother down for not knowing which one of the gorgeous ones to pick, can we?"
I laugh when she does this in a Mae West voice with a boom-shockahlockah hip shake.
Then we decide on a plan. It's a quickie; had to be because the guests for the anniversary party would be at the shop within the hour---all the guests---including Sander.
The party at the shop was rocking. All the clients came bearing gifts for Miss Tilly. She's a sock-it-to-me senior with go-go boots on and close-cropped silver gray hair. She even has a tiny tattoo on her shoulder---"SOB"---stands for Sweet Old Broad.
Everyone was listening to the juke box---Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Blue Bland, and Aretha---when Sander walked in.
Pen and I exchanged glances and I put our plan into motion. I looped my arm around Sander, dragged him over to the coat rack and took his leather jacket, feeling on his muscles as I peeled it down those hefty arms of his.
"I made a plate especially for you, baby."
Then I nodded toward a little table off to the side with a single chair and a place setting.
"Thank you," Sander said, "I can't wait."
You'll wish you hadda, I thought.
I sat him down and Pen came sashaying with the plate. The girl ain't got no hips as it is, but the half a pack she had for Pen shook it to the West and shook it to the East.
"What did I do to deserve so much attention?" Sander asked with a smile.
"Don'tcha know?" I purred and ran my hands along my bountiful hips. "I made this plate of food just for you, baby. Eat up!"
And brother man did.
Sander commenced to making a face.
Wonder if it was the cayenne pepper I added.
His throat started clenching.
Wonder if it was the castor oil I glazed his ribs with?
He jumped up and mouthed the word "water."
My girl Miss Pen said, "We fresh out. Next time you better bring your own and don't ever try to play us off one another again."
Then we stood beside one another, blocking Sander's exit like two super heroes. He looked confused, but it was kindah hard to tell, because his face was also looking kindah blue.
Finally Sander burst through the two of us and scurried out the door. All the women in the shop turned and looked in our direction. We two? We just laughed.
Miss Tilly, she came stepping over to us in her go-go boots. She said, "Where'd that nice boy go? I didn't get a chance to thank him for my beautiful gift."
Then she held up the box me and Pen had been fighting over. We could have died.
"For you?" Pen spit the words out as if they were laced with castor oil like the short ribs we'd fed poor Sander.
"Yeah," Miss Tilly explained, "didn't realize till the other day that I knew his grandmamma way back. So he dropped off this anniversary gift for me and like the old-timer I am, I left it here on accident. What run him off so?"
Then Pen and I had to tell the truth, what else could we do? All the girls gave us what for, especially my mother and my aunts. They marched us down to his hardware store to apologize. Poor Sander, he had barricaded himself in---wouldn't unlock the door.
"Go way! Y'all tried to poison me!"
Then he drew the blinds.
Our little party crew glared at us: "Always Miss Prissy and always Miss Penitentiary."
And ya know what, ain't it the truth?
"What are we gonna do with the two of y'all?" our family members asked.
"Make us start off the soul train line when we get back to the party?" Pen said sheepishly.
And we did.
Pen and I did the bump down the line.
Always Miss Prissy. And always Miss Penitentiary.
Always.
Luminous Days
Friday. Payday, and Rhonda quickly found a place in line at the check-cashing store. A faded blue Taco Fever uniform hung loosely around her thinning frame. Fresh stains covered older stains that persisted despite several washings. She fidgeted, trying to eliminate any negative thoughts. But the more she tried to escape them, the stronger they became. Rhonda knew there wasn't any money to spare. There never was any money to spare. Three hundred and twelve dollars, two weeks pay, just enough to pay rent, the light bill, and buy a few groceries for her empty cabinets and refrigerator.
She scanned the office trying to suppress the steady whirl of anxiety twisting the pit of her stomach and hoping the few people in the store wouldn't notice the increasingly harsh trembling of her hands, or the persistent twitching of her left eye. Her feet throbbed, swollen from a full day standing. The smell of ground beef seemed to be ground into her clothing. She considered her options or, in reality, her one option---Champ.
Maybe she needed him. He could help with the money. But calling him now, even though it seemed the best alternative, would mean admitting she was weak again. What would she tell him? She needed an escort to cash her check and pay the bills, because without one the bills wouldn't get paid? She couldn't tell him. She couldn't bear to see the disappointment in his eyes. Better to risk a secret relapse than to endure his disappointment.
A stumpy Hispanic man stood in front of her, irritating the counter woman with his poor English. Two more people entered the small store. Rhonda caught their faces in the security mirror. They were dark, a man and a woman, and judging from their rumpled clothes and wild hair were in the midst of an extended binge. She kept her back to them and hoped they wouldn't recognize her. Luckily they were engrossed in conversation.
"We're gonna cash this and go see Hype," the man said, his familiar voice coming from a few feet behind Rhonda. Ricky. She shuddered.
"Whatever," Ricky's female partner said, "just remember we splittin' this. You not gonna smoke it all yourself---I'm the one who hit the lick for us in the first place."
Rhonda wished she couldn't hear them, couldn't feel their eyes on her back. She kept her gaze forward and waited impatiently for her turn at the window. More people entered the office. Rhonda watched them all in the mirror terrified at the prospect of recognition.
The Hispanic man was futilely explaining something to the counter woman. Her coworker apparently had no intention of helping anyone else in line. Reading a multicolored paperback book, she removed her eyes only to sip from her Coke.
Finally, the man snatched his check from the small slit beneath the glass and stormed out of the office ranting what sounded like a flurry of Spanish obscenities.
Rhonda moved toward the counter pulling the check from her pocket.
"You'd think if they're gonna stay in our country the least they could do is learn our damn language."
Rhonda signed the back of the check and slid it under the glass. The woman grabbed it and asked her for some identification. She fumbled through her pockets, pulled out her I-D, then pushed it beneath the slit and watched the counter woman scribble some numbers on it.
"How you want your money?" the woman asked, sliding the check between some kind of stamping device.
"Big."
Big bills were safer. Less risky than the small bills that lulled Rhonda into a false sense of security. The ones that made her think she could take a few dollars and get high. As if stopping was a realistic option once she started.
"Fifty, one hundred, fifty, two hundred, fifty, seventy, ninety, one two three dollars and twelve cents," the counter woman said, carefully separating each bill.
Rhonda snapped up the money, stuffed it in her pants pocket, and moved toward the exit. Glancing up, her eyes met Ricky's briefly, but she hurried out the door before he had a chance to speak. Outside, she took the bills from her pocket and stuffed them inside her bra.
Darkness ushered out dusk hanging over the city with the promise of nightfall. The air smelled of rain. Rhonda walked down the sidewalk swiftly, hoping to reach the apartment before any drops fell. She had forgotten her umbrella at home. Her coat didn't have a hood. She turned off the main street and down a small alley that was a shortcut to her apartment. She wanted to rest before grocery shopping.
Her entire body was listless. Even her heart seemed to beat a little slower than normal. The bill paying would have to wait until Saturday. She kicked a glass bottle into an unfenced yard just as two headlights shone against her back.
"Rhonda," a male voice yelled from the car over the grumbling engine noise. She picked up her pace pretending not to hear.
"Rhonda," the voice called louder. The car sped up until it trailed her by only a few feet. "Yo, Rhonda it's me---Ricky. I just saw you come out the check cashin' store. You need a ride?"
Rhonda paused just long enough to respond, "No, I'm fine Ricky. I'm goin' home. I don't need no ride."
"Don't be silly, girl. You look tired. What---you just gettin' off work? Let me give you a ride."
The inside of the car was completely dark except for the two pairs of eyes that glowed like full moons. A painfully familiar glow to Rhonda.
"Ricky, I said no thank you. I don't want no ride. Why you so interested in givin' me a ride anyway? I'm not gettin' high. You're just wastin' your time!"
Ricky stopped the car as Rhonda turned and walked away.
"Rhonda," he called, trailing a few feet behind her now. "Why the hell you always got to bad mouth somebody. You don't wanna smoke. I ain't said a goddam thing 'bout smokin'. Hey! Quit walkin' away from me when I'm talkin'."
Rhonda turned, now thoroughly irritated. She recalled her last few encounters with Ricky. The bus ride home from DePaul when he tempted her unsuccessfully. She blamed him for her first relapse. And here he was blatantly trying again.
"Ricky, just please let me be."
Rain began to fall, gently at first, more harshly moments later. She thought about her walk home, a walk she now dreaded.
"Look it's pourin' now. I know you don't wanna walk home in this shit. Quit trippin'. Come on and get in the car. You ain't got no umbrella." Ricky's voice softened.
Rhonda's canvas tennis shoes were soaking up the wetness like a towel.
"Take me straight home and drop me off in the parking lot."
A triumphant smirk flashed across Ricky's face as Rhonda walked toward the idling car. They sputtered down the alley.
"We just got to make one stop." Ricky said, studying her face in the rearview mirror.
Saturday night. Champ pulled into the parking lot, circling twice in search of a safe spot for the Lexus.
"It's packed," Bump said, straightening the bandanna around his freshly braided cornrows.
Champ maneuvered between two cars and killed the engine.
"Stash the heater under the seat."
Bump pulled the gun from his belt buckle and slid it beneath the passenger seat.
Walking toward the club they straightened, brushed, and looked themselves over. Bump wore baggy cargo pants and Timberland boots. A long sleeved T-shirt served as backdrop for a navel-length gold medallion. Champ wore leather boots squared at the toe, soft jeans, and a fitted silk shirt. Diamond studded earrings pulled at his lobes; a diamond ring and watch dazzled in the overhead light.
Music pulsated. People glanced at them as they waded through the crowd toward the bar. Champ ordered a double Hennessy, Coke-chaser; Bump ordered the same.
Heavy fog filled the room. Everywhere the clang of glasses, the buzz of conversations, the thud of base. Champ drifted through the crowd dispersing mandatory handshakes, hugs, and nods. Colors filtered through the room like light bending through crystals.
He greeted everyone as friends, all with a smile of familiarity. He saw everything unfold in the third person, like he imagined a well-seasoned director would notice every detail of a scene. He cut through the dance floor, found an empty table against a mirrored wall, and sat sipping his drink.
Champ's mind wandered, captured only faintly by the woman staring at him from across the room. He stirred the ice in his drink with a long straw watching it swirl in choreographed circles inside the glass. She sauntered across the room impervious to gawking eyes that followed her like radar. He stood, then leaned over and whispered, "How you doin', beautiful?"
She smiled. "Fine"
"What's your name?"
"Raven."
"Very nice to meet you, Raven," he said, extending his hand. "I'm Champ." Lights reflecting at precise angles made his ring glitter. "You from around here?"
"Moved here a few months ago."
"Figured that," he said, almost stepping on her reply. "I don't forget pretty faces and I haven't seen yours."
"You talk a nice game . . . Champ."
Champ smiled. He liked the way she said his name. He loved the way she looked. Beautiful. Flawless mahogany skin, almond shaped eyes, mesmerizing long, toned legs.
"I like your style . . . Champ." She paused, overtly sizing him up. "Different. Not like the rest of the brothers I've met."
"Thank you."
He took another sip, more from habit than necessity. "You empty-handed or just not drinking?"
"Just finished one. So I guess that makes me empty-handed."
"Well, drinks on me the rest of the night. A pretty lady like you shouldn't be empty-handed if you don't wanna be. Here, have my seat. What you drinkin'?"
"Sex on the Beach." She smiled, revealing a set of perfect gleaming teeth.
Guilt crept up on Champ on his way toward the bar, his mind overwhelmed with thoughts of Kymm. He needed to hear her voice. He ordered the drink and took it back to Raven.
"Here you are," he said, his voice flat. "It was cool meetin' you, but I got to make a call."
Raven's face twisted in a puzzled expression. Champ walked toward the far end of the club and told Bump he was going outside. He needed quiet to make his calls.
His watch read 2:15. He dialed his home number; the phone rang three times before she picked up.
"Hello," Kymm's voice answered groggily.
"Hey baby."
"Champ, why're you calling this late? I thought you were at the club?"
"I am at the club---well I'm outside the club. I was just thinking about you."
Kymm didn't respond.
"I was just thinking about how much I love you, that's all, and I wanted to tell you."
"What did you do? You must have done something wrong."
"No. I haven't. I just wanted to tell you that. Now go get some sleep. I'll be home in about an hour. I've got to drop Bump off."
Champ called his mother's number next, counting seven rings before hanging up. On the second call the phone rang ten times. His next call went to Bump's pager. He punched in his cell phone number with a 9-1-1 behind it.
"Hey man, I'm ready to go."
"What for? I thought you were just going to the car for a minute," Bump screamed over the blaring background noise.
"I was, but I'm ready now."
"What's the deal?"
"I just called my mom's apartment and she wasn't there. I'm gonna run by and check on her. You can stay if you want, but you gotta find your own way home."
"All right, bro. I'ma hold tight. Moved a little piece of work. We gonna lay up 'til the mornin'."
"Cool. I'll holla tomorrow."
"Eh, bro---don't forget about the heat. Let me know what's up with moms."
Rhonda stumbled along the back streets toward her apartment, the pant legs of her Taco Fever uniform dragging beneath a pair of men's tennis shoes, almost double the size of her feet. With her purse missing and the money gone, only one thing remained: home. A place for recuperation. She hated Ricky, hated him for exploiting her weakness. If it weren't for him she'd be home, not walking. Asleep instead of tearfully awake. Most important, she wouldn't be trying to shake another high. She blamed Ricky, even though she knew sole blame was completely hers. She despised her weakness, her vulnerability. But despising it wouldn't change the last day and a half. Nothing could return the wasted dollars. Her money and pride were smoke blown in the atmosphere.
The shoes felt like blocks of cement. Sharp pains pierced her empty stomach. Nothing compared with the smell. An awful reminder that clung to her clothes and sank into her skin.
Eight more blocks and she'd be home, she thought, walking with her arms folded feebly against the chilly air. Eight more blocks and she could forget this happened. Again.
A car approaching from the rear highlighted Rhonda's stumble over a sidewalk crack. The car slowed, but she kept her head straight and moved as briskly as her weak legs would allow.
The car pulled slowly to a cruise beside her. Still, Rhonda avoided acknowledgment.
"Mama, mama," the voice called.
Rhonda's pace increased.
"Mama, stop! What the hell are you doin'?"
Rhonda froze mid-stride, then turned her head slowly; a reply was trapped somewhere between her throat and lips.
"Get in."
They rode in silence. Painful silence infiltrated only by the steady hum of the engine and the faint sound of breathing.
"Please just take me home, Champ," she said, eyes fixed outside of the window. "Please just take me home. I don't wanna talk right now."
Quiet.
Champ pulled into the parking lot, studying his mother in the faint overhead light. No words were spoken. He watched her exit the car and disappear behind the fence into the darkness.
She trudged in the house and headed straight for her bathroom, where she inspected herself in the gray light. It was self-imposed punishment. Her hair was wild; her lips red, dry, and cracked. The sight of her chipped fingernails and blackened fingertips caused her eyes to tear. Eyes that were glazed, and frightened. Could he see all this in the darkness? A sharp pain stabbed her gut reminding Rhonda of her hunger. She walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Empty. The stomach pain returned---fiercer.
FROM Only Twice I'veWished for Heaven
The Chicago Sentinel Tuesday, November 8, 1994
Inmate Alfred Mayes dies of heart attack
CHICAGO---Alfred Mayes, one of Illinois's most notorious inmates, died of a heart attack Monday in the Friersville Correctional Facility.
Mayes, 82, was the street preacher sentenced to life imprisonment in 1976 for the brutal murder of 12-year-old Valerie Nicholae, a resident of the affluent Lakeland community.
Warden James Delaney said Mayes's body was found by a prison guard at 8:04 Monday morning. According to the prison coroner, Mayes died in his sleep.
Miss Jonetta Goode (that's Goode with an e):"And the truth about Valerie's passing and Alfred Mayes and that whole mess?Oh, the truth was buried nearly twenty years ago."
You see, I growed up in a place called Annington County, Mississippi.
In my day, colored folk up and died whenever white folk got a notion for us to. Mostly our men, but sometimes women and children. You look up one day and they gone, like a speck of dirt just blowing on the breeze. Sometimes with grown-ups, you almost had to remember if they was ever there in the first place, because you couldn't tell who was who by the graves. But with the children, there was never no wondering. People always left rocks behind, sticks, X's, half-pushed into the ground. It was parents' way of burying parts of themselves with their babies. What remained, they numbed, just to get by.
So we all learned to stand together; we learned to help one another. It was something nobody even thought about. A child needed you, you was there. You helped a little boy lean against a hoe handle until hard dirt crumbled. Then you stayed with that child to drop a seed or two inside. When a little girl was sick, you mopped her mouth and served her stew in your Sunday pot, with the biggest chunks of sausage and carrots and potatoes you could find. Wasn't no skimping, mind you. No skimping for a child. Or you hid a so-called wayward boy in your crawl space, telling him to hush up---hold his breath if he had to---until the sheriff's boots stomped off the front porch, back down that dirt road. . . . Many nights after Valerie died, I asked myself what could I've done to help her. How could I've saved that baby from so much sickness?
Down south, we worried about white folks with their shotguns and lynch ropes, which made them God. Gave them the key to a heaven my papa wasn't rushing to get his girls to that fast. So in 1932, when we came up to Chicago, to Thirty-fifth Street, I thought I was a lifetime away from all that mess. Hell, the last thing I thought I'd have to worry about up north was black folks and their guns and lynch ropes and drugs, shooting all kinds of blues in their veins. And the nasty men, the Alfred Mayeses of the world, who liked to prey on little girls.
One thing is sure, you don't get used to death. Oh no, honey. Even old, old folks want to live forever---even if before long all they can do is hang like antique pictures on the wall. Relatives come by and stroke their chin and nod and smile while looking at their old kin. Take a rag every now and then and knock dust off them when it's due. But when they leave this earth, it ain't easy to take. So you know it's near impossible to make sense of having to pat dirt onto a child's face.
I saw Valerie only once, but after Child told me the hell her little friend was traveling through, I felt like I knowed her all her days. Could say I knowed her as good as I knowed Child. Just ain't fair for one person to have so much pain. Seems like God shoulda had better sense in piecing it out like that. Seems like since Creation, God had done gave Thirty-fifth Street's children more than their share of pain. Oh, Thirty-fifth Street was a horrible mess. For the longest, even the city had wanted to forget it was there. The mayor started by taking every city map and drawing a row of X's on the grid line between Thirty-fourth and Thirty-sixth streets. Stores hadn't been inspected in years. Mail wasn't delivered right, just left in one big pile. People never even had the dignity of a address. Thirty-fifth Street was all. Just Thirty-fifth Street. Only ten blocks made up the colored side of that street, and at every intersection, young souls was always dropping off. Like pecans from a tree. And not all of them dying in ways that call for burying, either. Sometimes that's the worst way.
So when Valerie died and the city finally got a notion to close down all the stores---to do what the street preachers had been trying to do for nearly half a century---I must admit, I was happy to get my notice. But it left a great big old hole in my heart that that damned street couldn't go up in flames without taking them two little girls with it: Valerie lifted on up to glory, and Child, who was left behind. Left to roam this here wilderness.
Every now and then, I think about the funeral, all them flowers surrounding Valerie's tiny white coffin, and a funny feeling still pass over me. Flowers are fine and good. But how come people forget to give children, especially little girls, flowers when they can enjoy them? Oh, the flower don't have to be a rose or a daisy. A flower is a "How do?" A kind word. A bouquet is no worries or cares or disappointments. It's giving a little girl a chance to enjoy a good breeze---to fix herself on a dream. And a child can't dream if she afraid to death to close her eyes at night.
I remember the day Child come running into my store, telling me a new girl come to the class. "Miss Jonetta, Miss Jonetta!" She was running so fast, her uniform had turned sideways and she was bouncing like she had jumping beans in her britches. Well, back then that wasn't nothing all that unusual for Child. She was born under a busy moon. I told her often: "Honey, us girls ain't suppose to look like something the cat drug in, like we throwed our clothes up and plopped in 'em. And stop all that hopping up and down, too. That ain't right, neither. You take a chance on mixing stuff up and having them moving to places they ain't suppose to be."
But that day, I couldn't worry about her clothes or her carrying-on. "Miss Jonetta, Miss Jonetta!" she kept yelling.
"Sit down and settle yourself first, honey," I told her. She breathed in and out, swelling her chest up, like you do at the doctor's office when he say take a deep breath. "Now," I said, nearly cracking my sides, "tell me what bug done got a piece of you."
"Today . . . in school? A new girl came to class," she said. "And she sit right in front of me. She even seem pretty nice, not like the other Lakeland girls."
"I thought I told you not to worry none about them other girls," I said. "They ain't got no color is all."
"I ain't worried about them," she said. She took a peek down at those old brogans of hers like they was making more sense than me. But that day? Believe me when I tell you, nothing and nobody, not even those prissy Lakeland heifers, coulda made Child feel low.
That year, Child was eleven years old, going on ninety. She thought nobody understood her. She thought nobody understood what it felt like to want to fly somewhere and be free. That's why she wandered over to Thirty-fifth Street. She was looking for a place to run to. Her hair was too red, so she thought. Her father didn't love her anymore, so she thought. And her family had just moved to this new hankty place where she felt she didn't fit in. With Valerie over there, and me on the other side of that fence, the two of us made her feel like she belonged.
And the truth about Valerie's passing and Alfred Mayes and that whole mess? Oh, the truth was buried nearly twenty years ago. Only today it can finally be resurrected. All them years ago, I told Child that if she didn't want to tell the truth right then, she wouldn't have to. She had my hand to God that I wouldn't utter a word. But I warned her from my own experiences that secrets don't always stay down. They rise like hot bread; spread like melting butter. I told her one day she'd have to tell this thing. And it wouldn't matter if the miles stretched like canyons between us, because I would help her. One day she'd have to gather the events the way you would loose petals on a flower and piece them together again. Slowly. Into the whole story. From the day she and her family moved to Lakeland to the day that no-good Thirty-fifth Street finally went up in flames. And she and Valerie helped set all them souls free. I told her she'd have to tell it, when it was time.
It's time. So listen.
Tempestt Rosa Saville ("Child"):"When you learn the truth."
When I was a little girl growing up on the far South Side of Chicago, my father and I would sit on our back porch---sometimes it would seem like all day. The sun would be sitting straight up in the sky and my father would be watching me chase butterflies, running from rock to rock, jumping up on the limbs of our near-dead apple tree with my hands poised, ready to pinch at their shiny wings. To this day, I can sometimes feel what was left of the morning dew squishing up between my toes, and the rose thorns and weeds scratching against my little legs. My father would laugh at me when I'd finally get tired of chasing the butterflies and I'd plop right down next to him.
Then when twilight would come and the butterflies had flown away, he'd see me smacking mosquitoes. "I hate them old ugly mosquitoes," I'd tell Daddy. "I just hate them."
One evening, he looked at me and laughed.
"You know, Temmy," he said, "you'll learn as you get older that there really isn't that much difference between your so-called pretty butterflies and your so-called ugly mosquitoes."
I looked at my father and I wondered if the sun hadn't beaten down too hot on his head. Didn't he see how light and free those butterflies were? Didn't he see how the sun fanned rainbow colors into their wings?
Well, twenty years have passed since my father and I last sat on that porch. And after Valerie died, with each year's passing, I finally began to understand what he meant.
That mosquito bites you now and it dies. It leaves a little mark, but nothing to really talk about, nothing that doesn't go away after a day or two. But the butterfly, that pretty, pretty little butterfly, bites you in another way: It makes you think life is full of color and light and easy. When you pinch its wings, it even sprinkles some of its magic onto your fingertips, like gold nuggets, making you think all you have to do is reach out for it. And you can buy yourself a forever. That's when it bites you. Unlike the mosquito, it doesn't die. But slowly you do. When you learn the truth.
Tempestt:"Good morning and welcome to Lakeland."
I was only eleven years old but deeply rooted in our South Side bungalow when my father moved my mother and me across town to Lakeland. Our move took place in early September 1975. I remember sitting in the backseat of our well-aged Volvo, which Daddy had spit-shined himself the night before, picking at the tear in the vinyl between my legs. The more I picked and pulled at the wadding, the easier it was to forget about the itchy ankle socks and the pleated skirt my father had forced me to wear.
"Daughter of mine," he said, glaring at me over his shoulder. "Daughter of mine" was his new way of referring to me. The words fell clankety on my ears and felt completely inappropriate for two people who had swapped bobbers and minnows and baseball cards, including a 1968 Ernie Banks number that only I could have made him part with. That particular one I kept by itself, wrapped in wax paper in one of Daddy's old tackle boxes under my bed. Though my mother never understood why a little girl would need such things---including several pairs of All Stars that Mama made me lace in pink, explaining only, "Because I said so!"---when cleaning my bedroom, she always, always cleaned around them. She also demanded that my father, from time to time, bring me roses in addition to model airplanes and finely crafted fishing rods with walnut stock handles.
"Daughter of mine," Daddy continued. This time, he squinted into the rearview mirror. "I won't ask you again to stop picking at that seat. Sit up straight, dear."
"But---"
"No buts, Temmy, and close your legs. You're a young lady. Didn't our talk last night mean anything? Weren't you listening? We're almost there now. Sit up straight, I said."
I suppose my father's metamorphosis didn't happen all at once. But it seemed that way to me. In truth, it was probably a gradual thing, like an apple left sitting on a counter. One day it's all red and softly curved and the next you find yourself slicing off sections, trying to find places the mold and sunken-in dark spots haven't yet reached. As we drove closer to Lakeland, I wanted just to shake my father, make him wake up and come back to himself. I wanted him to shave off that silly mustache he'd recently scratched out of his face and toss off that too-tight striped necktie. The house, though sold, was still empty. We could move back in, patch it up, make it pretty again, I thought. But of course my thinking was simplistic. My father would never again see the house at 13500 South Morrison Street as our home.
For me, our bungalow, our neighborhood, was the only home I'd ever wanted to know. From the day I'd learned our address and our telephone number by heart, it had become as much a part of me as my name. My parents had created a life that was sturdy and robust, existing as so much color: yellow-and-blue-trimmed bungalows that lined perfectly square city blocks; Miss Jane's red compact---the size of Daddy's hand---which Mama said Miss Jane held like a shield while sitting where the sunlight was best on her front porch, warding off the years; and Mr. Jenkins's broad purple boxers that were always line-drying on his back fence across the alley. How the prospect of ivory towers and debutante balls could ever compare to this world was completely beyond my understanding. I also wondered how my father could not only choose Lakeland but yearn for it. It was a lifestyle he'd once believed to be too "one size fits all," and as loosely woven and thin as tissue paper.
At stoplights, Daddy busied himself by flicking lint off my mother's sky blue cardigan and attempting to blot her perfectly smudged lipstick. Mama batted his hand away, warning with side glances that he was acting a fool.
"Thomas, you'll draw back a stub," she said calmly, refusing a full head turn to her left. So, after Daddy pulled the radio's knob and Mama pushed it back in (saying the static, all that popping and cracking, was trying her nerves), he folded several sheets of Kleenex and wiped his loafers. These, I must say, were the same loafers that just one year before he swore pinched his toes and were fit for nothing more than pulling weeds in our garden.
It used to be, before night school transformed my father from a cabdriver into a teacher, that Daddy watched me with a sense of ceremony as I played in our backyard. He would watch as I skipped around our partially painted picnic table and climbed the bottom branches of our apple tree. He clapped when I completed a somersault; he cheered when I shattered the Coke bottle with the slingshot he'd seen me eye in the Woolworth two blocks from our house. And with him and often my mother as my audience, that tiny backyard---with its thick rows of collards and cramped tomato vines---grew under endless possibilities. Back then, Daddy admired my socks that rarely matched, and my prickly hair, his shade of red, which he once chuckled with Saville pride was so wild, a comb would break its neck getting through.
But on that morning, when my father reached a heavy hand back toward me, it was only to brush wayward strands, forcing them, too, into submission.
The night before our move, Daddy rummaged through the house, deciding what was fitting and proper to take to the kingdom of the drab and what was best left behind. We had packed most of our things and sent them ahead. What remained, the movers would take the following morning. There wasn't much need for furniture because Lakeland's apartments, Daddy said, were "impeccably" furnished. The only redeeming quality about that final night was that Mama allowed my friend Gerald Wayne to sleep over with me. We spent the early-evening hours in the backyard in my tent before going inside. It was one last opportunity to listen to all the crickets and grasshoppers and the pitter-patter of alley rats, whose size often put some cats to shame.
Gerald Wayne and I had been friends since the second grade. Though I had seen him often in school, we met one Saturday while he was sitting on the curb in front of Wilson's Fix-It shop, playing by himself, as he often had. (I inherited both my parents' penchant for the down-and-out.) I just happened to be walking by, when he looked up at me, smiled, exposing two vacant spaces where front teeth should have been, and said in a most sincere voice, "You dare me eat this worm?" Had he given me ample time, I suppose I would indeed have considered the question. Only he didn't. Before I could utter a word, he dangled the worm over his mouth, let the squirmy little thing stare into his tonsils, then scarfed it down. Oh, he was nasty. He didn't even flinch.
Children always teased Gerald because of his dietary habits. But he had yet another unbearable affliction: He reeked---smelled just like a goat. None of us truly understood why, especially with his family living on the west side of the el train tracks, near the old soap factory. I suppose we thought proximity alone would have an impact on his condition. Even back then, Gerald was the cutest little boy in the second grade. He had smooth brown skin, dark brown eyes that twinkled, and a smile that sometimes made even me feel faint. But he had this black cloud that formed a capsule around his entire body. It was as if no other part of the atmosphere would allow it to enter, so it clung to Gerald for dear life. It even shimmied in the moonlight. Mama said all the child needed was a bath. Daddy later obliged him with one and threatened that if he didn't make "dipping" himself part of his daily routine, he would be banned from our house. Gerald liked having a friend, so he washed, religiously.
The night before we moved, Gerald and I sat in my tent with our legs crossed and the flashlight dimming between us as we sighed, grasping for topics that didn't smack of corny recollections or mushy farewells.
"My dad said you guys are lucky to be moving to Lakeland," Gerald said, interrupting several seconds of silence. "The construction company he works for helped build it. 'Yep,' he said, 'the Savilles are some lucky black people.' "
"Oh, shut up, Gerald," I said, choking back tears. "Nobody's lucky to be going nowhere---I mean, anywhere." Daddy had begun to drill me on my double negatives.
Outside the tent, a soft breeze nudged the wind chimes on the back porch, which alone held many of my childhood memories. It was there where Gerald helped me dig a hole to bury the horrendous Cinderella dress our neighbor Miss Jane had bought one Christmas, expecting me to wear it to church with her. Mama knew I had buried it back there. She pretended not to see one of the bells jutting up from the ground. But she never said anything, because she hated it, too. In the knotholes in the pine of the banister I had stuffed so many wads of purple and green bubble gum that after several years, they seemed to hold the old rickety thing together. And once I had even caught Mama and Daddy under that porch, moaning and touching one another in places that made me giggle.
Feeling sick, I opened the flap of the tent. I told Gerald I had to use the bathroom, then went into the house to find my father. I didn't want Gerald to see one teardrop. I don't know when it happened, but Gerald considered himself my protector, my shadow and shield. No, I'm not sure when it happened, because I was the one who often protected him. Like the day I had rubbed his head when Sandy Roberts shoved him to the ground. Daddy had told him that it was never acceptable for a boy to fight a girl, so Gerald couldn't hit her back. But I could.
In the house, I saw my father scurrying about and I wondered what was lifting him, when my mother and I felt to leave was one of the most wrenching things that could happen to us. One final box marked Garvey, Du Bois, Merton, and Robeson sat in the hallway. My father had so many books that the movers had to make two trips for them alone. He was about to prop the box against the front door when he noticed me staring at him.
"Hey, princess," he said.
"Hey," I said, picking at the newly painted lime green wall. I unpigeoned my feet, remembering my mother's warnings about them one day turning completely inward.
"You, okay? Seems like you got something on your mind. At least I hope you aren't so rude that you'd leave my boy out there by himself for nothing. Come here." He reached out to me with those huge arms of his and made me sit on his lap.
"I don't want to leave," I muttered.
"Daughter of mine," he said. "I thought we talked about this. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, dear. There's a waiting list a mile long to get into Lakeland. And our name"---he thumped my chest, then his---"our name was pulled in the lottery. Where we're going is a much better place than this."
He brushed his hair back in frustration, revealing a row of reddish gray strands. Then he looked up at the top of the stairs, where Mama was standing, folding towels. She, too, was listening; she, too, needed another dose of convincing. At first, my father looked everywhere except directly at me. I followed his gaze to the empty living room. Without furniture, it was all too apparent the floor sloped too much toward the fake fireplace, and oddly, the room seemed smaller than it had before.
"Lakeland is a wonderful place," he said finally. "That apartment will be three times the size of this old place. You'll have your own huge bedroom with your own balcony. . . ." He paused. "Temmy, you're too young to understand this, but soon this neighborhood will have gone to pot. Already young boys are hanging out on the corners. It won't be long before this place won't be worth half of what we paid for it."
"I don't care," I moaned.
"You haven't heard one word, have you, honey?" Daddy took a long, deep breath. "There was a time, when I first met your mama, that I would never have even considered living among the 'bourgeoisie.' But there comes a time when you have to mix some ideas. You get older and understand that nothing is all good; nothing is all bad. You know why I decided to go back to school? I wanted to give you somebody who does more than drive a cab, and write letters to newspapers and hand out pamphlets in his spare time. I had to ask myself, What more could I offer my wife, my daughter? In a few months, you'll be twelve years old. Soon, you'll be going off to college. I want you to be proud of where you come from and I want you to be proud of me. I'll be a teacher, honey. Your old man a teacher at a fine, fine school."
As I walked back to the tent, I wondered what I had done. I had always been proud of my father, and I wondered when he thought I'd begun to feel otherwise.
Down the hall from the stairs was a small, pantry-sized room that my father had used as his office. There were no windows, just his cold marble-topped desk and his favorite leather chair, cracked and worn, tired-looking from years and years of our weight. Daddy had found the set in an alley in the downtown legal district one afternoon while picking up a fare. He brought it home and dusted it off, and many nights I would stop in just before bed. Though I rarely understood the depth of Emerson or Tolstoy, I knew it was nearly impossible for me to find slumber without the melody of his baritone rocking me to sleep. Those nights, I believed with all my heart that as the years passed and my legs would begin to dangle far below my father's lap, below the final bar of missing gold tacks, we would always fit into the perfectly molded cushion that we'd created. That was until my father decided to leave the set behind.
Gerald had fallen asleep. I knew this as soon as I reached the kitchen, which led to the back porch. For such a small child, he had a tremendous snore, thunderous snatches of gasping and wheezing. Mama and I stood on the porch for a second, listening to him, watching his figure, silhouetted by the light, heave up and down.
"You know everything's going to be okay, don't you, Temmy?" she asked. For years I told myself---I suppose because everybody seemed to agree---I looked just like my father. But that was because of the hair. The red hair tended to blind people to the rest of my features. The truth was that I had a lot of my mother's face, her broad eyes, olive-brown complexion, and heavy, good-for-whistling lips. That night, Mama didn't wait for an answer. I suppose she knew I didn't have one.
"Stay out fifteen more minutes, Tem," she said. "Then I'll come get you both ready for bed." She smiled at me, then kissed me on the lips.
The next morning, I awoke to the scent of my mother's country bacon. I jumped out of bed and ran to wake Gerald in the guest room. By the time I got there, he was already watching the sun rise over the Jenkinses' tree house across the alley, and the garbagemen, sweaty, their pants sliding down their butts, hurl huge barrels of our un-Lakeland-like belongings into their truck. Too soon afterward, it was time to leave. I gave him my new address and he promised to write and visit as soon as he could. From my backseat in the car, I watched my friend, hands crammed into the pockets of his baggy jeans, turn and head for his side of the tracks. I waved, but he didn't see me. Still, I continued until we turned the corner at Alexander Street, and soon the house, Gerald, the Woolworth, everything, leaned in the distance and eventually was completely out of sight.
The clock on the gate showed 10:00 A.M. when our car pulled up. My father made certain it was ten exactly. The guard said, "Good morning and welcome to Lakeland." He checked Daddy's driver's license against a clipboard of notes, then handed him a map and showed us how to maneuver Lakeland's labyrinth of twists and turns to the Five forty-five building, our new home. Finally, he opened a massive iron gate that groaned as it parted, and we were allowed in.
As I looked out the car window, my fingers began to tingle and turn cold. Let my father tell it: This place was straight out of a fairy tale. One square mile of rich black soil carved out of the ghetto. One square mile of ivory towers, emerald green grass, and pruned oaks and willows so stately, they rivaled those in the suburbs and made the newly planted frail trees in the projects beyond the fence blend into the shade. The four high-rise apartment buildings were the tallest structures I'd ever seen, and already janitors were hanging from scaffolds, washing beveled-glass windows, making sure everything shined in tandem.
Men, women, and children were out in droves, reading under the trees, sitting on hand-carved wooden benches, or walking dogs along winding cobblestone streets---appropriately named Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive, Langston Hughes Parkway, Ida B. Wells Lane. When we passed a field of children taking turns riding a pony, I got on my knees to look out the back window. Then, remembering my father's warnings, I slid back down the vinyl. I was surprised to see him smiling at me in the rearview mirror. We turned onto a path that followed the lake, and a flock of white gulls flew over the car. I scooted from one side of the seat to the other to watch their pearl gray wings stretching across the sky as they squawked like restless, hungry babies, back and forth between the rocks and a lighthouse in the middle of the water.
In Lakeland, Daddy said, was the world's wealth of top black professionals: surgeons, engineers, politicians. Lakeland had begun in the early 1960s as part of Chicago's Life Incentive Project. As an apology to the rat-infested and blighted tenement houses blacks had to endure during the migration, the mayor garnered support from the state capital to the White House to build this urban utopia. It was an idyllic community, stripped of limitations and bounds. According to the Sentinel's annual obligatory article, Lakeland had every amenity: a twenty-seven-hole golf course, an Olympic-size swimming pool, coffeehouses with the classics lining oak shelves, and an academy whose students were groomed and pointed, some said from the womb, in the direction of either Morehouse, Spelman, Harvard, or Yale. Even Lakeland's section of Lake Michigan was different from that of every other community that bordered the shore. In Lakeland, the water was heavily filtered and chlorinated---sometimes even helped along by food coloring---to look the aqua blue of dreams.
This generation of residents, once removed from salt pork, fatback, and biscuits, now dined on caviar and escargot. Neatly draped Battenberg lace scarves on marcelled heads replaced dingy do-rags and stocking caps. And plump, curved saffron to dark brown behinds that once jiggled like jelly and made little boys long to be men were now girdled and clamped down, as stiff and rigid as paddleboards.
Despite what lay outside the fence on Thirty-fifth Street, whatever the world had told black people they couldn't do or be or wish for, it didn't apply to the residents of Lakeland. Within the confines of that ivy-lined wroughtiron fence lived this elite group of people who had been allowed to purge their minds of all those things that reminded them of what it meant to be poor and downtrodden. Once here, Lakelandites didn't look back. They surely didn't want to go back. All they had to do was sign a two-part contract in which they agreed to pay a monthly rent that was lower than the average mortgage. And they vowed to put their bodies and their beliefs into this great blender and leave it there until the whitewashed folk who came out no longer resembled the pageant of folk who had entered. The women made the Stepford Wives look like members of the Rainbow Coalition. The men, with their expensive pipes, plaid pants, and stiff white collars, were about as individual as the curds in white milk.
"This is Lakeland," Daddy said, pulling up in front of our building. He beamed almost as if he had built the place, or, worse yet, birthed it.
He patted the steering wheel and told the Volvo to be nice. For his sake, even I was hoping it wouldn't sputter and spit the way it usually did when he turned it off. I was happy it didn't embarrass him. A doorman rushed the car, opening the door for my mother, then for me. Solemnly, Mama and I walked up a slight incline to the oak double doors, which led to a lobby of glittering marble and crystal. Daddy, however, floated in on air.
Sonny-Boy
BY AGYMAH KAMAUFROM Pictures of a Dying Man
[NOON]
Midday. The sun directly overhead and so scorching hot it bleaches the blue from the sky.
And the palang! palang! of the school bell disgorges a rush of children from the schoolhouse. Playful voices yelling, screaming, laughing in the schoolyard and here and there a boy in khaki short pants and shirt, a girl in navy blue tunic, white blouse, and panama hat walking or running home for lunch.
And Sonny-Boy, strolling across the village in the hot sun to his son's bungalow, rapping at the front door and waiting, knocking again and waiting before finally hearing footsteps inside the house.
And when Isamina opens the door her eyes are swollen and puffy, the face of a woman who has been crying.
"You never meet me," Sonny-Boy says. He stretches out his arm for a handshake. "I's Gladstone father."
Isamina is staring at him as though she just woke up from a deep sleep. "Yes. Yes," she says at last. "We have a photo of you." She shakes his hand. "Come in," she says. "Come in."
She walks ahead of him toward the dining room where a pile of notebooks are scattered on the table. She clears away a spot in front of one of the chairs. "Excuse the mess," she says. "But I was just looking through Gladstone's diaries. Have a seat. Have a seat."
She flips through one of the notebooks, still standing up.
"Funny," he hears her say. "You think you know somebody, live with them for years, then you discover you never really knew them at all."
As Sonny-Boy tells me later, he is impressed with the proper way she talks.
"Here," she says. "Look at this."
Sonny-Boy takes the book she hands to him. It is open. And he reads:
Dear diary,
New York April. Horns honking; pedestrians bumping, freight trucks fart fumes, stirring gritty, eye-stinging dust amidst noises, harsh voices, while the Menthol fresh breeze caresses, raises dresses as funk rises from my parka, sweatshirt, layered clothes of odd sizes, feet aching, sweating while I need a shave, feel a cigarette crave. And on a bench on the corner, a face behind a newspaper, no emotion behind it, looks up as I ask, "Do you have a minute? . . . To talk a little bit?" He folds his newspaper, gives no answer, stands, moves farther away. No answer.
And Sonny-Boy says, "This belong to Gladstone?" And there's surprise in his voice.
"Yes," Isamina tells him. "All of these," flinging her hand out indicating the notebooks scattered on the table. "His whole life, it looks like. He left them for his daughter. Did you know he has a daughter? Yvette?"
Sonny-Boy is silent. Yes he knows but he doesn't want to say the wrong thing, so he keeps his mouth shut. Gladstone always was secretive but he didn't think he would be so secretive as not to tell his wife about his daughter.
Looking at the diaries strewn on the table in front of him he recalls times in New York when he would come home tired and hungry to see Gabby chewing a pencil and staring into space or scribbling in a notebook. And when he would fuss about coming home and nothing en there to eat, wanting to know if it was too much to ask for Gladstone to at least start the pot till he got home, Gabby would say is homework he doing. Perhaps some of those times he was writing things like this. Is true what Gladstone wife just say: Funny how little you can know about people, even your own flesh and blood.
And as he's thinking this Isamina asks him, "Can I get you something to drink?"
"Got any rum in the house?"
She nods. "How do you want it?"
"A little bit of Coke. Not much. With some ice."
After emptying his glass for the second time he says, "Just leave the bottle on the table. Save yourself the trouble, heh heh heh."
He pours his third drink and begins to talk, wanting to know why Gladstone didn't call him if he was having trouble. If he want somebody to talk to (and he looked at Isamina saying, "I don't mean no disrespect to you"), why he didn't call him? He was his father, after all. They coulda talk man-to-man. Perhaps if he'd done that and got whatever it was off his chest, perhaps he woulda been alive today. Because problems ain't nothing but obstacles and ain't no obstacle so high you can't get over it. And nothing certainly ain't so bad that you got to take your own life.
But from when he was small Gladstone always was the kind of child that would keep everything to himself. And instead of growing out of it, look like he get worse. Look what happen in New York.
He, Sonny-Boy was living in Florida, true, and Gladstone was up in New York. But what is distance when your son in trouble? If he knew Gladstone was catching hell he woulda jump on the first plane and go and see what happening. Gladstone didn't have to suffer through no hard times. He woulda even take him back to Florida till he catch himself.
"Don't blame yourself, Mr. Belle," Isamina says. "Things happen."
Easy for her to say. How could he help blaming himself when is he who send for the boy? He thought he was helping him. But what Esther say to him not long ago is true. America not for everybody. It is a place where good people, just to survive, can put a shell around them so tough that you stop seeing the person you used to know. He, Sonny-Boy, see it happen all the time. But Gladstone never develop that shell and look how it almost kill him. And is his fault for bringing his own son to a city where human decency is as rare as a virgin in a whorehouse, and even when it is there it seem to be buried deep beneath the filth and garbage that surround everybody.
He didn't even recognize Gladstone when he walked out from the airport with a traveling bag over his shoulder, a carton with four bottles of rum in his hand, and a mustache above his lip.
But Gladstone recognized him. "Pa?" he said.
And he stared at this man that was almost as tall as him, so thick-skinned that he know Esther was feeding him like he was the man in the house.
He say, "Gladstone?"
And Gladstone say, "Yes, Pa. It is me. And this for you." And he holding out the carton of rum like he want to hand it over quick before he forget.
Those early days was good days. Good days. Showing Gladstone around, going to places he never went to in all the years he was in New York.
"This is the Empire State Building," he remember saying. And Gladstone staring up at the building, making Sonny-Boy chest swell out because he can bring wonder to his son face just by showing him things that he pass by every day without even noticing.
He remember Gladstone saying, "When you going show me where you work, Pa? I want to see where you work."
But he was embarrassed. Didn't want the boy to know he was only a janitor. Told him he was an office services engineer. That is what they was calling themselves: office services engineer. Because nobody en what they is anymore in America. Everybody is some kind of engineer or technician. Hell. Nobody en even plain stupid no more---they mentally challenged. You know that? That is the new-fashion word: challenged. What a stupidness, eh?
Anyway, he was always giving excuses like "One day when things not so busy," or "They don't like you bringing people on the job." Excuses like that.
He couldn't understand why he was embarrassed. After all, it wasn't like he had a big job back home before he left. If he had, he wouldn't have had to leave so he could get the money to send Gladstone to high school.
After a while Gladstone stopped asking and it seemed around that time that distance begin to widen between them, probably because he began to hint to Gladstone that he could do with some help. He knew Gladstone was in college and had to study but perhaps he could get a little part-time job to help out. He was working two jobs trying to make ends meet and still save a little something---doing janitor work at night cleaning offices in the city, knocking off at seven o'clock in the morning and going straight to his next job at a gas station in Queens till four in the afternoon, then going home and sleeping till nine, when he had to get up and get ready for his eleven-to-seven night job.
It was hard.
Meanwhile all Gladstone doing, as far as he could see, is reading books. So he told him one day, "In America you have to get up and get. Nobody don't give you nothing free. They always take something in return, even if it is only your dignity."
And all Gladstone saying is "okay, okay." Till one day Gladstone look at him and say, "Look, it is you who send for me to come here and study. And it was you who come over here as soon as I pass for secondary school and left me and my mother there to scramble. Least you can do is help me out now."
What a blow, eh? What a blow. That is one Sonny-Boy didn't expect. It knock the wind out of him so hard he had to sit down. When he catch himself he say real soft, "That is what you think? After all the money I send for school fees, for books, the barrel of clothes and school supplies and food I send every year, you saying I left you and your mother to scramble for yourself? That is the thanks I get? That is what education does do to people? Turn them stiff-necked and ungrateful?"
But it seem that Gladstone had it in his head that Sonny-Boy owe him something so he living in the apartment like he is Lord Byron while Sonny-Boy working his tail off and coming home and cooking food for he and Gladstone like he is Gladstone mother or woman, one of the two---Gladstone say his mother never learn him how to cook.
One day Sonny-Boy couldn't take it no more. "Look, Mr. Big Shot," he say. "Money don't grow on trees over here, you know. You see them people you see going back home spending money and showing off? Well they just like me, working like a mule from the minute they land here. Like now, I working these two jobs just to support the two of we. Time for you to get up off your backside and help out, too."
That wasn't too much to ask, eh? But Gladstone bust out with, "Why you send for me, then?"
So now the blood really flying to his head. "Wait a minute!" he bawling. "Wait a gad daim minute! I send for you. Yes. But not for you to live like a king while I slaving to support you! This is America. Every tub got to sit on its own bottom over here. You think it easy? Eh? You see gold on the streets here? Eh?" He steups his teeth. "You just like these black Americans over here. Lazy. Living off welfare and food stamps and expecting somebody to help them. . . ."
And Gladstone butting in saying, "You know how you sound? Eh? You know how you sound?" And asking him if Francine that live across the hall is a black American. Because if he not mistaken, the last he know she was from back home just like them and ent she living on welfare? Eh? What about that? And he going on to give this lecture about how all kinds of people get welfare and that more whitepeople living on welfare than blackpeople, as if Sonny-Boy concerned about what other people do. Is he own color he care about. But this young generation? You can't tell them nothing. You can't reason with them.
So all Sonny-Boy can do is stare at his own son to see how the boy turn just like these Yankee children---contradicting their elders; talking, talking, talking and not stopping to listen and learn. And all he can say to the boy is, "This is what all this book learning doing for you? Turning you stupid and disrespectful? If that is the case, you better off back home."
That is when he feel his heart pounding so hard he think it going bust in his chest. He inhale, take a deep breath and sit down, and he thinking, look his crosses, this boy only here a few months and already with his American rudeness he giving him heart attack. But he also realizing that this isn't the only time here of late that his heart racing like that.
When he get home from his gas station job, even though he tired as a dog, sometimes it taking him a long time before his heart can settle down enough for him to drop off to sleep.
Not only that, he don't have time for enjoyment anymore. He used to be able to go to a dance every now and then on Saturday nights, even when Gladstone first come over. Now his days off at the gas station job is Tuesday and Wednesday, so he working there Saturdays and Sundays and when he get home he too tired to do anything but sit down in front the TV and doze off.
Couple mornings after that argument is when he collapse in the bathroom and when he wake up he find himself in a hospital breathing out of an oxygen mask and with a tube in his arm and Gladstone standing up next to the bed looking down at him.
First thing Gladstone say after he ask Sonny-Boy how he feel is, "Pa, I have a job."
All Sonny-Boy was able to say was, "Uh huh?" And he thinking, Look at this, eh? He had to nearly dead with a heart attack and end up in a hospital bed for the boy to get off his backside and find work. But he got a good feeling inside him anyway and he resting his hand on Gladstone arm.
When he come out the hospital things was better, with Gladstone holding down a little job at the college library and helping out with the bills. But Sonny-Boy decide that even though the heart attack wasn't serious (the doctor tell him he could live a long healthy life but he had to slow down), he would hold on a little bit till he figure his son could handle himself, then he would move to Florida where his cousin write and tell him things not so fast down there and the cost of living lower.
When he left for Florida, Gladstone had two part-time jobs: the one at the college library plus another one at a bank.
Next time he see his son, the boy sitting on a park bench like he sit down there waiting for his father from the moment he hang up the phone from calling him in Florida.
And Sonny-Boy can scarcely recognize his own son, this young man with bushy hair and fidgety hands but with his clothes clean somehow.
At first he feel himself standing there like he stick to the spot; then he have to control himself from rushing over, shouting out his son name and hugging him. Instead he walk over calm and cool and say, "Gladstone?" real easy.
Gladstone look up, see him, and start crying, tears running down his face and dripping off his chin.
• • •
Dear diary,
Here I am, weeks away from my forty-eighth birthday yet in my memory the day my parents got married feels like yesterday when I, a child of no more than about two or three, am being tossed up among the rafters by my father who is looking up at me with his mouth wide open in laughter, his hands open and waiting to catch me while I laugh with the thrill and fear of suspension in midair.
Forty-six years later I still see through the eyes of that two-year-old infant a tarpaulin stretched from poles at each corner of the yard, turning the entire yard into a tent filled with grown-ups eating, drinking, talking, merrymaking.
And my father's gold tooth glistens as he catches me and asks, Enjoying yourself, Brute?
His hands grip me under my armpits while I look down at the floor far below, screaming, kicking, and laughing the same way I yelled and laughed years later on my first roller coaster ride with him, years older and gray-haired, sitting beside me tense and clenching the bar in front of him. And walking home later after the bus ride back I glanced at him breathing heavily from too many years of cigarettes and I say, You know, I had a real good time today.
And without looking at me he says, Me too.
That evening we sat in the apartment watching TV together and I was content in a way I never felt before.
But happiness is as evanescent as a raindrop on a hot stone at midday. Because it wasn't long after this that I stood in a room watching my father lying in his hospital bed with a tube in his nostrils and clear liquid dripping from another tube into his arm.
Not long after that he moved to Florida leaving me alone in a city surrounded by strangers, searching my memory for childhood recollections of him, which was like peering into a darkened room and glimpsing the outline of a man with a golden-toothed smile coming in at night while the lamplight cast flickering shadows on the walls and danced in the corners of the house as I lay on my bedding on the floor; hearing him wake up early on mornings and the sound of his bicycle ticking along the side of the house as he pedaled off for an early-morning sea bath, and seeing him later flinging one leg over the bicycle saddle and riding off to work; watching him walk out through the front door one night while I am doing my homework at the dining table and hearing him say, I am going to have a kick out of life, and hearing Mamuh mutter, Well, I hope life don't give you a stiff, hard kick in your ass.
That was the year I passed the eleven-plus exam for secondary school with a scholarship to go to Wilberforce.
The day the letter came my old man went straight down by the rumshop after work. He got to brag with he friends, Mamuh said. But she could not hide the faint smile on her face. Earlier in the day she couldn't keep the news to herself either, telling Miss Clarke next door, The government paying for everything---school fees, books, uniform, everything.
Pa didn't come in till late that night, drunk and happy, singing and waking up me and my mother. But that night she didn't quarrel, just said, Keep quiet and go to sleep.
Two weeks later another letter came from the Ministry of Education.
To this day I've never seen the letter but I remember my mother opening it with the sound of the postman's bicycle tickticking away in the stillness of noonday, and my mother standing next to the morris chair by the front window staring at the letter with her mouth slightly open, then saying after a while, Error? What they mean error? and sitting down in the chair clutching the letter in her lap and staring through the window.
What happen? I asked her.
She stared at me, and it was a long moment before she said, You pass, but not with a scholarship.
Which didn't make sense. The letter from the Ministry of Education saying that I had a scholarship for Wilberforce was right there in the shoe box under the bed with all the other important papers like birth certificates and so forth.
But her eyes were still locked on and mine as she waved this new letter and said, They say they make a mistake.
And right then, at the age of eleven, I learned that folks like us who didn't have connections to influential people would suffer disappointments and face obstacles in life, or as Ma said as she sat staring through the window with the letter in her lap, Boy, if you don't have a godfather in this country, you suck salt. Or as Pa said later that night to Ma, If you stand up under a coconut tree a coconut bound to drop down and bust open your head.
Ma gave him a long, hard stare and then burst out, Harold, what stupidness you talking, eh? This is the boy future we talking about. Why you always got to be talking gibberish? What wrong with you?
But nothing was wrong with Pa. He couldn't help himself. He was a man thrust by circumstance into a role he wasn't prepared to maintain.
I still remember the night, one of many nights when rum made his head light and his tongue heavy, when Pa made a statement so heavy, so profound, that his rum friends opened their eyes wide and their mouths fell open in astonishment. At least that's the way the story was told when it started to spread the next day.
To this day everybody has a different version of what Pa said that night, which means that no one really remembers. But Miss Clarke, our next-door neighbor, came to the house bright and early the next day and told my mother, Sonny-Boy is a prophet.
And Ma stared at her. A prophet? she said.
Yes, Miss Clarke said. Like in the Bible.
In the Bible?
Which caused Miss Clarke to ask Ma, "What happen to you? You's a echo?" Then she began to tell the story of what happened at the rumshop the night before.
That evening before Pa could get in the door Ma asked him, "What this about people saying you's a prophet?"
So now it is Pa's turn to look puzzled and say, "Prophet? What you mean 'prophet'?"
It wasn't long before people began to come knocking at the front door, sometimes as soon as he got home from work, before he even had a chance to eat, asking for all kinds of advice. It is like all of a sudden Pa had turned into an obeah man with people saying things like:
---"Yvonne acting funny, like she got another man. What I should do?" and;
---"I like this fella that does work for the waterworks company, but all I try to catch his attention, he en paying me no mind. What you think?"
People coming from far and near, and Ma grumbling and asking Pa why he don't charge them. He's the only body she know does give away free advice. And Pa saying how God give him a gift to help people and how she expect him to charge them? If people want to give donations that is one thing, but he can't charge. And Ma saying low so that only I can hear, "Is one thing to be kind, is another thing to be stupid." But that comment doesn't reach Pa's ears, otherwise wise man or no wise man her ass would've been in trouble.
And the whole thing reaching national proportions when Dear Suzy who used to give advice to people every day in the newspaper began ending her columns with a warning to her "Dear readers" not to seek the advice of barefoot charlatans who only want to take their money. And the woman who does housework for her, who happen to live in the Village, coming to Pa and saying how Dear Suzy going to obeah man for him because Pa taking away her business. And Pa's only response is to shake his head and say, "Poor woman," which really impressed the woman who brought the news and she's telling people that Pa really is a holy man who, in her words, "have no fear of man nor beast." Which is a big joke to Ma who knows better.
It is around that time that I came to learn another lesson: when people say they want advice, what they really mean is they want you to confirm whatever it is that they already decided. Or at the very least they want you to tilt them in the direction they already were intending to go.
And it seems that Pa learned the same lesson after Gladys came to him with this question: Sammy en doing so good in school. You think you can help him?
To which Pa replied, I can't work miracles, adding that he knew Sammy since the boy was a baby in diapers and to the best of his knowledge her son always had a hard head and in his opinion she should try to get the boy apprenticed to somebody to learn some kind of trade because Sammy never going to be a scholar. The boy just not academically inclined, Pa saying.
You see, Pa had got into the habit of telling people whatever was on his mind, like he thought that whatever gave him the gift of wisdom would also shield him from the wrath of people when he told them what they didn't want to hear.
Gladys started raising her voice. "Wanting to know what kind of prophet you is, eh? Telling me to send my boy to learn a trade? Why you don't send that little, bony boy of yours to learn a trade, eh? Why you don't do that?" And she's looking me up and down with scorn while she's saying this.
That hurt my feelings.
But Pa was calm, replying how he never tell nobody he is no prophet. That is something they put on him. And if she not satisfied with his advice, then she should do like Dear Suzy and go see Papa Sam the obeah man who going tell her some mumbo jumbo and take her money.
Gladys flounced out of the house. Next thing you know, she is spreading a rumor that every night when Pa got drunk he would always come knocking at the side of her house whispering and begging her to let him in. But she is a Christian-minded woman, so she always tell him to go home to Miss Esther and stop bothering her. He should be ashamed of himself. Prophet? He en no prophet. If people stupid enough to believe that, well that is their business but she know better.
As soon as Ma heard this, she stopped speaking to Pa, sulking around the house and talking to him through me, saying things like "Tell your father his food ready," or "Tell your father to pick up some fish when he coming in from work this evening."
And Gladys's next-door neighbor, Mildred, is telling people what a lying hypocrite Gladys is, calling herself a Christian, when some nights she can stay over in her house and hear Gladys moaning and carrying on. And it en Sammy's father that causing her to carry on so, because everybody know Sammy father left her and living with another woman. Mildred figuring she doing Pa a favor by calling Gladys a hypocrite, but she's only making things worse.
After that, Pa stopped giving blunt advice and instead began answering people in baffling, head-scratching parables. So, grown people would come up to me after they talked to my father, asking me questions like, "What your father mean by so-and-so," or "What he mean by this-and-that?"
But if they couldn't understand my father, how could they expect me to? I was only a boy; they were grown. But of course I couldn't say any of this because in those days children couldn't talk back to adults (not like nowadays), so I would just stare at them or shrug, which would only get them vexed and cause them to suck their teeth and fling off their arms and walk away muttering about how I just as stupidy as my jackass father.
Well, needless to say, the flow of people coming for advice began to trickle, although it never really stopped. Once in a while somebody would come to see him as a last resort.
But the parables never stopped. Sometimes he would be sitting quietly and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he would let loose a parable.
So the night when Ma told him about the letter that said I didn't have a scholarship, his proverb about a coconut busting your head was the last straw.
That was the first time I could remember Ma raising her voice in the house. But I suppose the frustration that had been building up from having to listen to Pa's stupid parables, plus the shock of shattered expectations were too much to bear, so she let loose.
"These stupid sayings of yours got people looking at me funny! You know that?! People laughing behind my back when they see me, or else they feeling sorry for me and Gladstone---you can see it in their face. You en know you is a big joke?!" she asked him. "You en care you making your whole family a laughing stock?!"
All the while I'm sitting at the dining table expecting Pa to defend his sayings either with another of his parables (as he had a habit of doing) or by telling Ma shut up, woman, what you know. But instead he stared at the tablecloth as if there was something there that only he could see.
Finally a long sigh whooshed out of him and his shoulders slumped even more. "What they expect we to do, uh?" he said.
A beetle pinging against the lampshade gave the silence in the house the heaviness of molasses. Crickets chirped in the bushes outside. Frogs croaked.
Pa gazed at the letter in his hand. "First they tell we the boy got a scholarship. Now look at this. Eh? Look at this. What they expect we to do?"
And that night for the first time I saw what defeat looks like on the face of an adult.
Ma gazed at Pa for a long time then sighed. "God will find a way," she said.
To which my father replied, "Well he better hurry up. The school term soon begin."
"Hush," Ma said right away. "Don't talk like that." And she's glancing over her shoulder like she expects God to strike Pa dead.
But the slump of her shoulders says she doesn't really have much more faith than Pa does.
I never found out where Pa got the money to pay my school fees and buy textbooks, nor where he got the money to take me into town and buy a cricket bat for me after I came second in class that school year.
Even now the smell of linseed oil always triggers the memory of Pa and me walking out of the store with the midday hot sun beating down, me holding the cricket bat, and Pa looking down at me and saying, You got to cure it with linseed oil.
If my life can be told in chapters, that day marked the beginning of the end of one chapter, the one that ended with Pa shaking my hand man-to-man in the airport building and walking toward a plane that took him to Away, a place I couldn't even imagine and only later got an idea about through reading books I borrowed from the public library.
For weeks after Pa left I would find myself listening for him to come home from work, and several times I heard his bicycle bang against the side of the house. But those are the kinds of illusions that loneliness can create.
Many nights I would lie in bed listening for him to come singing and stumbling home, waking up Ma when he came in the back door saying, "Esther! I home! The Boss has arrived!" and then coming over to where I was sleeping on the floor and saying, "Sleeping, Brute?" and Ma stirring in bed and mumbling, "How many times I tell you don't call the boy no Brute. And keep quiet, for God's sake. People trying to sleep."
And sometimes Pa would take his food from the larder and warm it up (Rum drinking made him ravenous. I know. The same thing happens to me), and we would eat at the table with the kerosene lamp flickering before us.
Once when our cricket team was playing down in Australia Pa and I sat every single night next to the radio up to three, four o'clock in the dead of night listening to cricket commentary and eating salt herring and biscuits.
But all of that stopped the day Mr. Gaskins's old Morris Minor came bumping down the road to take the three of us to the airport.
When we reached the airport, Pa and Mr. Gaskins each carried a suitcase into the terminal building, with the weight of each suitcase behding their bodies sideways.
Ma and I watched from afar as Pa showed the woman at the counter his papers. It was as if Ma was already putting distance between herself and Pa so that when he really left the shock wouldn't be so great.
After Pa checked in we stood in the middle of the terminal---Ma in her good beige dress with white lace trim around the neck, broad-brim straw hat and shining black pocketbook, Pa in his only dark-gray suit with the two-button jacket and dark-brown felt hat cocked at an angle. It looked to me like he was outgrowing his suit, which didn't make sense because grown-ups don't grow. Mr. Gaskins wore a long-sleeved white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbow.
With all the talking that was going on and the aroma of food, the only difference between the airport and the market was the voice coming over a loudspeaker every now and then.
". . . flight number 461 now boarding . . ."
That is my plane, Pa said.
And the noise in the airport almost drowned out Ma's voice reminding Pa of the two dozen flying fish she fried that morning and wrapped in plastic and newspaper and packed in the suitcase. "Those will hold you for a little while," she said. "What you don't want right away you can freeze."
Pa said, "All right, all right." He didn't say it, but you could tell he was thinking he was a big man who didn't need nobody telling him how to take care of two dozen fish.
Then Ma said, Write as soon as you get there.
"Soon's I get pay I going send something," Pa said.
"Get yourself settle first," Ma said. Don't worry about we.
Pa pulled on his cigarette and at that moment he looked like a movie star with his hat cocked at an angle and his shirt opened at the neck under his jacket.
He stamped the cigarette butt under his foot and hugged Ma. She stared over his shoulder with water brimming in her eyes.
Then he stuck out his hand and looked me full in my eyes. "You in charge now, Brute," he said.
We shook hands, man to man, with me looking him full in his face and with my lips pressed together knowing that if I opened my mouth to speak I would cry, which I couldn't do because men don't cry.
We watched Pa walk toward the door with his travel agency bag over one shoulder and a carton of rum like a valise in one hand.
"Come," Ma said.
So I didn't learn until years later that he stopped at the top of the airplane steps and searched for us among the crowd behind the guard rail on the roof of the airport building, and even though he didn't see us he waved, not knowing that we were already in Mr. Gaskins's car headed back home with Mr. Gaskins making conversation to lighten up Ma's spirits.
"He soon come back," Mr. Gaskins said. "Soon as he make enough money he going come right back to you and Gabby here. Look at me," he said. "I work like a slave in the London Transport. But you think I was going stay over there? No sir. That en no place for human beings to live, far more die. But if I didn't do that, if I didn't go away, you think I woulda had this little motorcar to help me make a few little extra cents? Things going work out," he said.
That night I lay on the floor and heard Ma crying softly. And it brought to mind another night when Ma and I were sleeping and Pa came in, drunk as usual. For some reason he and Ma started shouting and next thing I know, PAKS! He delivered a slap to Ma's face. Ma held her face. The house was silent. Then she uncoiled and began windmilling her hands, hitting him every which way and yelling, "You come in here with your drunk self and hit me? Eh? In front your son? That the kind of example you setting?" And Pa hitting her back, but not with any force. After a while he walked back out of the house and Ma lay in bed sniffling into her pillow the same way she was crying that night after we came back from the airport.
It was the first of many such nights.
FROM Water Marked
Delta moved aside as Sunday came through the doorway, and in an instant, they felt their manifold heritage of silence and remorse, and the pull of common history and blood.
Sunday called her sister's name, and Delta's hands began to reach for her, before pausing and returning to her sides. She offered a determined smile, and then, seeing Sunday seeing her, she smoothed down her hair, oiled and halved by a careful part.
As Sunday looked at her, Delta nodded, reminded of her sister's aptitude for sight, and wondered if she could sense the toll of misbegotten love. She felt a sudden kinship with a tree she had once known, lightning-struck and fired from the inside out, a few singed spots the only clues, but changed, unmistakably changed. Her roomy, flowered shirtwaist offered no cover at all as she seemed to thicken, further, under Sunday's gaze, and she crossed her arms over the fullness of her waist and breasts and fumbled toward speech.
"Well . . ." she said, damning herself as she spoke for her ineptitude in launching their reunion with that word that was all-purpose and meant nothing, asking herself why she could never find the right way to begin, the right thing to say, even to her own sister, and there she was groping, idiotically groping as she heard her own voice trail off, her alarm at the impending silence and her own impotence spreading, and again, "Well," this time as if it were a statement, the completion of what she had started.
Each one took a step forward, and then Sunday reached for Delta, smelling Ivory soap and Kool Milds, and Delta felt herself enfolded in the soft, loose weave of her baby sister's clothes. She tightened her balled-up hands and inhaled the woody musk, the train, the oil paint in her neck, identifying them all in a tumbled rush of memory as the thin, gold music of Sunday's earrings quieted against her face and hair. She hadn't been held for so long, and here were Sunday's wiry arms around her and her fingers spread wide across her back.
"Wing stumps," Sunday whispered as she touched her sister's shoulder blades, giving her own childhood explanation for the protrusions of bone. Delta laughed as she remembered how Sunday had once drawn herself holding a set of folded wings, prepared for flight.
Delta freed her hands from her pockets and patted her sister stiffly as she eased herself away, noticing as Sunday moved to the center of the living room how tall she seemed beneath the layers of overlapping aubergine cloth. Her hair was unstraightened and unconfined, and she was so tall, so purple, so much, she seemed to fill the room.
"I know I was supposed to call, but I forgot, and it seemed easier just to come. That way I got to walk through the neighborhood."
Delta stepped back from her and focused on the different textures of cloth, some nubby and fibrous and some watery smooth, and what was that she had on, anyhow, she wondered silently, unable to tell if it was pants or a skirt, and where the top ended and the bottom began, and standing out from those waves of purple, from the corkscrews of bark-red hennaed hair and strings of beads that rang together as she moved, were her eyes, unquiet and nightblack, taking in the details of sister and house.
Sunday saw the green and rust that had appeared again and again on her own canvases, and the familiar symmetry of the room, where crystal candlesticks stood like sentries on the ends of the mantel and lamps of bulbous, tarnished brass sat beside the easy chairs that flanked the window. Little was changed, aside from the new afghan of alternating brown and white crocheted squares that Delta had recently made, folded neatly at the end of the couch.
Following Sunday's gaze, Delta looked around and saw threads escaping the bound edges of the sculptured pea green carpet, the dark, beetle-shaped cigarette burns climbing up the threadbare arms of her chair, the fingermarks around the switchplates on the walls. She saw that the brown oak leaf pattern on the drapes had faded, the curtain rod sagged in the center, and she would have to get the side cords unknotted. Everything was in its place at least, but she hadn't realized how shabby some aspects of the house had grown. She need not feel embarrassed, she told herself as she looked at the room crowded with furniture and knickknacks, for they had both grown up there.
Sunday's beads sounded against each other as she turned in a circle and then stopped, caught by the ribboned light coming through the half-opened venetian blinds. Feeling for the edge of something she couldn't place, just a feeling, maybe, a color or a shape that might be, for her, like a first word, like the start of speech, she stepped into the banded light.
Delta watched her. Nate had walked right into that light, too, she thought, recalling that his arms, bare and muscular, had been briefly tattooed with stripes as he extended them, offering plenty. She found that he visited her in sudden alarming flashes: She would see a customer at the post office who waited tensely, flexing his jaw as Nate had done, and it would freeze her fast until she could recover and return to the present moment. Why, she asked herself, did mistakes have to stalk you, no matter how hard you tried to right them and forget? She didn't seem to be able to lose Nate Hunter, and here he was now, walking, uninvited, into her living room light. She shook the memory off and went to the kitchen to restart the kettle, watching the blue fire of the burner leap into a mesmerizing ring.
Absorbed in her study of the room, Sunday didn't realize Delta had left. She felt a pang of guilt at her scrutiny, hearing the voices of those who had told her it wasn't gracious to look so hard at things. Countless times she had tried to defend herself, to say that looking was her job. She approached each object hungrily, seeking something without even knowing what: some clue that would bring understanding, some key thing that she might find in the landscape if she read it closely enough.
She recalled the cloudy rings on the coffee table and its veneer rising up along the edges, exposing warped and naked wood. The mosaic tabletops and trays that Dolora had made were still displayed around the room, overlapping spirals of color and glyphs of private and ancient languages. She could see the few survivor plates and ceramic figurines behind the glass doors of the china closet, and tiny pieces of glazed tile and stones were scattered on the shelves like bits of excavated treasure.
The missing leg of the phone caddy had been replaced with three of the secondhand encyclopedias Dolora had purchased over a five-year indenture: Q through S. Sunday stared at it and thought about the bound, compiled world of facts in the hall bookcase, the gold letters on the spines harder and harder to make out, missing an entire chunk of information two-thirds of the way through, missing quartz . . . rhinoceros . . . scarab . . . She reached out to straighten one of her first paintings, hanging where it had been placed fifteen years ago, recalling that as Nana was putting it up, Delta had said that she liked the texture, but wanted to know what, exactly, it was supposed to be. The plaster had crumbled above in places, leaving a fine grainy film on the picture glass.
The walls and furniture were still marked with horizontal lines from years of flooding, when rain burst the river and filled their home. She remembered sitting on the stair landing, watching wastebaskets, colored pencils, and even chairs float, and recalled the dank smell that remained when the water receded and left its dark, wavy line across their lives.
She could still detect it, she thought, sniffing, just a trace. Either that wetness or a recollection, surfacing.
Their lives had always seemed open to water. Loose, rattling windows and their ill-fitting frames accepted heavy rain into the house, into the ceiling that every now and then grew distended like a swollen belly. There was always a saucepan or that blue bread bowl of Nana's sitting in the middle of a floor upstairs to catch some drip from the roof that failed them again and again. The border of the oak floor was scarred with dark blots around the arching ribs of radiators that hissed and knocked and leaked.
She looked around the cramped, moist house she had been desperate to leave. Although she had never managed to lose it in her work, she had returned annually after leaving for school, and not once in the past five years. After Dolora and then Nana died, she had wondered if the present could exist for her in that house.
There was Nana's photo across the room. That last time, when they were supposed to be comforting each other, she thought, they had given in to a kind of smallness that had made Sunday feel disgraced before Nana's memory. It all came back to her as she passed through the hallway: the airborne tumbler of bourbon, the arsenals of words and tears, the resentments, grown thick and malignant, fed by absence and discontent. But the thing she had never been able to forget or forgive, the thing that came to her at night, just before sleep, was how she had heard Delta come softly to her bedroom door.
Sunday had heard her in the hallway, and had chosen to stand on the other side, separated from her sister by a piece of hinged and hollow wood, so close that she could almost hear her inhale and exhale. Not knocking, Delta had stood there for a full minute and then left, and Sunday had neither spoken, nor opened the door.
Blinking away the image of that door, she saw the piano resting in the corner, its closed keyboard piled high with library detective novels, magazines or horoscopes, mail order catalogs. So many things in the house made her want to either flee or weep. The try at cheerful domesticity of Delta's ruffle-edged apron brought tears to her eyes, and the crowded dining room with its crocheted doilies and centerpiece of plastic lilies reawakened the cornered sense of longing she had felt as a girl.
But there had been touches of beauty, she thought, while her mother was alive. Her mosaics had always given the house a distinctive quality, as had jelly glasses and coffee cans filled with fresh flowers. Mason jars of vibrant canned fruit and preserves had stood on open shelves in the kitchen. And in the daytime, the venetian blinds Sunday had always hated were raised; there had been light.
Overwhelmed with remembering, she went into the bathroom and sat on the chenille-covered toilet seat, collecting herself. I have never left this house behind, she thought, touching the dusty crocheted doll, no doubt bought from one of Delta's post office coworkers, whose skirt concealed an extra roll of toilet paper. Standing, she looked at her face between the abstract shapes where the mirror's silver backing of paint had cracked and flaked off, and pulled the mass of unruly ringlets from her face to force it into one of the elastics she had around her wrist.
She followed the ridged path of the yellowed plastic runner across the carpet, listening for the rrrrrrrh her shoes made. When she entered the kitchen she remembered the women who had regularly inhabited that room, Nana's voice leading the others, and she could almost hear their wooden spoons and smell the flour and sharp yeast. Standing in the doorway behind her, Sunday watched Delta straighten the quilted rooster-shaped toaster cover and raise her fingers to the half-moon stainless steel handles of the white metal cabinets and drawers. With her sturdy, flat-heeled shoes and her broadened hips rising under the pastel cabbage roses of her dress, she looked upholstered from the back.
Glancing away, Sunday could see the dent above the baseboard and a dark trace of splashed whiskey. How would she meet this woman who was her sister across the chasm, not only of their past but of their adult lives? She sat at the round oak table and took out the gift she had brought as Delta turned around, retied the bow on her apron, and flattened her palms along its fading green and yellow fruit. She took her cigarettes and plastic lighter from the counter and placed them on the table as she sat down.
"A peace offering," Sunday said as she pushed the foil-wrapped box a few inches toward Delta with her fingertips. She hoped the gift wasn't too extravagant, recalling how Nana had told her you had to be careful what you gave middle-class black folks, for if you brought jams or wine to dinner, they might be insulted, construing the gesture as a declaration that they couldn't afford, or didn't know enough, to get such things for themselves.
Delta opened the box slowly, anxious that she wouldn't know how to respond or might not understand its importance or its use. It might be some artsy thing she had never heard of, or some cosmopolitan gadget that was all the rage. And she was embarrassed that she had not thought to get Sunday a gift.
When she saw the dangling, pewter fish earrings, crafted into hinged and moving pieces, she smiled carefully. Sunday knew immediately that again she had chosen something discordant with her sister's quiet taste; she had chosen the gift she herself would like to receive. And she also knew that Delta would try to like them, and would wear them, at least once, before she left.
"They're . . . dramatic," Delta said, pulling one out of the box. She went to the hall mirror to put them on, and returning to the kitchen, unable to think of what to say, she began to apologize for not having a gift.
Sunday interrupted the repentance with a wave of her hand, and they both focused on the tabletop.
"It was definitely him, then?" Sunday asked, raising her head. "You're sure it was him?"
Delta nodded as she reached into her apron pocket to pull out an engraved gold locket the size of a half dollar. She placed it on the table between them.
"What I'd like to know," said Sunday, staring at the dented face of the locket, the letters of their mother's monogram looped together in a continuous line, "is how. How, I ask you, did he manage to die twice?"
The locket lay between them on the table as they looked at each other. "It came in the mail, along with what you might call a note," Delta explained. "He had kept it all these years."
Sunday's mouth went dry. She wanted to ask for every detail and then devour Delta's answers, but she couldn't seem to pose even the first questions: Where was the locket mailed from and what did the note say? She didn't understand why Delta was silent, why she didn't say everything then, right then. She looked up and saw herself in her sister's face. She had her skin, her oval face, her hairline. And unlike their mother's mouth, lean and carefully governed, theirs were liable to transform suddenly into reckless smiles.
Although Delta's hair was pressed straight and divided into the two dark curtains that Sunday remembered, its smooth surface had been invaded by recalcitrant white hairs that stood up at the temples and along the part. They had both sat on the edges of their beds while growing up and rolled the ends of their hair with pink foam-rubber curlers, but she had long ago abandoned that ritual. Delta's was turned under, as it had been for twenty years, in an even pageboy. Her deep-set eyes were sheltered by heavy brows, which she had plucked back to narrow pointed arches as a teenager, until Nana had convinced her to let them be. She still had the habit of smoothing them down with her fingertips, first the right one and then the left.
She seemed different to Sunday, but it wasn't her roundness, or her graying hair. As Delta raised her gaze from the table, Sunday sensed a change within the restive eyes. She searched the striated browns of her sister's irises, seeing behind the folded shutter of russet and seal brown and weathered grass something scorched and too quiet. The aftermath of fire.
She watched as Delta moved from taming her eyebrows, to turning her spoon over and over and over, to circling the gilt edge of the saucer with her fingertips. Delta took out a cigarette and tapped the filtered end against the table, and Sunday remembered how her fidgeting had unsettled Dolora, who had impatiently told her, "Be still . . . be still." Only Nana had been able to quiet her. "Be here," Nana had urged in her hoarse and gentle voice.
Delta jumped up to escape the discomfort of her sister's eye and emptied the coffee grounds from the pleated filter. As she rinsed the pot she also searched for a way to start the talking, glancing sideways at the locket in Sunday's rough, discolored hands, the nails cut close and straight across, the cuticles bearing traces of brown and yellow paint. Sunday examined the gold wafer intently, as if her touch and concentration could make it surrender its story, and Delta noticed the lines, like Nana's, that appeared in her forehead as she focused.
Reaching into the bag she had dropped next to her chair, Sunday rummaged through pens and sketchbook, lipsticks and barrettes, and the collection of found stones she carried with her. She unearthed her eyeglasses and put them on to inspect the details of the gold engraving that she had been taking in with her hands, and pried open the gold disk with her blunt fingernail.
Inside she found a faded picture of Dolora at fifteen or sixteen, her hair free of the French roll they had always seen her wear, her face plump and unworried, lovely in its innocent excitement at the just-opening world. Although Delta had looked at it when it arrived, she wiped her hands on her apron and came closer, bending over Sunday's shoulder to peer at the photograph that was cracked and water-warped. Together, they thought how different the young girl was from the mother they had known.
They had opened the locket, but they would have to work their way toward what it meant. They sat at the table chatting about local news. Then Sunday pulled the beaded brass chain that hung between them, flooding the room with soft, warm light.
"Remember Mama's jewelry box?" Sunday said as she eased her glasses up onto her forehead, where they stayed, like a second pair of eyes. "How when you slid the little brass button on the front the flat catch popped up, and each of us wanted to be the one to open it. Remember the embossed pink leather . . ."
"I think it was brown . . ."
"Pink. And it was darker, with the gold embossing fainter along the middle edge from all of our fingers touching it and pulling it open. And we would beg to go through it, getting her to tell us the lineage of each little thing in its velvet-lined division, always asking for more information. Unsatisfied, no matter what she told."
"You would want to try it all on and we'd pretend it was rediscovered treasure and make up our own tales about those things. Then we'd sneak into her closet when she was gone and play make-believe with her purses and shoes. I remember the little necklace with the dangling purple stones. 'Those are tourmalines,' Mama used to say whenever I touched it, as if it were important to her that the stones were authentic, and she could call their name."
"She never said where it came from," Sunday remembered. "She had costume stuff, too, the bracelet of shiny birthstones that must have been fake, and matching pin. But it was all super-real . . . magical, to us. And when you held it or put it on, you were transformed. It was the way into a fantasy."
"And there were the colored plastic bangles that probably came from the five-and-ten, and the one that boy had made her in his ninth-grade shop class from twisted metal." A symbol of love that had never had a chance to fail.
Delta also remembered the everyday, unremarkable things that were in there with the jewelry, and had thereby acquired a magic of their own: tiny safety pins and keys to forgotten or changed locks; buttons, lone ones Dolora must have been meaning to sew back on, and special, cherished ones made of rhinestones or cast brass that she had cut from clothes before giving them away, threaded into clusters with tangled wire.
"Grandpa's watch was in there, too," Delta added. "It's upstairs now. And a ring that was missing its stones. I used to imagine it complete, faceted sapphires intact. And there was a silver belt buckle, I vaguely recall."
Sunday stirred and cleared her throat, but decided to say nothing yet about the buckle she had brought in her coat pocket.
Delta lifted the chain and let the locket swing back and forth before she put it down. "Well, it seems like I've seen this locket, but clearly, it was never there after he left. Maybe she showed it to me beforehand, but maybe not. Probably she created it for us in the telling, 'cause when it came, I knew immediately what it was. What I hadn't known was that he took it with him when he left."
They had heard about the locket again and again, as Dolora made and remade her tale. Always it began in the same way, with her pointing to the empty velvet depression where it had been housed. She recounted her sitting for the photograph, and its presentation as a gift from her father, when she turned "sweet sixteen." As she described its intricate monogram and delicate chain, she looked into the distance and they could tell she was seeing it, repeating chosen pieces of the chronicle with embellishments, until it was a myth with a life of its own. As explanation of its absence, she had said only that it was "lost."
"Tell me . . . tell me the whole story," Sunday said, reaching across the table to take Delta's wrist and to feel the pulse beneath her fingertips, helpless at how little she understood, wondering what it would mean to have the whole story about anything, anything at all.
"Tell me," she said, "about the suicide that wasn't death."
Daunted by the hunger in her sister's voice and the rough hand that encircled her wrist, Delta looked away.
As Sunday watched her, she relived her recent impasse with paint. She wanted to be able to tell how she had gone each morning to her kitchen studio to stare at the blank and half-done canvases that filled the room, reminded of tombstones, and then turned their faces to the wall. Riding the El to the end of the line and back, she had walked the city streets, searching for something, a face, a storefront, a window that would move her from silence. She had even found herself standing at church doorways, attracted, yet hesitant to enter for the first time since she had left home, except in requiem. She had walked the lakeshore, trying to think of the water that stretched before her as ocean, but unable to lose the feeling that she was landlocked.
She had tried charcoal and pencil drawing, collage and modeling clay, never getting past concept to give her beginnings life. She had collected paper scraps and photographs and fabrics, but had been unable to turn them into anything. Her relentless, vague anxiety seeded and took root as she stretched canvases and mixed colors, and then flourished into panic when she tried to begin. She couldn't even focus on the rote drafting projects that were her steady source of income.
And then, after retrieving Delta's note from the box, she had drawn and painted furiously for close to a week. What came to her were shadowy figures bent into fetal question marks and disembodied limbs and hands, floating, buried, rising, layered. Again and again she painted the world from above, patchworks of city and field joined by branching rivers that fractured into overlapping pieces, like shattered trees. But she would come to a stop while painting, as if full sight just closed up, and then her palette began to narrow down.
Reed had walked in one day to find her stuck, trying to make a mark, a stroke, in any kind of blue, but lost. She couldn't seem to choose it, just as she couldn't seem to fully choose him. She knew she was trying his patience, but how could she explain something she didn't even understand?
She wanted to tell Delta how it had been. Fingers still around her wrist, she could only say, "I need it. I need all of what I am."
Except for the moth wings that homed in and trembled on the lightbulb's yellow curve, the room was still. And then Delta pulled away and tightened her pocketed hands into fists. "You see," she answered, "there isn't much I know." Tears filled her eyes and she felt as if she had failed her sister, once again. "We weren't a family that talked about what was gone." She looked at Sunday, apologizing silently for every time she had come up short.
"You know a hell of a lot more than I do," Sunday answered. "You had him for five years, so you've got your memory, for one thing. And by the time I came along, everyone had decided to just keep quiet about his leaving and everything else that had to do with him. I don't even know the smallest things about him, like whether he wore cologne . . . what he liked to eat . . . how he moved his hands. You and I scarcely even talked about him. Maybe everyone was protecting me, but in the end, I was left with my imagination, and a gaping hole."
She leaned into the circle of light. "Delta, this didn't only happen to you; it's both of ours. I know you can't give me what you haven't got, but let's remember together. Tell me, anyway, what little bit you know."
Delta paused. At least she was sure what the beginning was, for it came to her all the time, despite her resistance, as if occupying its own tier of the recessed past. She placed her palms flat on the table.
"Shoes," she said. "What I remember most is that pair of shoes."
Delta could see them. From the witnessing or the telling, or both, they were there, worn through brown to gray and dirty at the squared-off tips from work and daily travel. Laces tucked inside. Heels rundown and placed neatly side by side.
"Yes," Sunday responded. "I heard about the shoes. It's practically the only concrete thing about his disappearance that I do remember hearing. Describe them for me, so that I can see them, too."
She did describe their rundown heels, one eroded to a sharper slant than the other, and they both savored that clue to his walk, imagining him moving along, favoring one leg. She told about the places where the dark brown, dusty leather was strained and bunion-cracked on the sides. The twisted laces and elongated tongues. The mud-encrusted toes. And then they wondered what had happened to them, and Delta said, "Maybe Mama threw them out."
As Delta stared out the back window, seeming to fade farther and farther away, it occurred to Sunday that they might not be able to begin with Mercury's disappearance, which had never, in all their years of growing up, been discussed. Would they have to start to remember him as a person, to make him real, first? "You know," she said, "I wonder what Mama did with the rest of his stuff. There must be something, up in the attic, maybe. Something of him she kept."
"Well, I never heard anyone talk about his belongings, and I can't even recollect what all he had."
"But . . . but you must have kept something of him, then, if not a possession then a memory, some little thing he liked or used to do?"
Delta thought for a while, her hands in motion, turning and tipping the edge of her coffee cup and lighter. What came to her suddenly, despite attempts at forgetting, were his restless and uneven footsteps as he paced the upstairs hallway late at night, reaching one loose and groaning floorboard again and again. She willed away the sound and recounted other things.
"I know. He had a beautiful gray fedora that he always wore when he left the house. Sometimes he would take it off and let me feel the soft, pressed felt and the raised lines in its wide, grosgrain ribbon band, where a couple of feathers were tucked before the hat broke out in a cold-blooded brim. I think he felt really fly in that hat, even if he was just going to the plant. I'm sure Grandpa thought that was ridiculous, but he loved that hat, was proud of it, and when he came home he brushed it and placed it just so on the closet shelf . . . I can see him come through the door and do just that . . . but the clearest thing is me looking up at it, from my little-girl height, as it rested, tilted on his head, surrounding his frowning face with a dark oval that blocked out everything else."
After a pause, she went on. "I remember him playing cards at the dining room table, by himself. He liked to listen to the news while he played, and I can see those cards being turned over, building and shrinking and building in overlapping columns, and then his sudden curse and a hand scooping the mass of them together and cracking the edge on the table, evening them up, before starting again. I was entranced by the ceremony of it, and the mirrored, noble pictures on the cards, the bright red and black and the faces turned, secretively, to the side, as if they knew things they would never tell. But I was afraid of the curse and the sound of them hitting the table, and even more afraid to ask if I could play."
She spoke faster and faster. "And you know what else, Sunday? He used to bring a whole bagful of Mary Jane candies when he got home late. We both loved the thick, chewy molasses taste, and he would take one out and hide it in one hand, and ask me to guess which one. Whichever one I chose, he gave it to me, and we both laughed as we ate them together.
"I hadn't thought of that in a long time. It's small, but it's a good thing, isn't it?
"Mostly . . . he seemed ill at ease with me, like he didn't quite know how to relate to a child or a girl child, anyway. Those Mary Janes were something we shared."
Sunday looked at her expectantly, pushing for more. "So what else?"
Delta continued, "He liked fine things. Champagne taste and beer money, Grandpa used to say. And Nana told me how he bought that belt buckle, which he had engraved, along with a pair of inlaid silver cuff links, and a shirt to go with it, and Grandpa chided him with the uselessness of that. 'French cuffs,' he would say, and suck his teeth. It had turned into a big fight, because Nana had defended him, unable to bear the way he got on Mercury at the slightest provocation, telling Grandpa 'a body's got to have a little something nice, just for himself.'
"Grandpa didn't budge, I guess, even though he had his own weaknesses. He sure loved getting all decked out for Mason meetings, and his ring was so important to him that he made Nana promise to bury him in it. Being a Thirty-second-Degree Mason, the secret rites, the ring, all of that was major, along with the gold pocket watch that he cherished so. But in Mercury, he just couldn't tolerate it. Nana said Grandpa thought a person had to work their way up, to pay their dues before they got nice possessions and respect, and that attitude seemed to make Mercury even more withdrawn. Nana said he had one pair of really good shoes that he changed into after he got home and showered, and they were impractical for the life he led. Thin soles and fine leather . . . and she thought he would change into them to try and mark off the separate parts of his life. It was as if he was saying: This isn't all I am. I am also a man who appreciates the distinctions between things."
Sunday wondered at Delta keeping such details to herself for all those years, and at the slight smile in her eyes as she told them, as if they made her proud. She knew plenty of people like that, who found certain indulgences necessary, whatever their means. As she had studied the belt buckle over the past weeks, she had been struck by its extravagance, and she knew she had that taste for special things in her, too. Reed was forever reminding her of the time she had decided to have a pair of antique fountain pens repaired, when they'd scarcely been able to put together rent money.
Delta went on, "He would shower as soon as he got home and put on that shirt and those shoes and take a walk around town before dinner. The ones he left by the river weren't those; they were his other pair."
"You mean that when he left, he went wherever it was he went barefoot?"
"Well . . . I guess he did."
"I wonder what he did about that?" Sunday pressed. "I mean, how long could he have crossed fields and roads without shoes? I wonder if he stole some or what. Are you sure he didn't take those good shoes, too?"
"Nana said he left the good ones home, of that I'm sure. But the hat, the hat went with him. It was never found."
"The fedora?"
"That's right." She frowned in concentration and then went on, "You know, Nana would sometimes talk to me about him, as if she was trying to give me something of him to hold, and I often wondered if it was her own imagination talking, like she was forming an outlook that she could pass on to me. I remember those times by her gentle voice and her clove smell.
"She told me he had worked delivering papers and groceries and whatever else he could manage, from the time he was nine or ten, and then he had landed that job at the paper mill his junior year, most likely with Grandpa's help. At first he worked part-time, and then, after graduating, he had a regular shift. They still had segregated bathrooms, by unstated policy, though, and the black men used to have to warm their lunches on the radiators outside the makeshift 'colored' washroom, which wasn't much more than a closet with one toilet for the dozens of men, and that had filled Mercury with rage. She said he was a prideful man, who liked words. He read the dictionary sometimes and he liked to work crosswords during his breaks at the plant . . . and, what else . . . I know, he used to say all the time that his white supervisor didn't even know the word 'quandary.' It used to burn him, Nana said, and he would repeat it over and over again, 'Quandary,' and shake his head, as if it summed up everything about the unfairness of the world.
"Nana said he used to walk the river early in the morning, a big branch of oak like a staff in his hand. Looked like he was pretending to be someone in an adventure story, striking out for new ground."
Sunday asked, "But what was he thinking about while he walked? And on his last day here, did he pass the corner store and the little triangular park? Did he nod hello, and goodbye, as it turned out, to those he knew, and stop to chat at the barbershop, with its rippled iron grate and Mr. Odell out front, closing up?"
"I wonder. Maybe he saw that lilac tree downtown as you round that corner near the river, and scent floated up over the curb to greet him."
Sunday thought about that. "Somehow I don't think so. Even if he passed it, he likely didn't really see it. At least for me, that tree, with its tender perfume and cones of star-shaped blooms, might just make me able to deal with things. Really seeing that tree might just make me want to live."
"Well, everyone's different, Sunday," Delta said with irritation as she lit a cigarette. "Seeing . . . seeing a tree might not make some folks want to live. Some folks who might feel unlovely could have a harder time going on, with lovely things like lilacs around. People . . . individuals, I mean, see different things in things. Some people might even look up and see a tree as a potential place to hang."
Sunday stared at Delta and then picked up her glasses and began to clean them again. She was taken aback by the despair and resistance in her sister's words, and at the fury with which they had rushed out. Damn, Sunday thought, focusing on getting one lens completely free of lint, you can count on family to be there for you, in the same awful way they always were. And all you have to do to inspire their antipathy is be yourself. I wonder how soon I can get a train.
"I'm sorry," Delta said to the table.
"No," Sunday responded, putting the glasses on, "I wouldn't want to deny you a chance to express a grievance. It's quite okay."
Delta sighed. "Anyhow, I overheard someone say that he left for the paper bag plant that morning, showing no more than his usual dislike for his job. He had been talking in the weeks before, though, about his new assignment of pulling the bags out of the folding machines, where they had been turned from flat sheets into rectangular sleeves, one after another, on, on, and on."
They were silent for a long time, both pondering the embalming force of mechanical routine, from which Sunday had always been escaping and about which Delta knew so much.
Sunday pointed at the locket and finally asked, "How did it get here? When did it come?"
Delta went to the hallway and returned with the shoe box Sunday recognized as the family photo archive. Placing it on the table, she explained how she had been at the post office on sorting detail when it arrived in a small padded envelope, made out to "The Owens Girls" at Nana and Grandpa's obsolete address. She had turned it over and shaken it as she tried to think of whom she knew in Clare County, all the way across the state, and after prying open the stapled end, she had reached in and pulled the contents out: the locket, a long piece of lined, yellow paper folded into a tiny square, and a store-bought sympathy card. As she read the card she heard herself shout, "He was alive," and then she looked around and realized, from the uninterrupted flow of events around her, that no sound had emerged from her mouth.
Delta lifted the gray cardboard top of the shoe box, its edges worn soft, its corners split, and removed the brown padded envelope that held the note and card.
"Well," she said, and then cursed herself silently: There you go again, with that pathetic floundering. Unable to find the words to go on, she placed her fingertips on the envelope and slid it across the table.
Sunday began to sweat as she opened the card from the stranger. The words seemed to wave across the page until she placed it on the table and anchored it with both of her hands, recalling the sight of her thumbprints on Delta's note. She finished reading, put it back in the envelope, and got up for more coffee, her cup rattling against the saucer in her unsteady hold. She would have to do this in two stages, she realized, and she was not yet ready to confront her one and only message from a man who had been dead her entire life. Reaching out to touch the kettle without a pot holder, she felt nothing at first, and then a sharp white heat pierced her numbness and she jerked her hand away. Instead of running cold water on her fingers, she took solace in waking to the throbbing burn.
The card, whose printed message read "With the Deepest Sympathy" in embossed silver script, had a handwritten message inside. It said,
Your father he asked me to send this along. He was brother to me these last years. And he was sorry.
Sincerely, Clement Woods
She came back to the table and picked up the folded yellow paper, smelling the chemicals in it and detecting the minuscule fibers within its smooth surface. Aware, suddenly, of the fingers that held the paper, she noticed the dryness of their skin, the paint deep in the cuticles, and the scars the fingers bore. She could hear her heart beating, the air moving through her lungs, and the thunder of the paper unfolding as it grew from a two-inch square to full size.
When she got the creased paper open she found the same leaning, elongated scrawl she had studied on the back of the snapshot she had found. Five words: "I remembered and I paid."
Questions erupted in Sunday's chest, and with them a lightning flash of outrage.
Remembered, remembered and paid? she said to herself. And that's your offering to me who never even knew you never even saw you and I hope you did pay in fact I'm counting on it and what does that mean anyway that you paid and what does it mean that you were brother and never forgot and were sorry yes sorry you surely were and does it mean you married again and had another family you did not feel the need to leave?
It was too little, and far too much.
She wanted to know if he had recalled the 704 of Nana's address, and whether he had ever phoned their number and hung up when someone answered, or let his imagination run wild as he let it ring. Whether he had taken anything besides the locket that he had kept all those years, and wondered, wondered, what his fatherless children had grown up into, how they had turned out, if she looked anything like him? Delta, he had a chance at remembering, but what about her? The baby who was not yet born? What about her?
She heard tearing paper and before she understood what she had done, she had ripped the note in half and Delta was crying, "No!" and snatching it from her, running to the hall closet for Scotch tape. There she was again, Delta thought in panic and rage: Sunday, taking everything for her own.
"I'm . . . I'm sorry . . . I didn't realize . . ." Sunday stammered as she stood holding the envelope, aware that once again, she had just made Delta the victim, and had given her something else to hold against her.
Delta leaned over the table, carefully matching up and rejoining the halves of paper, while Sunday tried to find different, more meaningful words than "sorry" to express her regret.
"Do you want me to fix it?" she ventured, reaching out to touch her sister's hand.
"I think I'm capable of doing it," Delta replied as she pulled away.
"I didn't mean . . ."
"Oh damn, I almost had it lined up. Why don't you make some coffee or do something useful?"
Okay, I feel really shitty, Sunday thought as she looked at the paper, bisected with a shiny, Scotch-tape scar, and while I'm at it I'd like to apologize for every wrong I've ever done to you. She knew she had acted impulsively, "before thinking," as Dolora had always told her was her biggest flaw. And selfishly.
Delta smoothed the paper and added tape to the back to reinforce the mend, while Sunday, returning to the padded envelope's postmark in the heavy silence, considered whether she might be able to cope with finding Clement Woods.
They both jumped at the teakettle's shriek. "I figure," Sunday said, after rushing to turn it off, "Mama must have been puzzled by him taking that one thing. Lord knows she had a whole story about that locket that was very important to her."
What had his selection of that one possession meant? they pondered. Had it crushed her and comforted her both, that he had left behind the ring, which had stood for a promise that bound, keeping instead the smooth, gold disk that held a timeless memory of the girl she had been, before the demands of life began. Was it a talisman he had selected for his afterlife, rejecting commitment and choosing love?
While they considered Dolora's feelings about the locket, Sunday reached into the shoe box and started spreading the contents out on the kitchen table. When she came to a photo of her own art school graduation, she stopped. There they all were: she in her cap and gown, waving her diploma in the air; Delta, matronly at twenty-seven, hands folded and pageboy intact; Nana dressed in a navy suit and hat and gloves, head held high; and five of the bread-making ladies from church surrounding them, dignified and proud. The Bread Ladies had arrived on commencement morning by train and returned that same night, trusting neither the cleanliness nor the hospitality of white, city hotels.
There was a picture of Dolora's younger brother, Wilborn, who had gone to the East Coast after college and married Anna, from a prominent black family, who loved to say their people were never slaves. At each family death, she and Wilborn had flown in the morning of the funeral and left that night, only visiting once that Sunday could remember for longer than that. "I know he's embarrassed by me," Delta had overheard Dolora declare tearfully to Nana one night.
Sunday and Delta remembered enduring holiday phone calls placed by Wilborn and his family to Nana and Grandpa, following the arrival of extravagant checks. Everyone was forced to take a turn on the line, composing pleasant summaries of school and health and prosperity. "We're having a really good quarter," Wilborn would always begin, and then he would tell about the earnings of his latest sales line and the gifts he had given that year. Dolora was always reduced to icy withdrawal by what she called Wilborn's "all-out bragging" and Anna's "digs." "Isn't family great?" Sunday and Delta used to say, after hanging up.
Wilborn and Anna sent a yearly form letter detailing family accomplishments, and an annual Christmas photo taken in front of their hearth, in which they wore matching holiday outfits, and even the dog had on a red and green sweater. Sunday found many of these in the box and arranged them chronologically on the counter to observe the changes the years had wrought. She found that although the children grew taller and their parents' faces and bodies aged, the photos were amazingly uniform. They showed the same poses and expressions, the same dark hair, and only slight variations on the outfit theme. And then for three years in a row, they presented forced smiles and hints of discord. Wilborn and Anna had moved apart, to the sides of the fireplace instead of its middle. Her arms were folded tightly in a posture of defense, and she looked tired, unamused with her part. Aha, Sunday thought, there was trouble in paradise. What was it, Wilborn, an affair, unbearably average children, declining revenue? Yet after those three pictures, they resumed their presentation of triumphant harmony. The pictures stopped the year before Nana's death.
Beneath those holiday photos, in the shoe box, was a collection of picture postcards that Nana's cousin, Boykin, had sent from all over the country. They remembered how he had come through town as a traveling salesman, bringing the jokes and tall tales he had picked up on the road, jigsaw puzzles and hand mirrors and folding fans with silky red tassels. They had loved it when he showed up, unannounced, spreading mischief and laughter.
They put Boykin's cards aside and took a brown and white photograph of their grandfather from the box. He had died of a heart attack when she was only four, so that most of what Sunday knew was what she had heard. Delta picked up the photo and noticed right away how it had captured his unyielding, unforgiving gaze, and the resolution and pride in the set of his jaw.
"He was a reserved kind of man," Delta said, "and he took everything he did seriously, never missing a Masons' event and revealing nothing, even to Nana, about those sacrosanct meetings or the lodge. He wore a stiff collar and a coat and tie to work at the store, and kept it on even at home while he sat in his easy chair and read the paper as Nana cooked their evening meal. I always wanted to be in the kitchen with her, and I think he scared me. He seemed to need adulthood from me, when I was just a little girl."
She went on to say that his most unforgettable habit was directing an inventory of questions to Nana or Dolora, about the way some chore had been performed. And after the inquisition, during which his respondent had grown more and more vexed, he would demand with quiet force, "Since we now understand each other, tell me. Tell me that you love me now."
That feeling behind "Tell me that you love me" was what Sunday remembered about him. She felt uncomfortable just thinking about it, and she still responded to compelled affection with flight.
"He wanted things to be done in a certain manner," Delta said, "the way he had seen those he called 'important white folks' do them at various points in his life." She told how Grandpa had also been religious about "upholding the race." Although he was a man of few words, one topic he went on at great length about was "the betterment of the Negro." He had worked since he was seven, first farming soybeans and wheat with his family and then, anywhere he could earn something extra. For many years he had had two or three jobs, and he had always taken on something extra, like picking up people's clothes for the white cleaners downtown or delivering groceries. His experience working for a fancy country club, during the one year of college for which he had managed to pay, left him bitter at white folks and determined to emulate them, too.
He took pride in knowing that he was one of the most hardworking and prosperous men in Salt County, and he had a corner drugstore and several pieces of property to show for it. He always wore a suit to work behind the counter at his store, and he felt his people had to show both white folks, and themselves, that Negroes knew how to do right, that they were capable and responsible. And what disturbed him about Mercury Owens were his inklings that he had neither tenacity nor rectitude.
Delta remembered him checking with her to see that she had done her homework. "Always follow through, child," he had told her, stabbing at the air with his forefinger. "Always follow through."
Delta remembered being perplexed by the difference between Nana and him. In contrast to his distant formality, she was warm and fluid, but one piece of common ground Delta had been able to discern was the church, where he was an alderman and Nana was forever organizing some activity, baking for benefits, and singing in the choir. The other quality they shared was a kind of dignity, expressed in different ways.
"Did you ever hear anything about how he and Nana got together?" Delta asked. "Because I don't believe I did. I don't even know what year they married, or exactly how old they were at the time. Well, I have to think about who else would know, about their getting together, I mean. Opus Green knows, if anyone does."
There were no pictures of Mercury's family in the shoe box, but Delta knew that according to Nana, after his father had been killed in a sawmill accident, when he was three, his mother had tried for a year to feed and clothe them. She told Sunday what she knew about how they had often gone hungry, and how his mother was sick with consumption. She had been forced to leave him with her sister, Edna, who thought it best to try to raise him as her own and to speak of his mother as little as possible. He had been a handful growing up, restless and inattentive in school, a loner who had trouble making friends, and his mother died soon after his aunt Edna took him in.
Delta had seen Edna regularly at church. She had brought them birthday and Christmas gifts, but had never stayed long at the house and had never been there for a holiday meal. Delta recalled Nana commenting that Edna and Mercury seemed to make each other so defensive and ill at ease that her visits were dreaded by everyone, and then, after his disappearance, she rarely came. She had brought food for Dolora and sat with the children several times right afterward, and then she had faded from their lives, moving, a year or so later, to another town.
Sunday made a mental note to see what she could do about contacting Edna, or any of her family who might still be alive.
They put aside the photo of Grandpa and uncovered the last things in the box: two pictures of Mercury, one a yearbook photo and one a riverside snapshot with Dolora, that they had both memorized. They had retrieved the meager bequest from Dolora's closet often when they were growing up, determined to read his expression and posture, to know him through his dimpled chin and folded hands. "Who are you?" they had both puzzled, inspecting the figure in the yearbook pose and the youth at the riverside. "Who are you and how are you mine?" Sunday remembered looking at the second snapshot and imagining what everyday essentials and treasured possessions he had carried in his bulging pockets.
Studying the snapshot with a magnifying glass, Delta had speculated on what things had been withheld and professed. She noticed how their shoulders barely touched and the attention her mother's titled head revealed, and imagined the charged aftermath or prospect of touch on their impatient, adolescent skin. Surely they were dreaming, she thought, of the life they would make together, of the home and family they would one day have. Or had he just told her about some aspect of her beauty, "You have the longest lashes I have ever seen," or "Your waist is perfect for my hand"? Maybe they had laughed a private laugh.
They both imagined the people their parents had, at that moment, been. And then, as there was nothing else for the shoe box to yield up to them, Sunday went to her coat and took out the mosaic coaster, its tiles set within a brass frame. "Oh, that one I remember," Delta said. "In fact, I can picture her making it, for the church sale, and then deciding she didn't want to part with it, because she had gotten the colors just right, and almost hidden in the pattern was a scarab she just couldn't bear to let go."
As she handed Mercury's monogrammed belt buckle to her sister, Sunday thought she saw Delta's face stiffen with resentment while she smoothed her eyebrows, right then left. "So you had the buckle," she whispered. "He wore it only on special occasions, not to work, and he always placed it in a dish on his dresser, where I was told never to go. It was off-limits, you see, to my touch. He used to polish it with a piece of flannel, I remember that."
Sunday explained hurriedly that she had forgotten packing the coaster and the buckle when she left for college, only to find them before she came home.
She didn't tell how, halfway through that night when she hadn't been able to sleep or work, she had opened her taped-up box, cutting the packing tape with her matte knife to retrieve the note. Before she got to it, she read every other piece of correspondence she had saved, arranging Nana's letters and Delta's greeting cards by date, combing through her other boxes for the things she had brought with her from Salt County. Unsure of what she was seeking, but driven, she had unearthed her high school yearbook; her drawing contest awards from elementary school; her first set of markers, now shrunken and dried; and the ticket stub from the first train she had taken to Chicago. Amid the other contents of the box, she had found the coaster and the buckle, which as a child, she had liked to use for bouncing moonlight at the window, pretending it was a signal to contact airplanes and helicopters as they passed high above Salt County.
"Well," Delta said, before she could stop herself, "I'm surprised you found anything from here worth keeping." She placed the photo on the table and stood up to clear the plates. It was quieter than ever, and Sunday's bitterness at her sister's long-standing martyrdom flared. Two small mementos seemed little enough to take, when Delta had every other possession that had been left them right there with her. But nothing between them was free of the past, and Sunday guessed that the paucity of things selected, as well as the taking, itself, had provoked her sister.
She looked at the things on the table, stung silent by Delta's comment, and disappointed, too, that she hadn't been more excited about the items she had found. It made her even more reticent to reveal the bigger yearnings she had in mind, for Delta would surely think her maniacal for deciding to track down the man Mercury Owens had become.
For her part, Delta couldn't believe how sharp her own tongue sometimes got. This was no way to begin a reunion, she thought, and yet Sunday just seemed to get under her skin like no one else. She didn't understand where it came from, when she hadn't even been aware that all that ugly history was still so alive. She suggested that they put the pictures and the shoe box aside and they made lunch, relieved to have a concrete task.
To the background of the clock's steady meter, they made and ate their sandwiches, saying little except to comment on the train ride and the condition of the neighborhood. And then, settling back at the table and taking out a cigarette, Delta told the detail, overheard and never shared, which had caused her untold pain: In the laces of one shoe, Mercury Owens had tied his wedding band.
Once she had added that piece of information, the surviving image of his departure became, for both of them, those side-by-side work shoes. Rundown unevenly at the heels and holding a slim ring of gold.
FROM October Suite
The doctor had already told them that it would be days before he could say one way or the other. To October this meant that he didn't want to tell them. And so she said that they should keep a vigil. Twenty-four hours every day, one of them should be right at Aunt Frances's side. Panic took hold of October every time she pictured Auntie wandering in the Valley of the Shadow. She looked at her---pale against the white sheets, slack and doughy---and prayed. Here it was now, Bible wisdom rolling off her own tongue and none of it went anywhere. "God is love." If this was true, how could God let things like this happen? "Thy will be done." Surely suffering wasn't it. "For everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven." Didn't October already have her season of grief, or was this just a continuation? But she prayed anyway.
Vigil it was. For three days they all took turns watching Aunt Frances breathe, talking to her absent eyes when they were open, catnapping when she slept. Visitors couldn't stop coming---from the church, the paper mill, the hospital, the neighborhood. Some of Aunt Frances's bywords being proven. Reaping the kindnesses she had sown. And there were all the women from the Negro Ladies' League, too---a loosely gathered group that collected food and clothing for the poor. October recognized some of their faces.
The League had always left a sour taste in October's mouth, because her aunties had pushed it so hard. When she and Vergie were girls, the biggest notable event of the year had been the weeklong annual celebration for the Children's Home, and the Negro Ladies' League was always front and center. A season didn't end that hadn't seen those ladies---led by Frances, with Maude Cooper and their nieces---tramping around the Hopewell burial mounds or a Tecumseh site with a ragtag flock of orphans.
Although Aunt Frances had never understood why, October had hated the orphans, and she suspected that Vergie had hated them, too. It made sense, when she thought about it. Vergie and October were orphans, too. But strange ones. Different. They knew it and the orphans knew it. Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude alone had had it in their heads that doing things with the orphans could somehow be good for their two girls. Auntie never let them forget that the two of them were better off because somebody wanted them. And as October sat watching Auntie breathe, she conceded that Auntie had been right.
Toward the end of October's shift on the third day, Aunt Frances opened her eyes again and made a humming noise. Nothing in particular. October took her hand and told her, "Try to rest, Auntie. The doctor says you need to have rest and quiet."
Again Auntie hummed, but this time with an edge to it. Gently, as if she were lifting a wilting flower, October lifted Auntie's head and held a glass of water to her lips. Not so good. Auntie moaned, "Um-umm," meaning no, tried to work her mouth, tried to form some impossible word. Her eyes fixed on the bowl of crushed ice on the nightstand.
"Oh," October said. She took a tiny chip of ice from the bowl and spooned it into Auntie's mouth. Then dabbed her lips with a tissue.
She sat in her chair, and Aunt Frances lay silent but with eyes trying to say it all.
"Remember the chickenpox?" October said. "How you rubbed my blisters with ice?"
With the slightest pressure, Aunt Frances pressed her fingers into October's hand. Yes, she did remember.
"You don't have to stay awake," October said. "It's all right to go back to sleep. I'm not going anywhere."
She heard herself say it. Aunt Frances might not want to close her eyes for fear she was going somewhere.
But her eyes soon drooped close again, her grip fell, and October found herself breathing with her aunt's shallow rhythm.
Tallies. Wins. Losses. Aunt Frances had been good to her, period. And she owed her. The bad things always come up at the worst times. October was bound to remember the worst storm that raged between them, when she was seventeen and hell-bent on changing her name. Those years before, and even right then in the hospital room, she believed it was one of the most important things she had ever done. But at seventeen she had been righteous with a capital R. Left no room for Auntie to bless or curse.
Auntie had challenged her, October had prevailed. But the arguments had left her with one regret. There at the bedside, looking down on the fading beacon of her early life, October remembered standing at their front doorway once, with her shortie coat over her arm, big as day. And Aunt Frances saying something final, like "Girl, if you go out that door, I'll make you sorry you were ever born." And October had spewed a perfect cruelty about spinsters---an easy target: Something along the lines of Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude having no life until she and Vergie had come to live with them, and how they had not wanted them to have a life either.
What really bothered October that afternoon at the hospital was her remembrance of Aunt Frances's face when---with purest venom---October had proceeded to take away any hold Aunt Frances might have thought she had.
"You're not our mother," she had told her aunt. "You could never be my mother. You didn't sign anything legal to keep us, and I don't have to mind somebody who's just a relative."
And she had fairly pranced out the door.
And since that first incident of regret, she had done much worse---brought untold worries and hurts to her auntie's door.
That day at the hospital she thought back and saw her life as if it were a play that had started with one single event and then gotten blown every which way by the whims of God and men. That day at the hospital, she fully realized that life as she knew it had started with the death of Carrie. And wasn't that the way grief worked---throwing you back to what caused what, and who was to blame, and how much you had lost?
Over all the years that she had let the event begin to flood her mind and quickly evaporate, October had come up with a hundred ways to describe it. The word "murder" had never fit. The drama of "tragic death" took away the impact. "Father's crime"---too detached. "Family's shame"---too vague. "A man's insanity"---yes. "A woman's nightmare"---even closer. But nothing ever fit the way "The Killing" fit. It brought her down to the nitty-gritty, brought home just what their father had brought down on their heads.
October had been five years old---just five---a little girl with no idea that there were layers to what was happening. Over the years she had scribbled things, words on bits of paper, trying to get it right: a wall of water crashing against two new sapling trees. A gyre of wind sucking air into its spin and dipping down to touch the great and small thing that had been their lives. A natural disaster. How terrible it must have been for children---this was how she had always felt any emotion around it: as a secondhand sympathy for the children she and Vergie had been. Whenever she called herself grieving, it had been for them as they had been then, two young girls.
It didn't seem logical, but for October the public fact of the killing seemed to affect her life more than the private pain of losing her two parents did. Having to be his daughter---the daughter of a man who killed somebody. Having to carry that name and that label meant shame on you. Are you an evil person, too? And she and Vergie had grown up without so much as a second cousin to show them what a man was. Fascination comes from that. Leads to all kinds of craziness.
Franklin Brown had been the source of everything that had been wrong in their lives. But October couldn't say that she actually hated him. "Hate" didn't touch all the things she felt about him. Maybe disgust began to describe her feelings. And sadness, too, over the terror that Carrie must have gone through. Sadness over Carrie's heart that must have been broken at the thought of dying. October's sympathy, though, always gave way to the wish that Franklin Brown had somehow come to realize to the nth degree what he had done, and then that he had been forced to live with it until his last breath.
Some of her vengeful wishes came from being tainted by someone else's crime. At nine, and still named Lillian, she was a gangly little girl with thick ropes of plaited hair. The white freckle that was supposed to have turned into a mole had become a dime-spot blemish on her cheek.
Vergie, on the other hand, had become a thirteen-year-old whose rounded heft refused to be disguised as ordinary ripening. For Vergie, the burden of child-witness to The Killing had worked itself out in pounds, or so they had all thought---she was older, she had suffered more deeply than her little sister, who had been too young to understand.
They were sisters, though. Where there are sisters, the flame of contention smolders, and difference is the very air it craves. They were way past the need for being baby-sat, way past the desire to nose around the landscape of their aunties' rooms. With the way she kept her closet and the files of papers in the cedar chest under that high bed of hers, Aunt Frances had already become the General, law and order.
They knew every piece of paper in the chest by heart. Early school drawings, birth certificates, baptism certificates, attendance certificates, bank papers---all that. And whenever they wanted, they could touch the small white Bible with the crumbly clipping, the Herald obituary that announced Carrie's death. Inside the back cover of the Bible, the black ink and back-slanted scrawl of "Carrie Cooper" had faded to brown.
The closet, too, they knew: Starched white uniforms hung like guards over the few other dresses Aunt Frances owned; paired white duty shoes toed a straight line. The bureau drawers gave up old-style white cotton stockings on one side and brown cotton stockings---hideous, October always thought---on the other. And, like a monument to an old dream, a solitary bottle of toilet water---precious in cut glass---on her bureau.
Aunt Maude's space had nothing like order. Lounging, rummaging seemed fine in her room. October remembered how Aunt Maude's clothes---drab to plain---had always been draped in layers over the chair in the corner and piled on her bedpost. She and Vergie always found a coffee cup sitting with the lotion and toilet water and combs and brushes on top of her bureau. Snips of newspaper and scribbled lists made a raggedy fringe around her mirror. And candy. Always a tin full of peppermint, butterscotch, lemon drops on her closet shelf, under her one black hat.
At nine and thirteen, October and Vergie had not outgrown their habit of after-school sweets. School-weary and famished, they had just finished helping Mrs. Hopp make rag rugs for the Children's Home one day and raced through the front door straight up to Aunt Maude's closet. They sat on Aunt Maude's bed, Vergie with the nice candy tin on her lap, and they raked through hard candy for best and next best.
October liked butterscotch, and there was one, but Vergie was faster. She popped it into her mouth before October could say mine. That gave them a way to spend the next hour. They could just bicker until October decided that nothing at all was better than settling for the sour lemon drops, which were all that was left.
Later, while they piddled with homework, Vergie went down to the kitchen and came back with a crisp green apple, cut supposedly in half, and a little pile of salt on a piece of waxed paper to sprinkle on the apple. She placed the smaller half---a peace offering nonetheless---on October's bed. "That's yours," she said.
October ignored it. Vergie was hungry, but she dipped-and-bit, dipped-and-bit slowly, until hers was all gone. She kept eyeing the half on October's bed, piddled and glared for a while.
"You know, apples start rotting as soon as the air hits them," Vergie said. "You'd better eat yours before it turns brown." To which October answered, "Let it rot---I don't want it." She didn't want apple, she wanted butterscotch.
Vergie wanted apple. "Okay, then," she said. "Starve if you want to." And she snatched up the other half and chomped off a huge bite.
What happened next had to do with the fact that each year, the Negro Ladies' League had sponsored an annual Children's Home trip, which The Call---the only national Negro newspaper---dubbed a "Noteworthy Excursion," to the zoo in Columbus. And each year until October and Vergie were too far into their teens, they were forced to "set an example" by sitting like bumps on a log with the orphans on the rented bus, eating shelled and salted peanuts.
There had been this boy, Clyde, a pipsqueak, but Vergie liked him, orphan or not. She had written his name on page 100 of all her books. And there had been this girl, Lila, fearless and feared. Lila was Vergie's age and had run away several times. "Seen the world"---undoubtedly all of downtown Chillicothe and the river. Wore makeup and smoked cigarettes, mostly butts.
During the zoo outing the year she was thirteen, Vergie had made eyes enough at the Clyde boy to convince him that she would walk over a hundred miles of broken glass barefooted if he would smile her way. With the rest of the orphans, Vergie and October had spent the day swatting flies, licking their shaved ice, looking at the same old animals, all of whom had silly names like Tiny the Elephant, and Gertie, the Hippopotamus. On the bus back to the Home that afternoon, Clyde stuck a wad of gum to the back of Vergie's seat. On a piece of paper he scribbled "Gertie" and stuck the paper to the gum. Hearing all the giggles, Vergie turned around to see what else but Clyde, smiling at her. As the moment hung and trembled, Vergie smiled back. And then the moment hit and shattered. Vergie saw the paper. The orphan runaway Lila smacked Clyde with her fist. Too late.
"Devastated" didn't come close. For three days Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude had cooked and spread banquets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and Vergie had gagged and cried through them all. Aunt Frances had cursed the ground stupid Clyde walked on, telling Vergie that the boy was a heathen, an orphan with no home training. And Vergie cried into another day. They shook their heads, wrung their hands. Vergie cried into a second night. Over the third day, October had had the good idea that Vergie might be calmer if she had a new skirt to wear, a skirt like the ones Lila wore. October had just the right length of material, too; Aunt Frances had been saving it for a dress. That very day, Aunt Maude and Aunt Frances and October had pieced it together, and finally Vergie's tears dried up.
And so when Vergie gobbled up October's half of the apple that day a few months later, it was the strategic windfall that can bless all warring children. It would be years before October was able to understand how anger works. Why, in her meanest, cold-blooded fury, she had spat out "Gertie!" in Vergie's face.
Right away, though, October could see that she had hit her mark. Vergie's face began to break. But this time Vergie pulled herself together fast.
She arranged her face, lifted her chin ever so slightly, leveled her eyes at October, and said, "I'd rather be Gertie than a spotted Lillian any day."
The words weren't infected with any fatal poison. Some people had extra fingers, some had crossed eyes, some had had polio and would be crippled forever. October's white spot would turn brown again someday. She was fine---her feelings weren't hurt.
Oh, but Vergie had her. With lips all curled, now, Vergie had repeated, "I wouldn't be caught dead with that name." And when she saw that October still did not catch on, Vergie blurted, "Stupid. You're so stupid you don't even know where your sorry name came from."
October's face must have remained blank. She had never thought about it, really. Didn't get the point.
Hand-on-her-hip, Vergie had rained it down. "I'm named after Grandma Vergie Cooper," she said. And then the damning question: "Who do you think you're named after?"
Again, what did October know?
"Your father's people," Vergie said, quivering with the pleasure of having it out. "Poppa's sister who raised him. Her name was Lillian."
Dumbfounded, October called up reason to her defense. "You're a lie," she said. She threatened to tell Auntie. Any loose reference to Franklin Brown---his person or possible kin, his crime or punishment---any little remember-that-time about their early lives in Cleveland, their suspicions, old wishes, or nightmares had always brought a swift and unmitigated bawling-out from Auntie and Aunt Maude, too. October was sure that Vergie had made it up.
And then Vergie had spilled out unbelievable details. "His mother died and his big sister raised him and her name was Lillian. Ask Auntie. They used to live in Tennessee."
"Liar," October said, folding fast.
Vergie got louder. "Ask Auntie. She knows. Everybody knows. That's where your spot came from. No-good crooks and slutty women---that's who you are."
Hands now covering her ears, October couldn't listen. How many times had her aunts told her that they were decent girls, that they had come from good people? How many times had they warned "their girls" away from "lowlife" people who hung around the barbershop on Keane Street because "our girls" are better than that?
October threw back at Vergie, "We never even knew those people," trying to sound sure instead of whipped.
But Vergie was on. "Yes, we did," but there must have been some doubt because she went on with, "Even if we didn't, you still got their . . ." and she drawled, "Lil-yan."
"Shut up!"
"Lil-yan," Vergie slurred. "Lil- . . . Lil-yan . . ."
October swung at her, blindly, and her fist caught the corner of Vergie's mouth. Vergie's teeth cut the inside of her lip. She bled red blood.
Shocked them both for a split second. Then Vergie ran to the bathroom and, when she saw the blood, wailed like a trapped puppy dog. October went after her, but by then Vergie would have no apologizing.
"Get out!" she screamed and locked herself in the bathroom. October stood at the bathroom door, saying "I'm sorry" to the frame, but her words were way past lost.
Things might have gone better if Aunt Frances had been the first to arrive home to straighten out sister-squabbling quickly. But Frances had had the late shift at the hospital and wouldn't be in until midnight. And so as hours passed, the incident ballooned into a crime, like night swelling from a single shadow across the bedroom floor.
Aunt Maude got off from the mill at five, and Vergie burst out of the bathroom and stumbled down the stairs, greeting her with a garbled story, plenty of tears, and a swollen lip. Aunt Maude had calmed and soothed and whimpered with her and dressed her mouth with Mercurochrome. October had sat alone in their bedroom, waiting for whatever was to come next.
Aunt Maude, her face flat, opened the door and stood looking at October for a long time, and then her eyes welled up.
"What are we going to do?" she said, as if they were all lost. She looked into the air for an answer, then closed the door.
No one ate dinner.
Somewhere in what seemed the middle of the night, October was shaken awake, to Aunt Frances' cast-iron "Get up, Lillian, and get dressed."
She had been expecting anything. Vergie had not slept in her bed. Aunt Maude's voice was an all-night murmur behind her door. Starkly awake, October had gotten herself up and dressed, shoes and all.
"Get your coat!" Aunt Frances yelled from downstairs and October did as she was told.
Frances Cooper---fully prepared in nurse whites and her navy-blue cape with the red lining---waited at the front door. Aunt Maude stood at the top of the stairs in her nightgown and watched as October and Aunt Frances went out into the night. October followed Auntie across the yard to the Hopps', where Mr. Hopp waited on his front porch. Cold night. Cold enough to see his breath huff.
"Okay, Miss Cooper," he said to Auntie. "If you're sure this is what you want to do, come on."
Mr. Hopp worked for the city, although his exact job was a question October could not have answered at the time. Whenever he left for work she had heard keys jangling at the hip of his coveralls. This night the keys jangled, too. Silence like the cemetery rode with her in Mr. Hopp's long, low Hudson to the downtown Chillicothe she had seldom seen at night. Corner lamps, cold and glaring, made sharp shadows against the still buildings, empty streets.
Mr. Hopp pulled up in front of city hall and sat still, looked at the building a while, then went around the block, into the alley, and stopped behind the building. Fumbled with his keys. Where were they going? October couldn't imagine what punishment lay waiting---she knew only that Aunt Frances had thought it up, and it would be pretty bad.
"Okay, let's see what might be waitin in there for this one," Mr. Hopp said. Aunt Frances got out of the car and held the back door for October.
"Come on," she said.
Long hallways waited. And echoes. Two white policemen took Mr. Hopp aside to talk, then left. Aunt Frances followed close on Mr. Hopp's heels and October followed close on hers, down another long hallway that led to an iron door. Mr. Hopp unlocked the door and they entered.
When Aunt Frances pushed her forward, October saw the cells, eight or ten, side by side. In the half-dark she could make out lumps of bodies sleeping in some of the cells. And one cell door standing open. Mr. Hopp walked over to it, motioning for her to follow. Aunt Frances nudged her.
"You want to sleep in here?" Mr. Hopp said.
October shook her head no. Up close, she could see the measly cot with no sheet, the stinky slop jar, the dirty stone floor. She wondered about the police---what would they care about a fight between her and Vergie? But she couldn't guess how far Mr. Hopp could go at the jail, and there was no way to know how far Aunt Frances's wrath would go.
A cold, stone floor at night, being locked away, having to lie on that cot and use that slop jar---would Auntie do that to her? Was she finally just an orphan?
Aunt Frances had then opened the cell door farther and nudged her inside.
"This must be where you want to end up," she said. Then she said, "This is where your poppa ended up. He died in a place just like this. He started out just like you, fighting all the time."
She stepped out of the cell and clanged the door, leaving October inside the bars.
"Franklin may have given you his sister's name," Aunt Frances said, "---that's something you can't help. But you'll not have their ways and live with us, I promise you."
Dazzling. So her name really did come from those people---people she knew only as too lowdown and dirty to be mentioned. And what else? Her father had been a character in a storybook, banished to never-never land. She had always thought of him as put away forever. The end. It had never occurred to her that he could die.
An aunt, someone named Lillian, the woman who had raised him? No one had ever bothered to mention this. The whole day had turned into a new life. Her blackberry skin was a given, but until that day the only other family resemblance October had ever taken into account had been the way she favored Carrie or Aunt Frances or Aunt Maude or Vergie. With one word, she had a life times two. She had hurt Vergie more than she had had intended. Just happened. And then Vergie had opened a sewer with all kinds of gullies and gutters feeding it. Such a secret. All this time everybody had known.
October, even at the age of nine, had understood then that she was someone other than herself. That she was different from Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude. Different, too, from Vergie. Unwittingly, Aunt Frances had held a mirror in front of her, and even if she couldn't yet make out what she saw, she knew this: in more ways than one, the reflection coming into focus looked like a leper.
After that night, slowly at first, then whenever it wanted to happen, then with a vengeance, the name Lillian had become an accusation. Vergie's way of drawling out "Lil-yan" could be an excruciating jab or a pin-stick, depending on how raw October felt at the time.
Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude would step in a little with "All right, Vergie, that's enough."
But they, too, had got in the spirit of the curse. "Lillian" was the epithet when October's attitude became the stubborn cliff their reason couldn't climb. They tiptoed, never used the name unless they were put out with her. Otherwise they started calling her "Lily" or "Lily Ann."
But she called herself October to herself. October, for the month their mother had died. October, for the lack of any other name that she could put on to say how it felt to become another, stranger person.
Over time, though, she hardened. Turned her secret into a plan. When she got to seventeen, that was it. Old enough. She learned not to flinch so, and Vergie got tired of trying to use a dull weapon. Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude got tired, too, or guilty. However it happened, at some point they all dropped "Lillian" from the list of words they could use when they were mad, and replaced it with a permanent "Lily" for all occasions. Which sure enough proved that the name had kept some evil thing alive for too long. For a time anyway, October was Lillian to the world, Lily at home, and October to anyone who would go along.
It was always with a good feeling that she remembered the long swoon of puberty. A for-real-new person, starting with her body and going on to the music of her own voice, every single nerve ending exposed in every single moment. Without telling anyone, she had fallen in love, first with the deciduous drama of autumn, the pungency of blade and leaf giving up the ghost. Fallen in love with poems, any poem, and with the sound of the flute, or a bird, or train whistle.
She had fallen in love with the boy who worked in Ford's grocery store, and because she never caught that boy's name, she had switched her love to the Reverend's son, home from Wilberforce College. Because he had never been around for long and had never noticed her, she ventured to speak to a boy in the twelfth grade who said hi to her once. He didn't need a name. They didn't need to talk.
Each night before bed, like the leper in The Good Earth, October had inspected every inch of her new body for white freckles. She was convinced that the brown would return, and since no other spots had appeared, she got it in her head that the sun had protected her, and spent more time outdoors.
When she had turned seventeen, old enough to give herself a new name, with two aunts who were only relatives, not parents, October found an accomplice. The Reverend's daughter, Dainty Bonner.
Dainty wore her hair twisted around a hair-rat, the way women did, in a crown hoop that she set off with jeweled combs. She smoked and had a boyfriend twenty years old. October had fed Dainty bits of the whole orphan story and the evil family she didn't want to be related to. Tortured friend. And Dainty had agreed that "Lillian" had never been a name that suited her, and that "October" stood out. And Dainty had known exactly where, in the courthouse, they had to go to do the thing right.
October had never done this before. She went to the courthouse unprepared. How could she have known about things like the proof of her birth or birth name, and how much money she would have to pay, and a fail-proof reason for a name change, and the six-week wait for it to be official. And so, on another not-so-brave day, she and her Dainty friend went back to the courthouse. This time she had rifled through Aunt Frances's cedar chest for papers and emptied her own secret stash for the notary's fifty cents. This time she had announced her intention to Aunt Frances, who had dared her to leave. This time, with her shortie slung across her shoulders, and her hand on the doorknob, she had disowned the only mother she had ever really known.
Under "Justification" on the form, October wrote a version of the truth. Instead of pointing to the bloodline, she wrote that Lillian was the name of the mother of the man who had killed October's own mother: No one would dare refuse her then.
Her mother had died on October 26, 1931. As she sat with Dainty on the bench outside the notary's office, a feeling came over her. She had finished something important, and something else had begun. Finally, she could hold on to autumn no matter what the season was, and have the perfect memorial to Carrie. She could have the perfect way to separate herself from her namesake forever---the perfectly unique name for a girl with a dramatic blight on the brown of her cheek, October.
On the fifth day after Aunt Frances had suffered the stroke, Gene brought Vergie to relieve October at the hospital. Reverend Carter had prayed his ardent prayer, and as they all stood around the bed, a nurse came in with a needle and syringe.
"We need to check her catheter," the nurse said. "You-all won't mind stepping out into the hall for a minute, would you?"
Out in the hall, October tried to sound like she knew what she was talking about and at the same time not scare Vergie.
"Vergie, I know that miracles can happen," she told her, "but remember, we have to be realistic, too."
It seemed to October that until she had entered Aunt Frances's hospital room that day, her own life had not been pinned down. As if at any moment she might be able to put her life in reverse and move into the life she wanted. Redeemable, she thought. But now she was beginning to see that Aunt Frances's death would nail things down. Up until then she had seemed to have a "real life" waiting somewhere, and one day she would wake up and be in her real life. One where Franklin Brown had not killed Carrie. Carrie was not in the cold ground. Franklin had not died in jail. She and Vergie had not been orphans. In a sense, up until then, Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude had been aunts, not parents. And in some part of her, October had always held out for the possibility of "real" parents. All of it, even the David chapter, could have been a dream, and there was time for it all to be corrected.
But now Aunt Frances would be the real mother who would be dead and buried, gone forever. Nothing could be changed. October's messed-up life would be the only one she would ever have.
Vergie said, "The doctor said that it may take a long time for her to pull through." October knew Vergie dared not think she might die.
October thought she ought to make it clear to Vergie. "And, Vergie," she told her, "it's possible that she might not be able to pull through---I mean, she might not make it. We don't know."
Fear blazed in Vergie's eyes. "How can you say that?" She stepped closer to Gene and grabbed his hand.
"I'm just saying might, Vergie. We have to be prepared for the worst. If there's anything you want to say to her, you shouldn't wait. That's all I'm saying."
"Darn it, October, you never look on the bright side. The doctor never said that, and he ought to know." She wiped a tear with her thumb. Gene put his arm around her, and they went back inside the room.
On October's watch the next morning, she had the sense to take her own advice. Say what needs to be said.
Auntie's eyes were closed, and October took her time forming the right words. Auntie's eyes opened and October gave her a chip of ice from a spoon. Auntie stared, and after a few minutes, October could see recognition in her eyes.
October went into how well she remembered the years, the sacrifices, the fevers soothed, the battles Auntie had mounted against the world for her and Vergie, whether they were wrong or right. As well as she could, she said how bad she felt about bringing a child into the world without a father, and giving him away, and fighting with Vergie. And still she couldn't find the words to say what needed to be said.
Auntie never relaxed her gaze.
October tried again. "There is one thing I want to tell you . . ."
Auntie's eyes burned.
". . . something I said to you once, a long time ago. And I never apologized, I never took it back. I know you know I didn't mean it, but I want to take it back now, anyway."
Auntie pressed her fingers lightly into October's palm. She could hear.
Looking into her mute face, October said, "I just want to thank you."
Auntie then made her little humming sound, but kept her eyes fixed on October's face.
"Thank you for being my mother." The tears came then, but October refused to lose the one chance to have it said. "You were a better mother than I ever gave you credit for---better than you ever knew," she said.
Auntie pressed her palm, and October knew a smile was in there.
October wasn't at the hospital that evening to see Vergie reading the Bible to Auntie, or to see the pain in her sister's eyes when Auntie had another stroke. She stood next to Vergie, though, all through the next day, as Auntie's heart marched weakly on.
It was then that I stood by and held for Frances, my sister. She never opened her eyes or pressed their palms again.
Like Trees, Walking
Those of us already gathered along the beach check the wind. With matches cupped in our hands, we watch the smoke rise into the breeze that comes off the water. The conditions have to be right. The wind has to be blowing east. Rising tide and an overcast sky. Nights like this, when conditions are right along the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, the salt water from the Gulf mixes with the fresh water from the rivers. The fish and blue crabs stop swimming then. Why it happens, I'm not exactly certain---something about the oxygen and the water temperature and the currents no longer running true---but the fish and blue crabs are stunned, traumatized. At the place where the waters meet, they just float on the surface as if they're dead.
When the tide rises in the early morning hours, the silver sides of the flounder shine as they wash up on the shore. The crabs collect in the soft sand just below the surface of the water. We wait for them here. Some gather them with scoop nets and stakes. Others just pick them up in their bare hands and carry them home in washtubs and baskets. Nights like these are called "Jubilee."
I unfold our blankets at the place we like to claim while my son wades ankle-deep in the surf. He shines his flashlight on the wet sand, looking. But it's too early. We have time. My daughter holds my hand and taps my thigh with her plastic shovel.
"Daddy, may I go to the water with Reggie?"
"For a little while. Then I want you to come back so you can take a nap before the Jubilee."
"First graders don't take naps."
"You're not a first grader until September. You know what that means? You're still a Daddy grader. Daddy graders take naps so they're awake when the tide comes in. Is that a deal?"
"Deal," she says, shaking off her flip-flops. She points to the glowing hands on her watch. "When the big hand and the little hand are on the twelve, it's your birthday. I'm gonna sing 'Happy Birthday.' Happy Birthday to you---"
"Make sure you stay with your brother."
"Okay. Happy birthday to you---" She beats time with the shovel against my leg before she runs down to the water to where her brother stands.
It's 11:45 P.M. In fifteen minutes I'll be forty. Forty is supposed to be a milestone, a "big one" as they say. A party has been planned in my honor. My wife, my kids, and my parents have been up to something. They have that obvious silence about them of people trying too hard to keep a secret. So I'm sure they've gone to a lot of trouble to get everyone together. I'll act surprised.
I'll have a good time as I always do. July means family reunions, the Fourth, fireworks and picnics. July for me means celebrating one more year, and sharing some time with my brother, Paul. I don't see him like I used to.
He was born 362 days before me. We were, as my father would sometime call us, "the damn-near twins." For three days every July, I catch up with him.
Jubilee nights only happen in the summer months, twice, maybe three times a season. Every few years one would fall somewhere between our birthdays and we would celebrate here. There was a Jubilee the night after I turned eighteen, in July 1981. Eighteen was a milestone for me, not so much because of the age, but because of all that happened. That spring I finished high school. That summer I started working full-time with my father at our funeral home before I started college that fall. That July was four months after my brother found Michael Donald's body hanging from a tree on Carlisle Street. Michael Donald was a friend of ours.
My mother saves the newspapers from our birthdays. Tomorrow's early edition will come off the press soon. In the morning she'll add it to the stacks of the Mobile Press Register, neatly arranged in blue wooden RC Cola crates that she keeps in the closet under the staircase, stored away from the sunlight. Next to the crates she has a small filing cabinet where she stores her important papers. There she kept the news clippings about Michael Donald, neatly trimmed and filed in order. On the manila folder, in her impeccable schoolteacher handwriting, a simple label: "Michael."
The first clip in the stack was from the evening edition of the March 8, 1981:
Local man found slain on Carlisle
Police follow leads as investigation moves forward
MOBILE---Michael Donald, 19, of Mobile was found dead shortly after 6:00 a.m. on the 1400 block of West Carlisle Street. The body of the deceased had been hanged from a tree. Police officials report that the victim had been severely beaten prior to the hanging.
Paul Deacon, 19, of Mobile, a pulp processor at International Paper, discovered the body and notified police.
The lights are on tonight at the paper mill. At the north end of the bay, the smoke stacks made their own white clouds. The mill operates three shifts a day, every day of the year, Christmas and Easter included.
Some nights the smell of the mill carries across the bay. The stench is awful. It's the sulfur. The sulfur breaks down the fibers in the wood, so the pulp is soft enough to make paper. We learned this from Mr. Lewis, our Cub Scout leader, who was a supervisor there.
In our younger days the members of the Cub Scouts Pack 211 from First A.M.E. Church, Paul and I included, followed Mr. Lewis on a tour of the mill. With goggles and hard hats, we toed a broad yellow line painted on the concrete floor. We felt through our feet the rhythm of the vibrating concrete as the large steel combines ripped the timber to shreds.
Paul was historian for Pack 211. His job was to collect pictures for our scrapbook. In the picture Paul took that day, Michael stood in the back row with the taller boys, next to Mr. Lewis. My mother held on to that photo. She keeps it with the others.
Our uniforms reeked when we left the mill. My mother made us take them off before we walked in the kitchen. While our clothes soaked in a bucket of water and ammonia, Paul stood in the middle of the kitchen, in Scout socks and drawers, recounting in dramatic fashion the motions of the combine.
"Mama, do you know why it stanks so bad?"
"Stinks, Paul," she said, grading a stack of composition papers on the kitchen table. "Stanks is not a word."
"Sulfur," he said. "It smells like the whole world farted at once."
"Paul, do you want a spanking?" she said. She wanted to laugh, though. I could tell.
"You mean a spinking?"
"Oh, so you do want a spanking?"
"No, ma'am," he said. "But, Mama, do you know what else?"
"What else, Paul?"
"I'm gonna work at the mill."
"Going to," she said. "Going to work at the mill. You aren't going to do anything until you go upstairs and take a bath like your brother."
"Yeah. You smell funky," I said.
"Roy you know I don't like that kind of talk. I have told both of you about being so mannish. When your father gets home . . ."
When our father got home that evening, Paul told his story again during dinner. He reenacted the motions of the combines and the men who tended them. When he got to the part about the sulfur, he said, "It stinks tremendously," and waited for our parents to laugh, and they did. He had a way of making them laugh with the things he said. He had talked himself out of a few spankings, but he had talked himself into some, too.
Before our evening dinner conversation, we carried out the nightly tradition of blessing the food and reciting Bible verses. I would say, "Jesus wept," the shortest verse in the Bible, and be done with it. Paul would go on forever. With one eye open, I would watch the steam rise off the food while Paul recited. Sometimes his eyes were open, too. We'd make faces at one another across the vegetables when no one else was looking. I never remember Paul saying the same verse twice. He was good at remembering.
Paul asked Mr. Lewis when he could have a job at the mill. Mr. Lewis told Paul to ask when he turned fifteen. Shortly after his fifteenth birthday, he started working in the office, filing time sheets, moving boxes, running errands. Paul worked in the office for the rest of that summer and after school during the year. The summer he turned eighteen, he applied for a processing job on the floor, working with the same machines that as children we watched turn trees to pulp.
Once he graduated from high school and started college, Paul worked the night shift, ten-to-six three days a week, and went to class in the afternoons. My father wasn't sure what to make of it at first, but he had always believed in good money and hard work, which is what the mill offered. Paul was serious about it. He worked his shifts on time and when he got home, he soaked his work clothes before washing, drying, and ironing them. My parents were impressed, but they considered the job a temporary pursuit until he was old enough to fulfill his calling.
Paul, champion of Sunday school memory competitions, oratorical contests, and composition prizes, was going to go to be a preacher. He had decided that he would go to the seminary once he finished college. My father accepted the fact that Paul had never been interested in working in the funeral home. But on occasion my father would ask him to eulogize those who had no close family or no minister to bury them properly. We would be their family, and sit in the pews of the mortuary chapel, listening to Paul's words.
From the few comments he gathered from the one or two people who knew the departed, or from the unclaimed things that they left behind, Paul would piece together a message, warm words that seemed so familiar it was hard to imagine that the two people---the one in the pulpit and the departed---were strangers.
People in Mobile knew my father. They knew us all. They had seen our family photo on the church fans parishioners waved on hot days, trying to cool down the humidity or the Holy Ghost. Among the black funeral homes in Mobile, ours was one of the oldest and considered the best. In the picture, my grandfather, my parents, Paul, and I stood on the front steps of the funeral home. In black script beneath our feet, "Deacon Benevolent: Three Generations in the Service."
My mother held on to that family photo in an album she keeps. She also saved our team sports pictures. Flanked by backboards and bleachers, we wore sponsored uniforms and the mean-mug faces of adolescent boys trying to be men. Michael Donald was in some of these, one of the tall boys who stood along back rows, or the kneeling captain who held team trophies. Other pictures she kept as well. Color versions of the school day portraits that appeared on the black-and-white pages of our collected yearbooks. Portraits of Michael Donald and Paul Deacon often shared pages or faced across the fold.
In their senior yearbook, they were five classmates removed from one another. That same photo of Michael appeared in the newspaper and in the pages of the glossy magazines that mentioned his name. These magazines my mother saved in a small twine-bound pile on her bookcase, below our trophies and the diplomas on the wall.
Mobile is bright at night, the lights from the bay bridge, the spotlights on the old battleship, the shipyard beacons. Here it's dark. But the eastern shore darkness is familiar. It took a few minutes for my eyes to get accustomed, but now I can see the shades of dark, the outlines that separate the water, the tree line, and the overcast sky.
The only lights that connect the east and west shores are those suspended above the bay bridge. When Paul and I were young, riding in the back of my father's truck, we lay on our backs and counted them, 240 each way. Beyond the main roads, only a few dim lampposts light the Baldwin County woods.
When my father brought us over to the eastern shore on Jubilee nights, it took a while to reach the place we like to claim. People would stop us and speak. My father would stand for a while and talk to those who greeted him. He stopped and listened as long as they had something to say. He remembered everyone. He said it was his business to remember.
I didn't remember the faces of the people who spoke to us then, but some of the voices were familiar. When I answered the phone during my cartoons some early Saturday mornings, when no one else was awake, the sad, polite voices would ask me how I was doing before they asked me to put my father on the phone. I was old enough to know by the soothing tone of my father's voice---the tone I emulate now---that someone had died and there would be work to do. As he talked to them, my father ran his fingers along the carvings on the edge of his desk and looked out the window to where the ginkgoes grew.
After his night shift, Paul would stop by the Krispy Kreme on the corner of Chastain and Carlisle streets and pick up a dozen glazed doughnuts. When he got home, Paul would sit on the edge of my bed, and we'd eat them while I told him what happened on the late episode of Sanford & Son on Channel 44. The day before he found Michael, I told Paul about the episode where Fred and Lamonte went to the junkmen's convention in Hawaii.
"Shit. I've seen that one."
"You've seen them all. They're reruns."
"I just hate it how on the reruns how they show part one of the 'To Be Continued' and never show the part two in the right order. I bet you a dollar they show something entirely different tonight. Watch and see."
"You know what happens anyway."
"It's the principle, brother," he said, mouth full of a Krispy Kreme and digging in the box for another one.
"You wash your hands before you handled my food?"
"I washed my hands at your lady's house."
"I'm just saying you smell like the mill. Before you sit on my bed, you need to wash your stankin' ass."
"Speaking of stankin' ass, your lady told me to tell you hello."
If I was asleep when he came in, he would leave my half of the box on my dresser. He'd bring in the paper from the front steps and leave it on the kitchen table for my parents. On March 8, there were no doughnuts waiting. The morning edition of the Press Register was not on the table when I ran downstairs to answer the phone. It was Sgt. Kincaid, his voice familiar from our church choir. The strong, smooth tenor that would lead songs, the rock-steady voice expected of police officers. His voice was shaking somewhat when he asked for my father.
My father didn't say much in the car on the way over. He said as much as he had to: Michael Donald had been killed. My brother had found the body, and we had to go see about Paul.
A crowd had already gathered on Carlisle Street when we arrived. Before we could get over there, an elderly woman who was crying stopped my father. He put his arm around her and told me to go find Paul. I saw Sgt. Kincaid moving a barricade trying to clear the people standing in the street.
"Sergeant Kincaid, where is he?"
"He's still hanging. They won't let us cut him down until the coroner gets here."
"My brother, Mr. Kincaid. Where is he?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. He's in my cruiser." He pointed to the police car parked at the far end of the block.
"Is he alright?"
"He's shaken up. He was holding the Donald boy when I got to the scene. Trying to put some slack in the rope. It was already too late. You look out for your brother---he'll be alright."
"Thank you, Mr. Kincaid."
I had to walk past that tree to get to my brother. I didn't look. I didn't want to see Michael there. I looked instead for the blue lights of the squad car and I saw my brother sitting on the passenger side.
When I opened the door, he was sitting with his hands folded in his lap. Mud was all over his work shirt.
"I'm sorry, Roy. The doughnuts," he said, looking over my shoulder to where the crowd stood. "Roy, I left your doughnuts under that tree. I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it, Paul."
"I'll go get you some more. I can get you some fresh ones."
"Paul, it's alright."
"No. No it's not."
I didn't walk him past the tree and the crowd. We took the long way around the block to where my father had parked.
Our father was standing there with Sgt. Kincaid. Mr. Kincaid had asked my father to ride with him over to Mrs. Donald's house. She didn't know yet. Daddy put his arm on Paul's shoulder and asked him if he was all right.
"No sir," he said, picking the dirt off the name patch on his shirt. "Not yet." That was the last thing he said before I put him in his truck and drove him home.
The next day, the Donald family asked us to prepare Michael's body. My father told me I didn't have to be there when they worked on him.
"I'll understand," he told me. "He was your friend."
He didn't mean that. He wanted me there. Before I started working full-time with my father, we talked about times like these. He reminded me of the people I might see on the table. Friends and family. If this were to be my profession, he would tell me, I would have to be ready for them.
"No one dies before their time," he would say. "The call comes when it's meant to. It's not for us to question."
So I stayed and helped him prepare Michael Donald. There on the table, his face was so swollen that he looked like a stranger. My father addressed the swelling and bruises. I washed his hands and cleared his fingernails of the blood, gravel, and mud. My father stood over me as I cleared the scrapes and cuts on his knuckles.
"He put up a fight," he said.
Seeing Michael, his hands and his face, I thought of my schoolyard fights and neighborhood brawls. I thought of the fights I'd won, remembering how the rush of victory dulls the pain of taken blows. I thought of the fights I had lost, when I felt the full force of heavy fists on my face. Hard blows, knuckle on bone, followed by the hot rush of blood to the surface. These blows would take the fight out of me.
Turning Michael's hands, there were more cuts and bruises. "Defensive wounds," they call these.
My grandfather was in the room. Long retired, he had come to help prepare the body. He knew how to dress rope-burned skin. He knew how to wire the broken bones of a neck and make it straight again. He knew how to arrange the high, starched collar and necktie so they hid the marks that makeup could not conceal. I watched him as he worked, cradling Michael's head in his hands.
He held it like he held mine in the waters here along the bay, on the summer afternoon he tried to teach me to float. I floated for a while, but when I opened my eyes and realized his hands were gone, and what I felt along my neck and back was just a memory of his fingers, I sank like a rock.
On the morning of the funeral Paul came downstairs in reeking work clothes that he must have slept in. Mr. Lewis told him to take some leave time, but he went to work anyway.
"Do you want some breakfast, Paul?" Mama asked. We had started talking to Paul in questions. Sometimes he would answer.
"No, ma'am."
"You don't have much time, sweetheart. Don't you think you should be getting dressed?"
"I'm already dressed. I got some overtime this morning."
"Aren't you going to go pay your respects to your friend?"
"I already did. I talked to him when he was in that tree. We talked for a good while." That was the last thing he said before he went out the door. As we pulled out of our driveway, my mother tried to dab away the redness in her eyes.
"Talk to your brother, Roy," she said.
"I'll talk to him, Mama. He's going to be alright." This was the assurance I made to my mother as we drove to the funeral.
The sanctuary of New Canaan Baptist Church was filled that day. Hundreds more waited outside for the funeral procession. The pulpit overflowed with the reverend doctors of the world, known and unknown.
After the service, I stood in the vestibule with my father as the pallbearers carried Michael's casket down the aisle. On the wall behind them, in stained glass, Jesus stumbled on the road to Calvary. Next to him stood Simon of Cyrene, the man who helped him carry his load. As Simon reaches down over Jesus, his mouth is near the ear of Christ. Whenever I am in New Canaan, whenever I am burying one of their own, I look at that wall and wonder about the Cyrenean. I wonder what he said.
The pallbearers reached the door and met the sunlight of the March afternoon. The man at the front right looked down as he walked over the threshold. He looked back to the others and whispered. They nodded and lowered their heads as they crossed over. They looked down as they left the church, careful of the spot he warned them of---where the carpet had rolled away from the tacks---careful not to stumble.
Paul had been a heavy sleeper before Michael Donald died. In the weeks after Michael's death, his sleep was uneasy. I could hear him through the walls, saying the same words over and over, words I tried in vain to understand. Then he stopped sleeping altogether.
He stopped eating with us, and I would miss him for days at a time. Some mornings I'd wake up hoping to see him on the edge of the bed, hoping to smell the stench of sulfur that filled the room when he entered and lingered, refusing to let me get back to sleep. I started to miss that. But the only sign of him was the piles of work clothes that built up in the washroom until my mother soaked them, cleaned them, and hung them neatly in his closet.
He worked when he should have been sleeping and when he should have been at school. With only a few weeks left in the semester, he stopped going to his classes altogether. He worked double shifts and overtime whenever he could get it. He had that tiredness about him that eight hours of sleep couldn't shake. My mother believed the tiredness caused what happened. It was the tiredness, she said, that caused him to fall asleep at his machine.
"Hello? Deacon residence."
"Mr. Deacon, I'm so sorry to---"
"Mr. Lewis? It's me, Roy."
"You sound more and more---Is he home? I need to speak to him."
"He's out of town. What's wrong?"
He said nothing, but there was no silence. I heard commotion over the hum of the combines at the mill.
"Can I speak to your mother?"
"I'm the only one here, Mr. Lewis. Tell me what's wrong."
"It's Paul. He had an accident---"
The combine had sliced through the bone and tendons just below his right wrist. It could have been much worse, Mr. Lewis said. Paul's hand could have been caught between the teeth of the blades, and his entire arm could have been pulled through on the intake. I've heard the stories of men whose arms were pulled from the socket. They die sometimes from blood clots or trauma. They said Paul was calm. They said he kept his head about him. I slept at the hospital with him for those first few days. Paul got out of the hospital a few days before Memorial Day.
The investigators said the same thing my mother and Mr. Lewis believed, that it was an accident caused by fatigue. When he came home, he slept more than he was awake, and the medication kept him drowsy. Outside of doctor's appointments, he rarely left the house. I would take his dinner to him in his room, and try to talk to him while he ate, but would only speak when you asked him a question. And then in one word answers most times. Yes. No. Fine.
My mother wanted him to talk to someone, a doctor or maybe someone from the church. But he never did. Mama asked me to talk to him. I tried. When he did start to talk more, it was always about the pain in his arm.
"You know it still hurts, my hand. Nothing even there and I can still feel it hurting. The nerves don't know the difference."
"Do you want me to get your medicine?"
"Pills don't work on something that's not there. It's in my head."
He lifted his bandaged arm, turning his forearm and staring where his hand should have been. He never looked at me when he talked like this.
"I'm sitting right here, looking at it, knowing damn well that it's gone, but I can feel it just the same. If I close my eyes I can wiggle the fingers. See? I'm doing it right now."
He'd say these things then he would go silent again, and the only noise would be was the scrape of utensils against my mother's good plates. I told myself, and my parents, what we all wanted to believe. That he was going to work it out in his own time.
The seat my parents saved for him at my graduation was empty when my name was called. But when I walked across the stage, I saw him standing in the back of the auditorium. He waved. When we got to the parking lot, he stood by my father's car waiting for us.
"Sorry I was late, but tying this necktie was a motherfucker." He laughed for the first time in a long while. We all laughed then. That's when we all believed that things would be alright.
Before we could leave, the man in the car next to us, the father of a classmate I barely knew, congratulated us, patting me on the shoulder and hastily shaking hands with my father before extending his hand to Paul.
My father had taught us the proper way to clasp a hand, a firm, single squeeze without too much shaking. Calibrated just so, for the hands of peers or elders or the children of the deceased. My mother taught me the protocol for taking a widow's or grieving mother's hand in both of my own.
In the days after the accident, I had watched Paul reach for things. Bottles, doorknobs, books. He would forget for a second that it was gone. Paul had that same expression now---standing in the auditorium parking lot, tie loosely knotted---as his left hand was clenched awkwardly in the embarrassed man's right.
I skipped the graduation parties and talked to my brother for most of the night. There was small talk, of Sanford & Son, and of many things unspoken during the weeks after Michael and the mill, and reassuring words he said to me before I went to bed.
"You need to stop worrying about me, Roy. It just took me some time to get right. I've made sense of all of this now."
Instead of a big party when I turned eighteen, we had dinner at the house, eating the gumbo my mother made. My daddy played his records. Paul danced with my mother until she got tired and went to bed. When she was gone, my father went to his liquor cabinet, pulled out the big bottle of Crown Royal he saved, and poured thin layers into three of his good glasses.
"To my sons. The damn-near twins."
When I swirled it around, it was just thick enough to stick to the sides of the glass before it rolled back down. That was the same way it felt in my mouth before I swallowed.
This was the first time I'd had good liquor outright. We'd stolen tastes, of course, every once in a while slipping shots into Styrofoam cups and obscuring the taste with too much ice and store-brand ginger ale, but this was the first time I had tasted whiskey full on.
"You can pour yourself another one, Roy," my father said. "You won't be able to drink with the Right Reverend Paul Deacon."
Paul stared out the window like my father would sometimes. He hadn't taken a drink yet.
Then, "To Michael," he said, raising his glass.
That next day, I found on my chest of drawers a note: "Jubilee."
I folded the note in my pocket. Around the wastebasket, I saw the discarded scraps of paper. Imperfect letters that Paul had tried again and again with his left hand, incomplete early versions of the single word he had finally gotten right.
He always got to the eastern shore before me. I saw the truck parked on the side of the beach road. He left the park lights on so I could find him.
"Old man Roy Deacon."
After looking out at the lights, it takes my eyes a minute to adjust so I can see my brother. At first I can only hear his voice. But slowly he comes into focus. Whenever I see him, I am reminded how the years have treated me. I am much rounder at the middle, even when I suck in my gut. My hairline has gone its own way. He's still the same. If other people could see us together, it might be hard to imagine that we were born so close together.
"How's forty treating you?"
"I have five minutes left. Let me enjoy it."
"How does it feel to be on the verge of a grand transcendental moment? On the cusp of something greater than yourself?"
"I'll tell you in five minutes."
It's warm on the beach, and Paul has his shoes off. He has those high-arched feet that look like they're always ready to run. He used to stand in the water and wait for the fish and the crab without looking for them. He'd just feel them as they started to brush against his ankles.
"Transcendental moments need to be marked. Did you bring some punctuation?"
I show him the purple Crown Royal sack.
"You always come through, Roy. Always did."
I give him a sip, and pour a bit more on the ground.
"For the brothers who ain't here," I say.
"For the brothers who ain't here."
I look down at the ground. The bit of Crown I poured is soaking into the sand between me and my brother.
"I can't stay. I just wanted to wish you a good one," he says. "I wanted to see the kids, too. Where are they?"
"I let them play in the water for a while. They'll be back in a minute."
The scars on his arm have healed as well as can be expected. The ones along his wrist, from the accident. And the other scars that he put there. When I'd gotten to the eastern shore that night, I'd seen the park lights of Paul's truck along the beach road. When I'd found him, I thought he was sleeping.
"It's good to see you again, Roy."
On that Jubilee night in 1981, I had planned to meet my brother here on the beach. Instead I found him in the back of his truck. Since it had been hard for him to sleep soundly those months before---with Michael Donald and the pain in his arm---I'd decided to let him sleep until the tide came in. It wasn't until I came back and tried to wake him that I realized.
"You know Roy, when we were kids I wished I could stay here forever."
When I'd turned my flashlight on him, I'd seen the places where the blood had run down the rivets of the payload, soaking the dirt and leaves that had collected there. Some had leaked through the rusted places and pooled on the red clay of the road.
"Forever's a long time."
He didn't leave a note. My doctor said they don't always leave notes. And even if he had, the doctor says it might have caused more questions than it answered. He didn't leave a note, but he left a message, spelled out carefully in neat razor-drawn letters along his forearm. MARK 8 24. Some time later I would find it in his Bible. The verse he had underlined and crossed out again and again until the pen ripped through the parchment.
Tonight, Paul put his good arm on my shoulder. The scars along the arm that hangs at his side have healed as well as could be expected. The red open wounds have closed. In their place, swollen keloids have risen like braille against him.
This is the peace I have made for myself. Here in the place we like to claim. This I need to hold the rest together. While I wait for a harvest I don't understand, while I watch my children play in the water, while I watch how sand adheres to the good liquor I pour for brothers and friends.
I see my brother but I cannot feel his hand along my shoulder. I only feel my daughter's shovel as she taps me on my thigh. The alarm on her watch is beeping. She's singing "Happy Birthday" along with the electronic melody.
"Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to Daddy . . ."
Give them a hug from their uncle.
"Happy birthday, Pop," my son yells to me from the soft sand at the water's edge.
Take it easy, Roy.
I light a match to check the wind. The wind is blowing easterly, like it's supposed to for a Jubilee. It won't be long now. Tomorrow we'll celebrate my forty years. Family and friends will gather and we'll eat gumbo made from the crab and fish that I'll bring home in the morning. Many of us have gathered along the shore at the water now, looking for the silver sides of the floating fish and the sand-colored shells of beached crab. Some of us have lights on while others look down with eyes adjusted to the eastern shore darkness. We watch and wait for them.
Weight
My mother is a weightlifter. You know what I mean. She understands that the best laid plans, the sweetest beginnings, have a way of turning to shit. Bad enough when life fattens you up just so it can turn around and gobble you down. Worse for the ones like my mother life keeps skinny, munching on her daily, one cruel, little, needle-toothed bite at a time so the meal lasts and lasts. Mom understands life don't play so spends beaucoup time and energy getting ready for the worst. She lifts weights to stay strong. Not barbells or dumbbells, though most of the folks she deals with, especially her sons, act just that way, like dumbbells. No. The weights she lifts are burdens, her children's, her neighbors', yours. Whatever awful calamities arrive on her doorstep or howl in the news, my mom squeezes her frail body beneath them. Grips, hoists, holds the weight. I swear sometimes I can hear her sinews squeaking and singing under a load of invisible tons.
I ought to know since I'm one of the burdens bowing her shoulders. She loves heavy, hopeless me unconditionally. Before I was born, Mom loved me, forever and ever till death do us part. I'll never be anyone else's darling, darling boy, so it's her fault, her doing, isn't it, that neither of us can face the thought of losing the other. How could I resist reciprocating her love. Needing her. Draining her. Feeling her straining underneath me, the pop and crackle of her arthritic joints, her gray hair sizzling with static electricity, the hissing friction, tension, and pressure as she lifts more than she can bear. Bears more than she can possibly lift. You have to see it to believe it. Like the Flying Wallendas or Houdini's spine-chilling escapes. One of the greatest shows on Earth.
My mother believes in a god whose goodness would not permit him to inflict more troubles than a person can handle. A god of mercy and salvation. A sweaty, bleeding god presiding over a fitness class in which his chosen few punish their muscles. She should wear a T-shirt: "God's Gym."
In spite of a son in prison for life, twin girls born dead, a mind-blown son who roams the streets with everything he owns in a shopping cart, a strung-out daughter with a crack baby, a good daughter who'd miscarried the only child her dry womb ever produced, in spite of me and the rest of my limp-along, near to normal siblings and their children---my nephews doping and gangbanging, nieces unwed, underage, dropping babies as regularly as the seasons---in spite of breast cancer, sugar diabetes, hypertension, failing kidneys, emphysema, gout, all resident in her body and epidemic in the community, knocking off one by one her girlhood friends, in spite of corrosive poverty and a neighborhood whose streets are no longer safe even for gray, crippled-up folks like her, my mom loves her god, thanks him for the blessings he bestows, keeps her faith he would not pile on more troubles than she could bear. Praises his name and prays for strength, prays for more weight so it won't fall on those around her less able to bear up.
You've seen those iron pumping, musclebound brothers fresh out the slam who show up at the playground to hoop and don't get picked on a team cause they can't play a lick, not before they did their bit, and sure not now, back on the set, stiff and stone-handed as Frankenstein, but finally some old head goes on and chooses one on his squad because the brother's so huge and scary looking sitting there with his jaws tight, lip poked out you don't want him freaking out and kicking everybody's ass just because the poor baby's feelings is hurt, you know what I mean, the kind so buff looks like his coiled-up insides about to bust through his skin or his skin's stripped clean off his body so he's a walking anatomy lesson. Well, that's how my mom looks to me sometimes, her skin peeled away, no secrets, every taut nerve string on display.
I can identify the precise moment during a trip with her one afternoon to the supermarket on Walnut Street in Shadyside, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, white community with just a few families of us colored sprinkled at the bottom ends of a couple of streets, when I began to marvel at my mother's prodigious strength. I was very young, young enough not to believe I'd grow old, just bigger. A cashier lady who seemed to be acquainted with my mother asked very loudly, Is this your son, and Mom smiled in reply to the cashier's astonishment saying calmly, Yes, he is, and the doughy white lady in her yellow Krogers' smock with her name on the breast tried to match my mother's smile but only managed a fake grin like she'd just discovered shit stinks but didn't want anybody else to know she knew. Then she blurted, He's a tall one, isn't he.
Not a particularly unusual moment as we unloaded our shopping cart and waited for the bad news to ring up on the register. The three of us understood, in spite of the cashier's quick shuffle, what had seized her attention. In public situations the sight of my pale, caucasian-featured mother and her variously colored kids disconcerted strangers. They gulped. Stared. Muttered insults. We were visible proof somebody was sneaking around after dark, breaking the apartheid rule, messy mulatto exceptions to the rule, trailing behind a woman who could be white.
Nothing special about the scene in Krogers. Just an ugly moment temporarily reprieved from turning uglier by the cashier's remark that attributed her surprise to a discrepancy in height not color. But the exchange alerted me to a startling fact---I was taller than my mother. The brown boy, me, could look down at the crown of his light-skinned mother's head. Obsessed by size, like most adolescent boys, size in general and the size of each and every particular part of my body and how mine compared to others, I was always busily measuring and keeping score, but somehow I'd lost track of my mother's size, and mine relative to hers. Maybe because she was beyond size. If someone had asked me my mother's height or weight I probably would have replied, Huh. Ubiquitous I might say now. A tiny, skin-and-bone woman way too huge for size to pin down.
The moment in Krogers is also when I began to marvel at my mother's strength. Unaccountably, unbeknownst to me, my body had grown larger than hers, yes, and the news was great in a way, but more striking and not so comforting was the fact, never mind my advantage in size, I felt hopelessly weak standing there beside my mom in Krogers. A wimpy shadow next to her solid flesh and bones. I couldn't support for one hot minute a fraction of the weight she bore on her shoulders twenty-four hours a day. The weight of the cashier's big-mouthed disbelief. The weight of hating the pudgy white woman forever because she tried to steal my mother from me. The weight of cooking and cleaning and making do with no money, the weight of fighting and loving us iron-headed, ungrateful brats. Would I always feel puny and inadequate when I looked up at the giant fist hovering over our family, the fist of God or the Devil, ready to squash us like bugs if my mother wasn't always on duty, spreading herself thin as an umbrella over our heads, her bones its steel ribs keeping the sky from falling.
Reaching down for the brass handle of this box I must lift to my shoulder, I need the gripping strength of my mother's knobby-knuckled fingers, her superhero power to bear impossible weight.
Since I was reading her this story over the phone (I called it a story but Mom knew better), I stopped at the end of the paragraph above you just completed, if you read that far, stopped because the call was long distance, daytime rates, and also because the rest had yet to be written. I could tell by her silence she was not pleased. Her negative reaction didn't surprise me. Plenty in the piece I didn't like either. Raw, stuttering stuff I intended to improve in subsequent drafts, but before revising and trying to complete it, I needed her blessing.
Mom's always been my best critic. I depend on her honesty. She tells the truth yet never affects the holier-than-thou superiority of some people who believe they occupy the high ground and let you know in no uncertain terms that you nor nobody else like you ain't hardly coming close. Huh-uh. My mother smiles as often as she groans or scolds when she hears gossip about somebody behaving badly. My, my, my she'll say and nod and smile and gently broom you, the sinner, and herself into the same crowded heap, no one any better than they should be, could be, absolute equals in a mellow sputter of laughter she sometimes can't suppress, hiding it, muffling it with her fist over her mouth, nodding, remembering, how people's badness can be too good to be true, my, my, my.
Well, my story didn't tease out a hint of laugh, and forget the 550 miles separating us, I could tell she wasn't smiling either. Why was she holding back the sunshine that could forgive the worst foolishness. Absolve my sins. Retrieve me from the dead-end corners into which I paint myself. Mama, please. Please, please, please, don't you weep. And tell ole Martha not to moan. Don't leave me drowning like Willie Boy in the deep blue sea. Smile, Mom. Laugh. Send that healing warmth through the wire and save poor me.
Was it the weightlifting joke, Mom. Maybe you didn't think it was funny.
Sorry. Tell the truth, I didn't see nothing humorous about any of it. God's T-shirt. You know better. Ought to be ashamed of yourself. Taking the Lord's name in vain.
Where do you get such ideas, boy. I think I know my children. God knows I should by now, shouldn't I. How am I not supposed to know youall after all you've put me through beating my brains out to get through to you. Yes, yes, yes. Then one you all goes and does something terrible I never would have guessed was in you. Won't say you break my heart. Heart's been broke too many times. In too many little itty-bitty pieces can't break down no more, but youall sure ain't finished with me, are you. Still got some new trick in you to lay on your weary mother before she leaves here.
Guess I ought to be grateful to God an old fool like me's still around to be tricked, Weightlifter. Well, it's different. Nobody ain't called me nothing like weightlifter before. It's different, sure enough.
Now here's where she should have laughed. She'd picked up the stone I'd bull's-eyed right into the middle of her wrinkled brow, between her tender, brown, all-seeing eyes, lifted it and turned it over in her hands like a jeweler with a tiny telescope strapped around his skull inspecting a jewel, testing its heft and brilliance, the marks of god's hands, god's will, the hidden truths sparkling in its depths, multiplied, splintered through mirroring facets. After such a brow-scrunching examination, isn't it time to smile. Kiss and make up. Wasn't that Mom's way. Wasn't that how she handled the things that hurt us and hurt her. Didn't she ease the pain of our worst injuries with the balm of her everything's-going-to-be-alright-in-the-morning smile. The smile that takes the weight, every hurtful ounce and forgives, the smile licking our wounds so they scab over, and she can pick them off our skin, stuff their lead weight into the bulging sack of all sorrows slung across her back.
The possibility my wannabe story had actually hurt her dawned on me. Or should I say bopped me upside my head like the Br'er Bear club my middle brother loads in his cart to discourage bandits. I wished I was sitting at the kitchen table across from her so I could check for damage, her first, then check myself in the mirror of those soft, brown, incredibly loving mother's eyes. If I'd hurt her even a teeny-tiny bit, I'd be broken forever unless those eyes repaired me. Yet even as I regretted reading her the clumsy passage and prepared myself to surrender wholly, happily to the hounds of hell if I'd harmed one hair on her tender, gray head, I couldn't deny a sneaky, smarting tingle of satisfaction at the thought that maybe, maybe words I'd written had touched another human being, mama mia or not.
Smile, Mom. It's just a story. Just a start. I know it needs more work. You were supposed to smile at the weightlifting part.
God not something to joke about.
C'mon, mom. How many times have I heard Reverend Fitch cracking you up with his corny God jokes.
Time and a place.
Maybe stories are my time and place, Mom. You know. My time and place to say things I need to say.
No matter how bad it comes out sounding, right. No matter you make a joke of your poor mother . . .
Poor mother's suffering. You were going to say, "Poor mother's suffering," weren't you?
You heard what I said.
And heard what you didn't say. I hear those words, too. The unsaid ones, Mom. Louder sometimes. Drowning out what gets said, Mom.
Whoa. We gon let it all hang out this morning, ain't we. Son. First that story. Now you accusing me of your favorite trick, that muttering under your breath. Testing me this morning, aren't you. What makes you think a sane person would ever pray for more weight. Ain't those the words you put in my mouth. More weight.
And the building shook. The Earth rumbled. More weight descended like god's fist on his Hebrew children. Like in Lamentations. The Book in the Bible. The movie based on the Book based on what else, the legend of my mother's long-suffering back.
Because she had a point.
"People with no children can be cruel." Had I heard it first from Oprah, the diva of suffering my mother could have become if she'd pursued showbiz instead of weightlifting. Or was the damning phrase a line from one of Gwen Brooks's abortion blues. Whatever their source, the words fit and I was ashamed. I do know better. A bachelor and nobody's daddy, but still my words have weight. Like sticks and stones, words can break bones. Metaphors can pull you apart and put you back together all wrong. I know what you mean, Mom. My entire life I've had to listen to people trying to tell me I'm just a white man in a dark skin.
Give me a metaphor long enough and I'll move the Earth. Somebody famous said it. Or said something like that. And everybody, famous or not knows words sting. Words change things. Step on a crack, break your mother's back.
On the other hand, Mom, metaphor's just my way of trying to say two things, be in two places at once. Saying goodbye and hello and goodbye. Many things, many places at once. You know, like James Cleveland singing our favorite gospel tune, "Stood on the Bank of Jordan." Metaphors are very short songs. Mini-mini stories. Rivers between like the Jordan where ships sail on, sail on and you stand and wave goodbye-hello, hello-good-bye.
Weightlifter just a word, just play. I was only teasing, Mom. I didn't mean to upset you. I certainly intended no harm. I'd swallow every stick of dynamite it takes to pay for a Nobel prize before I'd accept one if it cost just one of your soft, curly hairs.
Smile. Let's begin again.
It's snowing in Massachusetts The ground's white in O-Hi-O. Yes, it's snowing in Massachusetts And ground's white in O-Hi-O. Shut my eyes, Mr. Weatherman / Can't stand to see my baby go.
When I called you last Thursday evening and didn't get an answer I started worrying. I didn't know why. We'd talked Tuesday and you sounded fine. Better than fine. A lift and lilt in your voice. After I hung up the phone Tuesday said to myself, Mom's in good shape. Frail but her spirit's strong. Said those very words to myself more than once Tuesday. Frail but her spirit's strong. The perkiness I sensed in you helped make my Wednesday super. Early rise. Straight to my desk. Two pages before noon and you know me, Mom. Two pages can take a week, a month. I've had two page years. I've had decades dreaming the one perfect page I never got around to writing. Thursday morning reams of routine and no pages but not to worry I told myself. After Wednesday's productivity, wasn't I entitled to some down time. Just sat at my desk, pleased as punch with myself till I got bored feeling so good and started a nice novel, Call It Sleep. Dinner at KFC buffet. Must have balled up fifty napkins trying to keep my chin decent. Then home to call you before I snuggled up again with the little Jewish boy, his mama, and their troubles in old NYC.
Let your phone ring and ring. Too late for you to be out unless you had a special occasion. And you always let me know well ahead of time when something special coming up. I tried calling a half hour later and again twenty minutes after that. By then nearly nine, close to your bedtime. I was getting really worried now. Couldn't figure where you might be. Nine-fifteen and still no answer, no clue what was going on.
Called Sis. Called Aunt Chloe. Nobody knew where you were. Chloe said she'd talked with you earlier just like every other morning. Sis said you called her at work after she got back from lunch. Both of them said you sounded fine. Chloe said you'd probably fallen asleep in your recliner and left the phone in the bedroom or bathroom and your hearing's to the point you can be wide-awake but if the TV's on and the phone's not beside you or the ringer's not turned to high she said sometimes she has to ring and hang up, ring and hang up, two, three times before she catches you.
Chloe promised to keep calling every few minutes till she reached you. Said they have a prayer meeting Thursdays in your mother's building and she's been saying she wants to go and I bet she's there, honey. She's alright, honey. Don't worry yourself, OK. We're old and fuddleheaded now, but we're tough old birds. Your mother's fine. I'll tell her to call you soon's I get through to her. Your mom's okay, baby. God keeps an eye on us.
You know Aunt Chloe. She's your sister. Five hundred miles away and I could hear her squeezing her large self through the telephone line, see her pillow arms reaching for the weight before it comes down on me.
Why would you want to hear any of this. You know what happened. Where you were. You know how it all turned out.
You don't need to listen to my conversation with Sis. Dialing her back after we'd been disconnected. The first time in life I think my sister ever phoned me later than ten o'clock at night. First time a lightning bolt ever disconnected us. Ever disconnected me from anybody ever.
Did you see Eva Wallace first, Mom, coming through your door, or was it the busybody super you've never liked since you moved in. Something about the way she speaks to her granddaughter you said. Little girl's around the building all day because her mother's either in the street or the slam and the father takes the child so rarely he might as well live in Timbuktu so you know the super doesn't have it easy and on a couple of occasions you've offered to keep the granddaughter when the super needs both hands and her mind free for an hour. You don't hold the way she busies up in everybody's business or the fact the child has to look out for herself too many hours in the day against the super, and you're sure she loves her granddaughter you said but the short way she talks sometimes to a child that young just not right.
Who'd you see first pushing open your door. Eva said you didn't show up after you said you'd stop by for her. She waited awhile she said then phoned you and got no answer and then a friend called her and they got to running their mouths and Eva said she didn't think again about you not showing up when you were supposed to until she hung up the phone. And not right away then. Said as soon as she missed you, soon as she remembered youall had planned on attending the Thursday prayer meeting together she got scared. She knows how dependable you are. Even though it was late, close to your bedtime, she called you anyway and let the phone ring and ring. Way after nine by then. Pulled her coat on over her housedress, scooted down the hall and knocked on your door cause where else you going to be. No answer so she hustled back to her place and phoned downstairs for the super and they both pounded on your door till the super said we better have a look just in case and unlocked your apartment. Stood there staring after she turned the key, trying to see through the door, then slid it open a little and both of them Eva said tiptoeing in like a couple of fools after all that pounding and hollering in the hall. Said she never thought about it at the time but later, after everything over and she drops down on her couch to have that cigarette she knew she shouldn't have with her lungs rotten as they are and hadn't smoked one for more than a year but sneaks the Camel she'd been saving out its hiding place in a Baggie in the freezer and sinks back in the cushions and lights up, real tired, real shook up and teary she said but couldn't help smiling at herself when she remembered all that hollering and pounding and then tipping in like a thief.
It might have happened that way. Being right or wrong about what happened is less important sometimes than finding a good way to tell it. What's anybody want to hear anyway. Not the truth people want. No-no-no. People want the best told story, the lie that entertains and turns them on. No question about it, is there. What people want. What gets people's attention. What sells soap. Why else do the biggest, most barefaced liars rule the world.
Hard to be a mother, isn't it Mom. I can't pretend to be yours, not even a couple minutes' worth before I go to pieces. I try to imagine a cradle with you lying inside, cute, miniature bedding tucked around the tiny doll of you. I can almost picture you asleep in it, snuggled up, your eyes shut, maybe your thumb in your mouth but then you cry out in the night, you need me to stop whatever I'm doing and rush in and scoop you up and press you to my bosom, lullabye you back to sleep. I couldn't manage it. Not the easy duty I'm imagining, let alone you bucking and wheezing and snot, piss, vomit, shit, blood, you hot and throbbing with fever, steaming in my hands like the heart ripped fresh from some poor soul's chest.
Too much weight. Too much discrepancy in size. As big a boy as I've grown to be, I can't lift you.
Will you forgive me if I cheat, Mom. Dark suited, strong men in somber ties and white shirts will lug you out of the church, down the stone steps, launch your gleaming barge into the black river of the Cadillac's bay. My brothers won't miss me not handling my share of the weight. How much weight could there be. Tiny, scooped out you. The tinny, fake wood shell. The entire affair's symbolic. Heavy with meaning not weight. You know. Like metaphors. Like words interchanged as if they have no weight or too much weight, as if words are never required to bear more than they can stand. As if words, when we're finished mucking with them, go back to just being words.
The word trouble. The word sorrow. The word bye-and-bye.
I was wrong and you were right, as usual, Mom. So smile. Certain situations, yours for instance, being a mother, suffering what mothers suffer, why would anyone want to laugh at that. Who could stand in your shoes a heartbeat---shoes, shoes, everybody got to have shoes---bear your burdens one instant and think it's funny. Who ever said it's okay to lie and kill as long as it makes a good story.
Smile. Admit you knew from the start it would come to this. Me trembling, needing your strength. It has, Mom, so please, please, a little, bitty grin of satisfaction. They say curiosity kills the cat and satisfaction brings it back. Smiling. Smile Mom. Come back. You know I've always hated spinach but please spoonfeed me a canful so those Popeye muscles pop in my arms. I meant shapeshifter not weightlifter. I meant the point of this round, spinning-top Earth must rest somewhere, on something or someone. I meant you are my sunshine. My only sunshine.
The problem never was the word "weightlifter," was it. If you'd been insulted by my choice of metaphor you would have let me know, not by silence, but nailing me with a quick, funny signifying dig, and then you would have smiled or laughed and we'd have gone on to the next thing. What must have bothered you, stunned you was what I said into the phone before I began reading. Said this is about a man scared he won't survive his mother's passing.
That's what upset you, wasn't it. Saying goodbye to you. Practicing for your death in a story. Trying on for size a world without you. Ignoring like I did when I was a boy, your size. Saying aloud terrible words with no power over us as long as we don't speak them.
So when you heard me let the cat out the bag, you were shocked, weren't you. Speechless. Smileless. What could you say. The damage had been done. I heard it in your first words after you got back your voice. And me knowing your lifelong, deathly fear of cats. Like the big, furry orange Tom you told me about, how it curled up on the porch just outside your door, trapping you a whole August afternoon inside the hotbox shanty in Washington, D.C., when I lived in your belly.
Why would I write a story that risks your life. Puts our business in the street. I'm the oldest child, supposed to be the man of the family now. No wonder you cried, Oh father. Oh son. Oh holy ghost. Why hath thou forsaken me. I know you didn't cry that. You aren't Miss Oprah. But I sure did mess up, didn't I. Didn't I, Mom. Up to my old tricks. Crawling up inside you. My weight twisting you all out of shape.
I asked you once about the red sailor cap hanging on the wall inside your front door. Knew it was my brother's cap on the nail, but why that particular hat I asked and not another of his countless, fly sombreros on display. Rob, Rob, man of many lids. For twenty years in the old house, now in your apartment, the hat a shrine no one allowed to touch. You never said it but everybody understood the red hat your good luck charm, your mojo for making sure Rob would get out the slam one day and come bopping through the door, pluck the hat from the wall and pull it down over his bean head. Do you remember me asking why the sailor cap. You probably guessed I was fishing. Really didn't matter which cap, did it. Point was you chose the red one and why must always be your secret. You could have made up a nice story to explain why the red sailor cap wound up on the nail and I would have listened as I always listened all ears but you knew part of me would be trying to peek through the words at your secret. Always a chance you might slip up and reveal too much. So the hat story and plenty others never told. The old folks had taught you that telling another person your secret wish strips it of its power, a wish's small, small chance, as long as it isn't spoken, to influence what might happen next in the world. You'd never tell anyone the words sheltered in the shadow of your heart. Still, I asked about the red sailor cap because I needed to understand your faith, your weightlifting power, how you can believe a hat, any fucking kind of hat, could bring my baby brother home safe and sound from prison. I needed to spy and pry. Wiretap the telephone in your bosom. Hear the words you would never say to another soul, not even on pain of death.
How would such unsaid words sound, what would they look like on a page. And if you had uttered them, surrendered your stake in them, forfeited their meager, silent claim to work miracles, would it have been worth the risk, even worth the loss, to finally hear the world around you cracking, collapsing, changing as you spoke your little secret tale.
Would you have risen an inch or two from this cold ground. Would you have breathed easier after releasing the heaviness of silent words hoarded so unbearably, unspeakably long. Let go, Mom. Shed the weight just once.
Not possible for you, I know. It would be cheating, I know. The man of unbending faith did not say to the hooded inquisitors piling a crushing load of stones on his chest, "More light. More light." No. I'm getting my quotes mixed up again. Just at the point the monks thought they'd broken his will, just as spiraling fractures started splintering his bones, he cried, "More bricks. More bricks."
I was scared, Mom. Scared every cotton-picking day of my life I'd lose you. The fear a singsong taunt like tinnitus ringing in my ear. No wonder I'm a little crazy. But don't get me wrong. Not your fault. I don't blame you for my morbid fears, my unhappiness. It's just that I should have confessed sooner, long, long ago, the size of my fear of losing you. I wish you'd heard me say the words. How fear made me keep my distance, hide how much I depended on your smile. The sunshine of your smiling laughter that could also send me silently screaming out the room in stories I never told you because you'd taught me as you'd been taught, not to say anything aloud I didn't want to come true. Nor say out loud the things I wished to come true. Doesn't leave a hell of a lot to say, does it. No wonder I'm tongue-tied, scared shitless.
But would it be worth the risk, worth failing, if I could find words to tell our story and also keep us covered inside it, work us invisibly into the fret, the warp and woof of the story's design, safe there, connected there as words in perfect poems, the silver apples of the moon, golden apples of the sun, blue guitars. The two of us like those rhyming pairs "never" and "forever," "heart" and "part," in the doo-wop songs I harmonized with the fellas in the alley around the corner from Henderson's barber shop up on Frankstown Avenue, first me then lost brother Sonny and his crew then baby brother Rob and his cut buddy hoodlums rapping and now somebody else black and young and wild and pretty so the song lasts forever and never ever ends even though the voices change back there in the alley where you can hear bones rattling in the men's fists, "fever in the funkhouse looking for a five," and hear wine bottles exploding and hear the rusty shopping cart squeak over the cobblestones of some boy ferrying an old lady's penny-ante groceries home for a nickel once, then a dime, a quarter, four quarters now.
Would it be worth the risk, worth failing.
Shouldn't I try even if I know the strength's not in me. No, you say. Yes. Hold on, let go. Do I hear you saying, Everything's gonna be alright. Saying, Do what you got to do, baby, smiling as I twist my fingers into the brass handle. As I lift.
FROM Thieves' Paradise
Momma shrieked.
The walls echoed her cries for Daddy to get his hands off her, brought her pleas up the stairs to my room. I jumped and my algebra book dropped from my chestnut desk onto the floor.
My father cursed.
By the time I made it to the railing and looked down into the living room, Momma was in front of my father, begging for forgiveness. Her petite frame was balled up on our Aztec-patterned sofa. She was holding her lip to keep the blood from flowing onto the fabric. I watched her rub away the pain on her cinnamon skin, then run her fingers through her wavy coal-black hair.
My old man looked up at me and grimaced. "Go back to your room, boy."
I was fifteen and a half. Less than half of my old man's age.
He stomped toward Momma.
She screamed and moved away from him like she was trying to run away from the madness that lived here every day.
My chest heaved as I stumbled past the grandfather clock and rushed down the stairs. My heart was pounding. I tightened my hands and hurried to my momma's side.
"Momma," I moaned as I kneeled next to her. "You okay?"
"I'm alright, baby. It's nothing. Nothing."
I looked back at my liquored-up old man. He bobbed his head and pointed back at the kitchen. "I work hard all day and come home to no dinner?"
He was slurring and sneering down on us.
I said, "Nobody knew you were coming home tonight."
Momma tried to get up. "I overslept. My pills made me---"
"Carmen," he shouted. "Get up off that sofa and cook. Now. Planet of the Apes comes on in an hour and I want my food on the table by the time Charlton Heston---"
"Don't ever touch Momma again."
"What you say?"
"He didn't say anything." Momma touched my arm. "I'm okay, baby. Go back and finish studying for your test."
Daddy's back straightened, his bushy mustache crooked as his lips curved down, his eyes widened. "What you say to me, nigger?"
"I'm not a nigger. My name is Dante."
"So, the nigger speaking up for himself."
"You heard me the first time. And I ain't a nigger."
"You challenging me? What, you think because you got a little hair over your dick you're a grown man now? Ain't but one man in this house."
Momma spoke carefully to Daddy. "Don't get upset."
I frowned at the shiny badge on the chest of his tan uniform, then at the gun in his leather holster.
He sucked his teeth, nodded, and jerked the badge off. He threw the gun holster on the love seat. He stepped away from the glass coffee table, opened his arms, and snapped out, "You want to be a man? Come on. I'll give you the first shot. Nigger, I'll knock your black ass into the middle of next week."
Momma gripped my arm tight enough for her nails to break my skin. I glanced at the golden cross she had on her chest, the one she had got from her mother just a few weeks before Grandmamma died. I looked into my momma's light brown eyes, eyes that looked like mine. "Let me go, Momma."
"No." She put her nose against mine and whispered, "Momma's okay. It's just a little scratch."
My knees shook when I stood and faced my old man. When his eyes met mine, his anger held so much power that I forgot how to breathe. Heart went into overdrive. He balled up his right fist, slammed it into the palm of his left hand; it echoed like thunder. "What are you gonna do, nigger?"
I trembled, backed away, and said, "Nothing."
"Nothing, what?"
"Nothing, sir."
I kicked my bare feet into the rust carpet, then slumped my shoulders, wiped my sweaty hands on my jean shorts, and turned around to go back to my room.
Then that motherfucker chuckled.
A simple laugh that stoked up the rage inside of me.
I charged at him as fast and as hard as I could.
Momma screamed.
Daddy's eyes widened with surprise.
Pain. Anger. Fear.
Three screams from three people.
From the backseat of the police car, I stared through the wire cage at the colorful rotating lights that were brightening Scottsdale's earth-tone stucco houses. I was hostage under a calm sky. The spinning glow from twelve squad cars looked like rainbows chasing rainbows. Colors raced over all the sweet gum trees and windmill palms, moved like a strobe light over the vanhoutte spirea in the front of the three-car garage. The reek of cordite was on my flesh. Couldn't really smell it over the stench of my stress sweating. I concentrated on the colors to make the pain from the tight handcuffs go away. Watched the rainbows come and go.
The door opened. A dry May breeze mixed with the sweltering car air. A police officer stuck his sweaty head inside. His face was hard, his voice angry and anxious. "Your mother wants to say something to you before we lock your ass up. We shouldn't let her say a damn word to you after what you did. Do you mind?
I stared straight ahead. "No."
He raised his voice. "No what?"
"No," I repeated in a way that let him know I thought that all of them were assholes for making me out to be the bad guy. "I don't mind."
He gripped the back of my neck. "You're pretty belligerent."
I was a knob-kneed reed of a boy. Hadn't lifted anything heavier than an algebra book and could barely run a mile in P.E. without passing out. That was before I started pumping weights, before squats, before doing two hundred push-ups in the morning to start my day, doing sprints, before the hooks and jabs and side kicks and roundhouse kicks and spinning back kicks became my trademark.
I said, "Fuck you."
With his other hand he grabbed the front of my throat and squeezed, made me gag and look into his blue eyes. He growled, "Say, 'No, sir. I don't mind, sir.' You insolent bastard."
He let me go when another officer passed by. I gagged and caught my breath while perspiration tingled down my forehead into my eyes. I tilted my head and looked at him.
He smirked. "Now, what you have to say?"
I spat in his face.
His cheeks turned crimson. He stared at me while my saliva rolled down his scarred face into his ill-trimmed wheat-colored mustache.
"That's your ass, boy."
Veins popped up in his neck while he stood there, handkerchief in hand, clenching his teeth and wiping my juices from his eye. He kept watching me, wanted me to break down and show my fear. It was there, but I refused to let it be seen. Another officer passed by and scarface told him what I'd done. It looked like they were about to double team me, but the second officer said they had to report the assault and they both stormed away.
A second later the door opened again and my mother eased her bruised face inside.
She said, "Don't hate me."
"Love you, Momma." I smiled. "Get away from here."
She fondled her wedding ring. Tears formed in her eyes. She dropped the police blanket from her shoulders, took her cross off, and put it around my neck.
She used her soft fingers to wipe the sweat from my eyes.
"Somebody'll come get you out. Maybe Uncle Ray. You might be able to go back to Philly and stay with him for a while."
"Uncle Ray don't like us. We're Catholic; Jehovah's Witnesses don't like nobody but Jehovah's Witnesses."
"Stop saying that."
"It's true."
"I'll call him anyway. I'll tell him you made the honor roll, so he'll know you're still doing good in school. Let him know you might get a scholarship. You could help him around his grocery store in the evenings."
I shook my head. "Don't worry about me. Get away before he hurts you. All he's gonna do is beat you up, then go out to Fort McDowell and spend the night with that Indian woman. He ain't been home in two days, then walks in complaining about some stupid dinner. Tomorrow he'll be mad about his shirts. The next day his shoes."
My old man was standing in a crowd of badges, guns, and whispers. The ambulance crew had bandaged his head and he was back on his feet. I'd beat him with everything I could get my hands on.
He made a single finger gesture for Momma to come.
My beautiful momma looked tired of the life she was living, and that made me sad. She wiped her eyes and kissed the side of my face. "You understand, don't you? You're a big boy now. Almost a man. You can take care of yourself. You understand."
I kissed the side of her face as my answer.
"Don't be angry." She twisted her lips. "Don't be like him."
"I won't." I smiled for her. "Go back inside before you get in trouble. Stop taking so much of that medication."
She rubbed her eyes, then dragged her fingers down across her lips. "It calms my nerves."
"Why you wanna sleep so much?"
"Sometimes," she patted my legs with her thin fingers, "sometimes I have nice dreams."
She was distant, reciting and not living the words.
I said, "Dreams ain't real, Momma."
"Sometimes---" she started, then stopped and kissed my forehead. Her voice became as melodic as the poetry she always read. "Sometimes they're better than what's real."
I fought the dryness in my throat that always came before my tears. I was scared. Fifteen and a half and living in fear.
She wandered away, wringing her hands and looking back at me every other step. We blew each other dysfunctional kisses.
I'd be in juvenile hall, then a boys' home until I was old enough to register for the draft and vote.
Living with criminals would be like going to a different kinda school. Nigerians, Mexicans, whites, no matter what nationality, they were all caught up in the same game. And didn't hesitate to lend to the schooling on everything from Three Card Monte to Rocks in a Box to Pigeon Drops, even broke down how to pass bad checks. A few were bold enough to run telephone scams from the inside.
That was different from the education I was after.
I had dreams of getting into Howard, to a frat life and a world filled with sorority girls. Always wanted to stomp in a Greek Show. Make enough money to get a small place, get Momma to move in with me. I was working on our escape.
But that night, guess I had had all I could stand and couldn't stand no more. I wanted to be like a superhero and rescue my momma. That was my mission in life. What motivated me.
Hard to save anybody when you're locked up, when you're too busy trying to fight to save yourself. When you've made yourself a prisoner.
I did want to save her. That gave my life a lot of purpose.
But there would be no Howard. No sorority girl at my side. And the closest thing to a frat I would see would be a bunch of young hardheads lining up for roll call, all wearing prison blues, most with tattoos. Our Greek Show was marching in sync to go get our meals.
Momma would find her own way to freedom.
My momma would take too many pills and become an angel.
My daddy would be found dead behind the wheel of his Thunderbird at Fort McDowell. Ambushed and shot outside of a married Indian woman's place.
On that night of changes, I sat in the back of that squad car staring at the colorful lights that were dancing in the night to make my pain go away. Watched the rainbows chasing the rainbows.
• 1
The phone rang.
Jarred me from my sleep and severed me from my past.
Time to time, I had nightmares, I felt the pain from the fights and heard the screams from the midnight rapes in juvenile hall. But I learned to kick ass before I got my ass kicked.
The phone rang again.
I opened my eyes. Focused on the red digits across the room.
3:32 A.M.
Not quite yesterday; not quite today.
Traffic in NoHo---that stands for North Hollywood---was breezing by outside my window on Chandler. Somewhere down by North Hollywood High a car alarm was singing a song of distress.
I snatched the phone up and answered, "Yeah?"
"Where've you been Dante?"
I knew who it was. Hearing his voice jarred me all over again. I sat up in my queen-size bed. The room had a chill and I kept the covers wrapped around me.
He chuckled, then said, "I was beginning to think you were dead or something."
"A'ight, how you get my number, Scamz?"
"There isn't a number I can't get."
"Just got it changed last week."
He laughed his irksome, sneaky laugh. "Happy birthday. You made it to the big two-five."
"On a hot wing and a prayer."
"A black man's not supposed to live past twenty-five."
"Then that makes me a senior citizen. I should be eligible for Social Security and a ten percent discount at Denny's."
"You crack me up." He laughed. "That's why I like talking to you."
I yawned, then checked my caller ID. No number was on the box. Last time he jingled, the ID box told me he was in New York, lounging at Fifth and Fifty-sixth at the Trump Tower. That was two weeks back. He didn't leave a message, he never did, but I knew that was my homey. Doubt if Donald Trump would be ringing me up to talk shop about the market. Nobody but Scamz. Time before that he told me he was down in South Beach. Time before that Montreal. Before then it was the W down in New Orleans during the Essence Festival. Before that Playa del Carmen.
I set another yawn free before I asked, "You back out in La La Land?"
"For a hot sec. Wrapping up some business before I go on vacation. You should've accepted my offer and left with me last time. Aspen had great skiing."
"Whatcha been onto?"
He boasted that over the last few weeks he'd been running scam after scam after scam. All nonviolent. Most of his dealings were in credit and green cards. Since he had women who worked everywhere from the DMV to the IRS, I already knew there wasn't any information he couldn't get, so his criminally-gifted butt getting my number didn't cause me to raise a brow. Not right then.
"Up until a few days ago, nobody around the pool hall had seen you for months," Scamz said.
"My job was keeping me busy."
"Thought One Time might've shackled you down and had you on the gray goose heading out to Chino."
"I don't do prisons." One Time was a nickname for the police. I yawned. "Like I said, I was working."
"Was?"
"Got laid off. Everything came to a screeching halt when the commercial side of the company stopped producing and the aerospace side picked up. Been out looking for another j-o-b."
Sounded like he took a draw from his cigarette, then blew the smoke out before he spoke again. "Why do you keep wasting your talents on a nine-to-five?"
Makes me content, that's all that matters. Don't need to be rich to be happy."
"What's the word, any luck?"
I told him I had called my old gig to check my status. Over twenty technicians with more time than I had were waiting to get called back. No one had gotten called back in six months and a few thousand more were getting kicked to the curb. The unemployment office told me to check back in a week or two, which was the same robotic line they ran on the twenty people in front of me.
I'd been hitting a lot of career fairs. Hit one down at the Bonaventure and put in apps with everybody from Aerospace Corporation to Sears. Never seen that many borderline-bankrupt people coming in from all over California and Nevada and Seattle looking for a job. After that I'd flown up to Oakland, hit the Alameda County Conference and Training Center, but five thousand out-of-work people beat me there. Most were in a line that circled the block by sunrise.
I told Scamz, "North or south, ain't nobody hiring."
"There's a synchronous world recession, especially in the high-tech world."
"Translate."
"No jobs out there. Jobs were already scarce, and those terrorists exacerbated the situation."
I said, "I got an interview next week."
"Another widget factory?"
"Labor gig. Slinging boxes on a truck from dusk to dawn."
"You're overqualified for that kind of work."
"A man with no job ain't overqualified for any kinda work."
"Spoken like a true member of the unemployed."
"You got jokes."
"Seems like a lot of people have been humbled."
I cleared my throat. "They're offering twelve an hour, but I know they have a stack of apps thicker than your little black book."
He laughed at that. "What're your ends looking like until that comes through?"
"They ain't looking. Almost as blind as Helen Keller."
"Your economic recession is in full effect."
"Yep. Seems like the world is fucked up."
We said a few words about the war that was going on, on how it had done a number on people both emotionally and financially.
Scamz said, " 'Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.' "
"Shakespeare?"
"D. H. Lawrence. The opening lines of Lady Chatterley's Lover."
I yawned. "A regular Nostradamus."
"Come see me today. I got a few things lined up."
"Can't. I'm a legit man."
Scamz asked, "You heard from Jackson?"
I met Jackson a few years back through Scamz. They were the best of friends when I came along. But Jackson had been off the grift for almost two years. A good woman and a steady job had him on the straight and narrow.
I said, "Yeah. I've been hanging with him almost every day."
"What you two got going on?"
"We've been teaming up and looking for jobs together."
"So, he's getting back on the hustle?"
I debated telling Jackson's business but Scamz wasn't the type to spread the word about someone else's misfortunes. And nine times out of ten, he already knew what was going on.
I said, "His ex is suing him for back child support."
"Sabrina slapped Jackson with a lawsuit?"
"Yep. She filed papers and claimed Jackson never gave her a dime."
"I don't believe that. He cared about his kids if nothing else."
"He showed me the papers from the district attorney."
We said a few more things about that.
In the end Scamz told me, "Be careful where you stick your dick."
I laughed at those sage words. He laughed too. They were laughs of disbelief.
We chitchatted about a few other people from our little clandestine world. A few were on lockdown, a few more were about to get out. A couple had died along the way.
"Big Slim told me you were down at Eight Ball gambling with Nazario," Scamz said.
Eight Ball was a place people went when they were desperate for cash. Trouble and money was always down there. You just had to outrun the trouble to get the money.
"Yeah," I said. "That psycho was so mad he lost his mind."
"Then he didn't lose much."
"He wanted to pay me on the spot."
"People say he made a scene."
"Big time. He made his wife give me her wedding ring to cover his debt."
Scamz said, "He hates to lose, especially in front of a crowd."
"I pawned the ring. Got five hundred."
"You know he's looking for you. He wants a rematch so he can get that ring back. Heard he's been down at the pool hall at least three times a day trying to find you."
"Kinda figured that. That's why I ain't been back down to the pool hall."
"If you're sweating over chump change, you must need some economic relief."
My eyes went to my pine dresser. My bills were over there, piled up next to a stack of job rejection postcards. Frustration was bringing out the wolf in me.
I told Scamz, "Just need something to hold me over until one of these jobs come through."
He said, "Come see me. You're a good worker. I could use your help."
I paused. The jury in my mind went out to make a decision. "I'll pass. I have a few job interviews around the corner."
"Then come make some ends so you can take your woman out and have a good time."
"Me no got no woman. Got my eye on this waitress at Ed Debevic's."
"You ever stopped her yet?"
"Not yet. She has an L.A. face and an Oakland boot that won't quit. Pretty much out of my league."
"How can a waitress be out of anybody's league?"
"True."
"Be a man at all times. Never let a woman scare you. Never."
Scamz was working my disposition in his direction word by word, phrase by phrase.
"Either way," he said, "it's hard to get a woman being broke."
Scamz wasn't lying. L.A. had its own mentality and it cost to be the boss out here. Whenever I hit Atlas Bar and Grill it was five bucks to park, twenty to get in, and close to ten bucks for one drink. If I met a honey, triple that drinking budget. Breakfast at Roscoe's would add another twenty. If I got lucky, a box of condoms would cost another five. Trojans were the cheapest thing on the list. Not using one was the most expensive thing on the list.
Scamz said, "Pussy and money, Dante. Got money, you can get pussy. Got pussy---"
"You can get money."
We chuckled at his phrase.
My eyes closed when I thought about that waitress, saw her dimples, heard her mature voice, even could see her hips when she did her sensual stroll, and wondered what she was doing right now.
A second later I exhaled. "Is this hot or cold?"
Hot meant difficult. Cold meant smooth, minimal problems.
I could hear Scamz smile when I asked that. His easy words had worked me toward his team.
He replied, "Easy rent money."
"Let's be up front. I'm not down for nothing long term."
"What do I have to do to get you to reconsider?"
"You can't."
He didn't say anything for a few seconds. He did that when his mind was in overdrive. Sometimes I thought he had so many thoughts he had to shut down to keep from overloading.
Scamz said, "You know how to find me."
We left it at that. He wasn't going to give me the specifics, not over the wire.
I hung up.
3:41 A.M.
I dialed another number. Jackson answered on the first ring.
I said, "You're up?"
"Yeah. What's up Cool Hand?"
"Scamz called. He's back and it sounds like he has a few things going on."
Jackson hesitated. "Yeah, Dante. We can check on those interviews after I leave court."
I understood why he was talking in code. I said, "Robin must be over."
"Right."
"See you in a few hours."
We hung up. No matter what time of night I called, he was awake. I didn't think much about that because I wasn't sleeping on a regular schedule my-damn-self. Not having a job stole away the importance of an alarm clock. It also made it easy to lose track of my days. When a man didn't have a job, didn't have a Monday, a hump day, and a payday, all days started to blend and lose value. All were just today. All he wanted was a better tomorrow.
I was on edge, a little hungry. I walked over my two-shades-of-brown carpet, went to the kitchen sink, washed my face, dried it with a paper towel, then opened the fridge. Not much in there except leftover salmon and rice and a frozen Healthy Choice meal.
Restless. Scamz had left me agitated.
I did two hundred sit-ups, crunches, worked on my obliques. Did half as many push-ups. Stretched my legs into a split on the left side, did the same on the right, then went down into a Chinese-style split. Shadowboxed against my old memories until a layer of sweat glistened on my skin.
I looked at that stack of job rejection postcards.
Anxiety was all over me, clinging to my skin like a thousand ticks.
More push-ups until my arm burned. More sit-ups until my abs were on fire.
Dealing with Scamz meant I needed to be in shape. Ready to rumble, ready to run.
I rested in my sweat. Put on my Levi Chen Liquid Gardens CD. Meditated a few minutes.
Then with that music calming me, I stood in my window and looked out at the palm trees.
I was lonely. Broke and lonely.
L.A. was an expensive bitch. A whore who sucked your dick and swallowed all of your money, then left you sleeping on the concrete.
A man stayed broke and hungry long enough, his value system was bound to change. And when it did, Scamz was waiting.
FROM P. G. County
Barbara stepped back and smiled at her daughter. Rebecca looked regal in her beaded ivory satin gown, and for a moment Barbara forgot the utter chaos on the lawn. She forgot about the tent being decorated with flowers, the tables and chairs being arranged, the band, the buffet, the bar.
Rebecca stood in front of the mirror above her dresser and picked at her upswept do. "Does it need more hair spray, Mama?"
Barbara glanced at Pearl.
"No indeed," Pearl replied as she reached up and fussed with a tiny stray hair on Rebecca's forehead.
From all that Barbara could see, Rebecca's hair looked absolutely smashing. Pearl had done a fantastic job, as always.
"Another drop of spray and it will be sitting up there looking like a rock, child," Pearl continued. "Your hair looks beautiful just the way it is."
"I've never seen you look prettier, sweetheart." Barbara kissed her daughter gently on the forehead, being careful not to muss her makeup, then she turned to Pearl. "Let's get the veil on her now. It's already twelve-fifteen, and the photographers are due at twelve-thirty."
Pearl reached for the floor-length veil sprawled across the bed as Barbara took a quick glimpse out the bedroom window onto the lawn. The wedding planner, a petite black woman named Darlene Dunn, was leading the florist around the grounds as they placed brightly colored centerpieces and other doodads on the tables inside and outside of a large white tent. The caterer and his staff were running back and forth between the four-car garage, where they had set up a temporary kitchen with food warmers, and the buffet being set up under the tent.
Despite the busy atmosphere, everything seemed to be falling into place, Barbara thought thankfully. Well, almost everything. The only exception was that husband of hers. She checked her watch. The photographers would arrive soon to take pictures and video before the family left for the church, and the father of the bride was still out banging his mistress. Unbelievable.
She needed a cigarette badly. But she had promised Rebecca that she wouldn't moke on this day. She sighed and turned to help Pearl lift the veil just as something outdoors caught her eye. She looked out the window to see a black car turning onto their driveway. Now who on earth could that be? Rebecca's godmother had offered to come by and ride to the church with them so she would be there to supervise the procession of the wedding party and Barbara could take her place in the front pew and relax. But Marilyn drove a tan Lexus.
Barbara frowned with disapproval as the car approached the house. Anyone arriving at this early hour was either extremely rude or just plain ignorant. Her frown deepened as the sporty little car ran right up over the edge of the asphalt on the freshly mowed lawn.
What the devil? Barbara blincked hard. Her eyes must be playing a horrible trick on her. She had been awfully busy planning this wedding lately and sometimes she didn't know if she was coming or going. It was entirely possible that her eyes were giving out.
Barbara blinked again as the little black sports car kept coming across the lawn. This was no illusion. Some idiot had lost control and now the car was plowing straight toward the reception tent.
"Oh my God!" she screamed just as the car smashed headlong into the tent frame. Pearl dropped the veil on the bed and followed Rebecca to the window. Barbara could have sworn the whole tent would come crashing down, but mercifully it didn't. The car, which by now Barbara realized was a small late-model BMW being driven by a woman, backed up. Thank goodness. What an idiot.
But before Barbara could catch her breath, the engine revved and the car jerked forward. Barbara gasped as it picked up speed and rammed into the tent frame. This time the tent sagged on one end.
This woman wasn't drunk. She was doing this deliberately. Barbara covered her open mouth with her hand as Darlene, the florist, the caterer, and the waiters all ran to and fro. It looked like a fire had broken out under a circus tent.
"Lord have mercy," Pearl whispered, clutching her breasts.
Rebecca shrieked. "Who is that?"
"I have no idea," Barbara said, turning toward the bedroom door. "But I'd better get down there."
"That woman is crazy," Pearl said.
"Mama!" Rebecca cried. "Daddy just pulled up."
Barbara turned back to the window to see Bradford's silver Jaguar convertible come to a screeching halt. He jumped out, ran toward the BMW and yanked the driver's-side door open.
Slowly it dawned on Barbara that she recognized the little black car. It belonged to Sabrina, that hussy mistress of Bradford's. Barbara twisted her lips with disgust. This was utterly ridiculous. She snatched her cell phone off Rebecca's dresser.
"I'll be right back," Barbara said hurriedly. "Pearl, can you stay here and help Rebecca finish getting dressed? I know I'm only paying you to do her hair, but---"
Pearl put her forefinger to her lips. "Shh. Don't worry about a thing. Of course I will."
"Thank you so much," Barbara said as she raced to the door.
"Mama, wait!" Rebecca shouted. "Oh my God. She's getting out of the car and yelling and screaming and waving her fists at Daddy." Rebecca lifted her gown and followed Barbara to the door. "I'm going down there with you."
Barbara held her hand out. "Oh no you aren't," she said firmly. "Your father and I will handle this. I don't want you getting involved."
"But Mama, she's---"
"No buts."
Rebecca sighed and ran back to the window and stood next to Pearl. Barbara walked out the bedroom door so fast she nearly bumped into Robin, Rebecca's older sister.
"What's going on? Who is that crazy woman outside?" Robin asked. She was wearing her lavender maid-of-honor dress and fastening pearl earrings.
"I'm going down there now," Barbara replied.
"Do you want me to come with you?" Robin asked.
"Absolutely not. Go help your sister get ready."
Robin blinked, clearly puzzled by her mother's harsh reaction. Barbara didn't like the tone of her own voice. Certainly none of this was Robin's fault. But she couldn't help it, not when Bradford had allowed his whore to pull such hysterical antics on their daughter's wedding day.
She took the back stairs in her satin Ferragamo pumps two at a time, threw the back door open and marched out onto the lawn. Sabrina was still in the driveway screaming at the top of her lungs as Bradford, dressed in a navy running suit, held his hands out and tried to calm her down.
Darlene Dunn and the others stood around in a small cluster nearby, listening and watching like it was the latest installment of their favorite soap opera. Barbara was so embarrassed but determined to stay calm. She had to get this mess straightened out before Marilyn arrived, not to mention the photographer and the three hundred guests expected later that afternoon.
"You bastard," Sabrina screamed. "I can't believe you didn't invite me to the wedding. How could you do this to me, Bradford?"
Barbara couldn't help but notice how young and thin Sabrina was---and how beautiful. The woman couldn't be more than thirty and had one of those size 4 figures with forty-inch boobs. Barbara also noticed how the spaghetti straps to her black negligee kept slipping off her honey-colored shoulders. The skinny little whore hadn't even taken the time to get dressed after her little tryst with Bradford.
"You're going to have to calm down, Sabrina," Bradford said in a firm tone of voice. "Look at the mess you're making here. You're going to ruin Rebecca's wedding, and I won't have that."
"Like I give a fucking shit," Sabrina retorted, oblivious to the black mascara streaming down her cheeks. She ran toward a cluster of tables on the lawn outside the tent and grabbed a chair by the back. She flipped it over, then ran inside the tent and knocked another chair down.
Barbara was appalled. She ought to grab that whore and throw her off their property. But she was wearing a two-thousand-dollar silk suit, and Sabrina looked downright dangerous. Barbara was not about to get into a public fight over a man, even her husband. Better to let Bradford handle it. She wished he'd hurry up and get rid of her. Marilyn would be arriving any minute, and it would be horrible for Rebecca's godmother to see this.
She followed Bradford as he rushed inside the tent.
"After all I've done for you the past year, Bradford Bentley," Sabrina wailed as she stopped in front of the buffet table. "And this is the thanks I get. A whole fucking year I wasted on you. I do everything for you. I cook for you. I listen to you talk about your problems with your wife. I give you every fucking thing you want in bed."
Bradford stole a glance at Barbara. She glared back at him, eyes smoldering. It was about time he noticed her. And yes, she had heard it. Every word.
"Sabrina, don't make me have to force you to leave. It'll be better for everybody concerned if you just go and get in the car quietly."
"Fuck you, Bradford Bentley," Sabrina yelled. She grabbed a carving knife off the buffet table and held it out in front of her.
Bradford clenched his fists and circled Sabrina silently and cautiously just as Marilyn's Lexus pulled into the driveway.
Damn, Barbara thought, as if all this wasn't enough. Marilyn turned off the engine but stayed inside her car. She looked over the scene with a puzzled expression on her face and rolled down the window.
"What's going on here, Barbara?" she called out.
Barbara waved toward the house. "Go on inside and wait for me there."
Marilyn got out slowly, then ran to the front door and disappeared inside the house.
"Bradford, do I need to call the police?" Barbara was damned if she was going to let this woman ruin Rebecca's wedding day. She lifted her cell phone to dial.
"No," Bradford responded without taking his eyes off Sabrina. "Just stay back."
"Bradford, you'd better tell that bitch to put that phone away," Sabrina shouted. Then she swung the knife in Barbara's direction and lunged.
Barbara screamed as Bradford grabbed Sabrina from behind just in time and they both fell to the ground. They tussled for a moment until Bradford wrestled the knife away. He stood up quickly and stared down at Sabrina with such fury that she began to crawl away in fear.
Barbara put her hand to her breast. She was huffing and puffing like she'd just run a marathon. She couldn't believe that woman had come after her with a knife. On her own property. The woman was clearly out of her mind and needed to be locked up. She punched the buttons on her cell phone and marched toward the house.
Bradford took his eyes off Sabrina, who by now was sprawled out on the grass and crying like a baby, and looked at Barbara. "Who are you calling?" he asked gruffly.
"The police. Who else?"
"You don't need to call the cops," he said tersely. I'll take care of this."
Barbara turned and glared at him. Take care of it? You call this taking care of it? Letting her put all your dirty business out in the street? She'd had enough embarrassment as a child to last a lifetime. Barbara the bag lady. She didn't need this, especially on her daughter's wedding day.
That was what she wanted to say, but she didn't care to argue with Bradford now. Rebecca was standing at her bedroom window watching her wedding day go down the drain. Not to mention Pearl and Marilyn.
Barbara hung up the phone. "Well, you'd better get her out of here now. We leave for the church in less than an hour and the photographers are coming. You're not even dressed yet."
"I said I'll handle it," he snapped. "The best thing you can do is go on back in the house. You're obviously just making her angrier."
Barbara squeezed the phone until her fingers ached. How dare he make it sound as if this were her fault. The bastard. But this was not the time to get into an argument with him, not in front of all these people. She took a deep breath and signaled for Darlene to follow her as Bradford reached down and pulled a still-sobbing Sabrina up from the ground.
"Are you all right?" Darlene asked as they stepped outside the tent.
Barbara nodded. She had to remain calm and somehow get through this. First, she had to deal with the tent. "How much damage did she do?"
Darlene shook her head anxiously. "It doesn't look good. It's going to need some reparis. Give me a minute and I'll make a few calls to try to get it fixed in time."
While Darlene made her calls, Barbara picked up the chairs that Sabrina had knocked over. Bradford was now talking to Sabrina as she sat in the car, and she looked much calmer. Sabrina finally backed out of the driveway and screeched off down the street.
Darlene covered the mouthpiece. "I'm trying to get the rental company back out here to repair it. But they're giving me some crap about being booked all afternoon."
Barbara threw her hands in the air as Bradford walked across the driveway and back toward the lawn. This was all his fault, but she had to stay calm in front of the help. "Bradford, they can't get out here to fix the tent in time for the reception. What are we going to do?"
He walked up to the tent and examined the damaged area. It was all Barbara could do to keep from yelling at him in front of everyone.
Bradford turned to Darlene. "Tell them we'll double their normal fee to get out here and fix it before the reception," he ordered. "Whatever it takes, just get them out here now."
Darlene's eyes lit up. "Whatever you say, sir." Within a minute she was snapping the phone antenna back into place and smiling in victory. "They're sending someone right away. The reception doesn't start until three, so that gives us two and a half hours. In the meantime, we can finish setting things up. I don't think it will topple over."
"Nah," Bradford said. It should hold up fine until they get out here to fix it."
Barbara sighed with relief. She had to hand it to her husband. He was always so good in a crisis, even one of his own making. "So you think everything will be ready on time, Darlene?"
Darlene nodded. "Yes. I think we'll make it."
Barbara smiled. "Thank goodness. Do your best."
Darlene nodded and walked off with the phone at her ear as she directed the other workers to get back to their jobs. Just when Barbara thought she could relax a bit, she noticed a young man walking around on the patio near the house, snapping away with a 35-millimeter camera. "Oh my God," she exclaimed in horror. "Bradford, it's Peter, the photographer."
Bradford followed her gaze. He let out a deep breath. "I'll handle this."
Barbara didn't say a word. She was too stunned to speak. When did he get here? How much had he caught on film? God forbid she should wake up tomorrow morning to photos in the style section of the Washington Post or on the Internet of Bradford's mistress wrecking Rebecca's wedding reception tent.
Bradford walked briskly across the lawn to the patio and spoke to Peter for a minute. Barbara let out a sigh of relief as the photographer fiddled with his camera, then handed something over to Bradford. The photographer disappeared into the house, and Bradford turned toward Barbara. "It's OK. I got the film from him."
"This is your fault, Bradford," Barbara snapped. "What the devil was that all about?"
Bradford shook his head with regret, but he didn't say anything. There was no apology and Barbara didn't expect one. The women came and went so often that Bradford seemed to realize that apologizing when he got caught was getting stale.
"Never mind," Barbara said. "We don't have time to get into it now, anyway."
"Where is Rebecca?" Bradford asked. "Did she see any of this?"
"Of course she saw it," Barbara snapped. How could she miss it? Not to mention Marilyn and Pearl and God knows who else. I'm sure we're the laughingstock of Silver Lake now."
"Barbara, please," Bradford said tiredly. "Don't be so melodramatic. I'm going to go get into my tux."
"Fine," Barbara said crisply. "We'll discuss it tomorrow."
"There's nothing to discuss."
"Nothing to discuss? Your mistress just drove up onto our property and . . . and practically ruined our daughter's wedding. Or didn't you notice?"
"You mean ex-mistress. The reason she was so upset was because I called it off."
Barbara scoffed. "You told me last month that you called it off."
"Well, it's true. But she's having problems accepting it."
This was why she tried to avoid these arguments with Bradford. It was impossible to win any of them. He had an excuse for everything. "So that's why you ran over there first thing this morning, I suppose?" she said sarcastically.
"She called last night crying, so I---"
"Bradford, please," Barbara said. "Spare me."
"Look, I didn't want to get into this, but you---"
"Daddy?"
They both turned to see Rebecca and Robin standing in the doorway leading to the patio with frustrated expressions on their faces.
"Yes?" Bradford smiled and moved toward them.
"Who was that woman?" Rebecca asked, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.
Bradford shoved his hands in his jacket pocket. "Nobody for you to worry about."
Rebecca looked from Bradford to Barbara with doubt. "She looked like plenty to worry about to me. Look at what she did to the tent."
"Your father is right. And the tent will be repaired in plenty of time," Barbara said. No doubt Rebecca and Robin had long ago come to realize their parents' marriage was a rocky one, but she never discussed Bradford's philandering with them, or anyone else for that matter. The dirt between her and Bradford would stay between her and Bradford.
"What on earth was she so upset about?" Robin asked.
Bradford shrugged. "She works for a friend of mine, and, uh, she was mad because we didn't invite her to the wedding."
"You've got to be kidding," Robin said.
"What if she comes back?" Rebecca asked, a look of horror on her face.
Bradford smiled and put his arm around Rebecca's shoulder. "She won't. I promise you that. And did I tell you you look stunning? Ralph is one lucky guy."
Rebecca tried to smile. "Thanks, Daddy. But you're not even dressed yet."
"I will be, in fifteen minutes sharp. I've already shaved and showered."
No doubt after you screwed your whore, Barbara thought. Because he certainly didn't shower here this morning. And all that talk about Sabrina losing control because he broke up with her was bull. Bradford could keep a hundred employees in check. He could manage millions of dollars. But he couldn't keep his mistress in her place? Mister Big Shot? Please.
"By the way," Bradford said. "The lieutenant governor called at the last minute and said she was accepting her invitation to the reception."
Rebecca's eyes widened. "You mean Kathleen Kennedy Townsend? Oh my gosh."
"And you waited all this time to tell us, Bradford?" Barbara said. "Honestly."
Bradford shrugged. "She called just this morning."
"She probably sees the reception as an opportunity to line up votes in her campaign for governor," Robin said.
Barbara sighed with impatience.
"What's the big deal?" Bradford asked. "She and the governor have both been here before."
"That was for political receptions, Bradford, not our daughter's wedding. She'll need special seating."
"I'm sure you'll carry it off without a hitch," Bradford said. He kissed Rebecca's forehead and walked into the house.
"I can't believe all this is happening," Rebecca said.
"How could Daddy let that woman in here today of all days," Robin said with annoyance.
"You can't blame him," Barbara said. "He tried to stop her."
Robin shook her head with frustration. "You always defend him."
Barbara grimaced and touched her forehead. So much to do, so little time. She was going to have to get herself together. And fast. She put her arms around both her daughters and forced a smile. "Come on, girls. Let's forget about this. We have a big day ahead of us. The lieutenant governor is coming, not to mention half of Silver Lake and our family and friends. We have to look and behave our best."
Barbara held her head high and led her daughters back into the house.
My Heavenly Father
It's the evening after I sinned against God, and the heat so bad it seem like somebody done wrapped a coat round my shoulders even though I don't need one. I start thinking about Hell. If I go there when I die, the Devil he gon' be waiting for me and he gon' poke me with that big pitchfork he got.
I'm sitting on the steps of the porch, looking over at the houses across the street. Old people is out on their porches, too, rocking in rocking chairs, fanning theyselves to keep cool. Every now and then one of 'em call across the street to somebody and ask how they doing. Them crickets done just started up their racket, and I'm thinking about what I did at church earlier today. That's when my grandma call me.
"An-DRE!" she say, her voice getting high at the end.
I put them quarters back in my pocket real fast like and look over my shoulder. "Ma'am?"
"You get in here before dark, you hear?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She standing behind me on the porch. Hands on her hips, she looking down at me like she trying to read my mind. I can feel my heart pounding like it's about to jump outa my chest. Around me in them bushes, them crickets is getting louder and louder like they trying to tell on me. Then they quiet down and start up all over again. After a while my grandma leave and go back inside. She must not of seen me with them quarters.
Me and her went to church this morning like we always do, but my mama ain't gone with us. She was sick so we had to go without her. Grandma was wearing a dark blue dress and this lil white and blue hat with a blue feather sticking up in the back. You could see her real hair poking out from underneath her wig 'cause her real hair gray and her wig black. She was wearing these high-heel shoes that make her look even taller than she already is. We was late and about to leave, but something was wrong with her hearing aid. It kept making all this noise and you could hear it all through the house. She couldn't get it to act right for nothing.
Pretty soon she got mad and hit it against the table in the living room. It was all right after that. I smiled. She smiled, too. Until she saw I ain't have my tie on.
"Boy, get in there and put yo' tie on," she said, pointing to my room.
"But we late, Grandma."
She frowned and started fidgeting with her pocketbook. "Lord, Lord," she said, shaking her head. "Well, come on then, boy." She put her pocketbook over her shoulder and we left.
I was glad. That ugly brown corduroy suit she made me wear was bad enough. I wasn't going to put that tie on, too. Why I gotta wear a tie anyway? And how come I can't wear my tennis shoes to church? Them dress shoes be hurting my toes. The bell bottoms on my corduroy pants so wide you can barely tell what kind of shoes I got on, anyway.
Anyway, me and Grandma left and I got away with not wearing that tie. She fussed at me all the way to church though. She always fussing at me about something. She say I'm getting too grown for my britches and I got too much mouth. My daddy used to fuss at me, too. But not like her.
I was burning up in that hot suit. It was summertime and I woulda been wearing the other suit I got, except last Sunday I had this pen in my pocket that bust 'cause I forgot to put the top on. Ink spread all over my suit, so my mama had to take it to the cleaners. My grandma started fussing at me about that, too.
"You hot, ain't you? Un-huh. I told you not to put that pen in yo' pocket. One way or the other, you gon' learn. You gon' learn that when you don't do as you told, the Lord will make you pay for it. He see everything you do."
She said I was gon' be lucky if the ink even come out.
By the time me and her got to First Baptist Church, wasn't nobody outside. I could hear the choir and everybody else singing they hearts out as me and her went up the steps. After they got through with the song, the usher let us in. He a tall man with big heavy hands. He gave my grandma a program, but ain't give me one. I looked up at him and frowned. He ain't see me, though. So I looked away.
That's when I saw Paul look over at me all mean like. He like to hang with this skinny boy name Hi-C. Everybody call him Hi-C 'cause every time you see him that's what he drinking. Him and Paul live in the projects, them red buildings down the hill from me. My street and the one the school on---they not like the projects. They nicer. My mama and grandma don't like for me to go down to the projects 'cause they say it's dangerous. But all the kids I'm in second grade with live there. Don't no kids live on my street. It's all old people.
Paul the biggest kid in our grade, but we say he the ugliest, too. He got big lips and his hair always nappy. He still mad 'cause I ain't let him scare me the way he be scaring everybody else. I hit him right in his teeth, just like how my daddy taught me, even though I had to jump to do it. He hurt my arm real bad and pushed me down, but I still got him in the belly. Then I hit him in his mouth again. Real hard. So hard my hand hurt. Here in church my grandma kept walking, but I stopped and stuck my tongue out at him. That made him real mad and he balled up his fist and held it up for me to see. I made a face at him 'cause he couldn't do nothing to me in church. But I was gon' have to see him outside of church sooner or later, so I ain't make that face for too long.
I caught up with my grandma. She looked over her shoulder and reached out for my hand. I let her hold it. My grandma ain't sit down till she got all the way up to the front of the church. Her and my mama always sitting in the front. And I always gotta be right up there with 'em. Most kids get to sit in the back. But not me. So I sat down between my grandma and this lady wearing a wide green hat. She had some perfume on. It smelled sweet. Like one of them flowers in my grandma's garden.
It was hot in the church like it was outside, so I took off my jacket. My grandma looked at me like I was up to something. But she ain't say nothing. After a while this old baldheaded man came up to the front of the church talking about Men's day. His head was real shiny. It was round too, round like a bowling ball. He had on a tight, funny-looking suit and kept asking for all the men in the church to help out "so this Men's Day can be the best Men's Day ever."
If my daddy was here with us, maybe he could help them out. A year and a half ago my mama left him and took me with her. We came here, to Alabama, and started living with my grandma. This where my mama from. Back when me and her was up in Michigan, my daddy used to come to church with us sometimes. But only when my mama woke him up and made him. They used to fuss about that and a whole lotta other things. Last month me and him was supposed to go to a preseason Falcons game for my birthday, like how we did last year. He said he was gon' fly down from Michigan and be in Birmingham that Saturday so we could drive to Atlanta for the game the next day. He said he was gon' buy me some of them fat pretzels and some of them hotdogs with ketchup and mustard all over 'em. He said he was gon' get me one of them footballs, too, the ones with Steve Bartkowski's autograph on it. But then he ain't never come. I waited and waited, but still he ain't never come.
I tried not to think about my daddy no more, but the man at the front of the church kept talking about Men's Day and how he needed the men to help out like they did last year. Then he got through, and everybody in the church had to stand up and sing a song from the hymn book. I was sad but I was mad too, and I wanted to hold my own hymn book 'cause they got pretty gold pages on the side. But my grandma wouldn't let me. She made me read on with her, and she held the hymn book down low to make sure I was singing.
When the song finished and everybody had sat back down, the preacher walked up to that wooden thing my mama call "the podium." He fat and got a big belly that make him look like a big ole grizzly bear. He started talking about Revival Services for the summer. I got bored. I looked at my grandma to see if she was watching me. She wasn't. So I pulled out my Matchbox car real careful like. It's a Trans Am. It's red and got doors and a trunk that open up. It's fast, too. Fast like that car on Starsky and Hutch. I started rolling it around on my leg, making it turn around and chase the bad guys. Vroom. Vroom. Errrrrrr! I kept looking up at my grandma to make sure she wasn't looking. But after a while I musta forgot to keep looking 'cause she popped me on my hand and snatched my car from me and put it in that big black pocketbook she got.
"I'm sorry, Grandma," I said, trying to see if she was gon' give it back.
Wasn't no use.
She just shook her head. "Boy, I don't know what yo' mama gon' do with you," she said in a mean way even though she was whispering. "You just as mannish as you can be."
I folded my arms across my chest. That was my favorite car and she had took some of my other toys and hadn't never gave 'em back.
"Look at you," she said. "You got your mouth all poked out. I told you if you wanna keep them toys, keep 'em at home."
I turned away and wouldn't look at her no more. The preacher started preaching. He talked and talked and seemed like he wasn't gon' never stop talking. He was sweating, moving all around, talking like it was hurting him to talk. But he still kept on going. He wiped his face with a handkerchief and started holding on to the podium. I fell asleep. I guess my head was bouncing around like people's heads be bouncing around when they sleep 'cause I felt somebody shaking me. I looked up and saw my grandma's face, them lights shining in her glasses like fires burning. She was real mad now, like she was getting ready to whoop me right there in church, right there with all them people watching. I really woke up then. I wasn't trying to get no whooping.
The preacher was still up there. He was swaying around, looking up at the ceiling, sweat coming down his face. His voice got louder and it was almost like he was singing.
"I'm here to tell you this morning, huh!, that when you need a friend, huh!, go to your Father, huh! Your neighbors, huh!, may not be there for you, huh! Your spouse, huh!, may not be there for you, huh! My God, your pastor, huh!, may not be there for you, huh! But no matter what, huh!, no matter the hour, huh!, your Father, huh!, He'll be there for you. Can I get an 'Amen'?"
"Amen!" somebody shouted.
"Can anybody out there, huh!, understand what I'm saying? Huh! If you know your Father, huh!, the way that I know mine, huh!, why don't ya say 'Amen'?"
"Amen!"
"Amen!"
"Yes, Lord!"
"Preach it! Preach it!"
I felt sad. I missed my daddy. I wished he was still my friend like the preacher said he was supposed to be. I wished he ain't stop coming to see me. I remembered how back in Michigan he used to wear a gray tweed cap and after work his face would be dark and the hair would always tickle and then hurt my face whenever he picked me up and hugged me. On the weekends me and him would go down to the park and wrestle in the grass and we would be laughing and every time he would let me win. Then we would be laying on our backs, staring up at the sky, watching the lil birds fly by, their wings just a-flapping. At night we used to sit in front of the TV and watch Monday Night Football, then I would fall asleep and he would carry me to bed and I could tell he was carrying me even though I was sleep. My mama and grandma don't know, but I heard them talking the other night about how my daddy got him a new girlfriend even though my mama and him not divorced yet. I heard them say my daddy's new girlfriend "pregnant." That was before my birthday, and then when my birthday came, he ain't never show up.
Last week I wanted to ask my mama what it meant that my daddy's new girlfriend was "pregnant." But I knew I wasn't supposed to have heard nothing about that. So I ain't ask. I asked her if my daddy don't like me no more, if that's why he stopped coming to see me.
She started looking sad. "It's not you," she said, hugging me. "It's him. He's not the man he used to be. There's something wrong with him. Not you."
I felt like she was just saying that to make me feel better. Like the time Frisky died and she said dogs go to Heaven and then I asked the preacher if it say anywhere in the Bible about dogs going to Heaven and he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Heaven is the land of the blessed. It's for us, young man. People like you and me who love God and accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. Pets can't know God the way we do. They can't go with us to Heaven."
So I felt like my mama was just trying to make me feel better. My daddy didn't like me no more. And I knew why. Last year when me and him came home from the Falcons game, my mama told him about my grades. She told him I wasn't studying and I was watching too much football on TV. He got mad and took off his big, long belt and whooped me with it. And he kept on whooping me. Then he pointed his finger at me and said, "Don't you never let me hear 'bout you getting bad grades again. You too smart for that, boy. I want you to make something outa yourself. You hear me?"
I ain't say nothing.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you! Do you hear me?"
I made myself look. "Yes, sir." I tried not to, but I started crying. "I'm sorry, Daddy. I'ma do better."
"Yeah, well, you just make sure you do."
Then he left and went back to Michigan and I ain't never see him again. For a while he ain't even call.
I think he still mad at me. That's why he don't like me no more. Thinking about all that while the preacher was up there preaching, my eyes started hurting. But I wasn't gon' let myself cry. I tried to stop thinking about my daddy. But I couldn't. That's when people started shouting, catching the Holy Ghost. It's always the ladies catching the Holy Ghost. I don't never see none of the men catching it. Maybe the Ghost don't like them as much. That lady next to me, the one with the green hat and the sweet perfume, she threw her hands up and started bouncing around. The whole pew shook. She was a big ole fat lady. She had on a green dress with flowers all over it. All of a sudden, she hopped up, started jumping up and down, moving all around. I was scared she was gon' fall on me and squish me to death so I started doing what she was doing. She throw her hands up, I throw my hands up. She wiggle around, I wiggle around. She jump up and down, I jump up and down.
The lady sitting in front of me saw me and bent over laughing. I stopped then. I just knew I was about to get it. But my grandma---she ain't see me! I was lucky 'cause I had forgot all about her. She ain't see me 'cause she was too busy helping them ushers calm this other lady down a few pews back. They was fanning her and she was laid back against the pew with her eyes closed like she was sleep. Her arms was spread out and they was fanning her. Wasn't nobody around to help that fat lady next to me. She had to keep getting happy till she tired herself out.
The preacher was finished preaching by then. He was sitting down. He had a Bible in his hands and kept tapping his foot to the music. He was smiling. Seem like he was looking right at me! The skinny man sitting next to him stood up. I guess he a preacher, too. He asked everybody to "come forward with the tithes and offerings." I used to couldn't say "tithe" right, but my mama taught me how. Me and Grandma stood up and waited like everybody else. Two men was standing up at the front, below where the preacher was sitting. They had straw baskets in their hands. They looked real serious in them dark suits with them dark ties. They always looking serious. My mama told me they called "deacons." While we was standing, my grandma gave me two quarters to put in the offering. I rubbed 'em. They was smooth and after a while they felt warm in my hand.
When it come time for the offering, they always gotta start with the people in the back. Me and Grandma was up front so we had to wait seem like forever to get a chance to walk around the church and put our money in. It was hot in there. My hand started sweating, so I put them quarters in my pocket. Paul walked past along the side aisle and looked over at me. But he ain't ball up his fist this time 'cause my grandma mighta seen him.
When me and Grandma's turn to go up came around, she ain't go. She sat back down and told me to take her five dollars up there for her. She was leaning back against the pew and her eyes was half closed. She looked tired. So I went without her and followed all them big, tall people around the church. When I saw Paul again, he was back in his seat. He ain't see me this time though. He was too busy digging up his nose and wiping boogas on his pants. I said to myself, If he try to mess with me again, I'ma tell people what he was doing. I'ma tell how he was up in church, wiping boogas on his pants.
Before I knew it, I was up there at them baskets. I put the five dollars in and came back and sat down. My grandma patted me on the hand and smiled at me. She still looked tired, but she was smiling. My hands was still sweaty, so I started rubbing 'em up and down my pants. They was shiny corduroy pants, and I watched how they turned from dark brown to light brown every time I rubbed 'em.
It was then I felt something in my pocket. It was them two quarters! They was still there! I had forgot to put them in the basket! I had put my grandma's money in but had forgot to put my own in! I stuck my hand in my pocket to make sure it was them quarters I was feeling. It was them all right. I was about to run up there and put 'em in one of them baskets before the deacons took the baskets away. But I ain't want people laughing at me and looking all at me. I ain't want my grandma to get mad and say I was shaming her. I felt bad. Like I had did something wrong, something God was gon' be mad at me for, something He was gon' punish me for. But I ain't even mean to do it!
I know some kids who be doing this all the time. They keep the money their mama or grandma give 'em and go and buy candy after church over. One time this fat boy name Kevin did that, and after church he ate them apple Now-and-Laters till his stomach hurt. I ain't never kept the money I was supposed to put in the basket. Never. Not till today.
I feel so bad I wanna go tell my grandma right now. But she gon' probably think I meant to do it. She always thinking I'm up to something. My mama say Grandma just old and used to the way things used to be when she was young. Mama say I got too much energy for Grandma. Man, I'm glad I wasn't born back when she was. That was way back in 1907! My mama say back then kids was to be seen and not heard. They do anything, they get a backslap.
I don't know what I'ma do . . .
I guess I could keep these two quarters and put 'em in with the two my grandma gon' give me next Sunday. Yeah, maybe I will do that. I guess God don't be caring when He get His money. Long as He get it.
And if God can forgive me, then maybe my daddy can too. My grandma say, "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains." I have faith and I been praying to God. So that must mean my daddy he gon' forgive me and start coming to see me again.
But to make sure, I wrote him a letter after church. I used a red pen 'cause red his favorite color. I told my daddy how good I did in school last year. I got all As and one B! So he can see for himself, I sent my report card too. The front of it got four shiny gold stars. Next year I'ma get five stars 'cause I'ma make sure I get straight As. That'll make my daddy happy. But I know he gon' be happy when he see how much I done already improved. After I wrote the letter, I got a stamp and a envelope from my mama. I wrote his address on the front and got her to make sure she could read it. For some reason she looked sad when she handed the envelope back to me. I guess she still feeling sick. She been sick all week. I put the letter and my report card inside, and I ran down to the foot of the hill and dropped the envelope inside the mailbox.
I can't wait to see my daddy again. I know he coming back. I know he is. And when he do come back, he can tell me how to beat Paul once and for all. I was lucky last time. If Paul come after me again, I don't know what I'ma do. And he probably is gon' come after me too. Now that I told Hi-C about him digging up his nose in church. Hi-C was walking through the projects, drinking some Hi-C when I mailed my letter. That's when I told him. I lied though and said Paul had ate his boogas. God ain't gon' be the only one mad about that lie. But God gon' forgive me before Paul will.
Maybe my daddy will call soon as he get my letter. Then I can ask him how to beat Paul. I need to know soon. Real soon.
It's nighttime now, so I betta go inside. I don't want my grandma to start fussing at me again. It's cool out here, and the old people that ain't gone in yet don't need to fan theyselves no more. It's getting real dark, dark like that ink that spilt on my suit, and I can hear a lil bird chirping in my grandma's tree. Now he flying away. Planes is like birds, like big metal falcons, and my daddy he gon' get on one and fly down to see me and it's gon' be like it was when he came to see me last time. Like it was when me and him lived in the same house.
And he gon' like me again.
Lion's Blood
Cetshwayo's old hunting injury prevented him from riding, but his twin sons Keefah and Darbul wouldn't have missed a hunt for a fistful of Alexanders. So as the sun dipped low above the kraal, Kai and seven highborn men, Zulus and Abyssinian alike, gathered their restless mounts in a mesquite flat abutting a conifer woodland. A dozen lean, alert Zulus accompanied them afoot.
The lead hunter was Shaka Zulu himself, a giant of a man who rode like a centaur. He raised his brawny arms---an ornate spear in one hand, hunting bow in the other, with a quiver on his back---and screamed to the moonless sky. "Let the hunt begin!"
Like Darbul and Keefah, the unmounted warriors were lean, muscular agile men, trained from infancy to be athletes on a par with any in the world. They gripped short stabbing umkhonto with elongated steel blades Kai recalled Malik's sober evaluation of Zulu skill: "Avoid close-quarter combat if there is any chance at all."
"And if I cannot?"
"Then consign your soul to Allah and prepare to enter Paradise. Just do your best to ensure you reach those gates together."
Abu Ali, Ali, and Kai carried rifles as well as spears. Despite her pleas Elenya remained behind at Cetshwayo's mansion. On a normal hunt the Wakil might have considered allowing her to accompany them. "Why can Nandi go?" Elenya had pouted.
Cetshwayo himself had overheard that last and had laughed heartily after Elenya stalked out of the room. "In the old country, Nandi would not ride to the hunt." He sighed. "But this New World gives girls airs. What can I say? I can't control her any longer." He dug his elbow into Kai's ribs hard enough to make the boy chuff air. "I wish you better luck!"
Shaka's white teeth shone in the torchlight. "Only here and on the battlefield do I feel so alive."
Abu Ali pulled up next to him. Kai's family rode Cetshwayo's mounts specially bred hunting stallions of imposing strength and size. Kai's seemed responsive to a feather touch of his knees, and Abu Ali already rode his as if he had raised the monster from a colt.
Abu Ali glanced doubtfully at Shaka's spear. "Can you really make the kill with such a weapon?"
Shaka's broad, scarred face glowed with amusement. "You had best hope so, my friend."
Distantly, there came the mournful wail of the hunting horn.
Shaka grew ruminative. "We bring the calves five thousand miles and raise them here, that we might honor the ways of our ancestors. He dies today. Perhaps he will claim one of us as well. Haiii!"
With the suddenness of a lightning stroke he wheeled his horse about as if sensing something that the others had missed completely. Abruptly out of the brush not three dozen cubits away charged two hundred sep of the most fearsome creature Kai had ever seen in his life. Its black horns looked as if they could punch holes in steel, its breath snorted from its broad wet nostrils in clouds of condensation, its hooves furrowed the earth.
Savannah buffalo. Magnificent, and the most dangerous game animal on the African continent. Crafty, powerful, and fast, the buffalo had killed more hunters than lions and leopards combined, and had no natural predators---save men like Shaka Zulu.
Abu Ali's face went grim and he reined his horse closer to Ali. "They are insane," he whispered. "Hold back a bit. Give Shaka and his men the honor of first contact."
"Gladly." Even gallant Ali looked unnerved.
Kai was still formulating his answer when Nandi rode past them. Her tan riding pants were unadorned, as simply functional as any of the men's. Somehow, the garb merely enhanced her sensuality.
As she passed Kai she spurred her steed and grinned back at him.
As the very wind of her passage ruffled his face, Kai felt her call: primal and wild and stronger than he had anticipated. He felt dizzied. "You would have me marry into this family, Father?" Kai called to Abu Ali. "They are all mad." And perhaps I am as well, he thought. "Hai!"
Kai spurred his own horse forward into the fray.
Ali laughed. "Allah, preserve us! I think the boy is in love." And raced after his younger brother.
The footmen's shielded, gas-burning lanterns probed the darkness, but deep patches of shadow remained in the forest. Death lurked within them.
Shaka, his nephews and footmen worked forward in a practiced arc, clearing one segment of grass after another. The buffalo seemed to have disappeared.
Kai's heart was in his throat. How could so large a beast vanish so completely? Twice he had seen the buffalo erupt out of shadows, and the mounted Zulus had scattered, hooting, as its horns came within digits of their horses. Insanity! Worse yet, they treated it almost like a game. Almost. These men were in the finest, highest physical condition he had ever witnessed. Clearly, they were competing with each other not only physically, but in display of courage. And Nandi was right in the thick of it. What manner of man could ever control such a woman?
There! Their prey had raised up again, and snorted as it charged. One of Shaka's footmen thrust at the beast with a spear, and it wheeled, hitting the man from the side. This time, the hunter was unable to spin out of the way, and the horn pierced his ribs. With a despairing wail, the footman collapsed bleeding into the tall grass.
Two more men veered in, jabbing, and the buffalo turned. Shaka galloped back in. "Hold!" he cried. "He is mine!"
Deferentially, the footmen backed away. Almost as if it understood that some ultimate moment had arrived, the beast pawed the earth and faced Shaka. Had the Zulus trained it for such an encounter? Did they somehow prepare the calves to provide such moments of drama? Certainly no wild beast would behave in such a manner. Kai glimpsed, and in a shadowy manner understood, something new about the culture whose daughter he was to marry.
Kai and Nandi were eighty cubits to the side, and Kai was ready to wheel and run for it if the monster broke in his direction. But he was also transfixed by its power, by its lethal sweep of horns and breadth of shoulder. In the darkness, partially lit by torches, it seemed more a creature of myth than reality, and Shaka some conquering hero of legend, not a man of flesh and bone.
Shaka and Keefah drew their bows, pulling steadily . . .
Suddenly, as if finally comprehending its danger, the animal flickered its tail and turned, vanishing into the high grass. As it turned, Shaka loosed his first arrow and it struck behind the buffalo's shoulder. Keefah's shaft, only a moment later, missed the flank and drove into the ground. Roaring with pain and anger, the buffalo made a chuffing sound as it disappeared.
Bearing lanterns and spears, the footmen beat the long grass, pushing ahead in a horseshoe configuration. They were supported by horsemen, all holding to the rigid pattern.
Shaka rode along the outside, striving for position. When their prey tried to break away, it was herded back with shouts and spears. The buffalo seemed confused, but far from fatigued.
Shaka raced for a shooting position ahead of his prey, but without warning the animal changed course, racing back straight for the footmen. With insane courage they thrust their spears, shone their lights in its eyes and shouted. Again it wheeled, running for the open, where Shaka waited, bow drawn.
Then the beast doubled back again, suddenly ignoring the shouts and spear thrusts. Several of the men cast their umkhontos. Two struck the beast, the hafts flagging out from its back and side like dreadful bamboo stalks, blood running black in the darkness.
The center man was little more than a boy, perhaps seventeen summers. He lost his nerve, cast poorly as the buffalo came straight at him, and missed his mark completely. The men scattered as it charged their line. The beast caught the boy who had missed his cast, gouging his back and sending him flying.
The boy landed hard in the grass, screaming and thrashing, reaching back spastically for the bleeding wound.
"Fool!" Shaka yelled as he rode by. There was a sheen of madness on his face now. His eyes were too wide, lips pulled tight against his white teeth. The footmen had been left behind now---it was up to the horsemen.
Shaka was racing beside the wounded prey now. He gripped his bow and aimed, horse and buffalo seeming to match each other stride for stride.
He released his bolt, and it entered just behind the left shoulder. The buffalo stumbled, rose again, and thundered on. Shaka released a second arrow. As it struck, the buffalo's knees crumpled, and it dove nose-first into the ground with an earth-shaking impact that would have shattered a lesser creature's spine.
Kai held his breath, unable to fully grasp what he had just witnessed, beyond any doubt the most intense experience of his young life. Allah preserve him! He did not even know that men such as these existed!
Shaka raised his hands to the stars. "Haii!"
"Who is the greatest hunter in all creation?" Darbul roared.
And his footmen, gasping now as they caught up with him, cheered in expected response. Shaka trotted his horse over to his trophy---
And it lurched up, catching Shaka's horse in the belly with its left horn. Mortally wounded and neighing in agony, his mount tumbled over backward, and Shaka spilled. Despite his awesome athleticism he crashed awkwardly to earth.
Shaka seemed momentarily dazed, disoriented, and for a moment the entire party was frozen, as if they shared his confusion. As Shaka's mount whined pitiably, the buffalo lurched to its feet. In that instant it could have slain Shaka, but instead it seemed to stare at him, blood drooling from its nose.
The Zulu's face was gaunt and strained. Kai knew that in that moment Shaka Zulu, great hunter, great warrior, was gazing into the face of his own death, and that his soul had recoiled from the awful sight.
Then, twin shots rang out. The buffalo staggered to its knees, then collapsed onto its side.
Kai turned, startled. His father and brother both had their rifles to their shoulders. Smoke drifted from both barrels.
Composing himself as best he could, Shaka rose. His limbs trembled a bit. Perhaps it was the chill of night, but Kai thought otherwise. Shake gave a perfunctory nod of thanks to Abu Ali and his son, and walked off unsteady legs to the buffalo.
Kai found himself looking deep into the beast's eyes. The mighty but falo's breath huffed in painful bursts. Its black eyes were filmed with dust, Kai's next reaction startled him. This poor thing had been stolen in child childhood from its native land, raised only to die for the entertainment of its captors. It had struggled for freedom and life, that Kai could understand Pointless and absurd as it seemed, he wanted to tell the felled creature we done.
Shaka snatched a spear from one of his men and drove it into the wounded beast's side. It heaved in pain. Shaka bore down with all his weight, working the spear back and forth until the heart was pierced and the buffalo lay still.
Shaka raised his arms in victory, yelling in musical, staccato Zulu. The men replied in kind.
"Ngikhuluma isiZulu kancane," Kai said haltingly to Nandi. I speak only a bit of Zulu. "What did he say?"
"He said that this was no ordinary creature, it was a demon, and in slaying it he has become more than a man." Her eyes shone with admiration. She had apparently seen nothing that was not glorious, nothing in the least disturbing in her uncle's behavior. Was that pragmatism? An understanding that even the bravest men know fear? Or delusion, an inability to acknowledge what she had seen? He wasn't sure which, and that uncertainty troubled him.
To Kai's gaze, Shaka had not yet fully recovered, and his trembling was not from the cold. His men apparently noticed nothing of their leader's momentary weakness. They cheered, beating their spears against the ground. Kai and his family smiled politely, but shared searing sidelong glances.
Shaka wrenched his spear from the dead animal's side. Its tip glistened black with blood. He rubbed his finger slowly along the edge. Ignoring his dying horse, Shaka then ran to the spot where his second man had been injured. Kai broke his mount into a trot to keep up.
The wounded youth was curled onto his side like an injured lizard his right arm still groping back for the bleeding wound.
"You are hurt," Shaka said coldly.
The wounded man looked up at Shaka, his teeth chattering.
"Your stupidity could have killed me," Shaka continued, in a conversational tone.
The wounded man said something in Zulu. Kai had the very clear impression that he was begging for his life.
Shaka spoke to him in the same language, his face calm and comforting. Then with shocking suddenness he raised the spear and thrust it deeply into the hunter's stomach. Kai's stomach fisted as the boy's body serched, as if trying to take the spear more deeply into his belly. Then with deadful finality, he went limp.
Kai felt dizzy and sick with rage.
"Allah preserve us!" Abu Ali said in disbelief. "What have you done?"
Shaka withdrew the spear and wiped it on the dead boy's chest. "What my right." He shrugged as if it was of little consequence. "He would have died in some days. To die on your king's spear is an honor."
The Wakil's face was as stone. "There are no kings in Bilalistan."
Shaka grinned and pointed to his men, who had moved to encircle the party. "Tell them," he said.
Kai scaned them. Fourteen now, standing proud and silent, chests high, gripping their spears, ready to kill or die for the man they followed. Kai felt a deep and pervasive cold seeping into his bones.
"There were kings in the days of my fathers," Shaka said. "Mark well---there may be again."
His mood had shifted completely, as if killing the hunter had purged him of all stress. He turned to his men. "Bring me the head! Put my steed from its misery. Bear your brother on a stretcher, he burns tomorrow."
Shaka ordered one of his men off his horse and mounted without a trace of hesitation. If he had been injured in the fall, the injury was already forgotten. His men scrambled to fulfill his orders.
Abu Ali and his sons rode together quietly, watching. Nandi pulled her horse up next to Shaka, clearly worshipful. "Uncle," she said. "You were wonderful. But weren't you afraid?"
Shaka Zulu rode proudly. "Nandi, fear is neither ally nor enemy. I never see fear, my child."
Ali whispered in Kai's ear: "You cannot see what lives behind your own eyes."
"Father," Kai said. "What do we do?"
Abu Ali shook his head. "The Zulus are allies of the Empress---and Shaka is as much royalty as Lamiya. On their land, it is their world. We can do nothing."
They watched the dead man rolled onto a stretcher. His eyes were open and turned up. Blood leaked from his side.
"It is not right," Kai said quietly.
"No, it is not," agreed Abu Ali. "But it is done."
The Knowing
Our teacher said one day that knowledge is power, and I had to raise my hand even though I don't like to; I like to sit and be quiet and watch people and wait for lunchtime. But I had to ask him if he was sure about that, or if maybe knowledge wasn't just a curse. He asked me what I meant by that, and I said, "Hey, that's what my mama always says." "Knowing is her curse," she whispers, touching my forehead at night, softly, her long fingers like spiders' legs. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and she's there whispering and rocking me. But I didn't tell my teacher that part. I could tell from the way my teacher looked at me sideways and went on with his lesson that he thought I was trying to be a smart-ass. People always think you're something you don't want to be. Mama says that, too.
I like this school in Chicago all right because my math teacher is real pretty, with long legs and a smile that means what it says. But me and Mama won't be here long. I know that already. I was in six different schools last year. It's always the same; one day I walk into wherever we're staying and she looks up at me through her cigarette smoke and says, "Throw your things in a bag." That must mean the rent hasn't been paid, or somebody got on her nerves, or maybe she's just plain sick of being wherever we are. I don't say anything, because I know if she stays unhappy too long, she'll start throwing things and screaming at the walls and the police might come and put me in foster care like that time in Atlanta. I was gone six months, staying with these white people who were taking care of six other boys. Mama almost lost me that time. When the judge said she could take me back, I smiled in the courtroom so he wouldn't see how mad I was at Mama. I hate it when she acts like she's the kid instead of me. I didn't speak to her for a whole week, and when I did, I said to her, "Damn, Mama, you gotta' do better than that." I meant it, too.
And she promised she would. She really tries. Things will be really cool for a while, better than cool, and then I'll walk through the door and see that look on her face and those Marlboro Lights, or whatever she smokes when she's in a smoking mood, and I know we're moving again. I guess she feels like she'll be all right if she just runs away from it, as if you could run away from your own head.
I wish Mama wouldn't smoke dope. It freaks her out. She goes up and down the stairs and walks through the halls wailing and sobbing, pounding on people's doors and shouting out dates. March 12, 2003. September 6, 2006. December 13, 2020. I have to find her and bring her back to the apartment to listen to Bob Marley or Bunny Wailer, something that calms her down. I hug her tight, and when she sobs, I can feel her shaking against me. "It's all right, Mama," I say.
"Nicky," she says to me in a little girl's voice, "I ain't only telling. I make it happen. When they ask me, I say, okay, you're October fifteenth, you're February eighth. I'm doin' the deciding, Nicky. It's me. Ain't it? Ain't it?"
She gets like that on dope, thinking she's God or something. I have to keep telling her, "Mama, it ain't you. Knowing ain't the same as deciding. TV Guide don't decide what's on TV."
Then, if I'm lucky, she'll get a smile on her face and go to sleep. If I'm unlucky, she'll keep crying and go back running through the halls and one of the neighbors will call the police. That's what happened in Atlanta. They thought she was crazy, so they locked her up and took me away. Lucky for her, the doctor said nothing was wrong with her.
But he doesn't know what she knows.
In Miami Beach, the last place we lived, our apartment was upstairs from a botánica, which is where the Cubans go to find statues of saints and stuff like that, trying to make magic. Mama took one look at that place and almost burst out laughing. She doesn't believe in statues, she says. But she was real nice to the owner, Rosa, who mostly spoke Spanish. Mama told Rosa what she does, what she knows. It took the lady three or four times to understand Mama, and then she didn't want to believe her. "El día que la gente van a morir?" Rosa asked, frowning. You could tell she thought Mama was trying to scam her.
Mama sucked on her teeth, getting impatient. She looked back toward an old lady in the back of the shop who was checking out some oils in small glass bottles on a shelf. The lady was breathing hard, walking real slow. Mama can smell sick people, no lie. Mama leaned close to Rosa's ear. "You know that lady?" Mama asked her.
Rosa nodded. "Sí. My aunt," she said. "Está enferma."
"She's gonna' die soon. Real soon."
Rosa looked offended, her face glowing red like a dark cherry. She turned away from Mama, straightening up some of the things on her shelves. You should have seen all that stuff; she had clay pots and plates and cauldrons and beads and tall candles inside glasses with holy people painted on them, even a candle that's supposed to burn fourteen hours. And there were teas labeled Té de Corazón and Té de Castilla. I always pay attention when I'm in a new place. I like to see everything.
"Listen," Mama said to Rosa, trying to get her attention. "You know your days of the week in English? Remember Friday. That lady back there gonna' die on Friday." Mama held up two fingers. "Friday in two weeks. Viernes. Nicky, how you say two weeks in Spanish?"
"Dos"---I had to think a few seconds---"semanas."
Rosa stared at me, then at Mama's two fingers, then dead into Mama's eyes. From her face, it was like Rosa couldn't tell if she wanted to be mad, scared, or sad. People always look at Mama that way.
"Then you come upstairs and get me," Mama said. "I want to work here."
I had forgotten all about Rosa and her botánica when someone knocked on our door on a Sunday morning. Mama was out getting groceries and I was watching cartoons on the black-and-white TV Mama had bought from a thrift shop for twenty dollars. It only got two channels, but one of the channels showed the Road Runner on Sundays, and that's my favorite. Rosa was standing there in our doorway, dressed up in black lace. I almost didn't recognize her because she was wearing lipstick and had her face made up to look nice even though her eyes were sad. It took me a second to remember she must be on her way to her aunt's funeral.
"Mama's not here," I said.
"When she come, you tell her for me, no?" Rosa said. "Tell her she say truth. She say truth."
I wanted to close the door. I was missing the best part, where Wile E. Coyote straps the rocket to his back so he can fly. He always crashes in the end, but at least he flies for a little while. "So, does she have a job or what?" I asked her.
Rosa nodded.
Cool, I thought. Whenever Mama has a job, there's always a little extra money for candy bars and Tshirts and movies and stuff. Mama only works because of me, because she likes to buy me things like other kids. I always felt a little guilty, though. In Miami Beach, I knew I'd better enjoy Mama's new job while it lasted. She could never work long before she had to run away.
At the botánica, Rosa put a sign in the window saying she had a psychic inside, and she told people they could go back into the storeroom, past the colorful curtain, to talk to Mama. The thing is, Rosa got it all wrong. She was saying Mama could tell people if their husbands were cheating or if they would get a raise at work, the kind of lame stuff they see on TV commercials. Mama just shakes her head and tells people she knows one thing, one thing only---and when she says what it is, some of them really do turn pale, like ghost-pale. Then they stand up as if she smells bad and they're afraid to stand too close to her.
At Rosa's botánica, Mama didn't get too many customers at first. But it was still kind of nice because she and Rosa started becoming friends, even though they could barely talk to each other. I like Mama to have friends. When Mama wasn't helping at the cash register, most of the day she'd sit back there watching TV or playing cards with me. Sometimes, when there weren't any customers, Rosa would come back with us and watch Spanish-language soap operas. I liked to watch them, too, because you don't need to know Spanish to understand those. Someone's cheating on somebody. Somebody's pissed about something. Mama and Rosa would laugh together, and Rosa would explain some parts to Mama: "He very bad man," she would say in her sandpapery voice, or "That woman no married to him." But Rosa didn't need to do that, because most things don't need words. Most things you can see for yourself.
So one day there was a thunderstorm, and Rosa was shaking her head as she stood in front of her store window staring out at the dark clouds. Lightning turned on the whole sky with a flash, then it was black again, and the thunder sounded like a giant boulder being rolled across the clouds. Miami Beach has the best storms I've ever seen, but Rosa was only letting herself see the scary parts. "I get killed to drive in that," Rosa said.
Mama grinned. "No you won't. Not today." Mama's grin was so big, Rosa looked at her real close. I could see Rosa's face change, the corners of her lips lying flat.
"Ain't nothin' to worry about. You got a long ways. You want to know?" Mama said.
"No," Rosa said through tight lips. All of a sudden, she didn't sound like Mama's friend anymore; she sounded like her boss-lady. She waved her hand in Mama's face. "No. No."
Mama shrugged, trying to pretend she wasn't hurt. She was just trying to be nice. But that's how it is, because nobody wants the only thing Mama knows how to give away.
It took a week at the botánica before even one customer decided to hear what Mama had to say. I liked that lady. She was brown-skinned and young, and she touched me on my shoulder when she passed me in the doorway instead of looking right past me like most people do. Maybe if I'd been older, I would have wanted to ask her out on a date. Or she could have been my sister, maybe.
"Are you the psychic?" she asked Mama. She had some kind of island accent, who knows what. Everyone in Miami was like us, from somewhere else.
Mama wasn't in a how-can-I-help-you-today kind of mood. "You want a psychic? Then you need to call one of them stupid-ass telephone services and waste your money to hear what you want. I only got one thing to tell." Then Mama told her what her specialty was.
But the woman didn't run away, and she didn't look scared. She just made her eyes narrow and stared at my mother like she couldn't quite see her. "Are you telling the truth?"
"I ain't got time for lies," Mama said.
"Then I want to know. How much?"
The price is usually twenty dollars for people Mama likes, a hundred for people she doesn't. She asked this woman for twenty, exact change. You always have to pay first. That's the rule. Then Mama makes you sit across from her at the card table, she takes an index card from her pile, and she scribbles a date in pencil, just like that. She doesn't have to close her eyes or hold your hand or whisper to Jesus. It's nothing like that at all.
"Now," Mama said, holding the card up so the woman couldn't see what she'd written, "I'ma tell you from experience, this ain't the best time to look at this, not right now. Some folks like to go where there's lots of light, or nice music, or where you got somebody you love. This ain't nothin' to share with strangers. That means me, too. Save it for when you're ready."
But when Mama gave her the card, the woman held it in her palms like a shiny seashell and stared down, not even blinking. I saw her shoulders rise up, and she let out a breath that sounded like a whimper. I wished she'd listened to Mama, because it makes me feel bad when people cry.
But this woman, when she stood up to leave, she was smiling. A smile as long as a mile. And this time, when she walked past me, she pressed her palm against my cheek. She made me smile, too.
When she was gone, Mama clapped her hands twice and laughed. "Look at that! That girl is something else." Mama is always so happy when she doesn't make people afraid.
"She's gonna' be an old-timer, huh?" I said.
Mama shook her head. "No, child. Ten years almost to the day. May fourth," she said, her face bright like it hadn't been in a long time.
I didn't get it at first. The woman was so young, like in her twenties. How could she be happy to have ten years left? But then I thought, maybe she was sick with something really bad, and she thought she was a goner already. To her, maybe ten years was like a whole new life.
It's weird. I've seen grown men with gray hair and deep lines in their faces drop to their knees and cry after Mama told them they had twenty-five years. No lie. Maybe they thought they had forever, and Mama's telling them the day, month, and year just made it real. And then there are people like this lady, so young and pretty, with no time left at all, and they walk out smiling like it's Christmas. Those people are my favorite kind.
Mama says she wasn't born knowing. She says she just woke up one morning when she was sixteen, looked at her family at the breakfast table, and knew. She knew her father was going to drop dead of a heart attack in January, in three years, after giving a Sunday sermon. She knew her mother was going to live to be ninety just like her great-aunt. She knew her brother Joe was going to get killed in an Army accident in 1987, and her sister was going to get shot to death by her boyfriend in 1999. She says she just ran to her room and cried, because all that knowing hurt her heart.
Then it started coming true. Mama says her father dropped dead of a heart attack after giving the sermon the first Sunday after New Year's, in January, and her mother treated Mama like it was her fault. Same when the phone call came about Mama's brother, my dead Uncle Joe.
Mama wanted to hide her knowing, but right after her father died like she said he would, people started coming to the house to see her. Because some people---maybe they're just weird, or they're less scared than other people---think knowing is power. Just like my teacher said. But Mama doesn't feel that way, not at all. A curse, she calls it. She has all this knowing, and there's nothing she can do to stop it once she knows. Even if she prays and fasts, it doesn't change anything. My dead Uncle Joe never even joined the Army because Mama begged him not to, but he got run over by a car on the exact day she said in 1987 anyway, the same year I was born.
Nobody can cheat it, except maybe the other way. Mama knew a boy in high school who got her to tell him how old he would be on the day it would happen, and she said he would be seventy-two. Then, he decided to act stupid and jump off the top bleacher at the football stadium like he was Superman, and he broke his neck. Mama saw it happen, and he was dead on the spot when he was only eighteen. That was the only time Mama was wrong.
Mama told me she had to think about that a long, long time. That was when she left home for good, and she spent more than a year thinking about how she got the date wrong for that one boy. Then, she decided on an answer: Maybe it'll happen faster if you make it happen on purpose, but it never happens later. The day is the day, and that's all there is to it. That's what Mama says.
Mama never had a boyfriend or anything, not the kind of boyfriend who gives you flowers on your birthday or takes you to the movies. She never even knew my daddy's name. Some people might not tell their children something like that, but Mama will say all kinds of things. She tells me she was an ugly child coming up, always sassing back and running around where she wasn't supposed to be, sticking her nose in grown folks' business, and the knowing came as her punishment. "God don't like ugly," she always tells me. She says that to scare me into acting right so I won't get punished the way she did, but that doesn't scare me. I wouldn't mind knowing the way she knows. I'd find a way to get rich from it instead of letting it drive me crazy like Mama does.
Grandmama is sixty-eight now. She still lives in the same house in Macon, all alone, and most of the time she won't return Mama's calls, not since Auntie Ree got shot by her boyfriend. Everyone tried to warn Auntie Ree because her boyfriend used to beat her up, but then again, it wouldn't have made a difference anyway, just like with my dead Uncle Joe. Mama saw how it would all happen.
I always call Grandmama collect once a month, no matter where we are. She picks up the phone if she hears my voice on her answering machine, but she won't talk to Mama except by accident. The way I see it, Grandmama's husband is dead and two of her children are gone, too, and I think she's mad because Mama told her she still has so long to wait.
The day we had to move from Miami Beach, I'd just aced a math test, no lie. I had the second-highest score in the class---answers come to me easy if I think hard enough---and on the way home from school I was looking at the palm trees through the school bus window, thinking it would be snowing if we were still living in Detroit like we did last winter. Then when I walked through the door, Mama was sitting there on the sofa with a Marlboro Light. Damn.
"We're moving on," she said. "Pack a bag."
Her face was damp, and there were little wads of toilet paper all over the floor, like there had been a parade. She'd been crying all day while I was in school. "You ain't working today?" I asked her, hoping it wasn't what I thought. I like new places, but I didn't want to leave. Not already.
"I been fired. So we're moving."
"Rosa fired you, Mama? How come?"
Mama's face turned hard, and she dragged on her cigarette, sucking it like reefer smoke. "We had a fight," Mama said. She blew the smoke out while she talked. "She didn't have no right to say what she said. 'Bout how I need help to take care of you right, I need to call Big Brothers or some mess, how I can't give you things like you need. You ain't none of her goddamn business."
The funny thing is, I always wondered what it would be like to be in Big Brothers, to have some dude who wears a suit to his job every day come play ball with me on weekends. It's not the same as a daddy, but it's better than nothing. But it's too bad for Rosa that she said that, because Mama gets pissed when people say she can't take care of me, especially after Atlanta. And she always has the last word in a fight. Once she gets mad, there's no keeping her quiet.
"So you told her?"
"Just go throw your things in a bag, Nicky."
"I don't want to leave here, Mama. Dang," I whined. I sounded like a baby, but I didn't care. "Tell her you lied. Tell her you just made it up."
I could see her hand holding the cigarette was shaking. New tears were running down her face. "I don't know why I said that to Rosa. That wasn't right. Maybe she didn't mean nothin' by it, but she made me so mad, talking about you."
I sat next to her on the couch and reached for her hand. She wouldn't squeeze back. "Tell her it don't mean nothing. We don't have to move just because of that. That ain't nothing."
"No, Nicky . . ." Mama whispered. "Telling to hurt somebody is the worst thing a person can do. Even the devil couldn't do nothing worse."
I'd seen Mama acting crazy for sure, running around in her underclothes, screaming at anybody who could hear, but I'd never seen her quiet. That scared me more than it would have if she'd been throwing pots and pans on the floor. She sounded different.
I got mad all of a sudden. "Shoot, Mama, forget Rosa. Who does she think she is, trying to say you can't take care of me? Nobody asked her."
Mama laughed a little and stared at the floor.
"You are taking care of me, Mama. Better than anybody."
"Sure am . . ." Mama said, still not looking up at me. "I got to . . . until May twelfth."
"Two thousand five," I said, squeezing her hand again, and Mama just closed her eyes.
Until right then, when I heard myself say it, the date had seemed so far away. I'd always known I would be fifteen that year, but I'd never stopped to think it was only three years away. It wasn't so far off anymore.
We left Miami Beach, which is too bad because it's so alive there. There are so many people who sing and dance and laugh and act like every day is the only one left. I wish we could have stayed there. Even in November, it's already freezing in Chicago, and people are dressing warm, walking fast, waiting for spring to come. In a cold place, it's like there's no such thing as today, just tomorrow. Will it snow tomorrow? Will it be sunny tomorrow? But Mama said she couldn't face Rosa, so we jumped on a bus and stopped riding when we got bored. This time, we stopped in Chicago. But there's never really anywhere to go.
I guess Mama felt so bad about what she said to Rosa because it reminded her of all the times before when she's lost her temper and said what she doesn't mean to say. I don't think she can help it. I was only six when she did it to me, even though I don't remember what I did that made her so mad in the first place. I was little, but I never forgot what she said: "I'll be through with your foolishness on May 12, 2005, because that's your day, Nicky. You hear?"
I told a friend once, a kid named Kalil I had just started hanging out with at my school in Atlanta, after he told me about something bad that had happened to his family in the country where they came from. We were just standing on the playground, and we told our worst stories. There were soldiers in his story; mine was only about Mama and May 12, 2005.
That was the only time anyone ever looked at me the way people always look at Mama. But the thing I like most about kids is that even though they get scared like anybody else, they can forget they're scared pretty fast. Especially kids like Kalil, who know there's more to the world than video games and homework. I guess that made us alike. He hardly waited any time at all before he said, "Does that bother you?" Just like that.
I'd never thought about that before. We were both ten then, so fifteen was five years off, half my whole life, and by that time I'd be in high school, nearly a man. A whole different person. I told him I didn't think it bothered me. When you grow up around someone like Mama and you hear about it all the time, you know everybody has a turn, and you just try to find something interesting every day to make you glad it hasn't happened yet.
That's why I didn't mind it in Miami Beach when the TV only got two channels---see, I don't need more than two channels, as long as there's at least one thing I can watch. I'll watch the evening news and soap operas in English or Spanish and even golf, if Tiger Woods is playing. Hell, I don't even mind when we don't have a TV, which we usually don't. I read comic books and books from the library and take walks and watch people. Kalil said he wouldn't go to school if he were me, but I don't mind. There's always something interesting somewhere, even at school. Like the way my math teacher smiles, when you can see her whole heart in it. I don't think anyone in my class has noticed that except me.
"You're really brave, Nicky," Kalil told me in Atlanta. I don't feel brave but I do think about it sometimes. I wonder how it'll go down, if it will hurt when it happens, or if I'll be crossing the street and a car will come around a corner all of a sudden like with my dead Uncle Joe. Or maybe I'll see someone getting robbed and I'll get shot like Auntie Ree when I try to stop the bad guy, and everyone will say I was a hero. That would be best. I wonder if it'll happen even if I stay in bed that day and never leave my room, or if I'll just get struck by lightning while I'm staring out of my window at the greatest storm I've ever seen. I never get sick, so I don't think it'll be that. I think it'll be something else, but I'm not sure what.
Even Mama says she doesn't know.
Luscious
BY BERNICE L. MCFADDENFROM Loving Donovan
Before she was Luscious, she was Rita.
Little wide-eyed Rita, daughter of Erasmus and Bertha Smith, hardworking people who knew God, but not every Sunday. They drank some and sometimes too much. Played their Billie Holiday records for the neighborhood, whether their neighbors wanted to hear them or not. Loved more than they fought, but fought just the same, had the scars and broken knickknacks to prove the latter, Rita to prove the first.
Before she was Luscious with a number and a cell mate she was Rita of Detroit. Rita of Cadillac Avenue. Tall, red-boned Rita who swayed down the street on long lovely legs so well oiled they gleamed. Rita with the green eyes and good hair that touched the middle of her back. Rita so fine, the white people forgave and forgot her thick lips and broad nose.
Before she was Luscious of Brooklyn, Luscious of Stanley Avenue, she was just Rita minding her own business who one day looked up into the eyes of her father's best friend and saw something there that she'd only seen in the eyes of school boys and lately strange men that beckoned her and sometimes brushed their fingers against her arm when she ignored their calls.
Manny Evans, raven colored, baldheaded, broad smiling, pockets heavy with nickels Manny.
Manny Evans who had bounced Rita on his knee, patted the top of her head, dropped nickels into her saving jar, the old mayonnaise jar Bertha had cleaned and put aside for just that purpose.
Manny Evans who had women on corners and a twenty-two in his sock. He wore taps on the heels of his shoes and the nickel-jingle-clickety-click sounds he made when he walked down the streets told everybody he was coming, but no one messed with him because they were sure about the twenty-two in his sock, and suspicious about the breast pocket of his jacket and the nickel-free pocket of his pants.
Rita had always liked the way his head shone and as she got older she began to appreciate his color, so black and smooth. She found herself thinking about his shoulders and the gold pinky ring he wore, the one with the black onyx stone. "Black like me," he said, "strong like me."
Rita filling out in places, eyes greener now, hair loose instead of pulled back, stockings replacing knee socks, ears pierced and Rita all of the time licking her lips keeping them moist, keeping them shiny.
Manny Evans dropping paper money in her saving jar instead of nickels, wanting to pat her ass instead of the top of her head, wanting to bounce her on his knee again and maybe on something else.
He visits on Saturday nights. Comes by with a bottle of whiskey after checking on his women, collecting money, and laying his hands on people who've allowed their eyes to slide over and past him when he called out to them, "You got my money Nigga?"
Erasmus and Manny drink, smoke Pall Malls, and play dominoes while Bertha talks to Adele from next door. Adele, tall like a man with hands that wrinkled early and callused two years ago on the palms.
Before she was Luscious on parole and scrubbing floors for white folk in Indian Village, she was Rita and that's what was written on her bedroom door in big black letters so Manny couldn't have mistaken it for the bathroom. But he did.
His fly is down and his dick is already in his hands when he stumbles in stinking of liquor and bleary-eyed. He apologizes when he walks in on her in the middle of drying her just-bathed body, but he don't jump back and close the door or drop his eyes in shame. He just stares at her and his hand, the one not holding on to his dick, reaches behind him and pushes the door shut.
His eyes enjoy her face and then her naked breasts and finally the thin line of black hair that begins two inches below her navel.
Before she was Luscious, she was Rita, confused and held down in her own bed by strong hands. Those same hands covering her mouth, roughly touching and rubbing. Those hands are rough like the steel wool Bertha scrubs the pots with and Rita believes her skin will shred beneath them. She can't imagine a more painful feeling and then she doesn't have to because he's inside of her, pushing into the place where only her index finger had ever been.
Rita, before she was Luscious, her mind bending and her body coming apart on the inside and Manny not allowing her to scream or breathe and when he's done he don't even look at her he just looks down at the bloodstains on his pants and tucks back in the paper money sticking out of his pockets, but he leaves the nickels that have fallen out and onto the bed.
Manny Evans finds the bathroom just fine now and returns to Erasmus, his Pall Malls and liquor and proceeds to win three more domino games.
Rita buds in the spring along with the gnarly limbs of elms and oaks. Her belly pushes out in mid-April, coinciding with the tulip and daffodil blooms and all of the beauty of the season rests in the glow of her skin, but her eyes are as cold as the long-gone winter.
"Who?" her parents ask even though their minds have wandered over the young men that have spent time with Rita on the porch, the ones that have called out to her from open car windows, music blasting, Rita's name lost in the lyrics and strain. Jake's son, Marshall, they assume, or the Tompkins boy, Pierce.
"Coca-Cola man," Rita says rubbing her stomach and looking off at nothing.
Erasmus doesn't stop smoking and Bertha keeps moving her hands up and down her arms.
"The Coca-Cola man?" they say together and exchange glances before looking back at Rita.
"Hmmm," Rita sounds and looks down at her swollen bare feet. "Mama, where the pail at?" she asks as if the conversation is over.
Bertha remembers her own pregnancy and her feet, swelled up and burning at the bottoms, but she can't go for the pail because Erasmus is reaching for another cigarette even though the one he lit a moment ago is still burning in the ashtray.
"White man, then?" Erasmus asks and then holds his breath.
Rita's eyes roam around the kitchen and then look up at her father. "No. Colored man," she says and her eyes move to the ceiling and then down to the floor and then to the window that looks out into the yard.
"Girl, have you taken leave of your senses?" Erasmus laughs before lighting his cigarette and inhaling. His laughter makes the hair on Bertha's neck stand up.
"Why you say that, Erasmus?" Bertha asks, moving closer to Rita.
Erasmus' laughter rocks him and his cigarette falls from his mouth.
"What's so funny? Why you laughing so?" Bertha's head swings between her husband and her child. "Man, you crazy or something?" She asks rubbing at the hairs on her neck and taking another step that puts her right next to Rita.
Erasmus composes himself and bends down to retrieve his cigarette from the floor. Both women see the thin sheath of hair on the top of his head and Rita thinks that in a few years he will be bald like Manny. She shivers.
"This here is 1942," Erasmus says, wiping the tears from the corners of his eyes and sticking the cigarette back between his lips. "And I ain't never seen no colored man driving no goddamn Coca-Cola truck!" Laughter consumes him again and the house seems to shake with it.
They send her down to Fenton, down to Mamie Ray's house.
Mamie Ray is an old woman Bertha had heard about months earlier when Valerie Hope, one of the women she worked with at the hotel got herself "messed up" by some married man who had showered her with "I love yous" until she was so slick from his sweet words that she found it hard to keep her legs together.
Having had her, his affirmations became few and far between and stopped all together when she announced that she was pregnant.
He didn't love her anymore and maybe when the love left so did his vision because he would pass her on the street like a blind man walking past a box full of money.
Aurora had pulled her aside and told her to stop her whining and crying. Told her it was her own fault she was in the situation she was in but it wasn't no use crying over spilled milk and shoved a piece of paper in Valerie's hand.
"You call Mamie Ray and she'll take care of it." Bertha heard her whisper. Gladys, who wasn't even involved in the conversation, sounded, "Umph!" and nodded her head in agreement before swinging her mop from one side of the hall to the other.
Bertha, who was only on nodding basis with Valerie and Aurora, approached Gladys about it later. They whispered about Valerie's situation over their bologna sandwiches and thermoses filled with warm coffee and, in the end, Gladys scrawled Mamie Ray's name and number on the crumpled paper bag that still held Bertha's apple.
"Always good to have," Gladys offered. "Like a pistol or a straight razor," she added and popped the last bit of sandwich into her mouth.
Mamie Ray, black, short, and stout with a tangled mass of orange hair that spread out around her head like a feathered hat imparting her with a buffoon-type peculiarity. She had a dead right foot that was larger than her left and hands too small for her body or even a five-year-old.
When Rita stepped off the bus Mamie Ray, body lopsided from years of dragging around her dead foot, was standing on the curb waiting.
"You Rita?" Mamie asked as she grabbed Rita's elbow with her tiny hands.
She hadn't really had to ask that question, Bertha had described her child to a tee, all Mamie needed to look for were the eyes. "Ain't seen another pair like 'em, ever," Bertha had said to Mamie on the phone.
"Yessum," Rita said, her eyes struggling with the woman's orange hair and twisted body.
"How far along you think you is?" Mamie asked, looking down at Rita's stomach.
"Don't know," Rita replied and took a step backward.
"Well, you know when you 'lowed him on top of you. What month it was?"
"I ain't allowed nothing," Rita mumbled. "Cold month, I suppose," she added and chanced a glance at the oversized foot.
Mamie bit her lip and scratched at her head. "After Thanksgiving but before Christmas and New Year's?"
"I dunno," Rita said and her eyes moved to the tiny hands.
"Uh-huh," Mamie sounded and then, "You look strong, you can carry that suitcase," she said and wobbled away.
Bertha is already preparing. She eats late and heavy, drowning her biscuits in butter and then dabbing them in honey. She bakes pies and cakes and consumes them like air. She excuses herself from the conversations that takes place around the bus stop in the mornings and evenings, when she's traveling to and from work. She excuses herself to spit or to move herself beneath the shade of a nearby tree and dab at the imaginary sweat forming on her brow and below her nose.
She calls in sick, falls out in front of the church after service is over and the congregation and choir are gathered there.
She does all of this so they can assume before she has to tell them.
Her hips have already spread and people remember that she carried Rita the same way. "That baby is all in your behind girl!" they say, just as she had planned.
"When you due?"
The questions come like rain.
"Lawd, you want another one after Rita practically grown!"
"My friend Ann had a baby late, too. Change-of-life baby. You probably won't even get your menstrual after this one come."
Erasmus didn't like what Bertha was doing, didn't like it one little bit.
"Bertha, why we gotta hide the fact that Rita done gone and got herself knocked up?"
"'Cause."
"'Cause what?"
"Just 'cause." Bertha was done talking about it and went to check on the cornbread and chicken and dumplings she was preparing.
By the time Manny shows up to the house again, Bertha is a good twenty pounds heavier.
"We expectin' you know. Erasmus ain't tell you?" Bertha spouts when Manny's eyes go wide with surprise.
"Really?" Manny says and his eyes stretch wider. "Go 'head man!" He laughs and slaps Erasmus hard on his back. "You still gotta a little left in you!"
Erasmus just grimaces.
"So when you due?"
Bertha drops her eyes and mumbles something Manny can't quite catch.
"What's that?" he asks and leans in closer to Bertha.
"Summer. July. Maybe August." Bertha speaks in a low, unsure voice.
"Is that right? Is that right?" he says again.
"Uh-huh," Bertha mumbles and then looks over at Erasmus.
There's a space of silence. A deep ebbing quiet that makes both Erasmus and Bertha twist their necks and examine their hands.
Manny considers them for a while and then asks, "Where Rita at?"
"Oh she down in Gainesville, visiting with my mama. She's ailing you know, so I sent Rita on down there to help out." The lies fall from Bertha's mouth like stones and Erasmus' body jerks with each syllable.
"She'll be back by the time the baby come. She'll be back by then." Bertha's voice falters and the smile that had been holding fast to her lips slips.
"That's good," Manny says and twists his ring around his pinky. "She a good girl that Rita."
Rita, before she was Luscious, was not called upon to change a diaper or heat a bottle, was assured that she would never be referred to as Mama or have to attend a PTA meeting. Bertha is Mama and Rita, before she was Luscious, is just older sister, eldest sibling, first child of Erasmus and Bertha, mother of none.
Friends visit; family, too. They bring pink receiving blankets, matching booties, and bonnets that smell of talcum powder and everything precious and new.
They stroke the baby's tiny hand and coo at her pursed lips and Bertha grins and smiles and serves cookies and tea while Erasmus grunts and excuses himself from the sounds of women and the baby smells that swirl around him and snatch away his air.
Rita, fuller in the hips and heavy-breasted, stays put in her room and listens as the lies her mother tells about pregnancy and childbirth slip through the crack beneath the door.
They notice her breasts before anything else. Their eyes light on them like flies on sugar shit and they lick their tobacco-black lips and drag their hands through their woolen hair and some touch themselves, running their fingers across their chins or pinching the skin of their necks.
The women turn cold eyes on her and one even spits in her path, another fixes her mouth to sling an insult but catches the cold glint in her eyes and the sun fastening onto something long, sharp, and silver sticking out from her coat pocket and she thinks better of her comment, bites her tongue and turns her head away instead.
It's just before dusk and the sun is looming and orange in the sky, people are huddled in bunches on the corners, and someone is already cussing up a storm in one of the apartments overhead.
Music is streaming out of Lou's place, and Jake's Spot has set the first batch of porgies in the pan to fry.
Friday night in the Black Bottom, Paradise Valley.
Rita reaches the corner and turns left on Hastings Street. Broken glass litters the sidewalk; there are bloodstains close by and further away a chalk outline of where the body fell dead.
But that was last night and not one person is talking about it because someone else was shot dead outside of Sonnie Wilson's place and another stabbed behind The Flame.
Too many dead people to talk about, living people got other things on their minds; they move up and down the walkways and don't even seem to notice the silhouette on the ground. They trample across its hands, legs and face while they talk about fifths, fucking, no-good men, and bad-ass kids.
Rita turns into the O Bar.
The door sits open but the orange sun can't even work its way past the threshold; it's already midnight inside those walls, just the flicker of cigarettes and the dim light coming off the jukebox exist there.
Rita peers in before stepping into the gloom. The two men seated at the bar turn their heads to consider her but decide after a moment that the drinks sitting in front of them are more interesting.
A woman, satin-colored, long and leggy, moves from the shadows and positions herself near the jukebox. Rita sees that the skin around her eyes is puffy and the lipstick she wears is the color of purple-black grapes.
The woman drapes herself over the jukebox, pressing the side of her face against the curved metal. Slowly, gently, she places loving kisses onto the glass, leaving plum-colored lip marks smeared across its clear face.
Rita watches her for a while before moving to the bar and taking a seat.
"Yeah," the bartender calls from a dark space at the end of the bar.
Rita squints her eyes. "Manny here?" she asks.
"Maybe," the voice calls back.
The two men turn their attention to Rita once more.
"He here or not?"
"Depending on who's asking."
"Tell 'em Rita here."
"Rita who?"
"Erasmus' girl."
There is the sound of wood scraping against wood and Rita catches sight of a worn white T-shirt and muscular brown arms as the bartender moves from his chair to a room behind the bar.
The woman is done with loving the jukebox and pulls up a stool next to Rita.
The men exchange glances and then drop their eyes back down to their drinks.
"What you want Manny for?" The voice is coarse and brittle and Rita's eyes turn to face the puffed skin and scraggly gray strands sticking out from the black blond hair.
"I got something for him," she says.
"Yeah, what you got that no other woman in here got? We all got something for Manny," the woman says and a bitter laugh escapes her. "Gimme a smoke, Lester." She orders without her eyes leaving Rita's.
Lester almost tips his drink over in his hurry to toss a cigarette down the bar, then drops a dollar down next to his glass and rushes out the door.
The woman reaches into her bosom and pulls out a lighter. Her eyes still holding Rita's, she lights the cigarette and inhales deeply.
"They ain't nobody too young for Manny," she mumbles to herself, then blows a stream of smoke into Rita's face. "Shit, I was young once, too, ya know." She spits and slams her hand down on the counter. "Must be them eyes. You got eyes like a cat. Probably sneaky like 'em too."
The man that was left at the bar, digs deep into his pocket, pulls out a dollar and drops it down next to his glass. "Later, Lonnie." He yells over his shoulder before shooting Rita a cautious look and skip-walking out of the bar.
"Hey, Lonnie, he here or not?" Rita asks.
"He said he don't know no Rita or Erasmus," Lonnie says as he lazily flips through the newspaper.
"He don't know nobody he owe, had, or hates!" the woman laughs. "Ain't that right, Lonnie?" she screams and slaps the bar again.
"If you say so, Ursula."
"So which category you fall under, honey?" Ursula leans in and whispers to Rita's cheek.
The rancid stench of scotch and cigarettes accosts Rita's nostrils and she stands up suddenly, sending the stool toppling down to the floor.
"Oooh! This one's a little spitfire," Ursula says. "Yeah, he like 'em like that."
"That's enough, Ursula," Lonnie warns and finally moves down from the dark end of the bar. He's large, over three hundred pounds, and his stomach jiggles beneath his T-shirt with every step he takes toward Rita.
"He ain't here. So either buy a drink or vacate the premises," he says and lays his meaty hands down on the bar.
"He ain't here?" Rita questions sarcastically.
"He always here," Ursula whispers and then breaks down with laughter.
Lonnie shoots her another warning look before turning his gaze back to Rita.
"That's what I said." His tone is angry now.
Rita chews on her bottom lip for a moment. "Okay," she says and then, "Where's the ladies room?"
"For customers only!" Ursula screams and pounds a scrawny fist on the bar.
Lonnie rolls his eyes and says, "At the back and to the left." He turns on Ursula. "I'ma throw your ass out of here, ya here me, Ursula?"
Rita moves slowly toward the dewy blackness of the back. Cigarette smoke hangs heavy in the air and the soles of her shoes makes sucking sounds against the sticky filth of the floor.
She walks slowly then turns her head slightly to see Manny seated in a large leather chair in the room at the back. He's leaned back, sleeping legs stretched out before him, arms folded across his stomach, onyx stone gleaming.
Lonnie is still fussing at Ursula, his sausage-length index finger swaying ominously in her face.
Rita moves right, slips behind the bar and into the room.
She stands there for some time, staring at his gleaming bald head, thick neck, and hands that held her down. Her eyes roll over legs that forced hers apart and shoes that left black polish streaks across her bedspread.
He sneezes and his eyelids fly open, his brown eyes hold the green of hers, the young face soft, plump, and glowing of motherhood. He smiles a sleepy smile and his eyes drop down to firm, full breasts and the small circles of wetness seeping through the pale pink blouse she wears.
Rita steps closer to him and he smells the talcum powder she's dusted her stomach with, the sour milk the baby spewed across her skirt that Bertha dragged a wet cloth across before Rita walked blank-eyed and calm out the door.
"What you doing here?" he finally asks when his eyes grow tired of holding her and the wet spots begin to make him uncomfortable.
Rita is still seeing the shoe polish marks on the bedspread and feeling the gold band of his ring pressed between her fingers. She can hear her insides screaming, screaming and pulling apart and him breathing heavy in her neck, her hair, his skin slapping against hers, the tearing part complete and the silence that swelled inside of her and him so deep within her she feels as if her body will swallow him whole.
"What you want?" he asks, his voice filling with annoyance, his eyes looking behind her for Lonnie.
Rita wonders why she's so calm, so cool. She looks down at her hands that aren't even shaking and thinks about her heart that barely beats enough for her to breathe right anymore. Then she reaches into her pocket and pulls out the knife that Bertha uses to gut fish and before Manny can understand what's happening, before he can reach his big hands up to stop her, she brings the knife down into the center of his head.
A screaming Ursula backs away from the doorway, her purple lips a large circle, her chicken-thin hands cradling her cheeks as Rita, bloody hands and blouse soaked through with mother's milk, moves pass her.
Days later, when the police knock on Bertha's door to come and take Rita away, the O Bar was burned down to the ground when white rioters tossed fire bombs through the glass panes of businesses along Hastings, St. Antoine, and Brush.
By the time Rita was assigned her number and asked to turn front and then sideways for the camera, Manny Evans' chalky silhouette was burned away to nothing and Rita was on her way to becoming Luscious #132541289.
FROM Crawfish Dreams
Camille Broussard sat high on the torn vinyl cushion waiting to shake hands with her Maker. Her wrinkled brown fingers worked the rosewood beads that had been her mother's last gift to her. She hadn't expected to die on a Thursday, an undistinguished day in her opinion, and she was disappointed to find she'd be riding to heaven in a heavily-dented Ford pickup truck. Good Catholic that she was, she had hoped for something fancier, a sky blue Cadillac with pleated wings boasting a choir of angels in the back seat. But her life had been one of diminishing returns, so she wasn't altogether surprised to find herself rushing headlong toward a concrete barrier in a vehicle composed entirely of scrap.
She had been looking forward to retiring from her job. For forty years, Camille had been housekeeper and cook for the priests at St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church. Two dozen priests had come and gone, but she was still there. The church had been both sanctuary and snare, located six blocks from her home in a conspicuously unprosperous part of Los Angeles called Watts. In a place where jobs were scarce, she had depended on St. Martin's for her daily bread. Her seven children had attended the parish school; it had given her great comfort to look up from the stove and see them at play. Now they were grown. Most of them had taken leave of both Watts and the Catholic faith. But whoever wished to see her a final time would have to come to church.
Being matriarch of the Broussard clan, a family of Louisiana Creoles who relied heavily upon ritual, Camille had laid elaborate plans concerning every detail of her death: who to burden with her last secrets, who to allow at her bedside, who to trust with her final rosary. She'd peopled dying moments with a cast of penitent thousands---the scoundrels who had wronged her, the children who had vexed her, the tax collectors who had cheated her out of her hard-earned dimes. Her funeral had been scripted down to the necklace and earrings, the correct shade of velvet for the coffin lining, the number, type, and tenor of hymns, the precise expression to be frozen for eternity.Pallbearers had been preselected along with their understudies. Her plot was purchased and waiting, the stone carved with everything but the final date. She'd envisioned a priest miraculously materializing at the exact moment of death bearing one final body of Christ, one last sweet taste of Jesus which Camille, as a Eucharistic minister, was perfectly capable of feeding herself. However, she wanted the priest to grant her absolution, which she did not wish to grant herself.
In her current condition, she would have no choice but to pardon her own sins. Her plans were literally out the window. In all her planning, she had never dreamed herself foolish enough to hasten her own demise by asking Lester Pep to carry her to San Bernardino and back in his godawful deathtrap of a truck.
Pep struggled to gain control of the lunging demon, jerking the wheel from side to side---an angler with a big one. "Say your prayers!" he shouted. A sixty-two-year-old black man from Watts, he was already five years past his life expectancy.
Camille held fast to the nape of her seat. They were jiggling down the freeway at a mean tilt, seventy miles an hour in the carpool lane, not a seat belt in sight. The curving highway stretched into oblivion, a vast sea of lanes rising and falling over pillars of rock. Box houses, brown skies, beige hills, dry bushes---all were being swept away on time's noisy current. The speed with which the end was approaching confused Camille, who was sure God still had work for her to do. As fragments of her sixty-seven years flashed before her eyes, a strange vision of hope revealed itself to her. Beyond the smog and the steamy desert sun, she thought she saw Watts rising in the distance.
Camille felt a pounding on the glass behind her. Her grandson Nicholas was crouched in the truck bed pitching curses to the wind, his shaved head thumping the glass like a gigantic ball of hail. As cars swerved and dipped all around him, he gripped the metal bars that normally served as guard rails for Pep's lawn mowing equipment. The equipment had been removed to make room for the passenger, but the chains that held it in place were left to rattle and bang against the sides of the truck. Nicholas, who had just been released from three years in prison, rattled and banged along with them. Camille wondered if any beating he might have suffered at the Men's Correctional Institute was as cruel and unusual as this one.
"Mother of Jesus!" Pep delivered a swift uppercut to the steering column and forced the truck off the meridian. The pickup bucked to a stop on the exit ramp, and Nicholas landed with a thud against the window. "Whew! That was a close one!" Pep massaged the dash. "God in heaven, I never pray except when I'm in this truck!" Camille turned around to see if Nicholas was all right.
"Oh, don't worry about him," Pep advised. "Somebody needs to knock some sense into that big head of his. So he knows better than to beat up old ladies."
Camille found herself staring directly into her grandson's eyes and nineteen years of hurt. She had raised seven children but none had tried her the way Nicholas had. Such a beautiful child he had been, but now fury scarred his countenance. She clasped the rosary in her palm. Everyday for the last three years, she had prayed a rosary for the return of his soul. As far as she could tell, a thousand rosaries later, he was not any closer to God. She was face to face with her failure.
She wanted to ask Pep to stop the truck and let the boy off right there on the blacktop in the middle of those chalky white lines. The way he was going, he would end up as a chalk outline sooner or later and she feared the yellow tape more than anything but the toe tag. When people in Watts drove past crime or accident scenes, they craned their necks to see if the yellow tape was mapping their tragedy, if the chalk outline matched the dimensions of someone they loved. Keening could still be heard in their part of town; the daughters of Jerusalem had nothing on the daughters of Watts. Camille could not bear the thought of burying her grandson, but the thought of him playing the angel of death was even more disturbing to her. He had not killed anyone yet, but he had come close enough to warrant a thousand rosaries.
Here was a child who only twelve years earlier had held the promise of a stellar future. He was so handsome that one of the Crenshaw cousins, upon spotting him at the annual beach trip, convinced Raymond and Isabel to sign their son with a modeling agency. He quickly became the family celebrity. By the age of nine, he had money in the bank and college plans, an enthusiastic agent, and two store catalogs under his belt. The limit was the sky, or in his case, the airwaves. The Broussards celebrated with gumbo the night their golden boy's first and only television commercial premiered. There was Nicholas, dressed as George Washington Carver, inventing peanut butter right before their eyes. It should have been his big break, but eminent historians and loudmouthed politicians suggested using Dr. Carver to sell peanut butter was like using George Washington to sell cherries, only worse because the distinguished scientist and inventor never would have uttered the words, "It don't get no betta than my crunchy nut butta." The ad was yanked off the air three short weeks, and like that of so many other budding stars in the city of the angels, the lad's golden age had come to an untimily end.
"Yo, Peanut! What happened to your head?" Some rough-looking young men were standing on the corner in front of the liquor store. Nicholas pounded the glass, in farewell or anger Camille wasn't sure, then climbed out. A lanky boy on a small copper bicycle circled the crowd. Nicholas reached out his hand and cuffed him on the ear.
Camille rolled down her window and shouted after her grandson, "Don't you dare leave without saying anything. You get back over here and thank Pep for the ride." The young men fell out laughing. Nicholas obeyed.
"Hey, man, thanks for bustin' me out the joint. I hope I can return the favor one day." He assumed a cocky swagger for the benefit of his friends.
Camille yanked him back with one lash of her tongue. "You may have paid your debt to society," she snapped, "but you haven't paid your debt to me."
"Get off my back, Grandma. I ain't done nothin' to you." The crowd bellowed its appreciation.
"You done plenty."
"Well, I ain't goin' to confession. You ain't my judge."
"I'm worse than the judge. You fooled the judge. I would have given you life."
"You can't give me life! You ain't God."
"I'm worse than God. God didn't come to pick you up. God didn't sit at your trial everyday hoping for some sign of humanity. I don't know what God has planned for you, but I've got work for you to do. You may have served your time with the California justice system, but you haven't served your time with me."
Howls from the street corner chorus. Eyes wet with tears of laughter.
"Damn, Grandma. Why you gots to be so hard on me?"
"I'm the easy one. What do you want me to tell your father?"
"Tell him I survived the pokey. Tell him the bird man is back."
For three years, Camille had dreaded this day and now it was upon her. His day of freedom was her day of reckoning. From the moment he was dragged from this same corner in handcuffs, she had racked her mind for an explanation. Boy children don't belong to their mothers, her best friend had tried to comfort her, they belong to the world. But it was under Camille's watch that Nicholas had gone from bad to worse, and she couldn't accept that she was blameless. She had turned her eyes away from him and he had wandered into the desert. It was up to her to bring him home.
Broussards did not go to prison. So as long as Nicholas had been locked up, they had pretended he had gone off to school or war or the priesthood. Now he was out, however & they were forced to deal with an ex-con, which was harder than dealing with a dropout, a veteran, or an ex-priest. Already his two younger brothers were following his lead. They had been suspended from school so often that the office had a stack of pink slips pretyped with the Broussard name. For Broussard men, it seemed prison was the equivalent of pregnancy: how to ruin your life, take years off your youth, and shame your family at the same time. And a prison record was more difficult to disown than an offspring.
Nobody else would go get him from prison. His parents were still too angry. His big brother had disowned him. He no longer had any girlfriends, or his girlfriends no longer had any cars. His little sister was too pregnant to fit behind a wheel. Even his Auntie Grace, who often felt kinship with outlaws, could not be persuaded to make the journey to San Bernardino. The prison was located not far from where Marc lived, but Uncle Marc couldn't have picked his nephew out of a lineup.
So Camille wasn't surprised when the phone rang and it was Nicholas wanting to know if she would come get him. She might could, she told him, but she wasn't going to let him stay in her house. He had tried to drive her from her house once but he hadn't succeeded, and she wasn't going to let him have another go at it. Nobody was going to part her from her home. She had been driven from her home in Louisiana by some lowlife white criminals, but she wasn't going to let any lowlife black criminals drive her from her home in Los Angeles, especially not one related to her.
"Ain't you forgive me, Grandma?" he wanted to know.
"No," she said and hung up the phone.
Now, as she watched him stroll away, taking no shame with him, she tried to remind herself that he had once been her joy.
"When I was his age, I wanted to do everything and couldn't do nothin'." Pep turned his head to follow the ambling figure of youth. "Here he is, free to do whatever he wants, and he don't wanna do nothin'." He whipped around and stepped on the gas.
Exhaust from the truck caused the young men to hack and wheeze. They fanned themselves, clutched their necks, pretended they were choking to death. Through the mirror, Camille watched Nicholas disappear into a cloud of smoke and laughter. She pictured his slender youthful fingers plunging a knife into delicate elderly flesh. The crime was his, but she was having the flashbacks.
"I can't just let him run the streets!" Her voice was thick with despair.
"Well, you can't keep him under lock and key," Pep reminded her. "It's up to the government to do that for you." He swung a left onto Hooper.
It was then that they noticed the boy with the small copper bicycle racing alongside the truck.
Pep slammed on the brakes. "Dammit! That kid needs to be in school!"
Camille clutched the dash with one hand and her stomach with the other. The truck started to convulse. The bicycle boy raced on ahead. Pep pumped the gas in a futile attempt to engage the engine. Some children chased each other into the street. Pep blew his horn. They scattered laughing. Eventually, the truck stopped shaking and Pep could not rouse it at all.
She should have driven herself in the Studebaker, but a few weeks before she had gotten into a little scrape. For a hair's length of road, she had lost sight of what she was doing and plowed into the car in front of her. In her forty years of driving, she had never hit a soul. No one was hurt, but a child was crying in the back seat of the stricken car. Camille cried, too. "It's my fault," she kept apologizing, thankfully. By the time Camille drove herself home, it was twilight and difficult to see so the damage to her car one of her headlights was smashed and her right front bumper dented wasn't that noticeable When she got to the house, she parked the car in backyard with all the dead cars her children had left there, and didn't tell them what had happened. When they did notice the damage, she downplayed the incident. Her insurance would surely be raised, that's what they said. But she could hear them whispering amongst themselves. She was no longer the unshakable power.
Age was beginning to take its toll. The ache in her feet was constant. Her eyes strained more to see, her ears strained more to hear. Her blood pressure was high, and so was her blood sugar. She looked at her next door neighbor. Grey had invaded his beard. His hands were veined like cabbage. Neither one of them was capable of picking up a nineteen-year-old and setting him on his feet.
"Where did we go wrong, Lester?"
"Oh, we didn't go wrong, Pretty Miss Camille. All the wells done dried up, that's all. The young people think they got to do bad just to survive. Take your boy . . ."
"He never wanted for anything!"
"You sure? How long his daddy work them shipyards?"
"He hired on just before the Riots . . ."
"Laid off after twenty years! Now, what kind of a upside down thing is that? It's an unforgiving world out there. All the niceties is gone! Where this boy gonna work? They done up and left with all the paychecks. An idle man is a hankering thing."
Pep spoke from experience. When he bought his house from the Broussards in 1959, he was a gardener tending the flowerbeds of Beverly Hills. After the 1965 Riots, his clients discovered they no longer needed him. So he moved his business to Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park, places where black people had enough money and grass to keep him busy. But Pep was a flower man. He didn't care for lawns and he wasn't very good at them. He couldn't compete with the teams of Japanese, then Mexican gardeners. He was used to operating solo. For Camille, this was the problem in a nutshell. What was known to successful gardeners had been known to her for generations. Collective effort brought collective achievement.
"Do you think he's redeemable?" She looked to Pep for encouragement. He had always been a positive fellow, far more optmistic than the Broussards, despite the comparatively poorer hand life had dealt him.
"I don't know, Pretty Miss," he shook his head. "Can't save nobody don't wanna be saved---not if he's too big to carry. You can pull a child out of a burning house, but not a grown man. And he's a child of the Riots, ain't that right? Whole city burning down and he come blazing outta his mama! Ain't smart enough to run the other way."
Camille hated when Pep talked crazy.
"What he needs is a job," she said.
"You gonna give him one? There's kids out here with good records can't find no work."
"Maybe I could pay him a little something to do odd jobs around the house."
The minute the words left her mouth Camille knew she had stumbled upon a truly bad idea. For the eight years since her husband died, she had been saving fifty dollars a month, stuffing it in an envelope taped to the underside of her bedroom bureau. Her job at the rectory paid two hundred dollars a week. Social Security would pay only half of that. She would have to subsidize her retirement with money from the envelope. She didn't have any money to pay Nicholas.
"You know," Pep was saying, "the two of us should put our assets together. We should start a little business."
"What assets?" Camille retorted. She had no more interest in going into business with Pep than she had in getting into his truck again.
"You with your beauty and brains. Me with my green thumb." He was smiling.
"You had a little business. What happened to it?" She wasn't in the mood.
"Minority-owned and everything. Just couldn't get those big contracts!" Pep shook his head. He climbed out of the truck and came around and opened her door.
"Where's a criminal when you need him?" he sighed. "Gotta get that grandson of yours to steal me a new vehicle!"
He threw back his head and laughed. Camille stared at him long and hard. He was not particularly handsome. His teeth were yellow; a couple of them were missing. His beard was badly in need of a trim. His eyes were bloodshot, even though he had stopped drinking a couple of years ago. But unlike Nicholas, with his movie star looks, Pep had never been to jail. He was entitled to his laughter. His only crimes were entrepreneurial.
She wrapped her sweater around her, took his hand, and stepped down into the street. The boy with the copper bicycle was suddenly at her feet.
"Hey, Miz Broussard, 'member me? I used to carry yo' bags."
"Where'd you get that bicycle from?" Pep growled.
"I found it in the L.A. River." The boy looked proud of himself.
"That's the bicycle of one of them boys that drowned after that big rain. You best to take that bicycle back." Pep snatched the bicycle away from him.
The boy protested loudly and held on. "I didn't steal it," he hollered, "I found it. I ain't no thief!"
Camille stared at him hard. "Is that you, Quentin? You getting big. How's your grandma?"
"She awright."
"Ain't seen you round the store lately."
"Ain't workin' there no more."
"You ain't working nowhere," Pep brushed him aside. "You need to be going to school. How old are you? Ten?"
"I'm thirteen! My gramma say I ain't need to go to school no mo'. Gimme twenty dollars, I fix that truck."
"I'll sell it to you for twenty-five." Quentin shook his head. Pep threw down the bicycle. He picked it up and rode off. The copper frame gleamed in the twilight sun.
Camille and Pep set off. Three blocks and they would be home. Before they had gone a good ten yards, children were jumping up and down in the back of Pep's truck chanting rhymes and yelling obscenities. The elders did not look back nor wag their fingers in reprimand, nor add their own voices to the din of posterity. They were tired from a long day spent with the future. Together they walked, his arm supporting her elbow, her hand clutching his wrist, two stalwart spirits teetering on the edge of endurance. If not for their surroundings and not again for their circumstances and not again for their misfortunes, they might have caused a head or two to bow. As it was, theirs were the only heads straining to stay aloft. Burdened with obligations and the apprehension of old people walking a gauntlet of unemployed youth, they struggled to make it home before night descended.
Press and Curl
It didn't take them all that long to find Rodney's body. Three weeks after he disappeared, they came across him facedown in an Atlanta creek. And by then I was used to the idea of him being dead. I had watched the children's faces on the news, one by one, since August of last year. Last time I checked, three of the pictures had "missing" up under them and the other ten said, "murdered." None of the "missing" ones ever got found and took off the list. All that ever changed was the word below. Once somebody's picture made it to the news, it was a done deal.
Rodney's family asked if the school chorus could sing at the services. We practiced for three days straight to be ready for Tuesday. Our rehearsals weren't as rowdy as usual, but somebody just passing by also wouldn't think we was getting ready to put a boy in the ground. Truth was, most people was a little excited because the funerals always got shown on TV. I didn't like to watch them, but Mama would sit on the couch with one dry Kleenex balled tight in her hand saying "God spare."
Mrs. Scott, the music teacher, was taking us through "God Is Amazing" for the fifty-millionth time with Cinque Freeman on solo. He had his eyes closed, singing like he Foster Silvers or somebody. Mrs. Scott banged on the music stand with her conductor wand. "Let us not forget why we are here."
I don't think that anyone forgot Rodney. It was just that they didn't know him good enough to have nothing much to remember. He was my friend, true, but I was the only one who got to talk to him. Rodney was so shy, like in that song by the Pointer Sisters. Talking to him was sometimes like talking to my grandfather after he had his stroke. I could tell by looking at Papa that he could hear me but his mouth couldn't work for him to answer me. So when I spoke to him, I would say my part and his, too. But most people not going to go through all that with a eleven-year-old, so they never got to know Rodney Green. That's too bad, because he was good people. So it's not that the chorus forgot Rodney. It just that they didn't miss him enough to forget that come next Tuesday, we'd all be on television.
Mama must have thought about me being on TV, too, because she made an appointment for me to get my hair fixed the day before the funeral. I had been begging her every Christmas and every Easter since second grade to let me wear curls and every time she said, "What you need to have your hair pressed for? You ain't grown."
What did I need a press and curl for? Sometimes Mama act like she don't have two good eyes to see with. My hair so nappy that it pulls the comb right out Mama hand when she try to fix it for me. By the time she get it into plaits, my head be tender and the comb so full of hair that it look like a little animal. And all that wrestling for what? Nobody ever said to me, "You hair looks real nice, Octavia." If they do notice it at all, it's to say how short it is. Grown people try to be nice and tell me things I can eat or put in it to make it grow. Kids just poke fun and say, "Octavia hair so short she can use rice for a curler."
But my hair not as short as people think. I can pull my braids down till they reach the bottom of my ear, but when I let it go, then pop back up by my eyes. But see, if I could get it straightened it could hang to its full length. Then I could wear it smooth down in the back with a little row of curls. Forsythia Chambers, this girl in my class, wears hers tucked under all the way around so she look like a sweet little mushroom. That's how I want mine. I get tired of stupid boys slapping on my neck because I ain't got no hair to cover it up with.
And as for me being grown, you don't have to be grown to get a press and curl. On Easter I see five-year-olds with they hair twisted into shiny Shirley-Temples. I think they look cute as pie but Mama just talk about them under her breath, "Last thing a little girl need is for people to have a reason to look at her."
Sometimes my Mama act like she don't live in the same world with the rest of us. Listening to her, you would think that you have to be cute for people to look at you.
"I want you to get your hair fixed after school on Monday," Mama said. She was in the kitchen boiling neck bones.
"Monday?" I asked. Real beauty parlors are closed on Monday. "Where at?"
"Over Mrs. Washington, where you think?" Mama chopped celery into big chunks.
"Mama, you know I don't eat celery."
"Don't eat it, then," she said.
I couldn't figure out if she was sending me to Mrs. Washington because she didn't have the money to send me to the Pink Fox Salon or if it was because Mrs. Washington is the only one doing heads on a Monday.
"What we having with the neck bones?"
"Rice and gravy. Green beans."
"To drink?" I asked.
"Kool Aid."
So it was a money thing. When she got cash we have Coke with dinner, or juice. Water or Kool Aid meant money was funny. But it could be worse. In the summer when the electric bill gets really high, Mama do her own hair in the kitchen. It looked okay when she get through but the tops of her ears get burnt where she bring the hot comb in too close.
"Mrs. Washington do people hair pretty," I said to show I wasn't tripping. Mama is good for taking something away if I turn my nose up at it.
"Go over there right after school." She didn't look up from the pot she was stirring. "And get rid of that gum. You look like a cow chewing cud."
"Yes ma'am," I said spitting into a napkin. The gum was still sweet but I wasn't about to complain.
Mama gave the pot one more stir before she went in her pocketbook and dug out some money. She gathered the bills in a stack and tried to smooth them out. "Here eight," she said. "You just give her seven. Use the extra one to get you a snack after school."
"Yes ma'am." I was trying to be cool, but a grin came to my face by itself.
"You sure smiling hard for somebody going to a funeral." Mama's soft sad face sucked the happy out of me like a vacuum cleaner. I didn't reach for the money.
"What? Ain't you the same child been worrying me half to death about a press and curl?"
"But you said I wasn't---" I was about to say grown, but she cut me off.
"Now I'm saying yes." She shook the money at me. I never noticed that dollar bills had a smell before then. They had a odor like people's sweaty hands and rooms that need to be aired out.
I took it from her without saying anything else. The stack of money was fat and kind of messy. Money on TV always lay flat in thin stacks held together with a little piece of paper. On the Rockford Files, Jim could slip a hundred dollars in his coat without it making a bump. But these eight real-life dollars made a stack so big, I couldn't put it in my back pocket without it looking like one side of my booty was lopsided.
Before I went to school on Monday, I folded two dollars at a time and put them in each one of my jeans pockets. That way, at least, people couldn't look at me and see how much I was carrying. But even for all my carefulness, I felt heavy like each dollar bill was a cartoon anchor that could pull the whole ship over. Mama had never trusted me with so much money at one time. She had never sent me for a press and curl. And I had never been to a funeral before. There were just too many had-nevers gettin' away like a handful of water.
Mrs. Washington stay in the for-real projects down the street. All the buildings are colored soft like ice cream but the paint peeled off like scabs. As soon as I got over there, I walked real fast and kept pulling my eyes off the sidewalk. I wanted to look like I came round here all the time, just that this time I was in a hurry. When you look like you not on your home side of the street is when kids try and jump you.
As soon as I knocked on the door, I could hear Mrs. Washington shuffling up to the front. She peeked through the peephole and waited a second like she was trying to see if she should let me in or not. She needed to hurry up. The wind was whipping around corners and I didn't have nothing on my head.
"Who is it?" It wasn't a friendly-sounding question.
"Octavia Griffith," I said. "I'm supposed to get a press and curl this afternoon."
There was all this clicking while she took loose the fifty million locks on her door. The last thing she let go was the chain; it swung to the side with a little click.
To be someone that fix hair so pretty, Mrs. Washington go around looking a mess. Her hair was long down to her shoulders but it was so thin that I could see her brown head between white strings of hair. It was pressed but she didn't put no curl in it so it was like looking at a bowling ball with spider webs all over it.
"Thought you was supposed to be here at two," she said once I was inside.
"No ma'am," I said. "School don't let out till 2:25. I came straight over." I looked down at the bag of chips in my hand. "I stopped quick at the store but that's all." I added that so she couldn't accuse me of lying.
It was dark in there. The only light that came in the living room was what managed to squeeze around the corners of the shades.
"The light bothers my eyes," she said. "Glaucoma."
"Yessum," I said. How could she do my hair in the dark? If I wanted to get a big burn cross my forehead, I could have stayed home and let my mama press my hair for free.
I had half a mind to ask her if heat bothered her, too, because it was freezing. The was furnace turned up just enough to keep your breath from smoking but that was it.
"Let me take your coat," she said.
Even in the half-dark she must have seen me looking at her like she was crazy.
"It's warmer in the kitchen where we going to be. Nobody got money to heat rooms where ain't nobody at."
I was shamed as I pulled off my coat. Like I was being high and mighty, worrying about being cold, trying to run up this old lady electric bill. But I would have gave her the dollar I spent for my snack if she would turn up the heat just for the time I was in there.
The kitchen was green. Green fridge, green counter, green cabinets, green everything. The high white stool in front of the stove was the only thing that didn't match.
"That's where I'm going to sit?"
"Unless you want to sit on the floor."
I climbed up and waited.
"You ate yet?" she asked. The smell of a chicken potpie rushed out when she opened the over door. I turned to get some of that warm air on my cold cheeks.
"Yessum. I had lunch at school and I got a snack off in my bag."
"Well I'm going to have myself a little bite." She bent over and took the potpie out with a blue oven mitt. She set it on the counter and added, "If that's all right with you."
It wasn't okay with me. Why she didn't eat before I got here? But what could I do but wait while she had her dinner standing over the sink? She ate slow and slurpy, but I guess people who have false teeth have to take their time.
She finished finally, and cut on the stove. It took her a few seconds to strike a match with her shaky hands. When she touched it to the gas it caught with a big whoosh. One of these days, she going to blow herself up. She set the heavy pressing comb on the blue flame.
Pressing combs are like cast-iron skillets. The first time I saw a brand new one, I couldn't hardly tell that it was the same thing as one that had been put to use; it was shiny as a good idea. Mrs. Washington's pressing comb look like it been in a thousand heads, black as Granny's skillets.
"What we doing with this hair?" She talked slow like people from the country.
"Press and curl."
"You got seven dollars?" She scooped a hunk of Ultra Sheen out of a wide-mouth jar. Her fingers were bent up with old age and lumpy from years of burning and healing.
"Yessum."
She nodded and started unloosing my plaits. "You wash your hair last night?"
"Yessum."
She put her nose to it for a second, which I really didn't appreciate. She the one live in the projects and now she sniffing me like I don't know nothing about personal hygiene. Mama had even put the shampoo through my hair twice and on top of that, used a strawberry creme conditioner. I never seen the ladies in the Pink Fox sniffing on nobody. But I guess that's why it cost twelve dollars.
Mrs. Washington took the comb off the fire and pressed it down on a wet dishrag. It sizzled like chicken frying but it smelled like hot water. Then she put the comb in a little section of my hair and pulled it through; at first my hair was hard to get through like regular but then the naps just let go and the comb went through smooth and easy like baby-doll hair.
I wanted so bad to have a little hand mirror so I could watch what was happening on my head. How long was my hair stretching to? A lot of times, girls who had just regular hair ended up with long hair once they got it pressed. I forgot about the mushroom style and started seeing myself with pretty little curls around the side of my face stretching past my chin, and the rest hanging straight back past my collar.
"You getting your hair fixed for that little boy funeral?" Mrs. Washington said.
For the second time since I got over here, I felt shamed. It was like how the Sunday school teacher let us sit around half Easter morning excited about new shoes and chocolate rabbits and then she reminded us that Pontius Pilate put nails in Jesus' hands and jooked him in the side with a knife. Twice.
"Yessum," I said. "I'm singing in the chorus."
"Hush now," she said. "It's hard enough for me to hold my hand steady without you moving your head around talking."
Why she ask me then? Seven dollars ain't as much as twelve but she don't have to be nasty. Next time, she put the comb so close that I felt like a piece of toast under the broiler. Grease melted and ran hot down my scalp.
"Ouch!" I jerked forward and the comb touched my scalp.
Mrs. Washington stepped back while I felt my head. Nothing was bleeding.
"Let me know when you ready to be still. That's why I don't like to do children's hair. They can't hold still."
"But you burned me." I was trying not to whine.
"That was just some grease melting," she said. "Pretty don't come easy."
After that, I was too scared to talk or even to move my legs when my butt started falling asleep on that hard stool. Next time, I was going to save the extra five dollars for the Pink Fox. The ladies in there wear nice little coats with their name on the pocket, call you "baby," and show you books with pictures of hair styles. You point at one and say, "I want to look like her," and they get to work. If your hair not long enough, they might let you wear a hairpiece. But this old lady didn't have none of that. And to top it off, she got a bad attitude. Hairdressers supposed to be friendly. And pretty.
By the time that old bat finished with me, I was stiff like it was me with the arthritis. I gave her the money and she counted it before she unlocked the door to let me out of that cold apartment onto the even colder street. She did ask me if I wanted to go to the restroom and look at my hair, but I wanted to get out there. We got a mirror at home.
"Who coming to get you?" she said.
"Nobody," I told her. "It's not that far."
She shook her head and said she don't know what go through young mamas' heads these days. "Run fast," she said while she was undoing her locks. "We don't need no more lost childrens around here."
"Yessum," I answered. She waited til I got to the street before closing the door and starting on her locks.
I had to pass by a liquor store to get to my house. There wasn't no way around it. Even if I took the back way, I would have to go by J&B's. Taking the front way, I had to walk in front of West End Package. Lights in front spelled out LIQUOR and WINE in blue and red. It wasn't night yet, but it was getting there. The last thing I needed was to be caught out in the projects after dark with liquor store lights pointing me out like I'm on a stage. But if I put too much pep in my step, I would seem scared and scaredness draw ugly people to you. And ugly get uglier at night. I made a point to take two steps for every block of sidewalk.
"Psst," said this one man leaning up on a pole smoking a cigarette. If he had been a boy my own age, I would have said, "I don't talk to snakes," and kept walking. But he was a full grown man with a mustache and everything.
"Say," he said.
I had passed by this store before and nobody ever had actually said anything to me. As a matter of fact, I had passed right by here on my way to Mrs. Washington house. Did I see this same man earlier? I couldn't remember. There'd been some men standing out here, there always were no matter what time of the day, but none of them had noticed me.
"Psst," he said again.
I crossed my arms in front of me so he couldn't see the outline of my training bra and notice what was sprouting underneath. What did Mama say about little girls with pressed hair? "The last thing a little girl need is to give somebody a reason to look at her."
"Say," he said again and I just took off running. He might could smell fear like a dog but he couldn't run as fast as one.
When I got home, my face was slick with sweat.
Mama was in the kitchen again, washing dishes. "What you doing running like that? I didn't spend seven dollars for a press and curl for you to sweat it out in the same day!" She shook her finger at me; drops of water and soap made little splatters on the floor. "You got to make up your mind what you want."
I was breathing hard, but I was able to say, "It ain't pressed no more?" If it wasn't I wouldn't have been hurt. I only wished that I could have seen it before it went back nappy.
"No," Mama said inspecting my head. "It's still straight. But you can't do all that playing if you want to wear curls."
"Yes ma'am."
She smiled. "You like it?"
"I don't know. I ain't seen it yet." I put my hand to my neck, where my nappiest hair grows. Everything back there was smooth as the green strands inside the corn husk. "It feel good, though."
I closed my eyes when I walked into the bathroom. I wanted to see myself all at once, like a picture when somebody snatches a red cloth from over it. When my hips knocked up against the sink, I knew I was right in front of the mirror. I opened my eyes.
My hair was not hanging down my back. It didn't even make it to my ears. Mrs. Washington had turned it into tight curls about as big around as a magic marker. Each curl sat close to my head in five or six rows like I was recharging fifty batteries on the top of my head.
"It's going to be pretty tomorrow," Mama said.
I didn't answer. Mama didn't spend seven dollars to see me cry.
"We'll comb it out in the morning."
"But it's so short." My voice was shaky.
"She cut it?"
"No. But I thought pressing your hair was supposed to make it long." I couldn't help it now. I let the tears run loose. I stood up against Mama but she didn't hug me.
"What's your problem?" She held me by my shoulders.
"A dog chased me on the way home."
"Well, ain't no dog in here now and ain't nothing wrong with your hair. Seven dollars can't buy a miracle. What? You think Mrs. Washington supposed to put hair on your head?"
I moved away since I could see she wasn't going to give me any sympathy. Even worse, she was getting mad.
"On the one hand, you want to be so grown, then you run in the street like a little kid, turn around, and want to cry like a baby." She put her hands on her hips, shaking her head.
What was she talking about? She was the one who said that pressing hair made you grown. I just wanted to have curls. But not these magic marker rolls. All I wanted was to be pretty. Make it where somebody could look at me and actually like what they see.
"Now, get on out of here. I need to get my bath so I can get ready to go to the wake." She stood in front of the mirror. "That poor little boy."
Mama's hair around the edges and in the back didn't lay down like the straightening comb told it to. It curled up in tight, hard knots that kids call "BB shots." Especially behind her scabbed ears.
"Look at me," Mama said. "My hair is all over my head." She looked at me with that Sunday school teacher look. I tucked my head and left the room.
I went in to my bedroom and cried facedown in the pillow, careful not to mash my hair.
I Don't Know Nothin''Bout Birthin' No Babies
BY SANDRA JACKSON-OPOKUFROM The River Where Blood Is Born
October 20, 1973
Dear Allie Mae:
How is college treating my baby way up there in Providence?
Don't a day pass when I don't think about you, and miss you, and wonder how you're getting on. I'm counting the days until you home with us for Christmas. Wish we could afford to bring you home Thanksgiving, too. But you know how tight money is. This twenty dollars ain't much, but I hope it helps you some.
We all been doing fine. Benny fell off the toilet up at Waukegan and had to go in the hospital. He's doing better now, praise the Lord. Otis lost his little bit of disability money last month. Those peoples had the nerve to tell him he well enough to go to work, bad as his back is.
You remember Miss Nibbs out to Lombard, where I mind her mother Friday nights? She so happy to hear you in college. She give me these books and magazines she was fixing to throw away, thought you might could use them.
I see one here where they pay peoples to write about My Most Unforgettable Character. You know I don't have much education. I don't know much about story writing and what-all. But Lord knows I could use the money. And I have known me some Unforgettable Characters in my time. Maybe you could write it up for me.
I know I ain't never told you much about my childhood. I been spending my life trying to forget. It wasn't an easy thing coming up in Cairo. But if I learned one thing at the age of forty-five, it's the truth of that old church song. "I can't get above what made me." I been thinking a lot about peoples I ain't seen in years.
Let me tell you about Lula Mae Jaspars. You know Cousin Lola, on my daddy's side? Her mama, my Aunt Truly, was my daddy's half sister. I guess you could call us distant first cousins. They were the kinfolk you never saw much of, come from living too close to the white folks' part of town.
Old Sheriff Jaspars was one of the ugliest mens you would want to see. Red face, red hair, big old red nose. Now you got to know he had a red neck. That didn't stop him from keeping his two houses. A big rambling one for his white wife and kids. A little white cottage for Aunt Truly and the kids they had.
I don't know how he done it. Maybe he would switch up days. Say, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with Aunt Truly. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for Mrs. Jaspars, his white wife. Sunday to rest---you know he needed it. Between his two families, Sheriff Jaspars had twenty-something kids. Lula Mae was one of them.
They say Lula Mae was her daddy's favorite of the bunch. She didn't favor him, except for being kind of on the red side. How ugly Sheriff Jaspars made such a fine gal, I'll never know. Those light, funny-colored eyes of Lula Mae's. I swear they changed with the weather. Rainy days they was gray, sunny days they was green. She got that good hair too, used to wear it all down her back. Never did have the need of no straightening comb.
Lula Mae Jaspars grew up to be a traveling woman. Her daddy sent her all over. New York City. New Orleans. Texas. I wanted to be a traveling woman, too, but I was too chickenshit to go off on my own. She was in San Francisco when I got it in my mind to go out and see her. I wasn't but about fourteen years old, but I went up there on the train all by myself. First time I ever set foot out of Cairo, I went halfway across country. Took me the better part of a week.
Lula Mae, who had been about the sharpest dresser in Alexander County, had took to wearing sandals, long skirts, headrags, and gold hoops in her ears. She had herself a Mexican boyfriend, and was passing herself off as a Gypsy fortune-teller, but she ain't used no crystal ball. She had a little black spider tatooed in the cup of her right hand, with all the lines in her palm stretched out around it like a web. For a price, she would tell them filthy-rich white womens up on Telegraph Hill what the spider saw in their future.
At first Lola, which is what Lula Mae had started calling herself, wasn't that happy to see her country cousin. But when it came to her that I could be of some help, Lola changed her mind and welcomed me with open arms. She got me on with the MacAvie family doing cleaning. It turned out I was doing her work and mines, too.
You know, thinking back on it, Dennis MacAvie might make a good story. That child was something else. I called him Dennis the Menace. I'd put him in his high chair while I cleaned up the house. He liked to be up high. And he'd be steady watching me with those big old blue eyes. He would wait for me all morning, just as quiet and patient. By lunchtime I would have that whole house spotless and the rest of the day left to play with Dennis.
The older he got, the more he swore I was his mama. But I wasn't soft like Mrs. Hightone MacAvie. I wasn't but fifteen years old, but Callie Mae Bullocks did not take no mess. I remember one day they give me some money to take Dennis to a picture show. Dennis wanted a cowboy picture. I wanted to see Gone With the Wind. Guess who won?
"Lordy, Miz Scarlet. I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies!"
Me and old buck-eyed Butterfly McQueen about the only black faces in the movie house. Dennis just would have to point at the screen and holler out: "Look! There you go, Callie Mae."
Child, I took him out of there and tanned his natural hide. If he had the nerve to show his behind, I had the nerve to whip it for him. Showing me out like that. I might be somebody's housemaid, but I wasn't hardly nobody's slave. If Dennis ain't learned nothing else, I made sure he learned that well.
"Are you my real mother?" he come asking me another time.
"Now, Dennis. How I'm going to be your mother? Look at you. I'm colored. You're white."
"No." Dennis shakes his blond head. "I'm colored, too."
I went and got his crayon box and a big sheet of white paper.
"Look at here." I drew a stick figure with the brown crayon. "This is me. What color is that?"
Dennis squinched up his eyes. He was just learning to name his colors.
"Brown."
"Alright." I picked out the white crayon. "Now, this is you."
I rubbed and rubbed it on the paper.
"But Callie Mae. Nothing's coming out."
"That's right, child. You see, they call people, like me, "colored," because we're colored brown or black. They call people like you "white," because you don't have no color to you."
He frowned up his face and snatched the crayon away from me. He commenced to scratching it against the paper, trying to get a picture out of it. Finally it broke.
"Ain't nothing you can do to make white colored, Dennis MacAvie."
When it hit him that he couldn't make a colored picture with that white crayon, he bust out crying and wailed the whole afternoon.
Well, I've met colored people who wanted to be white so bad they would take a shotgun to their own shadow. And I've met many a colored person who don't have a thing in the world to hold on to but their color. I was one of them. But I ain't never met a white person who wanted to be colored so bad they would cry about it. Not until that day.
Lola said I was being cruel to the child. But you know as good as I do that Dennis would grow up and learn to love his whiteness. You know he did. But you better believe that he also grew up knowing that darkness can make a mighty mark. And Dennis MacAvie also ain't out there making a mammy out of every colored woman he comes across, or my name ain't Callie Mae Clemmons.
Of course, I didn't have a way in the world of knowing how he grew up until near on thirty years later. Lola got in trouble with the family about bringing a man in the house to sleep in their bed when they was out of town. Dennis got an eyeful and couldn't wait to run and tell. And we were both sent packing back to Cairo.
But Lola wasn't a woman who would stay put for too long. Being run out of San Francisco on a rail ain't put a crook in her step. She hadn't sat down in Cairo good before she was off again to be with a man up in Phoenix. A black man this time. He had a little piece of change in his pocket, too. You know Lola had to have a man with some money.
Back then Clyde Brown owned the only barbershop and funeral parlor in town, right next door to each other. "Clyde's cuts will do you proud," was one of his slogans. "Browns, for the Funeral of Distinction," was the other.
Passing for Creole now (which I guess Creole is just about anything you want to make it), Lola went ahead on and married him. When she had the baby she come back down to Cairo and got me. I guess then she remembered how good I did her all those years in San Francisco when she was supposed to be baby-sitting Dennis. Lola never been too good with kids, anyway. Her temper ain't as long as my toenail.
Anyway, I went on up to Phoenix to be Clyde and Lola's live-in. And here's where I met another one of My Most Unforgettable Characters. He was so unforgettable, I up and married him. But that's getting ahead of the story.
I thank Clyde Brown to this day. If it hadn't been for him wanting to stay home and play with his baby girl, I might not have never met your daddy. His name was Benjamin Peeples, but everybody who knew him called him "King."
Clyde had set Lola up in a little business. She was queen of Lola's Place, a little juke joint that served watered-down drinks and live music. That night Clyde had come home from the barbershop or funeral parlor, one. He woke up Pat and started playing with her. She opened those big eyes and grinned all up in his face, nothing but curls and dimples. A little Daddy's Girl. If I had woke the hussy out of sleep she would have been screaming to beat the band.
"Go on out and have a good time, Callie Mae. I'm baby-sitting tonight."
"Where I'm going? I don't know nobody around here."
"Go on down to Lola's. If you want to meet you somebody, that's where they all at."
So down to Lola's I went. And I met me somebody. A big, black, burly somebody. Six and a half feet tall. King was there taking pictures of the colored folks dancing and drinking and flirting with each other's wives. He'd snap awhile, then duck back in that room behind the bar awhile. It was crowded that Saturday night, seemed like everybody wanted their picture took. King stuck his head out the door and hollered over where I was sitting drinking my soda pop, trying to make like it was something else.
"Come on in here and help me, girl."
Turned out to be, King had a darkroom set up in there where he was printing up the pictures as quick as he could shoot them. I got a quick lesson and was left to develop film and print pictures for the rest of the evening. We were a good team from day one. Just like a key and lock when they're well greased and not rusty. One works the other.
King, he was a natural-born salesman. Loud and friendly, could tell a Shine joke to a church mother and have her laughing at the filthiest lines. People just took a liking to him. He'd jolly them into having their pictures took; sweet-talk the womens, buddy up the mens. We'd sometimes pull in two hundred dollars on a good night. We'd work Chicago, Gary, Milwaukee, Peoria, and every place in between. Lord, wasn't that the good life?
See, me---I was the quiet type. I was happy to be in the back in the dark, with the noise and the music and the laughter floating back to me. I never missed a thing. Anything I ain't overheard, the pictures told the story the minute they start coming to life in the fix.
And if they didn't have nothing to say, King sure would. When the night was over we'd go on back home, count up our money, and King would tell me which woman got drunk and danced the hootchie-kootchie on the bar, who beat whose butt in what fight, what songs the band was singing that night.
King had him a good singing voice. He could croon just as good as that other man they called King who used to work the same juke joints we did before he went and got famous singing:
"Unforgettable, that's what you are."
What went wrong with your daddy and me? The lock ran out of grease. The key wore down. Children started being born.
Maybe I should never have had kids. Lord knows I love you both. But when I had taken care of other people's babies it was so easy. When I had my own, it was hard as day-old biscuits. Hard as a pimp's heart. Hard as the sun-baked row you know you got to hoe. That's why I look after old folks now. Seems I'm better helping ease folks out of life than I am raising them up in it.
Your brother, Benny, wasn't right from the beginning. He wanted to go out of this life the minute he came in it. Maybe they should have let him. They worked on him a good twenty minutes to bring him back. But part of him stayed over on the other side. He always hung back. Slow to crawl, slow to walk, slow to talk. Took him ten years to get up to where most boys would be at two. And he ain't never went no further.
Big, lively King and his slow son, Benny. It broke his heart every time he looked at the boy. And it broke my heart when I saw him looking. He never laid blame, but I always felt to blame. Like I must have done something wrong to make a child that wasn't right. Maybe it was the smoke in the air of all them juke joints. Maybe it was the chemicals I always had my hands in.
When I got pregnant again King made me come off the road.
"You a mother now. Soon to be mother of two. These late nights and smoky taverns ain't the right life for a mother."
You was a normal child, even though you came six weeks early. Black as a raisin and smart as a whip. But Lord, I ain't never seen such a colicky baby. Always wanted somebody to be holding you. If not, you cried. Girl, you could lay up there for an hour, flailing those little legs and wailing those little lungs. Once you got started good, Benny would join in. Sometimes I'd have to go out on the porch just to get away from the noise and have a minute to myself.
King was away working nights, sometimes overnight. And my mind would be working overtime. I'd be seeing him with some woman in the corner of a tavern somewhere. I'd hear his deep laugh mixed in with her soft one, while I sat up and listened to babies screaming.
Motherhood turned me into somebody I didn't like. A prying, jealous, hateful somebody. The kind of woman who goes through wallets and listens in on phone calls. A woman who boils water and sharpens knives. King was a traveling man. I knew that when I met him. One day he went out on the road and didn't come back.
Well, they say what goes around, comes around. And I lived to have a man who would do me like I did King. You know who I'm talking about. A man so jealous-hearted he couldn't stand to hear another man's name on my lips. A man who burned up my clothes on the barbecue grill because he said they showed too much of me. A man who wants to own every step I take, every thought I think, every breath I draw. I know you two never got along, but Otis ain't a bad man in his way. Sometimes I wish I had let him straight alone. It's too late to fret on that now.
And I don't hold hard feelings for King no more. He was a man who couldn't live with chains dragging at him. If I saw him today I would tell him that I lived to understand why he had to go.
Lola, Dennis, or King? Who do you think would make the best story? Or what would you say if I told you this? My most Unforgettable Character is me. Callie Mae Clemmons, forty-five years old. Born in Battle Creek, Michigan, raised up in Cairo, Illinois.
My daddy was a traveling man, too. He was an evangelist who went all up and down the country preaching revivals. He used to say that God got him up one morning and told him to spread the word far and wide. And he never stopped moving until a lightning bolt caught him while driving to a revival one night.
I never knew my mother. They say she used to go out on the road with him, singing gospel and passing the plate. I was born on the road, halfway between a church anniversary in Chicago and a revival in Detroit. My mother died giving birth to me.
Maybe that's why I come up wanting to be a traveling woman. Like that train named the City of New Orleans that would come whistling through Cairo in the night. I wanted to cock my hat to the side, jam my hands in my pockets, and jump aboard. Just move any which way the railroad would take me. I wanted to ride that train. I wanted to be that train.
But it took a while for the blood to take. Daddy stayed on the road, I stayed on the truck farm with Big Momma. Working the land, pulling at the roots of sweet potatoes, and feeling like I was growing roots that didn't belong in that place.
I just wanted to be out somewhere. Don't you remember being so little you couldn't even wipe your nose right, but always dreaming? Wanting to be out in the world with people who ain't known you since birth. People with things left to find out about them.
I ain't done too bad. I haven't traveled far, but I've been a lot of places. From Battle Creek to Cairo. Cairo to San Francisco and back again. Phoenix, Illinois. The night side of at least a dozen little cities in Illinois and Indiana. And Chicago, that's where it all ended up.
But don't a day pass when I don't wonder what I would have done and where I would have gone if I'd lived my whole life as a free woman. With no babies to keep me home, would I be laughing on King's arm right now in some other city? Ain't no telling.
Y'all kids are gone now. I'm as free as I'm ever going to be. I could go off tomorrow if I wanted to. But seems like once I got shed of one anchor, here come another one to weight me down. A piece of job to go to, a piece of house to pay on. A piece of man to keep me company as the years go by. Well, I guess my life wouldn't make no kind of story. I lived it long, but maybe not so well. But I tell you what.
I got me a daughter who is one Unforgettable Character. That's you, baby. Allie Mae Peeples. Still as black as a raisin and smart as a whip. I guess I give you a name something like mine because I thought you would be another one of me. But, honey, ain't no such thing as making yourself over in somebody else. You don't belong to nobody but yourself. Allie Mae ain't hardly Callie Mae. I guess you calling yourself Alma now.
It tickled me to death when you went and done like Cousin Lola did. Changed your name to suit yourself. What you say Alma Peeples means? "Soul of a people"? It takes a writer to think up with something like that.
When I was coming up it wasn't no such thing as a colored girl making a living as no writer. But the only difference between ain't yet and could be is trying. You sure tried. Through no help of mine, Lord forgive me.
I tried to pass my ignorance on down to you. Tried as hard as I could to write can't on your soul. But I was writing with a white crayon that couldn't make a mark. So can't wasn't never a part of your makeup.
Remember when you started busing? You must have been about twelve years old. Livia was so happy when we got you and Clarisse in the white children's school. I wasn't sure about it at first, but Livia talked me into it. You girls was so smart, but that school you'd been going to wasn't for shit. To me and Livia, this was a chance to get our daughters a little piece of the future.
It wasn't nothing special we were dreaming of. You'd get to finish high school without having a baby. Go to college maybe. Get a job as a schoolteacher or nurse. Just the stingy little dreams of poor colored womens.
I knew it was going to be rough on you girls. But Livia said it like this. "At least there'd be two of you." White folks was going to make it hard, but at least you would have each other to lean on. And be getting that good education, couldn't nobody take it away. Y'all got an education alright.
I seen what you went through every night on TV. It was just as bad as Little Rock ten years before. Bunch of grown-ass white womens, carrying signs and hollering at a busload of helpless children. Nothing I had ever taught could have got you ready to be called nigger by womens old enough to know better.
Livia didn't get nothing but grief for her dreaming. "What did Clarisse die from?" you used to always ask me. I didn't think that knowing would help, young as you was then. I guess I might as well tell you now. You remember that last time they carried her to the hospital? Clarisse had the sickle cell, she died in the County after having the fit that day in school.
What did I get for my dreaming? It's hard to say. You met the lynch mob at the age of twelve, lost your best friend to it. You know, I wanted to pull you out but Livia wouldn't hear of it. Said her baby's death wasn't going for nothing. Maybe you can tell me now. Was it worth it?
You stayed. Got that good education. And gone on to do much more in life than the raggedy little dreams I dreamed for you. You grew up strong, learning early on that to keep from being a beggar you had to be a fighter. But was it because of, or in spite of, me? I guess I'll never know.
All I know is that I would come home from work so late most evenings, you was already done cooking dinner and putting Benny to bed. You'd be sitting up at the kitchen table, just writing. Sometimes so mad you couldn't even speak. But writing like the lessons on that paper would save your soul. And to tell you the truth, I don't begrudge you your anger. It helped you make a way for yourself in a world where most colored womens scared to walk.
I told you that I ran into Dennis the Menace again? I was on the ward one day, collecting my sheets for the laundry. And here comes this white man loping down the hall after me, hospital gown hanging all open in the back. Thirty years later and Dennis MacAvie still showing his behind.
The money his parents had and the gumption I gave him had made him a big shot in the business world. But he was still little snotty-nosed Dennis the Menace to me, just living high in filthy-rich Lake Forest instead of San Francisco. He couldn't believe that life hadn't taken me no further than the hospital laundry.
"If you'd just apply yourself, Callie Mae, you could conquer the world. Hell, you've got twice the balls of the average corporate CEO out there."
"Nigger," I said. Since the boy had been so interested in being colored, I felt free to call him by some of the worser names we're known by. "Don't be telling me to apply myself. I taught you the ropes when you didn't know your ass from a hole in the ground. You better be out there telling your corporate boys to apply themselves and get they feet off my peoples' necks."
I ain't asked Dennis for but one thing. I figure he owed it to me for raising him. It wasn't nothing for him to get you that college scholarship. And you acted like it was nothing for you to get it, too.
"Payback," I remember you saying when you was packing for the trip out east. "Just paying back a few pennies of the millions they've made off us for the past four hundred years."
I should have knowed that being a schoolteacher or nurse would never be my girl's speed. You been writing things up so long, I bet you still got ink stains on your fingers. I kept everything you wrote, too. Shoot, I still got shoeboxes in the closet, full of the lists and letters and stories you been writing since you was old enough to pick up a pen.
See, you're like your mama and your daddy and grandfolks before you; a traveling woman. You're going places in this life. You know how to go out, yet you know how to come home. You ain't a train, you a ship. Can pull those anchors up, and put them back down again.
Or being a woman of today, maybe I should say my Alma is a plane with wings spread wide. With the Lord beside you and the wind behind you, ain't no telling how far this life will take you.
Now I know what you going to say. "Mama, you lived the life. So you write the story." But I just don't have the experience. So you take it and fix it up, make it so it reads right. I guess since you turned out to be My Most Unforgettable Character, it's only right that I split the money with you. So finish it up just as fast as you can, do we get that little piece of pocket change.
Be a good girl up there, now. Remember what Big Momma used to say. "Boys and books don't mix." Keep your mind stayed on your lessons, don't fool around and get pregnant, and everything will come out alright.
Your mother,Callie Mae Clemmons
Draggin' the Dog
I eat. A lot. Some people dance. Some people drink. I eat. So does everyone in my family. I could say we're big-boned, but hell, I'm from New York, okay? We're fat.
We've all got our reasons, you know? Most of it comes from growing up in a house of folk who loved to argue. Everything was a debate, from what channel we should be watching to whose turn it was to do the dishes. Only time we were quiet was when we were sitting around that table eating. That's when folks quit jawin' and got busy. We had some of our happiest times around that table. But that's not my excuse. I eat because I'd rather be fat than on trial for murder.
You see, I'm a principal of a high school where black children are killed every day. And last winter, there was this teacher and a dog . . . She's a big reason why I eat myself into Fat Land. But wait a minute. You're thinking the kids are dangerous, right? You're seeing them walking around with Uzis in their backpacks? You got it all wrong. Thugs don't do well in my building. Would you want to mess with a five-foot-eleven, 262-pound black woman with a bad attitude in the middle of a hot flash? The kids know better than to bring Miss Carter nonsense on her own turf. I don't play that. No, it's not the kids. It's the adults who are the problem.
Adults. That's what I'm talking about. Stay with me now. Take the music kids listen to, for example. Okay, we all know it's not Aretha or The Stylistics. Definitely not about no romance no kind of way. "Straight up I'ma do it to ya." As Grandma Lucas says, "It ain't nothin' but nasty," but who you think is responsible for getting this music into our kids' ears and hands? Adults. Honey, let me tell you. Those label people, they'd put their mama in half a skirt above her navel for that Judas purse. So I ask you, who will stand for the children?
When I started here, I was just a teacher. The principal at that time was a wrinkled-up, dry, white man who looked like a dandelion on the way out; thin as he could be, with one or two puffs of white hair on his head. On my first day, he offered me his ghostly hand, then stood there like someone who had walked into a room and forgotten what he came for. Then I realized he was trying to squeeze a smile out of the left side of his face.
We shook hands and he gave me the same speech he gave all the new teachers: "You're gonna love it here. Don't wear jewelry and don't ever take the stairs."
That was my introduction to this school. The teachers' cafeteria was a trip, too. The black teachers sat at their tables. The white teachers sat at theirs. The latinos divided themselves between the two. Every now and then, you'd see a brave soul sitting at a table looking like Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?
The conversations were about sports, travel, shopping, and what "the animals" had done that day. Yes, that's what they called the children. Animals. Teachers who'd been there since dirt gave tips to rookies like me about how to survive the day, like it was a recovery room in a trauma ward.
No one listened to what I had to say back then. "You're new here, aren't you?" they'd say, not really asking. Now they have to listen to me whether they like it or not. Most times they don't like it, 'cause teachers are creatures of habit. They don't like change.
First year I made principal, all I did was change. The color of the walls. My hair. Rules. Staffing. Damn near everything but, well, my dress size.
I'd been here nineteen years by then. I'd had enough and seen it all. A teacher crocheting and calling it a Reading Class. A teacher coming in high so she wouldn't have to feel low. Another teacher reading the newspaper in front of the class all day, every day, and calling it Social Studies. One teacher exploring himself behind his desk. You guessed it. He taught Biology. I even caught a teacher with a student in the supply room. Let me put it to you like this. She was getting more than paper clips. Educating the children? Well, that's somewhere on the list, but it's like that thing you keep forgetting to pick up at the supermarket, it just ain't there on the kitchen table when you're putting those groceries away.
Don't get me wrong. I know there are some righteous adults out there. There are some good teachers in my building, too. I treat them like kings and queens. Sunup to sundown I'm here for those good ones. They know it.
But back to those other folks---the dead weight---and why I eat. I'd have to say it's because it's better than wringing folks' necks on a continuous basis. Let me tell you a story. You already know it has a dog in it. I'm getting to that part. I need to tell you about the boy first. We'll call him "Ray," alright?
I became aware of Ray when he was just a sophomore. Beautiful boy. Reminded me of my son when he was a little guy and I'd take him places and white folks would say how cute he was. Always bothered me because I knew these same ones who were oohing and aahing him now, as soon as he grew up, they'd be clutching their pocketbooks like he was going to cut their heads off.
Well, Ray was beautiful like that, too, except he was black, blue black, so he didn't know how beautiful he really was. Kids made fun of him so much, he just looked evil all the time. Just had a permanent scowl, you know? But I knew that the beautiful Ray was still in there. I don't just mean how he looked. I mean what he was giving off. The boy was pure. He had something gentle and patient and innocent inside him, like an angel being tested for the first time.
And that was the thing about Ray. Street-smart kids could see he needed protection. They X-rayed him from a distance and knew there wasn't a tough bone in his body. Boys who'd been through the system had seen tough. They knew Ray wasn't it. So he was useful. An easy mark. He could be talked into things. Things he knew deep down weren't right. But these were the guys who were treating him like a brother. To his face. Giving him money. Clothes. Jewelry.
He was a kid. Fifteen. What do you know at fifteen? So, I was sure he could be turned around, you know? Hey, I've been in this game long enough to recognize when a kid turns a corner or crosses a line. The map is in his eyes.
Ray's map had lots of no-name streets, dead ends without signs to let him know where he was headed, stop signs where there shouldn't have been any, and no traffic lights at his most dangerous intersections. Somehow, though, he managed each year, studying just enough to pass.
I noticed him again when he was a junior. I'd see him sometimes, his hands probably sweating inside his pockets, just standing by the staircase near the front door. Standing there like he couldn't decide whether to go up or down, stay in or out.
Now, I have to tell you, I am not a principal who hides in her office behind a pile of papers. I got a secretary who does that real well. I like to move around, see what's going on. You know that bubble-wrap stuff people use to pack things in? Well, I will roll my triple-plus self down the halls in a heartbeat, breaking up those little bubbles of kids standing around. They whisper, "Here come Big Mama," thinking I'm deaf. But even though I don't tell them, I don't mind them calling me that. Least they know this is my house and I am their mama 'til they get back home.
So, on those standing-by-the-staircase days, I'd call Ray into my office using my principal voice, which is not the one I use when I'm explaining to my pastor why he hasn't seen me in church or the one you can barely hear when my doctor asks me if I'm trying to kill myself or do I just have a thing for refrigerators? So Ray, he'd hear me and suddenly he was no bigger than a minute. He'd egg-step over, walking on his toes like he was scared to break something or wake up babies no one else could see. He'd look up at me when he got closer, trying to give me that what's-this-broad-want-now? face. But you could see he was happy someone had noticed him splashing in the water. 'Cause he was the kind of kid who'd drown before he asked for help.
He'd come into my office, look around, stare at how big all the furniture was. Finally, he'd surrender to the same chair he always sat in. The leather would hold him like some giant suction cup in a science fiction novel, and we would talk.
"Aren't you late for your sixth period class, Mr. Taylor?" I'd ask him.
"Mr. Jacobs don't care I come or not," he'd say.
And we'd be off to the races about how it wasn't about Mr. Jacobs or Miss Lewis or anyone else but him, and didn't he know they were the ones who had already graduated from high school and he hadn't?
One time he told me about his daddy, who drove in and out of his life whenever he got the notion, with one fancy car after another and a different woman every time, and his brothers and sisters all over town he'd never met but heard about, as well as the five he shared a mother with. He was the last of the litter, the baby of three older brothers and two sisters, all but one had grown up and moved away.
"I give my mom big respect. She takes care of me," he said. "Even when she's tired."
Yes, he sure did love his mama, but he was in love with Ms. Jamieson, the science teacher he met in his senior year. At least until the trouble happened.
Ms. Jamieson was probably the first white woman who Ray felt had treated him right. He had no behavior problems when he was in her class. He even did all his homework and the extra credit. When she needed someone to stay after class to help her with a classroom project, Ray's hand was the first to go up. All because she'd told him he was smart. No one had ever told him that before. It wasn't like someone had said to him, "You're dumb," but it was the way too many teachers, for too many years had looked at him through their do-right pity, like surgeons whose eyes peek out between their caps and masks, and say without a word there's no sense in trying. The patient is too far gone. You see, Ray had gotten so used to everyone thinking he was stupid, he'd forgotten he wasn't. He'd given up trying to prove that the color of his skin did nothing to diminish the power of his mind.
Quiet as it's kept, when you study this child's records (and this is what I told them at the hearing) you'll find his scores are high, always were, all the way up through the third grade. Then something happened. His grades dropped like a downhill skier who had to pee.
My guess is he stopped feeling that joy of learning and love for himself as a special black boy. He came into the system with a gift, but we didn't have space for it on our paperwork. I always tell my teachers, every child has something, a delicate, little flame, whether it's a pretty smile or his ability to memorize all the words to a song. It's up to us to work that flame. Honey, we got to work it, you hear me, into a bonfire.
Somebody shoved Ray's flame down his throat. It wasn't shining anymore. Just burning him up. Same intelligence, but locked down in a pit of fire. 'Cause somewhere down there, he knew (even if he didn't know how to say it) that it wasn't supposed to be like this or feel like this as he went through life. Dr. Kunjufu says it's a "conspiracy to destroy Black boys." (It gets done to the girls too, but in a different way.)
From fourth grade on, Ray's records showed that there were problems. "Attitude" was what most of the comments were about. But what does that mean? Black folks got to have attitude just to get by in this world. We are characters by necessity. How you think we made it through our first Holocaust? But suddenly Jamieson was a key. Yes, Lord. In his senior year, the flame in Ray began trying to break free. I think he even began to believe he might be halfway smart. I loved visiting his science classroom just to see the process take shape.
And the other good thing about his excitement about Ms. Jamieson's class was having a domino effect on his other subjects. He had lost interest in being with the kids who meant him no good. Or maybe they'd lost interest in him. Either way, he seemed to finally be swimming with a gang of new ideas in a pond of his own. Graduation was on the horizon and maybe even a small community college.
It all fell apart at the Science Fair.
Ray had never thought about entering it before, but his progress in Jamieson's class gave him courage. He outdid himself. Do you hear what I'm saying? Created a project in quantum physics. The child was asking questions like "What is now?" and "How can we prove that time exists?" He did all kinds of research. Even interviewed scientists at the local university. It was brilliant. Okay, granted we all knew he did what he did to please Ms. Jamieson, but so what? Isn't that part of the game? Let them think they're making a big ole boat for you, and when it's all done and pretty and they're standing back and can't wait to see that look on your face, you show them that the boat was really theirs all along and you help them sail away.
Now what do you think happened? There was a tie between him and Wayne, an Asian boy who was used to winning every year. So I came to work one Tuesday morning and hell had not only broken loose, but it had splattered itself into a pool of folk in front of my office door. There was Wayne, his mother, father, and grandmother, Ms. Jamieson and Mr. Wycoff, the self-declared, most important Negro in the school, and head of the Science Department, all talking at the same time and trying to calm each other down. They were all waiting for me. The breakfast I'd bought was also waiting for me inside my pocketbook.
After I stepped inside my office to hang my coat up and gulped down a few quick bites of heaven, I called Jamieson in, because I knew all this commotion had something to do with Ray. Wycoff tried to push his long head through the door, too, but I told him I only wanted to speak with Ms. Jamieson at the moment, thank you very much. I closed the door on him mid-sentence and asked her what was going on. She paced and hemmed and hawed and finally said Wycoff thought Ray had cheated on his science project. That's when I felt a vision of a double cheeseburger and super-size fries coming on. Lord help me, I knew I was going to have to wring some necks that day.
Seems that Wycoff had looked Ray's classwork over and decided that he couldn't possibly have done it. I asked her if Wycoff had any proof Ray had cheated. He didn't. She said he was sort of hoping she would back him up on this. I asked her point blank what she was going to do. I'll never forget the terrified look on her face, her eyes bugging out of her head, but at the same time looking straight ahead, but no voice, no response.
Course Wayne's people wanted to know what their son had done wrong that he wasn't exclusively in first place. After all, everyone knew how smart he was.
They all expected me to open my door to their twenty-ring circus. I was not having it. No one, and I mean no one, was going to completely ruin my breakfast. I kept that door closed after Jamieson left. I was eating and thinking, thinking and eating. I decided to speak to each party alone, in a soft voice, with my belly full.
Of course, I had to call Ray in, too. He was nervous. Real nervous. He couldn't sit down. I told him how proud I was of how hard he'd worked this year. I told him not to worry. His graduation was not in jeopardy. Then I told him what he'd been accused of.
Slowly, he sat down.
"Ray," I said, "if you have anything to tell me, now is the time."
"You think I cheated, too?" he asked.
"No, Ray. I don't. Now that we've spoken, face-to-face, I know you're telling me the truth. But I want you to be man enough to face your accuser and tell him that same truth. I'll be right here with you."
"Thanks, Big . . . uh . . . Miss Carter."
That seemed to make him feel better. Now it was time for the meeting between him, Jamieson, Wycoff, and myself.
Ray thought he knew what to expect. He figured Jamieson had to be there because she was his teacher. He was sure she would defend him against Wycoff. He sat through Wycoff's accusations, and all through the speech about why plagiarism is unacceptable and how we have a higher standard at this institution of learning. He kept looking at Jamieson, waiting for her to say something. When he couldn't stand it anymore, fighting tears, he said, "Miss Jamieson? Miss Jamieson? Tell him. Tell him it was my work. You know me. Tell him, Miss Jamieson."
She hung her head and never said a word.
That's when I saw the final embers die in Ray's eyes. This is how they do it, I thought. They kill the children's spirits then sit back and watch them kill themselves.
Ray ran out. I knew exactly where he was headed. Y'all know I couldn't beat him to it. When I finally did get to the cafeteria, I was dripping sweat in places I didn't know I had, and out of breath. The science projects were still there on exhibit but Ray had knocked his over. By the time I saw him, he was stomping it into nothing but a mess of paper and mud. Then he started destroying everyone else's.
I tried to stop him before things got too out of hand, but Ray wasn't even there. He had gone to a place where he couldn't hear me anymore. Plates, glasses, windows, he began smashing everything he saw.
Security called the police, of course. They took him away in handcuffs. His mother showed up in time to see them pushing him into the police car. I held her back so they wouldn't lock her up, too. Should I have called her sooner? Maybe. Would it have made a difference? I don't know.
It was a sad, sad day.
Ray never did graduate. He was in and out of jail after that. Last I heard, about two years ago, he was doing big time somewhere upstate, learning quantum physics from a whole new perspective.
Now, I told you I never forgot that look on Jamieson's face when I asked her what she was going to do that day in my office. Well, I saw that same look one winter day after Ray was taken away, but on someone else.
The snow was thick underfoot and in the sky. It had been coming down pretty heavy for three days. I guess it was about five o'clock or so, because I remember praising myself for getting out of the building, for once, before the sun went down. I was trying to cross the street so I could get into my car when something made me look up. There was a car coming in my direction and it was making a weird kind of sound, like something scraping. As it got closer, I saw that a young white woman was driving. She had that look on her face that I told you about already. Pure terror, but straight ahead. Her hands were gripping the wheel tight, tight. And When I looked down at her front bumper, I saw that a big, black dog was caught underneath it. As she passed by, dragging the dog against the ground, she left a bright red trail on the snow behind her.
I stood there for a minute, the snow striking my face, not believing what I had seen. You can't tell me she didn't know she had a dog stuck underneath her fender. How could she not know? And then a thought came to me just as clear. She was like so many who worked in my school, pretending they were doing what was right by moving forward, getting from Point A to Point B, talking to themselves, plowing through year after year, no longer looking for any signs of life, just moving forward, not even caring that they were dragging the dog.
But you know, as Pastor Richards says, "God puts on his pajamas, but he doesn't go to sleep." Life has a funny way of bringing us back full circle 'til we get it right. Ms. Jamieson was forced to resign last year. Rumor was, someone discovered she didn't really have a degree in Science. In fact, when I did some digging, come to find out she never even graduated from college. Then Wycoff's wife caught him cheating on her one night with some young chippy. She left him the next day and never looked back.
As for me, I'm still here at Morrison High, searching for a few good pieces of wood, trying to build those bonfires. But all this storytelling's made me hungry. Would you care to join me for a couple of giant burgers with very special sauce?
Museum Guide
BY SHAY YOUNGBLOODFROM Black Girl in Paris
PARIS. SEPTEMBER 1986. Early morning. She is lying on her back in a hard little bed with her eyes closed, dreaming in French. Langston was here. There is a black girl in Paris lying in a bed on the fifth floor of a hotel in the Latin Quarter. Her eyes are closed against the soft pink dawn. Delicate maps of light line her face, tattoo the palms of her hands, the insides of her thighs, the soles of her feet like lace. Jimmy was here. She sleeps while small, feminine hands plant a bomb under the seat of a train headed toward the city of Lyon.
James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Gabriel García Márquez, and Milan Kundera all had lived in Paris as if it had been part of their training for greatness. When artists and writers spoke of Paris in their memoirs and letters home it was with reverence. Those who have been and those who still dream mention the quality of the light, the taste of the wine, the joie de vivre, the pleasures of the senses, a kind of freedom to be anonymous and also new. I wanted that kind of life even though I was a woman and did not yet think of myself as a writer. I was a mapmaker.
I remember the long, narrow room, the low slanted ceiling, the bare whitewashed walls, the spotted, musty brown carpet. To my left a cracked porcelain sink with a spigot that ran only cold water. On its ledge a new bar of soap, a blue ragged-edged washcloth shaped like a pocket, and a green hand towel. A round window at the foot of the bed looked out onto the quai St-Michel, a street that runs along the Seine, a river flowing like strong coffee through the body of Paris. The quai was lined with book stalls and painters with their easels and wooden plates of wet fall colors.
I am there again. It's as if I have somebody else's eyes. The Paris at the foot of my bed looks as if it were painted leaf by leaf and stone by stone with tiny brushstrokes. People dressed in dark coats hurrying along the narrow sidewalks look like small black birds. Time is still when I look out at the pale, gray sky, down to the silvery river below, which by midmorning will be crowded with double-decker boats filled with tourists. In the river, on an island, I can see the somber face of Notre-Dame cathedral and farther down, an enormous, block-long, turreted, pale stone building that looks like a castle, but which I am told is part of the Palais de Justice, which houses in its basement the Conciergerie, the prison where Queen Marie Antoinette waited to have her head chopped off and the writer James Baldwin spent one night after being accused of stealing a hotel bedsheet. Even the prisons here are beautiful, and everything is so old. Back home you can see the bars on the windows of buildings and houses, so you know that they are prisons. Sometimes bondage is invisible.
The first time I woke up in Paris I thought I'd been wounded. My body ached that first morning. My eyes, nose, and lips were puffy, as if my face had been soaked in water. My skin was dry and ashy. My joints were tight. When I stretched the full length of my body, bones popped and crunched like loose pebbles in a jar. The dream I woke up with was like a first memory, the most vivid of all the old movies that projected themselves onto the me that was. I woke up with a piece of broken glass clutched in my left hand. There was a small spot of blood on the sheets underneath me.
Before I left home I cut my hair close to my scalp so I could be a free woman with free thoughts, open to all possibilities. I was making a map of the world. In ancient times maps were made to help people find food, water, and the way back home. I needed a map to help me find love and language, and since one didn't exist, I'd have to invent one, following the trails and signs left by other travelers. I didn't know what I wanted to be, but I knew I wanted to be the kind of woman who was bold, took chances, and had adventures. I wanted to travel around the world. It was my little-girl dream.
I woke up suddenly one morning, at dawn. As the light began to bleed between the blinds into my room, the blank wall in front of me dissolved into a colorful collage by Romare Bearden of a naked black woman eating a watermelon. Against the iridescent blue background lay the outline of the city of Paris. The woman was me. This was my first sign of the unusual shape of things to come. By the time I came back to myself I was booked on an Air France flight to Paris. Paris would kill me or make me strong.
In 1924 at the age of twenty-two, Langston Hughes, the Negro Poet Laureate of Harlem, author of The Big Sea, arrived in Paris with seven dollars in his pocket. He worked as a doorman, second cook, and dishwasher at a jazz club on rue Pigalle. He wrote blues poems and stories and lived a poet's life. He wrote about the joys of living as well as the heartache.
My name is Eden, and I'm not afraid of anything anymore. Like my literary godfathers who came to Paris before me, I intend to live a life in which being black won't hold me back.
Baldwin's prophetic essays . . . The Fire Next Time . . . No Name in the Street . . . Nobody Knows My Name . . . were like the sound of trumpets in my ears. Baldwin knew things that I hoped someday he would tell me. The issues in my mind were still black versus white, right versus wrong, good versus evil, and me against the world.
The spring before I arrived in Paris, the city was on alert. I cut out an article from a news magazine that listed the horrible facts: April 2, a bomb aboard a TWA plane exploded over Athens, killing four Americans; April 5, an explosion in a West Berlin disco killed an American soldier and a Turkish woman, 230 people were wounded; April 15, in retaliation, President Ronald Reagan bombed Muammar Qadaffi's headquarters in Tripoli, killing fifteen civilians. Three American hostages were killed in Lebanon in response. April 17, a British woman was arrested in London's Heathrow airport, carrying explosives planted in her luggage by her Jordanian fiancé, who had intended to blow up a Tel Aviv--bound El Al flight. Terrorism was so popular that there were full-page ads in the International Herald Tribune offering hijacking insurance to frequent flyers.
I was no stranger to terrorism . . .
I was born in Birmingham, Alabama, where my parents witnessed the terror of eighteen bombs in six years. During that time the city was nicknamed Bombingham. When the four little girls were killed by a segregationist's bomb at church one Sunday morning in 1963, I had just started to write my name. I still remember writing theirs . . . Cynthia . . . Addie Mae . . . Carole . . . Denise . . . Our church sent letters of condolence to their families. We moved to Georgia, but I did not stop being afraid of being blown to pieces on an ordinary day if God wasn't looking. I slept at the foot of my parents' bed until I was eleven years old, when my mother convinced me that the four little girls were by now colored angels and would watch over me as I slept. But I didn't sleep much, and for most of my childhood I woke up each morning tired from so much running in my dreams---from faceless men in starched white sheets, from policemen with dogs, from firemen with water hoses. I was living in two places, night and day. In the night place I ran but they never caught me, and in the morning brown angels kissed my face. I woke up with tears on my pillow.
I was no stranger to terror . . .
When I was thirteen years old and living in Georgia I was in love with a girl in my class named Rosaleen and with her older brother, Anthony. Rosaleen and I played touching games in her bedroom, games she'd learned from her brother. We never spoke when we were naked and lying still on the carpet waiting for a hand to move an arm, bend a knee, for lips to kiss, for fingers to caress like feathers. We created still-life compositions with each other's pliant limbs, we were corpses, and for a few moments, a few hours, death seemed like something beautiful I wanted for the rest of my life. The fear of being caught heightened the sensations she awakened in me. Once when Anthony was home from college he sent Rosaleen downstairs to watch television, and he and I played the touching games. In Anthony's eyes I was a pretty brown-skinned girl. He whispered a continuous stream of compliments about my strange narrow eyes, my soft, still tender new breasts that filled his hands. He called me "Sugar Mama." His hands were rough, his smell musky and rank. I didn't struggle against the thick fingers that pushed between my legs, but let the hardness search the stillness inside of me. My feelings about Rosaleen and Anthony created a confusion in me, a terror of choosing. Anthony touched my body, but Rosaleen was the one I wanted to touch me inside. I was afraid to lose Rosaleen, but eventually I did. She got pregnant by a boy she met at the county fair. The baby was sickly and soon died. Rosaleen was sent away to live with relatives in Philadelphia. I never saw her again, but I had been touched by her in a way that would make all other touches fade quickly. After Rosaleen and Anthony I was terrified that no one would ever love me again, that desire was a bubble that would burst when I touched it. Years later I met Leo, who loved my body for a while, then left me when I felt I needed him most.
A bomb can kill you instantly, love can make you wish you were dead.
Within days of my arrival in Paris four separate explosions killed three people and wounded 170. There was an atmosphere of paranoia. The tension was visible in people's eyes. Everyone was suspicious. Every abandoned bag standing alone for more than a few minutes could be filled with explosives set to kill. Anyone could be a terrorist. Bombs were exploding all over the city the fall I arrived, and that made tickets to Paris cheap and suicide unnecessary. I would become a witness. I left my body and another me took over, someone who had no fear of bombs or dying.
It is 1986. I am twenty-six years old. I have 140 dollars folded flat and pressed into my shoes between sock and sole. It is what's left of the 200 dollars I arrived with two days ago. I have no friends here and barely remember my two years of college French. I think that my ticket to Paris will be the beginning or the end of me.
In 1948 James Baldwin, author of Another Country, then twenty-five years old, arrived in Paris with forty dollars. During the Sixties civil rights movement he led marches, protests, and voter registration drives. His angry, articulate essays on race shocked France and compelled witnesses to action. He was awarded the medal of Legion of Honor by the French government. I was a witness.
Josephine Baker arrived in 1925, at age eighteen. She danced naked except for a string of bananas around her waist, sang the "Marseillaise" in beaded gowns, and was decorated by the French government for her efforts during World War II. She created a new tribe in her château with children from every ethnic group. Like the character she played in the film Princess Tam Tam, she represented to the French the exotic black, sexually independent woman who could learn to speak French and pick up enough manners to dine with royalty.
I was transformed.
Bricktop arrived penniless and taught Paris how to dance the Charleston. Richard Wright was already a celebrity; he joined the French intellectuals and gave voice to the Negro problem in America. There were others and there will be more. My heroes. They dared to make a way where there was none, and I want to be just like them.
I was born again.
This is the place where it happened, where it will happen again.
For once I slept without dreaming. I woke up when the plane touched down on the runway and heard the entire cabin clap and cheer the pilot and crew for our safe landing. As we taxied along the runway I pulled my small French-English dictionary out of my bag to look up in the phrase section how to take a cab. Across the aisle from me was a young woman who had slept through most of the flight. She was blonde with olive skin and had a long face and pretty features. She wore jeans and a black sweater and held a Museum of Modern Art gift bag in one hand and a large Louis Vuitton satchel on her lap. The satchel looked real, not like the imitations everyone at home wanted. I assumed she was American.
"It's my first time in Paris. What's the best way to get to the city? Is there a bus?"
"We can share a taxi if you like. Where are you going?" Her French accent was a surprise.
"I don't know. I was going to ask the driver for a hotel. I don't have much money."
She looked at me as if I was crazy.
"You don't know anyone?"
I shook my head.
"It will be very difficult to find something not expensive." She pursed her lips and blew into the air, a French gesture I would come to recognize and imitate. She said that the students would be arriving for classes that week.
"Many of the hotels not too dear will be . . . complet. You understand?"
I quickly flipped through my dictionary and learned that the hotels would be full, no vacancies.
"My name is . . . Je m'appelle Eden."
"Delphine. Come," she commanded. We got up and joined the line of passengers exiting the plane. Charles de Gaulle airport was a maze of lines, people talking fast, signs I couldn't understand, and everywhere, guards carrying machine guns and holding fierce-looking dogs on short leashes. Then I began to be a little afraid of what I had done. I didn't know anyone, my French was practically nonexistent, and I had only enough money to last a few weeks until I found a job. But there was no going back. I took a deep breath and followed Delphine to baggage claim. I was relieved to see my duffel bag circle round in front of me. We stood in long, crooked lines in customs. One for citizens of France and several for everyone else. I gave Delphine twenty dollars to change into francs for me. She said she would meet me outside. When she was out of sight I had the fleeting thought that at home I would never be stupid enough to give a stranger money and watch her walk away, but I was in Paris and I was giving myself up to new angels.
When I offered up my passport, the customs officer, who had had a dry, grim expression for all the passengers before me, looked at me, then back at my passport. He scanned my short natural hair, high forehead, slow, sleepy eyes, broad nose, and full lips, as if to make sure the brown-skinned girl in his hands was me. He pushed my passport toward me and startled me by speaking in English. "Welcome to France, mademoiselle. Enjoy your visit."
During the ride to the city Delphine told me that she was a student at the "Science Po," the Ecole des Sciences Politiques, which I later learned was comparable to Harvard. She wanted to be a lawyer and in the current term she was studying English. When I told her I was a writer her eyes grew large and she could not hide her admiration, as if seeing in me something special she had not noticed before.
"I admire the dedication of the artist, but nothing is certain for you. I am not so brave." She looked out the window.
I did not feel brave, there was nothing else I thought I could do or that held my interest in the same way. The taxi was an old white Mercedes with a gray leather interior. The driver looked African and spoke French. We had loaded our bags in the trunk and got inside. Delphine had given the driver an address and instructions in rapid French. We sat in silence looking out at early morning Paris. The cars on the highway seemed to go faster than in the States. I was so tired I kept nodding off. When the taxi stopped on busy rue de l'Université, in front of a photography shop, I opened my wallet and Delphine took out some of the bills she had exchanged for me and added some of her own.
She pointed out the Sorbonne from the foot of the hill before we turned into the lobby of her apartment building. I followed her up four flights of stairs. She opened the door onto a small studio with high ceilings and cream-colored walls that made the room seem much bigger than it really was. Books and a small compact-disc collection lined the longest wall in the small but neat room, a high-tech stereo system and a small TV found space there as well. A bare desk sat in front of the windows, overlooking the street. Two double futons were stacked on top of each other in a corner. The most beautiful feature of the room was the set of tall French windows covered by metal shutters. Delphine opened the windows, letting in the light and noise of the street below. I went to the windows and looked down into the street. I saw a shop displaying cartons of brightly colored fruit, a florist's shop with spring in huge vivid bouquets that brightened the gray morning. She pointed me in the direction of the toilet. The bathroom fixtures were odd and ancient-looking. I did not recognize my face in the smoky gilt-framed mirror above the wide porcelain sink. There were dark circles under my eyes and my hair was so short. It was still me, a new me in a new place ready to begin again. I felt lost. After my father's funeral I felt as if I were drifting inside, as if anyone could disappear. Few things were certain. My father was dead.
Delphine made us strong cups of coffee in the tiny red-and-white kitchen area---miniature appliances lined up under tall cabinets. Stale bread crumbs were scattered over the counter, a knife left sticking out of a pot of butter. We added sugar to the coffee and drank it black from heavy yellow bowls.
"What will you do?" she asked, sitting crosslegged on the futons next to me.
"I thought I could look for a job as a secretary or an au pair." I sipped the coffee and felt the caffeine spreading through my chest.
"I have heard the American Church has a place to look for jobs. I can check the newspaper for you. There is a black American writer who is every day at a bookstore close to here. He might help you. I think he is a poet."
Delphine made two phone calls, then we left the apartment to look for a room. Her apartment was in the heart of the Latin Quarter, near the boulevard St-Michel. The streets were filled with people even though it was still early in the morning. Delphine was right, the less expensive hotels in the guidebook were complet, and I could not afford the more expensive ones. I could see that she felt pity for me and that she was determined to help me. Perhaps she thought an artist who was destined for a life of poverty needed all the help she could get. It started to rain, and as we were walking along the Seine back to her apartment I saw a hotel with a tiny sign in the window. By some miracle they had one room left, for about thirty-five dollars a night. We were told that it did not have a toilet, I'd have to share one on the floor below, and if I wanted to take a shower it would cost me about three dollars. The shower was in a stone cubicle in the basement. The clerk was a young man who, when he realized I was American, began speaking to me in English. This was a small relief to me, knowing I'd soon be on my own. I agreed without even seeing the room. I only hoped it had a view. It was not far from Delphine's apartment. She helped me carry my bags back to the hotel.
Delphine gave me her phone number and told me to call her when I was settled. She was going away to visit her sister in Lyon for a week until school started. Her cousin Jean-Michel would be in her apartment until she returned and he spoke a little English, so if I needed help I was to call him. I reached out to hug her but she leaned only her face toward me. She kissed me on each cheek and wished me bonne chance. She was the one who would need the luck. The very next day a bomb was found on a train headed toward Lyon. It was defused and no one was hurt, but it was only the first sign of more danger to come.
Suddenly it was night, and I was far from home and completely alone. The little room at the top of the stairs was not decorated with a chandelier, gold-leafed antiques, and a canopy bed covered in delicate lace as I'd imagined, but I was thankful to have a place indoors to sleep. On the floor at the foot of the bed were my green duffel bag and a black canvas backpack, which contained everything I owned. A tiny book of Bible verses the size of a matchbook, a 1968 Frommer's Guide to Paris I'd stolen from the public library. I knew all the major attractions by heart. I used the guide as a dream journal, writing between the lines. Between the pages I filed found poems and movie stubs and photographs. There was the gold pen from Dr. Bernard, three sharp number two pencils, a red Swiss army knife, seven pairs of white cotton panties, two pairs of white socks and one pair of black tights, a navy blue sweater and a pair of black jeans, a fat, palm-sized French-English dictionary, and a new address book with three addresses written in it. On the chair next to the sink, a pair of black stretch pants, a pair of gold hoop earrings, a watch with a thick brown leather band, a green trench coat from a military surplus store, and underneath the chair, a pair of black leather sneakers.
"Je m'appelle Eden. Je suis une . . . writer." The new me tried to impress the scratched mirror. I couldn't remember the French word for writer. Ecrivain. I said other things in French and practiced forgetting my old life.
My mother told me that she found me lying there, like a lost book or a forgotten hat. Found me crying, hungry, wet, and cold, wrapped in newspaper at the bottom of a brown paper bag in the bathroom of a Greyhound bus station. My father confirmed her story.
"Who am I?"
"Mama's little girl."
"Who am I?"
"Daddy's African princess."
"How do you know for sure?"
I discover that nothing is ever certain. A name, a birthday, an entire life can be invented, and that being so, can be changed. I intended to change all the ordinary things about myself. When I began to write I kept secret diaries, writing between the lines of books my father found in the trash at work. Books on law and economics, typewriter manuals. I wrote about the life I lived in the night place, where I traveled as far as the stars. Before I could speak my father read to me from his found books, sounding out each word as if it were an island, as if either of us understood. Having learned to read so late in life he valued books as treasures of knowledge waiting to be unlocked.
When I was four years old my parents told me that I was an orphan. My parents were orphans too. They found each other in church one Sunday. Hermine was a big-boned, sturdy, pecan-colored woman, with green eyes and gray hair she kept braided and wrapped around her head. She taught Prior Walker how to read the Bible, and in return he worshiped her. He was small for a man, with thick, callused hands, and balding by the time he was twenty-three. She was a seamstress in a blue-jean factory, and he was the custodian at a bank. They were old, like grandparents. Kind and patient, hardworking Christians. They were alone in the world until they found me. Their family, and therefore mine, was the church. We were happy together. They called me Eden. I made dresses for my dolls, but I was more interested in reading books and writing poems than in sewing. One summer Hermine and I pieced together a quilt made from scraps of clothes Prior and Hermine had worn out or I had outgrown. She called it the family circle quilt. The center image was three interlocking circles. She cried when it was done and sewed a lock of hair from each of us into three corners of the quilt, and in the fourth corner she sewed a secret. She folded the quilt into quarters and packed it into the cedar chest at the foot of her bed. In winter when it was time for me to go to sleep, she pulled the covers up around my chin.
"When you have a family you can put your baby to sleep under your family circle."
"My baby will have pretty dreams," I said stroking the lines of thread so lovingly handstitched.
"As long as Singer makes sewing machines, we'll get by," Hermine always said. The old machine she had must have been one of the first Singers, made in the late 1800s. She had a new electric model my father had bought her for her birthday, but for the quilt we used the one her mother left her before she died. Hermine told the same story about how her life began over and over again. At the age of two she had been left on the doorstep of a colored orphanage along with a note and the old Singer sewing machine in its case next to where she lay asleep. This was all she knew, but her life was full of stories she made up as she went along.
The only other family we had was Aunt Victorine, my mother's best friend and mine. On the first Saturday morning of each month she used to take me for blessings to the Church of Modern Miracles, where we both pretended she was my mother. When we were together she called me Daughter and I called her Mother, and that was only one of our secrets. Aunt Vic had never married and was childless, and in her way adopted me so that I had two mothers. She had something to do with my wanting to go to Paris. From the time she showed me on a map she drew with a broken pencil on her kitchen wall and told me that black people were free in Paris. Free to live where you wanted, work where you were qualified, and love whom you pleased. At least that was the rumor she had heard. One of her friends in Chicago, where she had grown up, had a sister, an opera singer who went to Paris and married a white man. The opera singer became famous in Europe. According to Aunt Vic the white folks in America didn't want us to know about that kind of living, where a colored person could socialize and marry whom they wanted whether they were white or black, Chinese or Hindu. If she could have chosen, Aunt Vic surely would not have chosen to be a maid for most of her life. She worked two days a week for a rich white doctor in Green Island Hills. That was freedom to her, to choose the life you wanted to live.
"And who would not choose to live well?" Aunt Vic said.
Aunt Vic's stories about Paris had sounded like fantasies. She talked about it as if it were a made-up place. If Paris was a real place, I wanted to go.
"Every day you ought to learn something new, Daughter," Aunt Vic said. I tried to learn new things, and I wrote them down like recipes between the lines of my found books.
I would go to stay with Aunt Vic, who returned me home Sunday morning ready for Sunday school with Hermine and Prior. I slept through most of Sunday morning sermons at the First African Baptist Missionary Church, where the service was orderly, the hymns hushed, and the service short, and nobody cried too loud or shouted that the Holy Ghost had them by the collar. There was no dancing in the aisles. At the Church of Modern Miracles there was a three-piece band---drums, electric organ, and electric guitar---and several ladies in the front row who shook tambourines and their ample hips and tremulous breasts all through the service. People shouted, praised God so their prayers could be heard above the sins of the city, were possessed by the Holy Spirit, who took over their bodies, shaking them with emotion and filling their eyes with tears and their throats with hallelujahs. I could use my voice strong and was put in the young people's choir. Soon I was singing a solo almost every Saturday morning. And Aunt Victorine had me performing at the age of six in juke joints on dirt roads for miles around almost every Saturday night. After midnight, when a juke joint was most crowded, some cigar-smelling man would lift me up onto a table in the middle of the room and somebody else would unplug the jukebox. Sometimes there would be a pianist or a guitar player to accompany me. I would sing songs I'd heard on Aunt Vic's record player. Aunt Vic taught me how to lift the hem of my dress and dance at the end of the song like Josephine Baker and the French can-can dancers who looked so glamorous in the photographs she showed me. The audience would throw handfuls of change and crumpled dollar bills at my dancing feet. I loved the attention. I dreamed about doing the can-can in Paris. If Mama hadn't found out when I was thirteen, I might've become a star on the dirt-floor circuit. Instead I started taking classical voice lessons from a mean old Creole woman who used to be an entertainer. Her long black curls left greasy spots on the collars of her old-fashioned quilted pastel dressing gowns. Miss Candy shouted at me in Creole when I forgot the words to a song. I didn't like her and the lessons didn't last long. Aunt Vic didn't speak to Mama for a long time. She was mad at losing all that income from my singing. And she missed me as much as I missed her. Low lights, Aunt Vic's copper-colored lipstick, and the sparkling dresses she let me borrow to perform in made me dream of a kind of life different from the one I was living. I made maps in my mind that would lead to other worlds.
Aunt Vic loved to be read to. She had grown up in Chicago and still had a subscription to the Chicago Defender so she could keep up with the community even though she had left under duress. The circumstances of her leaving the North many years before remained a mystery to me even though I asked her every time she started talking about the old days. Once I got her to admit her leaving had something to do with a man she didn't care to dance with, a gangster who owned the club she worked in. Aunt Vic loved Langston Hughes's Simple stories, which were published in the Chicago Defender from 1943 to 1966, Aunt Vic said. His main character, Jesse B. Simple, was everyman, every black man, and she loved him.
"Jesse B. Simple is real, I think that's a real person. I knew somebody just like that back in Chicago. Munro Fish, a sweet-talking jailbird who truly believed that someday he would run for a government office. He had it all figured out just like Simple. Always talking about race."
She had collected all the stories. She cut them out of the newspaper, and every once in a while she would pull them out and I'd read to her. The language was a little salty, but Mama wasn't around to get holy. Simple would talk about having Indian blood, and Aunt Vic would add her commentary.
"Like what Southern Negro don't claim that?" she would laugh. We would start packing our bags when he talked about all the colored people in Harlem. She would start singing about speakeasies and going up to Harlem like we were hearing the story for the first time.
The stories made us laugh and feel like we knew what was going on in the world, and we had a lot of our own opinions about that.
Aunt Vic showed me pictures of her old life as a dancer, the girls who went to France, and Josephine Baker, who was to her a symbol of complete freedom. I made up stories and acted out little dramas for my parents, playing all the parts myself. I wrote sad poems about orphans, and I moved through my life taking pictures with a toy camera, recording things in my mind, writing them down between the lines of other books. One day I made up my mind that I would go to Paris to be free.
When I was thirteen my parents gave me a typewriter, for which they had made many sacrifices. I typed my first novel in fourteen days. I wrote all the stories I knew and made up new ones. I typed them and put them in my library, a small bookshelf next to my bed that my father had made and my mother had painted yellow. By then I was reading in the adult section of the library and was certain after reading Langston Hughes's autobiography, The Big Sea, that I wanted to be a writer and feast at the banquet of life. Going to Paris would be an hors d'oeuvre. I kept my thoughts pressed between the lines of biology texts and biographies of dead presidents that no one else ever checked out anyway.
The color rust tastes like dirt, and my bones ache. The first blood on my fingers tastes like new nickels. Help me. I stumble on new legs into rooms so full of static sparks fly from my fingertips. As I reach for a vowel with my lips, an "O" softly escapes into the dry air. I need someone to introduce me to the woman who woke up in my skin. Mother, may I? Maman, puis-je?
"My body is breaking," says the me who is not my mother's child.
"It will bend," the mother whispers.
When I got my first blood, my mother told me I was a woman. There was something false about her happiness. Her joy came with conditions that must be followed.
"Don't let boys touch you." Anthony was a man.
"Be a sweet girl." I was hard candy.
My father pushed me off his lap and my mother seemed blind to me. Aunt Vic was my salvation.
"Being a woman is a cross we women must bear," she said.
"When I go to Paris I will leave behind the little orphan girl and all I will take with me is her body and some of her clothes. I'll make maps so other people can get there too, adventurers like me."
This was my little-girl dream.
Before Paris, at university, I studied English literature, and all it was good for in the end was a job as a librarian.
I wanted to hold on to old things, but I wanted new things to make me forget. When I was twenty-five I found a job in the house of dead things. Villa Luisa, known locally as the Dimple Mansion, built by the richest black man born into slavery. The house recalled an Italian villa and had become a museum and a memorial to a family of successful African American entrepreneurs. I was hired by the museum's director to assist him in giving tours and cataloging the collection. The director, Dr. Edgar Bernard, was a serious, scholarly gentleman and looked the part. He was tall, gray-haired, and elegant. His old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses accented wide eyes that popped from his head like lightbulbs. He wore the same dark gray suit and a crisp white shirt every day. His silk ties looked like pieces of stained-glass windows. The director was a lonely man. He spoke quietly and quickly as if afraid I would lose interest or he would forget to tell me something important as he veered into heated dissertations on obscure areas of Greek and African civilization. I was fascinated and listened to him with my whole body as if to memorize his knowledge.
When Dr. Bernard spoke there were secrets in his voice. I knew because I had secrets of my own. Dead things locked in a box I kept out of sight. I listened to his lonely, his hurt, and his misunderstood. He had dedicated his life to preserving a dignified memory of his mentor.
Dr. Bernard was a young man when he met Mason Dimple and became his secretary. Dimple sent him to Yale. They traveled the world together.
"Mr. Dimple gave me my first job. I worked in his garden every summer from the time I was fourteen years old. He sent me to school. I studied anthropology, receiving my doctorate just a few months before Mr. Dimple died.
"'Edgar,' he said, 'You have worked very hard and I've had to work hardly at all. I hope that you will make of your life something beautiful.' Mason was very good to me." Dr. Bernard's eyes got misty and his voice softened even more when he talked about Mr. Dimple, whom he sometimes, slipping, called Mason.
Now Dr. Bernard was married to a large woman who wore too much makeup and laughed too loudly. They were childless. The few times I saw her at holiday parties Mrs. Bernard's sadness and disappointment were clear as the champagne glasses she kept filled to the top.
Everything in the Villa was dead or old except me. The offices were in the basement of Mason Dimple's yellow brick mansion. The house was surrounded by a meticulously manicured landscape of pink and white dogwoods, red and orange azalea bushes, and wine-colored Japanese maples. Inside, the furnishings were opulent, each of the twenty-six rooms decorated in a different period. On the ceiling of each room were painted re-creations of religious scenes by Michelangelo from the Sistine Chapel. Angels floated above our heads all day. The Dimples were not religious, but they had wanted to impress their guests with their culture acquired from trips abroad. The house had marble bathrooms with gold fixtures and bronze-and-crystal chandeliers. The floors were inlaid with rare wood or covered in rare Oriental carpets. English antiques in the living room, French baroque velvet sofas in the sitting room.
A white marble statue of a naked muscled Greek god stood in the foyer, a replica of a famous sculpture in the Louvre. The director had placed a discreet bronze ivy leaf over its private parts after several church groups complained that the statue disturbed the children on tours.
Mason Dimple's bedroom was not included on the tour. Dr. Bernard said that Mason Dimple was so consumed with grief when his parents died in a train wreck when he was almost twenty-one that he stayed in his room for seven days staring into the flame of a candle, trying to pray them back to life. Then he painted his bedroom walls black. When I opened the door to his bedroom I could feel his suffering like cold fingers on the back of my neck. It was like standing in an opulent prison cell.
The Villa held a large collection of European art, English silver, and Greek sculpture. Most museum patrons expected to see a collection of African art because of Mason Dimple's race. But there was nothing African here except a wooden mask from Nigeria half eaten by termites and a few Moroccan tapestries. Mason Dimple hated anything too black or too African. At one time he had wanted to be a part of local white society. He thought his money and barely brown skin would allow him access, but he soon realized that he was not welcome. He made do with occasional contact with the black bourgeoisie that mirrored white society with its balls and charity events.
Dr. Bernard took me on a tour of the house and gave me facts I memorized. The questions from our guests were always the same.
When was the house built? Who was the architect?
How did the family make its fortune?
How did they die?
Why did Mason Dimple never marry or have children?
What are the naked wrestlers on the Greek vase in the study doing?
These were the things Dr. Bernard instructed me to say to the busloads of curious foreign tourists and rowdy school children and locals who had always wondered what went on inside the yellow brick mansion on Dimple Court.
In 1933 Mason's father, Simon Dimple, was the richest black man in the state of Georgia. He had spent his youth as a house slave on a plantation owned by his white father. He had been taught to cook by his mother, who was the plantation cook. He ran away from home when he was thirteen years old and earned his way in the world as a cook for rich white Northern college students. He met his future wife, Daisy, an octoroon girl from Louisiana, on a train in New York. They both were passing for white. He fell in love with her, and they returned to Georgia. He used Daisy and her brothers, who also passed for white, to purchase land and hire labor to build a restaurant on the outskirts of a growing town. They quietly ran the business behind the scenes and joined the local elite black community. Neither Daisy nor Simon could eat in the dining room of their own restaurant because it was for whites only. It was very popular and enabled Simon to invest in other businesses and real estate and make a fortune. The Dimples' firstborn child, Mason, they sent away to boarding school in Switzerland from the time he was a small boy to shelter him from the pain of racism. He spent summers with his family and eventually went to Yale, graduating with a degree in business.
At Simon Dimples' Plantation Restaurant, black women, dressed like Aunt Jemima in red-and-white checkered head kerchiefs, voluminous skirts, and white aprons, served the white patrons with a grin and a shuffle. The entire kitchen staff was made up of black men in white uniforms. The food was old-fashioned Southern cooking. Fried chicken, collard greens, sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, chicken and dumplings, lemon cheesecakes, blackberry cobblers, rice puddings, barbecued ribs, biscuits and cornbread. As good as the food was, that was not why the restaurant was so popular. It was the novelty of whites being served in the manner of their ancestors by a wait staff that reminded them of the good old days. The Dimples were members of the NAACP even though many members protested that the Dimples' restaurant perpetuated the stereotype of a slave plantation, where the white masters were still being served by happy blacks.
The Dimples considered themselves good and patriotic Americans. They raised the flag on holidays, bought war bonds, and wanted the world to see them as they saw themselves---successful, sophisticated citizens who contributed to their community. The Dimples were generous philanthropists, donating large sums of money to their church and black colleges and medical facilities all over the South. They were good businessmen and, after his parents died, Mason Dimple sold the offensive restaurant and most of the other properties. He set up a foundation to ensure the preservation of his home as a memorial to his parents after his own death.
A year after Mason Dimple himself died, the board of directors he had set up was ready to hire someone to organize the home's collection. My first job was to catalog everything in the house and develop a system for marking. First I looked through the photographs. Mason seemed to have been a happy child, in short velvet pants, white ruffled shirts, and high buttoned boots. As he grew older his smiles faded to a hard line and he wore pressed tailored suits and posed stiffly for the camera's eye. He still looked like a boy even after his hair had thinned and his small rimless glasses sat on his nose like little windows.
Under the stairs in the basement of the dead man's house there were several boxes of books Dr. Bernard didn't seem to know existed. One rainy afternoon when tours were slow and Dr. Bernard was attending a conference at a downtown hotel, I opened one of the boxes and flipped through the pages of historical novels and murder mysteries that Mason was so fond of. Behind the boxes was a small trunk half hidden by a large, brightly patterned rug. I dragged the trunk into my office and opened it. Inside were a packet of letters and several photographs. In the photographs Mason Dimple's eyes seemed happy only once. In one photograph he was walking through a flock of birds in a square in Venice. He was smiling at a young man who faintly resembled Dr. Bernard and who seemed to be flapping his arms to make the birds fly. There was a well-dressed young woman in the picture. She was wearing a tall hat and stood nearby watching both men with a weary, tight little smile.
The tiny black leather notebook fit in the palm of my hand. I found it sewn inside a linen bag in a secret compartment in Mason Dimple's traveling office trunk designed by Louis Vuitton in the mid 1800s. It was slender, the leather was smooth to touch, and inside, each page overflowed with tiny black lines like marching ants. The words were crowded together carefully as if they had been written in a small, dark place by someone with plenty of time, lots to say, and no one to listen. My hands were trembling as I cut open the neat stitches with my pocket knife. As archivist for the house museum where Mason Dimple was born and died I had access to every silver spoon and faded photograph that made up his life. Mason Dimple was a complicated man, there was no doubt about that. He had wanted to be a poet and so he went where poets went, tried to live as they did, but his money got in the way. He died a bachelor with no heirs and left a substantial fortune in a trust that would preserve the family home and the Dimple name forever.
I wanted to be a poet and I knew early on, but it was not practical for a girl born into a poor family to be a poet. At first I studied biology in preparation for life as a nurse. This was to ease my parents' minds that I would be able to take care of myself, but I became fascinated with history and poetry and the lives of artists. I was never a practical girl. Five years out of college I found myself working in the basement of a dead man's house, sorting through intimate details of his life, discovering common ground.
The letters were faded, but I could read the words, which told a story different from the one I recited to visitors to the house. It was in his handwriting. I knew it from the dull entries in the diaries I had cataloged. Places visited, foods eaten, and the prices in local currency of gifts purchased.
There were love letters:
My tongue is wasted on words when you would be of better use in my mouth.
There were rooms full of secrets:
The Great Hall, where the family received guests and gave lovely parties.
Mother made me scrub the floors on my hands and knees this morning as she recited prayers for my sinful soul.
The music room, where the family entertained their guests.
Mother tied me to the piano bench until I could play perfectly. Finally my fingers behaved. What a bad boy to make Mother unhappy. She speaks French when she is unhappy.
The master bedroom, where the father slept.
It is curious how Father never sleeps alone at night, nor does he sleep with Mother.
The pink bedroom, where the mother slept.
She cries at night. Her weeping is my lullaby.
Mason Dimple's bedroom, closed to visitors.
He is my first love and will be my last. I would be lost without him.
Mason Dimple had many secrets. Secrets I did not tell visitors to the house. Sometimes when it was quiet in the house I could hear a young woman singing and a grown man weeping. I could feel the cold, sad suffering of a mother's love. Some nights I dreamed, some nights I didn't sleep at all. My dreams shift my thinking:
I am in Paris. I climb a spiral staircase seven flights up. I enter a room made entirely of books, the walls, the fireplace, and the ceiling. The floor is a soft carpet of words. Leatherbound books with SECRETS etched in gold leaf along their spines are displayed in elaborate boxes set in the walls behind glass. The smell is haunting, dried ink and musty memories. I lie on the floor and words beneath me whisper in my ear, water words, the names of trees and flowers, parts of the body, parts of the eye. I leave the room and enter a dark hallway heading toward the light. I see my father in the distance, he waves me back toward the living. I whisper goodbye and turn my back on him.
My father died of a heart attack the summer before I went to Paris. All of us who knew him almost died from shock. A pious deacon of the church. A kind neighbor. A loving husband and father. Simply put: a good man gone to glory. "Prior Walker, dearly beloved" was carved in stone. Daddy was stitched onto the tender parts of my heart. My body folded and water fell from my eyes like rain.
The weight of all those dead things pulled me down.
One afternoon shortly after my father died, I had a revelation and a sign. The streets outside were steaming as if little teapots were brewing beneath the city, but I was cool underground. I was working at my desk in the windowless basement office. That morning the principal from a local boy's school called to cancel their one o'clock tour, and I was afraid I would cry all afternoon. A man I'd been dating had called me at noon to tell me he was returning to Detroit. He'd been looking for a job as a radio news journalist the whole year I knew him, but he had been unlucky and he felt that it was time for us both to face facts. For me the reality was more jarring, that he hadn't even asked me to go with him, let alone marry him. I couldn't say I was in love with him. I was just sad to be by myself again. I wanted to run away from so much loss all at once.
I was not allowed to be with my sadness for long. At one-fifteen the front doorbell rang. I went up the stairs, crossed the foyer, and opened the front door. Standing there were a regal-looking, well-dressed older black woman wearing heavy gold jewelry and too much powder on her face and a younger man in a conservative dark suit who I guessed by their resemblance was her son. I invited them in and noticed that they spoke with soft West Indian accents. The son seemed more interested in the house than the mother. Sometimes he would whisper to her in what sounded like French. I gave them the standard tour and the son asked the standard questions. At the end of the tour the son looked around with a puzzled expression.
"I presume that Mr. Dimple was an educated man."
"Yes, he graduated from Yale."
"That is not what I mean. His collection seems incomplete. He traveled to Africa in the Fifties?"
"Yes, but he wasn't much interested in African art. He brought back several tapestries from Morocco, and you saw the Ibo mask?"
The man made a noise in his throat and pitched his eyes around the room once more. "You can tell so much about a man by what he keeps in his house."
"Thank you very much for the tour. It was lovely," the mother said, signing the guest book. I noticed she wrote down Paris as her address.
"How did you hear about the museum?" I asked, curious.
"The concierge at the hotel recommended it."
"Are you West Indian?"
"We are French," the mother said, as if I'd insulted her.
The son looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. His eyes assessed me quickly, lingering on my breasts before returning to my face. He seemed to want to continue talking with me.
"There are many black Americans living in Paris, many artists," the son said. "I believe the black American writer James Baldwin makes his home in France. Do you know him?" he asked, as if it were possible for me to know someone famous.
"I know his work. I've been listening to my aunt go on about France since I was a little girl. I'd love to go there someday."
The son warmed to me when I said I wanted to be a writer. He said there were many bohemian artists living in Paris.
"There are certainly enough entertainers," the mother said, dabbing at her perspiring nose with a delicate lace handkerchief.
For the next half hour the son, Maxime Bazille, and his mother, Madame Marie-Lise Bazille, convinced me that Paris was the last red apple on the highest branches of a tree well worth climbing. I thanked them, and for the first time Paris became a real destination, with real places to eat, museums to see, and wide boulevards to stroll. A list of inexpensive hotels, bakeries and cafés, clothing shops and museums neatly printed in Maxime Bazille's elegant hand was folded in my pocket.
By six o'clock that evening the security guard hadn't shown up. I called Dr. Bernard and offered to lock up the house and set the alarm. He agreed, and I began clearing up my desk. I called a local copy shop to find out how much they charged for passport photos. Before setting the alarm I went into the library, and my eyes fell on several books by James Baldwin. I'd seen them every day, but that evening it was as if a laser beam pointed them out to me and I was drawn to them. Each of the books was a signed first edition. Giovanni's Room, Another Country, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Nobody Knows My Name, The Fire Next Time. Each book was signed, "Affectionately, Jimmy." I sat in Mason Dimple's reading chair and read into the night, from one book to the next. The most brilliantly illuminating passages were underlined with blue ink. By the time the sun came up, my eyes were red and tired and an overwhelming sadness had clouded the room. When Dr. Bernard arrived he thought I was sleeping. He touched my shoulder and called my name.
His eyes fell on the bundle of love letters on the table next to me.
"I found them behind the stairs."
Dr. Bernard sat facing me in a leather wing chair, wearily, as if it were the end of a long day and not the beginning.
"After Mason read a book he liked or hated or was moved by, he would buy another and underline words and sometimes whole passages. Then he gave them to me. We went to Paris after he read Giovanni's Room. It was the happiest time of my life. I love him still." Dr. Bernard began to weep. I reached out and touched his hand.
"Don't take only what life gives you, reach out and take what you want," he said.
We sat quietly in the room thick with memories and desire. Reading my own copy of Giovanni's Room a few days later lit a fire in me. The main character, David, a white American living in Paris, begins a passionate affair with an Italian bartender, Giovanni, but because David is ashamed and scared of his desire, his love for Giovanni destroys them both. I was determined to have no such regrets, no such fears. I was still young and thought anything was possible.
I was awake, but I was dreaming about Paris, reading Baldwin, planning a new life. I made a reservation on a flight to Paris. I gave Dr. Bernard one month's notice, he gave me his blessings and a gold pen. When I told Aunt Vic I wanted to go to Paris, she didn't laugh or ask me if I was crazy; she sat down on her sofa, leaned over, and peeled back the carpet. She counted eighteen twenty-dollar bills into my hand and promised to send me more if I needed money to come home.
"I wish I had the balls to do it." She hugged me hard.
"Aunt Vic, that's some salty talk."
My mother was still deep in her grief over losing my father. She let her sadness at my leaving roll over her like a fog.
"Child, I wish I could see you married, but I know that's a long ways off. You still restless." She stroked my hair and kissed my third eye.
"Aren't you glad I didn't marry Leo just to ease your mind?"
"He was too handsome to be a husband anyway," she said, trying to comfort me. I had already put him in a box and shoveled dirt on top.
I had saved three hundred dollars, and I figured after selling everything I couldn't carry to France I'd have about five hundred more. I watched ten French videos in fourteen days to prepare my ear for my new language. Four weeks later I had a ticket to Paris.
The day after I arrived in Paris a bomb was found on a train headed toward Lyon. I wondered if my new friend Delphine had noticed a plain package underneath a seat near her. Had she panicked? Did she call the conductor and save the lives of dozens of passengers and her own life as well?
In another country, reading the words "two men kissed" makes it possible for me to kiss any lips my heart desires. In another country, the sound of music breathes.
In another country, love means this moment, now.It means remembering your mother's facewhen you told her you were leaving,your lover's smell on that last day.Goodbye is so final,say: til then.
I carry words around in my pocket, put them behind my eyelids, in my mind. I let words float in my mouth. I roll them around on my tongue, taste them until sounds slowly push out of my mouth. Each word is a poem.
parler . . . la verité . . . à minuit . . . regarde . . . une étoile . . . le nuage . . . fumée
This new language I am dreaming, I'm beginning to understand, is soft in my mouth like small satin pillows. These words are not hard to swallow.
Once upon a time, not so long ago and not far from now, there was a black girl in Paris . . . She is lying on her back on a hard little bed with her eyes closed dreaming in French . . . The long narrow room . . . a round window at the foot of the bed . . . All the familiar things are not. A door is not a door. La porte. Love is l'amour, not an open wound. When I wake up I'll leave this place and I'll find my way back again. I'll find a word and sing it like it's the last song I'll ever sing. Josephine and jazz were here. It is a brand-new world.
My name is Eden and I'm not afraid of anything anymore.
School
BY VERONICA CHAMBERSFROM Miss Black America
The first time somebody called me a liar, I was nine years old. It was in a classroom decorated with faded pictures of rosy-cheeked white kids with blond hair, and that did not escape my notice. Every conceivable surface---the bulletin boards, the wall above the chalkboard, the wood closet doors---were covered with the illustrated adventures of Dick and Jane. There was only one white girl in our class: Brenda. She had red hair just like the comic book character Brenda Starr. She swore up and down that she wasn't named after a stupid comic strip, but that's what we all called her. Brenda Starr.
Our teacher was a middle-aged white woman from Long Island. She told us that the very first day of school. "My name is Mrs. Newhouse and I'm from Long Island." She pronounced "Long Island" in a really funny way, as if each word was chopped up into five or six squeaky syllables. I thought it was strange that she mentioned where she was from. It wasn't as if it was any place interesting like France or India. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Chong, was Cuban Chinese. We only found out about the Cuban part when some of the Puerto Rican kids in class were making fun of her eyes and she went off on them in Spanish. We always thought her clipped, staccato tone was the way all Chinese people talked. But when she started speaking Spanish, she was like Nidia Velásquez' grandmother cursing people out her window. Mrs. Chong put one hand on her hip and one finger in the air and let loose a string of Spanish words that swiveled in her mouth as fast as her hips. It was extraordinary, like watching a normal person turn into a superhero. That's when Mrs. Chong explained that her parents were Chinese, but she'd grown up in Cuba. We knew then that she was the coolest teacher we'd ever have.
"You better watch out," the boys would say, as they roughhoused in the playground. "Mrs. Chong will do a Bruce Lee on your ass. Then she'll turn around and pow, pow like Roberto Durán." Me and my girlfriends were more concerned with what Mrs. Chong had cooking in her pot. "Her kids are so lucky," Coco García said, salivating into her peanut butter sandwich. "They can have sweet and sour pork one night and ropa vieja the next." Kenya Moore added, "They could have won ton soup and black bean soup." Brenda Starr waved away all the comparisons with an impressive air of cool. "Face it," she said, crossing her legs and swinging the top one lazily, "her kids have got it made."
So, what was so special about a teacher from Long Island compared to a Cuban Chinese? Then Mrs. Newhouse went around the room and asked every kid what their father did for a living. When she got to me, I said, "Magician." Everyone in the class giggled. Hard of hearing or just not paying attention, she said, "Does your father play an instrument, dear?" I just shook my head. "No, Mrs. Newhouse," I said. "He's a ma-gi-cian." I made the word long and squeaky like "Long Island" so maybe she'd understand me better.
She smiled at me, a fake smile without teeth, then came over to my desk. She smelled of coffee and, on closer inspection, her red pantsuit had balls of lint along the thighs. She patted me on the head. "Here's an example of a very vivid imagination at work," she said. "I bet every little boy or girl wishes their father was a magician or a circus ringmaster or a flame thrower." She chuckled, as if she'd told a very funny joke; then she skipped me, moving on to the girl in the seat behind me. I didn't say another word the whole day. I just sat there, silent and furious.
The thing is I'd already come to school that day feeling bad. The night before my mother and father had had a huge fight because there was no money to buy me a new outfit for school, much less a pencil case or a small pair of plastic scissors or any of the school supplies on the list the counselor had given us. This, I was led to believe, was my father's fault.
Just the night before, my mother had been yelling about how my father was "no better than a child." Standing in the living room wearing a blue and green tie-dyed T-shirt and a pair of white jeans, she was beautiful, mad as she was. I thought she looked like a Charlie's Angel, a black Charlie's Angel. Her shoulder-length hair had been pressed to bone straightness and she wore it flipped back like Jayne Kennedy.
"Some sort of magician you are, Teddo," she screamed, ripping up pictures of my father's head shot. "Why don't you pull some motherfucking food out of your hat? Why don't you make some money appear, Magic Man?"
My father closed the paper he had been reading, then walked over to the stereo. "You're so small-minded," he said, clamping the bulky headset over his ears. "You've got such a fucking small mind. Can't you see that I'm trying to do something amazing with my life?"
My mother was on him in ten seconds, ripping two buttons off of his silk print shirt and pounding on his chest. "Amazing? You want to do something amazing?" she screamed. "Provide for your fucking child. Live up to your fucking responsibilities." He shrugged her off of him with one strong swoop of his arms. "This is a new shirt, man," he muttered to no one in particular.
My mother stumbled from my father's push but quickly got to her feet. She cut her eyes at my father, tossing him a long hard glare that would have been considered an invitation to rumble on any street corner in the city. But my father refused to take the bait, humming along to music only he could hear. "Come on, Angela," my mother said, leading me out of the living room. My hand felt small in her hand and in her anger, she clenched her long nails into my palm. I didn't care. She was my angel. My Charlie's Angel.
We were living in the South Bronx, in a basement apartment that had love beads and shag carpeting in every room. Even the bathroom was carpeted. As we walked back toward my tiny bedroom, I squeezed the carpet with my toes and willed myself not to cry. This was the first time I would not have a new dress for the first day of school. I understood the reason, but that didn't hold back the tears. There was no money. There was never any money. But it had never bothered me. Now I felt caught. For the first time, ever, I was drafted into the vicious no-money war my parents constantly battled. It felt terrible. Like playing a game of hot potato and having the cootie-contaminated object glued to your hands.
By the time we reached my room, I was quietly sobbing. I sat on the bed and my mother knelt in front of me. Her cocoa face glistened around the edges like a halo, where she'd combed her baby hair down with Vaseline. She pulled my face close to hers as if for a kiss and said, "I am so sorry. There's nothing I hate more than to see you go without. But I had no choice this month. Either I bought your clothes or paid the rent and I couldn't have us out on the street."
The notion of being out on the street was no idle threat. We'd lived in three apartments in as many years, and all around our Bronx neighborhood there was evidence of eviction sofas, like new, abandoned on the sidewalk, dining room tables left behind when somebody took all the chairs. Sometimes, after it rained, I saw family photographs and copies of birth certificates floating like paper sailboats in the street toward the gutter.
Mommy had grown up running from the bill collectors and the repo man. They would be in the middle of watching a favorite show---Laugh In or something silly---and the bell would ring and a guy would come in and take the TV. One day, she came home from school and found all of the contents of her apartment on the sidewalk and the neighbors making off with all of her stuff---her dolls, her clothes, even a bag of her barrettes. "Girls I knew," Mommy had said, her teeth clenched as if those stolen baby dolls had been real babies. "Girls who had been to my house, played with my toys, just took them. As if without four walls around them, our stuff was not our stuff. I never want you to go through something like that. Never."
Mommy told the story again as I cried my greedy new-dress tears, then she stood and opened my closet door. "It's a brand-new school, Angela," she said in a cheerleader's voice that I didn't believe. "Nobody's ever seen any of your clothes. Just make do for now, sweetie. First of the month, I'll buy you a new dress and new shoes."
I didn't want to hear it, and looked away at the poster on my wall of my namesake. Angela Davis' bright brown eyes were flashing and her lips were slightly open, but serious, as if she was about to say something powerful. I knew what Angela Davis would think of a little girl who cried for new clothes. I wiped my tears and hugged Mommy around the waist.
"Pick a dress," she said, kissing me on the forehead. "I'll iron it and it will look like new, I swear."
I stood up and reached for the outfit we both knew I'd choose. It was a pink peasant blouse with a pair of pink bell bottoms to match.
In the kitchen, Mommy gave me a purple notebook with stars and a new purple pen. "No book bag yet," she said. "But we'll get you one to match your coat." She looked outside and held her hand through the window---a human weather vane. "Thank God it's been warm 'cause you need a new coat, too."
I hadn't slept well the night before I'd met my new teacher, Mrs. Newhouse from Long Island. I'd been feeling nervous about the new school and on edge because my back-to-school clothes were really back-to-last-year clothes. I'd been feeling small and she made me feel smaller. So since she'd already said I was a liar, I went home and I told a lie.
Mommy was at work. Daddy was in the kitchen, making an omelet. It was three o'clock and he was still in his pajamas, which meant he didn't have a show, tonight, which meant there was no work.
"How was your first day at school, princess?" he asked in a sweet tone that told me he was sorry for fighting with Mommy the night before. When Daddy was feeling guilty, there was always sweet talk to spare. He'd be calling her Miss Black America and his dark-chocolate honey as soon as she got home. He'd offer to fix dinner and light candles and put on Teddy Pendergrass as soon as I went to bed. I knew the drill.
"It was terrible," I said, pouting for effect. "Not to mention, the teacher was talking about you."
"About me?" Daddy said, whipping around from the hot stove. "What did she say about me?"
For all his skillful hustling, Daddy was easier to play than a game of three-card monte. All you had to do was make him the star of the story---good or bad---and he got right involved.
"The teacher asked us what our fathers did for a living," I said, pausing dramatically. "And when I told her that my father was a magician, she rolled her eyes. She said, 'There's no such thing as a black magician.' "
"She said what?" Daddy growled ferociously. I had thought about pretending she'd said that there was no such thing as a nigger magician, but I figured that would be laying it on a bit thick. Always keep your con simple. Daddy had taught me that.
"She said she'd never heard of a black magician," I repeated. "Then she asked me if I hadn't meant musician and she asked me what instrument you played."
Daddy was livid. "Why we always got to sing and dance?" he fumed. Then he went off on a rant, barking like a mad dog. "It's not enough to be a talent like Bojangles. Got to sing 'Good Ship Lollypop' with Shirley Temple. You listen to me! It's not a 'good' ship unless white people are on it. Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin hanging out are just a couple of nice guys. Put a black man in with them and all of a sudden, it's the Rat Pack. Always got to be something negative with black people . . ."
"Daddy, the stove," I said, as the skillet began to smoke.
"In the cowboy films, the good guy wears white and the bad guy wears black," he continued.
"Daddy! Your omelet's burning."
He turned around and turned off the flame. "So because it's black, I'm not supposed to eat it?" he said with a grin, then sat down and ate every last burned bite.
The next day, Daddy walked me to school. Although it was eight o'clock in the morning, he was dressed in a black tuxedo, complete with top hat and tails. I felt slightly silly walking down the street with him. On each block, people peeked out of doorways and windows to stare. But I was more happy than embarrassed because I knew that my teacher was going to get it. Daddy was going to give her a tongue-lashing she'd never forget.
Which is exactly what he didn't do. After introducing himself to Mrs. Newhouse, Daddy said, "I understand that this is Career Day at school."
Mrs. Newhouse, dressed in a teal pantsuit identical to the one she'd worn the day before, went slightly green herself. "There's been a mistake, Mr. Brown. Today is not Career Day."
"It isn't?" Daddy said, shooting me a quizzical look. "That's what Angela told me." I was seated in the fifth seat of the third row and began silently willing myself and my chair to disappear.
"Well," Daddy said, cheerfully, "since I came all this way, would you mind terribly if I showed the kids some tricks?"
All the students began to clap. Three or four of the girls, the ones that I'd already designated as the snotty bunch, shot me winning smiles. They were sweet, "be my best friend/sign my slam book/make fortune-tellers with me" smiles and I ignored them, unsure that Daddy's spell would last past the minute he walked out the door.
"Actually, Mr. Brown, I'm afraid we don't have time for magic tricks," Mrs. Newhouse said, reaching out for a folder on her desk. "The Board of Ed has laid out a very strict lesson plan. Lots of learning to do, you know." She said this last sentence with a bit of a lilt, like a character in a musical.
Daddy reached his arm around Mrs. Newhouse's head, just past her jet-black modified beehive. "I won't argue with that," he said. "My great-granddaddy always told me that if you pour your wealth into your head, you will always be rich."
Mrs. Newhouse smiled her toothless smile and looked pointedly at the door. Daddy began to walk away, then turned around. "My dear Mrs. Newhouse," he said, in a faint British accent designed to flatter, "I need to use the payphone on my way out. A smart teacher like you, with a head full of knowledge, could probably spare some change." Then he pulled a quarter out of her ear and she gave a little gasp. The kids in class sat up on the edge of their seats. She'd asked Daddy to leave, she'd said there was no time for tricks, but he'd gone ahead and whipped a little something on her anyway.
Daddy lifted a large "Reading Is Fundamental" coffee cup off of Mrs. Newhouse's desk and held it up to her head. "You've poured so much knowledge, so much wealth, into your head, that you're a positive gold mine." He did the slot machine trick then, cranking Mrs. Newhouse's arm up and down as quarter after quarter fell out of her ear and into the cup.
The kids began to cheer and even Mrs. Newhouse let loose a giggle. "I have to say," she said, in a whispery tone that bordered on flirtatious, "that is really astounding. I think we can spare the time for one or two tricks more."
Daddy took out a large envelope, five notebook-size playing cards, and a piece of black photographic paper. He displayed each card slowly. On one card, there was a plus symbol; on another card, there was a square; on the third card, there was a circle; on the fourth card, there was a series of wavy lines, and on the last card, there was a star.
He turned his back to the class and asked Mrs. Newhouse to shuffle the cards. She did and handed the large cards back to Daddy, carefully with two hands as if she was afraid they might fall.
Daddy smiled at the class. "Since I'm taking up some of your important class time, I thought we'd do a review of basic mathematics."
He knelt down and placed three cards on the floor, then he asked, "Ladies and gentleman, how many cards on the floor?"
Everyone cried out, "Three!"
He stood up again. "That leaves how many cards in my hand?"
All the kids shouted out "Two!"
"Now what I'm about to show you moves out of the realm of math and into the realm of physics," Daddy continued. His smile, ever-present, glowed as if he was born to smile and was perfectly content at all times. I sat at my desk, remembering his fight with Mommy---the way he'd shrugged her off like a fly that bothered him. His face then had been so cold, so disgusted. He is a million men, I thought. He sheds emotions like skin.
"This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call mind over matter," he said. Daddy knew that kids loved to be called "ladies and gentlemen." It made them feel grown-up and was just a little bit distracting and kept their mind off the mechanics of the trick. "I'm going to put these two cards face to face and put this magical black photographic paper between them. I'm going to place the whole thing in this envelope and then I want the lovely Mrs. Newhouse to take the envelope to the other side of the room."
Mrs. Newhouse took the envelope and practically skipped over to the little library in the back of the room.
"Now you won't believe what you're about to see," Daddy said. "A year from now, you may not even remember exactly what you saw. But I want you to remember this---mind over matter."
Daddy took off his long tuxedo coat and rolled up his sleeves. He closed his eyes and placed a finger on each temple. Then he began to hum. A few moments later, he announced, "I'm in harmony with those cards. It doesn't matter what they were when I put them in because I imprinted my will on that photographic paper. I have changed the cards!"
In a confident, almost slow-motion stroll, Daddy began to walk up and down the aisles between our desks. He looked each child in the face, pausing suspiciously, to gaze longer at certain kids. When he had made eye contact with every student in the room, including me, he asked, "How many of you believe that I can guess which two cards Mrs. Newhouse is holding in her hand?"
About half the kids held up their hands. "This is a tough crowd, Angela," Daddy said, winking at me. Then he asked again for a show of hands again.
He walked over to a boy named Charlie, the biggest kid in the room. Charlie had jet-black skin and a permanent scowl. He was the kind of kid that was genetically destined to be the class bully. "What's your name, son?" Daddy asked.
Charlie told him.
Daddy perched on the edge of Charlie's desk. "You don't believe I can guess those two cards," he said.
"Nope," Charlie answered.
"Well, how about I make you a deal?" Daddy purred. "I'm going to take a guess and if I'm wrong, I'll kill myself."
Everyone in the room, including Mrs. Newhouse, looked horrified. But Daddy wasn't finished. He stood up and, as he walked toward the front of the classroom, he added, "However, if I kill myself, I'll do it by starvation." He winked at Charlie. "I don't know if you'll want to wait around."
Everybody laughed. Mrs. Newhouse let out a sigh of relief. Then Daddy pronounced, "You are holding the square and the wavy lines, Mrs. Newhouse."
And of course, she was. "House rules," as Daddy would say. The con man always wins.
Daddy stayed until the lunch bell rang. When he took his final bow, the entire class gave him a standing ovation.
In the cafeteria, I was surrounded by kids. Not just the ones in my class, but fifth and sixth graders who'd heard about Daddy's performance. They had a million questions, questions that just begged for me to lie some more. For the first time, it looked like I might actually be popular---old clothes and all. They wanted to know if I'd ever met Doug Henning. I said yes. They wanted to know if we had a magic carpet at home. I said yes. They wanted to know if we had a magic rabbit. I said yes. They asked if I knew the secrets behind Daddy's tricks. "Of course," I said, feigning boredom. The truth was I knew some of the devices---hidden compartments, rubber thumbs big enough to squeeze handkerchiefs in, dummy hats and newspapers that were quickly swapped for the real thing. But I couldn't do magic---not even a simple "pick a card, any card" deck trick.
What I wanted to tell them was it's more complicated than you think. Sure, it helps to be a magician's daughter. I've got a few ins. But let's say your mother is Patti LaBelle and you can carry a note. You still have to do more than sing. You have to wear those crazy outfits and sport that fabulous hair. You have to know how to dance and how to work an audience. You have to know how to banter and how to wink and how to make a room hot when everyone is just sitting there, staring, as frozen as a glass of ice cubes. You have to be fearless and larger than life. Otherwise, you're just another church mouse singing in the glee club or the Sunday choir. It's like that with magic, I wanted to say. The tricks are the easy part. The things my father does that make him amazing? That's what's magic.
Ghost Story
BY VICTOR D. LAVALLEFROM Slapboxing with Jesus
Move anywhere, when you're from the Bronx, you're of the Bronx, it doesn't shed. The buildings are medium height: schools, factories, projects. It's not Manhattan, where everything's so tall you can't forget you're in a city; in the Bronx you can see the sky, it's not blotted out. The place isn't standing or on its back, the whole borough lies on its side. And when the wind goes through there, you can't kid yourself---there are voices.
I was at war and I was in love. Of both, the second was harder to hide, there was evidence. Like beside my bed, a three-liter bottle, almost full. I rolled from under my covers, spun off the cap, pulled down my pants, held myself to the hole and let go.
Besides me and the bottle, my room had a bed, some clothes hanging in the closet, books spread out across the floor. Somewhere in that pile of texts and manifestos were two papers I had to turn in if I ever wanted to be a college graduate.
Cocoa was in the next room, snoring and farting. I listened to him, all his sounds were music.
I finished, pulled up my sweatpants and closed the bottle; inside, the stuff was so clear you could hold it to one eye and read a message magnified on the other side. I religiously removed the label from this one like I had all the others, so when I put it at the bottom of the closet with them, in formation (two rows of three), I could check how they went from dark to lighter to this one, sheer as a pane of glass; each was like a revision---with the new incarnation you're getting closer and closer to that uncluttered truth you might be hunting privately. I would show them all to a woman I loved, one I could trust; that had been tried three times already---the two stupid ones had asked me to empty them and change my life, the smart one had dressed right then and walked out. This was my proof, their intolerance, that people hate the body. But me, I was in love.
Cocoa and I had grown up poor and I was the stupid one; I believed that's how we were supposed to stay. That's why, when I saw him on the train two months before, with his girl, Helena, her stomach all fat with his seed, I didn't leave him alone. I walked right over. I was at war, too, and needed the help.
She'd looked up before he did; the express cut corners and I fooled myself into thinking she was glad to see me. "Hey Sammy," she forced out. Cocoa was working, I was sure of that; she was rocking three new gold fronts on her bottom teeth.
I asked, "You going to be a mommy?"
Started telling me how many months along she was but I'd stopped listening; soon she wasn't talking. Her jewelry disappeared behind her closed mouth. Cocoa hugged me tight like when we were fourteen: me and him coming out of the crap church on the corner of 163rd, the one with neon-bright red bricks, the painted sign on the door, misspelling the most important word ("cherch"). It was when his mother died, quick, and we were leaving the ceremony, behind us the thirty more people who'd cared to come. It had been a nice day so fellas were hanging out in crews everywhere and despite them Cocoa hadn't been able to hide his crying like his father and uncles had. I put my hand on his shoulder, patted it hard like men do, but it wasn't enough. So I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged, on the corner, like even his pops would never care: publicly. When Dorice walked by I didn't stop and she probably thought we looked gay; still, I didn't force him back and try to catch up to her. And Cocoa? He didn't push me away, he leaned closer. He hugged me like that when I saw him on the train, like there was a death nearby. He looked right at me.
"We need to chill again," I said.
The way Cocoa grinned, it was like I'd given him cash. He was small, but he had the kind of smile it takes two or three generations of good breeding to grow; the one descendants of the Mayflower had after four centuries of feeding themselves fruit I'd never get my lips around (the kind where fresh means just picked, not just brought out for display). It was a good smile that made people trust him, think he was going places. Helena touched his leg, but he brushed her back, saying, "I'm just getting his number."
I watched Helena's back curl like it would when the stomach got grander, the baby inside pushing out its little legs like it might kick a hole; as she sank I told Cocoa my number and he gave me his; he was living with Helena and her family, back in the Bronx.
"Wake up!" I yelled out to the living room.
There was a class today. Physics, I think, but me passing that now was like a dude trying to be monogamous---impossible. Cocoa hadn't missed a lecture or seminar all year, he'd bragged about it, so the last three days he'd been with me were only getting him in trouble with the mother-to-be. When she beeped him, every few hours, and he called back, she'd say she needed errands run, but her cousin Zulma was around, and her aunt; she was just on that ultrahorny pregnant-woman program and Cocoa knew. He would say, over the phone, "You know I can't sleep with you when you're pregnant, that would be wrong. I might give the baby a dent in its head." He laughed with me when he hung up, but while they were talking I said nothing; I listened from the kitchen to every syllable; if I'd had a pen and paper nearby I would have written it all down.
He stood in my doorway. He was slim as well as short but still seemed to take up all the space. Cocoa said, "You're messing me up. That stuff from last night is still bothering me. What did we drink?"
"I had a bugged dream," I muttered.
"I'd hate to hear it," Cocoa said. "I'm going to make some breakfast."
My hand, I placed it against the window to see how cold it was out. It wasn't a snowy winter. When I'd enrolled at City College it had been a big deal. I'd be getting my own place. My mother and sister were against it, but when you hit eighteen they call that adulthood and a lot more decisions are yours to make. Plus, you know how it is with boys in a family of women, they won't let go. When I'd first moved in, Mom and Karen were coming by once a week to check on me, but after two years of staying on top of things, schedules, they had no choice, they let me be.
Three nights ago, when Cocoa had come to hang out, I'd made him wait outside while I got things in place: threw my pillows and sheets back on my bed, plugged everything in. I kept up with news, they were doing renovations all over the Bronx: new buildings, the parks reseeded with grass and imported trees, you could almost pretend there wasn't a past.
After breakfast, for an hour, Cocoa and I took trains up and down the spines of Manhattan. Then we stood outside Washington Square Park, on the side farthest from NYU (Cocoa's school), staring at three women he thought he knew. I was shaking my head. "No, no. You don't know them. They're way too pretty to be talking to you."
He spat, "You criticize when you get them herpes sores off your lips."
I touched my chin. "They're only pimples."
"Then wash your face."
He'd been giving me advice since we were kids. He had thought that if he just told me how to be better I could be. Age ten was the first time for either of us that I acted up: When people whispering into telephones were talking about only me, a radio announcer was making personal threats "Someone out there, right now, is suffering and won't get relief until they're our ninety-eighth caller and gets these tickets to Bermuda!". And Cocoa grabbed me tight as I dialed and redialed the pay phone in front of our building, screaming for someone to lend me twenty cents.
Cocoa walked and I moved beside him; we entered the park. The day was a cold one so the place wasn't way too full like summers when you couldn't move ten feet without having to dodge some moron with a snake on his shoulders or a cipher of kids pretending they're freestyling lyrics they'd written down and memorized months before. "I saw Evette the other day" I told him.
He smiled. "What are you telling me that for? Anyway, she married someone didn't she?"
"Well, you staring at them three girls, I thought I'd tell you about one you actually got."
We had come to an NYU building and he told me to wait outside; he was angry that I'd brought up this woman with him trying so hard to be good; really, I don't know why I did. When I'd called him a few days earlier, it had been because I knew I needed help, but once he was with me I avoided the issue.
My hands in my coat pockets, they were full of those used tissues from the flu in March. I had planned to keep them in a pillowcase under my bed when I got better, but those were all filled with the hairs I clipped off and saved, so it was September and I had never truly healed and my hands were full of dried snot.
Maybe if he hadn't been doing so well, if his girl hadn't been so pretty, if his grades weren't soaring, if he'd been unhealthy, anything, but I couldn't confide in someone doing so much better than me. I wouldn't feel like I was asking for help, more like charity. The man he was now, I couldn't sit down with him and go through all the events in my day to figure out which thing was damning me: that I woke up every day, alarmless, at seven-forty? that I couldn't stand the taste of milk anymore? that I kept putting off a trip to the supermarket and so the cupboards and fridge were empty? that I had two pillowcases under my bed, one full of cut hair, the other full of old tissues? They all made sense to me.
They all had reasons: 1) for two years I'd had nine A.M. classes so now my body, even though I'd stopped attending, had found a pattern; 2) on campus two women had pulled me aside and shown me pamphlets about the haphazard pasteurization process, pictures of what a cow's milk does to human lungs so that even just a commercial for cereal made my chest tighten; 3) I'd dated a woman who worked at the market two blocks away, had been too open in explaining my collections to her one night, sat dejected and embarrassed as she dressed and walked out forever, so I couldn't go back in there even if it was silly pride; there wasn't another grocery for blocks, when I needed food I just bought something already made and I was mostly drinking water now (to watch a cleansing process in myself) and you could get that from a tap. And 4) it wasn't just my body, but The Body that I loved. So where others saw clippings as waste and mucus as excess, all to be collected and thrown away, spend no time on them, to me they were records of the past, they were treasures. Just tossing them out was like burying a corpse too quickly---rub your face against the cold skin, kiss the stony elbows, there is still majesty in that clay. People hate the body, especially those who praise the life of the mind. But even fingernails are miracles. Even odors. Everything of or in the body is a celebration of itself, even the worst is a holy prayer.
I found, as soon as he spoke, as I considered opening myself, I hated him again; I wanted to mention anything that would ruin his happiness. Like that, I brought up Evette and the night before it had been Wilma. Cocoa came out the building, pushing the glass door with power. Smiling.
"Your divorce come through?" I asked.
He stopped, composed himself back to pleasure. "Today, a little boy was born."
"Yours? I thought it wasn't for three or four more months." I was suddenly hopeful for the pain of something premature; I could talk to a man who was living through that kind of hurt.
"Not mine. Once a week I find out the name of a baby, a boy if I can, that was born. Newspaper, radio, Internet. This kid was born today, his father already posted pictures. Nine pounds seven ounces, man. Benjamin August something. He looked healthy. It's good luck."
I laughed. "I bet that kid wasn't born in the Bronx. If he was he'd have come out coughing." One fear of every South Bronx parent: asthma. It was enough to make Cocoa tap me one, hard, in the chest and I fell back onto a parked car. His child would be born in the Bronx, he didn't want to be reminded of the dangers. I put my fists out, up. I'd been planning for this, not with him, but with someone. Had been eating calcium tablets every day, fifteen of them (student loan refund checks are a blessing), and now my bones were hard like dictionaries.
He didn't hit anymore. It's what I wanted.
Do you remember the hospital? Not torturous (well, maybe one time), no beatings though; it wasn't even the drugs, try one word: boredom. You could move around but there was nothing to chase the mind, hardly even television if you weren't always good. Just the hours that were eons sitting on a couch, a row of you, ten or twenty, no books, magazines too simple for the mildly retarded and your active mind leaps further and further over an empty cosmos, as lonely as the satellites sent to find life in the universe. But in there, at least, was when I'd realized how they waged their war, my enemies: through sockets and plugs, through a current.
We balanced on a corner as cabs passed by in yellow brilliance. It was late morning. I noticed how much energy was on: Some streetlights never went off, people passing spoke on phones and the charged batteries glowed, radios came on and stayed on, computers were being run, every floor of every building. The taxi horns, engine-powered, began to sound like my name being called; I kept turning my head; the sounds bounced around inside my body, leafing through my bastard anatomy like I was a book of poems.
He spoke but the words were coming out of his mouth now all orange. I could see them, like the cones put out on the road at night to veer traffic away from a troubled spot. He said, "Look, let's not get craz, uh, let's not get agitated. I know someplace we could hang out. It'll be real good."
The NYU banners flapped with the wind, loud enough to sound like teeth cracking in your head. And how many times had I heard that noise! Like in the last month maybe five; whenever the remote control wasn't working or the phone bloopblopbleeped in my ear about no more Basic Service and I took each instrument between my teeth and bit down, trying to chew my anger out, that rage of mine which could take on such proportions.
Thought we'd catch the 4 to 149th and Grand Concourse---everybody out, everybody home. We could pass the murals of young men painted outside candy stores and supermarkets, where a thoughtful friend might have set out a new candle, where mourning seemed like a lifestyle. Instead we took the 6 and got out at 116th, walked blocks, then left, to Pleasant Avenue. My sister's home.
Cocoa saw me turn, flinch like someone had set off a car alarm in my ear, but then he put his arm on my shoulder and pushed hard, said, "Come on. Keep going." Cocoa kept pushing until we got upstairs, to the door, green, on it the numbers had been nailed in and the air had oxidized their faux-gold paint into that blackened color so familiar to buildings across our income level. He rang the bell. (Are they artificially powered?) The sound was so shrill I guessed they were part of the enemy army. Our first battle, twelve years before in the drab brown medical ward, had been so quick I'm sure they'd thought I'd forget. But I'd squirmed after they set those wires against my little forehead, so when they flipped the charge that one time, the lines slipped and burned both cheeks black; years later the spots were still there.
She opened the door. The whole place was going: television, microwave, coffeemaker, VCR. Karen was surprised to see me, but still, expecting it in some way. She was used to this.
I went to the bathroom but didn't shut the door. I filled my mouth with water and let it trickle out through my pursed lips, down into the toilet bowl so they'd think I was busy, held open the door some and my ears more:
Karen: "How did you end up with him?"
Cocoa: "I ran into Sammy a few weeks ago, gave him my number, then he wouldn't leave me alone."
Karen: "You think he's starting up?"
Cocoa: "I don't know what else. It's got to be. He hasn't done this nonsense in years. He calls me one morning and in an hour he's at my door, ringing the bell. I'm living with my girl's family, you know? He started kicking the door if I didn't answer. So I been with him three days."
Karen: "You should have called me or something."
Cocoa: "Called who? I wasn't even sure if you still lived here. I got lucky you and your man didn't get promoted or relocated. I called your mom but the number was disconnected."
Karen: "She needed to get away."
Cocoa: "Well, I know how she feels. You know I love that kid, but I can't keep this up. My son is about to drop in a few months. I'm trying to take care of this school thing. He's bugging, that's all I can say."
Karen: "You think you could help me out here, until Masai comes?"
Cocoa: "I can't take five more minutes. I'm sorry Karen, I am, but I can't be around him no more. I'm through."
I listened to him walk to the door, open and shut it quietly. That thing was a big metal one, if he'd just let it swing closed behind him it would have rattled and thundered, so my last thought of Cocoa was of him being delicate.
Washed my hands and crept out, pulled the door closed, and left the light on so she'd think I was still in there, and snuck into her bedroom. On the door was the family portrait everyone has from Sears. A big poster of my sister, her husband, and that baby of theirs. My niece. There was enough daylight coming in from outside that I didn't need the bulbs; besides, the light would have been like my rat-fink friend Cocoa, squealing to my sister about my goings-on.
There was a big bed in this big room, a crib in the corner, clothes in piles, just washed, on top of a long dresser. I walked to the crib and looked down at Kezia. She was wrapped up tightly, put to bed in a tiny green nightdress. Her diaper bulged and made noise when she moved. Dreaming little girl, she had dimples for laughing. I should have been able to make her smile even in her sleep.
From the hallway a slamming door, then, "Sammy? Samuel?" Karen kicked into the room like a S.W.A.T. team. I looked, but she didn't have a rifle. She flicked on the light and ran to me, but not concerned with me, looked down at Kezia and rolled her over, touched her face, pulled her up and onto Mommy's shoulder. The big light shook Kezia into crying and it was loud, torturous. I laughed because my sister had done some harm even though there was love in it.
"What are you . . . Is everything all right?"
I looked at her and said, "Of course. I was just looking at my niece."
"You might have woken her up."
"Seems like you did that just fine," I told her.
Kezia turned toward me and then looked to her crib, twisted and latched on to it, pulled at that because she wanted back in. Karen finally acquiesced and returned her. The tiny one watched me, remembering, remembering and broke out in a smile. You know why kids love me so much? Because all kids are very, very stupid.
"She'll never get to sleep now."
I thought Karen was wrong. I pointed. "Look at her eyes. She's still drowsy." Kezia was looking at me, intently. I started rocking from left to right on the balls of my feet and Kezia mimicked me. She held the crib's rail to keep her balance but when I leaned too far right she followed, tipped over on her side, huffed, grabbed the bars, and pulled herself back up to try again. She made a gurgle noise and I returned it, she went louder and I went louder, she screamed and I screamed; Karen flopped back against her married bed, holding her face, laughing.
My hands went around Kezia's middle, then I lifted her up as high as my arms would allow, brought her belly to my mouth and bit her there. She kicked her feet happily, caught me, two good shots right in the nose; that thing would be flaring up later. But she laughed and I did it again. I dropped her down two feet, quickly, like I'd lost my grip, and across her face came the look that precedes vomit, then a pause and like I knew it would, laughter.
Put her back in the crib and we returned to yelling, added movements with our hands and feet. Whenver I threw my palms in the air she did the same, lost her balance and fell backward; she lay there, rocking side to side so she could get some momentum for rising. I tickled her under the chin. We did it like this while Karen left the room and returned (repeat three times). Finally Kezia sat, watching me. I twirled in arms-open circles and she still had enough energy to smile, but not much else, and then she didn't have energy enough even for that and she watched me, silent, as she lay on her back, then Karen had to tap my shoulder and shush me because the kid was sleeping.
The lights were still on: Around the crib there were pictures taped up. Of our family and Masai's, all watching over; the picture of me rested closer to Kezia than all the rest, but in it I was only a boy. Looking at my crooked smile I felt detached from that child---like we could cannibalize his whole life and you still wouldn't have tasted me. Every memory would someday make the catalogue I kept in my room, eleven small green notebooks.
Me and Karen sat in the kitchen. She had been preparing dinner. I started making a plate. "Leave a lot for Masai. He'll be home from work soon."
I covered all the pots and poured myself some berry Kool-Aid. Karen's Kool-Aid was the only thing I would drink besides water. After I gulped I told her, "You need more sugar."
She sucked her teeth. "Masai and me decided we should still have teeth when Kezia gets to be seven." Karen finished her rice. "You look awful," she said.
"Yeah, but I've always looked bad. You got the beauty and I got everything else."
She smacked me, gentle, across the chin. "I had my bachelor's before you had been left back for the first time. Have you thought about coming to stay with us?"
"I like where I'm at."
"You need to be around your family. You're acting stupid out there."
"Whatever. I shrugged. You don't know what I'm doing."
"I can see what you're not doing: washing, changing your clothes. Probably not going to class."
"Man," I said. "You don't understand subtlety. You've got to bring these things up cool, easy, otherwise you'll close all avenues of communication."
That's how long she paused, watching me. Then she went to the fridge, found a green plastic cup. She put it on the table, sat, sounded stern, "How about you take the medication mixed with something? You still like it with orange juice? I'll make it."
I looked at the cup, the white film on top, that clump and beneath it the actual Tropicana Original. There had been plenty at my apartment, taken regular for two years, on my own. But someday you want to rest. "How about you put some vodka in there?"
On top of the fridge Karen had left a Tupperware bowl of the boiled egg whites she'd been cutting up for her next day's meal. Even in the light blue bowl they seemed too bright. She wasn't kidding around. "Drink it. You told us you would. You were doing so well."
"It makes my head feel like rocks."
"But at least it keeps you thinking right. Just drink this cup. It'll be a new start. Come on."
See, but I was supposed to take that medicine twice a day, every day. She wanted me to drink this one glass and everything would go right but you can't dam a river with just one brick.
I said, "Karen, you can't stop the electric soldiers."
I was twenty-two years old and Karen was thirty. How long before it's just frustration in her, screaming to get out, wishing whatever was the pain would go away.
"Can you?" she asked.
Blissfully the goddamn fridge worked, I could hear its engine going, regular like a heartbeat, mumming along and I was so jealous. When I got up she draped herself across the table, spilling the juice and the orchids she had in a vase, the ones her husband had bought two days ago, purple like lips too long exposed to the cold.
It was lucky Masai was at work. I was much bigger than Karen and I could simply pluck her off my arm and leave, but if Masai had been there it would have gotten louder, the trouble in this kitchen would have been contagious, contaminating the living room, the bathroom, their bedroom. We would have been all over the place. But at some point, as I was tugging, she let go. She could fight harder, she had before. Her hands fell to her sides; she opened the door for me.
I had other people I could have seen, but I kept forgetting their addresses. I might have passed four or five out on Malcolm X Boulevard. Later, I walked by the mosque, the brothers in their suits and bow ties selling the Final Call; I wanted to buy one, help them out; walked over to a short one in a gold suit, he pushed me a paper like it would save my life. "Only a dollar."
"And what do I get?" I asked.
"You get the truth. All the news the white media won't show you."
I leaned close to him, he pulled back some. "You don't know that all this stuff is past tense?" I asked.
Now he looked away, to his boy at the other corner, in green, white shirt, black shoes, talking with two older women; each nodded and smiled, one brought out her glasses to read the headlines. "So you want to buy this or what?" My friend held it out again, the other twenty copies he pulled close to his chest. I could see on his face that his legs were tired.
But for what would I be buying that paper? Or if a Christian was selling Bibles? Name another religion, I had no use for any. I wanted to pull my man close, by the collar (for effect) and tell him I knew of a new god, who was collecting everything he saw around him and stashing it in his apartment on Amsterdam Avenue; who walked home from the 1 train stealing bouts of Spanish being spoken in front of stores and when he came home prodigiously copied them down; who stole the remnants of empty beer bottles that had been shattered into thirty-seven pieces, took the glass and placed it in his living room, in a jar, with the greens and browns of others---in the morning he sat there and watched the fragments, imagined what life had come along and done such destruction.
Instead I walked backward until I got to a corner, hugged myself tight against a phone booth with no phone in it as the people swam around me and ignored everything but the single-minded purposes of their lives. After an hour was up my brain sent signals to my feet: move.
I stood in front of my apartment again, had a paper to hand in. Go upstairs and slide it in an envelope, address it to the woman who led my seminar on black liberation movements. The one who lectured me only when I missed class and never remembered to mark it in her book. The one who had assured me that if I wrote it all down this mind would be soothed, salvaged. One Tuesday (Tues. & Thur. 9:00--10:45 A.M.) she had pulled me aside when lessons were over, confided, "These days, the most revolutionary thing you can be is articulate."
I had told her honestly, "I'm trying. I'm trying."
I touched the front door before opening it. I'd been struck by the fear that the building was on fire; a church and a mosque had been burned recently. In the secret hours of night they'd been turned to ash and in the daylight their destruction was like a screaming message to us all. Had the door been hot I would have run farther than I needed to, but it was cold so I walked in.
The elevator was still broken. I had ten stories to climb; my legs felt stiff and proud. I moved effortlessly until I reached the sixth floor and Helena stopped me. She was with her girls, they were coming down the stairs. As pregnant as she was I knew the climb couldn't have been easy, but the look on her face had nothing to do with exertion. It was all for me. "I was coming to talk to you Sammy," she said. Helena's cousin Zulma stood beside me; she was so big I felt boxed in.
"You should be out looking for your man," I told Helena.
Zulma looked like she wanted to leave, bored, but was there to get her cousin's back in case it was needed. If Helena had been alone I wouldn't have had any problem kicking her in the gut and running. When she'd rumbled to the bottom of the stairs I would have crawled down beside her and in her ear asked, "Now tell me, what does this feel like? Tell me every detail."
"Why you causing so much problems?" another of Helena's girls asked, but I didn't answer. Instead I told them one of my philosophies to live by. "I never tell a pretty woman I think she's pretty unless we're already holding hands."
Helena rubbed her face with frustration. "You need to leave Ramón alone. He's good when he's not around you." Her watch beeped, not loudly, but it echoed through the stairwell. Its face was glowing. Batteries gave it power.
"Have you been drafted too?" I asked Helena.
"Fuck this," Zulma muttered, then her elbow was in my chest.
As the five girls got all over different parts of me I swung wild. Caught Zulma in the mouth and the first drops of blood on my face were hers. They were yelling as I kicked out with both legs. Then I was burning everywhere and I knew without looking that the off-silver colors in my eyes were the box cutters finding whole parts of me to separate. Fabric was tearing as they removed swatches of my clothing so they could get nearer to my skin. Zulma and Helena were at my face; neither of them smiled as they did the cutting. They didn't seem angry. Their faces were so still.
I grabbed and reached for something, dipping my fingers in everything spilling out of me. The colors were hard to make out in the bad light, but the stuff was beautiful and thick, it pooled. The girls rose and ran; I listened to five sets of sneakers move quickly down those stairs to the emergency exit; the door swung out and stuck, there was the flood of an empty wind up the staircase.
Clarity
Because Darryl, at thirteen, was too young to work, his stepfather, Jack Mitchell, found him odd jobs when he could. That way Darryl would have his own pocket money, Jack Mitchell would explain; it would teach him responsibility. One Wednesday in June, Jack Mitchell found work for Darryl and his friend Two pulling weeds outside the new post office.
Jack Mitchell and the postmaster, Wiley Edwards, both held seats on the Fitzgerald Town Council, and as fellow councilmen, they did each other favors. For Jack Mitchell, such amiability was a political move. For Darryl and Two, though, his political jockeying meant twenty dollars, quick cash in their pockets.
The new post office had been built on a dry, dusty lot on Mesquite Street, just down the road from the county courthouse in downtown Fitzgerald, Texas. Darryl and Two were to pull up the weeds and shrubs to prepare the ground for sodding. It was mindless work, but the sun was demanding, and the roots had dug stubbornly into the rock-hard soil. Whether the boys did the job in four hours or six or ten, the work was worth twenty dollars each. After an hour and a half, they had finished more than half the lot.
The boys had taken their Tshirts off, and the sun scorched their already bronzed skins. Walking bent at the waist strained their lower backs, and the mindlessness of the work wore on their minds. So they started singing.
"You know Chuck Berry?" Two asked.
"Yeah, I know Chuck Berry."
"My daddy's got a lot of Chuck Berry albums." Two straightened, stretching out his long back, then bent back to work. "He's got this song, 'School Days.' You know it?"
"How does it go?"
Two's head danced on his neck to the rhythm on the inside. He sang: "Up in the morning and off to schoo-ool . . ."
"Yeah," Darryl smiled, "I know it." His head started its own dance, like a camel's in stride, to the beat beating inside.
Two sang as they pulled: "Teacher be teaching the Golden Ru-ule."
Then Darryl: "Bell rings, time to go home,/ Grab some white boy's change and get 'long on."
They erupted with laughter as they clapped garden-gloved hands, steadily moving down the row.
Two continued: "Boy hollers, crying in his pla-ate . . . Slap 'im upside his head and don't be la-ate."
Then Darryl: "Cops, coming, so fast,/ They gonna get your black ass!"
But Darryl's palm-slapping laughter stopped when he didn't hear Two slap-laughing beside him. He glanced over and saw Two staring straight ahead, and then he saw what Two was staring at: a silver-suited pink balloon---Wiley Edwards---sucking a cigar and looming over them.
Wiley Edwards, his red face puckered around the protruding cigar, glared at the boys a long time. His belly surged over his belt and hung there, almost a separate, threatening entity. Darryl and Two straightened, a clump of pulled weeds in each hand.
"Yes, sir?" Darryl asked.
"You boys can go on home," Mr. Edwards said.
"Sir?"
Mr. Edwards pulled a wallet from his inner jacket pocket. "We didn't hire you boys to sing," he said. "We hired you to clear this lot." He gave each a ten-dollar bill. "Now, if y'all want to come out here and be disrespectful and play, well, y'all can just go on home." He turned. "You explain to Erskine why I sent you home." Then he waddled around the building and inside.
Darryl looked at the half-cleared lot, then at Two. "What was that about?" he asked.
"I don't know," Two said, "but I got me a ten-dollar bill, and I know what that's about. That's about seven dollars an hour."
"Jack Mitchell's going to kill me."
"'Cause we got the ax?"
"Yeah."
"Can't do nothing about it," said Two. "We was working and white man told us to go on home."
"Still . . ."
"Can't do nothing about it," said Two.
Darryl put the bill in his pocket and followed Two onto Mesquite Street. They walked toward the Flats, where Two lived and where Jack Mitchell worked and would be waiting to drive Darryl home to Oakbrook Heights.
Two turned. "Hey, who's Erskine?"
They passed the Dairy Queen and crossed the street toward the bowling alley. "My stepdad," Darryl said. "Jack Mitchell."
"Erskine Jack Mitchell?" Two asked.
"Erskine Elie Mitchell," said Darryl. "They just call him Jack."
"Huh," Two said. "Erskine, Ee-lie." Then he added, "Y'all Northern niggahs sure is some poetic folks."
"Must be a black thing then," said Darryl, "Bernard Ferdinando Lamar Waymans the second. What, couldn't your folks decide on a name?"
"Yeah," he said. "Two."
Two crossed the parking lot toward the Nite-Owl Lanes. "Let's go in here and spend some of this hard-earned cash."
"All right," said Darryl, but he was still preoccupied with how to explain getting fired to Erskine Elie Mitchell.
After getting change, they pumped quarters into video games. They played each other in a football game with such fury that their palms blistered.
"You see that pass!" Darryl said.
"I saw it." Two's team regrouped in a huddle on the screen while he selected one of the four defensive options. But his best option, it seemed, was to try to distract Darryl from his tactic. "So, what's your middle name?"
"I told you ten thousand times already," said Darryl, never looking up. "I don't have one."
"And I didn't believe you then neither."
"Well, it's true," he said. "I don't."
"You a lie."
"I don't."
"You know you a lie."
Darryl said, "What d'you want my middle name to be?"
Two stopped playing and looked across at Darryl. "Pharmaceuticals."
"All right. I'm Darryl Pharmaceuticals Young."
"Poetic," said Two.
"Just a black thing . . . Touchdown! D'you see that play?"
"Aw, man," Two said, "I wasn't even watching!"
"Well, quit squawking and play then . . ."
"You cheating Pharmaceuticals chump . . ."
"Go on, man," Darryl said, "it's your ball."
In no time they'd whittled their ten-dollar bills down to a dollar fifty (one seventy-five for Two), and they continued toward the Flats. As they walked along sidewalks like hot plates, the soles of their sneakers squooshing like sponges with each step, Darryl rehashed the morning in his head: they got to the post office on time, worked like beasts in that dusty heat, but still got fired. For laughing. They didn't do anything bad; if you can laugh while you work it makes the work go by better, that's all. Jack Mitchell would understand that. Of course, Darryl would leave out the part about the swear word.
"Two, man," he said, "we got fired for laughing."
"My daddy says white man don't like to see black folks laughing. Thinks they're laughing at him."
"Jack Mitchell'll understand that."
"Maybe so," said Two, "but you better start figuring how to make him understand your magic trick that made a ten-dollar bill turn into a buck seventy-five in change."
"Yeah." Darryl hadn't even considered that. And he only had one fifty left.
They walked on, searching silently for a solution. A Fightin' Pioneers poster taped in a shop window brought them to a halt. It announced the upcoming high-school football season, and on it was a picture of the quarterback, Hoodie Duncan, his arm cocked to throw a pass.
"Hoodie's my man," Darryl said,
"Hoodie's my main man," said Two. "Look it the arms on him." Two sat down suddenly on the curb and scrambled in his pockets. "Hang on a minute." He pulled out a fistful of rubber bands.
"What you got rubber bands for?" Darryl asked.
"I been wearing them," said Two. "Make me look strong."
"Huh?"
Two handed a wad of them to Darryl. "That's how folks can tell you're strong," he said, double-wrapping two around each wrist, then pumping his hands to inflate his forearms.
Darryl looked and mimicked Two's actions. "How's that?" he said.
"The veins be sticking out your forearms," Two said, inspecting his, then pumping his hands again. "That's how they know."
"Really?"
"Yeah. You look at Hoodie, or any of them tough brothers. They veins be winding like snakes all down they arms."
"That's true." Darryl remembered seeing Hoodie at the 7-Eleven once. Hoodie joked with the black attendant, signifying with his hands and holding his green and gold letter jacket in his first, and the veins of his arms seemed to jump off his skin. Darryl had been with his mom, who didn't see Hoodie or the attendant or even Darryl, it seemed; their playfulness stopped, though, when Darryl and his mom entered, and their eyes followed her around the store as she busily searched one aisle then the next for the saltines she'd forgotten to buy at the A&P.
Darryl and Two resumed their walk, hands periodically pumping the air. Two said, "My daddy was a boxer and . . ."
"Really?"
"Yeah. In the army. A welterweight," Two explained. "So he could whoop upside some white boys' heads. He told me he used to beat on white boys' ass like there wasn't no tomorrow. Said it was the only way you could get at 'em in them days, with gloves on, in the ring. Otherwise, have the law and all kinds of white folks all after you."
"Yeah, they say it was like that." That Two's father, now just a mechanic for the town of Fitzgerald, had once been a recognized athlete put him in very high esteem in Darryl's eyes. He wished Jack Mitchell had been one. But Darryl couldn't imagine primping, bulbous Jack Mitchell in a letter jacket.
Jack Mitchell was the town's first and only black councilman. That meant something. When he married Darryl's mom and moved the family to Fitzgerald, they made up the town's first interracial couple, ever, and the only one still. Theirs was the only black family to live in Oakbrook Heights. But still, it wasn't the same thing.
Two said, "My daddy, when he was boxing, he said he'd walk around squeezing tennis balls. It helped his punch. He's still got all kinds of veins sticking out his arms."
"He's strong, huh?"
Two stopped and, face askew, stared Darryl down until Darryl stopped walking, too. "Let that niggah get a switch after your ass and ask me that again." Then he sauntered forward.
They cut through the Texaco onto Third Street. Walking between the pumps, Two stepped deliberately onto the slim rubber hose that ran out from the station. A bell clanged, but nobody stirred, so they continued walking.
Darryl said, "Your dad was a boxer."
"Yeah," said Two. "He was good."
When they arrived at the vacant lot that separated the back of Eastgate Mall from the Flats, Two inspected his forearms, then backpedaled away from Darryl into the shimmering, sun-scorched reeds, his arm cocked to throw a pass. "I'm Hoodie Duncan," he called, bouncing on the balls of his feet as if in the pocket. "You see him in that game against Dumas?"
"I saw the game with you, Two."
"Man, I ain't never seen nothing like that." Two scrambled left. "Hoodie rolled left, and when the dude grabbed his right arm, he shook him"---which Two did, mostly just jiggling his shoulder---"put the ball in his left hand, and fired it downfield." Two mimed the motion. "Lefthanded!"
"Hoodie's tough."
"Hell yeah, he's tough! You know he's tough. Just six niggahs on the whole damn team? Shit, you know they ain't about to let n'an one of 'em play quarterback unless he's two times as tough as every white boy on the field." Two caught up to Darryl. "And Hoodie is. Being ambidextrous and all."
"Ambi-what?"
"Ambidextrous," said Two. "Hoodie's ambidextrous. My daddy's ambidextrous, too. It means you can use your left hand just as good as your right. Do whatever you want with either one."
Macadam turned to dirt in the Flats. Darryl and Two walked down the dusty road toward the Three Jacks' Bar, where Jack Mitchell (the third Jack) would be waiting. Darryl figured that Jack Mitchell had probably already talked to Wiley Edwards, so he was in no rush to get there. Dragging along, Darryl mimed a throwing motion with his left hand. It was awkward, had no force.
Two, watching Darryl, cast his own left arm forward. "I'm ambidextrous, too," he said.
"Sure you are."
"You know I am."
"Right."
"What you boys know?" they heard, and turned toward the porch from where the sound was emitted.
It was Grandpa Thevenet. Two started onto the porch of the pea-green house, and Darryl followed.
"Hey, Grandpa Thevenet," Two said.
"Hey," said Darryl.
Grandpa Thevenet, who was nobody's grandfather that either boy knew, was magical. "Hey youself," he said to them.
Grandpa Thevenet had a piano-key smile and told stories that would light up a place, wherever he happened to be. When Grandpa spoke, he sounded like the French Canadians Darryl had seen in droves when Jack Mitchell took the family to Disney World, but Grandpa Thevenet was from Louisiana.
On his lap, between hands soft and strong and long like Sunday, rested an accordion. Grandpa could do with his accordion what Hoodie Duncan did with a football. "You boys tell me what you tink of dis song."
Some people called it zydeco. Grandpa Thevenet called it housedance music. The best music there is. Grandpa said he'd learned it as a boy in the bayous in the twenties. He said his papa would play it on the violin on Saturday nights for the family and the neighbors. Folks sway-dancing and laughing; the swamps would be charged on Saturday nights. Grandpa had taken to the accordion and joined his papa in the music-making when he was only eleven ("I wasn't not'ing but a son den") and could hardly handle the accordion's bulk between his spindly arms. When his papa followed the oil boom from the swamps of Louisiana to the plains of West Texas, they brought the music along. For awhile, Beezville (which was what Grandpa still called the Flats) had been plugged into the same current that had lit up the bayous on Saturday nights. But he mostly played for himself now. And very infrequently.
Two and Darryl, sitting Indian-style on the porch, clapped with the beat. Grandpa smiled and swayed his head with the pumping accordion. The smile seemed to be as much a part of his music as the instrument. It replaced the lyrics, which were few, and let the listeners know that no matter what the words said, the people were together to have a good time.
"Ma Claire est belle," Grandpa sang:
Say, ma Claire, elle est belle.Mais les haricots n'sont pas salésFaut que je la renvoye chez elle.
He threw back his head, loose sunshine-yellow shirt rustling with his laughter. "Now, what you tink a dis song?" Grandpa asked, carefully laying the accordion beside his chair.
"Tops," said Two.
"It was great," said Darryl.
"Ah, you like it."
"What do the words mean?" Darryl asked.
"Tey means: Ma girl Claire, she a beauty. But she no know how to make my beans, so's I have to send her home."
The boys laughed.
"Naw," Grandpa laughed with them. "High-yalla gals just cain't cook," he said, himself a shade only slightly darker than his shirt; and he laughed some more. But then he stopped. "What's tat you got on your wrists?"
"Rubber bands," Two said, almost in a whisper and no longer looking at Grandpa.
"Rubber bands?"
"Yeah."
"Boys, you take tose off now." He was no longer smiling. "You crazy? Cut off te circulation to your hands." Grandpa Thevenet raised his own to accentuate his point. His hands were beautiful: delicate but strong. They looked sculpted.
When Darryl unwound the bands, he noticed the bulge of veins on his forearms. On Two's, too. Like Hoodie Duncan.
He handed the rubber bands to Two, who was rising.
"We got to go, Grandpa Thevenet," Two said.
"Yeah." Darryl rose, too.
Two said, "Thanks for playing that music for us."
Grandpa Thevenet smiled again. Wide. "You boys don' be so scarce no more. Come by and see me some."
"OK," Two said.
"We will," said Darryl.
And they climbed down off the porch and into the dirt street.
The twins, Fredrick and Dedrick Horton, were walking in the other direction. Two scrawny boys who together might make one normal-sized teenager, they often acted as though, because they were one grade higher in school, they were superior to Darryl and Two. As they approached, Darryl noticed one or the other---Fredrick or Dedrick, he could never tell them apart---snickering and looking toward Two and him.
Two raised a pumped and protruding-vein-covered forearm and pointed at Fredrick and Dedrick. "Y'all see something funny?"
"Yeah," said Fredrick (or maybe it was Dedrick), "you two knot-headed nigros up there samboing like slave days with Grandpa Sambo hisself." The other's laugh (Dedrick's; or maybe it was Fredrick's) was equally derisive.
"If you see a knot-head nigro," Two said, "give him ten dollars." Two waited. "Uh-huh, that's just what I thought."
"If I had ten dollars, you the last niggah see the green on its back."
"You don't wanna be messing with me today, Fredrick . . ."
"I'm Dedrick."
"Don't care who you is," said Two. "You two big-lipped baboons look so much alike, it's like I'm talking to just one of you niggahs anyway. Just don't be messing with the kid. Not today."
"The kid?"
"Yeah," Two said, shaking his head no and raising his hands as if in disbelief. "Don't be missing with the kid. Or I'm a have to open me up a can of whoop-ass on you."
"Whoop-ass on who?"
Two looked around. "I don't see nobody else in this road."
Dedrick, leering, squared up on Two. "Well, kid, go ahead. Do it then . . ."
Darryl felt Grandpa Thevenet's stare on them and felt suddenly small. He pulled back Two, who was now face-to-face with and mimicking Dedrick. "C'mon, Two. I've got to go. Jack Mitchell's waiting for me."
Dedrick turned on Darryl. "Well, go on and run after that tomming niggah then. Wasn't nobody talking to you. Oreo."
Darryl felt himself tighten, terror and rage racing through his body so strongly it turned his stomach. His legs felt weak. But he just stared at the other boy, who was now equally quiet.
Two stepped between Darryl and the twins, speaking excitedly. "Man, if I was you, Fredrick . . ."
"I'm Dedrick . . ."
"Don't care who you is, I'd quit that squawking and I'd be walking if I was you. My man Darryl wind up doing you just like I saw him do yo' momma the other day."
Dedrick surged at Two---"Don't be talking about my momma, niggah!"---but Fredrick reined his brother's charge. "Chill, Ded," said Fredrick. "Chill."
Grandpa Thevenet called from his pea-green porch, "Y'all boys cut t'at mess out 'fore I comes down t'ere and whups all ya's skinny tails myself."
Two, pulling Darryl by the shirt, shuffled backward, like an Ali dance step, wearing a victorious smile. Darryl still felt his throat choked up, his legs shaky; but Two, speaking with his hands, his body still dancing, delivered the knockout punch: "Yo, Dedrick. Yo, man . . ." When Dedrick finally calmed enough---leaning against his brother's restraining arm---to listen, Two sang: "I saw yo' momma at Burger King;/ Hit that bitch with a chicken wing!"
Dedrick swung wildly, but Darryl and Two were already laugh-shuffling up the road.
"Chill, Ded." Fredrick struggled to restrain his teary-eyed and flailing-armed twin. "Chill!"
"Yo, Fredrick," Darryl called over his shoulder. "She's your momma, too."
And Darryl and Two, hoofing it up the road, burst out laughing.
Their smiles died when they arrived at the gravel intersection where they would part. Two lived a few houses down the side street. The Three Jacks', cast in the shadows of trees, loomed quietly just a hundred yards up the road.
Looking toward the bar, Darryl said, "Jack Mitchell's going to kill me." Jack Mitchell didn't usually scold Darryl. Over dinner, driving his stepson to and from the Flats, he hardly even spoke. But this was different.
"Maybe they won't know," said Two, looking toward his house. "I'm a tell my daddy we got fired and white man didn't give us nothing."
But Jack Mitchell would know. He'd know how much they got, when they started and when they stopped, and he'd know what Darryl had said in the song. Jack Mitchell and Wiley Edwards and the other councilmen were buddies. In fact, had it been anybody but one of them, Jack Mitchell probably wouldn't say anything.
Two patted Darryl on the shoulder, moving past, and he smiled. "Oh well," he said, "can't die but once, and never be deader than that."
Darryl stood, looking down the road at the Three Jacks'. He could hear Two's quarters jingling in his pocket as he jogged toward his house. Then Darryl started walking to face Jack Mitchell. He steeled himself, his step steady and resolved, because he hadn't done anything wrong.
Pool balls' clacking clatter burst over the dusk of the Three Jacks' Bar and Lounge as Darryl entered. After his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, Darryl noticed the other two Jacks, Jack Pickering and Jack Johnston, playing cards at the bar. When he saw Darryl, Jack Pickering pointed over his shoulder. "Your daddy's waiting for you out back."
Marching through, Darryl thought: Jack Mitchell is not my daddy. Darryl called him Dad when addressing him directly, but otherwise he was always and only Jack Mitchell. A nice enough man; his mom's husband, his little sister's father; but not his own daddy. And it wasn't spite that made him feel this way. It was just the truth. So if Jack Mitchell was waiting out back to scold him, well, it disturbed Darryl; because Jack Mitchell was his elder, because he was an authority figure, it cowed Darryl---but it didn't haunt him, because it could involve no fall from grace. Jack Mitchell was not his daddy. Not like Mr. Waymans, the boxer, was to Two.
Jack Mitchell sat heavily in a too-small chair at the desk in the back office. He looked up when Darryl entered, stared, but said nothing.
Darryl stayed where he was, near the door. "Hey," he offered as greeting.
"What happened at the post office?"
"At the post office?" Darryl asked.
"You heard me fine."
Darryl shifted his weight. "Mr. Edwards sent us home," he said.
"Sent you home?" Jack Mitchell's eyes were working to meet Darryl's.
"Yes," Darryl said, looking from Jack Mitchell to his feet.
"Boy, you know better than playing around! . . ."
"We weren't playing around," Darryl said, looking back up. "We were working hard, but he heard us singing and told us to go home."
Jack Mitchell stopped. "Weren't playing around," he said. "But he told you to go home."
"Yes," Darryl said, eyes slipping down to his feet again.
"He told you to go home for a reason, I suppose?"
"For laughing, but we worked hard . . ."
"Boy, you know better than playing around! Laughing! White man sees you playing around and laughing, he thinks you're not working. He thinks you're clowning. Just another lazy niggah wanting a handout"---Jack Mitchell never used the word nigger; he said it was beneath him---"and now here you go, clowning and playing the fool and acting like a niggah. Is that what you want?" Jack Mitchell asked, and he stared at Darryl. Just stared.
Darryl didn't answer.
"You want to grow up to be nothing?"
He didn't answer. He stood by the door, looking down. When he looked up, Jack Mitchell had put his hat on his head and was rising, no longer even looking at Darryl, looking past him. "Let's go," he said, and he carried his bulk through the door and out of the office.
Darryl followed, a few feet behind, his face trained on the ground. He looked steadily down because he felt tears fighting their way up, and if he couldn't keep them in, he didn't want anybody to see.
"See you all tomorrow," he heard Jack Mitchell say.
The two other Jacks grumbled.
Outside, Darryl followed Jack Mitchell's round shadow to his Chrysler New Yorker. The tears were still there somewhere, but he felt that as long as Jack Mitchell didn't scold him anymore, he could keep them corralled on the inside.
Two would never cry like this. Two would go home and get his tail whipped for wasting his money and cry because of the pain, but never like this. Two would get sent to bed and wake up tomorrow and all would be forgotten, because Two was just a boy growing up, like Mr. Waymans had once been a boy growing up, and it was expected that a boy growing up get into trouble like this. "Spending all your money on games." He could hear Mr. Waymans say, the whip of the belt singing the chorus: "I sure ain't'bout to give you no more." But tomorrow all would be forgotten. Two would come out to play, Mr. Waymans staring on, his face quiet as a closed door, and all would be forgotten.
The inside of the car was too tight. Darryl was very close to Jack Mitchell and couldn't distance himself at all. Inside himself, though, was infinite space in all directions and nowhere anything to hold onto. Behind his eyes, Darryl was in midair, in free fall, and he didn't know when he would hit, nor where, nor how hard would be his landing. Behind his eyes, Darryl could see Grandpa Thevenet's Sambo song and Hoodie Duncan's wolfish leer and the twins' clowning scorn, black faces in blackface, with wide red lips and bug eyes, and laughing . . . These images, dancing in space behind his eyes, were all that Darryl could see. And inside he felt himself falling, falling, falling free.
My Mama, Your Mama
BY CONNIE PORTERFROM Imani All Mine
I been inside me to the place I ain't never wanted to know. That's what I was thinking to tell Bett-Bett when she asked me why I wasn't in school this past week. I say to her I been sick. Which is good enough for her to know about my business. I don't need her digging up some bone and passing it around. Last thing she need to know is the truth. That I missed school because of him.
I ain't saying his name. I ain't never, ever going to say it. I won't ever put it in my mouth. I don't even want it in my mind, because it's all connected to his face. And the day I seen his face in the cafeteria three weeks ago, I thought I was going to die right there, holding a tray of tacos and fruit cocktail. I seen him coming right at me from the snack line where you pay with money, not lunch tickets. He had a whole tray of fries and he ain't even see me. But I seen him and dropped my tray on the floor and run out the cafeteria. I ain't stop running until I got to the lavatory, even though this security guard started chasing me, screaming, Where you think you going? What you done did?
But he couldn't come in the lavatory. Wasn't nothing but these girls in there combing they heads and looking at theyselves in the mirror. I went in a stall and locked the door and I had to shit real bad. I usually can't go in a public place, but I couldn't hold it and I even sat down on the seat. Then this lady security guard come banging on the door of the stall I was in. Who in there? she ask.
I say, I'm sick. Can you just leave me alone? I ain't done nothing. I'm sick, is all.
She sick, I hear one them girls say. Hell, she smell like she dying. Then they laughed and I heard them leave. I was so embarrassed.
The security say, What you was running for? You know you ain't supposed to be running in the building.
And I'm thinking, Why she standing out there smelling my shit and asking me stupid questions? But I just say, I had to go.
She say, All right. I'll let you off this time. Next time you getting detention.
Then she left, too, and it was just me there with that boy name inside my head. With that boy name inside my mouth so nasty-tasting that I hocked and spit right on the floor. My knees was shaking like before. Like then. That night. I wished Eboni was with me but she ain't even in school now. She having two twins and her doctor say she need to be home in bed. She already know they girls, and she done picked out names. Asia and Aisha. I wanted to cry but it seem like my tears is all dried up in me and they left some craziness behind like salt. I could taste it in my mouth when I spit.
All I could think to do was get out of school, and I went right straight to the nurse to get me a excuse. The nurse a white man here at Lincoln. Who ever heard of a man a nurse? He act like he ain't want to let me go home.
I'm sick, I say.
Is that so? he say. He was reading a book and snapping gum like a girl. Then he ask, What time does your soap opera come on, girl? One or two?
I say, Excuse me. I'm for real. It's my stomach. I got my period and I got some bad cramps. I done bled through three straight pads this morning.
He looked at me like he done heard that excuse a thousand times before and say, I don't care if you go home or not. It's no skin off my nose, hon.
Static. Static. Static. That's the thing be getting to me about school. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. Ain't no difference. It's all the time some teacher nem act like they know you. Act like they can shine a light inside your head and see what you thinking.
I ain't say nothing to that nurse. I let him think that my head was so empty that all I want to do was fill it watching some stupid-ass soaps about a bunch of skinny white women wearing expensive clothes and living in fancy houses even if they supposed to be poor and having a bunch of make-believe problems. Black women, too. They lives be just like the white women's. Fake. I got real problems. So I kept my mouth all shut up and got my excuse.
Then I got Imani from the nursery. She was sleeping, looking just like me. Even though I can't say I know what I really look like when I sleep, because I be sleeping and can't see myself. But it's got to be just like Imani. My eyes shut real tight like I'm studying on something. Like there be something in my dreams I especially want to see.
Mrs. Poole say babies dream. She say don't nobody know what they dream about. Sometime Imani be laughing in her sleep. If it's night, she be waking me up. I jump up thinking that girl wake. But she ain't, and I stand over her crib looking at her. I know Imani got to be dreaming about something. I be hoping it's me. Wishing there was a way I could climb down inside her dream and shine a light on me holding her in my arms. Seeing me rocking her in my arms strong like the branches of the tree outside my bedroom window. And her laughing because I'm rocking her higher and higher, past all the soft leaves and into the dark where the moon rising over us and she know she safe because I'm holding her and won't never ever let her fall.
When I was little, sometime I would wake up laughing. I never could remember exactly about what. I like to think it was Mama and me I was laughing about. That she was holding me with love all in her arms.
There wasn't no way I was going home that time of day. Mama would just have some more static for me, so I went over to Eboni. Miss Lovey wasn't there. Eboni was, and she wasn't even in bed like she was supposed to be. She was in the kitchen, making Buffalo wings. Her school tutor was already gone for the day. She ask me, Girl, what's the matter?
I was wondering if I looked so bad. If I looked so crazy. If that boy name was wrote right across my face. I say, I had to cut out early because I wasn't feeling good. Eboni know me real good. I know she could tell that wasn't all. But she say, Have lunch with me.
Imani was still sleep and I put her down in Eboni room and finished up making the chicken while Eboni sat down. I told her, You know you shouldn't even be on your feet.
Eboni say, Shoot, I'm hungry and I'm eating for three people.
I say, You should have wait until your mama come home. Miss Lovey a good cook.
Eboni say, She don't cook like I want. The doctor got me off salt and I ain't supposed to be eating fried foods. I done gained seventy-five pounds.
I ain't say nothing to Eboni about her weight. Because it wouldn't be nothing but the pot calling the kettle black. I'd already dumped almost a half block of some government butter in the skillet to melt over the wings. I got the hot sauce and had poured on a half of a big bottle, and Eboni say, Put on more.
You crazy, I say. They hot enough and that sauce full of salt.
She say, Then add some cayenne.
I put in a whole heap and Eboni took the plate of wings I fixed up for her with blue cheese and celery. She was eating them wings and slinging bones like she was starving. I sat there all quiet like, just watching the pile of empty bones grow on her plate.
She say, I know something really wrong with you if you ain't eating nothing. What happened at school?
I seen him, I say with my voice as flat as I could make it, trying to sound like I was feeling real normal and had some sense. Like the craziness ain't take me all over.
Who? Peanut? she ask.
I say, Not no Peanut. I don't care nothing about no Peanut. I seen him. You know who I mean. For a few seconds I think Eboni didn't know who I was talking about until she looked at me real hard in the face and I just know she seen that boy name wrote there.
Oooh, she say, sucking grease off her fingers. No, you ain't even seen him.
I did, I say. Right in the cafeteria. I guess he been there all the time. Ain't no way I would've ever come to Lincoln if I know that's where he go.
Eboni say, You should transfer. When I have the twins, I ain't coming back to Lincoln. I'm going to East. It's closer. Come with me.
Soon as Eboni say that, I got a pain right in my stomach like I needed to go to the bathroom again. I was thinking, How I'm going to tell Mama I want to switch schools? If I ain't want to after the shooting last month, ain't no way she was going to believe I want to do it now.
Lincoln ain't that kind of school where there be shootings and stabbings like it's a regular way of life. It ain't locked down like a prison and you got to be passing through metal detectors and getting patted down. Wasn't never even no shooting there until that day.
We was just being dismissed. I had got Imani from the nursery and had her in her stroller. We was in the main hall, where there was like two hundred to three hundred kids, when all these other kids come busting back in the main doors, running and screaming. They shooting. They shooting outside, they was screaming. And they kept on running right up the hall, pushing past people. Teachers. Kids. They even knocked down a security guard. Then all the kids already in the hall started running. I swear my heart wasn't even beating I was so scared. I thought they was going to run right over me and Imani. I snatched my baby out her stroller. Her leg got caught in the strap. I jerked her hard and got her loose just as I got smashed into some lockers. But I bounced off. I ain't have to think about where to go. The crowd carried me into the front office, where the principal and secretaries nem be. I got pushed behind the main desk where the secretaries was already on the floor. Everybody kept on pushing and screaming and I almost fell. Then I heard the principal, Mr. Diaz, yelling for us to all lay down. Get down, he say. Get down. Stay down!
I fell right where I was and landed on some girl who ain't say nothing. Then this boy landed right on top of me and Imani. And Imani started screaming. My baby, I say. You squashing my baby. Get off!
He was crying. Big old boy, too, with hair on his face. I wasn't crying. But I could feel my heart then going like crazy. Imani wasn't hurt. She was scared. Her eyes was all big like she want me to tell her what was going on. But I ain't know. I just held her tight to me.
Mr. Diaz jumped over the main desk like he was Superman or something. One of the secretaries was screaming, Mr. Diaz don't go out there. But he kept right on going. I could hear him in the halls telling kids to get down.
I ain't hear no gunshots. But all I could think was somebody was dead right outside the school and if I'd stepped out them doors a few minutes earlier it could've been me or Imani. Or whoever was shooting could run right on in the building and kill us where we was laying. I started shaking then. Thinking, Who would ever want to die like this? On some regular old schoolday. At some regular old school laying under a desk too scared to move. I wanted to go home.
Mr. Diaz come back in a few minutes and say for us all to return to homeroom. Don't go out the building until I say to. After the police come. Then he got on the intercom. Saying for everybody to stay calm and if they was hurt, to come to the nurse office.
I was still shaking when I left the office. The halls was packed and some kids was crying and others was laughing. These boys was saying that some dude got shot in the butt, that was all. They was laughing and other kids was laughing. Even some who was crying started laughing. Books and papers and backpacks everywhere. There was sneakers laying right where kids had run out of them. Half of the lockers open. I seen my stroller. It wasn't bad off. It was real dirty where it got stepped on, and one of the arms was bent, but I could still push it.
Me and Mama and Miss Odetta watched the news that night, and the shooting was on every channel. The boy was really only shot in the butt and they didn't keep him at the hospital. They say his wound was superficial. Mr. Diaz come on the news, looking all smooth. Like nothing happened. He say our school a good school and they ain't never had no problem like this. The boy that was shot didn't go to our school. It's outside agitators. All the while he saying this, some kids was jumping up and down in the background and making faces, laughing. Then they interviewed this girl and boy who say they seen a jeep. It started going slow and pulled up in front of a bus. Then pow pow pow pow pow. Like it's the Wild Wild West. That's all they seen, because they ran back inside. The newsman say it's a miracle nobody else got hurt or killed.
Miss Odetta say, They ain't going to catch nobody. You wait and see.
Mama say, Ain't this some shit? In front a school. They could've killed a bunch of kids. Them the kind of niggers don't care about nobody. I'm telling you. You ain't safe no goddamn place no more.
I say, They was probably all some drug dealers coming by our school messing things up.
Miss Odetta say, That ain't got to be true. Why it got to be about drugs? She pulled a cigarette out her bra and lighted it. Then she say, Shit. Niggers was getting shot before there ever was drug dealers.
Mama give me a look and smile behind Miss Odetta back. Me and her knew not to say nothing else. We know Miss Odetta just say that because of June Bug. Miss Odetta know we know that June Bug dealing. Miss Odetta the one act like what he do is all right. Living on the down low in her basement. You can't say nothing having to do with drugs without Miss Odetta throwing her two cent in. And what I really want to be doing when she do is throw her back a penny in change.
Mama say, They need to catch them and throw they asses under the jail.
Miss Odetta say, Don't hold your breath.
Mama asked if I want to go to another school. I told her I didn't. I got my daycare and everything all set up at Lincoln.
Mr. Diaz had a assembly the next day to tell us everything was safe. Even though I was thinking he can't stop some fool from shooting. I mean, damn, if he can do that, he need to come around my way. Because they still be shooting around here. If there's some shooting when me and Imani is up late, she don't look at me like she done the first time she heard it. Like she got a question. Seem like she done already figured out the answer.
So things just settled back down to regular at Lincoln. The only trouble was that mess girls keep going. There some jealous girls go to our school. A group of bitches who roam in packs. They don't like you if you pretty, so I don't have no problems with them. They don't even see me. They hunt girls like Coco. Two of them bitches beat Coco up in a lavatory. Ain't no way skinny little Coco stand a chance against no two girls. They ripped five extensions out her head right from the root. Tore her shirt and bra right off her. Scratched up her face. Coco say they told her she wasn't nothing. She wasn't shit. Coco ain't tell who it was. She too scared.
I know how she feel about not telling. Even though she know who them girls is. She got to see them every day. But she keep right on going like they ain't even there. With a secret. Ever since she was jumped, Coco carry a knife. Not no little one, neither. She showed it to me. It's a butcher knife like your mama keep in the kitchen drawer and be chopping on meat with. She have it right in her backpack inside one of her notebooks. She keep the pack half zipped so she can get to it easy.
He say he had a knife. That night. He ain't never show it to me. He say if he had to show it to me, he was going to have to use it on me. So he kept it like a secret.
When I was talking to Eboni that day after I seen him at school, I was thinking maybe that was what I need. A secret to keep me safe. Maybe I could sneak a knife out the house without Mama knowing, or go down to the Woolworth and buy one down in they basement. I'd be like Coco, have it where I could get to it easy. If he was to say something to me, he'd know all about it. I'd stab his ass right in the broad daylight in the cafeteria. But that was just that dried-up craziness in me. There ain't no way I could do something like that. Not having Imani. I don't know what she'd do if I was took from her or she was took from me.
Greasing on her chicken wings Eboni say to me, You should do like you should of done in the first place, Tasha. Tell your mama.
I got me another pain in my stomach. I say, My mama ain't your mama. If Miss Lovey was my mama, I would've told her straight off.
Eboni say, My mother. Your mother. Live across the way. Fifteen. Sixteen. East Broadway. It was a song we'd sing when we was picking sides for kickball. We'd be lining ourselves up so we could end up on the same side. Eboni knew I'd give her the next lines of the song. Every night they have a fight and this is what they say. Icka Bicka Backa Soda Cracker. Out. Go. She. We finished up together.
But I say to her, I'm for real, Eboni. You know I can't tell my mama. And don't you be even telling Miss Lovey. Eboni was sucking on a bone and making no promises to me.
When Imani woke up, I took her on home. It was still light out. Before I unlocked the front door, I stood on the porch and erased my face. I closed my eyes and wrote on it that I just come from another boring day of school, because I knew the first thing I would see was Mama sitting on the couch looking me dead in the mouth when I walked in. But she wasn't sitting there. The house ain't had no smell like some dinner had been cooking, neither. It smelled like perfume. I knew right then Mama was going out.
She done met some man I ain't even seen yet. He call sometime. All he say is can he speak to Earlene. Then she take the call up in her room. The thing is, he been calling for over a month and ain't never been to our house. Mama meet him off somewhere. That make me think he ain't got no car. Or she don't want me meeting him.
I went upstairs with Imani and peeked in Mama room. It was a mess. Her dresser top was covered with all kinds of makeup and brushes and sponges. Her shoes was all in a heap on the floor, and it looked like she throwed all her outfits across her bed. All it seem she decided on to wear was her nice bra and drawers. The kind men be liking. All black and made from lace.
Mama was sitting on the end of the bed with her face all made up, looking all pretty and soft, putting lotion on her legs. Her body all skinny like she ain't never had a baby. Even her stomach flat. It got only a few thin stretch marks that circle her belly button like the petals on a flower. They so tiny you can't hardly even see them. It's like I was in her but barely left no sign I was there.
She say, Come on in here, Tasha.
I could only get the door part open. I squeezed in with Imani on my hip.
Mama say, I was fenna to leave you a note. But you here now. I'm going out. There's a food stamp on the kitchen table if you want to go up to the Arabian store and get yourself something for dinner.
I ask, Where you going, Mama?
She say, Out. And smile like a girl going on a date. I don't know. Maybe she feel like a girl. Mama ain't nothing but thirty-two.
I ask, Well, when you coming back?
When I feel like it, Mama say. Girl, I'm grown. I know my way home. Why you in my business? Do I be in your business?
I say, Yeah, Mama, you do be.
And Mama laugh and snap the bottle of lotion shut. You damn straight I be in your business. Because I'm the mama and you the child. It's my job to know your business. Did you take your pill today, Tasha?
I say, I did. I always take it, Mama. You going out with Royster? I ask. Even though I know it ain't been him calling. Mama busted out laughing, and me too. Even Imani laughed like she knew who we was talking about.
Child, Mama say, I ain't even going out with the Jherri Curl King no more.
Mama was dating Royster before Imani was born. I never did like him. Royster old enough to be Mama daddy. He all the time had a plastic bag on his head that stuck to his bald spot in the middle. Mostly I ain't like him because he married. What Mama want with a married man, I don't know. Miss Odetta got her this married man Simpkin she been going out with ever since I can remember. He give Miss Odetta money. Maybe Mama thought Royster going to give her money. But he never gave her none I ever seen.
Mama got up from the bed and I sat down behind her with Imani. Imani started squirming and whining to get down. I ain't want to let her down in all that mess. She wasn't going to do nothing but put something in her mouth. These days she be putting all kinds of things in her mouth she find on the floor. I bounced her on my lap. Imani liked that.
Mama say, If you go up to the store, get some more bread. She was pulling on a pair of tight jeans.
I say, I don't think I'm going. I don't feel so good.
Mama put on a red blouse and left the top three buttons open. Then she come over to me, kicking shoes out the way. She put the back of her hand to my head. It was all cool, and I smelled her perfume sweet like some candy. I could see right down her shirt to her titties.
Mama say, You cool as a cucumber, girl.
I say, It's my stomach.
Mama say, Tasha, you just need to sit on the toilet. You probably constipated. Seem like you trying to get me to stay home with you tonight like you some baby.
I ain't say nothing. I looked at Imani. She got hold of Mama housedress and was chewing on a button. Mama went over to the mirror, brushing her hair. I did want Mama to stay home. But I ain't want to say it.
Mama say, Miss Odetta right next door if you need something. She was still looking in the mirror.
Imani need changing, I say. When I took the button out her mouth, she start crying, so I knew it was time for me to leave. I went to my room. Maybe I was being a baby. But I ain't want to see Mama go out. I turned my radio up all loud so I wouldn't have to hear the front door shut.
That evening I went on with the routine of feeding Imani and getting her ready for bed. When I put her in the tub, she kept on saying, Dada. Dada. She been saying that for a while now, but when she say it that night, it made me think of him. I washed off her tongue with the washcloth. Trying to wash that word right out her mouth. Don't you be saying that, I say. You say Mama. Mama.
Imani wasn't even stutting me. She kept right on saying Dada like she been saying. When I went to wipe out her mouth again, she grabbed hold of the rag and sucked on it like it was a bottle. My baby probably thought I was crazy. Which I ain't. I was just on my way.
She went right to sleep after I give her a bottle, so I ain't had no excuse for not doing homework. I left Imani in her crib, went on downstairs, and turned on the TV. I had a Latin test coming up on Friday. But I couldn't even keep my mind on my work. I wanted to talk to somebody. I thought about calling Eboni. But she had already told me what she thought I should do. So I picked up the phone and called Peanut. I ain't even let it ring one whole time before I hung up. I knew he ain't want me calling him.
Like the nut he is, Peanut done left Lincoln. He transferred to South Park High. We don't mess around no more. I don't know. I think he done changed. He act like he don't want to be with me now. Maybe he sick of doing it with me. If I call him, he act like I'm bothering him. He always got some excuse to get off the phone real quick. He tired. He on the other line. He doing homework. Like he do homework! He made the basketball team there. J.V. He say that keep him busy. But I know he ain't just getting busy with no basketball. I know he seeing another girl.
Coco the one brung me that bone. Her cousin go to South Park, too, and Coco say her cousin say Peanut be with this mixed girl. He be kissing her on the bus. It's not like I love him or nothing. I miss being with Peanut. Kissing him. I don't really miss doing it with him. He do it so fast. I always just wanted to get back to the kissing. I be dreaming about him sometime. That his long eyelashes is tickling my neck and I wake up laughing, and then be mad because it was only a dream.
It seem like after you been with somebody, after they done been all up inside you, that you could call them up. That you could say anything to them. Like, Hey, there's something that's bothering me. I don't want you to do nothing but listen to me talk. To let me get this boy name out my mind. To get his name out my mouth. Off my face. You think a person could do that. But I ain't even try it with Peanut. If I would've called him up and he had rushed me off the phone like I wasn't nothing to him. Like he was so great and I was just some stupid bitch he was throwing table scraps to by actually talking to me for two minutes on the phone. I would've gone all the way to crazy.
I ain't had nobody to talk to. I couldn't tell Mama about him. I couldn't tell her about that night. How stupid I was that night, the summer before Imani was born. Thinking he really liked me. As fat as I am. As black as I am. As much as my body look like it ain't never supposed to be loved by no boy. Touched by no boy. That's why I went from Skate-A-Rama with him instead of staying there like I should have. Because he say he liked me! I was smiling back too. Eboni wasn't there, because she was home on punishment. I wasn't skating much, because I'd rented a smaller size skate than what I really take. I was wearing a nine then, and I ain't want that big red number blazing out from the back of my skate, telling the world how big my feet was. So I got me a size seven. They was real cute on my feet while I was sitting down on a bench looking at them. He come up to me while I was sitting down judging my feet. He ain't even have on no skates. He ain't say nothing at first. Just sat there. I pretended like I was watching everybody skate so I could sneak a look at him. I can't say he looked fine to me. Because he didn't. He was big. Bigger than me and he had good hair. It wasn't no curl neither he was trying to fake up to look like good hair. His hair wasn't at all greasy, and he had it just long enough so you could see it had a natural curl to it. When I turned my head away, he say something to me. I ain't hear what he say because the music was so loud. So he slid up next to me and screamed loud in my ear his name. He ask me my name and I told him. The music was so loud, I couldn't hardly hear nothing he say. I did hear his name real clear and I heard him say he like me. We ended up going outside, because it was too loud to talk in there.
I turned in my skates and got my hand stamped so I could come back inside. You can't get no skates again, the lady behind the counter say. This session end in a half hour. You done for the night. I told her that was all right. Then I went out with him. Just to the parking lot, where we can talk, he say. There was some kids hanging out there. They was talking all loud. I wasn't stutting them. But he took hold of my hand and kept on walking. Where we going? I ask. Around the back, he say. Where it's more quieter. We can talk back there. You ain't scared of the dark, is you? No, I say. I ain't scared of no dark. And me, like a stupid stupid fool, walked right on with him. Like we was some couple just walking in love. I wasn't really thinking about no love with him. I was thinking about him saying, I like you, Tasha. Like he mean it. Like I was someone special to him. Like I was someone special to somebody even if it was a lie.
It was cool out even though it was August. Soon as we went around back, I could smell him. I don't know why I ain't smell him inside. But out in the dark quiet he smelled like smoke. Me and him went up this little hill into these trees and he took off his jacket for me to sit on. I don't even remember what we talked about, because we only talked a couple minutes. I know he never did say again that he liked me. I would've remembered that. He never said I was pretty or nothing before he kissed me right in the mouth. It wasn't like I never kissed a boy before. I did kiss this Puerto Rican boy two times around Eboni house and let him touch me outside my clothes. But when he was kissing me that night, I ain't like it. His mouth tasted real nasty. I tasted dirt before, when I was little, and his mouth tasted worse than dirt. I guess his mouth was like that from smoking. Like some nasty little animal had done crawled inside his mouth and built a nest.
All the while he steady kissing me and I'm steady trying not to breathe. Trying not to swallow so I wouldn't taste him while he was laying me back to the cold ground. I pulled my mouth away and say, Get on up off me. I don't know what you trying to do.
He say, What you want me to do. And he steady pushing me down harder. I could feel it then. His thing. It was pressing up inside my legs. All hard and mad inside his jeans. I tried to sit up. But he pressed his whole weight on me, squashing my titties so hard they hurt.
Hey, I screamed, leave me alone! Get up off of me! He put one of his big hands across my nose and mouth. I was screaming and kicking and trying to peel his hand off. But my screams wasn't doing no good. They was so tiny they never even escaped the trees. That's all I could hear, even though that boy talking to me real low with his face right in mine.
I don't know how many times he say, I got a knife. I got a knife. Before I heard it. But when I heard that, I stopped trying to scream. I stopped trying to fight.
Then he say, If I got to show it to you, I'm going to have to use it on you. Now shut up, you fat bitch, and take down your fucking pants. I had already shut up. He took his hand off my face and raised up off of me some. But I ain't move. So he pulled at my sweat pants. That's when I started helping him, because I was thinking he going to tear them, and how was I going to explain that to Mama?
It was the both of us that got them halfway down when he say for me to turn over and get on my knees. He raised up some more to let me turn over and I could see the lights of the Skate-A-Rama coming through the tops of the trees. When I turned over, he pushed my head down to the ground and I couldn't see nothing no more. I ain't hear nothing until he pushed his naked self up against me and started doing it. And my hands grabbed for something to hold.
Hanging on to the grass, I swear I could hear them screams of mine quieter and quieter sinking into the ground. All the time I'm thinking, This ain't real. This got to be a dream. Not my dream. His dream. He done thought this all up in his mind. Had this all up in his mind. When I was thinking about him liking me, he was thinking about this. I'm all embarrassed with my butt all tooted up in the air and him sticking his thing in me harder and harder. Faster and faster. It seem like to me his thing was a knife. Mad with me. Cutting me. My insides was burning a little bit more. A little bit more. A little bit more. I couldn't stop my knees from shaking, and I was holding my breath in me to stop the pain.
He put his face right up next to mine and his breath come right in my ear. It was so strong I could taste it in my mouth. You know you like it, you stupid cunt, he say. Tell me you like it. Tell me to fuck you some more.
I ain't say nothing. He grabbed me by the hair. My breath come out in a moan.
He say, Yeah, that's right. That's right. He pushed my face back to the ground and got up off me. You can tell anybody you want, he say. I don't give a goddamn. Ain't nobody going to believe your dumb ass no way. He yanked his jacket up from under me. I heard him take off out them trees.
It was a while before I even moved. I don't know how long I stayed just like he left me, still burning inside. When I figured he was gone, really gone, I rolled over on my side and touched myself quick down there to see if I was bleeding. I was all wet. I ain't know if it was blood. The night was so dark, even with the yellow lights shining above me in the leaves. So I pulled my pants up and brushed myself off. My knees wouldn't stop shaking. But I got up. I ain't even went back in the Skate-A-Rama. I ain't even went back through the parking lot the way I came. I was shamed. I went around the other side and waited for the bus home. Spitting. Spitting. Spitting all the time I was waiting.
Mama was sitting on the couch when I got home. Watching TV with the lights out. She ain't even look up when I come in. It was a Friday night and she like to watch a cop show that come on. Mama say, Lock the door behind you. Which I did, and went right straight upstairs into the bathroom and pulled down my pants and panties. There wasn't no whole bunch of blood like I was expecting to see. Only a little spot, already turning dark like a old penny. That made me feel better. Like things wasn't so bad. Like I wasn't going to have to tell Mama about it because it was just a bad dream anyway.
I took me a shower and brushed my teeth with the water running all over me. I kept brushing them and brushing them, squirting out long white worms of toothpaste until my mouth tasted fresh and clean like mouths be on commercials. Like mint. Then I washed myself. I ain't even want to touch myself down there in my private parts. But I squatted down, with my knees still shaking, and washed off real gentle but real good two times. I wasn't burning like I was before.
When I laid down in bed that night, with the moon shining through the tree outside my window, with the moon shining down on me, I wanted to get up and go downstairs and tell Mama. I should have told her right then. I was so shamed. Even though my mouth was clean, seem like when I just thought of that boy, I got that nasty taste in my mouth again, and I wiped off my tongue with the back of my hand. I ain't want Mama to think it was me that was the nasty one. But I wanted her to come to me in my room that night because I was quiet. Because I had come in and gone straight upstairs. Which I never did. Showered without being told and got right into bed with no radio playing. No light on. No nothing. How come Mama ain't know that wasn't even me acting like that? What was she thinking about if she wasn't thinking about me? Royster, the Jherri Curl King?
When I was a little girl, if I was out of her sight and quiet for a minute, it seem like Mama would come to me. I would look up to see her face over me. Full and shining like the moon. Mama would watch me until she was satisfied I was all right and then she would slip away quiet. Quiet as the setting of the moon. I wouldn't even know she was gone until I looked up and seen she wasn't there.
I hid in the dark of my room that night like I was some little girl too shamed to tell on myself for doing something so stupid. Mama always been the one thinking I'm so smart. I'm so special. That I'm the one who has got a brain that's going to take me somewhere in my life. Maybe Mama think I got a brain that will take her somewhere too one day. Put her in a fine house. But that night I wasn't none of the things Mama say about me. I was what he say I was. All them nasty words he called me. Words Mama never would let me put in my mouth to say. Fat bitch. Stupid cunt. How I was going to open my mouth and say them words? Just thinking about them set me off crying. Not like I was crazy. I ain't make nam sound. And why ain't Mama come? She could've pushed the door to my room open and when the light of the hall fell on me she would've seen my face. Telling her what my two lips couldn't.
But Mama ain't come to me that night, and after then it was just easier to keep my mouth shut and let Mama think I was good and not nasty. So I opened up this place inside to leave everything he done and said to me. Not like it never happened. Because it did happen. But I found a place where I could close it off, and I really did think like some child, like some girl, like some fool, I wasn't never going to have to go inside it again.
After seeing him in the cafeteria, I knew that wasn't true. No matter how it looked to anybody, for the next two days after I seen him, I went back to that place. I was in it each night, curled up inside like some big old baby waiting to be born.
Instead of going to school, I went to Eboni's. Miss Lovey was home, looking after her state kids. She ain't say nothing to me about nothing when me and Imani went back in Eboni room and stayed until the tutor left. She ain't ask why I was there. I knew Eboni had told her. But I knew she wouldn't say nothing to my mama. Out in the kitchen, she made me one of her big meals. I could smell a chicken baking, greens boiling away with vinegar and hot pepper. Yams roasting with they sweet juice dripping in the stove. My stomach was making all kinds of noise just smelling how good that food was going to taste. But when it came time to eat it, I really ain't had no appetite.
I sat down with Eboni and Miss Lovey and them state kids in the kitchen. Miss Lovey made her and the oldest state kid a plate. He about three and he don't eat so much. His mama was on crack when she had him. Miss Lovey get WIC and food stamps. She be getting government cheese and butter, and he still so skinny he look like he could fall over if you blow on him. All he was eating was a teaspoon of food. Eboni, shoot, she was eating like food was going out of style at the end of the day. I ate me a plate just to be polite to Miss Lovey.
I went around Eboni house the next day, too, but on the third day Eboni wasn't there. Miss Lovey was all out of breath and sweating when she come to the door. She say, Come on in the kitchen. And I went. Miss Lovey was making grits and frying up some fish. She say, Eboni had her girls early this morning. I'm telling you, it was a easy labor. They were a minute apart. It seems like they were racing to get in the world. They're both healthy thank God and so pretty with good hair swirled around their heads. I say, Oooh, I want to go see her and the babies. Miss Lovey say, I'm sure Eboni wants to see you, too. You can leave Imani next door where I left the kids and we can go up to the hospital later. She made herself a plate and one for me.
I say, I ain't really hungry. I already ate.
Miss Lovey wasn't even stutting me. She opened up the stove and took out a pan of biscuits and put two on my plate. For a while she ain't say nothing. She ate. Sprinkling hot sauce on her fish. Slurping from a big cup of juice. Putting jelly and butter on her biscuits. I cracked open one of them hot biscuits and buttered and jellied it for Imani, who was sitting in her stroller whining because she knew there was food but wasn't none of it coming to her mouth. I fed some to her and tasted it for myself. It was good. I could tell it wasn't from no can popped open on the counter. Then I looked up at Miss Lovey and stopped eating. She had that I-know-you-got-a-secret look on her face. Right then I knew Eboni must have told.
You know, Miss Lovey say, I been meaning to talk to you.
I cut her right off. Not in a mean way. But I say, I know what you fenna say, Miss Lovey.
Miss Lovey say, Is that so? If you know what I'm going to say, you need to be on one of those psychic telephones making some money for yourself, child.
I bust out laughing, even though I ain't want to.
Miss Lovey put one of her hands on top of one of mines. It was warm and soft.
She say, Child, you have to go back to school. Shooting the hook won't solve your problems.
I say, I know that, Miss Lovey.
She say, You don't act like it. I know you're scared of that boy who raped you.
I looked down at the table. That was the first time that word been said.
Then Miss Lovey said it again. She say, I believe he did rape you.
I ain't say nothing. Miss Lovey reached over with her other hand and started rubbing my back. Round and round in circles like you rub a baby back to get them to sleep. Like I rub Imani. She say, It's all right to talk to me about it.
I couldn't say nothing. I just found my hand that was on the table squeezing her hand tight tight. Miss Lovey ain't ask me to say nothing else. She moved up close to me and put my head down on her shoulder and kept rubbing my back with her hand all warm. Pulling me back from inside myself. She was pulling me back every time she made a circle. Made a circle. Made a circle. It was like she was looking for the place I was. Reaching down inside that cold dark with her warm hand. Picking me up from that ground. Pulling me out into the world where I opened my eyes into the soft light.
It was a while before I lifted up my face. When Imani saw it she started crying. Miss Lovey picked her up and put her on her lap to rock her. She fed some grits to Imani right off her plate. Miss Lovey say, Go back to Lincoln on Monday and see how you feel. If you want to get out, I'll help you.
I say, Only my mama can do that.
Miss Lovey say, I'll talk to your mother then.
I just shook my head.
Miss Lovey say, I won't tell her nothing you haven't. It's up to you to tell her about the rape. She needs to hear that from your lips. But you need to be in school. What kind of future can you make for this child with no education? I looked at my little greedy baby and she put out her arms to come to me and I took her in my arms. I was holding her all close feeling her heart beating up next to mines. Miss Lovey say for me not be worrying about going to another school. She say I would only have to cross that bridge if I come to it.
I made myself go back to Lincoln the next Monday. I was real nervous. About running into him. But I had so much schoolwork to catch up on, I spent most of my time with my mind on that. In the cafeteria I was looking for him and not looking for him, thinking maybe I wouldn't have to come to that bridge at all. It was the middle of the week before I seen him. Me and Coco was sitting together at lunch. I wasn't hardly eating. I was studying for a Latin test. When the bell rung we was rushing to take our trays up. That's when I seen him, just ahead of us at the dish room, putting his dirty tray on the belt. There I was at the bridge. I wasn't even thinking about crossing it. I wanted to jump off. Kids was pushing up behind me to take they trays back. My feet took on a mind of they own and ain't even move when he turned around to leave.
Coco stepped up right next to me and took my tray. What's wrong with you, Tasha? she asked. Making us late?
That boy looked up then. I got a pain in my stomach, thinking he heard my name. But he ain't even look at me. He was looking at Coco. Smiling at her. She sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at him, and the smile he had on his face slid right off. He walked off without saying nothing.
I seen him the next day in the cafeteria, and he walked right on by me without noticing me. I knew I wasn't going to cross no bridge after all. I could feel it in my heart that he ain't know who I was. I was some girl with no name. I was some girl with no face. I was just some girl in a dream he ain't even remember.
FROM Rails Under My Back
Sunlight aroused Jesus from sleep. He pushed himself upright on the couch, and sat there, groggy, trying to clear his head against the growing hum of morning traffic.
Damn! His flesh luminous with heat. His feet cold. He looked down at them. No shoes. He could see No Face, fuzzy, cloudy, dim. No Face! he screamed.
No Face's black eye patch glowed like the barrel hole of a fired gun. I be dog. We fell asleep.
Nigga, what the fuck!
Some powerful shit. No Face's head hung suspended between his knees, a heavy balloon.
Every inch of Jesus's skin was alive, seeing, watching himself move in a dream. Bitch, what did you put in that weed? Jesus grabbed No Face by his collar and jerked him to his feet.
Nuthin. Somebody had stuck a red moon and a black moon in his face where the eyes should be. I told you I---
You can get hurt like that, seriously hurt. Hardly getting the words out, throat clogged with hate, each word anger-clotted.
But---
Jesus shoved him back on the couch. The sunlight scorched Jesus's socked-but-shoeless feet. Where my goddamn shoes? Once again he snatched No Face up from the couch.
No Face pointed. Red color began to bleed from his eye. He adjusted his black patch. Over there. By the couch. Jesus pushed No Face down like crumbs off of a table. Mamma musta put them over there while---
Jesus quickly shoved his warm shoes on his feet. I ain't never heard of no Buddha making nobody sleep like that. Pass out. He checked his pockets. Found everything in order. I mean, it's tomorrow already. I mean. He sat down on the couch.
The pipe on the coffee table had been cleaned of ashes.
I be dog.
Where'd you get that shit?
From Keylo. He musta gave me some of that crazy shit. Whacked. Nigga always be jokin around.
You lucky I don't . . . Jesus rested the words.
It's cool, No Face said. We're cool. Hey, you wanna watch some TV?
No.
We can watch some.
Bitch, do it look like I watch TV?
No Face studied the words, magnified them under the lens of his one eye. Well, what you wanna do?
Jesus felt a hole in his stomach, growing and spreading. His hands ran an orbit around his belly. Got anything to eat?
Sure.
He followed No Face to the refrigerator. Watched him open it. Almost threw up when he saw old cooking grease inside a mason jar, brown and gray like a rotting limb.
See anything you want? If you don't, we go down to Mamma Henry's house. She keep our meat in her freezer. And Mamma---
I know, Jesus said. I can't wait.
They took out some leftover meat loaf and ate it cold and fast, then drank milk, right from the gallon jug, sharing swigs until the plastic container was whistle-empty.
You can take a shower. No Face's anxious eye watched Jesus. I got some clothes you can wear. We go shoot some hoop.
Jesus looked at him. You lucky to be alive.
No Face directed his good eye somewhere else.
Real lucky.
Look. The eye returned. I got some of my own shit.
I don't wanna try no mo of yo shit. I mean---
You don't know me from Adam. I told you, that wasn't mine. Keylo gave me that. Look, I'll take you to my kitty so we can smoke us some real---
Nawl. I don't wanna smoke no mo.
Cool.
You lucky to be alive.
We can pick up some oysters.
What?
Oysters. Wit hot sauce.
That's what you like?
That's what I like.
Funny. Spokesman used to eat that.
Who?
Never mind. Jus somebody from back in the day. You don't know him.
So why---
It's cool. You can eat. I'll watch.
I ain't hungry. Let's shoot some hoop.
Some hoop?
Yeah, you know. No Face curved his wrist in a mock shot.
Well---
What's wrong? You don't want to?
I don't care. I'll whup yo ass in a game or two.
Follow me.
They squeezed through a narrow neck of doorway, then hurried to the elevator, which began to lower like a rusty bucket. The walls came rushing in and Jesus had to fight the urge to extend his arms in defense. The elevator opened into a dark vestibule. No Face miscalculated the height of the vestibule step and tripped out into the day. Jesus blinked forth upon the sky.
Hey, boys. Give you five dollars if you can tell me what kind of bird this is. The words emerged from pitch blackness, a dark niche cut deep in the building's brick. A face, then a body---blue overalls with dirty suspenders, parachute straps---pushed into the light, fist holding the groin. A janitor, Jesus thought. He's a janitor, cleaning up after this nigga trash. He saw Jesus looking at him. Flicked his tongue fast and dirty.
Damn, No Face said. You see that? He a stone-cold freak.
You can get hurt that way, old man, Jesus said.
The janitor cupped his hand over his ear. What? What you say?
Hurt.
And I can get hurt getting out of the bathtub, too.
Jesus turned up the heat in his eyes, red coals. The janitor winked at him. Dushan, the janitor said to No Face.
No Face did not answer.
Tell yo mamma I be up there to see her later.
Damn, Jesus said. You gon take that shit?
Aw, man, he can't sweat me. No Face waits a beat, watching Jesus.
Nigga, he talkin bout yo mamma.
You don't know me from Adam. He ain't nobody. That's Redtail.
Who?
Redtail.
What kind of name is that?
Well, his real name is Roscoe. Roscoe Lipton.
He yall janitor?
The superintendent.
A janitor.
Yeah.
Don't see how he can be nobody's janitor. Too fuckin ole. Nigga can hardly move.
Crazy too. Nigga be feedin rats and shit. Feedin em.
What?
Word.
Jesus shook his head.
I know. But guess what?
What?
He used to be a pilot.
What?
A pilot.
You mean an airplane?
Yeah.
Jesus tried to picture the old drunk in a cockpit. What he do, fly a bottle round his lips?
Nawl, in a war. Warplane. Flying Tiger. Hell from Heaven. He changed some enemies too.
That old drunk motherfucker?
Yeah.
He can't change his dirty draws.
He did.
Musta been a long time ago.
Yeah. Old nigga can't even hear.
I can tell that. So that was why he did it, covered his deaf ear and cupped his good one.
But he hear good nough to hear what he shouldn hear.
What?
He a transformer.
Jesus considered the possibility of this.
You do something, and he can't wait to snitch. Hey, he might even snitch on you.
Jesus looked at No Face.
Round here, he gotta watch his back. I almost changed that nigga a few times myself.
I bet. He walk like you. He talk like you. He yo daddy?
No Face watched---one red eye---Jesus hard for a stocktaking moment.
They began their journey. Above the river, a gull white-winged along a wave. A hang-tailed hound sat tough beside a garbage can until No Face roused it with a speeding stone. A ragtop speeded past, but slow enough for Jesus to be momentarily blinded by a flash of hand signals.
Trey Deuces, No Face said.
Right, Jesus said.
No Face took cautious steps crossing the street, as if fording a river. He walked, Jesus beside him, for several more blocks through a fog of belching cars, dragging his feet, tripping over his shadow, slow and purposeful, the blind motion of sleep. The morning increased, the wind rose, gusts of it shaking the branches, bringing a faint snow of spring petals, flake on sifting flake. Through rectangles of glass, Jesus saw men dipping their heads in coffee cups, sitting stiff with their beers or hiding their faces behind newspapers. He and No Face rounded the corner. The sun brightened in the distance, and Stonewall glittered white. Tall rockets of buildings, ready to blast off.
Damn, we walked that far? You ain't tell me we walkin to Stonewall?
Chill.
Nigga, you crazy.
You be aw ight.
A fenced-in basketball court loomed in the distance, thick shapes roving inside. Jetting along, Jesus and No Face found a stone bench and sat down to watch the game. Tongues circulated the circumference of the court. Homeys lined the fence, fingers poking through the chain-link holes, slurping Night Train and firing up missile-shaped joints. Floating heat. Sweat air. Grit that Jesus tasted in his cough.
Whirling colors, four men played the full-length of the court. Jesus took a good look. Two men in khaki pants and bare chests, and two in chests and blue jeans. Khaki One a tall (Jesus's height) man with a sharp-angled haircut like a double-headed ax (V from widow's peak to neckline). Bull-wide nose and thick worm lips. Wedges of muscle angling up from the waist and fanning out to a winged back. Big Popeye forearms. Dull white skin, as if faded from bleach. Whispered under his breath when he shot a free throw. Khaki Two a short nigga with carefully greased and patterned hair---a sculpture---and proud, bowed wishbone legs. He passed Khaki One the ball for a rim-ringing dunk. Serious hang time in the radiant haze. The opposing team took out the ball. Light-moving, the white man fell like an avalanche and smothered a shot. Drove the ball up the alley and around the other defender for the easy layup. Hoop, poles, and backboard cold-shuddered. The ball swirled around the rim before it flushed.
Good game.
Who got winners? Khaki Two curled up first one leg, then the other, checking his shoe soles. He pulled an old fighter pilot's helmet (World War I stick-winged biplane, Snoopy and the Red Baron) over his sculpted hair.
A scuffle flared up. No Face started for the court, Jesus followed him. Like a magnet, faces drew them in.
Keylo. No Face spoke to Khaki Two. Why you give me that whacked weed?
Give you? Bitch, I ain't give you shit. You paid me.
Jesus blinked. Focused. Keylo? So Khaki Two was Keylo, legend in the flesh. Word, drove an old red ambulance with a bed (stretcher?) in the back. His ho buggy he called it. Say he never changed the sheets.
Keylo approached, and Jesus imagined him choking No Face in the noose of his bowed legs. He smiled toothless, like a snake. Crunched his face, a single line of eyebrow above lidless rat eyes. Balled in a boxer's crouch. Rose on his toes with a dance in his body and pimp-slapped No Face upside the head.
Damn, Keylo. Why you always fuckin around?
Cause I want to. Keylo slapped No Face again. A storm of laughter convulsed the spectators.
Damn, Keylo. No Face's dreads rose like cobras. Quit.
Make me, bitch. Fists moving, Keylo circled No Face, dukes up, slow-moving like an old man. Circling, he fired slaps, loud as thunder in easy rain, stinging blows which rocked No Face, hard, fast-pitched blows to the soft mitt of his raised chin. No Face hung tough, refusing to go down.
Chill.
Laughter died down.
That's right. Chill.
Jesus searched for the voice's source. Khaki One. Sunlight streaked his greased flesh, accentuating every vein. Chill, he said, voice feverish, cloggy and hot, phlegm-filled as if from a cold.
Damn, Freeze.
Freeze. Freeze.
No Face alright, Freeze said. He hooked No Face's head under his elbow and stroked the idiot's bowed head. No Face grinned, tongue fish-flopping in his mouth. He alright. Freeze yanked down on No Face's head, then released it. No Face ballooned up to his normal height. Don't try to play him like a bitch.
I was---
Freeze cut Keylo off with a sharp glance. Shoved him into No Face. Kiss and make up.
What?
Kiss and make up. Freeze's biceps were round and solid, train wheels. Go on. Kiss and make up.
Keylo searched the crowd, pleading eyes and mouth.
Freeze cut a grin. The crowd flew into stitches.
You see the look on his face?
Yeah.
Had that nigga goin'.
Yeah.
Thought he was serious.
Bout to piss his pants.
Shit.
No Face bobbed in place, grinning, cannibal teeth, appreciative, glad that Freeze had made a fool of him. Freeze slapped him on the back. You did good, he said. He looked at Jesus, and his eyes spoke recognition. Jesus was sure of it. You did real good.
Thanks, No Face said.
Something inside told Jesus that Freeze's compliment went beyond the battle with Keylo, addressed some secret subject.
Yo, Freeze.
The voice spun Freeze's head.
You had yo fun. A short dude spoke, coal-black face under a red baseball cap, brim backward, manufacturer's tag dangling from the side like a tassel on a graduate's mortarboard. You ready to do this?
Aw ight, Country Plus, Freeze said. If you hard.
I'm always hard.
So pick yo team.
Well you know I got my nigga here. Freeze nodded at Keylo. They slapped palms and locked fingers in some private ritual.
Huh, Country Plus said. So what else is new? Ain't yall married?
Freeze ignored the comment.
Give me MD 2020.
My nigga.
Cool, Freeze said. You can have him. Give me my man No Face. No Face swelled up with gratitude, chest out, lips inflated into a grin, one eye expanding expanding expanding, and he rose, tiptoes.
Thunderbird.
Damn, Freeze, Keylo said. You gon let this bitch play on our team?
Jesus breathed his first whiff of Keylo's gravedigger breath.
Give a nigga a chance, Freeze said. Even a bitch. He gave Keylo a quick hug.
Come on, Country Plus said. Choose another man.
Damn, who else? Freeze studied the crowd.
Pick him. No Face pointed to Jesus.
Freeze gave Jesus a fishy-eyed look. I want him.
That doofy-lookin' muddafudda, Keylo said. He and Jesus faced one another, eyes colliding.
And I'll take Mad Dog. Okay. We set.
Jesus pondered the faulty mathematics. That's only four. Four players, not. . . . No Face pulled Jesus into the huddle.
Yo, g, Freeze said. What's yo name?
Jesus.
Jesus?
Yeah.
Welcome, Jesus. I'm Freeze. Freeze extended his hand, and Jesus took it with his firmest grip.
Country Plus pulled a dime from his pocket and tossed it shimmering into the air. Call em.
Heads, Freeze said.
The coin fell to the surface of Country's skin. He slapped his palm over it.
See, Freeze said. You already lost.
What you call?
You know.
Country removed his palm. Heads.
See.
Country Plus stared into Freeze's face, the price tag dangling from his cap and jerking back and forth in the breeze like a hooked fish on a line. From this time forward, I will make you hear new things.
Whatever, Freeze said. You talk a good game. Let's see if you can play.
No Face unzipped his jacket and pulled it off, removed his T-shirt, and revealed his Mr. Universe torso.
Hey, Jesus, Freeze said. That's yo man. He pointed to Country Plus. Stick him.
Word, Jesus said. Damn, how Freeze tryin to play me? Jesus always played center, the tallest and strongest player on the court. And here Freeze was, playin him like a guard.
We skins, No Face said. Ain't you gon take off yo shirt?
Nawl.
Why not?
Nawl.
Yo shirt gon get all funky.
I'm aw ight.
Better take out yo earring.
Nawl.
Nigga yank it off.
Nawl.
No Face, Freeze said. Take out the ball.
No Face took out the ball. MD 2020 snatched his lazy entry pass and tossed an easy layup. Good steal. Country Plus congratulated his teammate, and his team---Thunderbird and Mad Dog---celebrated their first basket. No Face looked at Freeze with a drowning man's eyes (eye!), begging for mercy.
Country Plus threw Freeze the ball.
Wait a minute, Jesus said. It's their ball.
Wake up! Keylo said. You in South Lincoln. Red Hook rules. Stonewall rules. Stonewall rules.
Freeze took out the ball. Fired it to Keylo, who crouched low and ran it hard on his short, baby-thick legs. Country Plus's unit swooped down on him, a flock of small fast birds moving in streaks, sparrows in a room. Keylo froze in place. Fired the ball at Jesus, but Country Plus clawed it in midair, and in the spark of a moment swept Jesus aside like a swatted fly. Jesus gave chase with everything in his legs. Country Plus launched for the nest-high basket, his elbow catching Jesus in the throat.
Damn!
Don't sweat it, Freeze said. He took the ball out. Fired it in to Jesus. Jesus dribbled. Green-thumbed grass poked through the concrete and snatched at the ball. Tall weeds twisted around his legs. And puddles swamped him, quicksand. With each putting down of his heels, his whole body sank further into the court. Then Country Plus liberated the ball from his paralyzed fingers. Rode an invisible rainbow to the hoop. Reaming sight. The rim vibrated colors.
Freeze looked at Jesus. Took the ball out, fired it to Jesus. Jesus barely caught it. A large fish. It slipped from his hands back into the dark court waters. Country Plus clawed it up, bearlike. Lifted for the jump shot. Jesus jumped as hard and high as he could, springs in his toes. Fake. Country Plus had never left his feet. Now he took it casually to the hoop. Jesus landed back hard on the court, waves of hard concrete pulsing from his feet and through his body, mixing with waves of laughter circulating the court.
You see that muddafudda? Way up in the air.
Yeah. A real sucker.
Freeze took out the ball.
Wait, Jesus said. You take it in. The center is supposed to---
Freeze fired the ball hard into Jesus's defiant chest. Jesus watched him a moment, eyes working. He dribbled the ball up the court. Country Plus yanked it from his hands, a string on rolled twine. He dribbled, in front of him, behind his back, between his legs, while Jesus grabbed at the ball, again and again.
Damn, look at that mark nigga!
Gettin played like a bitch.
Country Plus blew past Jesus. Took it behind the backboard for the reverse lay-in.
In yo eye, punk.
Mark.
Trick.
Ranked and intense observers watched Jesus. No shifting, no craning among the still faces, the still eyes. Country Plus laughed in close, Jesus hearing himself, the laugh erupt from his own belly.
Be true to the game, Freeze said.
Jesus lowered his eyes. The ball went weightless in his hands, so he hugged it to prevent it from floating away. The leather skin peeled away to allow him to look directly into the ball's hollow inside, where shapes formed then started to move. Thick sweatbands pinch head and wrists. Sleeveless Tshirts loop skinny shoulders. Jogging shorts sag like oversized diapers. Layers of brightly colored socks curve like barber-pole stripes around thin calves. Converse All Stars, Pro-Keds, and leather Pumas scuff the court with rubber music. John, Lucifer, Spokesman, Dallas, and Ernie---the Funky Five Corners---geared up for battle. Chuckers doing chumps. John with his quick little hands, hands so fast they don't move when he passes the ball. And Lucifer, mouth open, his tongue hangin in the air, some magical carpet lifting him above the ground, the court, the basket.
And you shoulda seen that nigga shout out when he jammed the ball. Served up a facial. He'd be like, Take that, you punk ass motherfucker!
Quiet Lucifer?
Yeah. Quiet Lucifer. I dawked that in yo face!
One-word Lucifer?
One-word Lucifer. How you like that motherfucker! Feel good? Taste good? That tongue just flappin. And those big hands shakin in yo face like he jus rolled seven. Yeah, he had some big hands, but they was slow. Lucifer wasn't no good at handling the ball. Dribblin. Catching a pass. Spokesman told John, Throw it at his face. He'll catch it then. It worked. Same way with everything: Spokesman had an answer. Standing there, watching from the sidelines, rubbing his belly like a crystal ball. Tryin to science the game. Geometrize plays for the Funky Five Corners. This is a human behavioral laboratory. You know, white smocks and white rats. Test tubes and Bunsen burners. Ideas lead to buildings and bridges. I like to think about yall, us, the team, the Funky Five Corners, and visualize yall, us, the team, being better players through my schemes. He measure the court with a slide rule and a triangle, then write some figures down on his notepad, sketch some pictures.
Damn, nigga. What you doin?
Always trying to science something.
You may be Einstein but you ain't no Jew. Still black. Science or no science.
One time he took these big-ass pliers and measured every nigga's head on the court. They let him, too, wanting to be part of the experiment, get written up. Spokesman. This other time he took this big magnet and poked it all around in the air and kept poking it. We jus shook our heads.
When he made his report he expected you to abide by it. He shook his head when you fumbled a pass. A person your age and height normally covers three and a half feet with each step, so we must conclude that you shouldn't have taken more than ten paces. An unnecessary waste of energy. Drew his lips tight with anger when you missed a layup. Lucifer, be slow about obeying the laws of gravity. And he was always placin bets. Oh, we can't lose. I got this all scienced out. John, if my right eye jump, we win money for sure. We won some money too. Serious money a coupla times. Lost some. Did we profit? Who can say? I guess it evened out.
Yall gon play or what?
A cool breeze wafted onto the stifling court, stirring up the stench of wine and weed. Jesus breathed through his hard-winded nostrils, unsure whether it was time to breathe in or breathe out. Everything was off, out of whack. Just need some more time. Gotta learn how to fly again. He was drowning in dark waters, in spinning lights. Blood on his tongue. He surveyed the players, searching for that one face which would sanction his plight. Freeze cracked his anxious knuckles. Keylo checked his shoe soles. No Face hard-breathed. Then the sun awakened, clean and clear.
I said yall gon play or what?
Jesus saw in precise detail thick, ropelike veins stretched lengthwise in skinny arms and hands. Saw a red sleeveless T-shirt and a red baseball cap, brim backward, the price tag dangling from it. Jesus saw him. Jesus knew him. Engaged sight the pulse of his color. Red, he would get back in the game. He would---yes he, he alone, not his team---make a run.
He fired the ball to No Face, who fired it to Freeze, who fired it to Keylo, who fired it back to Jesus. Jesus held the ball above him, squeezed in one hand. He brought it upcourt, dribbled three times, blip, blip, blip, then took it up the alley, body curved, elbows high. He faked the layup, drew back for the jumper, kicking his feet ballerina-like in midair. The ball arched from his fingertips. Sunk.
Country Plus grinned. I gave you that one, he said. Felt sorry for you. He took the ball in. Lifted off his toes for the jumper. Jesus caught the ball in the palm of his hand, midflight, fly to fly strip. Swatted the ball to Freeze, who lifted for the easy basket.
You got lucky on that one, Country Plus said. He looked Jesus flush in the face.
Guess so, Jesus said.
Mad Dog fired the ball to Country Plus. Country Plus crouched low in the dribble, challenging Jesus.
Pass the ball, Country.
Nigga, stop showin out.
Jesus punched the ball from between his legs, scooped it up, and arched it into the net.
Country looked at Jesus, anger and frustration concealed like fishhooks in his eyes.
Thunderbird inbounded the ball to Mad Dog, who bounced it in MD 2020's direction. Jesus hopped on the ball mid-air, squeexed it tight between his thighs, and rode it for a second or two like a bucking bull. Country Plus faced him, crouched, arms out, yellow sweat covering his forehead. Jesus bobbed and weaved, then broke for the basket, elbows working, tearing off a layer of Country's flesh. Jesus soared in solar heat---he could stay up in the air long as he wanted---gave niggas plenty time to count each tread mark on his rubber soles. He looked down on the basket miles below him, and released the ball like a bomb.
Okay, okay. Don't get happy. Game ain't over.
Country Plus planted his feet, tent in a field. Wind, Jesus blew him flat. Jumped for the shot. The ball hit the rim. Bounced. Once. Twice. Freeze snatched the rebound. The enemy unit trapped him within a wall of raised arms. Freeze fired the ball to No Face. Perfect pass. Except No Face was three seconds behind the ball.
Bitch, Freeze said.
Damn, you slow, Jesus said.
Bitch, Keylo said, you better stop fuckin up. Or I'll wrap my dick around yo head like a turban.
No playin bitch, Jesus said. Sweat dribbled down his nose, his mouth, his chin, every inch of his skin, every cell flooded with the energy of the game, the rhythm of his breathing. He studied his heart's double beat. Defense. That was the key. Offense through defense. Offense through defense. Fundamental. Time and distance. Count the pauses between bounces. Feel the game, deep down, somewhere behind the belly, near the lungs. Play as you breathe.
Country Plus rose like a wave for the basket, and Jesus chopped him down with one stroke.
Damn!
Jesus dunked and almost threw himself through the hoop. He landed on the court with easy footing, tiptoes, a ballerina.
That's game.
We won.
Country Plus lay flat and still on the concrete, like something you could stick a fork into. Mad Dog extended an aiding hand. MD 2020 and Thunderbird followed his lead, but Country Plus slapped their hands away, then raised himself warily, like someone trying to stand up on a rocking boat.
Next time, Country.
Next time.
Good game.
Yeah, Country said. Good game. He studied Jesus with nonforgetting, nonforgiving eyes. Good game. Catch yall later. He turned and led his unit from the court, parading his anger and his wound.
Jesus gave Freeze a high five, palms slapping. Slapped some skin with Keylo and No Face. Memory warm like sweat on his skin, of the Funky Five Corners---John, Lucifer, Spokesman, Ernie, Dallas---celebrating a victory.
You play a strong game, Freeze said. He greeted Jesus with a quick hug.
Yeah, Keylo said. He removed his pilot's cap, exposing a thick wave of greased hair, raised and stiff, a parrot's comb. He turned the cap upside down and dumped out a gallon of sweat. Liked the way you conned them mark niggas, actin like you couldn play at first. He fit the pilot's cap back snugly on his head.
You got it going on like a big fat hard-on.
Jesus said nothing. He wanted more game.
Straight up. Hard.
Ain't no man, woman, or beast can beat me, Jesus said, words warm with his heart's heat.
You got that right.
Word.
You the man.
Aw, Freeze, No Face said. You don't know him from Adam. This nigga can tell some stories.
Stories? What kinda stories?
Like---
Like the time he fucked yo mamma.
No Face looked at Freeze.
Keylo twisted off the metal cap on a cloudy, missile-shaped forty-ounce bottle of malt liquor. Threw his head back and gulped down the liquid, Adam's apple working. A big booty switched by. Some bitch got a big booty around here.
Keylo, Freeze said, you got no class.
Freeze, you know I'm a dog.
Yeah. Sniffin a bitch's ass.
No Face burped some laughs.
Tell one of them stories.
Later for that, Jesus said.
Nawl, tell one.
You really want to hear one?
Straight up.
Word.
All ears.
Awight. Why not? Once upon a time, this nigga went to this bitch's house. Her daddy come to the do. The nigga be like, I come to see your daughter Sally. The father let him in. Sally roll into the room.
Roll? Keylo hunkered down to listen.
Yeah, in a wheelchair. See, she ain't have no legs. Got nubs up to here. Jesus put the edges of his hands at the knees.
Damn. Head bent in listening.
Check it.
And she ain't have no arms. Nubs. Right here. Jesus put the edge of his hand at his elbow.
Shit.
What kind of bitch . . .
And she had this special wheelchair and all she had to do was throw her hips like this. Jesus demonstrated.
Oh, I see. One of them. Big-booty bitch.
Mad back.
Word.
Lumpin.
So the father say, Yall gon out in the backyard and talk. So the nigga and the crippled bitch go out. So he start kickin it to her. And she get hot, but she ain't never been fucked before. How you gon fuck a bitch with nubs? So the nigga see this clothesline stretched across the backyard. He gets an idea. He grabs two clothespins, then he takes the bitch out of the chair and pins one nub arm to the line, then pins the other nub arm to the line. He props an old wood barrel under her butt. Then he bump her from the back.
Damn!
Word!
Bumped that crippled bitch!
After he nut, he zip up his pants. Then he be like, See ya. Her father come out and find her three hours later. Pinned to the clothesline.
Laughter bounces around the court. Jesus is deep into it too, rejoicing from the gut.
And he left her like that?
Word.
Cold-blooded.
Hanging on the clothesline.
Word.
Heart.
But, nigga---Keylo shoved No Face's head back---that wasn't no joke.
You don't know me from Adam. I ain't said nothing bout no joke. I said a lie.
Bitch, stop lyin. Keylo stuck a big eyedropper into the forty and suctioned up liquid into the tube. When the dropper was full, he craned back his head, poked the dropper in his mouth, and squeezed liquid from the flooded ball at the dropper's end.
Funny story, Freeze said. He took Jesus's shoulders into the circle of his arm. Jesus saw that his own feet were no longer touching the ground. He bobbed in the air, bobbed in the circle of Freeze's sweat-warm arm. He could stay here, forever, and hang. Hang. Freeze released his shoulders. Anchorless now, Jesus concentrated, concentrated so as not to float away. Freeze walked a few steps, then turned to Jesus's trailing eyes. Keylo, he said, go to the sto fo me.
Damn, Freeze. I wanna check out another one of them jokes. Lies. Stories.
Me, too, No Face said.
Gon on, Jesus. Bust another one.
Yeah. Bust another one.
Stop repeatin' after me, bitch.
Keylo, go to the sto fo me. Buy me a . . . he nodded at Keylo's forty.
What about them stories?
Later for that.
Come on, Freeze.
Keylo.
Damn. Keylo tail-wagged off to the store---no, walking like an antelope, lifting hoof from knee.
And buy Jesus one, too.
No, thanks, Jesus said. I'm straight. He fluttered his feathers.
No Face, go with him. Make sure he don't get lost.
Aw, Freeze. But I wanna hear---
No Face.
Damn. Hey, Keylo, wait up. No Face trotted off. Jesus watched him grow smaller and disappear.
A pigeon skimmed the earth in flight, then headed toward the sky, and the sky breathed it in.
Freeze worked his arms through his T-shirt, and covered his bare chest and back. Pulled a pack of cigarettes from his back pants pocket. Shook the pack until one cigarette eased its length, extended, like a radio antenna. Want a square?
No, Jesus said. I quit smokin'.
Wish I could quit. Freeze pulled the antenna from the pack, tapped it against the back of his hand, then stuck it in his mouth. Using his thumbnail, he flamed a match. Where yo daddy?
What? Jesus said.
I said, where yo daddy?
My daddy? Jesus stood in a mass of tobacco smoke.
Yeah.
Jesus breathed in the silence. You don't know me.
Freeze watched the lit cigarette end. Where yo daddy?
Hey, you don't know me. Why you askin bout my daddy?
We got something to settle.
You must mean somebody else. He don't even know you.
He stole a bird from me.
Sound strikes what skin is meant to shield. Jesus wobbles. What?
He stole a bird from me.
A trapdoor shuts inside Jesus's chest. A bird?
Yes.
My daddy? Jesus fingers his chest, points to his heart.
Yeah. His name John, ain't it?
Nawl.
His name ain't John?
Yeah.
John ain't yo father?
Nawl.
Who yo father?
Jesus looked into the sky. Thinking: I get it. No Face told you. Y'all running a game. He laughed.
You think that's funny?
Jesus drank Freeze's milk-white eyes. No.
Ain't John yo father? John Jones?
Yeah, he my father. So, what up?
Like I said. Freeze took a drag on the cigarette. Exhaled through his nose, dragonlike. He stole a bird from me. Light lay in four colors on his face.
You serious?
Freeze said nothing.
Jesus shook his head. Fingered the words in his mind, measured them, searched for color and sense. When did he steal it?
Freeze smoked the square down to the butt. Does it matter? He crushed the butt under his heel.
John know you?
Know me good enough to steal from me. Know me good enough to steal from me then run off and hide like a lil bitch.
Jesus let truth move inside him, let himself move around inside it.
So now you know.
Yes.
And you believe?
Yes.
Good. So then you know. Know what I need you to do. So then you know that I need you to---
I know, Jesus said. I know.
You know?
I know. And I will.
You will?
Yes. Yes I will. Yes, I'll do it.
You can always choose---
Wait, Jesus said. He halted Freeze's words with his palms. Pushed them back. Wait. Feet carried him away. He didn't want to hear any more. No reason to. No reason, will, or desire. He walked, putting time and distance between himself and Freeze's request, command, mission. Maybe Freeze did know John. Maybe. And maybe John had stolen from him. No surprise there. John was a thief. Water-slick. Easy in, easy out. And John was forever desperate, light, seeking to add some weight to his pockets. But would he accept any color or shape of pay? God marked every sparrow, Gracie said. Every sparrow. Gravity, Jesus carried the thought inside. Raised it. High. Descended down the spit-mottled steps of the subway.
FROM Dakota Grand
The water was a little too hot. But I liked it, especially the way it made her lips feel as they moved up and down on me. I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her close. We kissed time and time again with the water cascading down our faces. Then she stopped and stepped entirely out of the bathtup, dripping wet, and walked out of the bathroom. I followed. I knew what came next.
There was something about our cold wetness that was thrilling. Our nipples rose hard and thick as we playfully slipped and slid against each other. She moaned loudly as my tongue entered her, the sound bouncing off of the echo-creating bedroom walls.
We knew how to work each other. The water and sweat soaked into the matress as we scrambled across its surface. She climbed on top, tightening her walls, knowing what it did to me. Our orgasms collided, just before the alarm went off. We crashed to the mattress like lifeless dummies.
"We gotta start getting up earlier," she said, breathing heavily. She wiped herself off with the comforter and stood up at the foot of the bed. "I think I need two of these before I go to work. One just doesn't get me through the day anymore."
"If you worked from home like me you'd have all the time you need," I said, smiling and out of breath.
"But I can't fit a hundred computers into my room," she said as she passed the blanket back to me, damp. I grabbed the top sheet and pulled it off of the bed for my own wipedown.
"I've asked a million times already, but how come you make fifty thousand a year and live in a room in your uncle's house?"
"Because that's all I need," she said. "I send money to the DR for my parents and my little brother, pay my bills, do a little shopping, and help my uncle with his expenses."
"But he ain't broke. He owns a store."
"D, how many times do I have to tell you this?"
"Tell me what?"
"That I live my life the way I want to. Just be glad I'm keeping you in it."
"Well excuse me. But I'm sure your mornings wouldn't be as exciting without me."
"Hmmm. I guess you're right about that," she said with a grin before moving over and kissing me on the cheek.
"But I gotta run, baby." She jumped back up and climbed into the navy-blue business suit that was her favorite. Now all she needed were her shoes and jewelry, which she retrieved from the bathroom in record time.
"You know what today is?" I yelled into the bathroom.
"Yes I do, D."
"You gonna read it?"
"Yes I'm going to read it, D." With heels, earrings, and the twin silver bracelets she always wore, she was ready for her commute into downtown Brooklyn.
"You gonna miss me?" I asked.
"I always do," she said just before she kissed me on the cheek again and rushed towards the door. "But I'm five minutes late. I'm out---"
The door slammed shut behind her. I'd gotten used to her quick exits.
Winter had shifted to spring and everything was great. Caution was set to be published the following winter and I was even starting to get work from the real magazines. And the people over at The Magazine and places like Gear and Maxim were pretty good about getting me my checks on time. I was happy, and Carolina was the jewel in my crown.
It was the Day, the one I had been waiting for for nearly three months as my story on the artists formerly known as Arbor Day would finally reach a circulation of more than three million people. It had been a lifetime of edits and visits to the magazine office with Chad. He'd cut some of my best phrases, but it came with the territory. As long as I was getting a byline in his magazine, losing a few words here and there didn't matter.
A half hour later I was checking the weather on my new TV with my new and very illegal cable descrambler box. Two hundred channels for what I paid for basic cable. My book advance had made all the movie channels and pay-per-view absolutely free. The high was going to be 65 so I took my sky-blue Polo sweatshirt and a pair of matching jeans and laid them across the sofa.
The magazine had hit stands at 6 a.m., and though I could have gotten copies days before, I wanted to wait until it was in the hands of the people. I wanted to ride the train and see readers' eyes glued to the article. That kind of attention meant far more than the $5,000 paycheck I'd gotten for it.
The Day was going to be spent running around. I had to get my courtesy copies from The Magazine, run by Todd's office to drop off the first galleys of my novel to the production editor, and then go by Maintain to give Lamar a loan for a plane ticket he needed. He was flying to the "How Can I Be Down" convention in London and Maintain was too cheap to pay for him to go. And to round the day out I was supposed to have dinner with Carolina at the Joloff Restaurant back in the neighborhood since she was working late for the rest of the week and I probably wouldn't see her.
I flipped through the freshly delivered Daily News looking for positive current events but gave up just before I got to the sports section. I switched Thundarr the Barbarian on my 34-inch screen and listened to the bell in the church down the street. It signaled 10 a.m. I had to get moving.
On the train a bearded and wrinkled Jewish man shotgunned leaflets to apathetic commuters on his way through my car and towards the next. I took his offering and ran my eyes over the tiny faded print trying to find what it was he was selling. Even if it didn't cost I knew he was selling something. I looked down to see that his urgent message was a stack of stapled pages, Biblical prophecies that had supposedly come true during the second half of the twentieth century. The last page even contained prophecies specifically for the African-American community. I thought about reading it but folded it up and stuffed it in my bag, dooming the information to be lost forever.
The Magazine was on the twenty-sixth floor of a skyscraper near Rockefeller Center. It wasn't my usual part of town and I still got the building confused with the Fox News building further down Sixth Avenue. But the absense of Fox's midday lunch traffic near the entrance let me know that I was at the right place.
Upstairs, the lily-white receptionist once again mistook me for a messenger and pointed me towards the courier drop-off window. I told her I was there to see Chad and she motioned me to go in without a word. I made a left towards the editorial department, where they were already waiting for me.
"There he is, the man of the hour," Chad yelled across the entire section with the voice of a game show host. "This month's special cover man, Mr. Dakota Grand!"
Scattered applause rang throughout the office. Some people even stood up. There, on the edge of the room, it was good to be able to see the occasional dark face among the many white ones. But I still felt like the butt of a joke I didn't understand.
"What's goin' on?" I asked Chad as we shook hands stiffly.
"You're what's going on," he said with a sly grin. "Everybody around here is in love with your piece. Who knows? It might turn out to be some award-winning shit."
"Well I won't hold my breath on that one," I replied with a flash of teeth.
"No man, I'm serious. Rap artists maybe make a cover once a year but everyone agreed that your piece belonged there. Looks like you're in there, man."
"Well thanks," I replied, on the verge of blushing. But I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to be a one-hit wonder. "I hope I can do somethin' else for y'all," I said humbly.
"Oh, you don't have to worry about that," he said as if he were speaking to a child. "We're already figuring out what to give you next."
Various members of the magazine staff approached and welcomed me like deacons do baptismal candidates. We shared words about lunch dates, meetings, and working on a contract basis. I had arrived. And I was ready to milk it for all that it was worth.
"So how did you start writing?" Claire asked before taking a sip from her Heineken an hour later. The editor in chief had invited me out to lunch at the Skylight Diner on Eighth Avenue. She looked like she was in her mid-thirties, a cross between Sharon Stone and Kathleen Turner. Her long blond hair was ponytailed behind her. Flanked by Chad on the left and Dan, the half Puerto Rican, half Asian managing editor, on the right, I felt like the final piece in a multiracial puzzle.
Claire told me that she had gotten her start in Atlanta as well, working as an assistant editor at Atlanta Magazine. It wasn't a hotbed for minority news and views but I had always liked the writing. Nevertheless it felt good to know that she knew a little about where I came from. Chad nodded along with her words like a TV reporter being filmed for reaction shots.
As they talked I looked around at the diner. The place had a '50s diner feel to it: neon signs in the windows, the oldschool stools along the lunch counter, curving booths with circular tables in the middle. But we were '90s journalists personified: fresh haircuts, record-label Tshirts, jeans and khakis. Dan's cell phone came alive and he squirmed out of the booth towards the foyer to take the call. Lamar would have just yapped into the mouthpiece right in front of us.
"It's both a long and short story, Claire," I replied after a sip of water. "I wrote my first short story when I was nine. It was a class exercise but I really got into it. So I wrote more stories and then some poems. And it just grew like a plant. I published my first article in a local paper when I was twelve. The next thing I know I'm sitting here at a table with you."
"Twelve, huh? What was I doing at twelve?"
"I wasn't thinking about writing. I know that," Chad said.
"You definitely have it together," she replied. Dan casually returned to the table.
"I just can't wait to get back to work," I said after a brief period of silence. Once again I was met with nothing but smiles.
"Just scored a cover and he's already on to the next thing," Dan chimed in, as if he had been there all along. "It's good to see that you're hungry."
"That's the only way to be," I replied. Dan gave me a nod and grin of approval.
"Our editorial meeting is tomorrow so Chad will give you a call in the morning. We'll definitely have something else for you."
"But you gotta promise me something," Claire said with a warm smile.
"What?" I asked.
"Take today and enjoy your cover. Worry about your next piece tomorrow."
"I'll try," I said. "But I'm always thinkin' about tomorrow."
I shook each of their hands before departing, happy to put a line through another appointment on my schedule. I was also glad to be on my way to an office that had more color. On the street I lit a cigarette and fantasized about what assignment they would give me next. What would it take to move up in the ranks, to have them panting for the next big thing with my name on it?
I made a quick run into W. L. Pressman at 43rd and Sixth to leave the galleys for the production editor with the receptionist. I'd told Lamar I'd be there at three and I still had five minutes to be on time. Luckily Maintain was only a few blocks down Fashion Avenue. I knew that Lamar needed his money as soon as possible so I hopped into a cab just letting someone out and was on my way down to his building.
"Deez streets is madness," the Rastafarian cab driver yelled over the blaring boom of Burning Spear. I'd never ridden with a driver with such a loud system. I didn't think that cabbies were even supposed to play music at all. "You never know who you gonna bump into and what they want. You remember dat, ya-ear?"
"I hear you," I said, wondering if he was somehow talking about my life. The bass driven rhythm gave his words a strange importance. It also made the cab rattle. He cut a sharp left on 39th and then made a right on Lexington and we were there before I realized it.
"Wake up boy," the Rastaman yelled playfully as I snapped out of it. The cab was double-parked in front of the Maintain building. I handed him five singles.
"Wassup, D?" Fernando asked as I bypassed the visitors list and headed straight for the elevator. Fernando was the head of building security, a bulky Puerto Rican who had dreams of pro boxing when he wasn't keeping the building out of danger. I took him to lunch once back when I worked up in research because he'd spotted a FedEx guy about to deliver one of my packages to the wrong floor. Since then we were always cool and cordial.
Something touched me when I pushed the button for the elevator. It was cold and fluttery, a feeling and a voice that told me to turn away and go home. It told me that Lamar could get the money later. I toyed with complying and then I fully decided to do so. I would just run the dough by his apartment later, or come by when he was leaving at seven. But before I could turn towards the exit the center elevator's doors opened. It was too late.
Mirage stood three feet in front of me like Darth Vader 2000, two medium-sized soldiers beside and behind him. I noticed a copy of The Magazine held tightly in his fist.
"You!" he yelled as if I'd just murdered his best friend.
"Hey Mirage, what's goin' on?" I was too high on the day's events to see that his bloodshot eyes spelled anger all around.
He took two steps forward and answered with a fist that knocked me flat on the floor before I figured out what it was. I tried to get to my feet but his boys were already on me. As if on cue they grabbed both of my arms, pulled me to my feet, and held me there.
"What the fuck is this shit you wrote about me?" he asked before practically ramming his fist through my abdomen. I wanted to double over but they held me upright. I hoped Fernando was dialing for help, or arming himself with some kind of a weapon. But he'd probably just ducked down. There was no prize for him to win in that fight.
Mirage followed up with an uppercut. And after that the pain flooded in from everywhere. I had to do something. Rule number one back at home on Fair Street was that if you got jumped you had to at least get one good shot in before you went down. They had my arms but my left leg was in perfect alignment with his groin.
Mirage was doubled over on the ground in seconds. I shook one arm loose and hit the one to my right with the dreads and matching beard. That was when my highlight reel ended.
First and heels rained down in buckets. A bone snapped and pain flooded through my right arm. I heard other voices and took more blows as I curled into the fetal position. I closed my eyes and tried to get my mind somewhere else but I didn't make it. I couldn't black out either. Was I dying? Was my clock being punched at the ripe old age of twenty-two? Then, ever so slowly, it began to stop. The voices faded to an echo and finally it all dissolved into darkness. I wasn't happy anymore. I was never going to be happy again.
The Dinner Party
E. LYNN HARRIS
He called it our Great Escape. Since my love for Marc was absolute, I didn't ask any questions when my partner of more than a decade told me we were moving back to his hometown of Sugar Lick, Texas. There is a black-and-white sign when you enter town from the east that proclaims, WELCOME TO SUGAR LICK, CLASS AA STATE FOOTBALL CHAMPIONS 1982, POPULATION, 19,909. I guess the town's leaders would have to change the sign to 19,911.
I knew I would miss our Upper West Side apartment with its friendly neighbors, and its sweeping view of Central Park. I would also miss the smells I couldn't explain from street vendor's carts and the conversations I couldn't understand from people walking the streets of Manhattan. It would be hard not going to a Broadway play at the last minute just because we could.
The first couple of months in the small Texas town were wonderful. We moved into a three-story house a few miles from where Marc had attended elementary and high school. The ladies of the neighborhood brought homemade pies and tomatoes from their gardens and left them on our doorstep with notes welcoming us to the community. Oddly enough, we never met any of the neighbors, just waves from robe-wearing women as they picked up their morning newspapers from the porch.
Not much changed from our regular routine. Thanks to the Internet, I was able to continue my freelance writing assignments.
Marc would come home from his job as a stock broker and skim through the mail, take an evening run with our dog, Simba, and then return home and shower. He would put on his favorite Yale or Stanford sweatshirt with his boxers and then ask me about my day. I loved the fact that after all these years he was still genuinely concerned about me.
There was a lot to love about Sugar Lick; no traffic jams or noise into the wee hours of the morning. I didn't have to face the rejection of taxi drivers who didn't care if I was already late for an important meeting. I fell in love with the sweet smell of the air, crimson rays of sunset and stars that seemed to melt into the silver-edged sky.
Right before Christmas things changed quicker than a west Texas winter wind. I convinced Marc that the approaching holidays would be a chance to show our neighbors our gratitude for their kindness by hosting a dinner party.
I prepared a standing rib roast with miniature new potatoes, sauteed spinach with a touch of garlic, and baked a ham. I made a pitcher of Marc's favorite drink, apple martinis. I had my own special recipe using vodka, triple sec, and Pucker's sour apple. I would garnish it with a Granny Smith apple slice and add a dash of cinnamon.
The evening of the party Marc came home a couple of hours early. He had left his arm behind his back and he brushed his full lips teasingly against mine and then pulled away.
"Come here," I instructed as I pulled him toward me by his suit jacket and demanded he kiss me like he meant it.
"Sometimes my love for you is so strong it overwhelms me," I said softly.
"Me, too. Our guests should be here soon."
Four hours and two pitchers of martinis later, Marc and I sat alone in front of the quivering glow of candles that adorned the perfectly set dining table.
"Why do you think they didn't come?" I asked.
"Maybe we're not their kind of people," Marc said.
"This wouldn't have happened if we still lived in New York," I said, pouting.
"Now be honest. There were times in New York when we walked down the street holding hands and people looked at us strangely," Marc said.
"But we received more smiles of approval than disgusted frowns," I said.
"So do you want to move back to New York?"
I didn't answer. A part of me wanted to scream "Yes!" at the top of my lungs, but I realized how happy Marc had been since we moved. Besides, neither one of us were quitters. We'd faced far too many obstacles to allow a few rude people to alter the path we'd chosen.
Marc pulled me close to him and kissed me on my forehead. I was trying hard not to cry, so I held him tight, as though I was magically pulling the strength I needed from his body. When I finally released him I noticed the blinking green digits on the microwave clock.
It was almost midnight. We started to clear the table when the doorbell rang. Marc raced to the door as I drained the last drops from my glass.
Marc opened the door and there stood a small, wispy woman who was dressed in faux fur with matching hat. She was also carrying a stick with green-and-gold crepe paper strips.
"What can I do for you?" Marc asked as she walked in like she owned the place.
"Hey, babies. I'm Miz Clara. Patton is my married name, but my husband's been dead for years. I live down the road and I saw your lights were on so I wanted to stop by and thank you for your invitation and offer a little bit of advice. I mean, people wanted to run you two out of town when they got your lil' party invitations," she said as she took a seat on the sofa. Marc and I exchanged puzzled glances while Miz Clara removed her fur. She was wearing a green-and-gold sweatshirt with some wild looking animal on it and had on Kelly green corduroy pants.
"I know it's late but could I have a martini neat?"
"Sure," Marc said as he headed toward the kitchen. When Marc left the room, Miz Clara motioned for me to have a seat as she patted the empty space next to her.
"Now, Baby, I know y'all are different from folks around here but there are a few rules you must follow if you want to mingle in."
"What do you mean we're different."
"First of all, anyone with half a brain can see that. We might be country but we ain't stupid and we do have cable. We've seen folks like you."
"What rules?" I asked firmly.
"Well, this is Texas. More important, this is Sugar Lick. And nobody would throw a party on a Friday night this time of the year. Especially when the Sugar Lick Fightin' Panthers are playing the Salt Lick Bobcats for the State football Championship. It's been twenty years since we made it to the State finals and everybody in town was at the game. You two coulda stole the whole town tonight," she cackled as she hit her knee in delight.
"So, who won?" Marc asked as he walked into the living area with a tray of three martinis.
"Let me take a sip of my drink and then I'll tell you."
Marc and I exchanged quizzical glances with each other as Miz Clara finished her drink with two quick gulps. She looked at me and said, "I know his name 'cause he grew up around these parts, but honey, what's your name?"
Before I could tell her my name was Lisa, Clara shot off another question, "How long y'all been midgets?"
Meeting Frederick
BY JEWELL PARKER RHODESFROM Douglass's Women
Late Spring ain't never sweet in Baltimore. Hot, slick. Sticky beyond dreaming.
I was twenty-eight, surviving as best I could. Had me a calico cat. Lena. I'd fan both her and me. Put ice chips in her milk. Ice on my head and wrists. May was as hot as July and there'd be no relief 'til November. Breezes didn't cool no sweat.
Legs itching against cotton. Arms damp, staining crinoline. Beads of water draining into my hair, down my cheek. Nights, just as bad. Laying in my shift, barely breathing, counting the tiniest stars I could see through the windo-top.
I felt drained. Hungry for more water. For something to fill me up.
I'd growed. I wasn't 'Lil' Bit' no more. Wasn't cute no more, either. Just short, round, dark; beyond lonely.
Mam say, "Beauty lives in the heart." But Mam was thirty miles away. Pa now dead, Mam had her own troubles living old. My trouble was forgetting the kind things she said, the words that made me feel special.
Now I was Anna, Housekeeper. Got servant's wages. Three dollars a month. Half sent to Mam. Got food, which I cooked. Milk for the cat. A room: clean but too small for a chair.
Eleven years. Working for the Baldwins. A good position. Nobody slapped me. Or cursed. Or expected me to bed them. But there wasn't much room for getting ahead. So I sewed and laundered on my off day. Thursdays. Anna, Seamstress. Wash woman. Carrying baskets to the docks.
Baltimore, great city then. Harbor for all kinds of goods and people. French and China silk. Spices. Rum. You need a gold cage for a bird? Baltimore. Sugar cane from Haiti? Bananas? Whale oil? All in Baltimore.
Irishmen, New Englanders, Virginia planters, Chinamen, British, Spanish, free colored men, they all passed through that harbor. And women---some dressed fine as queens, some barely dressed---waited for them. Waited for the men to slip them coins. Some folks went off in carriages; some went to the tavern; some got no farther than an alley.
Everybody mated, two by two.
Only new slaves---male and female---kept separate. Each had their own cage at the dock's east end. When I could, I slipped bread and meat to the women (some just children). On Sundays, men with great buckets splashed water at the slave holds. Great buckets to wash away the dirt and smell. Nothing washed away the heat. Except when my mistress ordered it, I kept clear of the docks on the Lord's Sabbath and Auction Days. Kept clear of seeing misery I couldn't fix.
Still. 1835. Baltimore, a great city.
Except for colored folks, everybody a bit rich. Got pennies to spare for colored gals to wash their shirts, pants, and privates. I worked for sailors stitching where a knife sliced, soaking tobacco stains and spit, cleaning where stew crusted on their sleeves and collars. I starched jackets for captains who brung tea, goblets, and Africans across the sea. Some I stitched gold braids for when they got promoted or won slaving treasure. But captains be the worse. Mean. They say your work not good. Insist you buy brand new shirt. After I lost my profit once, I never worked for any captain again.
This May that felt like late summer, I was working for Gardner's men. Carpenters with lots of money and no respect. Their clothes, more grease and sawdust than cotton. Mr. Gardner had a contract to build two man-of-war brigs for the Mexican government. They say July, if Gardner be done, he win big bonus. All the carpenters win bonuses, too. So everybody work hard---black and white---building those great ships.
I made my deliveries at dinner break. Men eating be generous. Less likely to complain: "This not clean enough." "This not ironed right." Foolishness. They complain to make me lower my price. Eating men don't talk much. Some even toss an extra penny.
I'd just finished giving William, the mast-maker, his clean clothes when I looked up and saw this young man standing at the unfinished bow, the ship still on stilts, looking out across the water. Not more than three feet away. He stood there, legs spaced, solid. Like nothing tip him over. No waves. No wind. He was pitched on the edge of the horizon. Boat beneath his feet. Orange-streaked sky above his head. Endless water fanning out the harbor. Seem like nothing move him from that space he choose to be. He could be a colored captain, watching, waiting for some change to happen. Some sign from the birds flying high. Some new streak of color in the sky. Some sweet odor of free.
His pants weren't fine. Brown burlap. His ankles and shins poke out. Shirt gone. His back was broad, rolling mountains. Copper-colored. Trails crisscrossed his back. I knew then he was a slave or exslave. No pattern to the marks. Just rawhide struck, hot and heavy. Enough to know someone had been very angry with him. Once. Twice. Maybe more.
I think I fell in love with his head. He look up, not down. Tilt of his head tell me he not beaten. Not yet. His hair curls in waves, almost touching his shoulders. Black strands lay on his neck. Made me want to reach out and feel. Made me wonder what it be like to bury my face in his hair. Would I smell the sea? Smell the oil they use to shine wood?
His hair made me think of Samson. God's strength upon him. Something else came up on me. Some wave of feeling I'd never felt. Made my feet unsteady. Made my heart race.
"Girl," Pete, the ironmaker call, "Hurry your nigger self here."
I scurried like a scared rabbit. So ashamed. This Samson man turned and saw me. Really saw. His eyes were golden, like light overflowing. I knew he saw me as a weak woman. Big. Too fat. Hurrying to this scum of a white man.
But I couldn't stop myself. Mam taught me, "Never irritate white folks. Do your work. Collect their money." But this one time I didn't want to scurry. I wanted to move slow, sashay my gown, and have this man I didn't know, think I was pretty. No. Lovely. I wanted to be lovely.
Twenty-eight and never had a man look at me with love. Never no passion. Desire. Mam taught me not to say those words. But I learned them as a woman. Learned them watching folks at the wharf. Learned them, too, listening to Miz Baldwin's friends---women promised to one man, yet mad about some other. They was mostly sorrowful. Passionate and sorrowful.
Mam said God made special feelings, especially for men and women. She and Pa felt them. I'd never felt one. Never 'til this man, this slave looked at me from the bow of an unfinished ship.
I hadn't enough backbone to tell this white man, "I'm coming. Don't hurry me." I scurried toward him and away from those light-filled eyes.
Head low, I got rid of all those clothes. Quick as possible. Out with the clean clothes, in with the dirty. Collect my money. Just move. Don't think about shame. The colored men were kind. Like they knew my sin. One tried to tell a joke. But it was no use. I hurried to leave that dock. Trembling. Not sure I'd ever come back. Ever hold my head high.
That evening I lay on my bed and cried. Cried 'cause I wasn't lovely. 'Cause this man would never love me. Cried 'cause he couldn't love me. Him being slave. I, being free. Him, young. I, old. Him, handsome. Me, ugly.
I cried and bit my pillow to keep from letting my screams out. I'd never have my own home. My own babies. I'd work my days 'til too old to work, 'til crippled and less than nothing, with no children, surviving on what little I'd set by.
Time makes the world fresh. Seven days, the world created. Seven days, my pain eased. Stopped feeling like a horse be sitting on my chest. Sabbath helped. I remembered the Lord loved me. And while I was singing "My Redeemer," I felt Mam just as if she was right beside me, taking my hand.
Got so I could see my reflection again and think I looked respectable. Clear eyes. Thick lashes. Clear skin. I didn't have to worry about freckles like white women. But it was a sore fault not to have Mam's sweet smile or Pa's even nose.
Lilbeth got Mam's smile and four children. Even mean George, with his trim features, had a family of five. All told, I was aunt to twenty children. Two in the oven. Thinking about my family, I start thinking about this man. Handsomest man I've seen.
Between kneading bread, slicing yams, serving the Baldwin's food, I be thinking, Why this man off by his self? Where his dinner pail? His food? Why this slave be at the shipyard? Why he not sitting with free coloreds? Where's his master?
I think, Charity. I can show him Christian charity.
I keep thinking of his hair too. Light trapped in it. Him standing on the bow, looking like gold glowed about his head.
His daddy must be white. Most likely his daddy be his master. His Mam being white be rare. The grocer on Dinwidde Street had a daughter who visited with a free colored. Not even a slave. When her belly rose up, her folks whipped her awful. She lost the babe. The colored man ran to Canada.
I packed a dinner. Miz Baldwin wanted chicken and biscuits. So I cooked extras. Just a few. Then, I slipped in a piece of banana pie.
Charity was Jesus' blessing. I'd take that man supper.
I was so nervous. I wore my best dress. It was blue and I always felt small in it. Married women seemed small. Delicate and needful, like Miz Baldwin. If I didn't cook and clean for her, she'd fade away and die, resting on her ottoman.
My blue dress had little buttons down the front and back. Had lace at the wrists. Shouldn't have been wearing my best dress among those coarse men, among that sweat and dust. But I wanted that slave man to see me different.
The trip was all right. Passed out the white carpenters' clothes then went to the colored men. They ate off to the side. Gaines, a free colored, who trimmed sails acted shocked. "You almost pretty, Miz Anna." I nearly slapped him. Everybody would've seen me blush if I was less dark. I passed out the clean clothes. Collected new ones. William's pants had bloodstains from where a saw nicked his thigh. Everybody working too hard. Making mistakes. But now they was having dinner. I had passed out my clothes and if I was gonna meet this slave man, I had to do it now. Had to march myself to the ship edge and holler, "Good day."
I couldn't do it. Too nervous. I stood at the edge of the dry dock looking up. Looking up at this man looking out to sea on a ship on stilts, I started chuckling. Funny. Both of us weren't going nowhere.
He turned, looked down at me. His hand on the rail. He smiled. I did too. I said, "You eat?" His face twisted, puzzle-like. "You eat supper? You hungry?"
"No. I . . . I didn't eat. I am hungry."
My heart fell because he talked proper. Even so, I said, "Come down then." I lifted my smaller basket. "Else I'll feed this here to the gulls."
He smiled and it snatched my breath. He moved, fast yet smooth, down the bow steps, then ran to where it was safe to leap over the ship's rail. He, nimble, swift. He came upon me eager. Widest smile. His beauty nearly undid me. I wonder whether Delilah felt this way when she first see Samson:
But he wasn't Samson. No Egypt black man. Seeing his features straight on, I could see more of the whiteness in him. But the drops of whiteness didn't matter. He still a slave. Such sadness undid me. My life was surely better than his. Not handsome, I knew I'd struggle to make a man love me. Pa said my darkness didn't matter but the world taught me it did. Even colored children called me "Afric."
But a handsome man---mixed black and white---might dream a better life. Might wish for genteel society. Hard to have Master be your father. Hard to see white brothers and sisters enjoy privileges not yours.
William catcall, "Better leave that slave alone. Ain't got the sense of a dog."
"Hush," I answered back. "Your sense got cut off with your baby finger."
"That's a fact," said Peter, the nail man.
The colored men laugh and I smile.
"It's true." This man's eyes were lit fierce. "I don't have a dog's sense." Then, his voice fell to a whisper. "A dog will stay where it's put. Or if it won't, a chain will hold him. I'm a man. I won't be held. Chained or unchained."
I kept real still. I knew he was staring at me. Expecting some response. Maryland was a slave state. Words could get me whipped. But here was this man asking more of me. Asking me to agree that holding a man a slave was wrong. I inhaled, murmured low, "That's proper. Nobody has the right to hold a man."
He smiled sweetly at me.
"Or woman."
He tilt his head back and laugh. Then he held out his hand. "Frederick Bailey."
I forgot I was wearing my good dress and wiped my hand on my skirt. "Anna Murray."
"Anna," he say. My name sounded like a jewel. he clasped my palm good and solid and made me feel like I'd made a friend. Not just a good time friend but a forever friend.
And, just as quickly, the word "dangerous" flashed through my mind. "A dangerous friend." Don't know where those words come from. They just sprung up. As soon as they did, someone struck a bell and this heavy-set--looking man come between us.
"Boy. Hear that bell? Work needs doing. Go on. Get."
"He needs his dinner."
"Don't tell me what he needs," the man turned angrily, causing me to back step As I did, Frederick made a move forward. I held up my hand, not wanting to cause him trouble.
"No, sir," I said. "I understand. I just brung chicken. My Christian deed. It's still warm. You're welcome to some. I be trying to get my spirit right. Do a little something for my fellow man. But, next time, I'll come earlier, so I won't interfere with work. Would that be all right? I can bring you chicken too. My mistake this time."
This foreman looked at me. His eyes squinting as if figuring if I meant what I said. He had a big bushful of hair on his head and face. But his eyes seemed flat, weighing me cold as if we did or did not have a bargain. Then he smiled crooked, spoke tickled yet also mean.
"You sweet on him? Won't 'mount to much. Him a slave and all."
"I know," I said as Mr. Bailey said, "We're acquaintances."
I felt anger flood me at high tide. But all mixed up 'cause I wasn't sure I was upset at just the foreman. "Acquaintances" sounded cold. Yet that was us. Barely met. Barely knowing each other.
"I'm simply doing my Christian duty. Seem like his master would want him fed." I knew I was pushing too far.
"I'm his master as long as he's working for carpenters, learning how to build ships. Go on, now. Get."
"Goodbye, Mr. Bailey," I said, bowing neatly. Just like at a dance. Suddenly, I felt embarrassed.
"Goodbye, Miss Murray." He looked at me quizzing, like he don't understand me at all. Then, he bowed at the waist like he had all the time in the world.
"Boy. Come here, boy," somebody was already calling. Then, there was another cry from the opposite direction. "Boy. Over here. Brace this beam." The foreman was shoving Mr. Bailey along. I walked from the place real slow. I still held my baskets. One filled with old clothes. One filled with my best cooking.
I knew I'd return next Thursday. The sky was sheets of red, orange, yellow piled on top of one another. The clouds had turned slate gray. A storm be rolling in from the gulf, the Caribbean Sea. I felt happy and shy. Scared and nervous. My world was upside down.
How to be more than an acquaintance? How to get Mr. Bailey to think well of me? Few words exchanged on a year of Thursdays didn't add up to much. And even if it did---a free woman and a slave? Hah. Don't carry much future. I ain't so dumb I didn't know that.
But little things can add up to big. "Be special like you," Mam would always say. I just had to be patient. Take my chance when it comes.
That evening I looked for my cat. She come in late, purring. I turn my back and face the wall.
Thinking of Mr. Bailey, it be some time before I finally sleep.
Eva and Isaiah
BY VALERIE WILSON WESLEYFROM Ain't Nobody's Business
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 20
When all was said and done, Eva had to admit that any fool with two working eyes should have seen what was coming. It was bound to happen---and sooner rather than later, considering her state of mind. Yet it took her by surprise---just like everything else since that hot June night when Hutch had left. Isaiah Lonesome was more matter-of-fact about it.
"I knew the first time I saw you," he said. Although Isaiah reassured Eva that that first time was when he'd picked her up on the Garden State Parkway and not when Charley brought him home, and that his desperate search for a temporary home had nothing to do with where things ended up, Eva was still distressed by his words.
It all started out innocently enough, with a question about his music. Up until then, everything had gone as Eva had planned. So little seemed to have changed in her life, she hadn't even bothered to mention her new living arrangement to Charley or Steven. First of all, she was sure they would disapprove. Besides that, they were both preoccupied with living their own lives: Charlie with working and preparing for her October debut. Steven with Dana. Eva knew that one or the other was bound to stumble upon the truth at some point, and she'd do her explaining then. If she bothered to explain at all. Truth was, it felt good for once not to bother with what anyone---particularly her children---thought about her life. It made her feel free and completely independent.
As for her neighbors, they were neighborly enough to keep any questions they had about her new boarder to themselves. She spotted one or two giving Isaiah curious, appraising glances when he came home in the morning, but they were far too polite to ask her who he was or what he was doing there. Eva suspected that they assumed he was a college friend of Steven's, which was fine with her.
Things seemed to be going as Eva had planned. That first week they successfully avoided running into each other and that week established their pattern for the next two. Eva left at seven in the morning for the library just as Isaiah was coming home from the club in New York City. He left around seven at night, about an hour after she'd gotten home. She stayed in her room watching TV or he stayed in the guest room doing whatever he did until she was safely out of the house. When they ran into each other on the stairs or in the kitchen or garage, they would exchange a few pleasantries about the weather, the traffic or who would play in the World Series. He did all his laundry and made all of his calls from his apartment in Jersey City while his roommate and his new wife were at work. There were never dishes left in the sink or trash cans left unemptied. When Eva peeked into the guest room, she found that the bed was neatly made, the floor swept, and the guest towels in the small attached guest bathroom arranged on the towel rack in a tidy row. When she got home from work one Monday, she noticed that the lawn, which had begun to resemble hay, had been mowed and the newly repaired water sprinkler was shooting out rainbows of water. He paid two months' rent in cash when he moved in and always replaced any food that he took out of the refrigerator. There were times when Eva almost forgot he was there. But then she picked up his horn.
It happened on a Wednesday afternoon during the third week of his stay, almost two weeks before Labor Day. Because of a power outage at work, Eva's shift ended two hours early so she'd come home at three instead of six. She heard Isaiah's trumpet the minute she pulled into the driveway. The sound was so pure, she thought at first that it was a recording, but when he repeated the same phrase a dozen times with a new emphasis and a fresher line of sound each time, she realized he must be practicing. She opened the back door, pausing to hear the mellow tones that greeted her, and still holding her bag of groceries, was as lost in his music as she had been the first time she heard him.
He played scales, rapidly gliding through tones that were vaguely familiar, and then dashed off a riff. Transfixed, Eva sat down and listened as he settled into a sensuous, bluesy wail and then a haunting melody that made her feel wistful and melancholy. When he stopped playing, Eva anxiously waited for more. Then she put the milk in the refrigerator and headed to the sunroom, where he had been playing.
There were two entrances leading into the sunroom, which ran the length of the dining and living rooms, and as she stepped through one door he left through the other. Eva suspected that he'd heard her come in and was as anxious to avoid her as she was him. He'd left his trumpet, however, which lay in an open carrying case on a small side table.
The case was made of well-worn brown leather and lined in plush maroon velvet. The horn gleamed as if it were made of gold. Hesitating for a moment, Eva touched it with her fingertips, as if it posed some threat or would snap at her hand. Then she picked it up and examined it. It was heavier than she thought it would be, and she wondered how he could hold it as effortlessly as he did. As if in a trance, she put the instrument to her lips, curious about how it felt and where the sound came from, wondering what kind of skill it took to make music come from it like Isaiah did. For some odd reason, she expected it to be warm like skin.
"Why don't you try it?" Isaiah's deep voice coming from behind her startled her, and she nearly dropped the horn on the floor. She quickly placed it back in the case where it belonged and turned to face him, catching the scent of the lavender soap that she kept in the guest bathroom. She had bought the soap a year ago in Sag Harbor at a tiny perfume store that offered overpriced items for the "luxurious bath and bed" and had gone through her box in a month, showering and bathing with each bar until it was little more than a silver. Until this moment, she'd forgotten she had any more.
He was dressed in jeans and a royal blue cutoff T-shirt that showed off his smooth chestnut skin and his well-developed arms and shoulders. She noticed for the first time a jagged tattoo high up on his arm that encircled it like barbed wire. Eva hated tattoos but found herself staring at this one in fascination. His short black dreadlocks, which had curled up tightly from the moisture of his shower, still held tiny silver droplets of water, and one drop dripped down the side of his face like sweat. He wiped it away impatiently.
"Go ahead. Pick it up and try it."
"No. I don't think so."
"Go ahead."
Self-consciously, Eva brought the mouthpiece to her lips again, and cautiously blew through it.
"Did you blow?"
"Nothing happened."
"Try it again."
She blew again and a squawking sound, somewhere between a note and a grunt, came out. She handed the horn back to Isaiah.
"How do you do it?"
"It's all in the lips and the tongue and the way you work them." He took the horn and blew a few notes, followed it with a very fast riff and then something slow and moody. Captivated, Eva watched him, noticing how tenderly he held the instrument, almost as if it were alive.
"What were you playing earlier, before you went upstairs?"
"You could hear me?" He glanced at her sheepishly. "I hope it wasn't too loud. I don't want to freak out your neighbors."
"No. It's okay. Nobody has said anything. What was it?"
"Well, uh, you know, I compose sometimes. Play it, then write it down later. The music you heard? It was something I wrote. I'll write it down or something when I go back upstairs."
"Will you play it again?" Eva wasn't sure where that came from, asking him to play what he'd played, but she was curious, even though she knew how artists were about a work-in-progress and their hesitancy about sharing it until it was finished. She knew how she had been. She also noticed the shyness that had come into his eyes. "Well, you don't have to play it if you don't want to," she quickly added.
"No. That's okay." He picked up the horn and blew the notes he'd played before, but they were shrill and rushed. Eva wondered if she had trodden into a place she shouldn't have gone. "It sounds different every time I do it," he said, apologizing.
"Where does it come from?"
He looked puzzled as he put the horn down. "Where does what come from?"
"Turning a thought into sound. Where does it come from?" She had wondered about that from the first time she'd heard him play, from the moment he'd stepped away from the band and blown that solo that had taken her and everybody else prisoner. He had what she had lost, that was for sure. It didn't have a name, and she couldn't see, feel or touch it, but she could hear it when he picked up his horn, and she knew she had had it once, but she didn't know where or why it had gone.
His eyes questioned her. "I don't know where it comes from. I just blow."
"But how?"
He looked perplexed. "I don't know how. I just do it."
As if explaining, he picked up his trumpet and played something short filled with riffs and short blasts of sound. Then he smiled, shrugged and handed her the trumpet.
"Try it."
"You know I can't play like you."
"Just try it. Hold your lips like this." He pursed his lips together. Eva wondered if he was trying to change the subject, but she did what he said.
"Like this?"
"No." He pursed his lips again, demonstrating, and Eva tried it until hers came close. "Now you put it to your lips." Eva timidly took the horn and held it against her lips. "Now hold it this way," he said, pausing for a moment as he turned her body away from his. His arms encircled her body as he showed her how to grasp the horn, gently touching her underarms and gliding past her breasts as he held her in an embrace that wasn't quite an embrace. Eva stiffened, and then allowed her body to shift into his. She caught her breath. She liked the way he made her feel, so fragile and in an odd way protected. She could feel his body moving closer to hers, and his smell, blending subtly with that of the lavender, was inviting and dangerous. She drew back, aware suddenly that maybe she was enjoying this too much. But it was too late.
He nibbled very lightly on the back of her neck, his lips gently traveling upward to the base of her scalp, and then slowly and evenly back down again as far as they would go until they were cut off by the top of her collar. He stroked the curve of her neck and her chin and then gently caressed her breasts. Eva lost her breath and collapsed against him with a sigh. He took the horn from her hands, dropped it into the case, turned her toward him and kissed her fully and deeply, his tongue touching hers. Eva, completely aroused now by his touch and the surprise of it all, felt the rumble of sexual desire (which she hadn't felt in the better part of eight months) stir violently in the pit of her stomach. She pulled back.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know!" She could hear the panic in her own voice.
He smiled that mischievous smile that she was never quite sure what to make of and nodded toward the stairs.
It was as if they did some Star Trek transport thing, it seemed to her when she thought about it later. She remembered being in the living room surprised that he was kissing her, and next thing she knew she was lying in his arms, completely nude in the guest bedroom. She couldn't remember negotiating the stairs or opening and closing the door to the room. She vaguely remembered seeing and entering it. The room was small and oblong with two windows, a hanging rhododendron and a ceiling fan, which whirred softly. But strangely enough, it was as if the room wasn't part of her house. Although she'd changed the linen before he came and had obviously bought it, she couldn't remember ever seeing it before. The whole room seemed unfamiliar, as if she were in the middle of some erotic dream and had never picked out the cream-colored wallpaper trimmed with blue cornflowers or the blue fake Persian rug of the glass IKEA vase filled with dried flowers that sat on the bureau. She didn't remember taking off her clothes or crawling next to him between the cool sheets. She remembered hearing the whir of the ceiling fan and thinking how good it felt against her naked skin, and how nice that it was on, but she didn't remember the time of day or whether it was dark or light or day or if she'd locked the front door.
His body was thinner than she had thought it would be, but muscular, and Eva was momentarily self-conscious about her own. But her desire for him quickly outweighed any embarrassment, and she realized she didn't give a damn one way or the other how she looked. When he'd pulled back the summer quilt, a cream-and-lace-covered number a friend had given her as a wedding gift, she felt a twinge of momentary guilt, but then realized she didn't give a damn about that either. She was too aroused to worry about anything but how good his smooth lean body felt next to hers. His obvious excitement was contagious, and she was overpowered by her need for him.
He opened her lips with his tongue again, kissing her fervently until she found herself with tongue in his mouth, wanting to touch and taste every part of him. His lips on her mouth and face, her eyelids, her neck, then all over her body, felt to her as if he were playing some long, sweet song. He followed the lines of her body with his hands, reading each piece of her with his fingertips and palms, as Eva touched, nuzzled, kissed every part of him that she could reach. He found new parts of her to touch or stroke---parts of her that she'd never known could be so quickly aroused---the small of her back, the tiny space between her breasts, the slender area near yet not touching her public hair, and finally gently teasing her clitoris with his tongue and bringing her to the edge of orgasm before he pulled away.
She wanted to devour him. She couldn't get enough of the salty taste of his neck on her tongue as it zipped down to his lips or the solid feel of his chest against the flat palm of her hand. Her fingertips slid over the muscles in his shoulders and upper arms. The ragged tattoo had fascinated her when she'd first spotted it and now she ran the bottom of her tongue down and across it, thrusting her face into his shoulders and arms, playing in the tight curly hair under his arms, around his belly button, and gliding down finally to slide his penis into her mouth as he buried his face into her stomach. And then finally, facing each other, pausing for a moment to gaze with stunned amazement into each other's eyes, as he thrust himself into her. Eva reached her first orgasm effortlessly, and then had a smaller, less intense one before he rolled onto his side, exhausted. And it was better the second time.
But the first thought that came to Eva's mind when they finally lay quiet and still beside each other was, What have I done? She tried to get up. Isaiah pulled her back down beside him.
"What's wrong?"
"Stop asking me that!"
"Tell me."
"When I figure it out, I'll tell you."
"You don't regret this, do you?" He had read her mind.
"I don't know yet." It was an honest answer.
"Then let's do it again," he said with his mischievous chuckle, and they did, more leisurely this time, as if getting to know each other again in a less frenzied, more intimate way.
When it was over, they slept for an hour. Eva awoke to Isaiah climbing out of bed. Fascinated, she watched him move around the room. She had known each crevice and crease of his body with her hands and mouth and now she studied him with her eyes, noticing how completely at ease he was with himself. He glanced up at her and smiled his strange amused smile.
"Come on, let's take a shower."
"Giye me a minute." Eva, her passion spent, was self-conscious again about the years between them, those little sags and wrinkles that would show up in the late afternoon sun that was streaming unfiltered through the window. How could I have done something like this? she wondered. Somewhere between the passion when they first hit the bed and the first time they made love, she had reminded him to use condoms, and she now said a prayer of thanks for that presence of mind. Nevertheless, she felt like an irresponsible fool.
When she heard him turn on the shower, she grabbed her clothes from the floor where she'd stripped them off and dashed out of the room and up the stairs to the safety of her bedroom. She closed her door, buried the impulse to lock it and jumped into her shower. When the water hit her body, she thought about Isaiah again and desire for him tore through her body with the sharpness of pain. She turned on the cold water, letting it drip down her back and breasts, opening her mouth to it, letting it run down her throat, tasting it the way she'd tasted him. Then she dried off with a rough towel, slipped into a caftan and went downstairs.
Isaiah was sitting at the kitchen table, fully dressed, sipping a Sprite. When Eva sat down on the opposite side of the table, he offered her the can. Avoiding his eyes, she took a swig and handed it back to him.
"So where did you go?"
"Back upstairs."
"Why?"
"I wanted to shower in my own bathroom."
"Oh." He shrugged. "I was thinking about what you asked me before," he said solemnly after a moment.
"What did I say?" God knew what she'd screamed out.
"About how I play my music. How I create. Don't you remember?"
Eva thought for a moment, and then nodded. That conversation certainly belonged to another age.
"Well . . ." He paused. "I start with a note. One note. And I'll blow until it's as perfect as I can get it, and then I go back and blow another, and another, until finally the whole thing is done. Nothing miraculous. Just one note at a time. That's the way I do it."
Neither of them said anything for a while after that. They just passed the Sprite can back and forth until it was empty. Then Isaiah glanced at his watch and said it was time to go to work, and he'd catch her later on that night. After he left, Eva sat at the table with her head in her hands and wondered what in the hell she'd gotten herself into.
FROM Discretion
BY ELIZABETH NUÑEZ
I took the train to Long Island. Marguerite picked me up at her station. I brought her red roses. I would bring her red roses the next time I saw her. One week later, when she was sure I knew she loved me, she asked me not to bring her red roses again.
"It makes me feel like a courtesan. Your mistress. I am more to you than a mistress."
We had been together again for just seven days and she knew that already.
But that first time when I brought her red roses, I had taken a risk for her that was more than the risk a man takes for a woman with whom he knows he would have only an affair, a temporary arrangement, sexual and nothing more.
I had had a meeting that afternoon with the U.N. ambassador from the United States. It was a meeting that my team had planned for weeks. We wanted a clear understanding of the extent of the U.S. commitment to the unconditional suffrage of all black people in South Africa. We were aware of the fears of the white world. We knew of the nightmares that terrorized even their waking hours: the specter of the masses of black people free at last. Liberated. Armed.
For decades white South Africa had unleashed indescribable cruelties upon its black fellow citizens---insufferable oppression, torture, humiliation. Now white South Africans were terrified. They knew that that kind of suffering demanded not simply justice, but revenge. This was not America. This was not England. Black people in South Africa were not in the minority. Only brute force, they believed, guns---weapons blacks could not afford---had been able to stop them from massacring their torturers. White South Africa was afraid to shut its eyes, afraid to sleep. What if the locks to the prisons where they had penned black people were removed? What if their passes were destroyed? The ones they had created to herd black people into slums, to rope them out of the areas where they had built their sprawling houses? Where their children played? They had let black people in, of course, to work in their kitchens, to dig their ditches, to empty their garbage, their refuse, but what if? What if?
We had met with the American ambassador as much to calm the nerves of white Americans, Europeans, white South Africans as to reassure ourselves that the West would not retreat from its position of outrage at the injustices that had been inflicted on black people in South Africa. I was prepared for this meeting. I had spent weeks rehearsing what I would say, anticipating objections, preparing rebuttals, and yet that afternoon, all I could think of was Marguerite, my mind unable to fix itself on anything else but her.
My teammates told me that I had looked at my watch three times. Brilliant strategy, they said. We let the Americans know that we were the ones running out of time. If they did not use their power immediately to force de Klerk into complying completely with our demands, we could not be responsible for what would happen in South Africa. We could not guarantee that white women would be safe. Who knows what could happen when the people get their hands on the white man's guns? On his money?
But it was not a strategy I had intended, and one man, the oldest on the team, suspected me. He was the brother of the president of my country. Bala Keye, my wife's uncle, a man I never liked, a man who never liked me. At the last minute my president had sent him to join the team.
"In case something happens to you, Oufoula. Like you're sick one day and we find ourselves in the unfortunate position where our country is not represented."
It was not an unusual arrangement for my president to make---to provide a contingency plan in case of an emergency. The only unusual part of it was that he had chosen his brother to be second in command on our team to the U.N.
Bala Keye was the youngest son of the president's father. He was a man with more ambition than talent and even less presence, and his brother knew it. Of the men who claimed they admired me but who I knew wished me misfortune, Bala Keye wished the worst for me.
I say he was the oldest man on the team, but not many years lay between us. Less than ten, enough that it seemed reasonable that he should be convinced that he had seniority over me and thus was entitled to more privileges than me, and yet sufficiently slight that he could consider me a peer, a contemporary, a competitor with whom he saw himself in contest for prizes he always lost. It was that precarious difference between our ages that was the cause of his resentment of me. That, and the fact that though the president was his brother, he had chosen me over him to be his first ambassador to Ghana.
Bala Keye carried this resentment like an albatross around his neck. Even when he laughed it was easy to mistake the quivers that ran through his body and the tears that rolled down his eyes as expressions of rage rather than joy. I did not know what caused the president to change his mind and send him on this mission to the U.N. Perhaps Bala Keye begged him and the president did not have the heart or the will to refuse him. The president was past seventy-five. There were many who said he was becoming soft, docile.
It was Bala Keye who pressed me to join the team for dinner that night. We were more certain than we had ever been of Mandela's release. My team wanted to celebrate. I said I was tired. I said I had a headache. The others were sympathetic. I had worked hard, they said. Harder than any of them. But Bala Keye was insistent.
It was five-thirty before I could get him to surrender. I was running out of the florist carrying the red roses I bought for Marguerite on my arm like a bridal bouquet when I saw him. Our eyes locked in one terrible moment before he turned away.
It was the gesture of an amateur diplomat, but he had put me on notice. He had an advantage over me, his eyes told me. He could trade on it whenever he wished.
I had made two mistakes that day, because of my desire for Marguerite. I, who had been known to be meticulous, a man whose appearance was that of a happy man, a contented family man. A man whose insouciance put the enemy at ease, who concealed his anger, his rage, his hatred, a man who did not wear his heart on his sleeve, who did not leave trails to the thoughts on his mind. Yet I had looked at my watch three times at a meeting with the U.N. ambassador from the United States. I had run like a lovesick puppy to the florist shop. I was seen cradling a bouquet of red roses on my arm rushing to the six o'clock train to Long Island. Rushing to Marguerite.
But these two were not the first mistakes I had made since I met Marguerite again. I had kissed her in the car on the corner of Thirty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue. I had put my hand under her blouse and cupped her breasts. I had slid my fingers up her thighs and would have done more. Would have pressed her back against the car seat and made love to her there, in her car, had she not stopped me, had she not promised the weekend.
I would have done that though I was aware, though part of my brain was aware that I was in a car parked on the street in the middle of Manhattan. That I could be seen. That in this city, in this country where fortunes are made by the humiliation of public figures, where a president can be brought down low, hauled into a court of senators, exposed before a nation for a single indiscretion, say, fondling the breasts of one of those willing sycophants intoxicated by the mere proximity to power, I could have tainted the reputation of my teammates, undermined the seriousness of our commitment to our mission, a mission that had consequences not only for the liberation of South Africa but for the liberation of all of Africa---the liberation from stereotypes that still persisted though Tarzan had been unmasked for what he was: a myth to quiet the white man's fears of the power of Africa.
Had I been asked to tell the principle that guided my life up to that moment, up through all the years to that moment, I would have said, as I believed then---as I believed that day when I tore up Catherine's letter, the letter that gave me Marguerite's phone number---one should not allow one's private affairs to affect one's public affairs. I had conducted my life according to this standard. I believed chaos would follow, confusion and disorder, if one's private life spilled into matters concerning one's public life.
But now disorder engulfed me. Yet I was not afraid, for chaos had not followed, nor confusion. Never before had I achieved such clarity of purpose. Never before had any decision of mine, any action I had taken, been so completely untainted by influence other than my personal desires, my personal needs. I knew what I was doing. I was choosing to do it, freely, of my own volition.
Up to that moment, for more than half a century, I had carefully compartmentalized my life. I had put the things that pleased me, the things that reassured me, in the front parts of my mind where I could see them, where I could retrieve them. The others---the things I did not like, the things I did not want to face, or could not---I had put in boxes and sealed them. I had stored them deep in the dark enclaves of my soul. And yet they had resurfaced. And yet always they had filtered through the reality I had orchestrated: the things I wanted to forget in the daylight---my mother's suicide, my father's indifference. Mulenga. Margarete, the dark fantasy I had created from Mulenga. Marguerite of flesh and blood. Marguerite, whom I loved, whom I lost. These memories filtered through my dreams, the lies I told as truths. They did not go away.
My mother must not have been afraid of the chaos I feared up to this moment. She must have found freedom when her passion for the man she loved spread over everything, engulfed everything, diminished everything---public expectations, public demands, her reputation, her place in her village community, her security, her future. The son she loved.
She must have been able to think her own thoughts then, feel her own feelings when the lines blurred, when the barriers came down between the things that ought to have mattered to her and the things that did. She loved me. She loved the man who slit his throat for love of her more than she loved me.
So it was that Marguerite mattered most to me now. At this moment. Not the American ambassador to the U.N., not Bala Keye, not the possibility that Bala Keye could blackmail me.
Marguerite's hair was up in a ponytail when she came to meet me, the way she had worn it the first time I saw her in New York. She had on a short black and tan plaid pants skirt, a white T-shirt, and a gray cardigan. She looked younger than she had seemed the night before. I felt old again, uneasy. I wished I had stopped to change my clothes, to take off my gray suit, my white monogrammed shirt, my drab blue striped tie---my old man's uniform---but Bala Keye, my nemesis, with his envious heart, had not allowed me. In seconds, though, my uneasiness dissipated. She was fifty years old. Women less than half her age had desired me. They considered me handsome. They knew I was a wealthy man, a man in a position of great power in my country. If I had not had affairs with them, it was not because I could not, but, rather, because I would not. It was because of my commitment to my family, my dedication to my work.
It was because of my love for Marguerite.
No woman who ever tempted me compared with Marguerite. No woman had been able to make me take the risk of losing my wife, my family, my position, my prestige---all I had.
Still, when Marguerite ran toward me, I broke out in a cold sweat. I was a man looking into a mirror of himself, terrified of the reflection there. A man who seemed to have no fear of what could await him, who did not care how his life could change now that he would have in reality the woman who had consumed his dreams for more than twenty-five years.
Once, passion had made me a prisoner in my room until a fantasy saved me. Once, passion had bereft me of a mother, caused her to take her life. I remembered all this as Marguerite approached me, but I could not turn back. That man in the mirror would keep on walking into that fire before me. Nothing I could say or do would deter him, not even the knowledge that the flames would devour him.
Marguerite reached up and kissed me passionately on my mouth. "I was surprised when you told me you were going to take the train," she said. She took the red roses from my hand as if I had given her a business card. I should have guessed then that the roses had not pleased her. "Where's your driver?"
"I take trains, too, you know."
"A man in your position?" She dug her fingers in my ribs and tickled me.
My tension broke. "Yes, a man in my position." I laughed with her. "But only for you."
"Well, I hope you don't mind driving in a beat-up old car."
I opened the car door for her. "So long as you're my driver," I said.
"And you go where I take you?"
Her smile and her question were the smile and the question of a woman of confidence, a woman who knew she could take me wherever she wanted and I would follow. The man in the mirror did not care. He would go with her willingly, anywhere.
Marguerite lived in a little house with white wood shingles, facing the Great South Bay in a small town on the South Shore of Long Island. She said it was the servants' quarters that was once connected to the dilapidated Victorian house that stood next to hers. It used to be the summer home of some rich Manhattanite, she told me, in the years before they discovered the Hamptons. She had gutted the interior and opened the roof with skylights. There were only three rooms in the house: a small bedroom, a kitchen that faced the street, and a large room in the back that opened to the sea. We had to walk through the kitchen to reach it.
"It's the secret of the South Shore." Marguerite stood next to me at the huge sliding glass door that extended from one end of the large room to the other.
The water surprised me. I would not have guessed it was there. We had driven through a residential area of tiny clapboard houses separated by squares of manicured lawn. The cars parked in the driveways and on the streets were domestic American cars, not the usual boxy foreign cars one associated with the rich, the people who could afford to live near the sea.
"Nobody guesses it either. A lot of streets here lead to the water---to the bay or the canal."
The water in front of us was still. Quiet. Two boats moved slowly across it. In the diaphanous twilight I could make out a dog and a man in one, two children and their parents in the other. "It seems so calm," I said.
"Because it's a bay, not the ocean."
"Does it ever flood?"
"Well, for one, we're built about eight feet above sea level. See the bulwark at the end of the lawn? And for the other, we're protected by that barrier reef in front of us." She pointed to a thin strip of land on the other side of the bay. "It protects us from the Atlantic, though sometimes the ocean breaks through, but not as far west as where we are. More to the east where the rich people have their houses."
"You don't seem to be doing too badly yourself," I said.
"I was lucky. The couple who bought the big house couldn't afford the servants' quarters. They needed the money, so they sold it to me at a bargain. It was a mess when I got it. It cost me more to fix it up than I paid for it. There are always banks that will lend money to someone with a full-time job."
She walked to the kitchen and I followed her.
"So you're still working full-time?"
"I'm tenured. You don't give that up. I teach at night. It still gives me time for my art in the day. Then I have the summers."
She opened a drawer under the kitchen counter and pulled out a tablecloth. "I put this on my drawing table and voilà," she said. "A dining room table."
It was the simple elegance of that ivory linen tablecloth accomplishing just what she wanted it to do that reminded me suddenly of Nerida. For the second time in two days I would find myself noticing how similar they were, and, perhaps, it was that thought more than anything else that calmed my anxieties finally.
There was no likeness, of course, in their physical appearance, but they had the same character---the same values, the same goals for the children. Now, as I could see, the same taste. Gone were the bright colors, the careless scattering of pillows I had found liberating in Marguerite's old apartment. But I was a different man now, with different needs. An older man. I wanted to gather in my nets. I wanted to hold on to the things I had. I wanted to bind to me the people I loved. The muted colors in my home suited me, reflected my mood. The colors in Marguerite's house were muted, too, the furniture sparse and neatly arranged. They pleased me.
Marguerite had folded her easel and stacked it against the wall to the side of the glass front door.
"When I work, I put it in the middle of the room under the skylight," she told me. "That way, I get the light from the sun above me and in back of me."
There was a wooden closet with large doors next to the easel. She told me she stored her tools there and her work. Apart from a striped gray and white couch that faced the bay, and her drawing table with two chairs that stood behind the couch, the only other furniture in the room was a matching pale gray armchair and a pine wood cocktail table on which she had placed a stack of large art books and an antique bronze metal jug filled with sunflowers.
I had noticed the sunflowers immediately when I entered the room. I knew she would not replace them with the roses I had given her. She had put my roses in a glass vase. After she set the table, she placed them on top of the linen tablecloth. They looked garish. Out of place. Vulgar. And yet I would bring her red roses two more times, until she stopped me. Until she told me that red roses were the flowers men brought to their mistresses---the peacock's plumage meant to announce to the peahen the peacock's readiness to straddle her: biology, the animal instinct, set irreversibly in motion.
"I'm not as colorful as I was before," she was saying to me now, as though she sensed my need for an explanation, some way to understand the change in her, to interpret the pale palette of colors before me.
"The sea tamed me. I couldn't compete. Only blend."
She said she kept her work in the closet to prevent it from being bleached by the sun. Most of it she took to her office. She had hung only one in the room. It was a large framed painting of bamboo trees. She had mounted it on the back wall, away from the windows on either side of the room.
"There was a pinkish carpet on the floor. At least I think pink was its original color, not red. Most of it had turned ivory, except in the places where I suppose there was furniture. I ripped it all out and sanded the floors. The wood turned out to be in good shape."
"It looks great," I said.
"I thought of staining it darker so it wouldn't look so raw."
"I like it," I said.
She smiled approvingly at me.
The furnishings in her bedroom were sparse, too, simple: a bed with a plain white spread, a pale green rug on the bare wood floor, a night table covered with a white cloth edged with white embroidery. On the table was a clay pot of purple African lilies and a silver reading lamp next to a stack of books. Opposite the bed, bookshelves, some buckling under the weight of too many books, lined the walls from ceiling to floor. There was no TV in the room. She kept it in the kitchen, she said. It distracted her when she cooked.
"Maybe I shouldn't be distracted." She laughed.
We sat down to eat. She had made poached salmon. It was a fish Nerida knew I loved. She had prepared it the way Nerida knew I enjoyed it.
"I can make this better, I promise you."
"Let me taste it," I said. I put some salmon on my fork and brought it to my mouth. "Perfect. It couldn't be better. Perfect." I touched her hand. "Like you, Marguerite. Like everything about you."
After dinner I searched the bookshelves in her bedroom looking for the books she once wanted me to read.
"Do you remember our quarrel over Achebe?"
She joined me. "Things Fall Apart." She pulled it from the shelf.
"You were right, you know." I took it from her hand. "I was a callow fellow. I expected too much from Africa. I was too ready to blame Africa alone for its problems."
"I was also too young, too idealistic. I didn't want to believe that colonialism had done such damage. I didn't want to believe that it affected our minds, that it could distort our thinking. Fanon was right. Though the Europeans have gone, we still have to battle racism. The one we have internalized. Have you read him?"
I nodded. "A Martiniquan gave me a book of his."
"Black Skin, White Masks"?
"Yes, that's the one. But we should be easy on ourselves. We were both young, Marguerite. We didn't know better." I handed her back the Achebe novel.
"Do you still have the books I gave you?" She turned to put it on the shelf.
"They are in my bedroom," I said. "Opposite to my bed on my bookshelves. Like yours are." She was standing in front of me. I put my arms around her waist.
"Do you read them?"
"Sometimes," I said. "The times when I missed you."
She leaned her head against my chest. "Did you miss me?"
"There were times I missed you so much, I could not bear to have anyone around me."
She faced me and put her arms around my neck. "And did you dream of me?"
"More times than I would want to tell you."
She kissed my neck. "I want you to tell me," she whispered. "Tell me how many times you dreamed of me."
"There were nights I could not sleep, waking up from a dream about you."
She kissed my mouth. "For twenty-five years? You dreamed about me for twenty-five years?"
"Twenty-five years. I never forgot you."
She unbuttoned my shirt. "And what did you want to do when you dreamed about me?"
"I wanted to make love to you."
"Like we used to?"
She had taken off my shirt. My fingers were now under her T-shirt, unfastening her bra. She pulled her arms through her sleeves, and I lifted her T-shirt over her head.
"Did you ever dream of me?" I asked her.
"Many times."
"And did you want to make love to me?"
"Many times."
I slid off the band that held up her hair and kissed her behind her ears.
"Even when I was married," she said, "I dreamed of you."
I cannot blame what followed on these words she said to me. I cannot say that because she mentioned her marriage, I was reminded of mine, and because I was reminded of mine, my body refused me. For the truth was I had not forgotten my marriage. I was the son of a long line of men who had had many wives, a man who had come to Christianity after he had passed the age of myth. So Marguerite had often told me before.
So it must have been.
So it was that I felt no guilt when I kissed Marguerite, no guilt when I lay naked next to her. And so it had to be that when my body failed me, when it could not do what my heart, my soul, every fiber of my being desperately pleaded with it to do, I could not say it was because I was married, because Marguerite reminded me that I already had one wife.
"Did this ever happen to you before?"
I could hear the tremors in her voice.
I lay on top of her naked, impotent. "No," I said.
Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. "It must be me. It must be me, then."
"No. No." I pulled her on top of me and hugged her. "It's not you. It's me."
"It's happened to me before," she said. "Harold . . ."
I put my finger to her lips. "It's not you. You are warm and beautiful and lovely."
"It happened with Harold," she said.
"I am not Harold."
"He said it was me."
"It's not you. How could it be you? Look at you. You're a sensual woman. Your skin is the color of the Sahara. Brown, warm, smooth. Not a blemish, not a mark. You smell like the desert. Like a flower in the desert."
"He said it was me," she repeated.
"Harold was a fool."
"He said I was hard to love."
"Harold was wrong."
"He said---"
"You are lovable, Marguerite. You are easy to love."
"Then why?"
"It happens to men, you know. More than we are willing to admit. I'm just nervous. Anxious. It's been too many years. Tomorrow," I said. "You'll see tomorrow. I'll be okay tomorrow."
I had told her the truth. I was anxious and nervous. But it had not happened to me before. Not in twenty-eight years of marriage to Nerida.
This was the fear every man lives with: the day he would lie on top of a beautiful woman and be betrayed by the body that had always served him. And yet I did not think that this was happening to me---the impotence men of my age feared. I knew that the stories we told of our wives' declining libidos were a camouflage to mask our anxieties, our fear of losing our own sexuality, our potency. We sought reassurance from each other. We wanted to convince each other that the end had not come. And I did not think the end had come for me that night. I knew that when my heart had stopped racing, that when with each touch of Marguerite's hand on my body my toes would stop tingling, my spine would stop quivering, I would have control of my body again.
"Let's sleep," I said. "It's too much for one day. After so long."
After so long. Not only with Marguerite, but also with Nerida. But I did not tell her that. That it had been six months since Nerida had let me in her bed. I was overexcited, overstimulated. My desire for her too intense, my mind racing too fast for my body.
Yet I knew that when my body failed me, it was not only because anxiety had reduced me to jelly, not only because I had waited so long, wanted her for so long. Remnants of a hard-learned reticence had returned to plague me. When I lay naked, stretched out on top of her, trying in vain to make love to her, it came back to warn me: This thing I had taught myself to shun. I remembered the passion that took control of me with Mulenga, the passion that had driven me into my room in the mission school, a prisoner of my fantasies. The passion that drove me into my work when Marguerite ordered me to leave her apartment, the passion that sometimes made me a stranger in my house.
The passion that had cost my mother her life.
The passion that made the man who loved her put a razor to his throat.
"You are beautiful," I whispered to Marguerite. "Desirable. Too desirable."
She curled into my arms. "Tomorrow," she said. She kissed the hair on my chest. "I love you," she whispered.
Her words would make me sleep until morning, would make me forget. They allowed me to sleep without dreams that would wake me in a sweat. I had her with me now, the curves of her body locked into mine like the pieces of a puzzle. We were whole again. I was safe. The passion would not undo me.
In the morning I reached for her. The trembling under my skin had subsided, my blood ran warm again through my groin. We made love as we had before when we were young---with the same energy, the same intensity, the same passion. I remembered she liked my tongue in her navel. She remembered I liked hers in my ears. I remembered she loved when I kissed her neck. She remembered I loved when she licked my chest. When the moment came, she stretched out taut beneath me and pushed me away, shouting the same words, "Get off. Get off." They had the same meaning. I braced myself and held on to her until the moan that had begun in the back of her throat rolled out to her lips, gathered force, and she screamed. Screamed with the pleasure of it. Begged me not to stop, not to let go. "Wait. Wait. Not yet. Not yet." And when I joined her, our voices became a symphony of the past restored.
Afterward, she lay on her side next to me. My hand traveled across the sand dunes of her body, the crest of her breasts, the slope down to her waist, the incline up her hips. I kissed each inch I touched. I buried my face in the basin that cradled her navel.
"I like this," I said. "I like this valley. I could lose myself in this valley."
She kissed the top of my head and turned my face upward to hers.
"And I love this," she said. She covered my eyes with her mouth, first one eye, then the next, and she ran the tip of her tongue down the spread of my nose and across my lips. "And I love this."
No one had ever kissed me like that. Not Nerida. No one. No one had ever made me feel so worthy, so handsome. She said she loved my wide nose, my thick lips, my nappy hair, my blue-black skin. I had a classical face, she said. Like a piece of African art.
"Tell me," I asked her, grateful, wanting to give something back, "tell me your secret. How do you stay so beautiful, so young?"
"I am beautiful and young because you think I am beautiful and young."
"No." I looked into her eyes. "I tell you this objectively. Without bias. A man would have to be blind not to see how young you look, how beautiful."
"I'm short," she said. "Short people seem younger than they are."
"I know short people your age. They don't look as young as you."
"Ah," she said, "you mean menopausal women. You mean women who can no longer have babies. Women whose wombs have dried up."
Discovered, I rubbed my chin across her hip to distract her.
"Ouch," she said. "That hurts."
"My stubble."
"I take a tiny little pink pill every morning." She would not let me off so easily from the slip I had made---Ibrahim Musima's theories that had penetrated my defenses even as I rejected them.
"A what?"
"To keep me young."
"A pill?"
"The elixir of life for the menopausal woman. It keeps us vibrant. HRT. Didn't you hear of it? Hormone replacement therapy. It gives us the estrogen we lose after menopause. It makes us young again, our breasts firm. It makes our skin glow. It's bad for us."
"Bad?"
"Yes, bad." She turned on her back. "Some say it can cause breast cancer."
"Then why do you take it?"
"Vanity."
"If it's bad for you, throw it away."
"You see this skin you like?" Her fingers brushed her cheek. "It would be dry without it."
"I don't love your skin. I love you."
"All men say that, but we women know it's the image you love."
"Marguerite!" But as my tone of voice admonished her, my heart sank. What else did she know, my Marguerite?
"You can't imagine how terrible a woman feels when she sees the disappointment in a man's eyes that will inevitably be there, later if not sooner. Then she knows for certain that she is not who he has fantasized her to be." Her eyes grew dark.
She was speaking about men in general, but still she frightened me. She had come too close to a truth I had lived. But there could be no comparison between her and my fantasy. She was infinitely more beautiful, her character immeasurably more admirable.
"We are not talking about men and women, Marguerite," I said, and pulled her to me. "We are talking about you and me, and I, Oufoula, say to you, Marguerite, that I love you, not your skin."
She closed her eyes. "Let me get old, Oufoula."
She said it as if begging for something I would willfully withhold from her and, perplexed by this sudden change, the pleading evident in her eyes when she reopened them, I responded quickly, "We will get old together, Marguerite."
But that was not the answer she was looking for. "I don't want to have to make myself young to please you," she said.
"You don't have to. I love you the way you are. Because of who you are." I brushed my lips across her forehead.
"And will you still love the real me when my skin is wrinkled?"
"Oh, Marguerite."
I was about to add more protestations, swearing my love for her, when she sighed and pushed herself away from me. "We play your game," she said. Her lips curved downward, sadly.
"Game?"
"We wear the makeup, the fancy clothes. We diet. We let doctors cut us up. I take HRT. But thee is always someone younger, firmer, that TV gives men to dream about."
"Marguerite." I pulled her back to me. "I have no interest in someone younger. It is you I love."
"And will you still want me when I am dried up like a prune?"
"I will love you forever." I held her tightly to my chest. "When you are old, when you are gray . . ."
"Grayer."
"When you've lost your teeth. Forever."
She laughed, but she repeated the word after me. "Forever," she said.
We both believed that was true.
An Orange Line Train to Ballston
BY EDWARD P. JONES
The first time Marvella "Velle" Watkins saw the man with the dreadlocks, rain threatened and she just managed to get herself and her three children down into the subway before it began. The rain was waiting for them at the end of their trip. On the crowded Stadium-Armory subway platform, she held Avis, the baby, by the hand, lest the girl wander off, and Marvin, the oldest, stood on his mother's other side. Marvin was looking into the tunnel out of which the train would come. He held his bookbag under one arm and looked down at the lights that were flush with the floor and whose blinking would indicate the approach of the train.
"How do the lights know when the train is comin'?" he asked his mother.
This was a new question. "I don't know," she said. "Avis, stop kicking like that." The girl continued to kick out at something imaginary in front of her and Marvella tugged at her arm until the girl stopped. "I guess," she said to Marvin, "that way down the line the moving train hits something on the tracks and that tells the lights ahead to start blinking."
Marvin seemed satisfied with the answer. He studied the lights and as he did they began to blink. The boy was nine. My son the engineer, his mother thought.
On the other side of Avis stood Marcus, her second son. Marvella noted out of the corner of her eye that he was yapping away, as usual, and at first Marvella thought he was talking to Avis or having another conversation with himself. "Everybody else is borin," he said to her the first time she asked why he talked to himself. He was now seven. Long before the train came into view, it sent ahead a roar, which always made Marvella look left and right to make certain her children were safe and close. And when she turned away from the coming train, she saw that Marcus had been talking to the man with the dreadlocks.
Marcus and Avis managed to find seats just in front of their mother, and she was surprised when the dreadlock man sat down beside her. Marvin found a seat on the aisle across from his siblings. Beside the boy was a woman as old as Marvella's mother, asleep, her head leaning against the window. For a few seconds Marvin looked at the old woman, then he opened his bookbag and took out a piece of paper.
The subway man running the train announced through the speakers in the ceiling that this was an orange line train to Ballston.
Marcus, after sitting for a few seconds or so, turned around and knelt in his seat, facing the man with the dreadlocks. Being so small, he hadn't been able to get a good look at the dreadlocks while he stood beside the man on the platform, but now he was closer and more or less head-to-head with the man and he planned to take advantage of the situation. I should tell him to turn around, his mother thought, but this might be one time when he's justified. Avis, a head or so shorter than Marcus, followed her brother's example and was staring at the man as well. A minute or so won't hurt, Marvella thought.
"Why you got your hair like that?" Marcus asked the man.
"You don't have no comb or nothin'?" Avis asked him. "My mama wouldn't do my hair like that." Avis was four and on any given day had a different answer about whether she liked the idea of going to school next year.
"Oh, yeah," the man said, "I got all the combs and brushes I need."
"Then why you do your hair like that?" Marcus said.
The train stopped and more people entered the car. The subway man told the new people what train they had entered.
The dreadlock man said, "It's nice like this. It makes me feel good to wear it like this."
"Oh," Marcus said.
"Oh," Avis said. Then she looked the man up and down and said, "Don't you want a haircut? My mama take my brothas to the barbashop. She can take you to the barbashop, too."
The man laughed. Marvella had been surprised that he did not have a West Indian accent. Each lock of his hair was at least a foot long and there were at least twenty locks with perhaps the roundness of a nickel. Around each lock, about an inch up from the end, there was a band, and each band was a different, dark color. The man smelled like the incense street vendors sold.
"No," the man said. "No barbershops for me. I like it like this."
The train stopped again. "Good mornin'. This is an orange line to Ballston," the subway man said.
Now there were people standing in the aisle and Marvella could not see Marvin.
"You look like a man I saw in a scary movie one time," Marcus said.
"Marcus, turn round!"
"It's okay," the dreadlock man said, and with one finger he momentarily touched Marvella's hand. "You like scary movies?" he said to Marcus.
"Yeah," the boy said. "But my mama don't let me watch 'em. Me and Marvin snuck and saw one at Granny's when she was sleepin'."
"They give you nightmares," the man said.
"Hey!" Marcus said, his eyes opening wide. "Thas what my granny said."
The train stopped again, and though it did not stop any more suddenly than before, Avis lost her balance and began to fall back. The man reached across and caught her arm, in a move that seemed almost as if it had been planned, as if he had known two stops or so back that the child would begin to fall at that moment. Marvella thought, If I see him tomorrow, it will be a good sign.
"Now see," she said. "Both of you turn around, and I mean it."
At the McPherson Square stop, Marvella and her children got off. Marcus and Avis told the man goodbye and he said that it was nice meeting them. It was raining when they came out of the subway. With the rain, it was hard going across Fourteenth Street and through Franklin Square Park to Thirteenth Street. Marvella carried Avis in one arm and held the umbrella with the other hand. She had Marcus carry her pocketbook and he and Marvin shared an umbrella. Up the street from K on Thirteenth, they went through the wide alley leading to Thompson School on Twelfth Street, where she and Avis watched the boys run up the stairs and go inside. Her arms were tired and she put Avis down. She wrapped the strap of her pocketbook around her shoulder and held her daughter's hand as they made their way two blocks up Twelfth Street to Horizon House, where Marvella's mother lived. They took the elevator up to her mother's apartment, and in a minute or so Marvella was heading back down Twelfth Street to the C&P Telephone Company, where she was a service representative.
It was about eight-thirty in the morning. She saw her day as blocks of time. She entered the building at Twelfth and H, and the second block began.
They did see the man with the dreadlocks the next day, the Friday before Washington's Birthday, but Marvella had forgotten that it was supposed to be a good sign. He sat across the aisle from the boys, and she and Avis shared the seat just in back of the one the boys were sharing. That morning, perhaps because of the holiday weekend, there were fewer people.
"You back, huh?" Marcus said to the man. "Still got the same hair, too."
"Yep, it's me," the man said. "How're you doing today?"
"Fine. No school tomorrow and we goin to the zoo if the weather good."
Avis, interested, leaned across her mother's lap. "You can't come to the zoo with us."
"Why not?" the man said.
"'Cause my granny's comin' and she wants to give peanuts to the monkey-see, monkey-do."
"My granny always says there ain't no good men left in the world," Marcus said.
"Marcus . . ." his mother said.
"Well, if that's so," the man said, "it wouldn't be a good thing for the world."
Marcus hunched his shoulders, as if it didn't matter to him one way or another. "You goin to work?" Marcus said to the man.
"Yep," the man said.
"They let you come to work with your hair like that?" Marcus said.
"Marcus," his mother said.
The man said to her, "You have wonderful kids." She told him thank you. Then to Marcus, the man said, "Yeah, I go to work like this. They have to let me. They have no choice. I'm the best they have."
"If they don't let you come to work, you gon beat 'em up?" Marcus asked. Marvin had his head to the window, looking out into the darkness of the tunnel, his hands shading his eyes.
The train stopped and the subway woman announced that it was an Orange Line train to Ballston. Marvella and her children always got on at the Stadium-Armory stop in Southeast. It did not matter if they took the orange line, which ended at Ballston, or the blue line, which ended at National Airport, because both lines, traveling over the same tracks, went past their McPherson Square stop.
"No need to beat 'em up," the dreadlock man said. "You go to school?" he said to Avis.
"I ain't neva goin' to school," and she shook her head vigorously. "No way. No way. No way."
"I go," Marcus said. "It ain't bad." He leaned his head out into the aisle and moved it up and down as if he were watching a bouncing ball. When he looked back up at the man, he pointed at the hair and asked, "Whatcha call that kinda hair?"
"We call them dreadlocks."
"You sure you whatn't in that movie I saw? They had this man comin' out of the ground and everything. He was dead but he was still alive and nobody could kill him." He turned to his brother. "Marvin, don't he look like that man in that movie we saw at Granny's? You member?"
The train stopped again. Marvin turned from the window and considered the man for a long time. The man smiled, but Marvin did not seem impressed with him or his hair and the boy did not return the smile. "You ask people too many questions," he said to his brother and turned back to the window.
My son the old man, his mother thought. The train had just passed the Smithsonian stop and, knowing that the trip was about to end, she found that she wanted the man to ask her something, anything, before they got off. She would have settled for something as inane as what was her sign, even though she hated such questions. And though she told the world that she did not believe in it all that much, she had nevertheless learned that she was not compatible with Capricorns and Libras. Her ex-husband was a Capricorn. If she had to guess, she would have said the man with the dreadlocks was an Aries. But the last man she had slept with, three months ago, had been an Aries, a man she had met at a club she and her sister went to. The man at the club had been full of shit and she was glad that her children had never met him. "They call me Slide," the guy had introduced himself. "Short for Electric Slide."
It occurred to her as she and the children were crossing Franklin Square that the dreadlock man's finger touch the day before had been the first time a man had touched her---outside of handshakes with men at work---since the doofus she met at the club.
They did not see the man at all the next week, and she hated herself for having thought about him over the holiday weekend. Going home that Friday after not seeing him all that week, she began to think that maybe it had something to do with the fact that they had taken the Blue Line for at least three mornings that week. Maybe, she thought, he only went on the Orange Line.
The following week she managed to get the kids out the door and down to the subway platform at about the same time when she thought they had met the man the first week. On Monday and Tuesday she waited and looked about for him, then, because time was running out, she settled for a Blue Line.
"I thought you said it didn't matter if we took a Blue or an Orange Line," Marvin said after they were seated.
"Well, it doesn't matter," his mother said.
"Then why we wait while all those trains went by?"
My son the lawyer. "I don't know," she said. That was the only answer in life that ever seemed to shut him up.
"Hey, it's that man with the snake hair," Marcus said, spotting the man and waving to him. It was Wednesday and they were on the subway platform. The man came over and appeared genuinely glad to see them. She was happy to see him, but she was also upset that he had not been there on the other mornings. She had in her bag a slip of paper with her name and work and home telephone numbers in case he asked.
"Mornin'," the subway woman said after they entered the train. She sounded as if the last thing in the world she wanted to do was speak. "Orange Line . . . Ballston . . ."
"Where's Boston?" Avis asked the man, yawning. She was in her mother's lap and the man sat beside them. The boys were in the seat ahead of them, and again Marcus was kneeling facing them.
"It's Ballston," the man enunciated. "The end of the line. It's across the river. In a place called Virginia."
"A long way," the little girl said and yawned again. She closed her eyes and leaned back against her mother.
"Kinda. It depends," the man said.
"What's in the bag?" Marcus said to the man.
Avis's eyes popped open and she sat up straight. "What's in the bag?" she said.
"None of your business," Marvella said to both children. "And turn around in that seat, Marcus." The boy looked at the man as if for help from his mother's order. Marvin was writing a letter to his father. The movement of the subway took his words sloppily above and below the lines, but he did not seem to care.
"My lunch," the dreadlock man said. He opened the bag and took out an apple and held it before the girl. "What's that?" he asked her.
"A apple," Marcus said. "Anybody know that."
"He ast me," Avis said. "Mama, tell Marcus to stop."
"Thas all you got for lunch?" Marcus said. "Boy, you pretty cheap."
The man put the apple back. "No, I have a sandwich and a slice of cheese."
"I hate cheese," Avis said. "It taste nasty."
"Well, I love cheese," Marcus said. "I could eat it all day long."
They saw him again on Friday and he was wearing a tie without a coat, carrying the same type of lunch bag. Marvella carried the same slip of paper, but the man with the dreadlocks did nothing but banter with Marcus and Avis.
On Saturday morning, on the pretense that they would go exploring before their father picked the children up, she borrowed her nephew's car and went driving about the neighborhood. She had grown up in Southeast, but she had spent much of her married life in Northwest, where she and the children had lived before they moved that summer to Southeast to share a large house with her sister and her two children. By keeping the boys at Thompson School in Northwest two blocks from her mother, she worried less when the school day ended.
Turning on the car's engine, she realized how she must look---on a beautiful day, she was dragging her kids along to look for a man she did not know, whom she could well come across strolling hand-in-hand with some other woman, who would probably also be arrayed in dreadlocks. She drove along an area bounded by Nineteenth Street, Potomac, Kentucky, and North Carolina avenues, a very wide area that he would surely have to live in if he got on the subway at Stadium-Armory. In case the children asked what they were doing, she made up enough lies along the way for God to send her straight to hell, but surprisingly, there was nothing said, except for Marvin's comment that being so far from home, they might miss their father when he arrived. But, as if to punish her, God did not produce the dreadlock man.
Over the next several weeks she saw the dreadlock man only four or five times, and on most mornings she simply took whatever train came first. The deeper they went into the year, the less she saw of him. But now and again, she would wake with one of the kids screaming for this or that, and she would take herself and them off to the subway determined to wait for him, for an Orange Line train. When she did see him, she was glad that Marcus and Avis engaged him in conversation and not once did she tell them to turn around or stop bothering the man.
"How do the lights know to turn off when the train's gone?" Marvin asked her one Thursday morning not long before Memorial Day. His father had turned down the boy's request to live with him and his girlfriend across the Maryland line in Capitol Heights. Marvella was surprised, and relieved, that Marvin had let the matter drop the same day his father said no.
Marvella had been distracted and she asked him to repeat the question.
"None a your business," Avis said to Marvin.
"I wasn't even talkin' to you," Marvin said to his sister. "You want a fat lip?"
"Alright, stop it. Both of you, and I mean it!"
Marvin asked her again.
She tried to think of something that would satisfy him. "I guess the last car of the train hits a switch that tells the lights it's gone and the lights turn themselves off."
The lights blinked, and a blue line train came without them getting on. Marvin wanted to know why and Marvella told him to be quiet, for a few people were staring at them. Marvin quieted after they got on the next train, an orange line. The subway was packed and at their stop they had to fight their way to the exit. "Hey! Hey!" Marcus hollered. "Lettus outta this joint!"
As they went up the first set of escalators at McPherson Square, Marvin began asking again why they had to all the time wait when the Blue train was like the Orange. Just in front of the farecard machines, Marvella put down Avis and grabbed Marvin by the arm. She pulled him along to a corner, away from the passing people. Marcus and Avis followed silently.
"I'm the boss around here, and you seem to be forgetting that," she said to him. He was utterly surprised and began to shake. "Who's the boss around here, you or me? Who? Who? Who's the mama in charge around here?"
His eyes filled with tears. "You are," he said, but not loud enough for her.
She did not like scenes like this, particularly around white people, who believed that nothing good ever happened between black people and their children, but she could not stop herself. "Who's the mama in charge around here, I said?" she kept asking the boy.
"You are," he said louder, crying. "You the mama. You the mama. You the mama in charge."
"Mama's the one in charge. Mama's the one in charge," Marcus chanted as they made their way across Franklin Square Park.
"Marcus, shut up!" his mother said just as Avis was about to take up the chant.
After that, she did not ever again see the man with the dreadlocks and she did not look for him anymore. But for some time, as she went about her days with their blocks of time, she would find herself comparing his hair with other dreadlocks she saw. By then the subway people had extended the orange line all the way to Vienna.
Lucielia Louise Turner
BY GLORIA NAYLORFROM The Women of Brewster Place
The sunlight was still watery as Ben trudged into Brewster Place, and the street had just begun to yawn and stretch itself. He eased himself onto his garbage can, which was pushed against the sagging brick wall that turned Brewster into a dead-end street. The metallic cold of the can's lid seeped into the bottom of his thin trousers. Sucking on a piece of breakfast sausage caught in his back teeth, he began to muse. Mighty cold, these spring mornings. The old days you could build a good trash fire in one of them barrels to keep warm. Well, don't want no summons now, and can't freeze to death. Yup, can't freeze to death.
His daily soliloquy completed, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled brown bag that contained his morning sun. The cheap red liquid moved slowly down his throat, providing immediate justification as the blood began to warm in his body. In the hazy light a lean dark figure began to make its way slowly up the block. It hesitated in front of the stoop at 316, but looking around and seeing Ben, it hurried over.
"Yo, Ben."
"Hey, Eugene, I thought that was you. Ain't seen ya 'round for a coupla days."
"Yeah." The young man put his hands in his pockets, frowned into the ground, and kicked the edge of Ben's can. "The funeral's today, ya know."
"Yeah."
"You going?" He looked up into Ben's face.
"Naw, I ain't got no clothes for them things. Can't abide 'em no way---too sad---it being a baby and all."
"Yeah. I was going myself, people expect it, ya know?"
"Yeah."
"But, man, the way Ciel's friends look at me and all---like I was filth or something. Hey, I even tried to go see Ciel in the hospital, heard she was freaked out and all."
"Yeah, she took it real bad."
"Yeah, well, damn, I took it bad. It was my kid, too, you know. But Mattie, that fat, black bitch, just standin' in the hospital hall sayin' to me---to me, now, 'Whatcha want?' Like I was a fuckin' germ or something. Man, I just turned and left. You gotta be treated with respect, ya know?"
"Yeah."
"I mean, I should be there today with my woman in the limo and all, sittin' up there, doin' it right. But how you gonna be a man with them ball-busters tellin' everybody it was my fault and I should be the one dead? Damn!"
"Yeah, a man's gotta be a man." Ben felt the need to wet his reply with another sip. "Have some?"
"Naw, I'm gonna be heading on---Ciel don't need me today. I bet that frig, Mattie, rides in the head limo, wearing the pants. Shit---let 'em." He looked up again. "Ya know?"
"Yup."
"Take it easy, Ben." He turned to go.
"You too, Eugene."
"Hey, you going?"
"Now."
"Me neither. Later."
"Later, Eugene."
Funny, Ben thought, Eugene ain't stopped to chat like that for a long time---near on a year, yup, a good year. He took another swallow to help him bring back the year-old conversation, but it didn't work; the second and third one didn't, either. But he did remember that it had been an early spring morning like this one, and Eugene had been wearing those same tight jeans. He had hestitated outside of 316 then, too. But that time he went in . . .
Lucielia had just run water into the tea kettle and was putting it on the burner when she heard the cylinder turn. He didn't have to knock on the door; his key still fit the lock. Her thin knuckles gripped the handle of the kettle, but she didn't turn around. She knew. The last eleven months of her life hung compressed in the air between the click of the lock and his "Yo, baby."
The vibrations from those words rode like parasites on the air waves and came rushing into her kitchen, smashing the compression into indistinguishable days and hours that swirled dizzily before her. It was all there: the frustration of being left alone, sick, with a month-old baby; her humiliation reflected in the caseworker's blue eyes for the unanswerable "You can find him to have it, but can't find him to take care of it" smile; the raw urges that crept, uninvited, between her thighs on countless nights; the eternal whys all meshed with the explainable hate and unexplainable love. They kept circling in such a confusing pattern before her that she couldn't seem to grab even one to answer him with. So there was nothing in Lucielia's face when she turned it toward Eugene, standing in her kitchen door holding a ridiculously pink Easter bunny, nothing but sheer relief . . .
"So he's back." Mattie sat at Lucielia's kitchen table, playing with Serena. It was rare that Mattie ever spoke more than two sentences to anybody about anything. She didn't have to. She chose her words with the grinding precision of a diamond cutter's drill.
"You think I'm a fool, don't you?"
"I ain't said that."
"You didn't have to," Ciel snapped.
"Why you mad at me, Ciel? It's your life, honey."
"Oh, Mattie, you don't understand. He's really straightened up this time. He's got a new job on the docks that pays real good, and he was just so depressed before with the new baby and no work. You'll see. He's even gone out now to buy paint and stuff to fix up the apartment. And, and Serena needs a daddy."
"You ain't gotta convince me, Ciel."
No, she wasn't talking to Mattie, she was talking to herself. She was convincing herself it was the new job and the paint and Serena that let him back into her life. Yet, the real truth went beyond her scope of understanding. When she laid her head in the hollow of his neck there was a deep musky scent to his body that brought back the ghosts of the Tennessee soil of her childhood. It reached up and lined the inside of her nostrils so that she inhaled his presence almost every minute of her life. The feel of his sooty flesh penetrated the skin of her fingers and coursed through her blood and became one, somewhere, wherever it was, with her actual being. But how do you tell yourself, let alone this practical old woman who loves you, that he was back because of that. So you don't.
You get up and fix you both another cup of coffee, calm the fretting baby on your lap with her pacifier, and you pray silently---very silently---behind veiled eyes that the man will stay.
Ciel was trying to remember exactly when it had started to go wrong again. Her mind sought for the slender threads of a clue that she could trace back to---perhaps---something she had said or done. Her brow was set tightly in concentration as she folded towels and smoothed the wrinkles over and over, as if the answer lay concealed in the stubborn creases of the terry cloth.
The months since Eugene's return began to tick off slowly before her, and she examined each one to pinpoint when the nagging whispers of trouble had begun in her brain. The friction on the towels increased when she came to the month that she had gotten pregnant again, but it couldn't be that. Things were different now. She wasn't sick as she had been with Serena, he was still working---no, it wasn't the baby. It's not the baby, it's not the baby---the rhythm of those words sped up the motion of her hands, and she had almost yanked and folded and pressed them into a reality when, bewildered, she realized that she had run out of towels.
Ciel jumped when the front door slammed shut. She waited tensely for the metallic bang of his keys on the coffeetable and the blast of the stereo. Lately that was how Eugene announced his presence home. Ciel walked into the living room with the motion of a swimmer entering a cold lake.
"Eugene, you're home early, huh?"
"You see anybody else sittin' here?" He spoke without looking at her and rose to turn up the stereo.
He wants to pick a fight, she thought, confused and hurt. He knows Serena's taking her nap, and now I'm supposed to say, Eugene, the baby's asleep, please cut the music down. Then he's going to say, you mean a man can't even relax in his own home without being picked on? I'm not picking on you, but you're going to wake up the baby. Which is always supposed to lead to "You don't give a damn about me. Everybody's more important than me---that kid, your friends, everybody. I'm just chickenshit around here, huh?"
All this went through Ciel's head as she watched him leave the stereo and drop defiantly back down on the couch. Without saying a word, she turned and went into the bedroom. She looked down on the peaceful face of her daughter and softly caressed her small cheek. Her heart became full as she realized, this is the only thing I have ever loved without pain. She pulled the sheet gently over the tiny shoulders and firmly closed the door, protecting her from the music. She then went into the kitchen and began washing the rice for their dinner.
Eugene, seeing that he had been left alone, turned off the stereo and came and stood in the kitchen door.
"I lost my job today," he shot at her, as if she had been the cause.
The water was turning cloudy in the rice pot, and the force of the stream from the faucet caused scummy bubbles in rise to the surface. These broke and sprayed tiny starchy panicles onto the dirty surface. Each bubble that broke seemed to increase the volume of the dogged whispers she had been ignoring for the last few months. She poured the dirty water off the rice to destroy and silence them, then watched with a malicious joy as they disappeared down the drain.
"So now, how in the hell I'm gonna make it with no money huh? And another brat comin' here, huh?"
The second change of the water was slightly clearer, but the starch-speckled bubbles were still there, and this time there was no way to pretend deafness to their message. She had stood at that sink countless times before, washing rice and she knew the water was never going to be totally clear. She couldn't stand there forever---her fingers were getting cold, and the rest of the dinner had to be fixed, and Serena would be waking up soon and wanting attention. Feverishly she poured the water off and tried again.
"I'm fuckin' sick of never getting ahead. Babies and bills, that's all you good for."
The bubbles were almost transparent now, but when they broke they left light trails of starch on top of the water that curled around her fingers. She knew it would be useless to try again. Defeated, Ciel placed the wet pot on the burner, and the flames leaped up bright red and orange, turning the water droplets clinging on the outside into steam.
Turning to him, she silently acquiesced. "All right, Eugene, what do you want me to do?"
He wasn't going to let her off so easily. "Hey, baby, look, I don't care what you do. I just can't have all these hassles on me right now, ya know?"
"I'll get a job. I don't mind, but I've got no one to keep Serena, and you don't want Mattie watching her."
"Mattle---no way. That fat bitch'll turn the kid against me. She hates my ass, and you know it."
"No, she doesn't, Eugene." Ciel remembered throwing that at Mattie once. "You hate him, don't you?" "Naw, honey," and she had cupped both hands on Ciel's face. "Maybe I just loves you too much."
"I don't give a damn what you say---she ain't minding my kid."
"Well, look, after the baby comes, they can tie my tubes---I don't care." She swallowed hard to keep down the lie.
"And what the hell we gonna feed it when it gets here, huh---air? With two kids and you on my back, I ain't never gonna have nothin'." He came and grabbed her by the shoulders and was shouting into her face. "Nothin', do you hear me, nothin'!"
"Nothing to it, Mrs. Turner." The face over hers was as calm and antiseptic as the room she lay in. "Please, relax. I'm going to give you a local anesthetic and then perform a simple D&C, or what you'd call a scraping to clean out the uterus. Then you'll rest here for about an hour and be on your way. There won't even be much bleeding." The voice droned on in its practiced monologue, peppered with sterile kindness.
Ciel was not listening. It was important that she keep herself completely isolated from these surroundings. All the activities of the past week of her life were balled up and jammed on the right side of her brain, as if belonging to some other woman. And when she had endured this one last thing for her, she would push it up there, too, and then one day give it all to her---Ciel wanted no part of it.
The next few days Ciel found it difficult to connect herself up again with her own world. Everything seemed to have taken on new textures and colors. When she washed the dishes, the plates felt peculiar in her hands, and she was more conscious of their smoothness and the heat of the water. There was a disturbing split second between someone talking to her and the words penetrating sufficiently to elicits response. Her neighbors left her presence with slight frown of puzzlement, and Eugene could be heard mumbling "Moody bitch."
She became terribly possessive of Serena. She refused to leave her alone, even with Eugene. The little girl went everywhere with Ciel, toddling along on plump uncertain legs. When someone asked to hold or play with her, Ciel sat nearby, watching every move. She found herself walking into the bedroom several times when the child napped to see if she was still breathing. Each time she chided herself for this unreasonable foolishness, but within the next few minutes some strange force still drove her back.
Spring was slowly beginning to announce itself at Brewster Place. The arthritic cold was seeping out of the worn gray bricks, and the tenants with apartment windows facing the street were awakened by six-o'clock sunlight. The music no longer blasted inside of 3C, and Ciel grew strong with the peacefulness of her household. The playful laughter of her daughter, heard more often now, brought a sort of redemption with it.
"Isn't she marvelous, Mattie? You know she's even trying to make whole sentences. Come on, baby, talk for Auntie Mattie."
Serena, totally uninterested in living up to her mother's proud claims, was trying to tear a gold-toned button off the bosom of Mattie's dress.
"It's so cute. She even knows her father's name. She says, 'my Da da is Gene.' "
"Better teach her your name," Mattie said, while playing with the baby's hand. "She'll be using it more."
Ciel's mouth flew open to ask her what she meant by that, but she checked herself. It was useless to argue with Mattie. You could take her words however you wanted. The burden of their truth lay with you, not her.
Eugene came through the front door and stopped short when he saw Mattie. He avoided being around her as much as possible. She was always polite to him, but he sensed a silent condemnation behind even her most innocent words. He constantly felt the need to prove himself in front of her. These frustrations often took the form of unwarranted rudeness on his part.
Serena struggled out of Mattie's lap and went toward her father and tugged on his legs to be picked up. Ignoring the child and cutting short the greetings of the two women, he said coldly, "Ciel, I wanna talk to you."
Sensing trouble, Mattie rose to go. "Ciel, why don't you let me take Serena downstairs for a while? I got some ice cream for her."
"She can stay right here," Eugene broke in. "If she needs ice cream, I can buy it for her."
Hastening to soften his abruptness, Ciel said, "That's okay, Mattie, it's almost time for her nap. I'll bring her later---after dinner."
"Alright. Now you all keep good." Her voice was warm. "You too, Eugene," she called back from the front door.
The click of the lock restored his balance to him. "Why in the hell is she always up here?"
"You just had your chance---why didn't you ask her yourself? If you don't want her here, tell her to stay out," Ciel snapped back confidently, knowing he never would.
"Look, I ain't got time to argue with you about that old hag. I got big doings in the making, and I need you to help me pack." Without waiting for a response, he hurried into the bedroom and pulled his old leather suitcase from under the bed.
A tight, icy knot formed in the center of Ciel's stomach and began to melt rapidly, watering the blood in her legs so that they almost refused to support her weight. She pulled Serena back from following Eugene and sat her in the middle of the living room floor.
"Here, honey, play with the blocks for Mommy---she has to talk to Daddy." She piled a few plastic alphabet blocks in front of the child, and on her way out of the room, he glanced around quickly and removed the glass ashtrays of the coffee table and put them on a shelf over the stereo.
Then, taking a deep breath to calm her racing heart, she started toward the bedroom.
Serena loved the light colorful cubes and would some times sit for an entire half-hour, repeatedly stacking them up and kicking them over with her feet. The hollow sound of their falling fascinated her, and she would often bang two of them together to re-create the magical noise. She was sitting, contentedly engaged in this particular activity, when slow dark movement along the baseboard caught her eye.
A round black roach was making its way from behind the couch toward the kitchen. Serena threw one of her blocks at the insect, and, feeling the vibrations of the wall above it, the roach sped around the door into the kitchen. Finding a totally new game to amuse herself, Serena took off behind the insect with a block in each hand. Seeing her moving toy trying to bury itself under the linoleum by the garbage pail she threw another block, and the frantic roach now raced along the wall and found security in the electric wall socket under the kitchen table.
Angry at losing her plaything, she banged the block against the socket, attempting to get it to come back out. When that failed, she unsuccessfully tried to poke her chubby finger into the thin horizontal slit. Frustrated, tiring of the game, she sat under the table and realized she had found an entirely new place in the house to play. The shiny chrome of the table and chair legs drew her attention, and she experimented with the sound of the block against their smooth surfaces.
This would have entertained her until Ciel came, but the roach, thinking itself safe, ventured outside of the socket. Serena gave a cry of delight and attempted to catch her lost playmate, but it was too quick and darted back into the wall. She tried once again to poke her finger into the slit. Then a bright slender object, lying dropped and forgotten, came into her view. Picking up the fork, Serena finally managed to fit the thin flattened prongs into the electric socket.
Eugene was avoiding Ciel's eyes as he packed. "You know, baby, this is really a good deal after me bein' out of work for so long." He moved around her still figure to open the drawer that held his Tshirts and shorts. "And hell, Maine ain't far. Once I get settled on the docks up there, I'll be able to come home all the time."
"Why can't you take us with you?" She followed each of his movements with her eyes and saw herself being buried in the case under the growing pile of clothes.
"'Cause I gotta check out what's happening before I drag you and the kid up there."
"I don't mind. We'll make do. I've learned to live on very little."
"No, it just won't work right now. I gotta see my way clear first."
"Eugene, please." She listened with growing horror to herself quietly begging.
"No, and that's it!" He flung his shoes into the suitcase.
"Well, how far is it? Where did you say you were going?" She moved toward the suitcase.
"I told ya---the docks in Newport."
"That's not in Maine. You said you were going to Maine."
"Well, I made a mistake."
"How could you know about a place so far up? Who got you the job?"
"A friend."
"Who?"
"None of your damned business!" His eyes were flashing with the anger of a caged animal. He slammed down the top of the suitcase and yanked it off the bed.
"You're lying, aren't you? You don't have a job, do your Do you?"
"Look, Ciel, believe whatever the fuck you want to. I gotta go." He tried to push past her.
She grabbed the handle of the case. "No, you can't go."
"Why?"
Her eyes widened slowly. She realized that to answer that would require that she uncurl that week of her life, pushed safely up into her head, when she had done all those terrible things for that other woman who had wanted an abortion. She and she alone would have to take responsibility for them now. He must understand what those actions had meant to her, but somehow, he had meant even more. She sought desperately for the right words, but it all came out as---
"Because I love you."
"Well, that ain't good enough."
Ciel had let the suitcase go before he jerked it away. She looked at Eugene, and the poison of reality began to spread through her body like gangrene. It drew his scent out of her nostrils and scraped the veil from her eyes, and he stood before her just as he really was---a tall, skinny black man with arrogance and selfishness twisting his mouth into a strange shape. And, she thought, I don't feel anything now. But soon, very soon, I will start to hate you. I promise---I will hate you. And I'll never forgive myself for not having done it sooner---soon enough to have saved my baby. Oh, dear God, my baby.
Eugene thought the tears that began to crowd into her eyes were for him. But she was allowing herself this one last luxury of brief mourning for the loss of something denied to her. It troubled her that she wasn't sure exactly what that something was, or which one of them was to blame for taking it away. Ciel began to feel the overpowering need to be near someone who loved her. I'll get Serena and we'll go visit Mattie now, she thought in a daze.
Then they heard the scream from the kitchen.
The church was small and dark. The air hung about them like a stale blanket. Ciel looked straight ahead, oblivious to the seats filling up behind her. She didn't feel the damp pressure of Mattie's heavy arm or the doubt that invaded the air over Eugene's absence. The plaintive Merciful Jesuses, lightly sprinkled with sobs, were lost on her ears. Her dry eyes were locked on the tiny pearl-gray casket, flanked with oversized arrangements of red-carnationed bleeding hearts and white-lilied eternal circles. The sagging chords that came loping out of the huge organ and mixed with the droning voice of the black-robed old man behind the coffin were also unable to penetrate her.
Ciel's whole universe existed in the seven feet of space between herself and her child's narrow coffin. There was not even room for this comforting God whose melodious virtues floated around her sphere, attempting to get in. Obviously, He had deserted or damned her, it didn't matter which. All Ciel knew was that her prayers had gone unheeded---that afternoon she had lifted her daughter's body off the kitchen floor, those blank days in the hospital, and now. So she was left to do what God had chosen not to.
People had mistaken it for shock when she refused to cry. They thought it some special sort of grief when she stopped eating and even drinking water unless forced to; her hair went uncombed and her body unbathed. But Ciel was not grieving for Serena. She was simply tired of hurting. And she was forced to slowly give up the life that God had refused to take from her.
After the funeral the well-meaning came to console and offer their dog-eared faith in the form of coconut cakes, potato pies, fried chicken, and tears. Ciel sat in the bed with her back resting against the headboard; her long thin fingers still as midnight frost on a frozen pond, lay on the covers. She acknowledged their kindnesses with nods of her head and slight lip movements, but no sound. It was as if her voice was too tired to make the journey from the diaphragm through the larynx to the mouth.
Her visitors' impotent words flew against the steel edge of her pain, bled slowly, and returned to die in the senders' throats. No one came too near. They stood around the door and the dressing table, or sat on the edges of the two worn chairs that needed upholstering, but they unconsciously pushed themselves back against the wall as if her hurt was contagious.
A neighbor woman entered in studied certainty and stood in the middle of the room. "Child, I know how you feel, but don't do this to yourself. I lost one, too. The Lord will . . ." And she choked, because the words were jammed down into her throat by the naked force of Ciel's eyes. Ciel had opened them fully now to look at the woman, but raw fires had eaten them worse than lifeless---worse than death. The woman saw in that mute appeal for silence the ragings of a personal hell flowing through Ciel's eyes. And just as she went to reach for the girl's hand, she stopped as if a muscle spasm had overtaken her body and, cowardly, shrank back. Reminiscences of old, dried-over pains were no consolation in the face of this. They had the effect of cold beads of water on a hot iron---they danced and fizzled up while the room stank from their steam.
Mattie stood in the doorway, and an involuntary shudder went through her when she saw Ciel's eyes. Dear God, she thought, she's dying, and right in front of our faces.
"Merciful Father, no!" she bellowed. There was no prayer, no bended knee or sackcloth supplication in those words, but a blasphemous fireball that shot forth and went smashing against the gates of heaven, raging and kicking, demanding to be heard.
"No! No! No!" Like a black Brahman cow, desperate to protect her young, she surged into the room, pushing the neighbor woman and the others out of her way. She approached the bed with her lips clamped shut in such force that the muscles in her jaw and the back of her neck began to ache.
She sat on the edge of the bed and enfolded the tissue-thin body in her huge ebony arms. And she rocked. Ciel's body was so hot it burned Mattie when she first touched her, but she held on and rocked. Back and forth, back and forth---she had Ciel so tightly she could feel her young breasts flatten against the buttons of her dress. The black mammoth gripped so firmly that the slightest increase of pressure would have cracked the girl's spine. But she rocked.
And somewhere from the bowels of her being came a moan from Ciel, so high at first it couldn't be heard by anyone there, but the yard dogs began an unholy howling. And Mattie rocked. And then, agonizingly slow, it broke its way through the parched lips in a spaghetti-thin column of air that could be faintly heard in the frozen room.
Ciel moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shone like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mother's arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water. She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers swept their children's entrails off laboratory floors. They flew past the spilled brains of Senegalese infants whose mothers had dashed them on the wooden sides of slave ships. And she rocked on.
She rocked her into her childhood and let her see murdered dreams. And she rocked her back, back the womb, to the nadir of her hurt, and they found it---a slight silver splinter, embedded just below the surface of the skin. And Mattie rocked and pulled---and the splinter gave way, but its roots were deep, gigantic, ragged, and they tore up flesh with bits of fat and muscle tissue clinging to them. They left a huge hole, which was already starting to pus over, but Mattie was satisfied. It would heal.
The bile that had formed a tight knot in Ciel's stomach began to rise and gagged her just as it passed her throat. Mattie put her hand over the girl's mouth and rushed her out the now-empty room to the toilet. Ciel retched yellowish-green phlegm, and she brought up white lumps of slime that hit the seat of the toilet and rolled off, splattering onto the tiles. After a while she heaved only air, but the body did not seem to want to stop. It was exorcising the evilness of pain.
Mattie cupped her hands under the faucet and motioned for Ciel to drink and clean her mouth. When the water left Ciel's mouth, it tasted as if she had been rinsing with a mild acid. Mattie drew a tub of hot water and undressed Ciel. She let the nightgown fall off the narrow shoulders, over the pitifully thin breasts and jutting hipbones. She slowly helped her into the water, and it was like a dried brown autumn leaf hitting the surface of a puddle.
And slowly she bathed her. She took the soap, and, using only her hands, she washed Ciel's hair and the back of her neck. She raised her arms and cleaned the armpits, soaping well the downy brown hair there. She let the soap slip between the girls breasts, and she washed each one separately, cupping it in her hands. She took each leg and even cleaned under the toenails. Making Ciel rise and kneel in the tub, she cleaned the crack in her behind, soaped her pubic hair, and gently washed the creases in her vagina---slowly, reverently, as if handling a newborn.
She took her from the tub and toweled her in the same manner she had been bathed---as if too much friction would break the skin tissue. All of this had been done without either woman saying a word. Ciel stood there, naked, and felt the cool air play against the clean surface of her skin. She had the sensation of fresh mint coursing through her pores. She closed her eyes and the fire was gone. Her tears no longer fried within her, killing her internal organs with their steam. So Ciel began to cry---there, naked, in the center of the bathroom floor.
Mattie emptied the tub and rinsed it. She led the still-naked Ciel to a chair in the bedroom. The tears were flowing so freely now Ciel couldn't see, and she allowed herself to be led as if blind. She sat on the chair and cried---head erect. Since she made no effort to wipe them away, the tears dripped down her chin and landed on her chest and rolled down to her stomach and onto her dark public hair. Ignoring Ciel, Mattie took away the crumpled linen and made the bed, stretching the sheets tight and fresh. She beat the pillows into a virgin plumpness and dressed them in white cases.
And Ciel sat. And cried. The unmolested tears had rolled down her parted thighs and were beginning to wet the chair. But they were cold and good. She put out her tongue and began to drink in their saltiness, feeding on them. The first tears were gone. Her thin shoulders began to quiver, and spasms circled her body as new tears came---this time, hot and stinging. And she sobbed, the first sound she'd made since the moaning.
Mattie took the edges of the dirty sheet she'd pulled off the bed and wiped the mucus that had been running out of Ciel's nose. She then led her freshly wet, glistening body, baptized now, to the bed. She covered her with one sheet and laid a towel across the pillow---it would help for a while.
And Ciel lay down and cried. But Mattie knew the tears would end. And she would sleep. And morning would come.
Fortune
BY R. ERICA DOYLE
Two doors down lives Fortune. She breathes in daybreak in black sarongs and flamboyant halter tops, orchids on her tongue. You watch her heave the gate open in the morning, trip-dance down the wooden steps to Morne Coco Road. The banana tree hides her for a moment, and your heart stops with her disappearance, starts again when her sandals clack on the street. The roosters crow before and behind her, hailing, "Fortune, ho ho, Fortune, ho ho." Her dougla hair, that curly mass of Africa and India making love, caresses her shoulders, bounces down her back, winds itself over the straps of her red handbag. She has bangles like a garden of silver on her full golden arms.
You stand in the doorway with your tea, now cold, sip it with a grimace. Fortune comes even with your hungry stance, two points converging, two pairs of cocoa eyes meeting, and then she is past you, throwing you a hard-won "Good morning Yvette!" over her shoulder. Her round buttocks describe circles under the cotton. "Fortune is a woman could walk and win' at the same time," Couteledge from down the road always said, "That what make them old hags tongue wag, can't stand no woman that age hard back and fete one time, no children no man to slow she down." The chickens in your front yard raise their heads from the dust they've been scouring for corn and insects to watch her. She is the sun rising over the hill, then setting below it, lost from your sight.
Something is pulling at the bottom of your short pants leg. You don't turn, know it is your little nephew, Selwyn, eighteen months old, awake and wanting breakfast. You wait. Two months now your sister, Dulce, send him from New York for you to raise. The child come walking, but ain't saying a word at first, only pointing and grabbing at things he want. To teach him you didn't answer those pulls, matched his silence with your own expectant stare, eyebrows raised into question marks, and smiling to show you not vexed, only waiting. Patience is one thing you always have. That and respect for few words. Finally he began to talk, say "Mek" for "Milk" and "Bah bah" for bottle or cup or ball or bath, and "Titi," his name for you, when he don't know the word at all. You pick things up for him then, showcase fruit, food, and toys like the game show white lady on Miss Flora television until he know what he wants.
"Titi?" says Selwyn, still pulling, but not too bad.
You turn, crouch down to meet his luminous gray eyes, smile. You open your arms and he falls in, laughing. "Good morning, Sello darling." His sweet still-baby smell of powder and coconut oil mix together, his fresh breath on your cheek.
"G'mah nah Titi," he replies.
"Good boy! You hungry?"
"Yesh, Titi!" He laughs at his own words, proud.
You stand and he runs into the house in front of you. You are always surprised at how quickly he covers distances with that chubby duckwalk he have. Not that there is far to go in the small house, it only have two rooms, but he speeds through like a windup toy, and into everything like a little monkey. When the stewardess handed him to you in Piarco airport, you called the woozy and fearful child "Paw Paw Boy" to make him smile, for he was dense and yellow as a papaya, with a shock of reddish hair to match the fruit's insides.
Selwyn climbs onto the seat you've stacked with newspapers to make him a high chair of sorts and fold his hands neatly on the table, ghost eyes shining.
"I have some roast bake for you this morning," you sing, holding up the iron skillet for him to see the bread round and solid within. "And some nice buljahl I make fresh fresh."
Selwyn giggles. His impossibly small teeth are like pearls between his pink lips. "Fwesh!"
"Yes, my dear." You place the bowl of codfish on the table next to the bake. "Uh-oh Sello---" you spread your hands wide in puzzlement. "One thing, one thing missing. What is it?" You place a finger on your forehead as if thinking, and his brow furrows to match. "Hmmm . . ."
"Jooch!" cries Selwyn.
"That's right my love, juice!" You take the plastic pitcher full of yellow juice from the narrow counter and put it on the table. "Now, what kind is it?"
"Mmm," says Sello, tapping his head with the palm of one tiny hand, "onch?"
"Good guess, but it's not orange. Try again."
"Magoh?"
"Mango is darker, love. Try again."
Selwyn thinks hard, then smiles and holds up one hand, fingers spread.
"Right, my dear! Five-finger fruit. But you can say 'star' if that's too too difficult. Can you say 'star'?"
"Shah."
"Very good. Now it's time to eat."
Selwyn claps his hands and sings one of his under-the-breath songs to himself, and you make him a small plate of bake and buljahl and pour some juice into his sippy cup, with its spout and two handles. You make some for yourself, and you both eat the salty fish and warm bread in silence.
After breakfast, you clear the table and Selwyn clambers down from his chair. He toddles through the curtain separating the second room from the parlor and kitchen, and goes to pull the sheets around on the bed you both share to "make it up." You rinse the plates in the sink, and put some water on to boil for his bath. This has become your routine, Fortune in the morning, breakfast with Sello, his bath, his toys and books, his nap, then wait for customers. He makes up the bed as the water boils and could probably do it for hours, until you call him. After his bath, you read to him from one of the books Dulce sent from America, and then sweep the kitchen while he plays in the bedroom with the puzzles and blocks Vilma just bring, also from Dulce. Books could be sent alone, but toys aren't likely to make it through customs "at all at all," Vilma had said, shaking her head in a long suck-teeth. "Is only thief they thiefing in that customs you hear? Thief the only custom them damn fools accustom."
After Sello clean and sweet and diapers change, playing quiet in the bedroom, you sweep the kitchen and parlor floor until the wood planks sing under the old straw broom. Out go the clouds of dust through the back door, which reminds you to feed the parrot, small and green in the big aluminum cage your cousin Panchita bring it in. "I know you care for it," she say to your sagging shoulders. "I found it on our mountain, I think the wing sore, and you know Mummy don't allow me to have no animal in the house." Panchita's mother was a woman from town who kept their Diego Martin home spotless and free of nonhuman life with a variety of pesticides she got from her shopping trips to Miami. Even the chameleons didn't escape her, though one had conveniently, and appropriately you thought, died in one of her fancy leather shoes. Even today you couldn't see the parrot without remembering the sight of Auntie Maxine bouncing around on one foot while holding the other, toe enmeshed with crushed lizard, and squealing. And so, like Rex, the black puppy, and Pepper, the old cat, the little fellow joined your crew of creatures needing someone to watch them.
You give the parrot some five-finger fruit and mango and some sunflower seeds. He whirls one black eye in your direction, still suspicious of your large brown figure. You run a hand through the short salt and pepper curls on your head and gesture toward the voluminous red-flowered shirt you are wearing, another gift from Dulce. Why she think you would wear a such a thing unless she give it, you don't know, but a gift is a gift. "See?" you tell the parrot. "I wearing my Sunday best only for you." The parrot is unimpressed, but hops down to peck at the seeds, twirling them on his black tongue to crack them just so. You sigh and go back into the house where Selwyn is waiting in the parlor.
"Chick? Chick?" he asks.
"Yes my dear, time to feed the chickens."
He runs ahead, out the front door, down the slanted wooden steps to the chicken coops on the side of the house, under the banana trees. His bare feet send up clouds of dusts in his wake. When they see him coming the chickens begin a soft clucking that sounds like the purr of a rainstorm. Selwyn gets the feed from the side of the coop and grabs it in his small fists, flailing his arms, opening his hands at just the right moment. The hens swirl around him kicking up dust and tickling him with their feathers until the rooster comes from behind the house and sends them cackling and scurrying. As he starts to eat, they converge again, and you watch the cloud of copper and black feathers, the flash of red combs and black eyes, the golden red-haired child throwing food in their midst, laughing in the midmorning sun.
When the chickens are fed, Selwyn goes down for his nap. He climbs onto the bed flops down and watches as you push two pillows and some sofa cushions around him to make a small fortress. The first time he slept alone in the bed he'd fallen out three times before you realized that he just would not stay. You were amazed by that, that staying on the bed while sleeping was learned. To know where your surface edges were while unconscious, know boundaries in your dreams. So now you make this wall for him, so he'll be safe while you work. Sello snuggles down and watches until you back out through the curtain a finger on your lips to shush. When you check back before going out to the yard, his eyes are closed, thumb in his mouth with the index finger scratching the bridge of his nose gently.
Today's customers are regulars: Mam Flora, Couteledge, Auntie Meiling and Shireen. They all buy one, two, or three chickens for the week, and take them live in a basket, except for Miss Merle, Auntie Maxine's neighbor from Diego Martin, who comes down to Petit Valley in a shiny car she always call her "automobile." You send Cedrick, Miss Agnes' son from next door to fetch your cousin Ramon to wring the necks for her, as she too fancy to do it herself. While you wait for Ramon, Miss Merle stay in she car, playing classical music on the radio, to stimulate the brain she say. You stand quietly in the road near her, to be polite, though you don't like the way her beady eyes rove all over your cut-short pants and that flowered shirt Dulce send, with a look like you covered in cow shit or some such. She smile at you in a way those ladies do, when they about to slit your throat with they mako words, always in somebody business. Miss Merle and them can't stay silent in the presence of another human being, class notwithstanding, for very long.
"So, Boysie, tell me Flora girl Fortune home from America come back to Petit Valley to live?"
"Yes Mam, she living just there down the road."
"Oh ho, close close! All you must have a lot to talk about, America and thing."
You don't say anything. Fortune and you have not exchanged more than ten words since her return, but words and Fortune is something that don't mix. Fortune say, "Words ruin," and then take your hands in hers and that was that.
Miss Merle, seeing no reply forthcoming, continue. "Well, maybe not. I know your sister Dulce there in America making a very nice life for she self. Studying dentistry and everything. Is a a pity your poor mother bless her soul ain't live to see it. But all you doing real good. You have this little business take over from your father and Dulce in America going to be a doctor!" Well, dental assistant, but you don't bother to correct Miss Merle.
"But that Fortune." Miss Merle look both ways up and down the street and in she rearview mirror to make sure the coast is clear, before leaning out the window to meet your eyes with her own murky black ones. "Boyboy, tell me a true true reason she come back from America so fast. That reason she live in that house all alone, nobody come, nobody go, no man, no friend nobody. You tell me Yvette, why is a woman look like that not have a man and no children to speak of? Taunting and tempting with she little shirts and breasts bouncing?" Beads of sweat form above Miss Merle's upper lip and spit flecks at the corners of her broken prune mouth. Then she sees Ramon and Cedrick approaching up the street and winds herself back into the car, breathing heavily.
"Tante, are you alright?" you ask, half amused, and a little worried for the state she's gotten herself into.
Staring straight ahead out the windshield, gripping the steering wheel, Miss Merle murmurs under her breath. "Obeah, I tell you, the girl is obeah woman or one ladiablesse, you mark my words Yvette, be careful with Dulce child!"
You lean into the car window and pat her shoulder, give her brown paper cheek a kiss. "Is alright Auntie, Devil Woman and thing, none of them happen here anymore. Don't worry about me and Sello." You hear the rhythmic squawking and the silence of Ramon catching the hens and killing them. He was always the fastest and the best at it of all his brothers. He brings the bodies in a basket out to the car.
"Thanks, cousin," you say as he puts them in the back seat.
"Eh eh!" exclaims Ramon to Miss Merle. "Auntie, what have you so frighten? Look like you see one jumbie!"
Miss Merle doesn't respond to his teasing except for one long suck-teeth. She puts her car into gear and drives off in a cloud of dust which leads Ramon to speculate on the rain that has been long in coming. You give him twenty dollars and he heads home, whistling.
Now it's past noon and too hot for business or money, but you add up the dollars in your head anyway. Forty-five dollars a chicken, you've made enough for today, anyone else would be extra. And besides, is almost time for Fortune to come home from her job at the market in town.
You close your eyes, feel the beads of sweat on your forehead, breathe the heat and tobacco from your own upper lip. The trees sway in the yard and on the hill across the road---cocoa, flamboyant, mango, jack fruit, and banana---just enough breeze to make a whisper of cool and force the leaves sing. From time to time a neighbor passes, or a cousin, on foot or in a wheezy car, and you wave them "Good afternoon."
Then here she comes, slightly slower of step than in the morning, eyes open not as wide, sandals still slap slapping the dusty road. On her head she balances a parcel must be brought from the market and a next one in the hand opposite the hand bag. She fills your horizon with her colors and packages.
You remember coming to her after midnight and leaving before dawn, the timeless embrace between. When she knelt above you, her hair was a net to catch the shadows, she coaxed out the light within you to bursting. The land and hollow of her, the slackness of her belly from the child she left in New York, the salt in the crevice of the backs of her knees, in the crow's feet near her eyes, released. Afterward, you slept lightly enough to hear Sello if he cried out, and, for those few hours, you listened to her breathe. Before roostercall, you slipped out her back door and behind Auntie Pricille's house to your own. Her jasmine smell enveloped you, you still tasted her on your lips.
As she draws even to your gate, she nods you a greeting, a hint of a smile beyond the tiredness at the corners of her eyes. I will see you under the belt of Orion, it says. I will see you when the rooster is still. When the lily closes its eyes for the day, and the old women sleep upright in their easy chairs, hold me like milk in a river of stones. Wash me in stars, I will be your good Fortune.
$100 and Nothing!
BY J. CALIFORNIA COOPER
Where we live is not a big town like some and not a little town like some, but somewhere in the middle, like a big little town. Things don't happen here very much like other places, but on the other hand, I guess they do. Just ever once in awhile, you really pay tention to what is going on around you. I seen something here really was something! Let me tell you!
Was a woman, friend of mind born here and her mama birthed her and gave her to the orphan house and left town. Her mama had a sister, but the sister had her own and didn't have time for no more mouths, she said. So the orphan home, a white one, had to keep her. They named her "Mary." Mary. Mary live there, well, "worked" there bout fifteen years, then they let her do outside work too and Mary saved her money and bought an acre of land just outside town for $5.00 and took to plantin it and growing things and when they were ready, she bring them into town and sell em. She made right smart a money too, cause soon as she could, she bought a little house over there at the end of the main street, long time ago, so it was cheap, and put up a little stall for her vegetables and added chickens and eggs and all fresh stuff, you know. Wasn't long fore she had a little store and added more things.
Now the mens took to hanging round her and things like that! She was a regular size woman, she had real short hair and little skinny bow legs, things like that, but she was real, real nice and a kind person . . . to everybody.
Anyway, pretty soon, one of them men with a mouth full of sugar and warm hands got to Mary. I always thought he had a mouth full of "gimme" and a hand full of "reach," but when I tried to tell her, she just said, with her sweet soft smile, "maybe you just don't know him, he alright." Anyway, they got married.
Now he worked at Mr. Charlie's bar as a go-for and a cleanup man. After they got married I thought he would be working with Mary, in the field and in the store, you know. But he said he wasn't no field man and that that store work was woman's work lessen he stand at the cash register. But you know the business wasn't that fast so wasn't nobody gonna be standing up in one spot all day doing nothing over that cigar box Mary used for a cash register.
Anyway, Mary must have loved him cause she liked to buy him things, things I knew that man never had; nice suits and shirts and shoes, socks and things like that. I was there once when she was so excited with a suit to give him and he just looked at it and flipped its edges and told her to "hang it up and I'll get to it when I can," said, "I wouldn'ta picked that one, but you can't help it if you got no eye for good things!" Can you magine!? That man hadn't had nothing!! I could see he was changing, done spit that sugar out!!
Well, Mary's business picked up more and more and everybody came to get her fresh foods. It was a clean little store and soon she had a cash register and counters and soda water and canned goods and oh, all kinds of stuff you see in the big stores. She fixed that house up, too, and doing alright!! But, she didn't smile so much anymore . . . always looking thoughtful and a little in pain inside her heart. I took to helping her round the store and I began to see why she had changed. HE had changed! Charles, her husband! He was like hell on wheels with a automatic transmission! She couldn't do nothing right! She was dumb! Called her store a hole in the wall! Called her house "junk!" Said wasn't none of that stuff "nothing."
But I notice with the prosperity he quit working for Mr. Charlie and got a car and rode around and walked around and played around! Just doing nothing! And when people go to telling Mary how smart she was and how good she doing and they glad she there, I heard him say at least a hundred times, "I could take $100 and nothing and have more than this in a year!!" Didn't like to see her happy and smiling! I think he was jealous, but he coulda been working right beside her! When he married her it was his business, too! I heard her tell him that and guess what he answered? "I don't need that hole in the wall with stuff sitting there drawing flies, I'll think of something of my own!" Lord, it's so many kinds of fools in the world you just can't keep up with them!!
I went home to lunch with Mary once and he got mad cause we woke him up as we was talking softly and eating. Lord, did he talk about Mary! Talked about her skinny legs and all under her clothes and her kinky hair. She tried to keep it up but she worked and sweat too hard, for him! She just dropped her head deeper down into her plate and I could see she had a hard time swallowing her food.
Then, she try to buy him something nice and he told her to give it to the Salvation Army cause he didn't want it and that he was going to give everything he had to the Salvation Army that she had picked cause it ain't what he liked! Ain't he something! Somebody trying to be good to you and you ain't got sense enough to understand kindness and love.
She cook good food for him, too, and he mess with it and throw it out saying he don't like her cooking, he feel like eating out! Now!
Just let me tell you! She want a baby. He say he don't want no nappy head, skinny, bow-leg baby and laughed at her.
She want to go out somewhere of a evening, he say he ain't going nowhere with the grocery bag woman!
I didn't mean to, but once I heard her ask him why he slept in the other bedroom stead of with her one night---she had three bedrooms---and he said he couldn't help it, sometime he rather sleep with a rock, a big boulder, than her. She came back in with tears in her eyes that day, but she never complain, not to me anyway and I was her best friend.
Anyway, Mary took to eatin to get fat on her legs and bout five or six months, she was fat! Bout 200 pounds but her legs was still small and skinny and bowed. He really went to talking bout her then, even in the store, front of other people. Called her the Hog! Said everybody else's Hog was a Cadillac but his was his wife! And laugh! He all the time laughing at her. They never laugh together, in front of me, anyway.
So, one day Mary say she going to take care some business for a few days and she went off alone. He say "Go head, do what she want to do." He don't care bout what she do! "Do whatever!" Just like that! Whatever! Whatever! Didn't finish it like other people do, like "Whatever you want to," just, "Whatever!" I guess he heard it somewhere and thought it was smart to say it like that. Well, when Mary come back, I coulda fell out cause she brought one of her cousins, who was a real looker; long hair, big busts, and big legs and a heart full of foolishness. Maybelline was her name and she worked in the store all day, I can't lie about that, she sure did help Mary, but where she got the strength, I don't know, cause she worked the men all night! In three or four months she had gone through all the legible men in town, some twice, and then all the married illegible ones, some of them twice too. She was a go-getter, that Maybelline. But, she did help Mary and Mary seemed to need more help cause she was doing poorly in her health. She was sighing, tired and achy all the time now.
But she still took care of her business, the paper work and all, you know. Once, I saw Charles come into the store and she needed him to sign a few things, if you please, and he took them papers and bragged to the fellas in the store that "See, I got to sign things around here to keep things goin." He didn't even read them, just waved his hand and signed them and handed them to Mary without even looking at her, like she was a secretary or something, and went on out and drove off with a big grin looking 50¢ worth of importance, to me anyway.
Well, Mary just kep getting worse off. I told her to see a doctor and she said she had in the big city and she had something they couldn't cure but she wish I wouldn't tell nobody, so I didn't. But I felt so bad for her I loved her. I knew whatever was killing her was started by a heavy sad heart, shaking hands, a sore spirit, hot tears, deep, heavy sighs, hurtful swallows and oh, you know, all them kinda things.
Soon she had to stay home in bed. Wasn't no long sickness though, I could see she was going fast. Near the end, one day I saw her out in her back yard picking up rocks and I knew the dear soul must be losing her mind also and I took her back in the house and tried to get her to let loose the rocks and throw them away, but she wouldn't let go. She was sick but she was strong in her hands, from all that work, I guess, she just held on to them, so I said, "Shit, you ain't never had too much you wanted to hold on to so hold the rocks if that what you want!" And she did.
Now, she asked Charles to take Maybelline back to the city to get the rest of Maybelline's things to move down there and Charles didn't mind at all cause I had seen him looking that Maybelline upways, downways, and both sideways and I could tell he liked what he saw and so could Maybelline cause she was always posing or prancing. Anyway, they went for a day, one night and back the next day. Before they went, I saw Charles sit on the side of Mary's bed and, first time I ever saw him do it, take her hand and hold it, then bend down and kiss her on the forehead. Musta been thinking bout what he was going to do to Maybelline while they was gone, but anyway, I'm glad he did do it. It brought tears to Mary's eyes. Then, they were gone and before they got back, Mary was gone.
I have to stop a minute cause everytime I think of that sweet woman . . .
She had told me what to do, the funeral and all, so I had taken care of some of those things and Mary was already gone to the funeral home and the funeral was the next day.
When they come home or back, whatever!, all they had to do was get ready to go to the parlor. I don't know when or nothing like that, but when Charles went to the closet to get something to wear, the closet was bare, except for a note: "Dear Charles," it say, "They gone to the Salvation Army just like you always say you want. Yours truly, Mary."
Now that man run all over trying to find some way to get them back but they was nice things and somebody had done bought them or either kept them, you know what I mean? Then, he rush over to the bank to get some money and found out his name wasn't on the account no more! The manager gave him a letter say: "Dear Charles, You told me so many times you don't need me or nothing that is mine. Not going to force you to do nothing you don't want to do! Always, Mary."
His named was replaced with Maybelline's so naturally he went to see her at the store. She say sure, and give him $50 and he say, "Come go with me and help me pick it out," and she say she ain't got time. So he told her take time. She say. "I got to take care this business and close the store for the funeral." He say, "I'll close the store, this ain't your business to worry about." She say, "This my store." He say, "Are you crazy?" She say, "I ain't crazy. I'm the boss!" He say, "I'm Mary's husband, what's here is mine!" She say, "That's true, but this store ain't hers, it's mine! I bought it from her!" He say, "With what? You can't afford to buy no store as nice as this!" She say, "Mary lent me the money; it's all legal; lawyer and everything!" He say, "How you gon' pay her back? You got to pay me, bitch!" She say, "No . . . no . . . when Mary died, all debt clear." He say, "I'll see about that!" She say, "Here, here the lawyer's name and number." He snatched it and left. He musta found out she was right and it was legal cause I never heard no more about it.
Now everybody bringing food and all, the house was full, but I was among the last to go and when Charles got ready to go to bed he say he wasn't going to sleep in the room Mary died in and he went into the third bedroom. I heard him holler and went in there and the covers was pulled back and the bed was full of rocks . . . and a note say: "Dear Charles, Tried to get what you wanted, couldn't carry no boulder, honest. Yours, Mary." Me, I just left.
Next morning he opens the food cupboard and it was almost empty, but for a note and note say: "Dear Charles, here is 30 days supply of food. Waste that too. Yours, Mary." I'm telling you, his life was going upside down. He and Maybelline stayed in that house alone together and that old Charles musta had something going on that was alright cause pretty soon they were married. I knew he thought he was marrying that store again, but let me tell you, Maybelline was pretty and fleshy but she couldn't count and didn't like to pay bills or the workers on that little piece of land of Mary's and pretty soon she was broke and the store was closed cause nothing wasn't in there but some old brown dead lettuce and turned up carrots and empty soda bottles and tired squashy tomatoes didn't nobody want. Charles didn't have nothing but an almost empty house. They cussed and fought and she finally left saying she wasn't really his wife cause she didn't have no divorce from her last husbands! So there!
Now, that ought to be all but let me finish telling you this cause I got to go now and see bout my own life.
Exactly a year passed from the day Mary had passed and a white lady and a black lady came to Mary's house with some papers and I heard a lot of hollering and shouting after a bit and Charles was putting them out. They waved those papers and said they would be back . . . and they did, a week later, with the Sheriff. Seems like Mary had give Charles one year to live there in the house and then it was to go, all legally, to be a orphan home for black children.
Welllll, when everything was over, I saw him sitting outside in his car, kinda raggedy now, just sitting there looking at the house. I took a deep breath and went to my dresser and got out the envelope Mary had give me to give him one year from her death, at this time. I looked at it awhile thinking bout all that had happened and feeling kind of sorry for Charles till I remembered we hoe our own rows and what we plants there, we picks. So I went on out and handed him the envelope through the car window. He rolled me red eyes and a dirty look and opened the envelope and saw a one hundred dollar bill and . . . a note. He read it with a sad, sad look on his face. "Dear Charles, here is $100. Take all the nothing you want and in a year you'll have everything. Yours truly, your dead wife, Mary." Well, he just sat there a minute, staring at the money and the note, then started his car up and slowly drove away without so much as "good-by." Going somewhere to spend that money I guess, or just stop and stare off into space . . . Whatever!
Are You Experienced?
Way back in 1969, there was this girl named Josephine, a Negro by race, but pale as butter, with straight black hair that fell to her waist. Everybody called her Jo.
She was married to a pretty boy named Charles, a failed musician, whom once upon a time she had loved something awful. Now she only needed him.
One cold week in December he decided Jo wasn't pretty enough, white enough, woman enough for him. He blew her week's earnings on the horses, and disappeared. Rumor had it that he had run off with a white chick named Barbara, which was certainly possible. White girls were always falling for him.
He left Jo without even a dollar for food or diapers for their three year old son, Diego.
She trembled with rage as she called the person she always called in moments like this: her best childhood friend, Carol Anne, who lived in the city.
"Girl," Carol Anne sighed when she'd finished her story, "You gone and married a bullshit artist. You need to leave his ass. You need to get your behind to the city, today."
"But what about the kid?" Jo said, sniffling, eyeing the boy where he sat banging blocks across the room.
"Leave him with Charlie's mother," Carol Anne said, without pause. "That's what grandma's are for. She'll spoil the child senseless and he won't notice anything's wrong. Give yourself a few days, Jo. I'll show you what you're missing. I'll show you a good time."
So Jo, whispering curses under her breath at her missing husband, did as her friend had told her. She packed a bag of clothes and diapers for Diego and brought him to his Grandma Louise on the other side of town. The old woman did not ask questions. She knew her son was no good. Jo told her she'd be gone a few days. Would the kid be okay with her? The old woman was happy to take him in. And he seemed content to sit in front of her black-and-white television, shoving cookies in his mouth. He did not pull his eyes away from the cartoon to say goodbye.
Jo left for New York that afternoon without man or child and, when the bus pulled away from the depot, she felt her rage transform into a giddy, girlish excitement, something she had not felt in a long, long time. She glimpsed her face in the window beside her and remembered that she was not bad looking. She said to her own reflection, "Two can play at this game."
Jo's girlfriend, Carol Anne, lived the life she had not chosen. Carol Anne was happily unmarried, childless, and worked designing costumes for rock musicians and Broadway musicals. She was a caramel colored girl with a light brown afro and the long muscular legs of a track star. The two women had grown up together in the nation's capital. They'd spent their teenage years plotting their escape from what they called "Boojie-dom." They considered themselves sisters---fellow conspirators in their escape from that high yellow prison.
They were both considered good looking, in a similar hinkety way. Lucky for them they had never had the same taste in men. No cause for conflict.
Carol Anne had loved white boys from the beginning. In their arms she could be anybody, a mystery girl with no past and no discernable future. While brothers could see right through her, with white boys she could affect accents, don costumes, rewrite history for herself---and never be called out on her lies. With this one she was the daughter of a Brazilian sailor. With that one she was the half-caste child of an Indian aristocrat and a Nigerian princess. With white boys, her life could be theatre. They encouraged her antics. Brothers, on the other hand, were always trying to make her behave.
Jo stuck closer to home. She had never much liked white boys. They had always seemed to her an alien species---their bodies could stand out in the dark. She had always had a preference for brothers. Not the uptight, Boojie boys she had grown up with, but men two shades darker than she, revolutionaries, who could teach her a thing or two about the world, the streets.
And so it had seemed strange that in the end she'd married a brother who wasn't dark at all. The moody and mysterious Charles Moore was paler than a brown paper bag. But what he lacked in melanin, he made up for with attitude. He was a jazz musician when she met him, with high ideas about how he was gonna conquer the world without ever trying. He was a first generation mulatto, the son of a brown-skinned housecleaner mother, and an anonymous white father. Jo had seen romance in his tragedy, splendor in his split roots.
Jo's family saw none of the allure. They had worked so hard to raise Jo up right, to send her to college, and at the end of the day, she had come home with this ragamuffin, bohemian, misfit bastard. Everything about him rubbed them wrong: the way he smoked those small brown cigarettes incessantly, cupped his mouth when he inhaled, the way he talked in a soft vague murmur about "the trouble with whitey." Jo's mother told her after dinner the night they met him: "Josephine, you can't trust them mixed bloods. They have too much anger, too much conflict running through their blood. Find yourself a good colored boy."
But Jo would hear none of it. She'd had enough of those over-bred puppy dogs her mother trotted out for her inspection---nice boys who were dry as toast at the end of the day.
When she'd told her mother she was marrying Charles, and dropping out of college to become a jazz singer, her mother seemed tired of fighting. She'd simply wrung her hands, looked heavenward, and said with a miserable smile: "Well at least he's got good hair. At least you'll make pretty babies."
In the early days of their union, Charles and Jo had been a team making music around the outskirts of the capital, and later in Boston at a small crowded jazz club on Tremont Street. But from the beginning it was clear: Jo's voice was better than Charles's playing. It wasn't that Charlie didn't have talent. He did, but it was talent without discipline. And he didn't shine the way Jo did on stage. The moment she took the stage, a hush would fall over the audience and her voice, smoky and androgynous, would fill the space with a remote yearning that could never be filled. Listening to her sing made one long for something indecipherable. Charles's horn, behind her, was just a background tune for her voice, nothing in itself. After a set, the boys and the girls would flock to the stage to compliment her. Charles would sit at the sidelines, rubbing a dirty cloth against his horn, glowering at his wife.
At first Jo had wanted to believe Charlies's failure was due to the alcohol or some inner torment that prevented him from being his best. She wanted to believe the reasons for his failure were complicated, traced back to his absent father and poverty-stricken youth.
But then one day, after a particularly bad show, it struck her: Charles was lazy. That was why he would never be great. He fancied himself a genius, and maybe he was, but he would never be more than mediocre. She had seen it so clearly she stopped breathing for a moment. Some people, she'd realized with a flash of lucidity, fall with a crash. Others, like Charlie, fall slowly, gently and slowly as a feather to their demise, so gradually they barely notice it happening. One day, they wake up, and they've hit the bottom. She thought, staring at her husband across the smoky nightclub air, that she would rather crash and burn any day of the week. There was nothing more horrifying to her than mediocrity. Nothing worse than a slow demise.
But she was loyal. She stuck by his side. Even when she had to stop singing, start working as a music teacher at a local public school to support them both and Charles had gotten a job as a cab driver (he said he wanted to feel he was moving somewhere, though he never got out of the car). Most nights, though, she came home to find him lying on the couch with a bottle of triple sec in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Sometimes, when he was sober and they would take the cab out and drive to the country, pretend they were really going on a trip. They would blast music, pass a joint between them, and giggle about the people they'd known in their club days, the wild things they'd seen.
But most of the time it wasn't like that. Most of the time they were fighting.
It didn't turn violent until after Diego was born.
The first time it happened she thought he'd lost control of his hand. She thought it had convulsed and ended up flying across her face. Holding her cheek she had stared at him silently as he turned away and shuffled back to the living room, muttering, "Shit," under his breath. The second time it happened was outside a club, where he'd just given his lousiest and last performance. Like before he'd back-handed her, but this time when she fell he gave her a swift kick in the belly for good measure.
It was evening when Jo arrived at Carol Anne's crumbling studio in the Bowery. Carol Anne gave her a big perfumey hug and told Jo to forget about the Failed Musician, to lighten up and smoke a joint. "Girl, we're goin out tonight. A party. New York style baby. I'm gonna show you how the other half live."
She did Jo's makeup, dressed her up in a rainbow mini dress that showed off her slight figure, and braided her hair so she looked like a Navajo princess. Jo missed her baby boy with a pain that gnawed at her stomach, but she did as Carol Anne told her, and tried to feel her freedom.
The two women shared a joint and reminisced about their girlhood in D.C.---the clothes pins on their noses, the plaits in their hair---how far they'd wandered from all that. Linking arms, they'd leaned in towards one another against the icy wind, as they went out to meet the night.
As soon as they arrived at the party, in a tall doorman building overlooking Central Park, Jo felt out of place. The people there were in another league---dazzling and decadent, famous or at least pretending to be. She felt small and brown and dingy. As she stared at a blonde woman spinning circles in a sequined mini dress, she thought that she belonged at home, with her Failed Musician, and her little boy, Diego, who smelled of strawberry's behind his ears. But when she looked for Carol Anne, she was gone, swallowed up in the throngs, so Jo stood in a corner and anxiously sipped her champagne.
Later, somewhat tipsy, Jo wandered down the hall in search of a bathroom. Peeking in a door she saw a gaggle of white people surrounding one black man who sat like a king on a throne, his head tilted back and an expression that teetered between amusement and boredom. Jimi Hendrix. She recognized him immediately. She had listened to "Foxy Lady" fourteen times in a row one night. She had wanted to go to Woodstock, but the Failed Musician had said he didn't want to hang around with a bunch of filthy, greasy haired honkies who smelled like wet dogs.
The people who surrounded him looked like industry types, sycophants and handlers. They were talking to him excitedly, but he looked bored, smoking at tiny stub of his joint and tapping his foot impatiently. His heavy eyes caught hers at the door. He smiled, a strange, familiar smile, as if he had known her already, for years. The gaggle of white folks turned around and smiled at her as well, waved her toward them, as if they were offering her up to this sullen prince. She stepped inside the room and stood before him speechless. Everyone else was silent too, as if they were waiting for his verdict. His eyes roved up and down her slim yellow body, until, finally, he winked and said, "Hey sister. You lost?"
They slept together three times. Once that night, in the king sized water bed of the stranger who owned the apartment, and twice the next night, in his hotel suite at the Ritz. He said she reminded him of a world he had nearly forgotten. He traced his finger over her wide brown nipples and said she was a lovely little slip of a thing. She told him she was married to a Failed Musician who drank too much and sometimes slapped her upside her head. Naked beside him in the big sloshing bed, she showed him pictures of her little boy, Diego, and he admired the child, and said, giggling, he looked like a wet back. Before falling to sleep each night, she sang to Jimi with that smoky boy's voice of hers, and he told her, sleepily, that she had a voice that could make a grown man cry. On the third night, he asked her to come with him on the road. He told her he could make her a star. She only laughed, sadly, and told him it was too late for all that. She had a boy to go back to.
Then he was gone, and Jo was on a bus back home, where her husband had returned, tail between his legs, white girl discarded, ready to make peace. That first night back, she picked Diego up at his grandmother's house & the boy crawled all over her, kissing her face and pulling her hair, as if he were a hungry bird, and for a moment she was glad to be home.
The Failed Musician, strangely, did not suspect anything had gone on in his absence. He thought she had been pining for him at Carol Anne's apartment. Only later, much later, after her face had been smashed and put back together, would she utter the name of Jimi Hendrix.
Nine months passed, and Jo grew. When the Failed Musician slapped her, she didn't even think of her own face, but only of her belly, shielding this child. On a wet September night in 1970, the baby was born at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Jo had been to that hospital two other times during her pregnancy---once at four months, for spot bleeding, and once, at six months, for a broken nose. Now, on her third trip in nine months, she gave birth to a red faced, howling, slippery, squinty eyed little thing who she wanted to name Cheyenne, but whom her husband insisted on calling Mabel, after his great aunt.
The child was nothing like her brother. She did not like to be touched, for one thing. While Diego clung to his mother, begged to sleep beside her at night, the little girl wiggled and squirmed from both her mother's and father's touch, as if she had her eyes on some other destiny from the start. While Diego hid under the table, sobbing and begging, "Stop, stop," whenever the Failed Musician went after Jo with his fist, the little girl would just watch them, study them, solemnly, unblinking, in such a way that seemed to shame even the Failed Musician himself.
Jo noticed that this was how the girl watched everybody: her friends, her teachers, the whole world---from a distance, wide-eyed, unblinking, as if committing an image that would soon be gone.
Jo loved the little girl, but feared her gaze. Whenever the girl stared at her, Jo would see herself---painfully clear---the way she walked perpetually tilted to the side, as if warding off an invisible blow. Watching herself through that child's eyes she saw that she was doing what she had swore never to do: she was falling slowly, in an endless gentle descent toward a place where she could not recognize herself.
Over the years, she studied her daughter closely for signs of the dead musical genius, looked for the features that would prove her royal lineage. And sometimes, when Jo was drunk and bruised and angry, she would drag the girl down into the darkened living room and make her dance with her, sleepy, confused, to "Purple Haze," until the sun came up and the high wore down and the truth shone through the curtains-revealing the Failed Musician in her daughter's pale face.
Group Solo
Dad?" asked my son James. "How should you tell someone you don't love them anymore?"
James is an actor. He's on an afternoon soap opera that airs after the game show which, ironically, just fired me from my job as host. His character, named Radcliffe, is a spy who speaks seven languages (none of which, I like to tease him, is Ebonics) and Ebony magazine says he is rumored to be one of the highest paid blacks on TV. This explains the luxurious expanse of his lower--Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking the entire southern tip of Manhattan on one end and the entire northern tip of Manhattan (and some of New Jersey) on the other end. His mother and I worked the Chitlin' Circuit for years before prime-time TV ever thought to call us; James went right from our house to Vassar to daytime drama and this elaborate spread. During his four years at Vassar, as a black boy in thrall to "art" and "acting" and "the classics," he was, I thought, completely, adolescently loathsome. But I loved him, as I love him now. Besides, I believe the long hours and aesthetic vulgarity of daytime television have humbled him. Which was clear to me when he said, "Dad, how should you tell someone you don't love them anymore?"
This was the first time James had ever brought up his love life to me. Other than the day he told us he was gay when he was eighteen years old, he's never talked about his romantic involvements. I said, "Your mother is the only woman I've ever loved and I never had to tell her that."
"But Mom---"
"What?"
"I just thought you and Mom had, uh, done things."
"We have," I told him, offering a smile. "With each other."
"Oh."
James is a good actor, but he is not a good liar. He is not good at hiding things; he is not good at keeping secrets. I've spent a lot of time at James' apartment since I was fired from the show, my way of still spending time in Manhattan instead of brooding in Long Island. I like the track lighting, glaring like spotlights, and the silk curtains draped over the windows like they're hiding a stage; the dazzling stereo set-up where I play my Motown hits at full blast, the wall of fame hung with magazine covers featuring James' handsome face. I love it here. But I haven't spent a lot of time with James, considering his long hours on the set. Now here we were talking, spending quality time together and he wanted to talk about how to end a relationship. My handsome son, who is not a good liar, was trying to tell me something.
"This isn't about you, is it?" I said to him. "You trying to tell me something?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know."
He flipped a page in the script he'd been studying. Finally he said, "You need to find a job, Dad." He shifted on the couch, pulling his bare feet up underneath his behind. "Everything flows from work. You used to tell me that, remember?"
James had been speaking to his mother. "You been talking to your mother?"
"You need to get a job, Dad."
That was two weeks ago. My name is Dennis Manning, but the woman who cuts my hair calls me Nissy, "short for Dennis, you know, like a nickname," she says, smacking orange-scented gum in my ear. "You know what I like, Nissy? You're kind of famous and you're the only guy who comes in here and asks specifically"---pronounced "pacifically"---"for me. I really like that." She talks the whole time she cuts my hair, offering long-winded tales of domestic life, about her pit bulls Kinky and Joe, and the constant loss of the remote control at the hands of Cyril, the three-year-old second cousin she baby-sits three nights a week. I don't know her age, but I assume she must be older than twenty-one, yet younger than twenty-five: She goes to a bar named The Misty Blue every weekend for dancing and drinking, and she refers to her boss Lyle (the quarterback to my tackle senior year of high school, Class of '64) as the Old Guy.
"Now that you ain't working, Nissy, you should come by the Misty Blue. You'd like it. You'd see all those guys from your high school days. They can dance." She draws out the word dance until it actually seems to be dancing on the surface of her tongue. "You know what record I love? That old record by the Miracles. 'Tears of a Clown.' I bet you like that record. You should see the brothers getting down at the Misty Blue, man. I didn't think old guys would be able to get down like that, but oh"---and her voice goes up and up, as the razor buzzes closer to my right ear, drowning out her words, and I wonder if the glory of over-fifty carousers will some day cause me to become right-earless. But soon her voice softens and the razor subsides, and Jackie---that's her name---is extending a mirror behind me with one long-nailed hand and spinning the raised chair with the other, providing me with a multi-angled view of myself. She knows that I'll be satisfied---I'm the only guy that asks "pacifically" for her---but those are the rules and I follow them as I follow the ebb and flow of her outlandish stories, as I followed Lyle onto the field in those autumns long long ago. I pay Jackie, tipping her five, and she winks. "See you in ten days, Nissy," she's says, dropping the bills into the pocket of the billowy smock she wears. For a second I wonder what her body is like underneath that sheath of cotton speckled with the detritus of my graying temples. "Who's next?" she says, looking around the crowded shop. But there won't be a next, because the too-cool teenagers sprawled across the patent leather benches, flipping through the pages of sports magazines and inky tabloids, wait for Lyle, oldschool football hero and style-cutter to the hip, high school elite. So, with no takers, Jackie just sweeps away the leftovers of my trim, picks up her own magazine---usually a car rag---and settles into one of the low-slung, beauty treatment chairs that tilt back toward a sink, and waits, I often wonder, through the ten days until I return.
"Come dance sometime," she says to me as I head out the door. "I'm gonna miss you dancing on TV." She's referring to Group/Solo, the game show I hosted for fifteen years, until last season, they, amid tabloid rumors of my forthcoming nervous breakdown (rumors that I only wanted to dance with the guests and had no interest in hosting the show), the new network regime---a green, ragtag assortment of twenty-eight-year olds who'd decided my style of hosting was, not "current" enough---put an old horse out of his low-rating 'ed misery. And I had no defense. The best part of the show did come at the end, when there'd be a group solo, in which I'd dance with the grand-prize winner. The house band would strike up some old standard and the winner and I would twirl away, as the credits rolled, past the gift displays and flashy game board. The new host, my youthful replacement who came to fame as a male cheerleader at USC, continues to dance, but he dances with younger contestants who swing and jack their taut, toned bodies into more current forms of social posturing. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. I am not like Lyle, who thinks he hasn't aged, who has parlayed his years of experience and local celebrity into fashioning those young heads into visions of state-of-the-art black teenhood. Then again, growing old gracefully might work in the 'hood, but it has no place on TV.
After I leave the barbershop, I drive through the ragged remains of my hometown, down Water Street, the main drag, teeming with empty storefronts and devoid, it seems, of the life that existed there in my youth. I pass the old fabric store my father once owned, where the first publicity stills of Gail and me, the dancing couple, were taken years and years ago. (I still have the local newspaper clipping: "From Football Star to TV Star"). The "Black Astaire and Rogers" we were called, two hoofing black high school sweethcarts, drawn together by an obsession with dancing and great books. We tapped and tangoed our way across the nation's stages, through the Civil Rights movement and Black Power, through blaxploitation filcks and disco, dressed in the sequined and spangled two-pieces my mother sewed in my father's back room. After my father died the fabric store became a Jamaican roti house, then a bustling Chinese take-out joint people don't any more but they do go out to eat. Now it's just a hollow building, waiting for its next incarnation as a Latin grocery emporium. I drive past the curving line of workers and shoppers waiting for the first early-morning Water Street bus to carry them away from this listless relic of a town to more upscale places burgeoning with opportunity and some taste of liveliness. Then I'm on Exceptional Boulcvard, once the sight of a colorful and bouyant parade in my honor, heading toward the home---some say mansion---I have in the hills of the next town.
My wife's morning cab sits in the very center of the circular driveway. I pull in behind it and blow the horn. Gail comes out of the house, pauses on the steps to put envelopes in the mailbox, yells something back to Agatha, the maid, then comes over to the car. "Don't forget dinner tonight," she says. Her body and voice are here with me in Long Island, but her mind is already in the office in Manhattan, her heart somewhere I'll never guess. "Are you listening to me, Dennis? We're meeting James at seven. We agreed this should happen tonight, so have Agatha set the alarm so you'll be up by five." She smells of lilacs; her pearls tap against the half-raised car window as she leans to kiss me goodbye, turning her ear to me to avoid smudging her makeup. "Don't forget. You said you'd be there." Then she turns, tall and graceful on the edge of her heels, and gets into the cab, off to make the 9:15 am train. I watch the cab drive away, then head into the house, through the dark foyer swathed in the fragrance of Gail's lilac perfume, to the skylighted kitchen, where Agatha stands at the stove and moves bacon around a frying pan with a long-tined fork. The sizzle of the grease competing with the blare of the TV on the counter. Agatha smiles at me, as she often does these days, a little sadly it seems, like she knows that the war's over and she has to serve bacon and eggs to the lone casualty right on the site of battle.
"You're on again today," she says, with a hand on her hip and a nod toward the loud TV.
There I am, on the Game Show Network, a celebrity guest on The $25,000 Pyramid, sitting in the Winner's Circle, facing an anxious-looking, red-headed woman in a polka-dot dress. I'm leaning forward in my seat, yelling out a list of words to her, "groceries," I say, "dry cleaning," some "ums" and some "uhs," and then, in a burst of inspiration, I say, "a spare tire," and she shouts back at me "Things in a car trunk!" And I nod, and she jumps from her seat and we're hugging and Dick Clark (who never ever gets old; how old was he when we taped that?) comes over to the Winner's Circle and offers his congratulations. Cut to commercial.
"That was 1979," I tell Agatha.
"I know," she says. "You ripped that corduroy jacket right after you got home."
Cable TV, the funhouse mirror that talks back to retired TV performers like me, televising like some kind of cathode-ray Dorian Gray portrait brought to life. In the months since my firing I'd seen my younger self on The Love Boat (as the jewel thief cousin of Isaac the bartender), Charlie's Angels (as the prosecutor whose wife is seeing another man), on Hollywood Squares ("Which state is the Iditarod in?" I'm asked. "A frozen state," I reply, and the audience roars with laughter.) There I was on Match Game ("Freddie believed that the only way to make dogs like him better was to dress up as a BLANK." The contestant's answer was "A can of dog food." My answer, along with Richard Dawson and Brett Sommers, was "Fire Hydrant"). And there, between Patty Duke and John Astin and Mr. and Mrs. Phyllis Diller, were Gail and I together on Tattletales ("What's the one thing you hate most about your husband?" the wives were asked. Gail's answer: "The way Dennis snores." We got one hundred points for the Blue Section.) Who would have thought, I'd asked Gail one night---while we watched ourselves on a Carol Burnett Show rerun on the Comedy Channel---that Cable TV, this threat to the Big 3 Networks that had kept us in business, this wave of the media future, would actually become a clearinghouse for the old network shows it threatened to replace? She just shrugged her shoulders and said, "Can you please turn the channel? Sex and the City's about to come on."
I eat Agatha's bacon and eggs and drift up to bed to sleep until noon, to have one of the mean daytime dreams that I've been having lately.
My dream.
Picture this: a woman, my wife, honey-colored, just over fifty years old. She's wearing a tapered plaid skirt with a matching jacket, padded shoulders accentuating the cinched waist that she tends to diligently with daily sit-ups and diet pills. Her hair is swept up from her neck, poised there with a barrette that she'd covered herself the night before with the remaining scraps of her outfit's fabric. She likes everything to match. She stands in the center of a moving subway car, the A train swooshing downtown toward her son's Greenwich Village apartment, hanging onto the metal passenger bar so as not to tumble into the unsuspecting lap of the gentleman reading the Post seated directly beneath her. She wants a seat. She's tired from the daily PR grind of lunches and conferences and the metaphorical prostitution it entails, but no one offers her a seat---not the gentleman with the Post, not the teenager in hightops, nor the man she recognizes from the suite of offices next to her own expensive suite of office space. This lack of courtesy doesn't really bother her though; chivalry died, she told me once, with the interment of King Tut. She realizes (or rationalizes) that with her heels and her brown auburn-tinted hair and slightly tight-fitting suit hiding her age she could easily pass for thirty, thirty-five even. But sometimes she wishes she weren't so, so---a word doesn't even come to her. She wishes that the youthful zest that gets her extramarital affairs and whistles on the street could disappear the moment she appeared on the subway train. Because no one offers a young woman a seat. But this also refreshes her, catapults her into new reasons for striving harder . . . or so she says.
She likes everything to match. But, as she said to me, she and I don't match anymore.
Just after my dismissal from the game show, Gail (and I) had a party, a cocktail thing to which everyone came: television people glued to their Nokias like the tiny cell phones held the secret of life; vulgar young music business-types that Gail associates with at work, their boxer-clad asses gaping out of baggy jeans; nosy starstruck neighborhood boors bent on being impressed; and the new breed of nameless, free-drink--drinking wannabes looking to make names for themselves.
It really was Gail's party; no one wanted to talk about my recent departure from their professional entertainment ranks. While she waltzed around the house, floor to floor, guest to guest, I planted myself near the bar, chatting mainly with the nervous catering administrator who often interrupted our boundlessly empty conversation with snide orders to his celebrity-gazing staff. Gail glowed in these situations, and because she glowed, occasionally surrendering herself to the music and spinning like a bump-and-grind pixie, the house glowed, as did I, as best I could, feeling old and unwanted, but mainly just bored. (Gail doesn't dance with me at parties anymore. "I like to dance the way the kids dance," she says. "You want to get too close. I'm not in tap shoes anymore.") That night, she danced with our son, James, making a not unawkward fifty-four-year-old's stabs at the latest crazy dance steps, her head ajerk with the beat, her mouth wrapped around the lewd lyrics, and everywhere the house breathed her lilac odor echoed her laughter. It was the generous chortle of a young woman, reckless, massaged by the knowledge that her whole life lay before her like a road repaved solely for her to travel upon.
I wanted to see Jackie.
The energy emanating from the Misty Blue almost made up for the lack of life in my old hometown. The parking lot out front was thick with cars and people preparing to party. I could smell the tangy odor of marijuana to my left; could hear the drunken shouts of a thick-thighed woman in high heels and a short purple skirt coming from my right. I turned that way, and there was Jackie, holding up the woman, helping her toward her car.
"Is that you, Nissy?" She sped up her step, now dragging the woman along with her as she approached me. "Look at you, Nissy. Looking all cute." The drunk woman in her embrace looked up at me, as if the sight of me and my possible cuteness might snap her out of her daze. She seemed to recognize me for a second, but her buzz had a grip on her memory; it held it away from her and she couldn't grab it back. She gave up and let her head loll back on her shoulder.
"Be right back," Jackie said. She hurried the woman to a Taurus that was parked just ahead of my car and shoved her inside. Then she stood, pressed down the front of her own miniskirt and turned back to me, her face all bright eyes and smile.
At our table inside, Jackie pointed out some old-timers and updated me on their lives since I knew them in high school. She'd dated the sons of at least seven guys I'd known when I was younger than she is now.
"And one daughter," she said, with a grin illuminated by the vodka cocktails she sucked down. "But that was just an experiment," she added. "You know how it is, Nissy. You've seen the world."
"But I still live near here," I told her. "The world is overrated."
"I'll believe that when I see it." She took a sip of her drink, then shouted over the thump of the music, "Why aren't you home with your wife?"
"She's entertaining a houseful of people I don't like or know," I said.
"Maybe if you got to know them," Jackie said, "you'd like them."
"I'm too old for them," I said.
"But not too old for me?"
"Nope."
"Why not?"
I didn't know how to answer that at first. But I thought about her cutting my hair and I thought about her baby-sitting her second cousin and I looked at her dreadlocks and miniskirt against a background of old men with whisky glasses and smiles that had known what frowns felt like and cars that knew the lyrics to the songs that I loved and I said, "Because my wife will never forgive me."
She had started to sip again but paused, holding her glass before her, cutting me a look that could have shattered the cocktail glass she was holding. "You cheated on her?"
"Nope."
"Then what did you do to her?"
"I got old." My mind's eye was on Gail dancing at the party. "I got old first."
"And that's unforgiveable?"
"She never thought that would happen," I said, suddenly warming to this conversation, warming to a theory I'd never spoken aloud and only rarely thought in any substantial way. "No," I said, and I took a long, deep gulp from the glass of wine that had been sitting there, untouched, in front of me. "No, that's not it. It's not that I got old. It's that I like it."
"You like being old," Jackie said.
"I love it," I told her. I wasn't exactly sure that I believed that last comment, but it felt good to say, so I said it again. "I love it and that's what my wife can't forgive."
"Wow," said Jackie.
"Wow, indeed," I said. "Let's have another round."
It was the first second round of many second rounds that I would share with Jackie, who became my best friend of sorts. We went to movies and basketball games. We shared ice cream at the Carvel on Water Street near my father's old fabric shop. We went to the amusement park in East Meadow where Jackie won me a teddy bear that looked, she said, like me when I came in for my haircut. One night, as we were driving back from a movie, a song called "I Think I'm Goin' Outta My Head" came on the radio and the falsetto tones of Little Anthony lifted me up inside. "I love this song," Jackie said. She grabbed my hand and yanked me out of the car and as drivers passed us, the radio turned to the highest volume, the headlights outlining our two-step, Jackie and I danced along Exceptional Boulevard.
Another evening, another party at our house, this time for our son, James, and his new contract. I invited Jackie.
She showed up in an apple-green dress and strappy high-heeled sandals, her dreadlocks piled high atop her beaming face. We talked for a while, I introduced her to Gail and some of the rappers Gail represented, then she swooped into the party, a whirl of green.
"She could be your daughter," Gail said.
"What are you talking about?" I said.
Gail just rolled her eyes at me and turned, melting back into the party.
Later I found Jackie on the dance floor and said, "Take a bow."
"What?"
"Follow me."
We went out onto the back patio. The stars were like tiny spotlights poking through the thick black fabric of the sky.
"'Take a bow,' " I told Jackie, "is an old family saying. Whenever someone was overreacting or overdramatizing or just cutting up, we'd say, "Okay, take a bow."
"Like, when a director says 'cut'?"
"Exactly," I said.
"The sky is beautiful, isn't it?"
"It is," I said. "My wife thinks you and I are having an affair."
"What?" Jackie's laugh was like a loud bark. "Should she be thinking that?"
"No," I said. "She shouldn't. But she wants to, I think. I think it would make me more interesting to her somehow."
"She's beautiful, your wife."
"Yes," I said. "She is."
"Have you told her that lately?"
"I haven't told her much of anything lately. We don't really talk to each other much."
"You need to tell her she's beautiful. Then she won't think you're jumping my bones."
"Maybe you're right," I said.
Jackie leaned onto the back of a patio chair. "I saw y'all on TV the other day."
"Who?"
"You and your wife and your little boy."
"He's not little anymore."
"I know that. Tell your wife that's the Manning I need to be having an affair with."
I had to laugh at that.
"I was watching this show about celebrities before they were celebrities and they showed an old TV show where you and your wife and your little boy were singing Christmas carols with some white lady."
I nodded. "Marlo Thomas," I said. "She had a Christmas special years ago. That was James' first public appearance."
"Y'all looked so happy," Jackie said. "Like a perfect little family."
"Yes," I said. "We did. We were."
"Which is why you need to go and tell that lady in there that she's beautiful. She wants somebody to tell her. Unless you waiting for one of those rappers to tell her." She pushed herself up from the chair and brushed off the back of her tiny apple-green dress. "That's all I got to say about that. Now I'm going back to the party. You coming?"
"I'm coming."
Toward the end of the evening, with twenty or so drunken dancers gripping each other in the center of the dance floor, Reuben Mays, James' agent, raised his gin into the air and began to recite Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth at Dunsinore, in garishly drunken tones. I picked up my own drink and looked around for Gail, who wasn't entwined with a partner on the floor. James, snuggled up to his latest flame, an Asian man he'd met in college, said he hadn't seen her. Mays was still warbling as I went down the three steps towards the kitchen. The last of the catering staff was struggling out with two huge bowls. Agatha stood, holding the back door for them, a stern territorial grimace tickling the edges of her lips.
"Good riddance," she said, slamming the door.
"I'm looking for Gail," I told her. Agatha seemed to ignore me. "Did you hear me, Agatha?"
"Upstairs."
I passed three people leaving as I fumbled my way up the stairs toward the bedrooms. In ours, on the bed, on the Mexican print James had given us last year, was Gail, in the arms of a tall, famous balladeer she represented. I watched them watch me before I turned and left the room.
I found Jackie downstairs in the foyer, draping herself in a big green poncho. Her sly eyes questioned me before she said a word.
"You tell her?"
"I told her," I said.
"See, man? That's all a woman wants to hear sometime. Just wanna know her man thinks she's the best-looking chick at the party." She pushed me playfully with her shoulder. "You seen the world. You know that. Now that you told her? You take your behind right on up those stairs and you show her she's the most beautiful woman at the party."
"Take a bow, Jackie."
"I know, I know. I'm leaving."
After everyone was gone, Gail said we didn't match anymore. "You're old and you're tired and you're bored, Dennis. You know what? I'm glad you caught me. You let yourself get kicked off the show because you refuse to change," she said. She pressed her lips together; fastened her gaze on some point directly above my head. "When we got married, I was still Little Miss Harlem, carrying around those silly blue ribbons from fashion shows, and tap-dancing behind you on the Ed Sullivan Show. You were doing your thing---"
"We were partners---"
"---now I'm doing mine and you just don't seem to be following. We don't match, Dennis. I'm going up and you're going down and I just can't accept that. I can't. I suggested you do a guest shot on James' soap. You turned that down. They wanted you---James wanted you---and you turned it down. I don't know what you want to do, Dennis. Sleep all day?" I didn't argue with her. Her speech sounded so rehearsed, I wanted to hear the climax and denouement.
"I guess," she said, as if on cue, "you're happy with your little barber who calls you nicknames."
"Jackie only cuts my hair. You know that Gail. We go to basketball games."
"I'm sure."
"Don't make your guilt into my guilt." I didn't know what else to say to her. So I said, "I love you Gail."
"It's not there anymore, Dennis. We just don't match."
How completely blissful it is to love a person who doesn't love you anymore. The drink flows; the possible onset of depression lifts you into a netherworld of fantastically ugly, bourbon-soaked reveries of revenge, and the lonesomeness created by betrayal seems to be a dangerous, inviting playground. Such thoughts occupy me as I search for a parking space along Ninth Street, passing young people and old who I believe to be happily entrenched in twosomes, untouched by the blemish of hidden romantic deeds done on the beds they shared with their partners. And, I say, as my son opens the door to his apartment, "How completely blissful it is to love a person who doesn't love you anymore."
I haven't been here since I started hanging out with Jackie. I haven't been here since James tried to warn me that his mother wanted to leave me.
"Mom's not here yet," he says, stepping aside, his head cocked to one side as I head over to the bar. "What did you say when I opened the door?"
"Never mind."
"Whatever. Nice haircut, Dad." There's something in his voice, if not his words, something sly and mean and haughty. But I can't be completely mad at his condescension, and for a moment I wonder if that's something Gail and I taught him. His eyes are blurry and I can smell vodka on his breath, though I'm not completely sure it's not my breath bouncing back off of him and ricocheting back to me.
We don't say much to each other as we wait for his mother to arrive. I look out the window, watching couples pass by. Soon I see Gail getting out of a sleek black Lincoln Town Car. My dream was incorrect. She hasn't taken the train, she's beaten the lack of chivalry, courtesy of one of the record companies that keep her in business.
James goes to the door when the bell rings. "Hey, Mom. Dad's already here."
"I'm starving," she says. "Where should we cat?" I can smell alcohol on Gail as well. It seems we all need to get drunk to spend any time together, just the three of us with no revelers to share in, to experience, the raging success of the Manning Family.
We go to the Front Row, a trendy little Italian boite on Sixth Avenue. James chats with an actress friend two tables away. Gail goes to the ladies room to fix her face. I sit at the table and smile back at the stares we get. When James and Gail join me at the table, we share a bottle of wine and small talk, like it's finger food to be picked over before the main dish arrives. All the while we are watched by patrons at other tables. One woman exclaims, "That's him, Jim," and runs over to our table, flinging a napkin down. "I love you, Radcliffe. You are my favorite. I swear." James signs his name on the napkin. "I swear," the woman yells to others as her husband escorts her out, "that boy is my absolute favorite."
We tell him as the waiter puts the clam sauce on the table between Gail and James. "I'm leaving your father," Gail says in careful, modulated tones, as if she's saying "I'm taking on a new client." But not for another man, she tells James. "Things are just different now." An astounding performance, this is. My son's performance is on par with his mother's. He stares at me as if he's seeing me for the first time, as if I'm someone he's only seen on TV who's come to life before him, just as people in the restaurant stare at him.
Gail says to James, "Your father has a crush on his barber."
And there it is. Her trump. I lost my job and now I'm cheating with my barber. I've given up my fame card and I'm dating a barber more than half my age.
"How old is he?" James asks.
At first I think James is asking about me.
I say, "Don't be absurd, Gail. She's James' age."
"My age?" James starts to laugh, loudly. He sets his wine glass on the table as he controls himself.
"And she has a nickname for him," Gail says, laughing now as well.
"A nickname?" James asks.
"She calls me Nissy," I tell him.
"Nissy?" he asks, as if he doesn't understand, as if spitting it out will lay the word on the table for us to decipher, like one of those extra-large family puzzles we used to do together on vacation.
"Short for Dennis," I say, smiling.
"Nissy?" James says it again. I notice that the sound of his laughter has grown louder as people at other tables turn to see what the celebrity is laughing at. "Oh, Dad." His words sound as if they're on display, as if this is some variety show and he's projecting to the balcony. I get it now. We're on stage. "Nissy? You let her call you Nissy?"
"I do," I tell him. "And she loves to dance." And suddenly I'm laughing as well, partner to my own abuse. Taking one for the family.
"You let Mom divorce you and you let your barber call you Nissy? Oh, Dad. Oh. Dad . . ."
Gail shakes with laughter, her hand on her stomach, the barrette bouncing as she moves forward and back. "Nissy," she repeats. "And she just loves to dance."
Soon, we're all at it, hitting the table for dramatic emphasis, inviting onlookers to share in our fun. "Nissy." I'm shouting now. "She calls me fucking Nissy."
"Oh, Dad . . ."
James looks wonderful in his denim shirt. His mother's almond-shaped eyes and my checkbones and chin combine to give his face a regal, dancing quality. But at that moment, the planes of his handsome face contorted in laughter, he has become a fine and heartbreaking mirror in which I can see all the gray hair that I no longer camouflage with black dye. I see the paunch and the wrinkles that lost me my job. I see the glassy eyes of a drinker whose wife considers him as good as dead. I see me, and realize that this dinner is a success because I feel overwhelmingly happy at the sight of all those flaws I haven't patched up. I feel like dancing.
And in my laughter, through the tears that I know are there, I try to imagine Dennis, a grown boy called Nissy, and Jackie, the unnamed costar in this family drama, dancing down Exceptional Boulevard. But here I am now in the middle of The Front Row, lifting my young almond-eyed son and pulling my youthful wife onto the table, breathing in the scenty hint of illacs, dancing a group solo to the strains of arch violins in the restaurant pavilion, then falling, to the floor, like a heavy brocade curtain, yes, indeed, falling.
Love
The sweet sounds of Maxwell played softly. I walked in the room and wanted to cry. I was tired, both physically and spiritually. Success is draining. Most folks looking at it from the outside can only see what they call glamour.
I made my way over to the CD player and pushed the volume button to the max. I don't drink, so I needed more Maxwell. The soulful sounds dulled the pain, at least for the moment.
I imagined myself in the younger man's audience, and noticed that even in my imagination, I was the oldest person in the room. For years my biological clock had been ticking, but because of my success and the use of new technology, it had been digital, so I couldn't hear it. But now, it was flashing midnight.
I watched the imaginary "other women" in my fantasy as they strolled about in anticipation that Maxwell would notice them. "Desperation is the world's worst perfume," I thought to myself. Maxwell entered the audience, and walked over to me. "Just a while longer baby," he sang for me alone. He moved in close enough to cause the other imaginary folks to disappear, and just as his wild mane of hair brushed across my eyelashes, the telephone rang.
"Peace," I said, not meaning it.
"Hey baby. What's that loud noise I hear? Are you having a party or something?" My mother's voice was as familiar to me as my own. I could read her like a book. I could tell that things were not good, because of the effort she was putting forth at sounding happy. "Hey Mom what's wrong?"
"What makes you think something's wrong? Maybe I'm just calling to say hi, or that I love you. Did you ever think of that?", she demanded.
"You're right, Mom," I offered. I knew better, but I dared not show it. My mother had a way of making me feel guilty for the things that happened to her as a child. She was even better with events after my birth.
To make matters worse, or better, depending on which side she stood on at that moment, my mother and I had what some might call a psychic bond. I could tell when things were going wrong with her, and she with me. The only difference was in how we received the message. For me it was just a feelling. Something like a shadow would cover my mood whenever my mother experienced pain or sadness. My mother received her intuitions in a much more dramatic fashion; the big toe on her left foot would throb. I don't know if she ever had these feelings for my other six brothers and sisters, and I never bothered to ask. I was too afraid she would share the graphic details of all the places on her body that ached or throbbed when one of her children was in need.
"Well, I might as well tell you, cause I know you, you'll find out sooner or later. Can't keep anything from you. I never have been able to from the time you could talk, and probably before that as far as I know. God only knows what you were thinking before you could talk. Cause you know you were born with a veil, a head full of hair and a couple of teeth . . ." My mother talked on and I allowed it. As she chattered away, I reduced the volume of my now dissipated imaginary boyfriend.
"What happened to the music?" My mother asked. "That was starting to sound good. Sort of like a young Al Green. Lord, me and your Aunt T, bless her soul, used to love some Al Green." My mind flashed back to the two of them at Aunt T's dinning room table. They would get as drunk as the proverbial skunk, and Al Green's voice would croon as loud as my music had earlier.
"Sing it to me Al, yes, yes, yes, yes. God knows that man knows how to make me feel." Aunt T and mom would listen to the same song over and over. "Love and Happiness" was their song.
"Make you wanna do right, make you wanna do wrong. God knows you know all bout that, girl," Aunt T would say. My cousin and I would laugh, not understanding the pain that sat around that table.
After years of my own struggles and loneliness I had learned a few things. "You there?" I heard my mother ask. "Lord chile, I hate these new phones. Don't ever work right. I told you I should have kept my phone with the rotary. Those were some good phones. But no, you want to bring me into the future. What for? Wasn't nothing wrong with my phone. I had that phone for bout twenty-five years. This new thing aint even a year old, and it already don't work. You there? hello?" "I'm here Mommy," I told her. "I was just listening."
"No you wasn't," she informed me. "You were daydreaming again, weren't you? Lord chile, you got some kind of imagination. I used to get all kinds of calls from your teachers. 'She won't pay attention, she has an over active imagination.' If it wasn't one thing, it was something else."
I'd heard all of this before, but if I said that, my mother would hang up.
But not before telling me that I was sassing her, and that I thought I was too important to talk to my mother. And after all she had done for me and the other ungratefuls, as she often referred to us.
"Mom, I was daydreaming," I relinquished. "I just thinking about you and Aunt T. You two sure did love Al Green. You used to play the same songs over and over again." My mother laughed the way she always did right before she corrected me about something I thought I was sure of.
"We didn't love Al Green. True, we liked his voice, but it wasn't the man we played over and over again, it was what he was talking about. That man was a little too far on the funny side for me. But he could sing. Yes he could. I don't know what he's up to now. Every other day, he done found God, like God was lost or something. Anyway, I'm glad you think of Aunt T from time to time. That means you need some love in your life. Your Aunt T was the most loving woman God ever made, not counting me of course." She laughed her, now-you-know-I'm-lying laugh. "Aunt T could smile at vinegar and turn it into syrup. Never said a mean thing about nobody. If you cut her that woman would bleed love."
My mother got quiet and I knew that she was crying silently. Aunt T had done just that. Her husband of thirty years had been cheating on her from the moment they first married. One day when Aunt T got up the nerve to ask him about it, he turned crazy, as my mother called it. Uncle Charlie went into the kitchen, right past that dining room table where she and my mother had listened to AL Green, got the largest butcher knife he could find and stabbed her twenty-two times. Throughout her attack, Aunt T told Uncle Charlie that she still loved him, and there wasn't nothing that he could do about it. I try not to think of Aunt T.
"You keep on thinking about her," my mother said, confirming the connection between us. "She sure did love you, too. Besides," my mother said, sniffing, "When you think of her, you keeping her alive. She comes to you cause you need love. And before you try to get all intelligent on me, you need to go on and admit that I'm telling you the truth."
She was telling the truth, but I had no intention of admitting it.
By now, though, you know I didn't need to.
My mother dropped the subject just as easily as she had picked it up.
"Well," she said after what was for her a lengthy pause, "I should probably be asking you what's wrong. But that's not why I called. When you want to talk, you call me on your dime."
Her last comment was as absurd as most of the things that seemed to flow from her mouth. I had been paying most of my mother's bills for most of my adult life. My dime was her dime. But it never really needed to be said. I paid her bills along with my own, as if they were bills I had made. My mother was even more conscientious of my money than I was. If ever there were a need for more than the usual bills and the monthly amount that was deposited into her account, she would call. She never asked for money; she would simply talk in her, I-need-money-but-I'm-not-going-to-say-so tone.
"Life can be cruel. You know I don't like to bother you. God knows you got enough on your hands. Even without children, I know you got a lot on you." Whenever she did this, I wanted to use the line she had used on my siblings and me years before: "Signifying is worse than stealing, Mommy." I could hear myself say, but I never did. If I had, she would not be trying to have a conversation with me today. It was fine for me to think mad thoughts, but better not to say them.
"Well, as I was saying before you got me off on Aunt T, and Al Green, I called about your sister." I never had to ask which one. I had four sisters, one had passed, two were referred to by name, and the fourth was always called "your sister."
"What has Ophelia done now, Mommy?" I asked, waiting to hear about another crazy boyfriend, or some kind of money-making scheme she was trying to pull my mother into. "Well, you know she has always been a little on the selfish side."
When it came to Ophelia, my mother was the queen of understatement. Saying that Ophelia was a little selfish would be like saying Hitler was a little mean. Ophelia thought only of herself. She was the mother of three children, and they existed only for her pleasure.
As soon as I thought of the children, I knew why my mother was calling.
"No Mom, don't tell me. She's pregnant again?" I asked expecting the worse.
"Alright, then I won't tell you," My mother said right before she hung up.
I called back immediately, knowing that I had better. Once when my mother did this, and I hadn't returned the call quickly, I was talked about for weeks. I knew this because my relatives all called to tell me how horrible I had been to my mother.
"Mom, what is she going to do?" I asked as if there hadn't been a break in the conversation.
"Well," my mother said slowly, "you know your sister. She gonna do what pleases her. Most likely that will be to have the baby. I don't know for sure, but I don't think that girl would ever think about having no abortion. I know you way more liberal than that, but well, you got your own life."
I had never discussed my false pregnancy with my mother. It happened during my marriage that lasted two years and too long. My now ex-husband decided that we didn't need children, because I was not ready for them. I agreed with him, but it was not until after we were divorced that I was glad that I had.
After the decision was made for me to have an abortion, we went to the doctor's office. Although my tests were all positive, nothing appeared on ultrasound, so I was told to come back in a month. When I did, I was informed that I had had a false pregnancy. My husband accused me of being so emotional, that I had caused a positive test.
I never told my mother, because she felt the same crazy dedication to my ex as she did for my sister.
Now, for the first time, I realized that she knew what I had been through.
"Well baby", she said, "life is funny, what's taken away from us, is always given back."
Now I knew that she was talking about me and not my sister.
"What you saying, Mom?" I braced myself for the response.
What followed was a long statement that was disguised as a question.
"You think you can take your sister's children for a while? 'Cause if you don't, child protective services are gong to take them away. And you know that no matter how hard it was on me when you were coming up, ain't none of y'all got taken or sent away from me.
So I know you gonna do the right thing 'cause it's in you to do. Plus, if you been seeing Aunt T, well then you need love, and I know for a fact that the best way to get love is to give it."
I knew that there was no way out. My mother was right and I was too tired to object. The fact of the matter was I could use the distraction. My career as a media consultant was going very well. I owned my own company, and had enough smarter-than-me types to keep things running while I took care of whatever had to be done.
"When do I need to come, Mom?" I heard myself ask.
"How soon can you get here?"
The fifteen hour drive from Chicago to Norfolk Virginia did nothing to prepare me for the mess that would become my new life.
My sister's pregnancy had been kept from me long enough for her to give birth to a bright-eyed baby girl. She'd named her Nia, which means "purpose." I didn't know if my sister knew that when she chose the name, but someone, somewhere was watching out for this child, this purpose.
I spent exactly twenty-four hours in the state of Virginia. I would have left sooner, but I had to wait for family court to open. I had already talked to my friend Bernita, a lawyer and a real sister.
"It's fine for you to play Mary Poppins for a while, but don't be stupid," she told me. "Get legal custody of them brats so you can get them on your insurance and into good schools." I didn't know until later how necessary this advice would be.
When I first laid eyes on the four children, I realized how long it had been since I had last seen them. Robert, the oldest, was now eight. The last time I'd seen him was when he was four and raising everything but heaven. The twins were now five and the newborn really was one. All I could think of was the infamous Butterfly McQueen line, "I don't know nothing 'bout birthing no babies" and I didn't. They piled into my beautiful Mercedes and it was no longer the thing of pride it had once been. It was now a kidmobile. I strapped the infant into the car seat a friend had given me, only to find out after I returned it that I had her in the car backward.
Our first night back in Chicago is what days of therapy are for. I don't know how the children survived. I bundled Nia in an electric blanket hoping to keep her warm. When she ran a fever, I called another friend, who is a doctor, and asked for help. "Calm down and take her out of the blanket," she told me when I described the child's condition. "You are baking the child."
When I put Robert in the whirlpool tub, hoping to entertain him with the jets, I was the one in for the show. He opened all of my bath salts and gels, poured them into the water, and created a upstairs full of bubbles.
The twins were no less amusing. Sometime between getting Nia back to a normal tempurature and cleaning up Robert's mess, I got a call from the doorman who said that the children I had dragged in earlier were now going up and down the elevator without a stitch of clothing on. He informed me of this in his "you know we Black folks gotta stick together" tone. I thanked him for the lookout, found the boys and called the one woman that I swore I would not ask for advice: my mother.
"Hey, girl," she said, laughing. "Woooeee. You should be having a good time by now. The kids all in bed?" Since I was sure she could hear the screaming in the background, but this was her idea of torture.
"No, Mom. They are not in bed. They are right here making a mess of my once beautiful home." I don't know when I started to cry, but I could hear my mother saying something she must have heard in an old movie.
"Now, there, there," she said, trying to hold back the laughter.
"Mom, why are you laughing?" I was close to hysteria, which only made my mother laugh harder.
"Well, honey," she said in a tone that actually dripped with the stuff, "I'm laughing 'cause you getting a taste of what I went through, and what your sister has had to go through."
"Mom, with all due respect to you and my sister, I don't remember asking for children. I don't remember laying down to make any, and I don't remember anybody asking me what I wanted to do about my sister's mess. This thing was just handed to me. And it was you who did the handing."
My mother paused long enough for me to realize that I had gone too far. But she didn't say so.
"This is a hard thing that you have to do. But you are not alone. And I wasn't the one who handed this to you."
Now it was my turn to sit silently. The silence didn't last long. "Girl, this is from God. You've been chosen to bring up them kids. They are special. Just like you."
My mother hung up the phone and I never got the chance to ask her what she meant. She died that night in her sleep.
I didn't fully comprehend the things my mother said or did until after her passing. "You never miss the water 'til the well runs dry" was one of her favorite sayings. It's a hard thing to realize that after you lose it. It was not until I became a mother that I realized how much I needed her.
There's nothing like a black funeral. You see people that you haven't seen in years. The funeral always becomes more like a reunion of the living. My mother's funeral was packed to capacity. I learned afterward that there were people in the streets. This was no small thing for Ezion Mt. Carmel Baptist Church. It held five thousand people comfortably, so there had to be at least seven thousand crammed inside. I had no idea of my mother's popularity, or of her importance to the community.
She had fed, housed, and clothed half the neighborhood at some time or another. Now I could see where my money had been going. Folks told stories of her generosity and of her ability to see to their needs long before she even asked.
"Lord, your mother was a good woman. She knew more things than them psychic folks claimed to know," one woman told me through her tears.
"She came to me and said, 'Etta, that boy of yours is in big trouble, you get him out of town and he will get right, but he needs to get away from here fast.' Now, I kinda knew what she was talking about, cause my boy was always into something, but I didn't want to let on to nobody that I did. I told your mamma that I ain't have no way to get my boy nowhere, and she said that she had already took care of that. She handed me a ticket and some money and told me to see him to the bus station right away.
It was a good thing, too, cause that boy had got mixed up in some drug-dealing stuff. He wasn't selling, but his boys were and it turned out that they stole somebody's money. They all end up dead, but my boy is up North working and going to school at night. She saw all that in a dream. Believe me when I tell you this, there's lot's of folks 'round here who can see, 'cause that's the kind of place that this is, but most of them won't tell you nothing without charging you and they surely wouldn't be giving you nothing to get to your good fortune. Yes Lord, your mamma was a good woman, but you know that. I just wanted to let you know what she meant to me."
She hugged me and walked of smiling like she knew something that I wasn't privy to.
For days, I got letters and visitors telling of my mother's exploits. While it told me more of the woman she was, it didn't console me. I wanted my mother back. She had left me with a task that seemed to grow with her absence.
My sister didn't bother to come to the funeral. We didn't even know where she was. She just called to say that she wanted to make sure that we knew that mom's ring was supposed to go to her. "Would you like to talk to your children?" I asked her.
"No, I have to go," she said. "They'll be alright with you. Mom said so."
Then she was gone.
The children never saw there mother again, and I only saw her to identify her body. But that's a story for another time.
I'm just telling you this right now to let you know that my mother surely did know what she was talking about.
I needed love. But it didn't come in the form of a man, at least not at first. Love for me came from the children I now call my tribe. Before them I had had no idea that love was something you show. I thought it was something that I could get. With them I learned that when you give it, you see it. It's not a feeling at all. My feelings had only led me down the road of loneliness.
I've learned something else, too. That by connecting with the thing you were made for, you open yourself to the gifts of the universe. Why am I telling you this? I think you already know.
FROM Breathing Room
The café on Connecticut Avenue has dark walls covered with paintings by local artists. The metal tables and matching chairs have a quaint European look. Norma loves the way the windows are positioned so that sunlight has no choice but to lurch through them. The smell of ground coffee beans seems to leak from the wallpaper. Norma breathes it in like fresh air.
There are several customers eating, conversing, and reading the Sunday newspapers, more than Norma anticipated would be here this early. Some are part of a couple or a group, others are alone. A black woman with sagging cheeks and bosom sits on a stool by the window, reading the Bible. Norma watches as steam spirals up from the woman's mug and contemplates how striking a photograph the scene would make. I'm seeing a man and he's white. No. I'm seeing somebody and he happens to be white. She might shoot the photo standing behind and to the right, capturing the black woman unaware, with the light from the window nuzzled against the woman's face. If the woman was someplace more accessible, it would be a perfect shot for her zoom lens. She loves the intimacy a zoom provides. From quite a distance away, she can zero in without having to ask permission, without the subject posing and erasing the truth of the moment.
Norma has been standing near the doorway, where the chime sounds every time someone enters. She decides to hang her coat and uses the pay phone to leave Woody a message at his office. Several weeks ago, she impulsively looked up his home phone number and was both mesmerized and repelled at seeing it there. A reminder of his other life that she's not a part of. When his voice mail picks up now, she says, "It's Norma calling on Sunday. I know you're not there, just wanted to listen to your voice even if it's only a recording. Miss you." She knows he checks his messages on the weekends, anticipating hearing from her.
Norma selects a table against the wall to wait for Moxie. She sits and absently tucks her turtleneck into the waist of her pants. Looking up, she sees Moxie maneuvering toward the table. Her locks are wrapped with African fabric, and her cheeks appear rouged by the cold. Moxie shivers when she takes the seat across from Norma. "It's really chilly out there. Been here long?"
"Not long. A few minutes. It's more than chilly out," Norma says.
"Sorry I'm late. Fussing with Zadi." Moxie removes her coat and scarf and drapes them over the back of her chair.
"What now?"
"That girl makes me crazy sometimes. She doesn't get fired up enough about racial issues that come up at her school. Even though, mind you, I've exposed her since day one to cultural things. But she---I don't know why, just refuses to take a stand, so once again---I'll have to."
"I know how you agonize about her school, but you made a compromise with James, and you say you're satisfied with the academics. Think back---were you such an activist at her age? Sure she can't handle it without you getting involved?" Norma asks, cautiously. She scoots her chair closer to the table, allowing another patron to get by.
"Norma"---Moxie puts her hand up---"I don't even want to talk about it. You'll tell me you know what private school is like, meaning I don't; you'll side with Zadi and it'll just infuriate me again, so let's order." She turns in her seat and tries to read the posted menu. "What are you going to have?"
"Wait a minute. You just totally dismissed me in one sentence."
"Sorry. I get frustrated with that school on so many levels. I told you how I tried to organize a meeting of black parents, so we could check in with each other, compare notes on how the kids are doing. But I think only ten parents showed up out of the already paltry thirty-five or forty black families. Later I heard things like they thought it was going to be a gripe session or something divisive. From black people! Some of those folks act like they came to the school to get away from themselves. I swear---it's such a headache."
"I'm sure it's not easy for you," says Norma, opening her purse, somewhat annoyed. "But you have such strict standards." Woody's a good man. He really is. He's white, but he's a good man.
"Like what?" Moxie listens intently.
"Oh, come on. You know how you are. No one's ever black enough to suit you," Norma says with a smile. "If it was up to you, you would have me, Zadi, and your dad running around tied up in kente cloth all the time, celebrating Kwanzaa every other month." Norma laughs, pleased with her half-serious joke, and then busies herself, taking several dollars from her wallet. "I think I'm going to have a vanilla latte. What kind of tea do you want? I'll get yours."
"'Tied up in kente cloth.' Norma, you're crazy." Moxie laughs, too. It's Norma's customary way of digging at her.
"You know what I'm saying is true, Moxie. You know it's your lifelong dream to someday be crowned Ms. African American."
Moxie waves her off. "Leave me alone." She squints at the sign displaying the coffee shop's offerings. Although she laughed, Moxie knows all too well what it's like to bear the brunt of a racial-Richter-scale judgment. She recalls feeling not black enough for some of the people at Zadi's African-centered preschool. Her gaze lingers on Norma's relaxed hair, cut in a bob with amber hair coloring to disguise the gray strands, a constant reminder of one of the differences they have silently agreed to sidestep for the sake of friendship.
"I was supposed to be ordering---What kind of tea do you want?" Norma asks. "Oh, I'll take that Gypsy Ginger Rose. Why'd they have to call it 'gypsy'? Why couldn't it be just plain 'ginger rose'? I mean, is that exoticism or racism?"
"See---you're the crazy one." Norma is still not as relaxed or ready as she had hoped. She leans forward and changes the subject. "So, Mox, it's a new year, any potential dates or mates on the horizon yet?"
Moxie clears her throat. "I told you. I'm not dealing with that. What---you don't believe me?"
"It was on your wish list last year."
"Yea, and where did it get me? Entanglements that stressed me out. I need to work on me before I can be involved with anyone. I'm tired of giving myself away to men and getting only half of them, or less, back in return. I don't even want them taking up space on my voice mail. I told the last guy I went out with to call me back after he'd had a year of therapy. He called and I said, 'Did you start therapy?' And he laughed, and said he didn't think I was serious. I was very serious. He had 'issues,' as Zadi would say. This year I'm concentrating solely on my family. Understand?" Moxie raises her eyebrows for emphasis.
"Yes, but remember Phillip, the guy from the Eastern Market Gallery we ran into before the holidays?" She can see that Moxie doesn't remember. "The halfway cute one who had his dog with him? He's asked me twice about you. If you want, I could arrange a little dinner, nothing fancy, grilled vegetables, lamb or chicken. Could be a nice hookup . . . never know."
"No thanks. I barely remember him, but unless he's the reincarnation of Gandhi, Martin, or Malcolm, I don't want a thing to do with him. What is with you and my father constantly trying to play matchmaker?"
Norma removes her sunglasses from her turtleneck collar and places them low on her nose. She looks over them at Moxie and speaks in a mock baritone. "I understand what you're saying, Sister Moxie. But I have a dream today. I have a dream, my sister, that you will walk into the sunset with an upstanding brother who is not only my reincarnation, but the others you mentioned, all rolled into one." They both laugh heartily, as Norma takes off the sunglasses.
"Norma. I'm serious, though," Moxie says, reaching across to touch Norma's arm. "This year I just want to be really happy with myself, by myself; I want to be closer to my dad and to Zadi; I want to make a difference in the lives of my clients. And of the utmost importance is keeping Zadi a virgin."
Norma puts her glasses back on her nose and deepens her voice once more. "I see, Sister Moxie. Let me understand, are you talking about for the rest of the girl's natural life?" They laugh again.
Moxie stops laughing, a little abruptly. "Well, at least until she's in college. I don't think that's too much to ask. Norma, I see so many parents knuckling under the pressure. They hand out condoms to their sons, take their daughters to get on the pill. To me, that's condoning it. And I'm not just being paranoid---I can tell Zadi's thinking about sowing her wild oats. Her body is blossoming like some damn springtime. She walks around with her boobs, bigger than mine, pushed out all the time and jiggling like Jell-O. Never mind that butt."
"Yeah. She's a brick house. So what? Are you jealous?" Norma's eyes brighten as she smiles impishly.
"I've had my brick-house moments," Moxie says, pushing her chest forward and placing her hands on her hips. "But she looks a bit too much like prime meat to me." She glances up at the menu again. "I thought you were going to order."
"Just don't go overboard with my girl, Moxie, please. Alright? Okay, I'm finally going to get the tea. Want anything else?"
Norma goes over to the counter while Moxie flips through the New York Times sections left at their table. Moxie looks up and notices a black man come in, locked in laughter with a tall red-haired white woman. His arm is hinged on her shoulder while she regards him as if he were the only person in the world. He glances around, Moxie thinks, to make sure all are taking note of their presence. She won't give him that satisfaction, though, and returns to perusing the newspaper. When Moxie looks up again, Norma is engaged in a conversation with a white woman who holds a small child's hand.
"You know so many white people," Moxie says to Norma when she returns carrying a tray with two steaming mugs on it.
"Oh, she's a parent from Miles' preschool," Norma says, ignoring the way Moxie's comment pricked through the surface. "I've run into her before. She's one of the few who recognize me outside of the center." Norma knows this statement will help put her back on track with Moxie. Moxie nods. Often when she encounters white people she knows through work or Zadi's school, they don't recognize her if the meeting takes place in a different context.
After Norma sits down, Moxie whispers, "Why does it feel worse when it's a brother?" She aims her eyes in the direction of the interracial couple.
Norma looks over her shoulder at the couple, then unwraps a muffin and puts a napkin in her lap. "Worse than what?"
"Worse than if it was a sister."
"Oh, no. Are we going to be subjected to your where-have-all-the-brothers-gone speech again? You know it doesn't bother me. If they're happy together, then so be it," Norma says, feeling slightly piqued. "What is it---you think he should be dating you instead?"
"No, thank you," Moxie says, blowing onto a spoonful of tea before bringing it to her lips. "I just wonder if he rejects all black women, and what his mama thinks about that."
"His mama! I don't believe you. For all we know, she's happy as a clam thinking about those light-skinned, straight-haired grandkids she's going to have." Norma glances at Moxie slyly, while she swallows a piece of her muffin.
"On the other hand, she might be the type who'd be devastated," Moxie says without smiling.
"Devastated? Don't you think that's a little strong?"
"Not really." Moxie frowns as she contemplates her statement. Norma says nothing, but shifts around in her seat. The black half of the interracial couple approaches Moxie's chair from behind, holding her scarf. "Excuse me, miss. Your scarf was on the floor."
Moxie turns and searches his face but receives only an empty smile. "Thanks," she says, as coldly as she can manage, wrapping the scarf around her neck. She watches him go back to the white girl. His narrow behind hardly moves beneath his leather bomber jacket.
"So, now did he redeem himself enough for you?" Norma says, leaning forward to playfully tug at Moxie's sweater.
"Just another lost brother." Moxie waves one hand, dismissively, and returns to her tea.
"That's not fair, Moxie. Remember, even your boy Malcolm X came to the conclusion that all white folks aren't devils."
Moxie adjusts her fabric hair wrap and peers at Norma. "And I never said they were. I just think it's important not to forget the history of who was the oppressor and who was the oppressed." She reaches across and tastes a piece of Norma's muffin. "Did I ever tell you what my old roommate used to call them?" she asks in an attempt to relax the conversation.
"Who? Brothers?"
"No, interracial couples."
"What?"
"'IRCs.' " Moxie laughs. "Well, anyway, what's this big thing you want to talk to me about?"
Norma takes a sip of her latte, holding it in her mouth for a second before letting it slide down her throat. Moxie is the main one she has trusted with her secrets and feelings for more than ten years. I'm having an affair with someone who's white. "Moxie," Norma says slowly, not meeting Moxie's gaze, "I---I'm seeing somebody, a man I met." She can feel Moxie staring at her, but Moxie says nothing. "I put off telling you for a while because I know what you're going to say---that it's wrong. But you know I've been so unhappy for the past few years, and it's not like I haven't tried to work on my marriage." She gets it all out without taking a breath.
Moxie backs her seat away from the table. "'Seeing somebody.' Does that translate into 'screwing somebody'?"
Norma nods.
"Well, I guess I don't have to say anything, since you already know what I'm going to say. Just hope you know what you're doing, that's all," Moxie says, feigning indifference. A bulky silence hangs between them.
Norma presses her fingers onto the leftover crumbs on her plate, then to her tongue. Moxie's words pierce the edges of her skin, making her feel nauseatingly warm and embarrassed, as if she were a scolded child. She looks at Moxie, and is not fooled. She sees the judgment shadowing her face. "It's not like I was out there looking for someone. This thing with Woody just happened." She covers her remaining crumbs with a napkin. "I told you because supposedly friends share things with each other."
Moxie drains the mug of tea. It's clear from Norma's unrelenting gaze that she longs for something Moxie can't give. Moxie looks away. She wishes she were somewhere else. Friendships change and grow over time, arching and aching along the way, but this one has been the sturdy monument that weathered anything. She thinks about the night she and Norma came into each other's life, how Norma's dormitory room, with Frankie Beverly crooning in the background, became her refuge. It disturbs her that, at this moment, she can think of absolutely nothing to say that won't be problematic.
Over the surrounding chatter, Norma notices that the coffee aroma seems even stronger than when she first entered. Moxie is drifting from her, and she fears she will be unable to reel her back in. "Things with Lawrence have been bad for a long time, and they're not getting better. You know this. I'm not justifying it, but Woody feels like a badly needed vacation. Maybe I am justifying it."
"What happened to working on your problems the way most married folk do?" Moxie lowers her voice when she realizes she's loud enough for others to hear. There is a long line of people at the counter. The black woman with the Bible, Norma's white friend and her child, and the interracial couple are gone, but they've been replaced. Almost every table is full.
"I've tried to work on my marriage for the past three years, but where has it gotten me?"
"Your marriage is made of gold compared to some of the ones I see and hear about. He's not beating your ass; he's not cussing you out; he's not trying to sell your children for drugs."
"Oh, come on. Moxie. You can cut the ghetto melodramas. James wasn't doing any of that to you either." Norma crosses her arms and holds her elbows, inching forward. "And you all split up."
"But I didn't start something else before the first thing was finished. And to this day I still have regrets, still wonder whether there wasn't something else I could have done to avoid divorce."
"My recollection, based on what you told me, is your situation boiled down to the suddenly-socially-conscious sista versus the money-instead-of-the-motherland material guy and never the twain could meet. Those weren't exactly insurmountable battered-wife, alcoholic-husband type issues." Norma's face is hot, tears threatening at the periphery of her eyes. She picks up her mug, but the latte is tepid and almost gone.
"You're missing my point, Norma. I'm saying yes, we had problems, but I wasn't sneaking around having an affair behind his back, smiling in his face at the same time. I spent my energy trying to salvage the marriage and then accepting when it couldn't be salvaged. I mean, how is this affair going to help you figure out your marriage? Have you thought about going back to counseling?"
Norma looks beyond Moxie for a moment, trying to collect her scattered feelings. "He wouldn't want to go. I wouldn't even ask him."
"No, I meant you."
"I don't know if I'm ready to listen to her questions and comments about me seeing Woody."
"Like you really don't want to hear mine." Moxie's tone softens. Some relief seeps through, loosening the conversation. "Norma, is it worth it? Is it that damn good?"
Norma rests her elbows on the table, hands under her chin. "Can't you just try for one minute to understand what I'm talking about? All this time I've been laying back, quietly tolerating Lawrence's indifferent lovemaking. Forgetting that I'm supposed to feel something, too. And no, it's not just about sex. Woody and I talk about our work, our children, our lives . . . Something I can't seem to do anymore with Lawrence."
"Well, I hope you think long and hard about what you're doing to your family. The more you continue, the more chances they have of finding out, Norma. With information like that, Lawrence could take Miles from you." A spiky-haired employee comes from behind the counter with a dishrag in his hand. He removes the tray and their empty cups and plates.
"Lawrence stopped letting me in on his feelings a long time ago." Norma sighs. "Maybe it doesn't sound like it, but I do care about Lawrence, Moxie. I never wanted us to end up like this. But I'm not in love the way I was, nose wide open, head all turned around like a broken Barbie doll. He blew it." An elderly man at the next table, with several medicine bottles lined up in front of him, leans over and asks to borrow the honey. Norma passes it to him. "Moxie, I feel like I'm stumbling around in the dark, trying to figure out my life, and here you come saying 'wrong move.' Makes me wish I hadn't told you. Can I please find out for myself whether it's the wrong move or not?"
"Sure," Moxie says. "Absolutely. You're right---this is your life. But don't you want to feel like you're doing your best? Isn't that what's supposed to happen as we get, supposedly, more mature and closer to dying? What about Miles? Have you thought about him?" Moxie refolds her napkin, so she doesn't have to look at Norma.
"Miles isn't even four years old yet---he doesn't know what's going on."
"You'd be surprised at what kids feel and remember."
"Oh, here we go. More expert advice from your probation-officer annals? I'm not Zadi, you know." Norma pushes her coffee cup to one side.
"Norma. I'm trying to help you see the whole picture. What you do affects everybody." Moxie presses at her temples out of habit. "I never told you this before, but I was in the pediatrician's office with my mother once, when I was around five or six. Dr. Luther, I think his name was, had already examined me, but we waited like two hours for him to finish with all the other patients, and then he gave us a ride home. Because it was raining, my mother said, and we had taken the bus there because she didn't like to drive in the rain. There was something about the way she and he talked and laughed together that struck me even at that young age. I remember he touched her shoulder when we got out of his car. I asked her if she liked him, and she said, 'Don't be silly.' But I never forgot how strange and a little scary it felt. Somehow I knew not to mention it to my father, even though she didn't tell me not to."
Norma stares at Moxie. "You never told me this."
"I haven't thought about it in a long time. I don't think she had an affair with him or anything, but I never forgot it."
"What happened when you went back to the doctor?"
"We switched pediatricians and never went to his office again. I thought about it several years later but didn't know how to verbalize what I wanted to ask. I never did mention it to my father because I didn't want to bring up something that would cause him more pain."
Norma nods and crosses her legs against the table. "The way your father talks about your mother, they must have really been in love, though. He makes it sound like they never even had arguments. My parents used to argue all the time, even though my father was in the service and away a lot; Irene and I were always afraid they were on the brink of divorce. But they stayed together, and now they seem very content."
Moxie takes her car keys from her purse and places them on the table. "It was different, I think, because, my mother was depressed so much of the time. She'd get mad at my father for little, absurd things, and he wouldn't react. I don't know how he did it," Moxie says. "Anyway, the point of my story is---Miles isn't too young to feel something, even though he might not be able to say what he's feeling."
They both know it's time to leave. Moxie removes her coat from the back of her chair. Norma stands and retrieves hers from the coatrack. Two white women weave their way purposefully toward the table Norma and Moxie are about to abandon. Moxie, irritated that the women can't even wait for them to move away, that white people always feel so entitled to everything, sits back down at the table and fumbles around in her purse, as if she's looking for something. This contrivance to hold up the two women embarrasses Norma, compelling her to tell them she and her friend are leaving, they're welcome to the table.
Outside the cafe, though, Norma embraces Moxie. Moxie hugs her back but is first to pull away. She stands still and watches Norma walk toward Dupont Circle. Partway down the street, Norma casts a brief glance over her shoulder at Moxie and waves vigorously. Moxie waves back, with less vigor.
Sunday, Jan. 10thblack jean skirt from Lernerred & blk stretch topblack Banana Republic boots
Dear Sistergirl:
Spent the day doing homework and still didn't finish it all. When I took a break, Ma was watching Waiting to Exhale on TV tonight and laughing like crazy. I like the way Ma laughs when she's really happy and not stressed; it's like a wave that starts out small and gets bigger, and it makes you start laughing with her even when you don't know what she's laughing about. I asked her if I could watch the movie with her, and she said only if I had finished my homework. (I'm probably the only teenager in the world who isn't allowed to have a television in their room.) The usual rule is no TV on school night. I reminded her that it was really still the weekend and that there's something I don't understand in math. I can get it done in study hall before class.
I saw Exhale when it first came out. My favorite part is when Robin is waiting for Troy and he comes over all late and all high and she says, You leather-wearing-in-the-summertime blah blah blah. That shit is so funny. Lela Rochon's hair is off the hook in that movie. I wish I could have my hair like that or like Aaliyah's---all straight. I wonder if she wraps it, like Allegra says she does.
Me and Ma sat under a comforter on the floor, and she made us popcorn. It was fun. I wasn't even bugging when she put her hands in my braids, which usually blows me. When it was over, Ma said her favorite part is the three of them dancing to TLC in Loretta Devine's house, drinking, and talking trash about men. She said it reminds her of when she and Norma were at Howard. They played old music and hand danced with each other once when they didn't have a date. I asked her if she used to drink and get high. She rocked me when she said, To tell you the truth, yes, which is why she hopes I never try it. She said even though at first she liked how she felt, later on she had bad experiences and kirked out and once even thought she was dying. She doesn't know about Norma cause Norma graduated way before her. Then she told me about a girl who drank so much she fell asleep on the toilet and they had to go in there and pull her panties back up and everything. That's so not mellow, like Janet says at the end of Free on the Velvet Rope CD.
Note: No call from Octavius.
Love
BY MAT JOHNSONFROM Drop
Friday, I opened the door for her. This little woman, too proud to even look up at me past the rib she came to. She stood, beneath layers of white skies and before wet sidewalk, a vision. A face so black it was bold, cheeks a duo of sweeping circles beneath the soft rainbow of a head wrap that contained all the colors that could scream or cry for you.
"Is this the place?"
"Excuse me?"
"Is this the place that's supposed to be taking pictures of me?" she asked. She was so much smaller than I'd been expecting, but she had to be the dancer David hired: She was too pretty not to be getting paid for it.
"Please, please come in," I managed. I shouldn't even have been answering the door because by this time, besides clients growing and waiting for our attentions, Urgent had a secretary, too, a bony, Marlboro Light--smoking Brixton boy named Raz who should have been down here with this woman, saving me from my awkwardness. The shoot was scheduled for a half hour before, but models, David reminded, were always late. Taking in the smell of her: of violet water and hot sauce.
"Fionna Otubanjo?" She just walked by me and started heading upstairs; I couldn't tell if she'd nodded. Tiny, this one. The size of a girl but the shape and proportions of a woman, making the stairwell look cavernous as my eyes struggled to keep perspective.
After I took her coat, introduced her to the photographer, the stylist, and even Margaret, who was taking a rare intermission from her reading to make an appearance on the third floor, I showed Fionna to the bathroom that would be her dressing room for the day. Then I pulled David to a far and relatively secluded section of the floor.
"Cuz, she's gorgeous." Somebody in the room had to acknowledge this.
"Really? A bit of a head on a stick, I thought. A short stick at that. She looked bigger on her Z card. If you like, maybe later we'll go for a curry or something, you could ask her to tag along." David reached into the cereal box in his hand and threw a kernel into my mouth.
Golden Crowns, an old-brand cereal owned by one of several companies that realized Urgent knew how to implant hunger in even the most bloated, who understood that our work was the stuff people were starting to whisper about, the kind that would be bringing back industry awards in the year to come. Its box stood in the center of the white cove, ready for its picture to be taken, short and proud and belligerent with caloric prophecies. Golden Crowns, a combination of flour, water, high-fructose corn syrup, and yellow dye number 24, but also something so sweet it didn't need milk or morning.
"Alright, luv," David was bellowing at the emerged Fionna. "What we need you to do is just run, leap right over the box, right? Spread your legs open like scissors, give it as much as you can. We want to capture you directly above the Golden Crowns, almost as if they gave you the gift of flight."
"I can do that," Fionna said, looking at me, and wasn't it immediately clear that she could do much more? That she could hold your head in her lap, rub her little palms over your face and wipe away everything else besides the blackness behind closed eyes? That if there were arranged marriages I would have had David call her family immediately on my behalf, have stood behind him smiling and jumping up and down like a horny Masai?
The photographer's tin can lights sat on the floor, hung from erected scaffolding, rested on the ends of tables and chairs, all pointing in one direction, metallic ravens holding brilliant court. The heat almost solar in intensity, pulsing away from the illumination to the rest of the space beyond, the warm touch linking all those in the room together. And within the fire, one body moving. To watch her run, to see her leap. The determined start with bare feet slamming the floor and then the jump, the seizing of space with a ferocious kick, a smile that flashed gloriously as soon as the pivot foot left the ground. How could one so short fly so high? And all this along with a bowl of glued Golden Crowns in one hand and a spoon in the other. Running and leaping and landing. The toe and ball of one foot touched back down and the rest of the body followed, the flesh moving slightly past the limits of her bones for a moment until it bounced back into structure again. David walked behind me and snapped his fingers by my ear---"Pay attention to the work"---but how could anyone with her perspiring until the midnight fabric of her leotard became even darker beneath the neck and arms, her form becoming an essay on the possibilities of blackness, a diatribe about refusing the limitations of one word? I sat, leaned against David's desk with my shirt open, my sleeves rolled, watching. Witnessing the sweat drip away from her as she ran and explode around her when she landed, giving a shine to the floor. Steaming the windows to opaque rectangles, forcing me to sweat along with her, to feel my own oily wetness and susceptibility, until, in one particularly triumphant soar (spoon and bowl held by hunger), she landed in the puddle of sweat that she created, broke the spell, and bore a new one in a helpless painful cry.
"Oh, fucking hell!"
The first to reach her, I held Fionna's back as she held her ankle. "Are you okay?"
"No, it's not okay. I'm hurt!"
"Is it broken?"
"No. I don't know. I don't think so." Inspired by the urgency of the moment, I moved around Fionna and gently took her leg into my lap, touched her ankle with my famished fingertips, bent the joint slowly in my hands up until "Ow!" and slowly back down until "Oh!" and left "Ew!" and right "AY!" until "No, it's not broken" but damn, isn't it divine to hear you scream and imagine that the sound must be the same when pleasure motivates it?
After the food, after the drinks, after it was too late for a limping girl to ride all the way back to East London, I offered my place to her for the night. It was the perfect time to ask the question: I had finally reached that delicate plateau where I was drunk enough for bravery but not too smashed to pronounce the words. Fionna agreed that would be good, "Because I'm very tired." When I carried her from the cab into my apartment, the driver looked at me funny: Even he knew she was too pretty for a wreck like me to be holding. I managed to get out my keys and open the door without dropping her or her overstuffed duffel bag that weighed nearly as much as she did. What's in it?
"Just some of my clothes. Lately I've been staying with girlfriends while I hunt for a new bedsit. This is your place?" Fionna asked inside.
"Yeah. This is me."
"You live alone then? No roommates or anything? How much do you pay?"
"I don't know. David says he take it out of my salary."
"I've been looking for a new place for months, and I haven't seen one this nice. Not one that didn't cost a fortune." She made me feel unusually lucky.
I turned on every light in the house as I carried her upstairs to the living room, trying to destroy any shadow that might scare her. Trying also not to bang her bad ankle against a wall. The swelling had gone down in the hours since the sprain, assisted by a variety of towel-wrapped foodstuffs Margaret found for her, but it was still an ugly thing sitting above her foot.
"Were you robbed recently?" Fionna looked around like maybe she didn't want me to put her down in this place.
"No, is something wrong?"
"You don't have any furniture," she said, shocked, staring at my apartment with nothing more than its own dust and possibilities to fill it. "How long have you been living here?"
"About nine months. I bought a kitchen table and some chairs." Actually, Margaret had made that donation from her basement, along with some dishes, flatware, and pots and pans after the time she came by the house to offer me leftover spaghetti and had to watch me sit on the floor eating it with my hands.
"Do you like it here?" Fionna's was a new voice echoing around these walls.
"I love it. I'm not going back to America."
"I meant the flat. There's so much room, isn't there? You should really get some more furniture, right? Some carpets and such. Make a home. It could be really nice, once you get the proper things together. Then you could rent a room out or something. It's too big for one person." Fionna took the seat on the futon I offered to her. I turned on my clock radio hoping for something romantic; it was pathetic, that tinny, cheap, monotone sound. I slapped it off again and tried to smile.
"Have you thought of painting any of the rooms something besides white?" Fionna asked.
"I like the white walls, actually. It makes me feel kind of free, for some reason. No stimuli. It's like the color of silence. It's an old place: a bit more than a hundred years, I think. You should see what they used to paint the place. In some rooms, I've actually chipped at the paint a bit, with a knife, all the way down to the wood, to see all the layers the walls were covered in before. You know this room was actually pink once," I said, motioning around. "And light blue, too." What the hell was that? I was making things up and I still sounded like an idiot.
Fionna looked around. Her leg hung out of her dress; you could see the light cut a perfect line down whatever angle of it was closest to you. Her toes, poking out the front of her sandals, were long and beige on the bottom, as if she'd been walking through sweet pancake batter. On one toe was a golden ring, a strip of solid metal seizing a strip of delicate skin. If I took her foot in my hand and pulled that ring off slowly, she would be more naked than the mere lack of clothes could ever provide.
"Do you like it?" Fionna asked. "It's very expensive. I got it in the town of my father. In Nigeria. I could probably sell it here for enough for a car, if I wanted one." Keep talking. As long as we're talking I won't try to kiss you, and then things won't go wrong. There won't be that moment when you say "Please, no," and then that awkward time after I apologize when we're both sitting here, trying to act out the scene that mirrors this perfect time before anything stupid was done.
"I've always wanted to go to Africa. I actually got David to put some of my money aside, a bit each check, into a savings account, and that's the big thing I was planning. Fly down into Egypt, go into Côte d'Ivoire, then go by land the rest of the way into West Africa. Do you go back there a lot?"
"Sometimes. I go at Christmas sometimes, to see them. Christmas, there's parties, things to do. Our house, where I was born, is very big, very old. You would like it. It was the magistrate's, when it was still a colony. Tall ceilings, and so much wood. My whole family lives there. Maybe you could visit. We could have a good time there. I want to go to America someday."
"No, you don't."
Fionna fell asleep on the futon, halfway through an Alec Guinness flick on BBC2. Awake, I stared at her, petrified that if I fell asleep I would succumb to flatulence, or wake up with a viscous pool of my warm drool coating us both. So I just kept looking, scared she would wake up and catch me and then it would really be over. This wasn't like with Alex; it could not be as simple as reaching out to another sibling of solitude. Fionna was of another caste, the one stories were told about and pictures were taken of, so far above my own I was surprised she found me visible. I kept looking at her closed lids as the balls swam joyously beneath them. My ear resting on the mattress edge, listening to her breath.
Saturday, a lack of blinds combined with an eastern exposure meant that, as usual, I woke up at dawn blinded and sweating. Scared that she would awake and then leave me, I got dressed and went down to the supermarket to get some food, cook a breakfast so big that she couldn't move.
At Sainsbury's I resisted the urge to stand gawking at the incomprehensibly large selection of baked beans and pork products by jogging through the aisles, grabbing at staples. Back at my front door, I became sure Fionna had already vanished, that inside was a goodbye note with a smiley face but no phone number, but upstairs she was still lying there, pulling on her top sheet with the blind gluttony of the sleeping. Back down in the kitchen, I cooked in careful silence: Shoes off, movements slow and studied, I even turned down the heat on the potatoes when the grease started popping too loud. When I finished, I could hear her above me. A repetitive, scratching sound. Probably clawing her way out the living room window. But when I climbed the steps, the sound was coming from the bathroom. Fionna was in the tub. Crouched down on her knees, working on something. Her back to me, I saw her bare legs. The right ankle was so bloated it seemed to belong to another, much larger person.
'You don't clean the bath very often, do you? How can you take a bath in this?' Pushing all her weight into the brush in her hand, scratching at the stain I had confused for permanent.
'I take showers,' I offered, pointing at the hose that she'd disconnected from the nozzle.
'Well, I prefer baths,' Fionna said, and kept scrubbing. Taking away not just the dirt but the discoloration that hung beneath it. Elbow jerking frantically, purposeful, as if she never wanted to see it again.
Saturday night turned out to be Fionna's club night. Iceni, below Piccadilly: all jungle, free cocktails for the best dancers, ladies free before eleven, men a tenner at the door. I'd managed to keep her around all day (you want some lunch, a nap, have you seen this video, wow it's time for dinner) so I wasn't about to lose her to my hatred of nightclubs. Once her ankle was wrapped, I carried her on my back down to the mini-cab, and then, in the West End, through the streets and into the club to a table full of waving, pointedly attractive women the same size as herself. 'My American' was how I was introduced, to which the response was 'Oh, right!' with smiles and ungripping handshakes.
Everywhere fags smoldering, fags burnt out, snubbed, fags crushed and left to die at the bottoms of dark bottles. Bright fags with wet lipstick stains perpetually kissing their butts. And for all of the hunting for unspent packs and elaborate lighting rituals (which usually commenced as soon as a new man stopped by to pay his respects to their grouping), I seemed to be the only one who was actually smoking, who was actually pulling the dark cloud into me and letting it spill back, warming my nostrils and shielding me from this room. It was the perfect evening because this was the perfect arena for me to go David-less out into the world: concealed under an unyielding blanket of sound, obscured by a calculated mix of darkness and random, off-color lights. Snug within the mist of tobacco, sips of my pint-cured bursts of self-consciousness. Saved by music so loud that it made my social deficiencies irrelevant. I was actually succeeding. Everyone seemed very pleased with my presence, introducing me to strangers for no apparent reason. The other ladies bent forward to me with occasional questions or comments. Somehow they'd been given the impression I was from New York, so I endorsed this misconception with several unprovable lies that we would both forget the next morning. Fionna held tightly on to my arm as if we were lovers. And then, just when her hand was getting warm, an intro to a song came on that made everybody at the table's eyes inflate as they reached out to clasp one another's hands.
In the seconds it took for the beat to kick in, Fi's friends were gone, off to dancing. Foreplay was over. Fionna released my arm. Everyone was screaming on the floor, hands in the air, bouncing as it there was cash on the ceiling. I stood up to watch. Look at them, bumping, shaking, jerk, jounce. Fionna pulled herself up from her seat by grabbing my leg. Her head bobbed with them. On the floor, slightly below us, the crowd was spreading. These friends of hers could dance, and everyone in the room knew it. No partners: a flock of individuals, simultaneous soloists performing variations on the same work. The crowd grew still because watching them dance was more enjoyable than doing it themselves. I looked down at Fi to compliment them but her head had stopped nodding.
"Lift me."
Thank the Lord---time to leave. Riding this mood and with a little drink to blame any embarrassments on, I could make my move in the cab home. I grabbed Fi into my arms and started heading for the exit.
"Where are you going?"
Fionna pointed to a wall. "Over there," she said, her finger pointing toward the dance floor, that place everyone else in the room was staring at. I walked. Someone brushing past with two drink-filled hands banged Fionna's out-sticking foot and Fi screamed demonstratively, digging her nails into my arm as the guy cursed his spillage and kept going. "There. Over there." I was directed to a high table covered with flyers. "On top," I placed her rear at the table's edge. "No, on top." I lifted her higher till she had put her good foot down and was standing upon it, where everyone could see her. Immediately, knee bent and bad ankle behind her, arms reaching out to the air for balance, Fionna started dancing. "Chris, come on, come up and dance with me. No, come on, climb up. Now."
"I can't." I offered a grin as I yelled back to her. I really couldn't.
"Why?" Because if I got up there they would boo or laugh or throw rocks at my head. Because I wasn't made for the pedestal, I was unsuitable for display. No crowd would ever accept Chris Jones held up above them. Philly had already taught me that, and who knew me longer than it? Definitely not the graceful Fionna, who reached out to tug my hand while still doing her one-foot shuffle. I grasped hers just so she wouldn't stumble.
"I'll dance with you down here, so if you fall I can catch you," I told her, and she accepted that evasion, released me of the obligation of humiliating myself.
Look at the way she moves and imagine what she could do with two feet beneath her. Reluctantly fulfilling my promise, I began bobbing awkwardly below her, forwarding racial harmony by dispelling stereotypes of black grace with every pathetic jerk. But then the crowd took even that responsibility away from me. All around me, bodies stilling as they took her in. Little woman up above them moving like there was nothing you could put on her that she couldn't just shake off, radiating life so bright it might even burn your troubles, too. Whatever made us alive, whatever it was that made us more than functionally bags of blood, she had it and she was showing it to the room. A sliver of God vibrating there before us. And I knew everyone could see her the way I did because they were all trying to get a better glimpse, pushing me out of the way to do so. Knowing instinctively that I shouldn't even be there to witness this event, the crowd expelled me, shoved me shoulder by shoulder back to the dance floor, now emptied. Fionna kept going; I could make out from over their heads. I don't know if she knew I wasn't there anymore, but I knew she knew the crowd was. That they were yelling for more and she was feeding them.
I went back to the table we'd been sitting at, picked up a drink I was pretty sure was mine. The other seats were deserted, so I commandeered a dark pocket in the corner, against the wall. For the remaining hours, I sat and played shepherd to the jackets and lighters the dancers left behind. The club made snakebites and the waitress didn't care how many I ordered, as long as she could keep the change from the tenner each time. So by the time the music ended and the only sound was my ears buzzing, I felt prepared for the solitary night bus home. But, as I struggled to get up again, there was Fionna, hopping back from the light to greet me, tugging on my hand once more.
"Why you come back for me?" I managed.
"Because we need each other." Fionna giggled, hugging my waist tightly (or was she keeping a drunken man from falling down?). Propping me against a pillar and hopping back off again to call us a mini-cab out of there. Having the bouncer help me out to the car. Waking me up in Brixton by giving a pinch to my cheek and delivering the words "Christopher, we're home."
Sunday, my day-after embarrassment evaporated when Fionna walked into my bedroom, sheet wrapped around her, and said, "Chris, I have a bag of clothes already packed at my last bedsit that I've been meaning to retrieve. Maybe you could pick that up for me?" Immediately, fueled by hope, I was on the tube to Hornchurch, riding all the way out to the East London address she'd given me. The trip took as long as my last flight to Amsterdam, regardless of how close it looked on the Underground map. Maybe, if it was a large bag, she might stay the whole week.
The landlord was a big woman and a cop, dressed in a uniform when I got there. Her jacket was off and I could see her bra hugging her fiercely underneath the white shirt, her back looking as if it needed to be scratched. Smiling, I said I was here to pick up a bag for Fionna.
"Well, I'm sure you are, but first, let's see the money. Mind you, I told her that from before." There was an ATM a mile back by the tube station, so it didn't take me long to gather up the cash. When I got back the lady was standing at the door behind six suitcases, big enough to hide bodies and heavy enough to make me believe they did. I took a cab back to Brixton, paying the driver nearly forty bucks for the ride. From the car I walked to my door with three cases in each hand, letting the handles try to break my bones as the weight hammered my legs with each step.
At my front door, the odors---fried onions, sausage, hot pepper, and olive oil---all coming from my property. Inside, I stood at the kitchen door, luggage still in hand, looking at the place settings Fi had laid out on my table. "Try this." Grinning, she came toward me, one hand holding a spoon and the other guarding underneath it. She was wearing one of my Tshirts as if it was a dress; she'd even found one of my ties was a good belt for the outfit. My hands still caught inside handles, Fionna put the spoon's tip in my mouth and lifted it up so it could pour in. It was some kind of chili, I could taste the salt and the crushed tomatoes. When she pulled the spoon away, excess sauce dropped onto my bottom lip, sliding down to my chin. "Sorry," Fionna told me, and she reached forward and grabbed a dick that was already hard for her, pulling me down to her eye level. Slowly, with the end of her tongue, Fionna retraced the drip's path along my chin up to my bottom lip. When she reached it, Fi surrounded mine with both of her own, catching me in her teeth and sucking my flesh clean again. Oh, to put my hands on her, to hold her to me as hard as she was now biting, but at my sides my swollen hands were now stuck in the luggage handles, which made things even more difficult when Fionna started pulling me down to the linoleum. Her teeth released, and I wasted precious time trying to maintain contact with those lips before I realized that she really wanted my face to drift away.
"Talk to me," she demanded, and my words began pouring confessions of attraction, instant love and des---
"No. Talk to me black," African woman said to me, and neither one of us thought she meant Swahili, Yoruba, or Twi. Black. And not the black I coveted, not the one I was walking to. The other one. That was her price, the cost of this fantasy. Lady, do you know what you ask of me? Do you know what this payment says about my desire? Take it. So I gave that to her: released the ownership of my tongue to the sound it had been meant for. Oh, and wasn't that sound happy to be free again, eliminating prepositions and conjunctions with its loose grammar and curving my sentences into its drawl? Reveling in its parole and scheming for permanent freedom? Give ear to me, Fionna. Hear the voice of the life I want to smother. Listen to what the niggers on the corner have to say to you. Her fingers traced the moving lips that spoke to her until those same hands went to my neck and pushed my face lower, down to a place I wouldn't assume clearance. Lips to lips once more. "Keep talking," Fionna demanded as my tongue took on additional duties.
My hands still stuck in suitcase handles, my arms outstretched above me like a gull in flight, I continued to rap my ghetto garble. As Fionna's moaning grew, I spoke louder. Wet words wandered within her. Fionna's fingers slipped to the back of my head and stayed there.
Keys in my hand was the best part of the day because there it was, physically, in my hands: David's world, heavy and jagged and multiplicitous, held together by a ring attached to a black plastic duck. Everything he had was contained within its weight and I stood on the street alone with it, unprotected, unguarded.
I would find the brown, round-head key, slide it in the door, then walk up the stairs to the kitchen where I heard him yell, "Make us a cuppa" which meant pour the old water out of the electric kettle and add cold water for the new. Lay mustard on the white bread and cover that with cheddar and put it in the grill hung above the stove.
While water boiled and cheese melted and brown man spat and farted in the bathroom beyond; I read the newspaper that Margaret would place on the table after she left for work hours before (always the Guardian and always placed back in order, section within section, without crease or jam stain, just like new although she had surely read it over breakfast hours before). When the sounds of his shower had ended I went back to the kitchen and poured one inch of milk into a mug that held one gray tea bag, then laid the steaming water on top of it. David would appear, in long pajama bottoms and still no shirt but maybe a towel across his thick shoulders or on his head like a frustrated boxer. He would sit hunched over, a few feet from the table, so that his head was nearly level with it as he held his tea mug close to his mouth with both hands. Sipping was the only treble. For bass, he might moan.
When Red Rose had burnt away the encrusted syllables he might begin with explanations of the night before ("After you left, I really tied one on, got right pissed") or show me a souvenir of his travels ("See this sign? I pulled it off last night. Right off a stone wall with my hands, right? I was mad, pissed out of my head. I used to chat up this girl that lived on Thorncliffe, number seventy-four. Lovely, you should have seen her.") or passionately reveal his latest fascination ("Mushrooms are the fruit of the soil. It's like eating the earth when you eat them. That's what it is."). Then a walk to the third floor. David would get the messages from Raz, and we'd go down the blackboard in the center of the room, figure out the agenda and schedule whatever in-house or client meetings were needed.
But how long could that last? Particularly when the spritz of lager cans being opened marked the top of the hour better than Margaret's antique grandfather clock (the German one, with the thick oak sides, and the two brass pendulums)? Inevitably there came five-thirty, a time to pick up the downstairs before Margaret came home. A time to pull up empty and half-empty cans and the ashes of fags and spliff, for the list of chores to be executed while David hit the shower again, this time destined to arise with more clothes than his pajama bottoms. Was the work done? No, but as long as people were contacted, meetings were kept and deadlines were met, I could do all the work I needed to do that night, downstairs in my study, complete now with the drafting table, lamp, and file drawers that Fionna'd gotten me to buy, the only distraction being her calling me from upstairs to tell me when something good was on the telly ("Christopher, you'll like this one, come."). As long as David was there every morning, guiding me, massaging the clients, creating the designs, Urgent could keep going. David took care of the business, dealt with the people, I birthed the ideas. I was good at my job. I liked working. I liked working for him.
If the pre-Margaret chores were quick (get vitamin C, cod oil, and ginseng from Boots, renew the subscription to the Voice, mop kitchen floor) I could make my disappearance before six having taken care of things. If the chores took too long it was just "Do what you can do, I'll take over when she gets here. Wake me when you hear her keys in the door."
"Are you going to wipe his arse, too?" Fi asked me. I was late. Only a little, but she had been waiting for me down by the ticket machines in Brixton tube station and that short homeless brother with the busted lip and the lobotomy scar had yelled at her. We had opera tickets for the Royal Albert: I'd never gone and she was excited she was going to show me.
"You know it's not like that. He takes care of me also," I told her, going down the escalator.
"David takes care of himself."
"David pays my rent, he pays my bills, everything. He got me here. That's how he takes care of me. He's my boy. Without David I would have nothing." And without David, I would be nothing. Lady, you don't know it, but without him propping me up, you wouldn't even be standing next to me.
"That man will suck as long as you let him, and then when there's nothing more he will fly off like a bloated bat. By then you will be too weak to even swat him down." Fionna stared forward while she said this, as if she were watching this unfold. For a second she wasn't a beautiful woman, someone who looked just the way beauty was supposed to. For a moment Fionna was just a skinny little black girl, hair straightened, lipstick done, trying to look cute in a dress she had no hips to be wearing. She could be from Nicetown maybe, East Mount Airy or Ogontz.
"Fi, really, don't worry. David is cool. Just because he needs me doesn't mean he's using me."
"Chris, who am I? I'm the one who loves you, the one who will always be here for you. I am the woman holding your hand." Fionna's hand was a light thing, impossibly soft, even at the palm. The thin veins on top could barely be traced without looking. Later, when we got to the show, I held it during the entire performance, letting my hand explore hers as she led me through the sound.
The opera was a story about an old guy who married a young chick and then she cheated on him, and they all suffered, but that didn't matter; I was a Phillystine and didn't care about that silliness. What mattered was that we sat close enough that you could see the spittle shooting out of the actors' mouths, that the voices of these performers were so strong, their sense of the emotion so complete, that when they sang I could feel their sound upon me, vibrating the hairs in my nose, as loud as when you're waiting for the sub at Fairmont Avenue and the express roars by. What mattered was that here was a plain old Philly boy, costumed in a suit and actually enjoying the sounds of this world. The only one under these ornate ceilings who knew what malt liquor tasted like, what to do when someone starts shooting up a party or how to open a Krimpet without letting the icing stick to its plastic bag.
Antiquated Desires
I was practical when I married Mr. Pete, or rather, I felt obligated to marry him.
Mr. Pete first broached the subject of marriage the summer of Alex's fourth year as we lazed in Mama's backyard on Loomis Avenue. It was too hot to do anything but sip lemonade and watch Alex play with Paris, Mama's cocker spaniel. Mr. Pete and Mama yakked about the good old days when my daddy was alive, and he and Mr. Pete ran the streets.
"Now, Helen, you know Alex never cheated," Mr. Pete assured Mama.
"Humph. Show me a man that doesn't cheat, and I'll show you a dead man," Mama said.
Mr. Pete laughed, low chuckles that sound sinister. The shrill of the phone disturbed our tranquillity.
"I'll get it." I rose, but Mama flagged me down.
"It's cranky old Pat," Mama said. "I told her I was coming over."
While Mama was in the house, Mr. Pete and I laughed at Alex and Paris's antics. Paris was so old that he limped as he tried to escape Alex's grasping hands.
"You know, I always wanted a son," Mr. Pete said.
"You and Miss Verna never had any children?" I knew the answer before I asked the question.
"No, Verna and I was married for almost forty years but she couldn't have children."
"Uhmm-hmm," I said. I was not good company for old folks like Mr. Pete and Mama. The past lived in their heads like old sitcoms, same stories told and retold. Their conversations revolved around things that happened, or should have happened, or shouldn't have happened.
"Here I am, seventy-three, and still wanting a child," Mr. Pete said. "A son from my blood."
"Well, Mr. Pete," I said brazenly, "you need a woman for that."
He looked at me and laughed. "Maybe you could be that woman? Ain't nobody in the world but me. The house is paid for. Got a few dollars saved, and there's my retirement annuity from the railroad. You'll get that forever."
"Mr. Pete, I'm only twenty-four!" I exclaimed. The last image I wanted in my head was that old man humping on top of me.
"Twenty-four with proof that you can give birth," he said. He nodded to Alex who chose that moment to look at us with an angelic face.
"Katie!" He shouted and ran toward us.
It was one of those storybook moments. He ran straight into my arms with Paris yelping at his heels. Mr. Pete chuckled, and I felt absolutely trapped. Just then Mama came out of the house, and I used her entrance to escape.
Mr. Pete was on a mission. He wanted a child. After that encounter, I saw him with a few of my high school classmates. The girls were always dressed to the nines with jewelry galore. Fine and dandy. I met James and married him. James and I got a divorce just when LaWanna Jordan, Regina's baby sister, announced her pregnancy by Mr. Pete. Her wedding plans were as grand as the plans for the royal wedding, fifteen bridesmaids, two flower girls, and a white limousine. Mama talked about the affair with distaste and disbelief.
"Can't believe Pete's letting some twenty-year-old child trick him into marriage. Everybody knows she ain't pregnant by him. Old goat! Thinks he gonna leave a string of children behind. Married to Verna for forty years and never a hint of a baby. Of course, he blames her. Go 'round saying she couldn't have any children, but the man cheated on her left and right. Where're the babies from all those affairs? And Verna? Heaven knows I loved that woman, but why she spent most of her life crying over that dog, I don't know."
"Woof-woof," Alex said from the floor. "Woof-woof."
"Stop that, boy!" Mama snapped.
He and I were watching our Thursday night television lineup, Cosby, A Different World, and anything else that NBC had to offer. Back then I spent Thursday evenings at Mama's house. Every other Saturday, I picked Alex up for a movie and dinner date. Sometimes he spent the night with me. Most of the time he didn't. I was in school at the time, trying to get my master's. It was so much easier for Alex to stay with Mama.
"You said he was a dog," Alex pushed his luck.
"You keep on, and you won't see another episode of Cosby this year," Mama warned.
I guess LaWanna would have married Mr. Pete and gone to Vegas for the honeymoon if she hadn't been spooked out of her plans. A week before the wedding, the story goes, LaWanna and Mr. Pete did a walk through his home. She wanted all of Verna's things gone, and planned to redo the house in soft lavender and blue, with sprinkles of yellow. On the second floor Mr. Pete walked past a closed door like it didn't exist. LaWanna insisted on going into that room.
"Pete, honey, I need to look in this room," she said.
"That there is gonna be the nursery," Mr. Pete said.
"Well, don't you think I should look inside and make some plans?" she asked.
Reluctantly he took out an old-fashioned skeleton key and unlocked the door. The room was large and bright. The cream wallpaper had teddy bears holding colorful balloons. There was a beautiful hand-carved oak crib against one wall. A wicker bassinet, draped with netting, stood against another wall. The bassinet and netting were yellowed with age. The third wall supported a changing station and small white dresser. A bamboo rocker sat by a window that overlooked the neighborhood. Scattered around the room were toys. GI Joes marched across the window sills. A Chatty Cathy doll and several Barbie dolls crawled across the lap of a huge panda bear. There were toys out of Burger King and McDonald's gift packs. A family of dead sea monkeys floated in a dirty fish tank. Winnie the Pooh rode a tricycle. Quick Draw McGraw sat on a bicycle. Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble sat on a Big Wheel. A scale model Lionel train set, a go-cart, three racing tracks, and thousands of Matchbox cars ran around the room. There were Raggedy Ann and Andy, Winnie the Pooh, and Barney Rubble stuffed dolls. Posters of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Underdog, and a rare one of the Little Rascals looked down from the wall. Model airplanes, ships, and a model of the U.S.S. Enterprise from Star Trek dangled from the ceiling on thin wires. There were smaller things like crayons, coloring books, bolo bats, jacks, marbles, a slinky, and a Rubik's cube. Mr. Pete had added to that collection of toys year after year.
Some said it was that rocker moving slowly back and forth that tipped the scale. Others swear that LaWanna heard Verna humming a lullaby. Still others testified that it was the ghost of Verna that made LaWanna back out that room until she hit the wall in the hallway. LaWanna swore that she felt something tap her on the shoulder. When she turned, Verna scowled down at her from a huge picture. I know that picture well. Verna was not happy that day. In that picture, her eyes were narrow, tight slits, her mouth, a wrinkled pucker. To this day, LaWanna swears Mama Verna whispered, don't touch nothing here. Anyway, LaWanna ran down the stairs, screaming at the top of her lungs, with Mr. Pete behind her calling:
"Girl, girl! What's the matter with you, girl?"
But Mr. Pete was old and LaWanna was fast. She was outside the house and running up Loomis Avenue before Mr. Pete could get to the first floor. LaWanna called the wedding off. She claimed she lost the baby in the flight. In less than a month, Mr. Pete was back to begging me to marry him. I married Mr. Pete for one reason only. He saved my son-brother's life.
I don't know about other cities, but in Chicago the children will get in the middle of the street and play ball---football, dodgeball, baseball, soccer. When cars came drivers would toot their horns and the kids would scatter. The drivers never, ever rolled their cars over the children like a ball over bowling pins. The day Alex was mowed down, we sat on our stoops up and down the street watching the kids play dodgeball. An ice cream truck had passed, so almost everybody was munching on something. A few of the boys had wolfed down their treats and were back in the street. Alex, who was not allowed to play in the streets, was with them. He had a way of blending into a group of kids so Mama and I couldn't see him.
Along came a yellow Pontiac Firebird. It was a beauty. As it passed our house at top speed, I saw the red emblem on the back. Then I saw my child in its path.
I leaped up and screamed. I heard the screeching of tires. The car swerved. I heard the grind of metal against metal. I fainted. I regained consciousness as the ambulance wailed down our street. Mr. Pete kneeled by Alex. The Firebird had careened into a parked car but still managed to hit Alex on his side. Mr. Pete administered CPR. He breathed into Alex's mouth and pumped his tiny chest. Mama and all the other mamas were praying, "Dear Lord, oh, Jesus, save this child." By the time the ambulance made it way down our street, Alex was breathing. I vowed then to take CPR, which I later did.
Mr. Pete drove Mama to the hospital, while I rode in the ambulance. He handled the doctors because Mama and I were in shock. I was still in shock when he asked me to marry him. I was half-comatose with thoughts of losing my only son-brother. I said yeah and Mr. Pete didn't allow time for me to change my mind. He raced me from Mercy Hospital to city hall. We were married that day. Mama never spoke about that marriage.
By time Alex got out of the hospital and I realized my mistake, I was firmly ensconced in Mr. Pete's house. Verna never frowned at me or made any type of appearance. I thought, Well hell, the man does think I'm pretty. He's nice, and he did say he would wait until I was comfortable being Mrs. Peter Smith, before we attempted to make his son.
I reminded him of his promise to set up a trust fund for Alex's education and to change his will so I could get the house. I really didn't expect the old geezer to do it since Mama said a distant cousin of Verna's would inherit everything, but he did. One morning, he placed a manila envelope in my hands with all the appropriate paper work. What else could I do but keep my part of the bargain? I am a woman of my word.
On our official wedding night, bile sloshed in my stomach. Every time I looked at the old geezer, I shuddered. When I was a child, Mr. Pete wasn't bad looking but on our wedding night old age had twisted his good looks into a comedic nightmare. His pink lips were simply cups to hold saliva. His skin was thin, dry parchment with liver spots. He moved as if every bone in his body was on the verge of breaking. His soft curly hair had yellowed with age. His eyes were huge behind his triple thick eyeglasses.
I figured that Mr. Pete had one good go in him. He would hump me, roll over, and wait for the baby to grow in my stomach. I bought a black gown that surged so far down in the back that the crack of my butt gulped air.
A slit ran up the front and the bosom plunged down to my navel. I figured this would excite Mr. Pete so much that the whole sordid act would be over in, say, five minutes.
To guarantee the old geezer wouldn't have enough energy to last past a hit and a miss, I cooked a huge dinner; oxtails in speckled butter beans, candied yams, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, fried okra, sliced tomatoes with mayonnaise, and a peach cobbler with so much butter and sugar in it that the crust glittered. Hell, that meal would have put the strongest man to sleep. I put on Isaac Hayes' Hot Butter Soul LP, and prayed that the man would be finished with my body before the long version of Walk on By was completed.
That night Mr. Pete started at my toes, licking and sucking them like candy, while his fingers played my satin hips like a fine harp. He nibbled my calves while he massaged my ankles and I felt the first stirring, the first quivering of excitement. He nibbled up my body to my navel. His tongue darted in and circled slowly, almost ticklishly. An ancient core of lust burned inside my stomach. Did it matter that his body was as wrinkled as an old cotton sheet? No. When he took one of my nipples into his mouth and rolled his tongue around it, I heard myself groan from some hot orange place where desire controlled my mind and body. I clawed the bed and pulled the sheets as my hips rose. By the time that old man released my hardened, wet nipple from his mouth, I was begging him for more. I hated him for that. I tell you, I despised him. I did not want to want him, but there I was writhing on his bed underneath the watchful eyes of Verna, writhing and saying "please" like some young girl who didn't know any better. And Mr. Pete, was a master, he nursed at my breasts softly. Notice I said nursed, not lick'd or nibbled, but nursed one after the other. Long before we consummated our marriage, I had orgasms. I had many mini-orgasms. When he finally entered me, I could only scream as flashes of light, intensely bright, filled my sight. Little did I know that was only a mid-size orgasm under his masterful hands. I thought it was a major thing, but Mr. Pete I took me on one roller coaster ride after another. At one point, I thought my heart would explode. He moved slowly, like honey coming out of a jar, like he had a lifetime to consummate our marriage. There was no rush, no hurry. Whenever I thought the old geezer was at the point of orgasm, he would stop, just stop and breathe. Obviously, he intended to go on forever. By the time the man finally ejaculated---no, wrong word---unloaded all that was in him, I was weak and angry. I curled away from him, ashamed of my body's betrayal. His hand rested on my belly. Lying in the darkened bedroom, I wanted to scream. I had married a man who expected a baby and who had the stamina to work diligently toward that goal.
When Mr. Pete died a couple of months later, I had the house and his retirement, and Alex had what was in his bank account in a nifty little trust fund, but I was not pregnant. After Mr. Pete's funeral, I donated the toys (except a few collectible items) to LaRabida Children's Research Hospital. I gave all the furniture away to Goodwill Industries. I painted the house and rented it to the Gordons, a couple with life. I moved to the North Side, far away from Englewood. Folks looked at that house on Loomis and thought If that old goat hadn't tried to make a baby he would have lived much longer. But, if that old goat had lived any longer, he would have worn my young body out.
FROM Rest for the Weary
I am Flowers of the Delta Clan Flowers and the line of O. Killens. This tale I tell as told to me. Once upon a time there was an angel. And a conjureman. Walk with me Lord Legba.
Horns, whistles and noisemakers erupt through the thin walls of the hotel. Outside the snug cocoon of their room New Orleans parties in the New Year. She leans over him, silvered hair a translucent curtain around their heads. He is acutely conscious of the points where her body lies warm against his. "What happens" she says, when the dream dies.
He looks up at her, waiting for a reprieve. The lamp behind her backlights the silvered curtain that shelters them. He clears his throat. Dreams never die he says, what are you trying to tell me, baby?
It's over the says, you've got to leave in the morning.
There is a finality he has not heard before. This time he thinks, this time she is going to make it stick. Six, seven months hes been fired six, seven times. But always before the dream brought her back. His hand slowly strokes the flaring curve of her hip. Perhaps this is the last time he'll handle her. The first time they've made love without watching the clock. The first time shes slept in his arms.
They had come to New Orleans for New Year's 2000. She had told him she was going down to visit her parents and he had asked if he could come down for a New Year's Eve dinner with her. I'll leave right away he said, just take you to dinner he said. She said she would have a hotel room for when she needed a break from her parents. He could stay over if he wanted to. A couple of nights if you want. I probably wont stay there with you though.
She works in the little neighborhood library at the mouth of the park, on the corner of Riverside and Person. Both library and neighborhood named after Riverside Park, about a mile or so of thickly wooded Mississippi River bluff in deep South Memphis. He lives in the park itself, and alongside the river, in a little house on the bluff sitting treetop tall on stilts dug deep in delta mud. Neighborhood folk call it a treehouse but it only looks that way, a tight little box of a house, old gray wood as weathered as the trees that surround it and barely visible in the bright months of sanctuary. The good folk of Riverside quick to point out late night lights glowing deep in the Park to folks from less blessed Memphis neighborhoods. See there they say, where the lights are? Thats where the hoodooman stay they say. In a house on stilts. So he can see.
He tells stories, delta classics on the college circuit, festivals, community dothingees, it's a living. Late forties dreadman, thick and bearded and built to take punishment, a bluegummed twoheaded man with hooded eyes and a face of carved wood that showed only what he wanted it to. Met her at the library, where he likes to nest among the fruits of solitary labors. She is the reference desk librarian and it just so happens that from his favorite chair (back to the wall and facing the door, a child of the 60s) she be in his line of sight. Interesting woman, a classic beauty, long and lean, with an unruly mane of prematurely silvered dreads. They nod, exchange pleasantries, have lunch occasionally. She is, he soon realizes, a strange and fascinating woman, an iconoclastic sort within whom he detects the complicated soul of an artist.
They had been on nodding terms for years when lunches were inaugurated by a fortuitous encounter at the Hole in the Wall, the local juke eatery across from the library and next to the Riverside Baptist Church. Angel, she told him. Angel, he said. Hard name to carry he said. My parents thought very highly of me she said. And when she laughed at herself she threw her head off to the side in a manner that struck him like revelation.
Perhaps that's why one day he blurted out, surprising himself, Angel, I realize youre a married woman, but I would like to court you.
She watched him fidget, intrigued since the first time they met with the power she has over him. (You drooled she told him.)
Highjohn I'm very flattered but you know Im a married woman and I hope you can respect that is what he expected. Instead she looked at him with this stricken look. I'm sorry he babbled, I hope I haven't upset you, I just . . . No, no, she said, you havent upset me . . . I am married, though.
I know, he murmured, head tucked down into his shoulders, I just had to say it you know. I'll . . . uh . . . see you later. But as he turned away she brushes his beard with the palm of her hand. You didn't upset me, she said.
All night long conjureman feeling the angelsbrush of her palm. And the goodfolk of Riverside, heavier in ash'e than most, toss and turn in their sleep cause the conjureman howling at the midnight moon.
The next morning an e-mail saying she wanted to talk. They arrange to meet at the Hole. The old ease gone. Eyes that fidget and flicker. I cant be what you want me to be, she said. But I didnt get any sleep last night thinking about what you said. You can't . . . court me . . . like, that . . . I have a husband you know. But we can continue to be friends. To have lunch like we have. If you're comfortable with that.
Very. Thankful, even. What on earth could he have been thinking of? That evening he emailed an apology. She replied that it wasnt necessary. Says she wants to finish the conversation when he got a chance.
They took to walking in the park during her lunch breaks, solemnized by the wooded calm. He found himself telling her things he himself didn't understand. Told her he wanted to save the race. Take the trick off the souls of blackfolk, Said I am Legba Child. Told her the park was a holy ground. A hole in the wall.
Said Brer Rabbit and his crew lived there. Said they wary of humanfolk but sometimes late at night I settle back and close my eyes and act like Im sleeping and soon enough old Brer Rabbit come peeping in the door and when he see me sleeping like that he call the rest of them in and they commence to partying. Brer Bear pull out; bluesharp Rabbit play; Sister Coon play, she guitar bigger than she; Brer and Sister Fox commence to kicking up their heels, and sometimes I get in the spirit and I forget myself and I open my eyes and the music stop and they all hide away till I close my eyes again.
She showed him dreams she has long carried in secret places. A story she once wrote, a nightblack African goddess born of stars and thunder. Kinda corny, I know, she said, I've never shown it to anybody. He listens with all his power to a wildweed childhood wandering the storytale streets of New Orleans when she should have been in school. Stories about her oldschool New Orleans family, funny ways and all, the second masters, the damned doctorate, ABD, if she can squeeze the time. Told him about late-night archaeology classes at the University of Memphis, the summer digs on the Harriet Tubman Home in Auborn, the Tubman birthplace in Maryland. An extraordinary woman, she said, deltasun leaping off the river and igniting her eyes. Most people only know of her slaverytime and Civil War exploits. But in her last years she built a home for homeless exslaves. She never quit struggling. She speaks to me.
The first time he kissed her was in the park. Spring probably, pollen so thick you could taste it. They were standing high on the bluff and she was entirely too close. She turned to say something, their eyes meet and flicked away bruised. Before he realized it he was leaning in to kiss her. Caught himself. May I kiss you? he said. She nodded most imperceptibly. Then he kissed her and his world lurched spun shouted and spoke in tongues while he savored her lips, her tongue. Lost in the grace of Oshun. And I will be worthy of this blessing Oshun, I am forevermore your devoted fool. He opened his eyes, looked at her face up against his, put his hand on her neck to feel the warmth of her skin, the heartbeat under his finger. She drew back suddenly and pushed at his chest. No, she said, I shouldn't. He stepped back and she dropped her head into her hands. (Something moved in me, in my body and I knew it was a dangerous thing we were doing. I knew it then.) He stood there frozen. Never wanted to cause her grief. Sorry he mumbled and backed up to the edge of the bluff. Not your fault, she said, I need to get back. Sure, he said. They crossed the bridge over the expressway that separated the park from the city without speaking, much too aware of boundaries broken and fingers unlinked only upon crossing.
The second time was better than the first. This time he held her in his arms. This time she let him. But it was the first time they made love that the earth shifted under his feet. An easy peace wrapped their souls in a little warm blanket.
Then she fired him. For Legba is a jealous loa and does not care to share. I was going to tell you it was over, she said, pulling away and sitting on the edge of the bed, body still sleek with sweat. Sure, he said, no problem. she would be back he thought and when she came back she better have a better attitude. He was still cool when he watched her drive off. Then he got to thinking. What if she didn't. Come back. Classic alpha, the conjureman tend to command games. But could he take that chance with this one. What if she didn't. Come back.
Evening come and the conjureman walking the 'hood like he do, de village witch doctor keeping he finger on the pulse, the patterns unbroken the harmonies clean, his invisible thing, I see but am not seen. Some folk, heavy with the ash'e, see him just fine, but most just feel the passing breeze of hoodooman walking. But this time he distracted by the very things that generally please him. Families sitting comfortable on wraparound porches, greeting folk and watching the day fall. Light glowing through windows as the sky darkens. Couples walking hand in hand with that coordinated rhythm. This time the conjureman retreats early into the leafy darkness. Acutely conscious of being damn near fifty and living in the park like a kid playing games.
Conjureman sitting on a driftwood throne and handling he roots in he hand. Throw shift frown. Not a good time for unclear signs. Throw shift. Or perhaps it is just that he does not like what he see. Conjureman dont care for distraction. The faint brush of Fa like spiderwebs on the face. Throw Shift. Frown. He observes the habitual urge to slip back into his fortress, comfortable enough and answerable to nobody. When they were just flirting it was one thing but now that they have been intimate it is entirely another. Already he can feel significance lingering about the edges. The intoxicating scent of a power greater than his own
Surely just the overwrought passion of new love. The trees are greener afterall, the air fresher, his faded dreams once again bright and shiny things. He has been here before. No, not here, says the power.
To win her I would change the world.
He called. Cleared his throat and asked her to lunch. Said he wanted to talk. If that's alright with you. Okay, she said. Okay.
In the park and on the bluff. The park was deeply quiet and they can barely sense the city around them. The jagged treeline of Arkansas. I tried to be cool, he said, when you said what you said yesterday. I should have fallen on my knees and begged you to reconsider.
I wrote you she said. Wrote you a letter. I dont want to stop. What we doing.
He was glad he had come to her first. I am such a bohemian, he said. Thats not necessarily a bad thing, she said. You have no idea, he said.
If I were to go with you, what kind of life would we live.
He decides then that he will hoodoo her, bind her to him with a web of lovemagic. He commence to spinning dreams. Magical, he said. Whatever you want, he said. And he found himself caught up suddenly in the spell of his own dream. With all my power I will serve you, he said. I will tell stories of you that will be a beacon light unto the generations. Stories of my love for you. I will immortalize you, he said.
The letter was there when he got home. She really cared for him, it said. She cared for him and she cared for her husband and she was confused, she said, two men she cared for in her life, two fires, one for my husband and a growing one for you. Not contacting him would be hard, she said. I do love you, she said.
She canceled New Orleans twice. Twice she relented. The day he was supposed to leave he didnt answer the phone for fear she would tell him not to come. Didn't know what to expect until she met him in the lobby of a classic Quarters hotel on Quarles, the Vila something or other, intimate, faintly decadent, a little elevator pushing them together and forcing a hug, a quickish peck.
An equally classic room with thick brocaded walls and lace covered windowdoors. They were just above the oldworld rooftops of the Quarter and a rainy drizzly day shrouded the crenelated roofs surrounding them. They sat on a wroughtiron balcony drinking champagne with bread, fruits and cheeses and only occasionally came inside to make candlelit love on the big brass bed.
God, this is good. Spooned up behind her and fitted in all particulars. God I want you, he says, into her ear. So does my husband, she says, he wants me, too. Well what do you want, he says. She turned and went into his chest. I want you, she says, so soft he more felt than heard it, my warrior, my fearless warrior. His heart swells and his power glows hot like a burning sun. And when he comes in her he is claiming her. Thats what he tells himself, convinces himself. Murmurs in her ear as she comes on him and he in her, Do you want me to be faithful to you baby, do you.
Oh yes, she moaned, oh yes baby yes.
But it was walking the little streets of the Quarter, weaving through festive New Year's crowds of tourists and natives in beads, sequins, and feathers, that he is happiest, holding her hand and being a couple. I'm going to drop all my women, he talk her, all my negotiations. I'm going to tell them all I'm in love with you.
I can't ask you to do that she says. I can't be that to you.
That's why I asked when I did.
They wander into Congo Square and the milling New Year's Eve crowds are left behind in the Quarter proper. The Square is quiet and fittingly somber with thick willows draped over it like dignified sentinels. The enslaved used to come here to do their sacred dances, she told him, you can still feel the history here. They are sitting beneath a sprawling elder. It is a comfortable moment. Until she says, if I do leave my husband, it doesn't mean I will get married again.
He ignores the heart beating in his chest and asks why not.
Why would I, she says, fingering beads she has accumulated. Been there done that.
He blinks. Pulls off a silver mask. Maintains cool. He knows she resents her husband. Sees marriage as an unescapable trap. I dont read books written by men she once told him. She rarely speaks about her marriage but the conjureman always listening. Dude got oldschool ways. She had to wait till he left the country to sneaklearn how to drive. But Highjohn ain't much better. Always been the boss. Assume any woman he with to adjust herself to him. His work. His way. But to be with her he has had to adjust himself to her rhythms and it has been a revelation. He been thinking optimal scenario: Angel leaves husband Angel marries him they live happy ever after. But no. He will be dancing forever. Her husband has forgotten the steps and no longer hears the music. Most likely never did. De conjureman he open she armored heart with massive doses of unconditional affection.
If I were to come with you, you won't always love me like this.
There is nothing I would not do to keep you happy. Nothing I would not be.
Both sincerity and intensity speak to her and they spend the night wrapped in the passionate moment. Lying face to face in a moment of acute satisfaction, he says, I am jealous of him. Of your husband.
In a twenty-year marriage, she says, theres not a lot of sex left.
Well that's good, he thinks, but not what he's jealous of. It's the rest he wants. I'm jealous of him snuggling up with you before you go to bed. Wiping your brow when you fevered. That burn you got taking that apple pie out of the oven. Hurried breakfast before rushing out to your jobs.
I'm the only one rushing out. He takes a deep breath. Well he said, is he going to get a job. Or are you going to keep supporting him. No, he's not she said. I'm going to keep working. He pushes it. That's okay with you? No, it's not, she said, I want a chance, too. She turns her back to him and his fingers trace the knobs of her spine like a blind man finding his way. You aren't a gardener, she said, but it's like two plants and over the years their roots are twisted up together and one is suffering but if you try to break up the roots you might destroy them both.
You deserve more than that, he finally gets out. Fucking pimp.
She shifts, sits up. My husband is a good man. And you dont know him. You dont know what it is about him that keeps me with him. In his own way my husband is good to me.
If he is that good to you, he thinks, you wouldn't be here with me. But what he says is I'm sorry. I knew what I was doing when I said it. I know you did she said and turns on the bedside lamp. Thats when she leaned over him. Asked what happens when the dream dies. Told him he had to leave.
Cool. Since I have known her I have been braced to be fired. Okay baby, he said, New Year rising up wild around them. I will officially quit chasing you. This time I will make it stick. Can you, she asked. Can you quit.
When he got back to Memphis he disappeared into the leafy sanctuary of the park.
A letter finds him. Postmarked New Orleans. He sitting on the landing of steps that run up the side of house. There is a hurricane building in the Gulf and Memphis is braced for the fringe. It is the deep breath quiet before a delta storm and dont nothing move, not a leaf not a wind, and the world waiting still like a mountain's heart. He put he roots down he open he letter. She thinks they should just be friends. Says she doesn't think hes ready for a real commitment. Real life. Real world. Says she is not a real woman to him. Say she wont be no mans fancy. Says he has control issues. Too fond of headgames. And finally, she says, I am committed to somebody else and am unable to give you the love and attention you need. Can you, she asks. Can you really quit.
Well. At least I'm a free man again. The old Highjohn that I know and love. Tired of being a beggar anyway. A fucking supplicant. I don't need her. I am free of her spell.
Then the delta wind come moaning and around him trees bow low and sing homage. Windsong whistling in great gusts through the trees shift he roots ever so faintly and lift he dreads in a whipping halo. Branches brush against the walls of his aerie in aboral symphony, and the sky opens wide and the rains they come. Stormbringer raises his head to the cooling spray.
Conjureman can't help but be amused. Thought he would bring so much magic down into her life she would never consider leaving him and instead brought the magic into his own. Called himself hoodooing and got hoodooed.
He handle he roots, he begin he story. One that will make the world as he wants it to be. One in which he dreams come true and he soul be saved. One that would be rest for the weary.
FROM Church Folk
After a week of emotionally charged revival preaching, Theophilus was too spent to race straight back to the arms---and the demands---of his Memphis congregation. He was tired and hungry, and he needed some time alone. So he was glad to see 32 West off of Highway 55, the exit for Charleston, Mississippi, where he knew of a place to stay, Neese's Boarding House for Negroes. He had also heard about a place there, Pompey's Rib Joint, which had the best rib tip sandwiches around---not to mention being known for hosting some of the best blues artists in the region.
It was in Charleston, a tiny Delta town thirty minutes west of Oxford, that the Lord's second and most important life-changing miracle for Theophilus occurred. It was his second miracle, the one he prayed for deep in his heart, not even aware of how intensely God was listening to him and not aware that the Lord loved him so much---He really did know the exact number of hairs on his head.
He drove to the "Smoky" section of the town and found the Negro boarding house. As he walked in, he took care not to let anyone sitting in the living room area catch a glimpse of his robe. His workday was over and he didn't want to have to explain if he happened to run into someone from the boarding house over at Pompey's. He felt a little twinge of guilt about going to Pompey's after preaching a revival, but he shrugged it off by telling himself that Pompey's was probably the best place he could go to have some peace. The last thing folks at Pompey's would be looking for was a preacher to tell their troubles to.
His room was simple, immaculate, and comfortable. The high double bed looked inviting with its starched white linens, and yellow and white cotton patch quilt. There was a large gray, yellow, and white rag rug in the middle of the worn but freshly waxed beige linoleum floor, and crisp white cotton curtains at the one window facing the bed across the room. There were even fresh daisies in a plain white pitcher with a yellow satin ribbon tied around it sitting on an embroidered linen runner on the dresser.
Theophilus put his things on the bed and unzipped his garment bag to get some fresh clothes. He had no intention of showing up at Pompey's in the navy chalk-striped suit, white shirt, and blue, black, and white tie he was now wearing. He selected a pair of silvery gray slacks and a pale gray silk knit sports shirt with silver buttons down the front, and matching pearl gray silk socks. He got his bathrobe, toiletry bag, fresh underwear, and left the room in search of towels and the bathroom so that he could take a quick bath and shave.
Thirty minutes later, he pulled into a dirt parking lot across the road from Pompey's Rib Joint. The smell of succulent ribs and the light from the hot pink neon sign that blinked POMPEY'S RIB JOINT---BEST RIBS IN THE DELTA led a straight path in the black night to the old brick building sitting off to itself on the other side of the road. Inside, where there was a rough wood floor, light purple walls, and unfinished wood tables and chairs, was packed. As soon as he walked in, Theophilus saw that the only seats left were at the bar.
He pressed his way over to the bar and put his hand on a stool just as a short, round woman wearing an orange print dress and holding a big white pocketbook on her arm was about to sit on it. He had begun to apologize when she spotted some friends and gave him the seat. Mouthing thanks, he squeezed through the narrow space and a thin, light-skinned man with freckles and a broad smile moved his stool to make more room for him. He lifted his shot glass in a neighborly fashion when Theophilus nodded a quick "thank you" and settled his large, muscular frame on the shaky barstool.
He got more comfortable and started looking around the room, unintentionally making eye contact with two women who were dressed in identical lime green chiffon dresses. One of the women ran her tongue over the top of her lip and blew him a quick kiss when she was certain her man wasn't watching her. He nodded at her, taking great care not to get caught by her man. It was one of those no-win situations. If he ignored that red-bone woman with "good" hair, chances are she would get mad at him and say something about him man. If he were too friendly with her, then her man, a wiry fellow with a process and dressed in a red suit, would get insulted and probably be inclined to fight. And the one thing he knew about little wiry-built men was that they were easily insulted, mean, and carried a serious weapon.
Theophilus was relieved when the waitress finally came to take his order, making it possible for him to have a decent reason to stop the eye contact with that woman and her friend. But it took him aback when she walked up to him and right into the space between his legs as she rubbed his knee and whispered in his ear, "What you think you be wantin' tonight, baby?"
All he could do was smile at first. He was fully aware that he should know better than to respond to such outrageous flirtation. But the man in him, the part that loved getting attention from good-looking women, couldn't stand to let her get the best of him. He just had to give her back as good as he got. So Theophilus sat back on his stool and smiled, looking her up and down, admiring how good she looked with her sepia-colored skin in that skimpy black satin dress she was wearing. He stroked his chin and said, in a voice that sounded to her like midnight on a clear summer evening, "I don't need much, sweetheart. Just a tall glass of iced tea with a few sprigs of mint leaves and a rundown of what you have to eat. And make sure it is something succulent for a hungry man like me."
She grinned at Theophilus, moved closer to him and spoke into his ear, this time allowing her lips to brush the tip of his earlobe, sending a rush of warmth across his neck and shoulders.
"We has a rib tip sandwich special tonight. And baby, them ribs so good till they will make you want to do something real bad and nasty, if you know what I mean."
Theophilus gave her a sultry smile to let her know that he knew exactly what she meant. Then he winked at her and said, "So, tell me, sweetheart. What's on this sandwich that makes it so good it'll make me want to do something nassty?"
She felt a little quiver in her thighs and had to take a few deep breaths before she said, "Them tips is just good, baby. They soaked in hot, homemade barbecue sauce, with potato salad on top, and Wonder Bread."
He smiled at her again. "I'm gonna trust you and take one of those sandwiches. But, sweetheart, if the sauce is real hot, bring me some ice water along with my order. I think I'll need more than a glass of tea to cool me down with a sandwich like that."
She leaned on him one more time, a big smile spreading across her face. She inhaled the scent of his cologne some more before saying in the sexiest voice she could, "I'll bring your tea real fast and then go get your order settled."
Theophilus smiled to himself as he watched the waitress walk away, deliberately giving him an eyeful of her fat, fine behind just swinging and swaying all for him. He thought to himself, "Boy, get yourself together, carrying on like that. Just a few hours ago you were all down on your knees at church and glad to be there, too. Shame on you, Reverend Simmons."
The waitress brought his tea just as the band performing tonight, Big Johnnie Mae Carter and the Fabulous Revues, finished setting up on stage. The Fabulous Revues was a good-size band---bass player, lead guitarist, tenor saxophone player, trumpet player, pianist, and drummer. These men, who were anywhere from the ages of thirty to fifty, looked good in crisp black pants with razor-sharp creases, light-purple silk shirts, shiny black Stacy Adams shoes, and slick black straw hats cocked on the side of their heads. When everybody was in place, the drummer raised his drumsticks high in the air, brought them down hard on the first beat, and Pompey's Rib Joint got to jumping.
Big Johnnie Mae Carter, a tall, husky, square-shaped woman with big breasts and a headful of coarse bleached-blond hair piled high on top, was in rare form tonight. Decked out in a long light-purple evening gown with slits up to the knee on each side and rhinestones glittering in her ears, she strutted her stuff to the funky Delta blues rhythms of her band, from the front door of Pompey's all the way up and on to the stage. Then she finally stepped up to the microphone, throwing back her shoulders and whipped out the words of the song:
"If you was a bee baby, I'd turn myself into the sweetest flower.
"And if you was the rain, Daddy, and me the Mississippi? I'd flood this old Delta 'cause I couldn't keep all of your sweet lovin' all to myself.
"And if you just happened to be the devil. Then, Lawd, Lawd, Lawdy, just help me please.
"'Cause see, I'd be tryin' to up and sell my soul just to make sure you kept on lovin' up on me.
"I said, Lawd, Lawd, Lawdy, Help, Help, Help me please.
"'Cause I know I'd be doing so wrong just to keep you lovin' up on me."
Big Johnnie Mae looked like she was feeling that music from head to toe as she stretched out her arms, snapped her jeweled fingers, and moved her hips from side to side. As the lead guitarist stepped forward to pick out his solo, she shifted aside, still dancing, rolling her hips in a sinuous way, and finally shimmying on down to the stage floor. The guitarist looked down at Big Johnnie Mae and smiled. She, in turn, smiled back up at him, pulled that dress up to her knees and rolled her hips some more. All the other musicians stopped playing and just let the lead guitar, accompanied by Big Johnnie Mae's dancing, carry the song.
Now Big Johnnie Mae began to weave her way back up, all the while crooning around the melody, stretching to her full height in front of the microphone. Then the band rose up behind her full and strong, as she reached for a note that sounded like it had started way down deep in the basement and came on upstairs to blow the roof off the joint.
A man sitting only a couple of feet from the stage jumped up and shouted, "Damn, baby. You sho' 'nough is hot tonight! Lawd! What I wouldn't give to be that there micro-ro-phone you holdin' on to right now."
The freckle-facedman leaned over toward Theophilus and said, "Now, that Negro don't have no sense. 'Cause the way she was movin' down on that flo', any fool would know he need to turn hisself into some wood."
Theophilus could only smile at this observation and raise his tea. He stopped short of nodding his head in agreement. He wasn't so sure he wanted to "turn hisself into some wood." because he wasn't so sure he was man enough to hold all of the woman that was Big Johnnie Mae Carter. Theophilus thought that perhaps he could be the sound system that carried her voice to the ears of her listeners. He sipped his tea and nodded his head at that thought. It would be nothing short of a religious experience to feel her voice coursing through his body and on out to the eager audience. He sipped on his tea some more, bobbing his head to the beat of the next song. The tea felt good, too---cooling him down at the same time that Big Johnnie Mae and the Fabulous Revues were warming up his soul and making him feel almost as good as he had felt at church.
Just as Big Johnnie Mae ended this last song and started up on one with a calmer rhythm, a different woman came toward Theophilus with a plate of food in one hand and a big glass of ice water, a napkin, and silverware in the other.
"You the man who ordered the rib tip sandwich and glass of ice water?" she asked.
He said, "Ummm-hmmm."
She pushed the food out toward him.
"Here, this is yours and you owe me buck twenty-five."
Theophilus took the plate, silverware, and glass of water from her and put them on the bar. He reached back to get his empty tea glass off the bar and then fumbled in his pocket for some money.
Watching him, the woman had to agree with the waitress, who was now stuck helping the bartender fix drinks, that the man in the "silver gray outfit" was sure enough a "big and pretty chocolate man." She tried to steal a better look at his face without his noticing it. She knew that you didn't look at the men coming in here too hard unless you wanted to send them a message you hoped they wanted to answer.
Then he smiled at her, handing over the money while looking her over so thoroughly until she wished she had worn her large cook's apron. It covered a lot of her body but she hated bringing customers their food in that barbecue-and grease-splattered thing. But at least that grimy coverage would have slowed down the speed with which this man's eyes took in her body. She was standing there in a shirt and Bermuda shorts, so her only defense was to narrow her already slanted eyes and give him a nasty look. He wouldn't be the first man to get this look. But he was the first one who made her wonder if she had looked at him just a little too mean when she walked back to the kitchen.
Theophilus shrugged off the glare that little woman had given him and turned toward the bar to eat his food. The sandwich was so thick and juicy he had to eat it with a fork. The tips were tender and dripping in some of the best barbecue sauce he had tasted in a long time. And there was a generous helping of potato salad spread evenly on each slice of bread. The waitress hadn't lied about this sandwich. It did taste good enough to make you "want to do something real bad and nasty."
As he ate, Theophilus found his mind fixed on the image of that mean-acting little woman. She sure was a fine little thing, with that dark honey--colored skin, thick reddish brown hair held in place with a light blue headband, heart-shaped face, full lips, and those sexy slanted, light brown eyes cutting him in two when he stared at her too hard. And she looked cute in those baby blue Bermuda shorts with her petite, hourglass figure and her backside swinging her own natural, uncontrived rhythm when she walked away from him.
Umph, umph, umph, he thought to himself. If that girl didn't have some big pretty legs, I don't know who did.
Just then the waitress came switching back to him to ask if he needed anything else from her. Figuring she was offering more than just another glass of tea, he thought that he had better add a little extra sugar to his smile before he asked a question he knew she wouldn't want to answer.
"Who brought me my food, sweetheart?"
She looked confused and said, "Something wrong with your food?"
"No. I just want to know who was the woman who brought me my food. She didn't look like she was a waitress. And judging from the way she just walked off with my money after I paid her, she didn't act like one, either. I mean, look at you. You're standing here all sweet-like, making sure I'm alright."
"She wasn't nasty-actin' was she?" the waitress asked. She knew Essie Lane was good for giving these men that old nasty, slit-eyed look of hers.
"No, sweetheart, nothing like that. I just want you to tell me who she was."
"That was Essie Lane. She the cook on duty tonight."
"Well, I have to thank a woman who can cook some rib tips like that. Where is she?"
The waitress didn't look too happy about Theophilus wanting to talk to Essie but she said, "She back in the kitchen," and pointed him in that direction.
"Thank you, sweetheart," he said as he gave her a sexy wink and put some money in her hand.
She put her smile back on her face and said, "I just knowed you was the kind of man who really knows what to do with a woman," as Theophilus got up and headed back to the kitchen.
Sighing with regret, she looked down at her tip. The five-dollar bill she was holding in her hand stretched her smile into a big wide grin. Five dollars was a huge tip for a waitress working at Pompey's Rib Joint.
When Theophilus walked into that hot kitchen, Essie was drinking some ice water and stirring a big pot of collard greens. Sensing someone watching her, she turned around, hoping it wasn't that old drunk who kept waving a dollar bill at her every time she came out on the floor. When she saw that it was the good-looking man in silver-gray, she was kind of relieved but also wondering why he was standing in the doorway looking at her like that. Ready to run him out of the kitchen if need be, she put a hand on her hip and looked him dead in the eye.
"What do you want?" she asked.
Theophilus wasn't surprised by the attitude in her voice. At the gut level he knew she was one of those good women who didn't allow for foolishness from a man. And as nasty as she sounded, he liked her voice. It was the kind of voice that could move swiftly from giving a command one dare not disobey, to girlish laughter, to a deep, throaty sigh. The desire to hear that sigh nestled itself quietly and comfortably in the most private, yet-to-be awakened region of his heart.
"I said, what do you want?"
He wanted to smile at her but didn't want to be chased out of this kitchen before he had a chance to meet her. So he decided to put on his "receiving line" face, which seemed to carry him a long way with most folks he greeted after Sunday morning service. He held that look in place as he tried to think of something to say that would match his disarming expression. The best he could come up with was, "Sister, that food was so good, I just had to come back here and humble myself before the chef," with what he truly hoped had a good dose of the preacher in his voice.
He knew better than to say what he was really thinking, which was Baby, you so fine, you make me want to say things that can only be whispered in your ear.
Essie just looked at him and said, "The chef, huh?" with a frown on her face. "You are talking about a 'chef' in a country place like Pompey's Rib Joint? You must think you in New York City. But you ain't. And since you ain't, get out of my kitchen right now, before somebody gets hurt." She edged over to a small table with a big meat cleaver on it.
Theophilus saw her reach for the meat cleaver and backed away, saying, "Hey, wait a minute, baby," before he could catch himself right.
Looking at him like he was out of his mind, Essie said, "Negro, I know you ain't calling me no baby."
Theophilus moved toward her gingerly, trying to placate her. "Look, girl, I didn't mean you any harm. Your food was good and I just wanted to see you---"
"Wanted to see me? For what? If my food was so good, why didn't your cheap self send me a note about my good food, along with a tip?"
Theophilus didn't even try to defend himself on that one, realizing he had been too distracted to tip her. She was looking at him real hard, meat cleaver firm in her grip.
He tried another tack, extending his hand and saying, "My name is Theophilus---"
"I believe I know your name, Reverend. I thought you looked familiar when I brought you your food. Ain't you that revival preacher who was in Jackson this week?"
Before Theophilus could answer her, she said, "You sure are. And now you back up this way spending up their offering money and thinking you can talk up some little juke joint cook. Man, sometimes you preachers can truly act as bad as the worst street Negroes." She blew a puff of air out of her mouth in disgust, adding, "And I'd be surprised if you ain't a married man to boot."
Theophilus was embarrassed at the mess he had made in his effort to meet this woman. And now he had to convince her that he didn't see her as some "little juke joint cook." But the way she was holding that meat cleaver made him think real carefully before he opened his mouth again.
"I realize that I haven't made much of an impression on you this evening," he began. "But you have to believe me when I say that I didn't come back here to be disrespectful. I just wanted to meet you. You should call Reverend Murcheson James over at Mount Nebo Gospel United Church and ask him about me. Maybe a good word or two from him will make you feel comfortable enough to see me again."
"Reverend James is my pastor. I'm a member of Mount Nebo."
Theophilus felt like shouting. This woman went to Mount Nebo? Now he knew the Lord was truly on his side. He smiled at her as he said, "You should also know that I'm a single man, all by myself, just hoping to find a good woman."
Essie rolled her eyes at him. "All by yourself? I've never seen a preacher all by himself without a whole bunch of women to choose from. For some reason, women just seem to love preachers. I don't know why."
Theophilus decided to ignore that last comment and said, "Yes, there sure are a lot of women who love preachers and would be glad for one to choose them. But I just told you that I'm looking for a good one."
"And you gonna find her in Pompey's Rib Joint?"
"I'm talking to a good woman right now, right?" Theophilus said, standing over Essie, looking down at her, daring her to differ with him.
Essie knew she was a good woman, one who worked real hard to see that everybody at Pompey's knew it, too. To be sure, good-looking Negro men had crossed her path on many an evening at work. But they all made the fatal error of missing the point---that Essie Lee Lane was not only fine-looking with big sexy legs, she was a woman of fine character who knew she deserved better than what they always wanted to offer her.
"You haven't answered my question."
"What question?"
"I asked you if you were a good woman and you've been standing there staring at me."
Now it was Essie's turn to be embarrassed. She hadn't realized that she was staring at him.
"So, I'm talking to a good woman in the kitchen of one the hottest juke joints in the Delta. Am I not?"
Essie struggled, trying to compose just the right answer to that question. The way he looked her over, head to toe, was jumbling up her thoughts. She frowned. "Why you looking at me like you got X-ray vision? You know that ain't right for no man and especially one claiming to be a preacher."
Theophilus checked his gaze, traveling down to get a fully lighted view of those legs. He wondered if her legs would feel as soft and satiny to his hands as they looked. But he wasn't about to apologize because he couldn't keep his eyes off her. "You know something, Miss---"
"Essie Lee. Essie Lee Lane."
"You know something, Miss Essie Lee Lane. I don't have X-ray vision. Truly I don't. But to be perfectly honest, at times like these I sure wish I did." He gave her a smile that started at his eyes and traveled leisurely down to his mouth.
Essie felt flushed looking at him smiling at her like that. Here was a man---a preacher, in fact---who told her he wished he had X-ray vision and gave her a look that said volumes about how he would use this gift if he were so blessed with it. She had always been skeptical of ministers---felt that too many of them didn't practice what they preached and had big-headed notions about themselves. But for some reason, she felt differently about this man, which was disturbing, the more she thought about it.
"What's the matter with you, Miss Essie Lee Lane? You got a thought you don't like?"
Essie couldn't believe he could see through her like that and said, "Nothing wrong, just thinking."
"Just thinking, huh?" Theophilus said with a warm smile that didn't have a trace of freshness in it. "I bet you're thinking you kind of like me and might just let me see you again, right?"
Essie sighed, trying not to let him see that he was getting all up under her skin. She would rather die than so much as breathe a "yes" in his direction.
"Yes, I bet you're still thinking about me, isn't that right, Miss Essie Lane? And it's bothering you that you want to see this preacher just one more time."
Essie just looked at him as if to say, "Don't flatter yourself." She said, "I ain't troubled about nothing that has anything to do with you. Just because you can see me again---nothing about it that needs extra thought to it. All you'll be doing is what you asked to do, seeing me again."
"Well, well, well, God is truly good. I think nothing short of an act of God would convince Miss Essie Lane to let me---X-ray vision and all---see her again."
Essie blew air out of her mouth and rolled her eyes as if to say "please." She said, "I think no harm could come from you visiting me."
Theophilus guessed correctly that this was about as close to a yes as he was going to get. But with a soft laugh in his voice, he pressed, "So, you're telling me that I can see you again, huh? Is that what you are saying, Miss Essie Lane?"
The slight smile on her lips made him feel certain that he was getting next to her, if only a little.
"Maybe I could see you tomorrow afternoon," he said. "If it's okay with you, I can stop by your house after my visit with Reverend James."
"Yes. Yes," she replied. "You can come by my house tomorrow and eat lunch with me."
His heart swelled with hope.
"With me, my mama, and my Uncle Booker," she continued. "That way you'll know without a doubt that there ain't no good times to be had down here with this little small-town Mississippi girl. Way I figure it, once you're certain about that point, you probably won't want to see me again anyway."
The expression on his face changed. Gone was the heat and in its place was a look she didn't know what to make of. Was it hurt?
He said, "Essie, please know that the only time I am really looking to have, is more of it with you. And the only thing I want from you is for you to tell me how to find your house tomorrow."
Theophilus settled his bill at Rose Neese's Boarding House for Negroes and went to visit with Rev. James. He spoke of the revival with warmth and feeling, thanking his mentor for the role he had surely played in getting him the chance to serve as the guest preacher there. But Reverend James couldn't help but notice how the excitement in his voice rose when Theophilus spoke of meeting that fine young woman from his congregation, Essie Lee Lane. He approved of Essie inviting Theophilus to lunch with her mother, Lee Allie, and her Uncle Booker, both of whom he knew well. Being a kind, patient, and extremely observant man, he could see how hard Theophilus was working to stay focused on any topic other than Essie. So he decided to cut their visit short. He knew better than to compete for the attention of a young man whose mind kept straying to his upcoming lunch with a young lady like Essie Lane.
Much as he loved Rev. James, Theophilus was relieved to be dismissed, for it had taken everything in him not to hop up from his seat and run out to find the Lane house. When he walked up on the small porch and knocked on the screen door, a woman he just knew had to be Essie's mother came and unhooked the latch. She was a nutmeg-colored woman, with thick brown hair that was twisted into an attractive French roll. She bore a strong resemblance to Essie but didn't have her slanted, golden brown eyes. Theophilus did notice, in the most respectful way, of course, that she had Essie's figure and legs.
Lee Allie Lane had been just as anxious for this Rev. Simmons to get to her house as he was to come there. Essie didn't bother with any of the men who came to Pompey's, and she had never shown the slightest interest in a man who was a preacher. So when Essie told her that she invited a minister she met in the kitchen of Pompey's to lunch, Lee Allie was about to bust open with curiosity. There was something mighty special about Rev. Simmons if Essie was allowing him to come to the house, let alone asking him over to eat.
As soon as Lee Allie answered the door, she knew why Essie couldn't resist seeing this preacher again. He was a six-foot-three, coffee-with-no-cream-colored man, with close-cut, coarse black hair framing a handsome face, and dark brown eyes, draped with long, thick black lashes under well-shaped eyebrows. He had a slender nose that flared at the nostrils, well-defined cheekbones, and deep dimples on each side of his face. His full, richly colored lips were accentuated by the well-groomed mustache that stopped right at the corners of his mouth. And from what she could see of him, Lee Allie had the distinct impression that his navy suit, with his starched white shirt and blue, maroon, and silver paisley print tie, hid strong brown arms, a neat waist, long, nicely shaped legs, and one of those backsides that only a Negro man had---it was a backside that made you thank the Lord for making you a Negro woman.
"You must be Reverend Simmons," she said, opening the screen door and waving for him to come in. As he stepped into the house, the comforting scent of fresh-baked rolls went straight up his nose. The pretty room he entered was simple, cozy, and warm, with a soft yellow on the walls, off white sheers at the windows, and plants scattered around, spilling over their bright red, blue, and purple pots. The soft mint green sofa made you want to stretch out on it and read the paper, and the pale blue chair with the matching ottoman was the kind that had "Sunday nap" written all over it. After admiring the room, he extended his hand to Essie's mother.
"Theophilus Simmons from Greater Hope Gospel United Church in Memphis. Your pastor, Reverend James, has known me for years and is my mentor."
Lee Allie gave his hand a firm shake and said, "It is a pleasure to meet you, Reverend Simmons. I am Essie Lee's mother, Mrs. Lee Allie Lane. When she told me and my brother, Booker, that you wanted to come by this afternoon, we both wanted to get a good look at a man who likes to preach and listen to Big Johnnie Mae all in one workin' day."
She motioned for him to sit down in the blue chair and hollered down the hall.
"Booker, come on in the living room, the Reverend just got here and you need to come meet him."
Essie's Uncle Booker walked into the living room finishing a roll and wiped his hands on his pants leg before giving Theophilus a firm, "don't take no mess off a nobody" handshake and motioning for him to sit down. He looked a lot like his sister in the face and had her coloring. But where she was small, he was stocky and of medium height.
Lee Allie said, "Essie Lee not here yet. Had to go by the store to pick up a few things. She'll be back right shortly, though. Give you, me, and Booker a chance to get acquainted. You pastoring Greater Hope in Memphis? That's a pretty good-size church for a young pastor like you, Reverend Simmons. How many folks at your church now?"
Theophilus shifted around in the chair and got as comfortable as possible, feeling like he was gearing himself up to face the Inquisition.
"Greater Hope has about 365 members," he said. "I have been there just about a year. And I won't lie to you---pastoring that church has been one of the most difficult challenges I've ever had to face. I've learned a lot. But I stay on my knees, Mrs. Lane, stay on my knees."
Lee Allie opened her mouth again, but before she got a chance to ask Theophilus more about his pastoring, Uncle Booker jumped in.
"Now, Reverend, what I want to know is how you come to preach and swing at Pompey's at the same time? I don't go on about all this thou-cain't-do-anything-if-you-want-to-serve-the-Lord foolishness, but I do think you need to tell me something. This ain't no church business visit. I'll bet some money you sweet on Essie Lee. Am I right, Reverend?"
Theophilus didn't know what to say or even how to say it if he did know. Essie's uncle looked like he could whip his tail if he had a mind to do so.
Uncle Booker, who had been leaning against the front door, now sat down on the couch across from where Theophilus was sitting. Staring intently at Theophilus, as if to look through him, he said, "Don't you sit there searching for no answers to what I just said. You tell me the truth. Because if you hand me some cockamamie preacher double talk, I'll know it. I'm used to church folk."
"Booker! Reverend Simmons is a minister," Lee Allie said.
"Lee Allie, don't you go and start getting all upset with me. This here preacher went up in Pompey's last night, ordered something to eat, looked my baby-girl niece over, and then came over here the very next day to get a better look at her. Now, he must like the girl to do all of that."
Uncle Booker looked at Theophilus real hard. "Now, son, you have some likin' for my niece, don't you, Reverend?"
"Yes, sir. I saw your niece and wanted to meet her."
"And you liked what you saw, right?"
"Yes, sir. Your niece is a very striking woman."
"Mess. That's just some funky mess, boy. Essie Lee got next to you and you darn well know it. Striking woman, my black behind. Just what you up to, preacher?"
Theophilus respected Uncle Booker's right to look after his niece but he didn't appreciate being treated like some jive-acting, jackleg preacher. He figured he'd better let these people know right now what he was about. He sat up straight in the chair and looked directly at Uncle Booker.
"Mr.---"
"Webb. My last name's Webb."
"Mr. Webb, you're right to think I'm not your regular kind of preacher. Truth is, sometimes I go to places like Pompey's to eat some good food and relax a little without being troubled with church business. You know, I do like being able to talk to folks about more than church. And I like being treated like a regular man instead of always being treated like "the Pastor.'
"And, sir, when I saw your niece last night, she gave me the impression that she was a good, solid woman. And if you don't mind my being so bold, she is a fine-looking woman, too---so fine in fact, that she held my attention for the rest of the night. So, I came by here today to let her know I was interested in getting to know her. And I knew I needed to meet her family so she'd know I wasn't after her for all the wrong reasons."
This response seemed a little bold to Uncle Booker, who didn't answer but sat weighing what Theophilus had said. Finally he extended his hand. "Son, I'm glad to know that you ain't one of those preachers who so intent on making sure everybody know just how saintly and pure they are. I like that. Lets me know you know you just a man and not some fool who think he got the only connection to the Lord."
Theophilus grabbed Uncle Booker's hand and sighed out loud with relief.
"Mr. Webb, I understand that you need to know what I'm all about. I'm not perfect but I was raised right."
They were interrupted by the sound of Essie pulling at the screen door. She didn't know why her mother waited until the last minute to send her out for kosher dill pickles, big green olives, pickled okra, jalapeño peppers, and potato chips to go with lunch. She thought they had enough to eat, with the fresh-baked turkey stuffed in large, homemade rolls, fresh garden tomatoes, butter lettuce and cucumber salad, and homemade custard ice cream with lemon-flavored tea cakes. But Lee Allie had insisted that these things would make lunch so much better. Essie hoped Theophilus didn't think she was rude for not being there when he arrived.
Theophilus stood up, trying hard to control the big grin stretching across his face when Essie walked into the house.
"Afternoon, Reverend. Hope you haven't been waiting too long."
"No, I haven't been here long."
Lee Allie looked back and forth between the two of them, took the bag of groceries from Essie, handed it to Booker, and said, "Reverend Simmons was telling us a little about his church in Memphis." She turned to Theophilus and asked, "Reverend, how big is your choir? Most solid congregations have good choirs."
Theophilus sat back down. "Mrs. Lane, we have a little over thirty people in our choir, a pianist and organist. One of the first things I did as the new pastor was to appoint a new choir director. Seems like the old one didn't want to sing what the congregation wanted to hear. Lot of folks at Greater Hope love hardcore gospel and they have said that service is so much better now that the choir is rocking the church with some good music. I know I enjoy listening to the choir more now than when I first came as the pastor."
While Theophilus was talking to Lee Allie, he could not stop himself from stealing looks at Essie, who was leaning against the doorway leading to the hall. She was wearing red pants, a red and white horizontal-striped, short-sleeved knit top, and red sneakers. Although the pants showed off her figure well, he sure wished he could have caught another good look at those big legs before he went back to Memphis.
Later, as Essie and Lee Allie sat in the kitchen, shelling snap beans for supper, Lee Allie said, "Essie, I don't know why you didn't hold more conversation with the Reverend. The whole time he was here, you held up that wall, just sizing him up like you was looking for something wrong with him."
"Mama, I didn't have to look for something to be wrong with him. Whole time he was here, he ran his eyes all over me, head to toe, when he thought nobody was looking."
"Essie Lee, he was looking at you so hard because he likes you, girl. And I hate to tell you this, baby, but a man gone look at you like that when he likes what he sees. Even a good man gone look, baby. He cain't help it 'cause he a man. And the Reverend young, too. So he really gone be looking before he can catch himself. What is he, about twenty-eight or so?"
"Twenty-nine. The revival program said he was twenty-nine."
"Well, like I just said, at twenty-nine, he still young enough for his nature to spill out over his home training when he think nobody's lookin'. And remember, even Booker had a good impression of him. I think the Reverend is a decent man. He sure 'nough a good-lookin' one, too. So the next time he comes, you be sure to give him a chance to talk to you."
"Mama, what makes you think he coming back anytime soon?"
"Because I invited him to be our church's guest preacher for Missions Day," Lee Allie said with a smile on her face. "I called Reverend James and my missionary group. Reverend James said that Reverand Simmons was a fine preacher and that he would come at a price we could afford. So now you'll have a chance to see him again."
Essie rolled her eyes, not wanting her mother to know she was happy that Lee Allie had engineered a reason for Theophilus to return to Charleston.
"Girl, why you rolling your eyes like that? You the one who invited him over here in the first place. Besides, you need to meet somebody and leave Charleston. 'Cause you don't need to stay here."
"Mama, I'm not that crazy about preachers. They can be some worrisome men and wear on your nerves something terrible when you are around them. Some of them can be so greedy---buying big cars, always wanting folk to cook them a whole bunch of food, and then will sit there and practically eat up everything in sight. Remember the last guest preacher who came to Mount Nebo? Ate all of the best pieces of ribs and he didn't even offer Rev. James the last piece. Just snatched it out of the pan and gobbled it up."
Lee Allie interrupted her. "That preacher was greedy, all right, but the problem was that we shouldn't have let Mother Harold convince us to invite him in the first place. Several people knew something about him and didn't care much for his ways. But we just sat back and let Mother Harold have her way again. Should have known better. 'Cause we all knew from the get-go that she wanted him to come just so she could look him over for Saphronia. Lord, if that woman don't wear out my patience looking for some preacher to marry her old stuck-up grandbaby."
She shook her head a few times just thinking about the preacher and Mother Harold.
"But Mama---" Essie began.
"But Mama nothing, Essie Lee. Every preacher ain't like that and you doggone well know that fact is the truth. Reverend James is a good man who loves God and takes his pastoring seriously. And you think Reverend Simmons is okay, too. Otherwise, you sure were some fool to let him come over here to see you. You know, Essie Lee, some preachers really do want to do right."
"And you think Theophilus is a man that wants to do right?"
"Umm-hmm. I think Theophilus, as you seem to be callin' him now, wants to do right," Lee Allie answered with emphasis on his name.
Essie looked embarrassed. She didn't want her mama reading any more into this situation than she knew she already had. She said, "Well, he'll just have to convince me he is all that you saying he is."
Lee Allie gave Essie a "look" and dismissed that foolishness with a wave of her hand.
FROM Commitment
---But Lou---, he say's---
---No.
---But can't you just say it---or---
---I said, No.
---But even if I---
---Stop begging, Ricky. What did I tell you? See, now---
---Don't you want it?
---That ain't the point, now. Get dressed!
---Why don't you . . .
---What?
---make me . . .
---Boy . . . see, now---
---Uh, huh?
---You better quit playing games and get dressed! What you doing?
---Proposing.
---Yeah, to the wrong one, says that other. Who is Lou Jay. Easing himself up on the bed. Thinking, mama just changed these damn sheets yesterday and now in the late-morning heat they were already sticking to the sweat on his back. Thinking, the bedroom was all right enough---was home. Thinking, the postcards and pictures of Miami and New York and whatnot made it more . . . the way they liked it. Had liked it. Him and Ricky. Thinking: Uh-huh, 'cause the boy had been in there often enough (only one who had been)---thinking, Uh-huh, best friend, searching for the word to describe him, my, my---my what? And now that the mama and daddy were out for a while Miss Ricky was actually going to try it: going to try to go on and be his hardheaded self as usual and show out like a fool even with everything getting set to happen on schedule tomorrow. But, see---
---I wish Renee would catch your ass in here like this.---Looking straight over at Ricky kneeling on the floor beside the bed.
---That stupid---don't talk about that now. Don't even get me started.
---Yeah, uh-hmm. That stupid---listen to me, talking just as nasty as you! Well, she gone be your wife in a day. Less than a day.
---So? We could still---
---What did I say, fool? No.
---Why not?
---'Cause I said so, that's why not. You need to listen for once, stead of being so damn---
---Hardheaded. I know.
---Well, then.
---You sound like Daddy.
---He got some sense.
---He ain't got nothing. You know he's forcing me!
---He needs to. Somebody needs to.
---I'm seventeen, Lou Jay!
---You eighteen.
---I will be. What he got to go on and try to force me to get married for?
---'Cause he want him some grandkids.
---He got eleven already. I got brothers, Lou Jay!
---Six.
---And no sisters, neither.
---But you his baby. His baa-by Ricky.
---Shit, Ricky said. One long syllable the color of the snarl that formed it.
---Tell that to the preacher, he said.
---Well, baby, you better go on out and get you a nice sweet fancy ring.
---I'ma smack you down in a second, bitch. I swear.
---You be acting too grown sometimes any old way. Get up off your knees, Ricky.
---What you talking about grown for, trying to act like you so grown, giving out orders? You ain't but two months older than me, baby. I could stay on my knees if I want to. You want to know what Daddy said?
---About what? The wedding? Everybody far way as Decatur already knows. That's all folks do round here is talk, okay? But ain't nobody saying nothing to your daddy's face, that's all. They could shame you and me if they wanted to.
---I ain't studying all that. And you---
---You need to.
---You want to know what Daddy said?
---Told you I already knew.
---Don't be acting all grand, Miss Girl, 'cause you don't know all this. He got his gun!
---What? For what?
---You know what. Fittin to shoot off my ass if I don't marry little Renee. And you know he could shoot good. He learned me. And I learned you, Lou Jay. My baby.---Reaching over to squeeze the other man's naked thigh, then moving his hand slightly above and to the center of it. Their skins, together, all of a glow in the thickening heat.
---You'll always be my baby, Lou Jay. You know that.
---Ricky---
---Since we was thirteen we been playing on. I got you now, Lou. You got me. I don't never want nobody but you. We got us something! You think I could let you go for some little piece of---
---All right, now. We ain't got no time for all that sweet talk---stop, boy, that tickles!---with some man, your daddy no less, putting a gun all up in your face. No, uh-uh. I ain't having it. Didn't I ask you to stop?
---Aw, girl, you love what my hands do. Anyway, Daddy ain't only got his gun up in my face. He got it aimed all up in my behind, too.
---Um-hmm. 'Cause he know what's been all up in there.
Laughter, until they choke. But already he is looking. Ricky, having laughed, stilled, now looking. Thinking how hard, how very very hard it is not to focus, fixate, his eyes on Lou Jay. How hard not to see, looking, just how pretty. How fine and all that, he thinks. How hard not to carry to dreams and private thrusts the big old shoulders and pretty lips and nipples, after his very own lips have traversed the skin . . . the shoulders and nipples all hard now hard-hard yet soft, like the eyes, beneath the shirt . . . when he wore a shirt. Hard not to think, Yeah, 'cause I could just take him right now, couldn't I, and do all a that and more. I could (uh huh, do all of it, that and that) get him all relaxed (the calm-down part) and whisper back behind his neck about the house they'd buy someday (or, no: I will buy. I will. For him. Ricky-for-Lou Jay. Uh-huh) in Decatur or maybe . . . that one. The one they'd fix up nice with a front yard just like everybody else's and some back land too just like everybody else's so they could live someplace far away from all those others, those others with guns and bullet eyes, those others like his own daddy. Far away from the eyes, from the Now-what-y'all-got-into-some-nasty-shit-no-doubt pressed lips and hands on hips. Far from the sucked teeth and curling sneers. Someplace where the two of them, him-and-Lou Jay, could just settle and say, All right, now. Because this here is Lou Jay's and Ricky's house and we been up in it together going on how long now? so don't y'all ignorant motherfuckers even try no fierce shit up in here. Uh-huh. The ones with the guns (Daddy) who could never know how it felt when that part of him that was on Lou Jay, right there, slow and silky out in the fields at night sometimes or right here in Lou Jay's room, like when after his mama and daddy are asleep and it's just him and me and is that your hand, Lou? I can't hardly tell no more. It all feels like soft sand, smooth reeds, watergrass. Hot silk. All water. My face in the sand, in the soft soft reeds. Enough to know for now. Better not to know yet about (though he knows already) the curling snakes on the shore, the blue things that, in murky rivers, curl about ankles, drag them down to drown. Enough to know, for now, what their hotsilkiest dreams tell them: that they are here, alive, and that, right here, on this hot morning beneath the pecans and the sizzling live oaks, all snakes are in their holes, all blue things uneasily at rest. Here, where, whatever else might be known or feared, each can be certain, remembering warm sand and siltyslim reeds, that the other will always be his and his. Lucky, he thinks, or something. And I'ma make sure we stay lucky. But says:
---I swear, Lou, it's like we was living in---
---You need to tell me what Daddy Malcolm said. You ain't tell me everything.---Reaching over to the bedside table for a cigarette.
---Well---
---Go on.
---All right. He said---get this, now, this's Daddy---he said, "Boy, if you don't marry Renee I'll blow your head off myself. You will marry her," he said. Sounding all white. Daddy!
---Lord Jesus. He got to know about me.---Blowing out a thick smoke stream.
---He do. What you think? He been knowing. Why the hell else you think he been pushing me all up in Renee's face?--- Looking out into the June sunlight. Turning his face to the day and noticing how the air is free, humid; how bugs are chattering between birdsong.
---I don't want to marry that girl, Lou.
---Why you so sure she want to marry you? She must have something to say. It ain't like you the only one out here seen her. And no matter what folks say I don't think she stupid. We know Renee.
---Well, she don't know nothing about us.
---She don't know nothing about us cause we ain't never done nothing in her face and we watched that anyway. Daddy Malcolm, now, that's a different story. He always did look at me funny. I ain't messing with that.
---Evil, you mean. You got that right. He thinks you switch. Plus you ain't never had no girlfriend.
---Ain't never wanted none.
---You should've, Lou Jay. You coulda saved us a whole lotta trouble that way. Maybe Daddy wouldn't be breathing all down my neck now if you did.
Lou Jay smoked for a while in silence, then turned his face to the freedom of the day and the birds singing and the trees looking so peaceful, quiet, beneath the bright wheeling sun.
---Can't nobody make me to nothing I don't want to, Ricky. Not even Daddy Malcolm.---Not quite believing his own words, but they sounded brave.---Anyway, answer my question. Why you so sure she want to marry---
---She do. Lou Jay, she do. You know Renee always liked me! Anyway her mama said she better and Renee ain't gone hardly go against her mama.
---She can't---she can't do nothing to get rid---
---Hell, no, Lou Jay! What you saying? If she even opened up her mouth to say something like that Miss Gaines would kill her with the switch before she could even say jump up. And Daddy---I don't even want think about what Daddy would do. Besides, we ain't got all that kinda money. I don't even know where we could get one. We ain't never known nobody who did that.
---Far as we know.
---Far enough.
---Goddamn! Her mama, your daddy . . . --- Falling silent once more. Turning his eyes down to Ricky's hands at rest between them on the sheet.
---I just don't see that y'all got much choice now. You know Daddy Malcolm ain't playing. I think he would rather see you dead. He don't want him no sissy son no matter what. And Renee gone have you a kid. You gone be a daddy.---Pausing. Those eyes raised again to Ricky's face.
---How could y'all do that? Practically right in my face.
---Lou Jay---
---You wasn't even thinking about us when you did that, Ricky. You wasn't thinking about Renee, neither. No you wasn't. And all this time you and me been making plans and whatnot. Talking shit. And now you gone come back in my face telling me you love me and how we gone do so much.
---Baby---
---I shoulda---I . . . that was just stupid, that's all. Don't look at me all innocent! Y'all was wrong. You was wrong---I can't really say too much against Renee. And I know you know y'all was wrong.---Pausing once more. Taking in the tender curve of the neck, eyelashes.
---I know you know, Rick.
---But I told you---
---You just wanted to see what it felt like? It ain't all that different. I coulda told you that.
---No, you couldn't.
---Well, maybe not.---Sucking on the cigarette.---But that don't change nothing. And now you gone have you a wife and a kid. I'll be damned. Ain't that something!
---Don't take the Lord's name---
---I didn't.---Smoking some more. Frowning.
---Lou Jay.
---What?
---You don't understand . . .
---What . . . what don't I understand? Tell me! Since you got all the answers.
---Just . . . damn, Lou Jay! She don't mean nothing to me. She ain't---she ain't shit.
---I told you to get your hands off me. Oh, so now she ain't shit, huh? That's nice. Real nice, baby. You the one, I tell you.
---What you mean?
---She our friend, you dumb mother---Jesus! We all growed up together, you and me and Miss Girl, fool! That oughta mean something. Like more than just she ain't shit. I got to say I feel kinda sorry for her, laying up in bed with somebody she don't even know don't want her ass cept for what she got tween her legs.---Still watching Ricky, of course still watching him. Feeling the sadness rising up in him again, in that place, like the peepers' dying sundown calls: there, right at the edge of the shore, where most of the time he feels, deep inside, only Ricky. Then gathering all of it, the dusk and the shore, as they rise out of him, hover between them, joined by that lonely something else of lowered eyes, as Ricky moves closer to him on the bed. Putting first one hand, then another, on those big old shoulders. As Lou Jay rests his cheek on one of the hands. Closes his eyes.
---You know what the worse part is, Lou?
---What?
---It's like now---now I feel like---
---Yeah?
---Like I hate her. Renee.---Whispered.
---Like---like I ain't never hate nobody in my life---not no girl, and---
The eyes, opened.
---I know, I know. Don't look at me like that, Lou Jay! You know what---
---What you saying?
---I---I don't know. I don't know why cept I know I been laying up in bed at night thinking about how much I---
Lou Jay looking at him.
--- . . . how I hate that girl now, Lou. Can't even stand to look in her face no more. That---
Lou Jay looking at him.
---Don't look at me like that, Lou Jay! I can't---
---I guess you want me to say something.
---I can't---
---What you going on hating her for? She ain't done nothing to you. Last time I heard takes two to make a baby. And she settin up in that house knowing she gone have you a kid and her mama looking at her all cross-eyed and you settin up here talking about some you hate her. What you doing hating folks?
---You don't like her neither.
---I don't like what y'all did but I don't hate nobody. I hope.
---She so proud, walking around telling everybody, "Yup, we getting married!" Just yesterday she was up the road telling folks, "He so fine, wait til y'all see him in his wedding suit."
---Well, you are.---Very quietly. But I swear to God I won't never tell you that too many times, he thinks, 'cause you just too hardheaded for words.
---Uh-huh. But just watch me wear some tennis shoes to the church.
The other silent.
---Why can't we go away, Lou? Up to New York---even Atlanta! What I'ma do, married to some---
---What you did the night you got you a baby.
---Lou Jay---
---You do what you got to do. Like I'm going on to college. U.A.'s waiting.
---You really gone do that, Lou? Go on and leave me here with her and Daddy?
---You left me.
---I didn't! Listen, Lou. Listen to me. Whyn't you leave Alabama for school so we could go away? I could work.
---And get Daddy Malcolm up on my ass to come on and shoot me dead. Uh-uh. No, thank you.
---Coward.
---No. See, now, listen. Try I don't want your mess all up in my business, fucking with my shit again. Try that.
---Oh, bitch---
---No, baby, no. We ain't gone have that, now. Didn't I tell you how long ago now to go on and get dressed? You gone stick around here all day, when you getting married in---what is it now---twenty-two hours? Besides, Mama and Daddy'll be back in a few.
---Where they went to?
---Probably out with your daddy, looking for your ass. You need to go on home.
---They know what we was doing last night?
---When did we ever tell em? Do they know. Do they know.--- The disgust in his face and voice cruel enough to slash cane. Hiding from the slash or seeking to conjure the face of the water and the reeds, Ricky put his own face in his hands.
---So I'm just gone ruin my life, and you ain't gone do shit to help.--- From between fingers.
---Help you ruin your life? You don't need no help. Gimme one a your cigarettes.
---I ain't got but two left. You don't even care, do you? Bitch?
---Excuse me? Ain't nobody your bitch up in here. I got to buy me some.
---I said, you don't even care, do you?
---I heard you. What you expect? You want me to drop dead?
---Whyn't you try? Ricky said, but the laughter returned. Later, Lou Jay would remember that just then he had noticed neither the glimmer in Ricky's eye nor its presaging the speed that followed as, with the barest shifting of a thigh, Ricky leaped onto Lou Jay's chest and farted loudly and squarely on the most sacred spot, just below the neck. A way of possessing it, the victor knows; the surest way of leaving behind his most private smell where before only the mouth and skin had been. Then feeling the strong hands attempting to push him off, but the feeling of those fingers about his hips once more, even in protest, nothing compared to the victim's grimace and the victor's delight.
---Now see if I give a fuck about some Renee, Ricky said, purring---for, like many, the foul gifts of his own innards entranced him.
---Well, thank you, you nasty---
---Aw, you love it, honey.
---Take your hand off me.
---Lou---
---Come on.
Ricky moving lower over him, then closer.
---Let's just run away.--- Whispered.
---Aw, shit. Here we go again. I swear---
---You could cook. Make me chicken in dressing. Pear preserves and biscuits. In our own house. You could cook, Lou Jay.
---I know I can.--- The beautiful smile at last emerging in full.---Did I or did I not ask you for a cigarette?
A reach over to the table, a cigarette pulled from the pack. Lit, then placed, ever so gently, into that mouth.
---See, Lou, I could light your cigarettes for you.
---Uh-huh.
---We could get married.
---Boys don't get married. To each other.
---You need to look at the news, girl. Boys be marrying each other up in Oregon---
---I ain't moving to no Oregon. And if it's boys marrying each other, you know it's white boys.
---Or in California where it don't matter. Where don't nobody know nobody.
---Fuck that bullshit. U.A. U.A. You got it? September, now!
---Why you acting like---damn, hold still, boy! Can't I even get me a kiss? What you scrunching up your mouth all stupid for?
---You got your kisses from Miss Renee.
---Lou Jay---goddamn!---I told you---
---Speak the truth and shame the devil. Now! Tell your Daddy I said that.
Ricky silent. Watching those lips move over the cigarette.
---It ain't even like that, Lou.---Very quietly.---You know I just---
---It's time for you to go. Now I ain't---
---I'm serious. You think I'm playing?
---I'ma say one more time---
---Just one kiss, baby. Please? Then I'll go on. Please? Open up.
This is one hardheaded fool, the other thinks, the kind that sooner or later---
---Don't you love me, Lou Jay?
A look at those eyes, asking; a look away. And now Lou Jay, lying on his back, feeling what's on the way, doesn't have to say anything, not a word or even a tune, because it's all there---yes, right there beneath the watcher's curling lashes that match his own, there in the neck's curve, where the veins are exposed, where the look is hot silk, where you can't even hardly stop it cause you are
---What you doing, Rick?---But all at once his voice is all water.
---Get up offa me, he says, but how the silt of the smooth river glides, glides across his moving sand.
---You can't say nothing now, Ricky says, sucking air where there is none.
---Get your hand out from all up under me, Lou Jay whispers, but how the waters have already parted, a circle of ripples pushing gently where the weeds are thickest.
---Ain't nobody gone be back for a while, neither, Ricky says, wetting his face where it is warm.
---See if I marry that girl.---Straining the weeds, the soft grasses, through his teeth.
You will if your daddy makes you, Lou Jay thinks, running his fingers up and down, up and down a single blade.
The bugs, still conversing. The jaybirds, over the water, darting. Everywhere blue, black to blue, blueblue.
Renee will be there soon. Lou Jay, remembering. But moving now faster against the weeds, pushing more deeply into the sand, up to his buckling knees, until the entire river, its source and moan, rises and swells, swells and flows, wetting his sand, soaking his weeds. Filling every space of that warmth in his open throat.
---A beautiful dress,---she was saying. The three of them walking out along the Stone Bridge Road that led down the long hill to the Creek Meadow valley just outside of town. And she was pretty, Lou Jay had to admit---the type who surprised you with that devil in her that came out when you least expected it. And when you most expected it because it didn't. The Gaines' least favorite girl, folks in town said, who from the looks of things spent half her time daydreaming and should have been quicker than she apparently was considering she was Elvira Gaines' girl, since you could see Elvira had known quick enough to get Renee off her hands and into Ricky's, whose daddy owned not only twenty acres here in town but fifty more too up around Decatur and his own house and business and had those seven boys, six of whom had already come close to doing the same. Nice girl, everybody said, but looked simple sometimes, too, like them Birthwright brothers up on the hill who fooled away the day playing with cats and whatnot---the kind who ought to see things she needed to and didn't, things that sure enough, please, Jesus! didn't bear mentioning. But then others said no, not simple just innocent---who wouldn't be, by force or His holy reckoning, raised under Elvira's switch? A few to whom almost nobody listened said naw, that girl was deep if you just looked. And---who knows?---maybe with that fury (the source of which they'd quickly forgotten or had never known) that in ever-shifting forms still took nightly and daily aim against them even as they slept, and which now firmly in their grip propelled them to devote the meaner, smaller parts of themselves to caring too much about some things, like the image of two boys pressing hands to each other's bellies in the slow velvet dance of a kiss---maybe with that same fury that moved them to cut their eyes and storm over policemen's bullets and marauding church fires in their midst, they'd never bothered to look very deeply into the most quiet part of that girl's eyes---or not far, anyway, beyond so many guesses as to the eventual worth of that girl and her kind as sweet fast pieces. Her gaze darker, deeper than ever today. Skin shining in the heat, hair permed and tied back in just that way that made so many of the other boys in town think nothing of going right up in her face to whoo-zop a little of the Bird they hadn't known they'd owned, za-bazz out some of the 'Trane they'd not suspected still seared in their veins, and say Miss Renee, hey, hey! All right, girl. 'Cause, well, uh huh. So, why don't you. And. Not that she couldn't handle them, Lou Jay thought. And Daddy Malcolm too had welcomed her into the Malcolms' with wide-open arms (a little too open, some said) because he'd always loved her anyway (a little too much, some also said)---like the daughter I ain't got, he'd said more than six times, and loved her even more these days, some folks murmured, now that she was marrying his baby son. Everybody swears Miss Renee got herself a man, Lou Jay thought, but I had him first, y'all, in places y'all couldn't even dream of. Shocked at how much it scratched at his heart to think of them having a baby together---what was a little baby, after all? But scratched even more to think of it now because they'd all been friends and he wanted them all still to be so long as he could just have Ricky and they could get far away from here and everybody and get that house, something, someday. Away. And none of it fair to her neither, he thought. She hadn't never hurt nobody, not once. But even harder now for him to like her when he almost wanted to. When the wedding was getting closer and they all were together here talking about (but what? please, Jesus) her wedding dress. Ricky! he cried out silently, what we gone do, Rick? Distant field noises coming drowsily across to them in the mid-afternoon heat. Lou Jay's parents having returned from visiting somebody's sick wife, and Renee come looking for Ricky (where else but at his best friend's? Boys would be just like that, getting married and couldn't care less about tomorrow). The Stone Bridge Road walk had seemed to suit all but the soon-groom. He would fidget, the other two thought, and be his sillyass self, but why looking evermore like he wanted to kill somebody?
---What's wrong with you, Ricky? What you looking at Lou Jay all evil for?
---Nothing.---Skipping stones in front of his shoes on the road.
---I ain't paying him no mind.
---Go on ahead of us, Lou Jay. Me and Ricky got to talk about something for a minute. In private.---Raising her eyebrows at Lou Jay and jerking her head toward the road ahead of them. The two young men exchanged startled looks.
---Anything you got to say to me Lou Jay could hear, Renee. I don't know what you got to say that could be so---
---Let me go on, y'all, Lou Jay said quickly. Moving ahead.---I'll wait for y'all on up some.---He was already gone by the time Ricky opened his mouth to protest, then turned back to face Renee standing in the road; her face grave, upturned to the source of light. The light in her eyes not golden, the face not smiling.
---Well, what?
Her eyes, looking at him.
---Well?
---What you taking that tone with me for, Ricky? You acting like somebody did something evil to you. What's wrong with you?
---Just tell me what you got to say, Renee. It's hot out here.
And there's so much he don't even know, she thinks. That he won't ever know.
---Well . . . ---A pause.
---Yes?
---I just . . . I just wanted to say I hope everything's gone go all right tomorrow---
---What you mean, go right?
---Just what I said.---Pausing once more. Continuing:
---I mean I hope you show up on time like Daddy Malcolm said you would and don't come in the church looking all evil like you looking now. Mama and Daddy gone be settin' right up in front with your mama and Daddy Malcolm and we don't need to have no kinda fuss. Mama picked out my dress and Daddy Malcolm paid for it, so that's that. I guess you know all that anyway. I know you're nervous, but I'm nervous, too. You acting like you the only one. But don't forget---I'm the one's having the baby!
---Girl, you don't even . . .
---Listen! This ain't no joke, Ricky. You think I ain't scared too with a baby coming? I ain't never had no baby. I ain't even so sure I want one, to tell you the truth. I don't know. But we gone have one and that's why we getting married.---Stopping then to look at him with those eyes suddenly filled with dark birds in rapid flight through a country he'd never known---or had never wanted to know.
---Renee---
---You listen to me, Ricky. I got a lot to say and I don't know if I'm gone be able to say it straight out like this again.---Her feet planted squarely on the road's dry, hard, sun-baked earth. Looking almost as if she will rise into that other country from which her own voice seems to be coming, thinking. But this can't be me talking like this, not to him, not to nobody, who ever gave me the---? Or did I always---? But maybe too scary, right now, even to think. Rising into the sky might be easier than continuing to speak, continuing to look at him burning at her that way as the brids race through her eyes, their wings' beating her own secret desire to soar with them, so secret even she is unaware of it, how could such a soaring ever take place? she does not quite think but senses. Senses that the question itself is rarely, if ever, permitted, at least (but why?) to her; that the freedom to dream in a language of wings, if that is what freedom is, to fly, the sort of freedom her almost-but-not-quite dreams intone---such freedom truly must be a journey, must lead to grace. Petite, pretty girl on a country road. Hair tied back, lips parted to speak or to fly and so much, so much now and always, an entire world and beyond in her eyes. Now speaking from that place where she continues to stand, knowing that it is in fact her own voice she hears, her own words and the wings between them, as the words' weight and her feet so planted continue to pull her down into another vital yet hidden part of herself---a small, reaching figure outlined and illumined in the merciless sun.
---It's like I been thinking . . . ---Her voice almost gentle.---You said one time---only one time, Ricky, that you loved me. But I know just like I got two eyes in my head that you ain't been showing me that side much lately. Daddy Malcolm's been real nice to me like always. Why can't you act right? You got the same face like your daddy but you don't act nothing like him.
---Renee . . .
---I ain't finished. Just listen. You got to understand something, Ricky. I don't want nobody in this town talking about you and me and our business. One thing I can't stand is a bunch of nosy--- . . . The vehemence in her voice halting him.
---Renee---
---No. No. Let me tell you. Already somebody come up to Mama saying something about how it must be hard to have a fast girl in the house and how still waters run deep and all a that. Mama picked up the switch so fast I ain't even know what hit me. She said she ain't raised no fast girl for folks to laugh at and I know I don't want nobody laughing at me or you neither. So I'm just saying we gone have this baby and live right and since you gone be a daddy I hope you know we ain't gone have time for you to be running all over town with Lou Jay like y'all ain't got nothing better to do.
---Renee, lemme tell you something . . .
---Hold on, Ricky. Whyn't you listen for a minute? I'm just saying we could all still be friends and whatnot but he is going off to college and you and me gone have to get jobs and work, you hear? Cause I ain't about to put this baby off on Mama so she could take up the switch on me again and tell me something about how it's time I acted grown. We can all still have fun and get together but we---we gone have to be responsible. That's what Mama been telling me all along and I think she right.
The birds fluttering, settling. A new fear creeping into the spaces between their wings.
---I ain't gone feel that switch no more, Ricky.--- A small, quiet voice.
---Renee---
---I ain't, Ricky. And, see, I'm not my mama, neither. I'm me. You know? I mean, me. And me, I mean me and you, we ain't gone use no switch on this baby. No, we not.
Opening his mouth to speak but the sweep of those birds stopping him.
---Don't say nothing to me while you still looking all evil, Ricky. Just come on.--- As she turns and walks up the road, shoulders a little lower than before, he doesn't see the falling birds beginning to die in her eyes. As he follows with that slow dull heat that begins in his ears and continues on creeping down into what still feels like his neck. When they catch up, Lou Jay will look back at him, see that new (but what is it?) searing out of his eyes, and turn quickly to her. Will put his almost-burly arm through her fine-boned one and say:
---What about that dress, girl?--- Pulling her forward.--- What was you saying?
---Y'all got to see it. It's got satin---wait'll y'all see it!---satin ruffles. And---
---It's bad luck to see it til I marry you.--- Gazing off toward some white houses on one of the surrounding hills.
---Well, excuse me, you ain't gone see me in it til tomorrow. Didn't I already say---
---Don't pay him no mind, Renee.--- Shooting Ricky a Don't you start no mess out here! look. Behind Renee's back, Ricky grabbing his own crotch. Flicking Lou Jay the finger.
---You gone act right today or what, Ricky?--- Over her shoulder, walking on.
---I got a headache.--- Renee missing the kick he aimed just then at Lou Jay's behind.
---Well, don't talk then.
---Go on, Renee.--- Smiling so that only Ricky can see.
Smiling, the other thinks. But not smiling that day when I asked you why, Daddy. Why, and you saying 'Cause that's what you gone do, boy. Nothing else. I know you know why so don't be asking. You man enough to put a baby in her, you gone be man enough to marry her. You will marry her.
But I don't want to, Daddy. I---I can't. I don't---
Why can't you? Why don't you want to? Boy, don't be telling me nothing that's gone make me kill you up in here.
Would y'all quit that fussing and come on.
Mama. Mama, talk to Daddy.
What you want me to say, baby?
Quit crying, now! Quit crying!---you little asslicking sissy-ass. I wouldn't even call you my own. You think I don't know? You my own and you done shamed me. Shamed me!
Daddy, don't hit me! Don't---
I'll kill you.
But didn't say all that. Even though he did hit me we ain't said all that. But we should've. We should've so I coulda known sooner he did hate me. You. You hate me and him. But I just want him. And I don't give a fuck cause we gone get the hell outa here anyway no matter what and buy us a piece of something someplace no matter what 'cause it don't matter what you say you ain't never gone make me marry no girl, Daddy. You could kill me if you want to. You could try. You could just try.
And she told her mama but ain't told her daddy she got a baby in her. Didn't mind telling my daddy but she ain't told her own. Maybe I could blackmail her. I got less than a day.
But now he sees the car coming down the road toward them. Raising dust clouds, an air-wake in the bright distance. The enveloping heat, disturbed, breaking into shimmers. The dust after a moment circling back on itself, settling on the thick grass, on the leaves of the heavy dark pecan trees along the road.
---That's Daddy Malcolm's car, Rick.---Lou Jay, seeming prepared to run.
---Not his daddy---my father-in-law, Renee corrected him.
---Not yet.---Ricky threw a stone over her head.
---Since when y'all got a station wagon?---Lou Jay looking from Ricky to her.
---Since you know when.
---Maybe he could buy us one.---The snort from behind her that followed her words not reaching her ears.
The car pulling up to them. Ricky's father, sticking his head out.
---Well, what we got here? Three pretty rats.
---Sir.---Lou Jay, not looking.
---Daddy Malcolm.---Renee, moving closer.
---You---to Ricky---you ain't got nothing to say to your daddy, boy?
Something just beneath the surface of his father's face swiftly urged the bloodsnarl trembling in Ricky's throat to a mumble that, in the wavering heat, passed well enough for respect.
---Sir.
---Uh huh. And so now where you all walking to?
---No place.---Her voice low as she cast a brief glance at Ricky.---You know we got rehearsal in a little bit. You coming, Daddy Malcolm?
---Church be too hot for rehearsal now.
---We know. Later on this afternoon, we going.
The gray or heavy thing beneath Mr. Malcolm's face softened into a smile before he glanced back at Lou Jay.---That sounds better. Just call me when. I got to bring the preacher.---Sharpening his gaze on Lou Jay.---And you, boy---
---Sir?
---Guess you must be fittin to go off to U.A.---Moving something on his lap.
---Yes, sir.
---You won't be coming back too much, then---this summer's the last we gone see of you. You'll be so busy.
---Maybe.
---Ain't no maybe about it.--- Pulling up into view a long, shiny rifle he'd been holding out of their sight on his lap.
---Ain't she good-looking?--- A smile.---I'm fittin' to get me some hunting.---Patting the rifle fondly, looking from Lou Jay to his son, smiling at their unsmiles.
---I could knock off something big with this.
---You could shoot us something.--- Moving closer to the smiling face until Ricky's hand reached out for, tightened around, hers.
---Honey, I'd shoot anything for you, looking so pretty. We know why, boys, don't we?
Dust, heavy things, silence. A memory of birds, rivers, blue things. The two young men unsmiling, wordless.
---Got to say, Lou boy, nice to see you talking so sweet with a girl---even my son's fiancee. Ricky!
---What?--- Slow steps forward from where he'd been pulling leaves off a few bushes on the other side of the road. Lou Jay and Renee walking farther down the road to stand in the shade.
---Don't you what me.
His son silent.
---Come closer, boy.
His father's eyes, burning into him.
The older man looking straight into his son's eyes to say:
---I know you member what we talked about.
---Daddy---
---Seven sons,--- his father continues, a sudden bitterness hardening that deep voice,---seven sons and my baby son gone leave us tomorrow to take him a wife. Thank you, Jesus! he shouts, shattering the stillness beneath the trees. Looking about as if expecting Christ to come down off the cross, then driving that hot gaze toward his son. Only then does Ricky see the face that had stormed, kissed, wept over, sang to and cajoled him through the years in that house they lived in up on the hill change in that very second into something utterly destroyed, like the face of a person in flames---a face all at once of hideous suffering. Melting, shifting, a face of pure rage and something else, unspeakable: what in that moment the witness knows has been familiar to him all his life, throughout every cold space back of communal keening, visions of dark birds in someone else's eyes, beneath blue things lurking in rivers and deep within his own frightened silences---a face offering no escape for itself or anyone. In that collapsed minute he sees in the face too much like his own every twisted face that once torched barns and left fiery crosses in their place, faces that have stalked his dreams; then the face of every corn-whiskey peckerwood coon hunter; then all the faces before his time and of it, that above jeers and fire had strung up heavy women and ripped out their insides, to crush beneath the heel the dreaded commingled issue so desired and despised. Daddy. Backing away in horror from the face as he feels himself drawn with a greater fearful yearning than ever before for who and what he is sure, this time, are behind it---the strange human power or just the pain, in the body of a man or a lurching, broke-spirited god. And then in that other very old language which possesses no words but only the power of harsh vision and the brute killing force of pain---a kick to the stomach, a sharp knife to the groin---he knows that the terrible something inside himself that burns what he feels for her, for her---maybe just something like hate itself, looking for an easy place to settle and spit---forms part of this face, corners its edges; as he knows too where sensation blows cold and fierce enough to slay everything that all faces of this face were devised long ago, in three (or two, or four, or eight hundred) closed moments of the most deadly cunning, silence. Sensing all at once a weakening in his knees that feels as though---yes, as though it's accusing him of something. Backing away still further from the face. But it continues to speak.
---You mind you tell Satan to get behind you, boy,--- it hisses, ---for the rest of your days on Earth. You hear?
The faces staring at each other in the heat.
Then the older face is gone. Become Daddy Malcolm again, same as before.
---Lou Jay! Renee!--- Mr. Malcolm, shouting. ---Y'all come on over here now.
The two of them running over, sweat-faced. Lou Jay not looking at Ricky.
---I know y'all gone get to the church on time. Mind, now.
With one sharp movement, Ricky turned away to face Renee. And she ain't even nowhere near ugly, he thought, I wish I could say I did like girl-pussy.
---I got to tell you something.--- Looking her straight in the face.
His father raising the gun. Lou Jay's eyes opening wide.
---What, Ricky?--- The birds gone from her eyes, now reflecting back only the stone certainties of the future.
Daddy Malcolm's gun pointed directly at his son's back. A click from the trigger.
Ricky turning. Gazing at his father.
---You really would, wouldn't you.
The face emerges once more, but by the time the skin has finished its shifting and melting the scream strangled in Ricky's throat has risen up into his head, to remain there.
---He would what?--- Only Ricky's body preventing her from seeing where the gun is aimed.
---I would love to see my son get married tomorrow. Y'all know Ricky's my baby son. Seven boys, six married, tomorrow the last one. And it's gone happen, too. So nice to see young people loving each other, living a normal life. Lou Jay!
---Sir?--- Lou Jay's voice thick through the clustered reeds in his chest. In that moment looking exactly like what he had never been known to be in that town: completely stupid.
---We will miss you, boy.--- The gun lowered. The look on Ricky's face unchanged. Renee looking off into the distance with what none of them can yet know---a memory of dark birds from another country dying at her feet. Nice-looking girl, the older man reflects, and a shame, only seventeen in two months, she coulda saved it for a real man.
---Yes, sir. Thank you.--- Backing away as the car slowly begins to move off. As it runs right over where he'd been standing.
---I'll be with your mama and daddy for a while, Renee. Y'all don't forget---later at the church.
---We won't! she screams, but the car has gone. ---What's wrong, Ricky?
No answer. Trembling in spite of the intense heat, he turns to Lou Jay, says:
---You coming?
Lou Jay also shaking. Hands stuck in pockets. The shoulders stiff.
---Nope. I need to get back. I got things to---
---Wait a minute. Am I gone see you after the wedding?
---You gone see him later, Ricky! What you---
---Don't say nothing, Renee, fore we get into a fuss. Am I gone see you after?
---Ricky, your daddy---you saw---
---I asked you something.
---Well, sure, you gone see me. I live here, don't I?
---That's right.--- Her voice still low. ---And Lou Jay, if you---
---Renee, shut up.--- I'll knock you down in a second, he thinks, but only Lou Jay can see how she is staring now at the face none of them had ever glimpsed in the man who must soon be her husband.
---I asked you, am I gone see you? I mean see you.---Hands folded into tight purple fists.
---Ricky---
---I got to see you, Lou Jay! You don't know---
---Ricky, now---
---Tell me!
---I got to go, y'all. I'll see y'all in the church.
---Lou Jay!
---Bye.
---Lou!
---Bye, Ricky.---Walking off quickly up the road in the direction from which they'd all walked earlier. The air becoming cooler as he mounted the hill---and strange, he would think later, because there wasn't hardly no shade up there, after all.
Feeling Ricky's stare burning into him all the way up the hill, until he rounded the curve near the higher meadow that bordered the farm-fields where there should have been a gentle breeze and wasn't. Recalling the horrible burn, like the feeling, he'd received only once in his young life, when he'd put the wrong finger at the wrong time into a beaker of hydrochloric acid in high school biology lab. The finger hadn't ever been the same, not really. One of the fingers he would need to write postcards from Birmingham, like those pasted on his bedroom wall, if he could find them on that campus seen only once. But Birmingham was far enough away . . .
When, just as he finished rounding the curve, he heard the screams far below and behind him, he ran all the way back to the part of the road where there was a view right down the steep slope into the Meadow valley. He saw Renee. Down in the dirt on the side of the road. And saw Ricky, pulling her hair and kicking her all around, especially in her stomach. Saw her bleeding, spitting up blood. Saw how she tried to get up, and how Ricky punched her hard, right in the mouth, then kicked her in the side of her head. Again. And again. Even from that distance, perhaps because of the day's still heat, the sounds seemed audible for miles. Soft, wet noises. Thinking, before his mind began to scream along with Renee, that to some people there was no better proof of love than that.
---Ricky! he screamed, running as fast as he could down the hill,---Ricky, stop! You want your daddy to kill me? You fittin' to get you and me killed! I got to go to college! You gone kill your own child, Ricky! You gone be a daddy! That's Renee you beating on! We all friends! Ricky! You hear me? You can't go beating up on no girl like that! Stop that now fore you kill Renee!---Then feeling his heart chugging up inside him in the way of the heart attack that had been predicted for him before he reached forty, just like his daddy. But still he couldn't stop, not even when one dark bird and then another and then still another flew out of nowhere right into his face and he fell flat on his behind in the road, tumbling over and over on those sharp little stones until he raised himself in the dust to see the blood and dirt on his hands and forearms as he tasted it in his mouth and felt it warm and sticky and dirt-smeared all over his face. Thinking that it was, yes, Mama, like he couldn't even taste or feel Ricky in that private place inside him anymore, Then take me now, Lord, or the water and the reeds, and wash me, Jesus, or the sand and the soft soft grasses, and O shall come on a cloud descending, but could only sense that big new bitter taste, that one, inside every part of him that he knew he shared with the one who knew it all and had been all up inside it and back around, cause thou art the light, cause I ain't never wanted nobody else not nobody but you, cause I feel a fire in me, Lord, when I see you riding up this way, but O your daddy learned you good and you ain't know til now how good did you, he thought, flying: knowing that it was that terror and all before it back to the time of the holy rider and his blazing flight unto the fiery angels and their swords and light that were lifting him now, exploding in sharp fragments inside him as he ran and felt the sun and the sweat on his back and the familiar blood on his face, as just then and for the rest of his descent a million dark birds released from dreams charged blindly up into the sky turned a deeper red with the heat of the day, as each eye of that face came out to look at them and score into them the curling marks once recognized in blistered skin---right there, where the prophets spoke in flaming tongues, the flier knew, and where the first words of their lasting flame were always, before anything anyone could call truth or love, just plain old hurting sorrow.
Black and Boo
Sandwiched between undulating and chaotic vehemence to his left, stiff machismo to his right and the swirl of voices off of the TV screen Black sat his mind churning.
Sergio was the vehemence. He'd an attitude all day, refusing to share with anyone what was bothering him. He was funny like that sometimes, just let it things burn him up until a channel for release came along, like a tarantula still and observant waiting for the perfect prey. He'd spent the better part of the day wiping stains off of his brand new red and white Jordan's with his hand. A long plain white shirt exposed the contours of his gangly frame and blue jean shorts stopped at the base of his calf. They hung over three pairs of fresh slouch socks.
The stiff machismo was Sam. Sam was a twenty-two-year-old neighborhood dude. He was dark skinned and wore a plain black baseball cap over his closely tapered fade. He rarely smiled or showed any emotion for that matter. He always acted like he was being watched. Although his movements were sudden and mechanical, his hands always stayed in a defined position. Either one was clenched in a fist and sat in the palm of the other or it stroked his chin hairs as he supported his elbow in his palm.
Dink was the 4th member of the gang He & Dink had known each other for a long time but they just started hanging tough in the last couple of months.
They were passing around a blunt, which Dink had taken into the kitchen with him. Although it was very hot outside, the temperature was cool in Dink's three-bedroom apartment at the bottom of Maryland Avenue. His building sat in a lowland about one hundred feet away from Langston Hughes golf course. Under the dim ceiling lights the television provided most of the rooms' illumination, as well as serving as the center of attention. The group had gravitated towards the black, hard plastic, twenty-five-inch monitor that was rounded on the corners, behaving like giant gnats with the TV as an equally large porch light. It sat like a monument to procrastination under a thick cloud of marijuana and boat smoke.
Earlier in the day they smoked a blunt of boat: mint leaves wet down with embalming fluid. Sitting sat around the kitchen table, the sun casting a bright rectangular ray on the flowery table cloth, Dink had asked Black if he'd ever smoked boat.
Black had looked across the table at the stony expression on Sam's face and unflinchingly told Dink a bold faced lie which he'd instantly regretted. He wasn't a liar. He might lie to his mother to avoid chastisement, but he didn't lie to his friends. Well, there was that one time a couple of years back before he lost his virginity when he told them he'd had sex. This time he'd concluded it had either been an attempt to impress Sam or to have one up on Sergio. Sergio However, knew he hadn't smoked boat, unless he'd done so in the two weeks since their conversation where he said that he hadn't.
Regardless, Black had wrinkled his face and disdainfully spat, "Yeah man, come on," his voice morphing from his usual bass laden tone to a high pitched whine as he spoke.
Dink had looked in Black's eyes, inhaled what seemed like all of the oxygen in the room and said, "Aiight," then heavily exhaled.
He'd then exchanged a meaningful eye contact with Sam, who he sometimes referred to as Sam-Sam, and continued rolling the blunt. Sergio, facing the wall with his fingers interlocked and his forearms resting on the corner of the table, he nodded his head in a rhythmical motion to the sound of Tupac's "Come with Me." During the brief silence that followed Dink's statement, he'd restlessly squirmed in his seat, his feet unconsciously shifting towards the front door.
"I know you smoked boat before," Dink had blurted as he looked at Sergio.
He was licking the blunt and his head was bowed so his eyeballs rolled to the top of his sockets. Sergio looked straight at Dink.
"Yeah, young. Why don't you hurry up and light that shit," said Sergio.
This was his way. To recklessly attack a situation when he felt threatened or challenged. Dink heeded his words and lit the blunt, then passed it across the table to Sergio, breaking the rotation. The rotation was the rule that the blunt was to travel either clockwise or counter clockwise. Sergio placed it in the small opening between his lips and vacuumed in the smoke, then immediately coughed the smoke back out stirring up riotous laughter amongst the group. Black' made sure his laugh was the softest. In fact he smiled more than laughed. Surprisingly Sergio didn't try to save face, just gathered himself as the laughter simmered down to chuckles and took another pull. This time it was a baby pull. Still the fumes irritated his throat. He caught his cough in his mouth but his body jerked as a cause of it. This was also funny to the guys. He looked like a young Dizzy Gillespie.
Black also knew that if he inhaled deeply he would cough, because he occasionally coughed when smoking good weed. Taking the blunt, he asked it into an simply soda can to his right while he devised a way to make it appear that he wasn't the novice Sergio revealed himself to be. Then He inhaled the smoke into his mouth but used his tongue to cut off the channel to his esophagus. After swallowing the smoke like a sip of fluid he hastily expelled it through his nostrils. Then ashed it again, giving himself time to absorb the dry chemically saturated taste. It didn't taste like weed. It tasted like wrapping your lips around the exhaust pipes of a Metro bus as it pulled away from the curb. He put the blunt in his mouth and cautiously inhaled at an even slower rate. The entire time he kept his eyes fixed on the cherry. Once it flared up and burned the blunt he stopped, then opened his eyes wide as he held the smoke in the pit of his mouth before blowing it out like a kiss. He passed the blunt across the table to Sam. The movement made his head feel woozy. His arm felt like it was moving in slow motion. Tupac sounded like he was defending him as he berated his enemies with verbal taunts. He sat back flushed with the feeling of accomplishment. Mission accomplished, he thought they laughed when Sergio smoked but didn't when I did.
Now, hours later, he was close to sleep, but just as he was about to doze off he was awakened by Boo's whiney voice. His eyes met hers as soon as they opened. She was smiling and standing over him with her left hand on her hip. He could tell she'd been getting some sun because her skin was a nice dark, smooth syrupy color. Her hair was tied in a ponytail with a black rubber band She was looking very sexy in some skin tight sky blue jeans that hugged her from black belt with square silver ornaments to ankles. She wore an equally tight tank top tucked into her jeans. Her round breasts poking out created an erotic fervor in Black's heart. The tank top was so tight it revealed the contours of her bra from the shoulder straps to the lining. Her nipples pointed straight at him.
"One of y'all gotta walk with me to take Shontay home," she demanded.
Shontay hovered near the door. She wore some tight black jeans and a red shirt with a leather coat. She was a honey-complexioned girl with short frizzy hair, sodden with gel. Because she had a little weight on her she stood with her back to the wall hiding her wide butt. Black figured Boo befriended the girl because she wouldn't compete with her for any boys.
Black looked around. Sergio was seated to the left of Black eyeing Boo hungrily.
"I'll go wit y'all," Sergio offered enthusiastically.
"Nah, you aiight, you was watching the movie," said Boo. "Go head and watch your movie. Come on, Black, go with us. You ain't doin' nothin'," she whined as she gently kicked his foot.
"Go 'head, young," exclaimed Black as he kicked her back. Every time he and Boo were in each other's presence they bickered like first graders trying to hide the fact that they liked one another.
I mean she cute and all but she too silly. She definitely gettin' phat, I'll give her that, but I don't wanna fuck wit her. I'll find a reason not to fuck with her. Sometimes it's because she's Dink's peoples, then because she too fuckin' annoyin'. Both my brother and Dink be tellin' me I should go head and fuck her. It's like when somethin' be real easy I don't be wantin' to do it. I don't know, that's just me. I like hard shit. If nobody think I can do it, then that's what I'm a do. With her, if I give her what she want all she gonna do is want more and more. She asked me for a dollar one day and I slipped up and gave it to her. Now every time she sees me she ask me for a dollar. I don't hardly got it like that. Now if I don't go walk wif her to her friends house then she gonna try to make me feel bad. She good at makin' somethin' out of nothin'. She'll probably come back sayin' some strange man looked at her funny or some nigga grabbed her just to make me feel bad. Then she gonna hype it up like I'm being mean to her. For real, for real that's why I ain't got no time for her cause she too hype.
"Come on, Black, you not gonna do that for me?" moaned Boo.
When she got desperate her neck limply tilted to the side, her eyebrows arched inward and her lips poked out Black looked at Sam, then Sergio and let out a loud sigh. Boo reached down, grabbed his left arm and tugged on it. Black let his body go limp to provide the maximum resistance. He was only sixteen but at 5´ 11", 186 pounds he was solid. Boo was grimacing her body in a tug of war stance as she pulled on his arm. Still he barely budged. Dink reentered the room & their eyes met and they simultaneously shook their heads.
"Please, Black", whined Boo in a phony innocent tone.
"Leave my company alone Boo," Dink said jokingly.
The only reason Dink was still standing was because he anticipated sitting on the cushion soon to be vacated by Black. He injected his comment with the intention of stirring things up. He knew how to manipulate Boo and vice versa. He'd been doing it all his life.
Boo turned to Dink while still tugging on Black's arm and said, "Ill, mind your business Dink. Ain't nobody worried about you."
"Aiight, aiight. Let me go first," reluctantly said Black.
"Nah, 'cause if I let go of your arm. All you gonna do is sit right back down," said Boo.
"No, I ain't," said Black.
"What's the difference? If you goin', you might as well get up now," said Boo.
Black knew Boo had no shame and she would go to any lengths to have her way. He began wondering whether his resistance was even worth it. After all, she had successfully disturbed his frame of mind.
"For real, let me go, young," Black shouted in a tone that made Boo's heart skip a beat.
"You comin', right?" said Boo.
Black responded with a stone-faced glare. Boo released his arm warily. Black nestled his rear end deep into the cushion and straightened his pants out with his hands. Then he gestured for Boo to move out of the way by waving his right hand to left, horizontally to the ground. Sergio covered his mouth with his left hand and chuckled. Dink shook his head. Black felt relieved when he heard the laughter. He didn't want to show any signs of succumbing to Boo even though he was. Boo's eyes tensed as if she'd been bitterly betrayed.
"Fuck you Black", said Boo
As she marched toward the door all eyes, including Dink's, were on her butt cheeks as they swung back and forth. Her butt wasn't big---the cheeks were about the size of volleyballs---it was just right and she had great legs to go with it. In those tight jeans she was almost irresistible to the average man.
Black sighed heavily. Then slowly rose from the couch and walked behind her. Boo felt his presence. Turning her head to the side she gave him an over the shoulder evil eye. Black heard a chorus of "Aws," "Suckers" and various other jibes as he walked out the door behind the two girls.
The sun was setting in front of them as they walked up the hill toward Shontay's house. It left its heat behind as a parting gift. The sky was a three layered mesh of dark blue at the top, sky blue in the middle and fiery orange at the bottom. The evening crawled with life. The streetlights had just come on, voices of children and adults filled the air and sirens sounded faintly in the distance. Cars drove past blasting an assortment of urban tunes. Kids rolled by on bikes. Bands of children darted in the streets and through the courtyards between the buildings. There were small groups of teenage boys on almost every corner and in front of most buildings. Groups of females paced up and down the sidewalks wearing revealing, bright-colored clothes.
Boo was making a concerted effort to ignore Black. She walked along the wire fences with Shontay between them, milking the moment for all it was worth. Black could tell she wanted a formal apology from him for embarrassing her, but Black's take on the situation was that she had embarrassed herself.
Black began to lag a few feet behind wondering why he was walking with them. Boo peeked at him out of the corner of her eye. She didn't think he saw it, but he did. Then she steadily chirped in Shontay's ear about boys who liked her, and how she didn't know what to do. Many thoughts enter Black's mind. The dominating one was of Boo's ass. As much as he tried to look away, his eyes kept finding their way back. Passion invaded his body. He fought it off valiantly with thoughts of old experiences and images of other girls he viewed on the avenue.
His mind and body were in agreement that they wanted to have sex with Boo, but his spirit was still undecided. He could already envision having to talk on the phone with her every day or come over to visit her. And he didn't want to dog her because as much as she pissed him off, he genuinely liked her. Boo didn't have a boyfriend and in an unexplainable way he thought she was waiting for him. He was sure that if he came on to her she would melt like butter in a bowl of cream of wheat. He was confident that she would get hooked on the sex. He'd seen other guy's dicks in porno movies and in the showers at school. From this he'd concluded he had a bigger-than-average penis.
"Ill, why you walking back there?" Boo asked.
"Y'all talkin'. I ain't wanna interrupt. I thought you was mad at me or somethin'."
"Why? 'Cause you was showin' off for your friends?" said Boo. "I wasn't mad at you. You was just gettin' on my damn nerves."
"Psst. Man, I'm sorry," Black said in a staged somber tone. "I ain't know you thought I was showing off. Ill, what I'ma show off for them for, come on now. I was just smacked. For real for real."
"Nah, that's alright. You ain't gotta apologize. I know how you go now," said Boo.
"Whatever, young," said Black. "Go head."
They came to a busy intersection at the bottom of the hill, a divider marking the middle of the street. Cars zoomed past in six different directions. Buses moaned as they stopped and then started again. Across the street was another apartment complex. To the left and behind them was a shopping plaza. To the right was an imposing apartment building and a convenience store on an island. The signs lit up the night.
Standing at the corner they waited for the light to turn red or or for a break in the traffic, whichever came first. Black took a couple of steps into the street then stepped back on to the curb as a minivan rolled over the spot he'd just been standing in. Finally the light turned red and a caravan of cars came to a halt behind each other. They drift wove their wall through the thicket of vehicles, over the divider, and sprinted across the other side of the street as cars from the crossing streets turned onto the road. Boo gripped the back of Black's shirt, screaming jovially while Shontay waddled behind.
They hit the corner and walked down an eerily dark, desolate street. There were no streetlights. Fans and air conditioners hummed ominously. Large oak trees exploded out of plots on the sidewalk, their leaves twice as abundant on this street side because they naturally sought the illumination of the sun. The apartment buildings blocked the sun and on the left side of the street tall row houses did the same. The bases of some of the trees were as wide as twelve feet around. Mushroomed at the top they looked like green and brown pom-poms. Other than the lights that shone through the blinds of the windows of the apartment buildings and houses. it looked like the residents of the block had been tipped off about an impending apocalypse.
They passed an alleyway that led behind the apartment complex. It took them three seconds to pass yet Black still saw a sight he'd never seen before. Time stood still as he beheld a dingy mutt with a brown coat and a black snout cornering a woolly gray cat against a fence and a power line pole. The cat's eyes glowed as he defended his ground. The dog prodded the cat with its nose, exposing surprisingly sharp teeth. The cat rested on three legs holding the front right one up like a tired boxer trying to conserve energy by doing everything with one arm. He let out a savage meow. The dog viciously barked back. Then the cat retracted his paw and violently swung it across the face of the dog. Blood trickled down the dog's face as he staggered backward, flustered and deeply lacerated. The cat ran through an opening in the fence.
I'm glad Dink ain't here. If he would've seen that, trust me he would've been like "Man I wish I had my pistol with me. I'm bout to let y'all walk home by y'all selves." Or he would probably get real cold and be looking at everybody funny. That's my nigga but he be lunchin' sometimes. I be wit him on that shit sometimes but then he'll come up with some crazy shit that'll make you be like "What the fuck is you smokin'?."
"Daaaaaaamn," said Black.
"What?" said Boo.
"Nothin'," said Black after he paused. "I just seen some vicious shit."
As they approached the corner they noticed a group of five boys huddled in front of a house near the middle of the next block laughing loudly and acting out. They were a rag-tag looking bunch. Black took notice of them. He knew how the boys around his neighborhood treated strangers.
"Oh shit that's Lonté' and them," said Boo as she turned her head down and to the side. "I thought he was locked up."
Lonté' was a tall, lanky, dark-skinned juvenile, the color of a coffee bean. His eyes were narrow and his jaw protruded from his face like it was swollen. His posture was arrogantly thuggish. He wore a long white T-shirt with some jean shorts. The shorts were cuffed and came to his kneecaps.
"He got out two weeks ago, He just ain't been comin' around here 'cause he was in a group home," said Shontay.
"Damn, damn, damn," said Boo. "He play too much. I don't feel like bein' bothered right now. He probably still think we go together."
Black remained quiet as they slowly shortened the distance between themselves and the group. He thought about the possibilities that lay ahead. He conjured up an image of the boy saying something to him or about him and how he would react. He developed tunnel vision down a road called "worst possibilities."
Boo grabbed him by his biceps and said, "Pretend you my boyfriend." When he didn't immediately respond she followed up with, "Aiight. Aiight."
Black's uneasiness grew exponentially as they approached the group. Most of the boys were already staring at them with looks meant to freeze them stiff, even as they calmed down their raucous interaction. None of them could've been over twenty years old. Black's heartbeat rose wildly. He tried to check it by holding his breath, but it didn't do any good. He thought Boo could hear it because she was draped on him. He kept his face expressionless. Boo plastered a smile on her face as they encountered the group standing directly in their path.
"Shontay," said one of the boys.
"What's up, Man?" replied Shontay.
The boy ran up beside her and said, "Hold up."
She stopped and faced the boy as he talked. It was her old boyfriend, the one who hooked Boo up with Lonté'. Black and Boo stood several feet behind her on the edge of the sidewalk under a tree. Their position was awkward. Standing like Siamese twins between the four boys to their left and Shontay and Man to the right. Boo had the side of her head embedded in Black's shoulder. She made sure her butt wasn't facing the boys. All of them gazed lustily at her but one stare was particularly piercing. Lonté' leaned against the rail of a fence with his arms crossed. He had a maniacal gaze and appeared to be holding something back. Black just wanted Shontay to stop talking so they could move on.
"Ohh, you can't speak, Boo," said Lonté'.
"Hi Lonté," said Boo in a shy, sullen tone. "Where you been at?"
"I was locked up. Remember?" Lonté' said gruffly. "Who is that?"
Black knew it was on. He wasn't gonna get out of here without trouble. Even if he bitched out he would have to fight. He knew the jealous ex-boyfriend routine.
"This my friend," said Boo as she squeezed hard on the inside of Blacks biceps.
"I thought I said you can't have no friends," said Lonté.
"Lonté', stop playin' with me. Why don't you carry your ass back around where you came from?" Boo spat out the words with a defiance that surprised Black.
"You don't want me to do that," said Lonté' and the boys laughed like it was an inside joke.
"Whatever," said Boo.
"Why? You tryin' to go wif me?" Lonté' asked amid a chorus of laughter.
Shontay and Man had walked down a bit and were involved in a serious conversation about the future of their relationship. For her, getting back together. For him, having sex tonight.
"Ill. Nah. Don't no body wanna go nowhere with you," Boo said, still squeezing Black's arm.
"So what you sayin, I can't still hit it?" Lonté' asked.
Boo stormed off, pulling Black. When they got to where Shontay was standing Boo interrupted their conversation saying, "Come on Shontay, Lonté' getting' on my nerves. Oooh."
"Why don't you just go home?" Shontay said, turning to look at her house which was a few yards down the street, "Call me as soon as you get in the house."
Boo pouted, then she turned and they walked up the street toward the boys. Black felt like a death row inmate waiting for his number to be called. The group parted, letting them pass through.
"Come here, Boo," Lonté' said hopefully.
"No," said Boo. "Leave me alone."
Lonté' pushed off the fence with his butt and followed them. They felt as well as heard his black Nikes scraping the ground. Boo simultaneously rolled her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked at Black. Black looked at her and exhaled while shaking his head. They kept walking. Black was tense but he wasn't scared. His adrenaline pumped, causing him to inadvertently ball his fist. The sounds of Lonté's sneakers scratching the concrete got faster as he shifted into a jog. When he got close enough he reached out, grabbed Boo's arm, and pulled her to a stop. She let out a yelp that sliced through the calm night air. She was holding on to Black so tightly, she pulled him back.
"Don't fake for cuss," said Lonté.
"Leave my girl alone, young," said Black, staring stoically into Lonté's lazy eyes.
He couldn't believe these words "my girl" had rolled off his lips. An incident was about to kick off and it was all because he was supposedly Boo's boyfriend. The idea was almost funny.
"What? Oh you fakin' cuz," exclaimed Lonté' in a high-pitched voice as he pulled up his britches and braced himself. "What's up then. How you wanna carry it?"
"Fakin', you the one tryin' to put your hands on my girl," said Black.
"That's my girl, cuz," said Lonté. "But fuck all that, how you wanna carry it. It's whatever," and he spread his arms like bird wings.
His boys began walking up on the scene. Their postures were aggressive. Boo stood to the side and observed the fracas with an awed expression.
"Whatever, man," said Black as he turned his head to the side exposing his profile.
"Oh, it's whatever than," said Lonté' as he stepped closer to Black.
He breathed hot air into Black's face. Black remembered how his friend CJ always told him to have his back in the streets no matter who or what it was. And how he advised him to throw the first punch at all times. He also told him gangstas don't start fight; they end them.
"Man, if you don't get the fuck out of my face, cuz," Black barked, high off the thought of his brother's words.
"What? Man I'm 'bout to break this nigga jaw if he don't stop fakin'," said Lonté' as his boys hovered close by.
"Oh, y'all gonna jump me. That's fucked up," said Black in an attempt to buy some time while he mustered up the fortitude to swing on Lonté'.
"Nah, nigga I'm a bang your bitch ass out myself," said Lonté'.
Black turned his head quickly to look at Boo. She had a blank look on her face that he'd never seen in the fifteen years they'd known each other. Turning his face back around to meet Lonté's eyes, Black cocked back his arm and threw a wild haymaker, picturing every dude who he let slide with some slick-ass comment or nasty look. By the time it connected with Lonté's lower jaw it was a virtual club. The punch shattered Lonté's jaw bone and caused him to bite down, chipping teeth in the process. He staggered backward, dazed and disoriented. Black was bent over on his left leg like a pitcher falling off the mound just after he releases a pitch.
Man and Shontay ran up on the scene as Boo grabbed his wrist.
"All that fakin' and got slam knocked out," said Man. "Aye, cuz,' you better roll out young."
Boo started up the street pulling him. Black was hype so he resisted her.
"Come on, Black. Let's just leave. Come on," said Boo.
Lonté' had begun to get some wits about him and mumble in a low tone, "I'ma kill you motherfucka."
Then he mumbled, "Go get my gun young . . . it's in the bushes."
Black relented and began to briskly walk down the street. Then they started jogging. Boo leading him like he didn't know the way, both of them looking back every couple of steps. They saw a boy run into the yard while the rest of them tried to pick Lonté' up. They heard loud threats and taunts. As they got closer to the bright lights of the avenue Black felt like a slave coming up on the Mason Dixon line.
When they entered Boo's building Black slammed the door and leaned against the wall to catch his breath. The lighting was dim because one of the lightbulbs had blown out. Names were written with markers, spray paint, lighters, anything you could across the walls.
Before he could reflect on what had just taken place Boo fell into him and leaned back. Her soft butt fit into his crotch like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. His chest heaved out when hers dipped in, creating a grinding sensation. The smooth glazed bricks felt frigid against his sweaty back. After a moment of contemplation, he put his arms around Boo's waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. Her heartbeat immediately began to return to normal. She delicately caressed his forearms with her sweaty palms. His penis grew as she pressed against it.
What he felt was more than a crush. It was like a warm sensation in the core of his body. The only catch was that it was Boo who was causing it. Not that he wanted to change anything. He just was in disbelief at how quickly it got to this point. An hour ago she was getting on his nerves. Now they stood there silently in each other's arms like they'd been together forever.
"I'm scared," whispered Boo. "What if he comes around here? He knows where I live."
Black's heart skipped a beat and he was sure Boo felt it. Nevertheless he kept his cool veneer.
"If he wanna get his niggas. I got niggas. My niggas is right in there," said Black as he nodded his head toward the apartment. "Sheed, you know how Dink go, he down for whatever. And my brother, come on now, and Sergio psst."
"I know. That's what I'm talking about. I don't want you to get involved in none that bullshit. That's not you, Black," said Boo.
Her comment brought Black down to Earth. He wondered how it would be to shoot someone. He wondered if he could go through with squeezing the trigger and actually kill someone. He hadn't thought he had it in him to punch Lonté' and look what happened.
"So what you tryin' to say?" said Black as he raised his chin from her shoulder.
"Don't be like that, Black," said Boo. "I'm just worried about you. I can't believe I'm here in your arms. I mean this is like a dream come true. You don't know how much I like you and how long I liked you. Like even when we was little I liked you."
"For real?"
"Oh come on, Black. Don't play dumb with me. I know you."
"Nah, I guess I knew you liked . . ."
"I love you, Black. You don't know how many times I wanted to tell you, but I never did."
Boo turned around to face him. Black stood up, put his arms around her waist and gripped her butt. She played with the wrinkles in his shirt and rubbed his chest with her palms. Her face was so angelic now. Although cute she had always appeared upset or annoyed. In this moment she took had a brand new loveliness. He was afraid to make eye contact with her because he felt his feelings would grow even more. They could hear the voices coming from her apartment, mainly Sergio's.
"I don't like him," said Boo as Sergio's voice echoed against the walls.
"Go 'head, young," said Black as he cocked his head back and rolled his eyes.
"I'm serious," said Boo as she slapped him lightly on his chest. "I don't like the way you act around him. You ain't . . . real. It's like you don't want him to think you," said Boo.
"Look, just let it go man. You blowin' me," said Black.
Boo apologized, sort of, and gave him a warm hug. She rested the side of her head on his chest and gazed at the door. A door upstairs opened, then slammed. They both held their breaths and their grips on each other instinctively loosened, taking on the personas of guilty children about to be discovered by their parents in the midst of mischief. Loud footsteps thumped each stair with the force of a plummeting bowling ball. They tensed up and their grips relaxed even more. But it was just Artise, a preadolescent who lived in next door. He went by in a blur.
"We should go in," said Black.
"Nohhhh," whined Boo. "I want to be alone with you."
"Psst," said Black.
"You know what? I'm a fuck you up, Black," said Boo.
"I'm just sayin' we could be alone up there," said Black.
"Ill, I don't want all them niggas in my business," said Boo frowning.
"What you think---I want them in my business so they can playa hate? Come on, now," said Black. "I'ma chill wit them for a minute, until they leave then I'm a come in there with you."
"Nohhh, that's too long for us to be apart," whined Boo. "The way I feel right now, it's like I can't explain it. I just don't want you to leave my . . . presence."
She looked up into his eyes with an expression that could've corrupted a monk. He clutched her close to him and plotted on kissing her. She felt so soft and tender, but he just felt weird. It was like he knew things would never be the same if he kissed her. He knew it was going to happen that night. He was just stalling it out.
Rossonian Days
---FOR ERNEST HOLLIMAN, EARL MCADAMS, AND EVERY OTHER MUSICIAN NOBODY HEARD.
Anyone who's ever blown knows you gotta feel it to say it; only a few really ever know the Truth and then play it.
The memory of things gone is important to the jazz musician. Things like the old folks singing in the moonlight in the backyard on a hot night . . .
Listen. This happens for just a moment. The car is headed north, to Denver. That's where the gig is. The band is from Kansas City. West by south, through Pueblo, and every dirty-snow mile of Route 87 stretching north by west. This kind of traveling never takes the short way. More road than anybody wants. Not much else to see. The fields will be gray for months. Land slips from the road, rolls in swells of rye and hay across the plain to the Front Range.
The car is long and the wheels are wide. Front grille stout, like America itself. The car is a Lincoln, rides like horsehair across bass-strings.
Nothing is small time here. No two-tone paint job. All black. Six coats of pure gloss. Shine for days. Tinted glass. Chrome nothing more than nuance. More power switches than anybody will ever use: E-Z drive power steering. Power windows. Power locks. Power antenna. Power seats. What don't got power, the car don't need. The whole deal, chrome trim sidewalls to suicide doors, holds more class than most will get from getting in. You don't drive it. You ride it. The Lincoln Continental four-door convertible: chariot for the rebirth of the cool.
Inside, everybody's got room without anybody's last nerve being worked over. The bass is strapped to the roof; horns and drums packed like china; clothes for tonight rest on instrument cases. The worries ride up front, steaming the windows.
Call back to memories less rich but more grand, like Milt Hinton snapshots that didn't make print: Ellington, asleep in a cashmere topcoat, fedora brim angled across his the bridge of his nose, head at rest on Strayhorn's shoulder. Missouri is outside. They glide through the dusk of the Midwest, "Lush Life" drifting on A.M., night coming on.
In another image---maybe Ohio this time---Duke at work, writing in the small spot of a car lamp. Harry Carney sawing logs, shoulder to Duke's shoulder. Too many road gigs were cats filling a car like the last boxcar headed North: Sweet Pea, Monster, Snooky, all the rest, blessings on the stand, but all the same, smelly-sock brothers filling space where, if the Duke is on, a "Black and Tan Fantasy" is always birthing. Not all of his rides smooth, but you know the elders always wander the hard way first.
Call back to days of try. Edward Kennedy Ellington: Duke before there was Wayne, regent of a tight backseat, sounds making themselves on pages under dim light, no hambone room. Outside, it was always night, dark in the heartland, where brothers wasn't safe after dark. You ain't been blue 'til you had that "Mood Indigo." Ride a million miles through Columbus, Des Moines, Perioa, Tulsa, Vidor, Lincoln, just to enter the Cotton Club through the front door . . . Hambone, hambone, where you been?
Somebody before now played this road---someone heard by some, or maybe never whispered---so drive this Lincoln like holding the family photographs, and when it rolls in, brother, stride right.
It is some time after the turn of the year: Say it's 1965, or a year later, maybe years ealier. There's no stick to this moment, but it will echo. Don't need a year to know this story is old. The trip has been made by many: like making good time in a '31 Hudson from Baton Rouge to Chi-town. Been in moments like this, riding with hay discs strapped to the slatboards of a flatbed International Harvester, bound for Macon. Been up to and down from Ft. Worth for a summer of Saturday nights. Skylark was the ride in those days. Chickory, pork chops, grits, a skillet of cornbread cooling in the pantry every morning. In and out of icehouses of all sorts, sometimes even those for WHITES ONLY. Been asked back to and booed out of every juke joint on the Chit'lin Circuit, Southern route that splits cats who are down from those who ain't, and if you miss the A train, you have missed the quickest way to Harlem.
No matter the year, it is winter. The plains are a hard, gray-brown bed nobody wants. For long breaths the road is lost in angry wind and tired snow, and the only thing that keeps the car on track is the tenor player at the wheel, working through Moody's "Tin Tin Deo," Afro-Latino jam, up from beneath the underdog's fatback jawbone. A downbeat, thick like adobado sauce to go with that arroz con pollo; the band chanting . . . oh, tin tin deo . . . and now the conga is in it . . . oh, tin tin deo . . . cowbell, crisp like momma's catfish . . . oh, tin tin deo, oh, tin tin deo . . . a four-four swing gone East Harlem bebop, the rhythm something you know, but the rattle is new: stick on a can, good groove under the Lexington Avenue local, 104th Street.
Long after the tune leaves his humming, the tenor thinks he still hears it . . . oh, tin tin deo . . . on his last breath, from the backseat, deep in somebody's chest, or fifty miles back. Wind keeps rhythm. White sky stained gray like old bone. The fields empty. More snow coming. Bourbon is passed from backseat to front, and somebody says if there's a God out in all of that, he best be blowin' for us. Then all is quiet.
Not much to say once you hear the call. A body has been waiting a long time for that call, through the passage of centuries, through all the rent party nights and tencent coffee hours. Time was when days were three shifts: some of one spent sleeping and practicing, most of two spent working or looking for work. Word spreads down the Sante Fe line, an ad cut from the Kansas City Call, letter from a cousin in Pueblo, an auntie in the parlor with the phone pressed to the radio: a "jazz-endorsed" P.S.A. from WVBA, the disc jockey calling out from far away, late night, low and steady, like a talking drum across the bend of the savannah's horizon:
Are there any musicians left out there? Here's this from the Rossonian Auditorium, Denver's best kept secret: Management would like to remind you there's always a stage for great talent at the Rossonian. Maybe you have got a talent that we would want to showcase. Perhaps you're the next swinging sensation, ready to strike it big back East. Go East, young man, but swing in the West! Give us a call---Albion-6867---tell us your name and address, and let us know what your talent is: horn, piano, vocals? Have you got a band? Call soon, Albion-6867, or write us, Management, The Rossonian Auditorium, 2640 Welton, Denver, Colorado. Tell us what you can do . . .
Many places are right for moments like this, but the moments are fewer than the places. Where it's at is now: the band, the car, the road, and where all three will stop. So Kansas City is gone. The gig is at The Rossonian. In Denver. On Five Points. Where Welton meets Washington. Come night, the people are there, roasting ribs and frying catfish, domino games in front rooms, Cadillacs angled to the curbs like Crisscrafts. Five Points, where it has been and is. It's not Beale Street or Eighteenth and Vine, but it wants to be.
The Saturday night local headliner is bound to pack it tighter than the mickeys allow anyplace else. Nobody has a care, except for showing up and showing out their hard-earned, store-bought clothes, ones that won't do Sunday morning, but do it right on Saturday night. Can't roll up to that scene in some small-money ride. Nobody will take the scene for serious. These days, cats are pulling out their best jive; everybody who's nobody is hustlin'. Everybody can blow a horn son, but what can you do? So drive the Points in the soft-top Lincoln, Continental convertible, shag top shiny in a stingy man's winter. Drive up in some sorry vehicle, that's what folks remember.
They remember Andy Kirk and Mary Lou Williams---When you hear the saxes ride, what's the thing that makes them glide? It's the lady who swings the band! Basie and Jimmy Rushing. They remember Charlie Parker. But Bird didn't need no car to break out of K.C. Mary and Andy floated in style through the West with the Twelve Clouds of Joy. And elders are quick to say ain't nobody worth a damn come out of Missouri since the thirties . . .
But it is 1960, give or take some years back or forward and the arrangement of players doesn't matter---a piano man, tenor and trumpet players, drums, double-bass man, maybe a trombone, maybe a singer---no one knows their name.
It doesn't matter, but everything matters: Bebop has died, straight ahead Jazz is dying. The small traveling band ain't long for this road. Long Playing records play the hits, what's popular spinning on records for less than any five-piece group driving state to state. They not gonna like you out West because you Sonny Rollins, son, they gonna like you cause they heard your record was on the tops of the Billboard and Downbeat lists. Or maybe you got an angle: Dave Brubeck and Chet Baker blowin blues like the Brothers but their blues ain't about paying the bills. Only a few will rise off the highways and land on wax.
Make that no never mind. This car is headed for a gig. There are highways full of these long, black cars, carrying the best jazz nobody's ever heard. To hear it live: another breakdown chorus, Basie swinging "April in Paris"---"one more time . . ." a third reprise, volta, groove, call it what you want, it swings just the same---"jus' one more, once . . ."
Music from the marrow. At clubs a rung above juke joint; velvet-draped lounge or speakeasy; intimate auditorium, backlit in blue. No need for a name, just a love for Blues, a four-four swing tapping your toe, hit that jive, jack, put it your pocket 'til I get back. The show: standards spill like laughter, one into the next; the piano man is running through "Twinkletoes"; the tenor is just sitting down; the trumpet man sips on his sour mash and picks lint from his sleeve; the drum player's got a new suit: Ivy League cut, iridescent green rust shimmers when his brushes ease across the snare, left stick teasing the cymbal like a pastor's blessing. Late night makes early morning, the glow of early morning shows through the skylight, stars like embers through the wireglass. A third set beginning, lights low, dim footers set brown skin glowing. Folks look younger than they ever have or ever will.
Play on, Brother, play on, it don't matter that tomorrow is a workday, or a Sunday, or another sack o' woe day, play on, because right now, everything is right.
No record or radio catches that. But it's hits that are selling now, not that better-get-it-in-your-soul music, all its mothers and fathers sold off to new owners. It's the sixties. Just forty years gone since they lynched 617 in three months. Red Summer's strange fruit rots slowly in our gut. We get silent. We learn the ulcers we bear. Or we forget. But you know the Emmitt Till Blues. Where's your singing now? Just a whistle get you dead.
This is a voice stowed in the Middle Passage. Call looking for Response. After the chain and yoke, there were weeks of dark quiet, the wash of sea water against the ship's bow. Inside, a song of rot breathing head to foot, row over row. This was a voice that sang Benin, Ibo, Fang, Hausa. This is a voice that learned Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, all the Dixon below Mason. This is a voice that learned cotton, tobacco, and sugarcane. This is a voice that almost unlearned itself.
No more drums, no elders' words. They beat you if you speak out or refuse the labor. They hunt you when you run. They listen for the bell welded around your neck, smell you out with hounds when you run from the noose. Not much music in hose-spray or last snap of rope, jolt of cord and spine; that razor quick like fire and fierce between the legs. No voice in that night.
But Coltrane preaches "Alabama," so listen: People been hanging from trees; elders gone North and West and back again; Harlem, Detroit, Chicago, burned, Northern lights when they told you only Mississippi was burning. And who sang the Oklahoma Blues? Tulsa, 1921: that fire fierce but silenced. No news carried that. That's our Death, people: no story, no wire, no radio, no voice, no ear, no report, no Call and Response to know that people out here are living and dying. Nobody to sing their Blues. Nobody to hear it wail.
Listen. You got to listen: Trane's Blues. Four girls, baptized with bombs. Bessie Smith a story we forgot. The ghost-whistle of Emmitt Till cups the street corner of every young black man's dreams. People going broke on Northern city Blues, and their voice, only thing they ever owned for sure, sold for the price of a record.
Soon enough, they don't want to hear no "Strange Fruit." Sing us "Body and Soul," Billie, they cheer. Smile and sweat through "Body and Soul" for the money thing. Soon enough, change chimes in Brothers' pants pockets as they easy-step the sunny side of Lenox Avenue; Billie Holiday all but gone, another echo in the alley.
The road and the soundless miles are for the singers and players, heard and unheard. They all want the voice, they travel. Once they've heard the voice it will never leave them alone. They travel. Most will never hear it, but they travel. This is the road jazzfolk play. Have played. Been playing. Been played by. Will play for.
I let a song go out of my heartit was the sweetest melodyI know I lost heaven,'cause you were the song.
Before King's English. Before the Word, there was story, in song and wail, drumbeat, hambone, and sand shoe, the hot breath of mothers birthing field-to-factory-generations. Thick and light, the sound moved as the people did, on to East St. Louis, on to South Detroit and Cleveland, to Chi-town, where brothers blew that hard, Midway-city, get-ol-man-Hawk-out-my-draws bop.
On North and East, to Philly, and, of course, The City, The Village, 52nd Street, and 125th street, Harlem, Mecca at Lenox Ave, nothing small in Small's Paradise, where anybody on the move was moving. On out westward: Austin, Lincoln, Denver, K.C.---all the gigs before, in between, and after---all the way out to the Pacific, that high-tone, low-key, California-here-we-come land of give up the gravy.
Just one night, one good jam in Denver---tear up the Rossonian---and the skate to the West Coast was smooth.
After that, return to the South slow and easy, like nobody's ancestors ever left it. A stroll on Beale. Cakewalk down Rampart.
After that, leave it, freer than any freedom train headed North.
After that, to The City. The road will lead to The City.
After that, only Ancestors and Elders know . . .
Some kind of way, this trip will be made. There are so many cities, all too far from Kansas City, but the trip will be made. Phone rings, the gig is on. Denver. The Rossonian, Down in Five Points. The Rossonian: two sets, one night, a hundred heads, fivespot to get in, two drinks to stay, a quarter take of the door. Fill the place, management is happy, band is happy, and like that, the Rudy Van Gelder is the Call from Englewood Cliffs, just across the Hudson, where the studio is still buzzing from when Miles Davis Quintet was the Word.
So the trip will be made: Three days, two nights. Head out Route 24 after a half-day's shift, roll past Topeka, already lit in the winter early dusk of the Plains, pass through Kandorado as the blue bowl of late night pours its last stars across the West; make Pueblo for the late set at the Blossom Heath. Two encores milk gas money for the trip--- nice work if you can get it. Sleep off late night's drunk until just before new day's dark, then a biscuit, coffee, corn liquor, junk, or smack. Here comes Denver. The Rossonian: oasis in Jazz Nowhere on the way to Jazz Somewhere. Someday soon, stompin' at the Savoy.
And after the gig is swung, tired or no, never mind hangover, no time for a strung-out morning, the Lincoln will make fast back to Kansas City, the small low-money gigs, the stormy Monday job, the life that always expects the empty-handed return.
So the phone rings, for the bassist, the drummer, the singer, the piano man; maybe a vibraphone player, but maybe they ain't ready for the vibes out in the Mile High, not yet, and this ain't the time for testing new waters.
The phone rings for the hornplayers, the sax, trumpet, trombone, whichever horns, any of them are waiting for that phone to ring. Everybody wants that taste like what Canonball and Nat got on the grill out in California. Monk fixing on which suit coat to wear---dark or light---while the car is running and the photographer is waiting. Ain't we all been waiting for that phone to ring? Cannonball Adderley filling seats like it was summer Bible school. Mercy, mercy, mercy. Dizzy blowing that horn easy as waxing the Cadillac: L.A. smooth, beret, goatee, horn rims, and herringbone. Ivy League cut suit, fresh bed, dry martini, salt peanuts, salt peanuts.
Go get some. Don't bring no soft sound. There are few chances, one or two big moments. Many misses. The young cats, they got good at hitting the target, notes all dressed up and in line, so on top of technique the soul got blowed out. They miss. Those brothers will rattle some walls with a few records but, come five years, those cats are quiet, waiting on that phone. They missed.
The phone didn't have to ring for Satchmo, who never missed. Not Charlie, who was blessed with more jam than he could jive. Not Bessie, who was hit enough to bring it back black and blue---beautiful like that until she couldn't bring no more. Not Prez or Johnnie, who didn't know what slow was. Not Billie, who didn't know what "no" was, and gave her soul to encores and needles. Not Ella, who never knew an off note. Not Milt, who gave Bag's Groove to the grooveless. Not Chet, who gave to music and no one else. Not Nina, who got more sugar in her bowl, her well-deep voice the middle of whatever best and worst day anybody ever lived through. Not even Clifford, who lived through one car wreck only to be taken in another before he was twenty-seven. Not even thirty yet, and he needed no phone to ring. He already swung with strings, just like Charlie Parker.
The phone rings for the rooftop and boiler room players. The Brother scales on his lunch hour. Down by the riverside. With mute when it's late. A bus ride hum. Not yet twenty, but a lifetime waiting on that phone. Sometimes, it rings. They pick it up. They say yes. They travel.
The bag is packed, shirt's been pressed for weeks, instrument oiled, shoes shined---chamois across alligator pumps, matchstick to clean each wingtip hole. The savings is cracked---quarters and singles from days of pinching for days of playing. The landlord is dodged. Never mind the bills. The bossman is conned: . . . you see, I just gotta see my Auntie Berthene, up over in Denver, else she likely to up and die fore this time next week.
And somebody will always be left behind. A woman, a man, maybe large-eyed children, but somebody's left on the porch in the day's first light. They wonder what makes this time the time when it's the Big Time? What makes it different from the last big time? St. Louis: gone for three days. Or Memphis: gone for a week, and come back with half the world dragged out in between. Somebody will be left. Somebody is always left. But nobody will remember after the record deal is signed, and the reel-to-reel is playing back "If I Were a Bell," take two. Gin gimlets all around. Someone will tell the story about Ben Webster trying out the tenor when the piano had no luck in it for him. "In a Mellow Tone," from that day on. It will feel like that, your story will be told down the ages. When that new sound comes everyone will know the name on the album, bookings sticking at Birdland, Leonard Feather calling for a Downbeat feature, and nobody will never, ever, be left alone again. Whoever it is that's left behind, that's the promise left on their lips as night air makes their embrace stiff.
Inside the Lincoln it's quiet-cool. Nobody looks at anyone else. Snow's still coming. The sax player drives the car quietly now, changes and progressions silent secrets to an inner hum of his head. The drum player is almost asleep, slumped against the passenger window as he syncopates fingertaps between the hushed beats of passing fenceposts. The trumpet player works a soft-scat to the high C he's never hit. The piano man has blank paper at the ready. The singer low-moans spirituals that got her through the ten-hour days of working somebody else's clothes against a washboard. Joshua fit the battle of Jericho . . .
The bassist rubs a match stick, pushing it to spark, pulling back before the rasp springs to fire. The car is full with the quiet of knowing. Some kind of way, they know some sound is going to roll up the highway and reclaim the song-breath of blackfolk.
This voice something like some thing drifting in the summer air of childhood days, caught and lost in sun-glare. It's wind lingering in the branches of the boabab just before rain covers the savannah. An Elder whispering. A mother's sigh carried on the wind, the rasp of callused hands across burlap bags when the cotton is high. It's Biloxi crickets, never seen but heard, in want of wet and hot, loud for days even in winter, through the cold, hard bright of day, out here, on the winter-bare spine of the Rockies---miles of dry and nothing---where crickets echo only in imagining.
The tight air waits for any sound, and when the bass player strikes his match, everyone is startled. Wait for it: brass stopper and snare skin, bass string strained, sevenths and discordant ninths sustained on the high registers of the ivories. I let a song go out of my heart. Nothing is captured: not time, rushing past the Lincoln, come and gone, down the road fast, like it's the car---not the passing of seconds or minutes---pushing the hours; not this vast rust-out bowl of land spilling from the Rockies; not the wail of prairie birdsong, ringing like something forgotten, impossible in March, not here, not now, not this road.
I let a song go out of my heartbelieve me, darlin, when I sayI won't know sweet music,until you return someday
The music of open air is waiting. The Blues has done its sliding, the bebop's been straight and never narrow, and still here's that yearning, like the song were so many grapes to be plucked, and rolled around in the mouth like a lover's tongue. Driving from gig to gig, all fixed life loses itself for want of that fresh new groove. Everyone wants the sound we haven't heard yet. Since we were children we wanted that song to fit in somewhere between the first jumble of quarter-note and half-rest and the last few miles before the gig; measure after measure of notes. And that sound is taunting, take me in.
. . . child, take me in, roll me in your mouth, under your hands; pull me from blank space and empty air and make me beautiful: love me. Begin the Beguine. I am a Love Supreme. I am the song you've always wanted, so love me.
It is hours before the Rossonian. Night has already covered Missouri. The wind and snow are dropping off, and it's near dusk in Colorado. Sun so low it lays sideways into the frost on the windows. The Rockies are all but gone, last light like a wick on Pike's Peak.
There is no company but the crackle of prairie air across radio waves and a worry of what Denver holds in store: an old town, maybe a new night; fresh start, worn body; maybe a different crowd or the same women in different dresses, the men in their one good suit. Another night of promises never spoken. To the body: please, no more, no more up and down the road and in and out of the blues; to the people: tonight, on this one night, we truly are glad to be here; to whoever was left last night, you know I'm working all this for you, baby; to the nameless body at the end of this night, you know I'm working all this for you, baby; to the bottle, you know I'm working all this for you; to the smack, the junk, the horse, the krik-krak monkey, five-and-dime-sho'-nuff-right-on-time feeling, you know I'm working all this for you; the horn, the strings, to the drums, those piano keys, and the run that's coming tonight, it's gonna be tonight, it's gotta be tonight, because it needed to be tonight for the past five years, you know I'm working all this for you.
It takes the heart all day to find its beat for the big night. Soon as the gear is packed out of the Colorado Springs club---even though there's a night to be had in the Springs---the hands start twitching with want for the next night. Where's that song? Waiting on a song to come: For all of the sound in the world, Colorado Springs the night before the Rossonian is a world of too much quiet. Soon it will be provin' time. Hands, be still.
Heart, be loud.
Denver will rise out of the plain. The road will soon pull the band down Colorado Boulevard, past homes where maids and yardmen work toward tonight. "Begin the Beguine."
The streets will rush toward Five Points, a turn into the alley, the rise of stairs to stage door from the cobblestones. An open door, and a taste of Rossonian air. Breathe once, let out the long road coming. Wait a moment. No breathing, in or out. The quiet room. Step to the empty stand.
Imagine walls lit from the floor. Imagine arched alcoves vaulting into a dome the color of any night full of lovers. Night in Tunisia. Imagine calls of the ancients, taking their rest above the balcony. Hear the drums, the voices. Somewhere voices call across grasslands. Imagine a room with doors all directions, not just North. Now inhale, take in the thick, dark air of from here to who knows what's next.
In one of those long-mile hours they wondered, Why this long trip? Why have we gone all this way to have so little? We have come this far, through many beginnings and endings, and rebirths, to this: No more to show than we did before we began. We been down this road, but what of this long life and no voice?
We wonder as we wander, and maybe we make it big at the end of this moment we've been driving to. If we don't make it, we'll steal away until we do, and if we do, we'll be playing for the money and the name, but someday, somewhere down this road, or the road to L.A. or the road to New York, somebody's going to say boy, you got to use the back door; boy, smile that big-lip grin for the camera; boy, you real lucky to get even ten percent of the take at the door . . .
Then we remember why the call and response dies a bit each day. When that happens, will we look out to the flat, barren horizon, still voiceless like now, still driving to that next chance and cry, what craziness brought us here?
But anybody who's played up and down these roads will tell you that something touched sent them flowing, somebody spoke to them, dipped them in call and response.
It could have been Basie, or Big Joe Turner, shouting the Blues down Vine Street, Kansas City Blues swung in a low key, Black and Tan Fantasy, or havin' it bad and that ain't being good, but it didn't have to be. The sound that says play me came before mouth to mouthpiece or stick to high-hat.
It was Momma singing "Get Away Jordan" in the backyard or it was a frontroom evening full of her momma's stories.
It was Daddy's comin' home whistle and Sunday-stroll scrape of wingtips on porch steps.
It was the late-night laughter of an uncle back home from Up South, on the road, looking for one night's meal and one good year of work.
It was a grade school teacher, short on smiles, long on the blackboard screech and scratch sharp through the chalk haze and radiator knock.
It was the wind-heavy sigh before summer storms.
The early-evening call of the icee-man in mid-July, a joyful echo gone too soon after childhood.
A reverend at an all-Sunday service full of Tennessee heat. Every spiritual almost forgotten. Every low bellow. Each high wail of every elder come and gone. It was somebody testifyin'. Like a whole tentful of folks bearing witness in the middle of some South Carolina field.
Getting ready to take the stand, one of these musicians will tingle with a remembrance of childhood and fantasy afternoons. And of long Sundays. The Rossonian audience will remember Sundays, too. Right then, before the blowing begins, something mighty spiritual will happen. Come Sunday. Whether it's song or sermon, or both being the same, the people will come from the offices, the factories, the markets, and the fields, where song and sermon were born. All will remember how that reverend had it together: everybody's story in one Sunday afternoon.
And that remembrance feels like taking the stand.
It will be hot like the August of '23, only elders speak of that. The congregation has waited all day for the sermon. Men's Sunday-white collars ringed with sweat; talcum women, dust above their bosoms gone in that first hour, when the organist broke into "Old Landmark."
Children have dozed, stirred, and fallen off again to the heat of high summer. Tithe plate's been passed around enough so that everybody's given, even the one deacon who's passed more plates than he ever helped fill. The choir's turned itself out, rising from "In the Upper Room" to "He Saved My Soul," and now, after the sun has pushed its dust-heavy beams from the back of the church to the front, they are tired. Everybody's tired. Been tired since before last Sunday. Since before the church was built, burnt, and rebuilt. Before runaway prayer-meetings. Before men came with Bible and whip. Been tired.
The Rossonian audience will be waiting. The band will soon be giving in to that next moment of happening. It's like that for the reverend, too, and as he steps to the stand, afternoon sun angles through the transoms, shafts of light burning on his lectern like a signal fire. He walks with the step of wise griot women. His brow is furrowed, his blood is quick. He smiles at young ones and nods to the elders. And then starts in with my brothers and sisters, we come too far to stop singin now . . .
This is when stories mix: traveling band from far away taking the stand, hard working people stepping out to be graced with music, and the air of that room, many times graced itself. This could be Zion Baptist or the Minton, back in Kansas City. There's something to be heard. The Word will be played. This is the language many know but few can speak.
. . . a Love Supreme, a Love Supreme, a Love Supreme, a Love Supreme, a Love Supreme, a Love Supreme, a Love Supreme, a Love Supreme . . .
Soon it will be time for you to take the stand. Time's come to blow, that's the real time, when the lights lose their glare, faces in the crowd spring from smoke-dark into the footlights; the band is in the groove, sho' nuff, but they sound mono while the jam that's buzzing in your head is all stereo. Hi-fi. Good-to-the-wood, down-to-the-wax groove. And you heard it from way off, like back into the bridge of the second song in the first set, when Cherokee was busted out like anybody who's somebody from Kansas City would swing it.
From way off, you wanted that groove, you heard the jam coming, like before anybody took the stand, before the Lincoln pulled to Rossonian stage door, open like any drumming circle in a Congo square, sanctuary from all roads long and tired, from the long way North and the width of the Midwest.
By the time you feel it, the jam has been at work from way back, music back to your momma, when hand slap and down beat filled Southern evenings, drums or weary blues cotton-picking song, rising into the heat-faded poplar and pollen heavy pine that divided plantations; still further, on the slow spine of the Blue Ridge or rippling above turtle wake in some South Carolina swamp, where many had run and few masters were greedy enough to follow. Back then and there, you might have heard drums and song drifting from the swamps and thickets, places unlivable, but more livable than living chained with iron, with the bloody knuckle from cotton husk, with a new God and His words, with a hard-handed owner called silence.
To get here from there remember the songs of elders now gone. Take Duke's hand through the Money Jungle. Steal Away, steal away, follow Harriet Tubman from the swamp, from prayer meetings, from memories of taballo and kalimba chime, follow Sojourner Truth on the railroad that runs only North and West, catch the train, it's Underground, it's straight ahead, the A train, Coltrane's Blue Train, it's the only train, follow the drinking gourd, follow the drinking gourd.
And from there to here came the groove that fills your head. A sound coming like the answer that knows it needs no reason to be, no story is needed, no event, no particular year. Just the knowledge call that somebody may be out there, just beyond where you begin to hear your song drift past hearing, out to where there's a brother or a sister in the audience, down the block, in the next state, on that next plantation plot; maybe nobody you love, but somebody who came from where your people came from, and with just an utterance there may be an answer back, like any right-on, praise-the-lord-pass-the-peas, I-heard-that, call-and-response, because out there, they know that yes,
This voice comes from somebody, and it tells the story of who I am, who my people are, day-by-day, and no matter joy or the weary blues, I will lift my sound to the evening air---across tired miles, across rivers I've known, across the sea I never knew could bring so much dark to light, across the bones of my elders---because I know that somebody out there will hear it, nod their head, answer back, knowing the same pain, the same Middle Passage, many other passages from then to now, and can know a great many things, but only need know that this is a voice, it is blowing to the world, it is bold, it is strong, it knows no yoke, no money, no god, but knows a way. It is my language. It is the story. It pushes against the hard morning of yet another day, and it is mine. It is mine.
Helter Skelter
Miss me?" You issue the blunt question that is also a command each time you see the boy. He nods his head, moving it up and down, up and down. Too fast. Automatic. Like a tic or a reflex. Does he really miss you? It's a simple question. Juwan's response makes you feel like shit. Though it's the end of October, there's still only a hint of fall but Bunny's made him wear a thick parka, a turtleneck sweater and corduroy pants. Strapped into the passenger side front seat, the safety belt holding him in place, the boy is staring at you, deep eyes aglow with an innocence you wonder if you ever knew.
There's no escape from the wide, round brown eyes, the lashes thick and lush as fur. No escape once the boy turns those eyes on you. You study the shapely head and the frail, almost feminine face that lives behind a veil of something secret and unreachable to you. As if at any moment, with the slightest pressure, the boy will break. Ten years old and no sign yet of the gritty toughness he should have by now. After all he is your son.
You have picked him up at school as a weekday surprise. You wanted it to be just you and the boy. He has broken your heart. But who and what hasn't? You don't know how you are breathing, how you stand, wake up or sleep, swimming as you do every moment through the wreckage you have wrought. Trying to resist the pull of the undertow.
He is a quiet boy. This always unnerves you. Infects you with a guilt that is old and punishing and all-purpose. Last weekend you skipped seeing the kids. The undertow got you. Dragged you, no sucked you into a murderous whirlpool. Ate your black ass for breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. You stayed in the house all weekend. At the kitchen table. Smoking. Cleaning your guns.
On the way to the movies, Juwan asks if he can turn to another radio station. You've got it on smooth jazz. When he asks this, you remember the radio fights in this car with Bunny ("God, I hate that jazz muzak, it's like a drug"). She always wants to listen to people talking, talking, on NPR, and the kids, begging you to turn to a station that plays hip hop or rap. "Sure," you tell the boy, the sound of those jovial arguments a snarled tape on fast forward behind a locked door in your mind. On those rare Saturday or Sundays, you were all driving together, you solved the sparring by giving everybody ten minutes on their station of choice. The girls sitting in the backseat, their high-pitched, quivering voices singing along with Aaliyah:
Rock the boatRock the boatWork the middleWork the middleChange PositionsChange Positions
snapping their fingers, twisting and squirming in their seats imitating the now-dead singer's video moves.
DMX blasts through the speakers and the song---profane, apocalyptic, thunderous---is the beat of everything you feel inside. But beside you Juwan is moving his head to the sounds so you let it go. Let it slide.
When the song ends and the commercials come on Juwan asks, "You feel better, Dad? Mom said last week you were sick."
"Yeah, I'm better now," you lie. The lie opens you up and you ask about the twins. Juwan squinches up his face, takes a deep breath and then launches into a catalogue of the girls' recent offenses and punishments. You don't like this about the boy, the way he savors being a tattle tale. Roslyn was caught playing with matches in the basement.
Mom told her no video games and no T.V. But she could still do gymnastics because of the competition next week. She couldn't let down the team. And she made her apologize to Gramma for almost burning the house down.
Juwan is rarely punished. You wonder if he has any imagination at all. You've seen their sibling rivalry. You know kids are cruel, mean little bastards but "Burn down the house," you yell, almost side swiping a car at the thought.
Juwan purses his lips, eyes gleaming with a hard, mischievous glow. "Some magazines caught fire. Roslyn threw a lit match on them to see what would happen. That's when Roseanne ran upstairs and Mom came down and stomped on the fire and put it out."
He likes to make things up. Always exaggerating. You can hardly trust anything he tells you. It would be okay if he just lied in those stories he writes. That's what storytelling is, a pack of lies. His teacher, Miss Harley, had him transferred to the Gifted and Talented program in part because of his essays and poems and stories. But he's got to learn that you don't lie all the time. And you just told him you were feeling fine.
At the mall you park close to the theater. It's a new mall, built like a small town with brick sidewalks and old-fashioned streetlights and a nostalgic atmosphere to make it easier for you to open your wallet. At Juwan's insistence, you stop at the bookstore. He rushes through the doors straight back to the children's section, that's designed like an indoor playground. You stand in the front of the store, trying to catch your breath. It's one of the chains where they sell coffee, cookies, cards, cups, CD's, calendars, why not condoms too you wonder? It's like a cathedral, and you recall how big churches convince you they got nothing to do with God and how the Smithsonian, the times you went there with Bunny and the kids, made you hate culture, made you glad that you watch the X-Files and had seen A Few Good Men sixteen times.
You wander to the back of the store and find Juwan and he's got an armful of books. He's just like you in this. If you come into a store, you already know what you want. You find it and get the hell out. He's holding books about dinosaurs and two Harry Potter books and one called Bud, Not Buddy. You'll have to use your plastic.
"Pleeeeeze?" he whines.
You're proud that he reads, that he's an honor roll, Gifted and Talented kid. But you also know that nobody likes a kid who's too smart. Because books send another message too. You think you're better. Too good to shoot some hoops with us. Too good to hang out. You heard Bunny tell him one day, "Books are bridges to people and experiences. You're never lonely with a book." You'd wanted to tell Juwan books can also be walls and to ask him, "What's in those books anyway? What are you hiding from?"
But you leave the store carrying a bag full of books. You walk across the street to the theater. The movie is Shrek. It's slick, animated, and rated PG, but the inside jokes and smart humor are for you. Although he downed a Coke and shared a tub of buttered popcorn with you, as you leave the theater Juwan announces, "I'm hungry." It is now dusk and will soon be dark. It's a school night. Bunny will raise hell, you getting him back so late. But he's your kid and he wants to go to McDonald's. As a cop you ate so much of that crap you should own stock in the company, so you take him instead to TGI Friday's, a few steps from the theater. And over dinner as he munches his fries and wolfs down the cheeseburger, Juwan tells you he's thinking about being an animator when he grows up, so he can make movies like Shrek. He wants to work for Disney and already knows how much money animators make, how many hours the cartoonists spent drawing the figures in the film.
As you walk to the car he reaches for your hand. This time you do not falter in your touch, grateful for the way the boy's palm in yours steadies you, even for just a moment.
Parked in front of your motherin-law's house, where your wife and children now live, he asks, "Daddy, can you come inside? Can you stay?" He is sliding his hands up and down the seat belt.
"Juwan, you know I can't stay."
Your words inspire that sad-eyed, near-tears, stricken look that you hate. But this time it's a show of love, you're sure. Not like when you force him to go outside and play with the other boys in the neighborhood. Boys who had stopped coming to knock on the door to ask for Juwan because he's always in his room, his head stuck in a book or drawing (not even playing video games like the other boys, like his sisters even).
"I can't come in, but you'll be coming home soon." You hear the arch, almost sinister trembling in your voice. You're sure he hears it, too.
But he asks hopefully, a smile shattering the solemnity of only a moment ago. "To stay?"
"To stay." Just saying the words, assuring the boy of what you fear is a lie, melts a measure of the disdain gnawing at you. After all, you and the boy want the same thing. For them to come home.
"Your mom and me just gotta work some things out." You feel suddenly generous and pull out your wallet and press a five dollar bill in his hand.
"This is just for you. Put it in your bank."
"My bank's at home."
"Well put it wherever you keep your stuff here. Okay?"
"Okay." Juwan releases the safety belt, lifts his parka, and stuffs the bill into the pocket of his pants.
"Now, go tell your mom to come out. I want to talk to her." The words sound like a court order, like a summons, although they spring, in fact, from the hungry soil of your need for Bunny, for him, for the girls.
"Okay," the boy says, reaching to open the door, then hesitating as the eyes look again at you and ask, as they always do, for more than you can give.
You playfully punch him on the jaw and say, "I'll call you tomorrow." You watch him walk away from the car to the house, wondering if you will call him tomorrow, what you will say.
Once the front door is open you hear Juwan's excited, pleading voice. Bunny stares at you through the glass top of the storm door and nods. Then she closes the door. She'll probably make you wait like last time. Ten fucking minutes before she came to the car. Her mother, Elmira, had told you she'd prefer if you waited for the children outside.
"I don't have much," she'd told you, blocking your entry that day, "but I want to keep it. I don't want anything to get started in my house." Like you can't be trusted in the same room with your own wife and kids. Like you're dangerous. You only ever hit Bunny that one time. One time because everything was falling apart. Everything still is. Elmira, short, stout, her hands on her wide hips as she looked up at you contemptuously. Her graying hair is nappy, uncombed, shooting out all over her head. She reminds you of a pit bull, always looking for trouble. And Bunny letting her talk to you that way.
"What do you want, Carson?"
You hadn't even heard Bunny approach the car. You turn on the ceiling light. She's leaning through the open window on the passenger side, her long auburn hair grazing her arms. Her arms and hair are inside the car, filling it with the fragrance of Dove soap, hair conditioner, and Jergens lotion. You aren't like some men. You even know what size bra (36D) and panties (6), and shoes (8 ½) she wears. You know everything you are sure, about your wife. The car is thick with her smell, the scent of a woman who has had your babies and whose love is the only thing you want in this world or the next. Her arms and her hair are inside the car. But she keeps her face outside. You look at her hands. She's still wearing her wedding ring. Your wedding ring. A dark deep brownish-red color stains her lips and her skin glows like she's just had a facial or maybe great sex.
"You look good," you say slowly, seeing in her gaze that you look like shit. You haven't slept a full night since she left. And you feel like you've always felt, even in the uniform, even with the badge and the night stick, like a too-short, freckle-faced, sandy-haired red-bone runt. You don't know how you ended up with her.
"What is it, Carson? What do you want?"
"I wanna talk."
Bunny rolls her eyes, looks away, staring back at the house, pursing her lips as though your request, simple, humble even, is causing her pain. You follow her glance back to the house and see the porch lights on. Until this moment you had not realized how dark it is. Not until your wife asks, "What is it Carson? What do you want?" do you realize that night has fallen and you feel it close and smothering.
"Come on, get in."
"Now you wanna talk."
"Yeah, now I wanna talk." You keep the words forceful but strong, tap down the rage you feel. Begging your own wife to talk to you. Bunny, like everybody else, against you. On the other side. Standing there looking at you like you're some jive nigguh on the corner trying to rap to her. You remind her, "I still got rights."
Bunny opens the door and slides into the car. She sits where only moments before Juwan sat staring at you. You openly appraise her, the black wool turtleneck sweater and the tight jeans, the big hoop earrings. You've been apart thirty-eight days, and every time you see her she looks better. Rested. She's even shed some of the weight she'd gained years ago with the twins. Thirty-eight days. Nine hundred and twelve hours. Fifty-four thousand seven hundred and twenty minutes. Bunny squirms beneath your gaze, and looks at her hands, looks anywhere but at you.
"If you'd come back . . ." You lean closer to her, all the smells mingling, enveloping you in a cocoon of hope and longing, and she slides away from you, closer to the door. Bitch.
"Carson we've been there."
"Well, let's go there again." You lean in closer, just to fuck with her. Your lips almost touch. You want to kiss her. You could kiss her. You're still my wife.
"Why you freaking? Acting like I'm gonna hurt you. Like you don't even want me to touch you, huh? I mean, look at this. You take my kids. Leave me at the worst possible time. I'm getting sued. I got lawyer's fees."
Hearing your voice, everything you've just said, how the words careen and pile up, how they ring with the sound of ruin. You decide to back off.
"Carson, I'd been thinking about leaving for a long time."
"I quit the force. Isn't that what you wanted? Isn't it what you've always wanted?" You ask her this gently. A peace offering.
"Once I thought it might make a difference. I thought that might save us. I thought I couldn't get close to you because you were always wearing your uniform. Even when you weren't in it. But after what happened, I saw it wasn't the uniform. It was you." She's looking at you as she says this and now you wish she'd look at her hands. You offer peace. She wants war.
"Carson, just give us some time," she says, reaching to touch you. You want to feel her hands on you. Even if she just touches your jacket. You're sure you'll feel her fingers through the cloth. You miss her that bad. But instead this time you pull away.
"I don't have time. Not anymore," you say, shaking your head, quick, fast, with everything inside you. Like Juwan. "I can't live like this. Visiting my kids on the weekends. My own wife not wanting me to get close to her."
"Carson---"
"Standing by while you get involved with some other man." The accusation slithers through your lips as you look at Bunny out of the corner of your eye. You look at her and you are not moving, not breathing. So you can catch the flinch, the giveaway expression she'll try to hide.
"You know there's no one else."
"Do I?"
"Carson, it's only been a month."
"It's been five weeks," you correct her, stung by the "only," when you've felt each day like an eternity.
"We've needed some time apart for a while."
"Maybe you've needed to be away from me. But I've never needed to be away from you."
Bunny looks at you skeptically and you see all your sins in her gaze. "I haven't been perfect. I know that---"
"Don't say anymore, Carson, please."
"Maybe you can live without me. I can't live without you." There you said it. You've been whipped since you first laid eyes on her. You're pushing too hard. You feel her pulling away again. Not her body this time, but her feelings. Stop. Stop. Back off. She's still your wife.
But you can't stop. "I want you and the kids back. I'm not gonna let you screw me like the department did, stringing me along for months, making me think I had a chance and then kicking me off the force, telling me to resign or I'd be fired. What kind of choice is that? Like I'm a murderer. Like what happened to me couldn't have happened to one of them in a second. In a split second. Bunny, I want to know by the end of the week if you're coming back. Fuck this trial-separation crap. This isn't anything I want to try on for size."
These are the words that have filled you head with a wayward clamoring. And yet, you say them quietly. Quietly. You don't want to frighten her. You want her back.
"Bunny, whatever it's gonna be, tell me."
"I will, Carson," she whispers.
"I still want the kids this weekend."
"I'll bring them over on Friday, after school."
She squeezes your hand, which is tight and red-knuckled, gripping the steering wheel. You don't touch her, because if you do, touching her hand, her arm or her face won't be enough. You'll want everything. And you don't want to scare her. Not when what you're feeling for her and about everything is scaring you.
"I'll have the girls call you tonight." The words sound like a salve, but they are salt eating into your wounds. I should be grateful.
"Alright."
"Goodbye." With that word, she's out of the car.
You watch her walk toward the house. If she looks back, even with a glance tossed over her shoulder like looking at an object she no longer needs. Even if she turns to look quickly, hoping you won't see, no matter. Just look back. But Bunny walks away from you with long, defiant strides. Like she's crossing the Sahara. Climbing Everest. Treading a path she's charted in her mind, alone, without you. Her arms are folded in front of her. Sealing her tight. Against you. She doesn't look back. The front door closes behind her and stares at you like the smug, grim face of the entrance to a vault.
Fifteen minutes later, you're cruising the streets of your old beat. Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard is a wide, four-lane stretch of road that's always busy. Every major city you've visited in America has got a street named for King and it's always the main drag of the ghetto. Even when you weren't in your squad car patrolling the area, the hyper, unpredictable energy of this commercial zone clung to you like sweat. Although it's been eight months since you were last on duty, driving these streets that you will never patrol again, you still have the eyes of a cop. Suspicious, probing, curious, you had to know the street and be prepared for anything, all the time. They didn't ask much of you being a cop, just the damn near impossible.
There are the fast-food places, Popeyes, KFC, McDonald's, Wendy's, the liquor stores, like outposts, one every third intersection, the car washes, and the pawn shop housed in an old laundromat, the words PAWN SHOP large in garish green and yellow neon, crowning the building. Until this moment you've never wondered why cops called the stretch of territory you'd been sworn to protect against crime and mayhem a beat. But that's what the streets did to you. The length and breadth of this section of Cartersville is veiled in a permanent gloom. Cops call it "Dodge City."
If you were still on the force, you'd have started your shift at four o'clock, savoring the early near-quiet first hour before the traffic accidents, speeders and red-light runners took over. Then when people got home, got settled, and the domestic disturbances flared like summer brush fires. People couldn't wait to get home, but then soon as they open the front door, they lose it. Two brothers argue over who controls the T.V. remote control. One lands in the hospital, the other in jail. A woman locks her boyfriend out of the apartment and throws his clothes out the window into the parking lot. You're called to mediate. Kids spray paint store windows. Complaints of barking dogs. A couple that's lived together three years argues, the woman accuses the man of rape, then recants the story an hour later. You collar three fourteen-year-olds selling weed in the unlocked basement of an elementary school. A father suspects his son of stealing his money to buy drugs and wants you to evict him from the house.
You pull into a gas station and get out to fill up. The gas station mini-mart is crowded. You walk over to the coffee stand and pour a decaf into a large Styrofoam cup. Tear open two packs of sugar, stir, snap the top on and get in line. It's almost nine o'clock. You stand behind a burly, gray-haired taxi driver who pulled in moments before you. The line for lottery tickets at the second cash register is long and you recall having seen something on the news about the state lottery. Was it fifty, sixty, eighty million dollars? The people in line haven't got a prayer and they seem to know it, standing solemn, cheerless, quiet as penitents clutching crinkled bills in their hands, staring into space, or deep in thought, worrying about bills, wondering what they'll do if they win. The odds against them are criminal. And even if they won, nothing would change, you think. Nothing that matters, anyway.
The Pakistani who owns the station smiles at you in recognition. "Sergeant Blake," he says, the words clipped and heavily accented, the voice flush with a respect for you that you have never heard in an American voice. He's got large, droopy dark eyes and a thin angular face that tells you nothing of his age. He reaches for the dollar and quarter for the coffee. But when you tell him "Twenty on number seven," he nods and waves a brown hand, his skin darker than yours, saying, "Have a good night."
Since you arrested the men who robbed him and his son a two years ago, he's insisted on giving you a free fill-up when you come in. They burst through the door of the mini-mart two minutes before closing, pistol-whipped the son, blinding him in one eye, then tied father and son up and locked them in the back storage room. All for $387.50. Two nights later you caught the two at the end of a high-speed chase that lasted half an hour and involved six squad cars. They were driving away from the third station they'd held up in an hour and a half. It took a year for the case to come to trial. They got five years. After the arrest, Mohammed Musharraf's wife brought a banquet of Pakistani dishes to the station one night as a show of thanks. Standing in the station house Musharraf kept shaking your hand, and saying "Anything, anything, I can do for you just tell me." He knows what happened. Knows you're not on the force anymore, but calls you "Sergeant" anyway. You let him.
Outside you put the nozzle in the tank and fill up. In the distance, atop a rise that is part of the Belle Manor apartment complex, you see a group of boys shooting hoops on a tiny patch of cement court. It's a Monday night. You've seen those boys shooting hoops in the snow. In the rain. A mural of Tupac, sloe-eyed and watchful, hovers over the boys' shoulders.
You've made one hundred and fifty arrests in twelve years, and "Dodge City" still overflows with drugs. It's a wasteland. You're not a sergeant. You're a garbage collector. (You will always think like a cop. It will always be present tense for you.) The still neat but weathered bungalows that line the streets adjacent to King Boulevard are home to some of the first blacks who moved out to Cartersville from D.C. Some of their kids are dealers. Some of them are buyers.
To the drug dealers, you're the interloper, the intruder, hassling them on their turf. Their hatred of you rubs off on the kids, turning them into urban Robin Hoods. Even the hardworking adults who don't hate you, don't trust you either. They never look you straight in the eye, scream brutality if you look ready to touch them, but never tell you you've done a good job when you throw the dealers in jail.
You stopped seeing their faces years ago. But there are some faces you can still see. Some you always will. The seven people you've shot at, or wounded. The young man I killed.
You politely dismiss the orange-hatted elderly who actually think that a group of sixty-or seventy-year-olds sitting on a corner, or patrolling with flashlights, decreases crime. (The smartest dealers simply put out the word not to touch the old people because of the heat it will bring down on them). And to the middle-aged couples who make dozens of calls, to complain about the weekend night drag racing along the boulevard (thirty or forty cars that scatter as soon as you drive up and then regroup once you leave), you keep your advice simple: "Move." Your old beat. You beat. And got beat. Leaning on your trunk, watching the familiar scene the thudding, taut wires of your heart activate your hands that reach reflexively for the gun in the holster at your side that no longer is there. That pulse kept you sharp. Kept you on top. Kept you alive.
Bunny accusing you of "wearing your uniform all the time." What are you supposed to do? You carry a gun everywhere. You sleep with a gun. Not in your hands but in your head. You're a cop twenty four/seven. A cop banging your wife or girlfriend, your mistress, or a quick piece of surprise "bonus pussy" you lucked up on. A cop singing hymns in church on Sunday morning. A cop sitting in a restaurant with your family, eyes scanning the place (you can't help it; it's automatic), hoping, Please nobody go crazy in here and start acting a fool. But just in case, you got your revolver strapped to your ankle. A cop stumbling out of some bar in plainclothes, head tight, but not quite wasted, coming upon a burglary. The sight instantly clears you and as you pull out your revolver a fellow officer, in uniform arrives, and you're yelling, "I'm on the job. I'm on the job," thrusting your shield into the darkness.
Cars fill the parking lot of the liquor store across the street like the lot at nearby Fed Ex Field on a home-game Sunday. In that same lot with only a month on the force, you were called to break up a fight. Young. Inexperienced. Scared of fucking up. Making a bad arrest. Adrenaline pumping you up, pushing you, making you feel crazy, invincible and yeah, you're still scared. Right off the bat you violate rule number one. Wait for backup. But you want to prove yourself. And surely you can handle this. There's a crowd but they're just watching the two men go at it. A big, burly Incredible Hulk mutha and a wiry, short guy who's bloody, but won't stop fighting. You radio for backup. But you don't wait. Can't wait. Hell, the guy could get killed. So you jump out of the car and swing into the crowd. Your night stick breaks when you slam it on the back of the bruiser, who turns around, not even flinching at the sight of you in uniform, shouting into your radio for backup. He doesn't even stop in his tracks. You try to body slam him, but it's like scaling a mountain. You're on the ground and the monster is astride you, choking you. The crowd's voices are a lurid, wild, jeering chant. Some are rooting for you. Some are shouting "Kick the cop's ass." Straining to remove the mutha's greasy huge hands from your neck, you hear your radio slide, cold and slick, across the parking lot into the crowd. The bastard starts banging your head against the cement. Once. Twice. Pain numbs and reverberates, blasts across your temples, and for a moment you can't see. Then two men from the crowd jump in, wrestle the guy off you just as two police cruisers arrive. The lights and the sirens, loud, disorienting, disperses the crowd. You suffer a concussion. That's not the only ass-whipping you get. You've been shot in the arm at the scene of a bank robbery, suffered whiplash when your cruiser crashed into another patrol car chasing a stolen SUV. But you gave as good as you got. Got even. Got even and then some.
You top off the tank and pull out of the station. You're driving. Headed nowhere. You just don't want to go home. No longer are you guardian of these streets. Driving you feel like a nomad. One with no destination.
It's 1988 when you join the force. Your first partner is a white guy named Deek Rehnquist. He's been on the force twenty years and is a go-along to get-along granny goose. He figures he ain't been shot yet so he's not putting his ass anywhere near the line of fire. But you joined the force to make a difference, to catch the bad guys, to see some action And this fuck is your partner. You have missed the worst of the eighties crack wars, but there's still plenty to do. Deek talks about the early eighties like it was Korea, or Vietnam. "Hell, sometimes we'd take fifteen, sixteen service calls a shift," he tells you, shaking his head and letting out a long, smooth whistle of disbelief at the memory. "We were patrolling all the hell holes. The crack dens, the open-air markets. And for all that work, we got the minimum mandatory sentences, it was just a revolving door." You realize quick that a partner is like another wife. On Bunny's birthday, yours and the kids, on Christmas, on your wedding anniversary, you're with Deek. Your shift is 95 percent boredom, 5 percent terror. Half your shift is just talking, talking to your partner, as you cruise the beat, keeping your eyes on the street and everybody on the street.
Deek grew up in the county like you, but out in Crofton, where his old man was the sheriff. He talks guns and hockey, deer hunting, and how great a President Ronald Reagan was. On bad days Deek grumbles about his seventeen-year-old granddaughter getting pregnant by a "colored" boy at her high school and deciding to keep the baby and what the hell is the family supposed to do? You remind him that you're not Oprah and that nobody says "colored" anymore.
"I'm not a racist. I want you to know that, Carson," he tells you as you pull into the lot of a 7 Eleven to get your third cup of coffee of the shift. Deek's got a slow, country, long-legged gait, and the beginnings of a paunch. His buzz crew cut shows more of his scalp than ought to be legal. "My daddy hired the first colored deputy in Crofton and took heat for it, too."
"Am I sposed to say thank you?"
"I just want you to know I ain't no redneck."
Deek may not be a redneck, but you know that he's scared shitless of black perps. When you pick up a young Blood, you can smell Deek's fear. How quick he is to pull his gun, how he goes overboard with the black suspects even when they offer little resistance. You're the rookie, so you don't say anything. You go along to get along. Like Deek. Your beat samples a bit of the whole county---the just-made-it middle-class white section, the boogie-black haven called Heaven's Gate, and the streets of Dodge City. You see Deek put on the kid gloves, or just ignore shit in his neighborhood. But you don't say a word. Back then you can't imagine that one day they'll all just be perps to you.
After a while you start listening to Deek and he's got all sorts of stories about the department, the chief, the politics of the department, who's getting promoted, who's not. And all of it you need to know. He's not interested in you much at all and that suits you fine. You can't imagine yourself telling Deek about Bunny. But what galls you is that Deek's lazy. You damn near have to twist his arm to get him to stop for a traffic violation or to park in a strategic spot in a crime-ridden area to make a point, or some arrests. He wants to drive and talk the whole shift.
Then one afternoon the day after Easter Monday, two dealers erupt into a shoot-out over a drug deal gone bad along one of the quietest, loveliest streets nearly hidden in the backside of Dodge City. A twelve-year-old girl riding her bike is killed, caught in the crossfire. Within an hour the department knows who they're looking for. There's an APB out and everybody is working overtime, questioning witnesses and cruising, looking for the suspect.
You and Deek have been given a description of the shooter and his car. It's seven o'clock and you can't believe it when you and Deek pass a Popeyes and you spot the car and the suspect. He's leaning against the hood of the car, laughing and talking trash. You wonder if he's laughing about the girl he killed earlier that day. As you and Deek pull into the parking lot he breaks into a run. Deek radios for back up and you bolt out of the car and chase him. He runs behind the stores to the back of the mall. You're running faster than you knew you could. You hear Deek behind you. Not close enough. And you also hear another squad car, its siren closing in. The suspect trips and falls in front of a trash Dumpster. On the ground, he's holding his ankle, squealing like a pig in pain. Your flashlight speckles the darkness with light that lands on his face and you figure he's maybe sixteen at the most. His dark-skinned, childish face is mangled, twisted by belligerence and rage. He wears a bandanna tied around his head like he's a Blood or a Crip. Deek finally catches up and is all over the kid, searching him and cuffing him, raising from the ground with a gun and a palm full of tiny cellophane packets of crack.
You hear more footsteps and you turn to see Vincent Proctor nearing you. He's a light-skinned blue-veined brother. You thought he was white when you first saw him. Even in the darkness you see the tiny pencil-thin mustache, the small eyes that are as hard as metal flints. Some cops love him. Some cops hate his guts. You don't know why. To your eyes Vincent Proctor walks like a man who's got everything he needs---with him, on him. All the time. He's a kick-ass who prefers the uniform to undercover and who saved the life of another cop trapped in a burning car and another with a gun pointed at his head in a hostage situation. On the ground, the kid is yelling about the cuffs being too tight and his ankle being broken.
"Nigga, if you don't shut up I'll give you a real reason to scream," Proctor tells him.
"Fuck you muthafucka," the kid shouts.
"This ain't no rap video you stupid-ass," Proctor yells as he begins kicking the kid in the head, the ribs, in the groin, in the back, his thick muscular arms outstretched almost as if he is balancing himself or performing a dance movement with each kick. You can't believe how loud is the sound of Proctor's shoes against the kid's clothing and his flesh. The kid's moans strangle the chilly April air. Deek is holding the gun and the crack, watching Proctor, his eyes huge and still.
"Fuck you muthafucka," Proctor taunts. A dim halogen bulb hangs from the roof of the back of the pizza parlor above the trash Dumpster. And so you see everything. The boy's face, blood soaked and unrecognizable, Proctor's foot on the kid's stomach as though to hold him in place. The hands cuffed in front of him. Proctor, his pencil-thin mustache the only color on his ghost-white face, and his presence making you feel smaller and the moment bigger than anything you've been a part of before. You hear Proctor asking "Blake, you want a piece a this?"
The kid's moans sicken you. But Proctor is watching and if any questions are asked, it's three men and one story. You've known that since the first day. The first kick is half-hearted, the second and the third, you just close your eyes so you don't see the kid. The fourth and fifth, it's like you're a machine. And then you feel Proctor's hand on your shoulder. You know it's Proctor, not Deek, and he's saying, "I think he's got the point." You open your eyes and Proctor winks at you and you know the lesson is through. You and Proctor and Deek haul the kid off the ground and lead him out of the alley. You've left something back there on the ground where the kid had lain beneath the light, something mixed in with the trash and dirt overflowing from the Dumpster. Walking out of the alley into the rows of police cruisers that had blocked off the alley, that night isn't the last night you don't look back to see what it is.
Here
There's no way to not pass The Pita Hut and the men who come early to wait. Today, it makes me laugh, the way they lose language at the sight of live women. From thirty feet, they begin preparing. Shifting like ants, their circle opens in formation. They slouch at attention---narrowed eyes, mouths panted open. But Deanna says what she knows and hates is that they'd never look at one of their own women like that. And she's right. And I'm mad before I know it, fumbling to do something I mean: stop and stare, spit and curse, scream the world out of place. They are still looking when I turn back for their eyes. Aproned fools. I can live without their fucking hummus. Deanna catches me before I keep going. "Slow down, girl. We're here."
The air in the cooler dries the sweat to my face. I watch my biceps settle under the weight of trays of poached salmon, going up and up and up the bruised stairs to the narrow kitchen in the back of the store. Deanna sighs over coffee, eyes closed and rubbing her brows like she's reading her mind, thumb and forefinger meeting, parting at the bridge of her nose. She leans into the steam before closing the cambro. "That's all I need," she says.
We'll let Howard be the man and heave all this coffee up and out. He'll be running late and have some Howard stories to make laughter, even once the mosquitoes hum hungry into us, and folks start getting wine-rowdy. I gather my braids in a knot and change into white shirt and apron.
We are traying asparagus when Ben walks in without footsteps, complaining that the cake won't be ours. "This is a corner man and wife have chosen to cut." He smirks and winks at no one in particular. Sometimes, I get tired of puns. "It's coming from Leona's," he adds. Leona uses mix and bright, heavy frosting. With a cake like that, these won't be big tippers. Ben sets down the folder with a half smile and heads out, grabbing the van keys and mumbling about booze and ice.
And so we wait. The food's unpacked. Howard's stocked the bar. Deanna's folded napkins, set out china and candles on all the tables, inside and outside. She twists in a stuffed chair in the sitting room, reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. If she leaves it visible, it will make someone nervous. Deanna acts like she doesn't know this. Howard and Allison lean and bend, uncorking fat bottles of vino verde. The harpist is carting around, looking for the spot to play without an amp. Summer heat has filled this big old house. The ice will not last the night. The florist came too soon.
The bride's sister introduces herself as the bride's sister. Tracy. I see the resemblance. Severe cheekbones. Orphan Annie hair. She asks me if I am who I am. It happens like this. "Yes, I'm in charge," I tell her. "Yes, we're ready for the guests." I glance sideways to remind Deanna not to set any tablecloths on fire. Tracy should be going by now, but she remains in place, smiling a sniffing smile. I turn back to the house to make myself useful.
We eat while we can, while the house creaks, while the tent is full of quiet people, all except the man up front, talking with his hands. Bride and groom kiss, and the applause sounds like rain from this distance. I roll up my sleeves and straighten my collar. It's time go outside and disappear.
"Scallops wrapped in bacon . . . Scallops wrapped in bacon." "Scallops wrapped in bacon?" "Scallops wrapped in bacon."
Some say "here" for me to stop. Others "please." Most wait silently, glancing to be understood.
I cut more lemons for ice water and look forward to the scent they will leave on my palms. Deanna edges past, her tray full with toothpicks, balled napkins, the shards of a plate. She dumps them and Handiwipes her hands and neck. There's not much left to size up in the fridge. Deanna moves in closer, bending and humming. She smiles at the last tray of stuffed mushrooms.
"Notice the brother out there?"
"Hard to miss." I saw him on my way past the bar. Howard was opening his bottle of beer. Pale-green linen suit. Looked a little like my cousin Ray. Broad-chested and peacefully serious.
"Tell you now, he's the kind that looks away. We remind him."
"Black bean spirals? . . . Black bean spirals? . . . Black bean spirals . . . Black bean spirals?"
Guests are spread across the lawn. They buzz in polite circles, happy with their beverages. Some open as I approach. Reaching for a spiral, a man with a handlebar mustache talks about the films of Kieslowski. "Genius of our lifetime," he declares. The circle waits for him to chew. I look ahead to the next, waiting for the silence of full hands.
It is time to relieve Howard and Allison at the bar. They're grateful and a bit sluggish. Howard is hungover today, quieter than he really is. "Take fifteen," I tell them. "Rest. Standing in one place can make a person tired." Finally still, I realize the day is almost over. I will serve women impatient for wine. I will serve children who rattle their cups for Coca-Cola. I will serve beer to men who really want eye contact. But for now, I am alone in this corner of the porch, my face cupped in my lemoned palms, my elbows cooling where ice has melted. I watch the horizon dusking ripe and remember the darkness of that one Kieslowski film---the scene, that scene, when Veronika collapses.
Veronika is blushing and singing, losing her heart as her voice swells and thickens. And when she falls, the camera sees the sky of that concert hall ten different ways before the noise of her body meeting the stage and the leap and zoom overhead in a brief, straight line---before someone finally holds her wrist, limp as a promised fish.
Tracy's sister approaches. Her dress has a righteous train. She beams. "Call me Liz," she insists, holding herself. They are finished with pictures.
"Come in," I tell her. "Come in for the buffet."
Deanna's pouring out the last of the fruit salad. "Old boy on the harp is just sad." She laughs to herself and tops the platter with mint. "Out there playing the theme from 'Cheers.' And trying to get funky before . . . Lionel Richie, Bee Gees, somebody." I haven't heard the harpist for hours. I want to remember that song from the movie.
I carry full bags of trash to the big metal cans outside, empty and sour from all this happiness. Only hours to go. Back in the kitchen, I soap my hands and forearms and rinse them with fast, warm water.
There are those sighs and gasps and someone flashing a camera when I wheel out the cake. Deanna will follow with the engraved knife. I watch for darting children and feel my breath caught and my arms stiffening a tremble.
I rinse and stack things that can already be put away. The groom thinks I can help him.
"What was in that fucking chicken?" he asks, slamming his Pilsen, rubbing the top of his neck through his bowtie.
"Excuse me, sir?" He moves closer until I can see that his mouth is a bit greasy and his face is strange---red, expectant. The door is still snapping behind him in short, frantic arcs.
"One of you girls drop a fingernail in my food?"
"Excuse me?"
"Listen. I swallowed something wrong." His voice breaks like a child's and his stare begins to twitch.
I dry my hands, considering. "The chicken was garnished with rosemary," I say. He stops and leans forward, his knee bent and atop the folded stepladder. "You swallowed a sprig, maybe."
I hold his gaze until he starts looking past me, over my shoulder, clearing his throat over and over, jerking his head, becoming the bird he has eaten.
Something soft to chew may help make him right again. I pull the final baguette from the tote and turn to find him draining the beer from his glass. I will not cut my hand slicing for this groom. I take my time and hand him three rounds.
"Thank you," he confesses.
Veronika never sings in the film. She lives sadly in Paris, waiting until things begin to happen.
People with children have already left. It is beginning, the last hour of this party. The tent is empty now, all but for an armful of plates and bottles. A few guests come to tell me that the food was exquisite. Someone is howling near the bar.
Somebody's momma is always wearing sequins at their child's wedding. This one reaches to touch my hair before she even speaks. I hold the empties close to my chest and I wonder. "Aaah"---her fingers work their way up and down a braid---"beautiful. Feels like rope." I wonder who she thinks I am. She wants to know does it take long.
There are others who wait for my answer. "Like Whoopi Goldberg," some old man says. I feel myself smile and I don't know why. "Six, seven hours," I say. Someone else's hand is reaching. I remember his freckles from the bar and I back away before something gets broken. "Can you wash it?" he wants to know. "I'll get more napkins," I explain, moving swiftly to leave the bottles with Howard at the bar, regathering my hair on my way through the parlor.
Before I reach the kitchen, I find them glowing on the bureau in the corner of the sitting room, bound with a broad white sash. I gather them and head out back, past the trash cans, to the small barn that holds crates for china, boxes for linen, things I cannot see. I settle underneath the light hanging high from the beam, studying these strange, strange flowers. I do not know the name for them, but I am drawn in by their blush, their velvet purple centers, by the way they show their seeds. I imagine the island they should come from, lush and distant, my own twin there, waiting for that tug so that something might begin. I touch their warm waxy skin and close my eyes. Outside, another car starts and slows away, and there's that harp music, somewhere farther, finally beautiful. I take my time and pull each petal free.
Summer Comes Later
Looking out the car window, he saw the red oasis city of Marrakech in the distance, toward the dark outline of the mountains. Ahead three men in ragged djellabas herded a flock of sheep along the road. The truck in front of him weaved wildly back and forth, then jerked to a sudden stop before the sea of unruly wool. The abrupt halt of his ancient Saab sent the entire backseat cargo sailing in the humid air, down into a jumble on the floor, his camera equipment, thermos, pair of battered suitcases, and rumpled bag of figs and dates.
He recognized that he was in exile, away from New York. Fleeing from America. Historically, he was not the first writer in his late thirties to seek a place of solace other than home, the troubled land of his birth, to recover and heal. Baldwin did it. Hemingway did it. In fact, many of his countrymen did it. Still, none of his pals understood why he would walk away from a good-paying job on a newspaper to catch his breath. But he was a refugee of the wounded heart and tarnished romance. He'd had his moment of glory, his day in the sun, his fifteen minutes of fame, and then it'd been all downhill. Like so many baby boomers, he was feeling the aggression of the hungry, skilled young black reporters, half his age, who were not scarred by the memories of Jim Crow and determined to make their mark in the business. He saw them ruthlessly pushing forward throughout the industry, breaking through on every level, more comfortable with whites and the corporate world than he ever could be. This was what he was up against. This was what his wife never understood. In her mind, he had never achieved his potential; he had failed their dream.
His moment under the media sun's glistening rays had come when he'd interviewed Yasir Arafat in the early 1980s in a small pock-marked building in Beirut, Lebanon. A car, full of the man's private staff, all armed, had picked him up at his hotel and driven him blindfolded into the Arab quarter. He'd been guided, staggering, into a room, where the blinders were removed and the short, bearded man sat before him at a long table with a large Palestinian flag mounted on the wall behind him: The first thing he'd noticed about Arafat was his drab--green military fatigues and the large holstered gun on his hip.
"It is the will of Allah that I lead my people back to their homeland, that I overcome the Jewish invaders," Arafat had said, staring at him as if he were an alien being. "This struggle will not be won overnight. It will take years, maybe generations, to come, but it will come. Before it is over, there will be much war waged in the name of peace, many will die, but it will come."
When he'd tried to question the PLO leader about the so-called Islamic menance to peace, Moslem extremists, the wild card of Arabian oil, and the interference of the West in the battle for a homeland, Arafat reminded him of the sacking of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70, the calling for a Jewish state of Palestine by Theodor Herzl in 1887, the dominance of the British during the late 1930s, the 1947 Partition, the first war by the Arabs against the Jews shortly thereafter, and the annexing of the West Bank by Jordan and the Gaza by Egypt. Without a doubt, it was a history lesson rendered slowly and expertly by the tiny man with the penetrating dark eyes.
"You must know how we feel to be forced from one place to another, nomads, never at home anywhere," Arafat said through clenched teeth. "Your people endured it as slaves so it must not be a strange feeling for you to understand."
Every foreign reporter he knew had warned him how shrewd and perceptive Arafat could be, possessing skills that often misled journalists into underestimating him, much to their chagrin. But he would not be fooled. He researched the leader from his early days as a founder of the Al Fatah, the guerilla army formed to fight the Israelis in 1959, to his post in the fledgling PLO in the mid 1960, and finally to his ascension to PLO chairman in 1969. When the PLO was kicked out of Jordan in 1970, Arafat and the boys moved to Beirut.
"Why aren't you writing this down?" Arafat asked him, motioning to one of his aides.
"Well, this is pretty much background," he'd replied, holding his pad up. "I'm waiting for your response to my questions about any movement to the peace process."
Arafat picked up the telephone and spoke quietly into it. While the leader talked, one of his most trusted men tried to place his chief in context, speaking softly about his exploits in battle, the speeches, and the botched assassination attempts. He was indeed a survivor.
"Someone must pay the cost of peace, take it on, and not be afraid to die," Arafat continued after the phone call ended. "I'm not popular with anyone. The guns are pointed at my head from every direction. Let me ask you this. Do you think the Americans will ever accept us as they do the Jews?"
The two men talked for almost three hours nonstop and the result was a series of articles ARAFAT SPEAKS! that brought him praise and book offers back in the West. That was then. That was before the days of the Great Drought.
Now he was back in the region, following up leads about fundamentalist hardliners, terrorist cells, threats to American embassies, and the changing winds of the Islamic Jihad. On the road to Marrakech, he understood that his nerves were frayed at the edges, unraveling swiftly, and nothing could prevent him from doing something stupid.
Tempers flared in the white glare of the noonday sun. He watched the men in the truck descend on the Berber herders, arms waving, shouting in harsh Arabic for the herders to clear a path. Fierce and proud, the Berbers took their time, moving at a slow regal pace, casually guiding the animals to the road's narrow shoulders with well-aimed pokes of their sticks. Behind him, others grew impatient, filling the air with sharp curses, guttural threats and the angry barks of their car horns.
Sitting behind the steering wheel of his aging car, wrapped in the stifling Moroccan heat his mind went back to his beloved ex-wife Janet, her satiny voice in his head mixing in seamless unison with the cacophony of mayhem outside. The tape played on, spilling brine onto his internal wounds, triggering that bone-deep ache, the bitter regret of his failed marriage.
Finally, the traffic moved, winding up the road toward the city. Woozy from the long drive from Tangiers, he tried to remember his first trip to Morocco in the 1970s, when he stayed at the El Monsour in Casablanca, the Rebat Hilton and the grand old Momounia in Marrakech. He was a kid then, in his early twenties. His father gave him the trip after reading Paul Bowles' novel, The Sheltering Sky, with Port and Kit trying to jump-start their dull lives with an illfated trip to the desert: the vast, merciless Sahara. His father, ever the academic with his literature class at Columbia, stood with him in the air terminal, going through his checklist of essentials for international travel. First, travel light. Second, buy your medicines such as aspirin, cold medications, and toiletries before leaving the States. Third, and most important, keep your traveler's checks, credit cards and cash on your person in an inside jacket pocket, not in your carry-on luggage or other suitcases. Fourth, lock up your valuables in the hotel safe. Don't leave them unprotected in your hotel room. All good advice. Being well-traveled, the old man knew what he was talking about.
This time in Marrakech, he stayed in a small hotel not far from the city's Holiday Inn, which featured adequately sized rooms with telephone and old Philco televisions harking back to the glory days of Milton Berle and Sid Caesar. After checking in, he sat on the queen-sized beds, thinking of taking a stroll down near Hotel Layesh where there was always action and a questionable clientele. Kif peddlers. Quick-fingered thieves. Burned out torch singers. Forsaken women on carnal display, outside of the protection of the Qur'an. Dangerous at night, it was also not particularly safe to stroll down there in daylight.
The telephone rang. It was Dr. Mrabet, a great friend of his father and his old Columbia professor in Middle Eastern literature and philosophy. Word was he possessed a connection to several terrorist groups in the region, some of them violent and extreme.
"William, welcome to Marrakech," the doctor said. "So what are your plans?"
"Following up a story on the Al Kufir, a band of hardcore extremists who have had their hands in much of the terrorist attacks in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan," he answered. "I'm waiting for a contact, someone to get me inside."
"Maybe that's a story you should leave alone," the doctor replied. "One you should step away from. Come around and see me. We'll talk about old times."
"Why do you say I should leave it alone?"
"Because there are some things you should not bother. Walk away and go home. These people are fundamentalists devoted to the Islamic Jihad and I don't think they're anyone you might want to aggravate. You're an American. They hate Americans. I say leave it alone and go home."
"I can't," he said. "I've got to take a chance. I need this one."
The doctor switched gears. "Why aren't you married, good looking man like you?"
"Our marriage didn't take," I said. "My wife stopped loving me. I came here to get my head on straight. To heal. And to win a Pulitzer by doing the first inside story on Al Kufir. I can't leave until I do that."
"Do you know what I'm hearing, William?" The doctor's voice had a bite to it.
"What?"
"There is talk around the city that you're not just a journalist, that you are something else. A spy, a CIA operative. Believe me, if you go digging for your story in the wrong quarters, you will be killed. These are very serious, dedicated people. The streets are not safe. There have been shootings, bombings, kidnappings of foreigners, and other things. General unrest. The police and army are everywhere. Be careful, please.
The spy comment struck a nerve. "So that's what they say. Well, I am what I say I am."
The doctor laughed low in his throat. "Tell that to the men who follow you about. My son, your every move is being watched. If you stay here, you're a marked man. Enough about this story. We'll talk more when I see you."
"I look forward to that," he replied.
"Insha'allah, worry not because Allah makes all things right," the doctor said. "He is merciful, compassionate and fair. If you are meant to get this story, it will be so and nothing can stop it from happening. If it is the will of Allah. Worry not, my son. What is meant cannot be stopped."
The phone went silent. After the call, William reviewed his notes, checked the addresses from his sources, and fell asleep on the bed. It was just a matter of time.
Now at dusk, he remained holed up awaiting word if the righteous would welcome him, an infidel, into the world. While he waited he watched a nude couple through the window on the side of the hotel. He could see everything. The woman knew how to work her magic. Her Arab lover did his part as well, letting her straddle him on the bed, kissing and licking the soft brown skin of his broad chest around and near his erect nipples. At times, she indulged in her love play as if her life depended on the heat of her passion. But there were moments when the fervent kisses, frenzied caresses, and demented wails bordered on fake, like something out of a well rehearsed strip show, a practiced lie nevertheless. She rode him hard and strong, the man's hairy hands worrying her moist sex underneath the cloth while her fingers encircled his neck. When his nature had been sufficiently aroused and his sap was high, he applied his tongue to the tender skin near her navel and down in the curly cleft between her legs. Her screams of joy echoed in the air to mix with the occasional murmur of gunfire. Her Arab lover then tilted the amber glow of the lamp as he moved to reenter her, so the watcher could see his thin, craggy face. Once the brown man plunged into her again, he never took his eyes off the stranger across the alley until she trembled violently once or twice underneath him, her sweaty legs locked tightly around his gleaming buttocks. The Arab man knew the dark American was watching them.
Watching them brought it all back. Janet and the days before the crack-up. He felt utterly alone now, cut off from the world, from all tenderness, love or redemption. Despair, terror, and gloom landed against his chest like a series of cruel, vicious slaps.
"Sweetheart," Janet, his wife said the night before she left him.
"What, baby?"
"William, tell me you'll never leave me. Tell me you love me."
She was toying with him. The marriage was already dead. He never answered her, mumbled something under his breath and rolled away from her, angered that she'd even asked that of him.
When his editor called two hours later from New York, his eyes were swollen from crying. His voice was thick with tears and the words stuck in his throat. None of it was lost on the white man who had hired him when no one else would, especially on a big time city daily.
"How's the story coming?" his editor asked, his tone cheery.
"It's a waiting game but I expect something to break any day now. I've put some feelers out and the fish are circling. I expect a nibble soon."
"Bill, we believe in you. But we can't foot the bill for you to take a vacation. We expect results. Find the rag heads you need to talk to and get this thing over with. And don't take any unnecessary chances."
"Yeah, you bet," he said, then hung up. Outside, police sirens sounded in an annoying chorus.
If it is the will of Allah. What is meant cannot be stopped. If it is the will of Allah.
He looked out of the window toward the hotel across the street, hoping for a distraction from the room where the young Arab couple met every day. But the shade was down and there was nothing to see. Not a damn thing to watch. Killing time, he sprawled on the bed, completely nude, smoking cigarette after cigarette. As the ashtrays filled and the black telephone on the nightstand near his bed remained silent, he became more and more anxious. Then his mind wandered back a few years to when he covered a rash of terrorist bombings in Tangiers, committed by a new splinter group determined to shake up the status quo.
Once in Tangiers, he saw a woman, dressed in rather risqué Western clothes, being shunned by other Arabs walking along one of the city's narrow side streets. Her head and eyebrows were shaved, much like the French woman collaborators of the Nazis, who were marched through cobbled Parisenne streets after the Second World War. The unforgiving crowd parted for her, this vessel of condemned female flesh, like the stacked waters of the Red Sea under the power of Moses' blessed staff. As he'd neared the scarlet woman, he'd seen alarm and fear in her dark eyes and in the contorted expressions of the others as they went out of their way to move around her, avoiding all contact. His companion, Abu Omar, a writer from a local Arab newspaper, had cautioned him to steer clear of her as well. No talking or touching.
The woman's beauty was in her modern attitude, her courage to be bold, at least that was what he told himself. To her, he was just another American infidel. As she passed him her gaze changed from fear to a sharp look of disdain, and she marched past with her head held arrogantly aloft. Each of her proud steps sounded a brutal note of contempt for both him and the crowd.
Eventually, the memories of the woman and Tangiers dissolved into another fit of worry and self-loathing. He was not a weak man but lately all of his feelings were right at the surface. He cried again, the same stale tears. As he reached for a tissue, the telephone rang. The game was on. A man speaking thick Arabic mentioned Al Kubir, his Islamic Jihad story, the doctor's revered name, and said for him to be at the marketplace, at Djemaa El Fna tomorrow at two. The caller concluded with a threat that if he were not there, there would not be a second chance. They would not contact him again. Dr. Mrabet's words came back to him with a fury: If it is the will of Allah.
After hanging up, he sat on the windowsill and smoked a cigarette, watching the soldiers man a barricade down the street from his hotel. Twice he'd tried to go to the open-air market on the edge of the square not four blocks away, but soldiers, carrying machine guns, had turned him back. They told him that it was not safe to be on the streets, to return home because a group of rowdies were shooting at anyone dumb enough to be out walking on the cobbled roads. Which was not true. Something else was going on in the city. Angry, he defied them this day to make a short jog across the road to a turbaned merchant, who sold him a bag of nectarines, mangoes, figs, raisins, and a bottle of fermented palm wine.
Upon his return, the man at the desk told him that he had two international calls while he was out. One from a woman with a husky voice, sounded like a man with a bad head cold and the other from a man with high-pitched nasal voice who asked if he was still alive and whether the hotel had been strafed by bullets during the afternoon ruckus. Neither person left a number to call back. He went upstairs and turned on the radio to listen to the evening program of foreign chatter and music. That night, there was no show across the alleyway, although he did see the woman leave the building dressed in traditional garb with veil with a man in European clothes carrying two gift-wrapped boxes. They drove off in a small dark sedan, which had a jagged line of bullet holes in the door on its passenger side and a shattered rear window.
With the coming of dawn, he could see how dark and dismal the morning would be. It was not long before a strong wind whipped down the narrow corridors of the town, accompanied by forks of lightning and sheets of driving rain. Still, he heard the sound of military helicopters circling overhead, searching the streets for any odd activity. After breakfast, he decided to go for a walk to see what was happening in the town. To hell with the authorities. Maybe his press pass would carry some weight this time. Soldiers, tanks, and jeeps with mounted machine guns were parked on every corner and checkpoints were set up at all of the key points of the areas where the trouble had broke out for the past four nights. Twice he was stopped by police, questioned, and checked for identification. The fact that he was an American journalist brought scowls from the armed military men, but little else happened and he was allowed to go on his way.
Still, none of it was cool. He looked at his watch. He was screwed. It was well after three. If it wasn't for bad luck, he wouldn't have any luck at all.
The Bulging Bag
BY UNOMA N. AZUAH
The harsh Lagos sun came down on the motley crowd of traders, civil servants, market women, mad people, children, hawkers, and beggars. Presently, a rickety bus called a molue appeared, quaking and shuddering in an attempt to stop. People jumped out, others in the same manner jumped in. When the bus eventually came to a stop, the press of people from the inside and the outside created a temporary dam. Seeing this, the driver adroitly jerked the bus a few meters forward; the dam burst, spilling its contents.
Mr. Akpan broke into a run, panting toward the moving molue. He had almost missed the bus while selling some tablets to his customers. There was no sitting space in the bus when he hopped in, so he stood holding on to a rail above him. Six baskets of chickens were on top of the molue supported by four rails. His raised hand sent the chickens flapping their wings in an attempt to fly out. Their eyes were bright as they croaked, lifting each of their legs, theirs claws clutched.
Mr. Akpan looked down, as they began to calm. His eyes rested on a crying baby. His mother was coaxing him to stop, making a clicking sound with her tongue, shaking her lips, but he yelled the more only pausing to lick his running nose. His mother sucked the mucus, and spat it out of the window. The baby gasped in relief but continued crying. His mother pulled out her left breast and thrust it into his mouth. He stopped crying. Behind the woman, a middle-aged man was snoring, his head swinging to and fro. The woman sitting next to him sighed incessantly because once in a while, his swinging head rested on her shoulder, but only shook him awake when a trail of slimy saliva crept down his faded coat. The coat was green with different buttons and threads. The button in the middle of the coat had slipped off, the buttonhole too big for it. The collar of the coat was patched with a red piece of cloth. Waking, he mumbled an apology opened his bloodshot eyes. And he wiped the saliva with a brown handkerchief. His hands were swollen, his fingers coarse. His nails were long and dirty. He had deep grooves of wrinkles on his brow, and a few gray hairs were sprinkled on his head. When he coughed, his whole body shook.
The molue swayed. In a bid to make himself comfortable, Akpan stepped on a woman's foot.
"Aaih!" the woman cried with a grimace, soothing her foot. "Craze man, you no dey see, abi . . ."
"Sorry, madam, na mistake," Mr. Akpan pleaded.
"Which kin mistake!" she spat out. "You no get eye for face? You fit mistake for other people leg, no bi ma own, a beg!" she concluded.
Mr. Akpan had hardly heaved a sigh of relief when close to him, another woman yelled out to a chic, well-dressed lady.
"Sidon well now, abi you tin say na your boyfriend car you dey . . ."
All heads turned toward them, but the lady ignored her.
"If you won do sisi, you no for enter molue," continued the woman.
Mr. Akpan recognized the offender as one of his customers.
"Oh, Rose, na you, wetin happen?"
Rose, who couldn't repress herself anymore, blurted out, "Can you imagine, the bus swerved and we went along with it. I was only trying to adjust myself when she yelled out like the market woman she is!"
Some market women gave a murmur of protest. One boldly spoke up in her Yoruba accent, "Oko ri, sisi eko, you no bi market woman, you bi Miss Nigeria!"
"So you even sabi blow gramma," insisted the first woman. "I bin think say you dey deaf and dumb, nonsense!"
Mr. Akpan gave Rose a sign to keep calm, and that ended the quarrel.
"Who took my wallet? Who took my wallet?!" a voice rang out. It was a young man sitting behind the driver. "It was here in my pocket!" he screamed, springing up from his seat and stretching his hands in appeal. When nobody responded, he insisted on searching everybody on the bus.
He scrambled up to his neighbor, who stared hard and said, "If you search me finish an you no see anything, I go so beat you ehh, your people go prepare ya funeral service today!"
The young man looked closely at the man. He had a red piece of cloth tied round his head. His eyes were deep in their sockets. Lumps of pimples concentrated on his cheeks. His lips were swollen and he had gaps in his upper teeth. His red shirt, which had no buttons, exposed a hairy chest. He was wearing a dirty pair of jeans and rubber slippers. His feet were clumpy with dust. The young man's eyes settled on his muscles. He changed his mind and sat down with clenched fists, tears glittering in his eyes.
"Ye ye, man!" his neighbor breathed down at him, then sat down.
Eventually, feeling at ease, Mr. Akpan cleared his throat and announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, I have something very important here. Content Super Tablets, manufactured by W and C Pharmaceutical Industries, Limited, for headache, fever, pain, dysentery, and for any other bodily discomfort. Content Super Tablet go kill am one time. If you buy dis medicine, and no show, arrest me anywhere you see me. Obuda na ma town. I come Lagos for 1977, follow my mates begin business, I start with cleaning, no work. I enter for iron melting no way, I begin sell newspaper, sell newspaper tire, enter for iron bending, so tay all my fingers bend finish." He displayed his crooked fingers and people roared in laughter. Some started for his tablets, mostly traders and market women. A few did so in appreciation of his sense of humor.
"How much . . . ?" asked one of the buyers.
"Na one naira fifty kobo, but take am for one naira," Mr. Akpan answered.
He did not finish his story and did not see the need to, since he had sold out most of the tablets. This invented story had proved most effective for the past six months, and it cost him only fifty kobo for each bus trip.
He waited for what seemed an age for people to leave the bus, so that he could have a little privacy to count his money. There were just a handful of people. He looked around and smiled to himself, then noticed a promisingly bulging bag at an obscure corner of the bus. He fought with the urge to go see its contents and the urge to wait; he did not want anyone to see the supposed treasure. He decided to remain in the bus till it became empty.
"Na here we de stop for fifty kobo, if we pass here na one naira you go pay oh!" announced the conductor.
"Na small thing . . ." two hefty men replied from behind. "We pass one naira!"
Mr. Akpan left his seat and sat near the bag with a feigned air of ownership. It was when the two men moved toward him that he realized he shared a common interest with them. An idea struck him. He did not stop to think, but grabbed the bag, threw it out of the window, and followed suit through the door. The men went after him. Seeing his hopeless state, he ran toward a policeman standing by.
"Na wetin?" the policeman asked.
"See dem, dem be tifs, na from molue dem begin follow me, make dem carry my property!" panted Mr. Akpan.
"Na lie!" said one of the men who had caught up with him. A stifled odor of cigarette and beer oozed out of his mouth. The policeman took a step backward to avoid the reek from both men.
"We jus lev dis bag, dey talk to driver, wen dis hungry man grab am begin run . . ." he said.
"God na my witness!" Mr. Akpan shouted. He went down on his knees, took some dust and licked it. "I swear na me get the bag!" And he pointed his finger to the sky. The policeman gave the suspicious-looking men a stern stare.
"Wetin de inside?" the policeman asked the men.
"Na some moni with small clothe!" they answered.
"You, wetin dey am?" referring to Akpan.
"Na-na . . . moni wey I pack from bank," he fumbled.
The policeman took the bag from Mr. Akpan and began to unwrap it. Plantin leaves fell out.
"Yes! Dis na di leaves wey I take wrap am!" Mr. Akpan interrupted.
The policeman continued unwrapping, His hands froze as a human head bounced out of the bag. He recovered in time to grab Mr. Akpan, who was about to escape. The two men took to their heels.
FROM Sap Rising
"LIKE DOVE WINGS"
I remember when she come back home, carryin' her blues in a faded pink blanket, edges frayed. I was the first to see her. Half stumblin' down the road. In the darkness. My own restlessness makin' it so I couldn't sleep. Even from where I sat, I could see a bone-weariness all over that poor child, the way her arms held on to that baby only because they been used to doin' so. I thought about how we all be holdin' on, even if what we holdin' on to is a whole lot of nuthin'. How we go through life pretendin' to be full up on emptiness.
I used to believe the only thing worse than leaving this place was having to come back in need. But life has a way of making your worst fears greater than the point it brings you to, until nothing else matters except putting one foot in front of the other, in front of the other, in order to find your way back home. Even still, I come back to Grandville at night, a shame that is not my own keeping me from treading the street in broad daylight and under the eyes of those who once created the me I used to be.
She wouldn't come out for the first three months she was home. Didn't want nobody to know about a baby with no father and a young girl whose dreams amounted to a faded blanket and a half-mile trek back down a dust-covered road. But I knew. Just like I'd known she would leave in the first place. Could tell she was the runnin' kind.
When she finally decided to show herself, it was at church, of all places. That baby on her hip. Struttin' down the aisle to the pew her sister, Loretta, usually took every Sunday. The sight of Ebbie, her citified self, caused a heat to rise in the already warm room. Womenfolk fanned themselves, ashamed for a girl who didn't have sense enough to be ashamed of herself.
As soon as I knocked on the door, as soon as Loretta answered, I knew what I was in for. Her eyes, tight at the corners, accusing, greeted me in silence. When she helped me into a chair so I could rest my feet, and took Pontella from my arms, it was with an unforgiving face. And if my own sister, my flesh and blood, could look at me as if she didn't know who or what I was, I could only imagine how the rest of the town folks must feel about me.
So I stayed close to the house. Never left except at night, when Pontella was down for the evening and the only thing looking at me as if I had some explaining to do was the frogs and crickets, creatures whose world I had disturbed when they thought they were free to sing.
She ain't come back to church after that first time, though we see her around town every now and again. Time passes, and I can't explain it, but I find myself lookin' for her. Thinkin' about her, wonderin'. While Dorothy, Irma, and Zeta chitter like a bunch of squirrels, gossipin', I stare off into the distance, tryin' to wrap my mind around what this woman was and not what they say she is. They say she some kind of a witch. Say they men been actin' real funny ever since she come back. Folks arguin' more'n usual. The chirrun carryin' on like they don't have a lick a sense. And it's been near 'bout a whole year and ain't nobody got pregnant. Whispers say she done somethin' to dry up our wombs. Done stole our seed.
I can't go back to that place. The way everyone's eyes read my life from the rips in my clothes and the baby who slept in my arms. It was as if they all thought they knew everything they needed to know about a woman like me. And when the coldness filmed each gaze and hardened every familiar face, I knew I would never find in them what it was I needed.
Funny, but me sitting in church, in the house of the Lord, was just like that woman in the Bible, the adulteress, and every single one of those God-fearing church folk were ready with stones. Except Jesus didn't come and gather me up. He didn't shield me with his body or stoop down and write something in the dirt at my feet. I knew that if I were to continue to go there, all I would do was keep them from taking the planks out of their own eyes, because they'd be so busy tending to the stick in mine.
Yesterday the weather broke. There is a hint of prefrost in the wind, causin' my cheeks to redden when I'm outdoors too long. Folks will be stayin' in more. Ebbie, too. Though she ain't out much anyways. Gone are the days of watermelon chillin' in the icy creek until one of the men strikes it against a rock to split it open. The sweet flesh explodin' on the tongue.
But the hog'll be delivered soon, and it'll be slaughterin' time. A season for killin'. It will come innocent, unawares of its fate. Squealin' in its pen in the back of Mr. Kenton's truck. And after a few days, Leonard will slit its throat from ear to ear. String it up by its back legs to drain the blood. It will become cuts of meat: a ham shank, slabs of bacon, its bladder a balloon to be tossed about. And me and Leonard will feed on it all winter long, forgettin' the day it come to us in the back of Kenton's truck. Whole.
Fall comes quickly, bringing with it cool days and even cooler nights. I watch as the earth and the things of the earth prepare to bed down for winter, hoping that I, too, will be able to settle in. Like Pontella has done. How she runs from room to room like they all belong to her. The way she tastes and touches everything that catches her eye and that's just within her reach, as if by feasting on balls of dust that scurry across the floor and dead spiders hidden in corners, she'll become one with this world.
For a squirrel, say, or a two-year-old without memory, finding a place in the world is an easy thing to do. But for one who has never known her place, a woman's place, it is nearly impossible. So I stumble through green kitchen, into white bedroom, and back through blue parlor, trying to catch sight of something---anything---that resembles me, just to keep from falling away.
Somethin's been pullin' me from sleep almost every night lately. We got the Indian summer and the nights are warm, even though the leaves have already started to change in their eagerness for somethin' different. I go to sit on the back porch, my mama's shawl wrapped tight around me like arms tryin' to hold me together, and even there I feel the pull to go down to the Pinder place, just to see if she's still there. Just to get a look at her.
Everybody sittin' around talkin' about her like she a dog, when all she did was what half of us have wanted to do at one time or another but was too damned sorry or scared to try. Too busy worryin' about what everybody else'd think. But nobody'd admit it. Then they'd have to say that maybe somethin' was wrong with all of us, too. Instead, me and the others make like Ebbie's the one need fixin'. At least that's what we say out loud.
If not for my baby girl and the night, I would die here. Each day I play with Pontella little games I've made up. I contort my face into silly pictures that make even me giggle. Or chase her around the yard until we both fall exhausted, laughing, on beds of grass. The smell of her skin and hair after I have given her a bath, me nibbling at the layers of pudge on her legs and arms, around her neck---I drown in the scent of all that innocence. But that's what keeps me during the day.
At night I creep outside to sit beneath the moonlit sky. It's there I get what I couldn't get in church that Sunday. At those moments I know I still belong to this world, this universe. Just like the trees and the earth and the stars. I find something out here that even Pontella can't give me. Out here I don't have to be a child's mother, Loretta's sister, or that Pinder girl who ran away. Out here, with God looking down on me, where their shame can't follow me, I'm just like His other creations. Only I'm a tree whose roots have pulled free, a sunflower that no longer follows the movements of the sun.
And when I couldn't stand it no longer, I went down there. To the Pinder place. I saw her sittin' in the backyard under a cluster of trees a little ways from the house. She held her face to the moon like she was at church. I wanted to go over to her and hold her like I would a child, amazed by how small she looked under the largeness of the sooty sky. I expected her to be six foot tall by now. Like she should have grown from all the signifyin'. How big we had been makin' her with our words. In our own minds. But she was small. I wondered how we all must look when we got to stand alone. How I must look on the other side of the road, hidden in darkness.
I saw that woman Leonard married standing across the street, watching me. At first I was angry. I figured she must have heard I was the one he'd once loved, though we loved in secret. A woman knows. She can always tell when there has been another, can feel the presence of another like a shadow that hovers just out of reach, blocking out the fullness of the sun, causing a chill that goes down to the bones. And then I felt sorry for her: the one who comes to see the one who loved a man she can never know. A man who strolled among whispering trees and still dreamed dreams. As if by seeing me she might somehow discover what it is she wants to see in him.
Before I could call up enough sense to stop myself, I ran down the road and over to where I knew she'd be. My mouth opened and the words spilled out of me like one of those angry rains. They was hard and fast, the words that spewed from me:
Who you think you is comin' back here like you some movie Star? With no shame whatsoever. How dare you? And now our chirrun actin' up. Our husbands. Stealin' our seeds, makin' it so all we can talk about or think about is Miss Ebbie Pinder, hauntin' me so's I can't even sleep at night---why you have to come back here remindin' us of what we done tried so hard to forget?
When I was done, I fell to my knees in the grass beside her, my chest heavin', too empty to cry. My words had been the tears, and the prayers, my mournin' song, and in the tellin', they had become hers, too.
When I looked up, she was already standing over me as if she wanted to strike me. Her hands were clenched in fists so tight they shook. Even in the moonlight, her eyes looked like pools of glittering black glass. I sat, too stunned to move, while her words fell over me and pierced my skin in accusation, until I realized she wasn't talking about me at all. Then I watched as her words became snow that tumbled from her trembling lips onto the grass and dissolved into the earth, feeding the rich brown soil while the air between us grew heavy with pain and loneliness and fear. When she was done, all I could do was lay my hand on her bowed head and whisper over and over, "I know, I know."
Now we meet almost every night, meander through the orchards in silence. Or sit and talk. Mostly we talk, comment on how two women so different could be so much alike, inside where eyes don't go. How one could leave this place, the other one stay put. And we realize the reasons were the same: fear. One afraid she would turn out like everyone else, the other scared to death she wouldn't.
We share secrets denied us in our youths. The truth about who we are. The stuff no one wanted us to know. We share the story about the women called maniacs. Women who lived a long time ago. They were just country women, really, who got tired of cookin' and cleanin', takin' care of the husband and chirrun. Got tired of everybody else usin' up what was supposed to be their lives. So they met in the woods one night and had this dance. When the men found out, they got angry and tried to put an end to their women's foolishness. But they couldn't. The women rebelled. Started gatherin' every night. Before long the men started callin' the women crazy, and started treatin' them like they was, until the women began to believe it.
Why is it when a man wants to be free, he's just being a man, but when a woman wants to live life from the position of the birds, the first thing folks say is that she's crazy?
That's what we ask ourselves.
We shake our heads as if unsure of the answer. But we know. It's because they know what'll happen if we ever really do get free. They scared.
Ebbie say God must be a woman. That we was made in Her image, though she whispers it like she's afraid He may hear her talkin' about Him thataway. I tell her she's blasphemin'. Ebbie say she been blasphemed against all her life. That I been blasphemed against, too. Just because we womenfolk. She asked me to think over how many times someone spoke to me, to my womanness, with irreverence. Me. A sacred bein' like them stars, only Ebbie say more so 'cause I was fashioned in God's likeness. And me not ever knowin' it. I laugh at her, but that night when I creep back home and let myself in the screen door, real quiet so's not to wake Leonard, somethin' deep down in my belly tingles at the idea of God with Her nappy hair, coffee-and-cream skin, and lips thick as plums. Lookin' like me.
Ruthie craves a child of her own the same way I once ached to leave Grandville. So I tell her about when I was pregnant with Pontella, when she first fluttered. And the women who already had children---how they told me it would feel like I had a belly full of butterflies. Only it wasn't like that at all. I'd felt butterflies before; they came with the fear.
This was something else. More like dove wings, bringing me peace for the first time in my life. And for a while I thought I was having a bird, until I saw the coal-black coils of hair peeking out from between my thighs. When the midwife turned Pontella's head in order to sweep her mouth, seeing her face, that ancient face, I realized for the first time that a whole being had lived in me. The awe made it so I could barely breathe or move.
I could hardly hear the midwife telling me to push one more time, the shoulders. And me taking the deepest breath I could, so deep my chest burned, hunching my back and pushing with all of my might. I felt in my soul more than in my body the ripping, like the ripping of the veil. Shaking, I fell backward onto the bed, my eyes rolled up into my head. It was like I'd fallen into the bluest of oceans, sinking, sinking into the warm, rushing waters of life. I had fallen into myself. I had become the world, my womb the center of the universe. I had become one with God, one who knew what it meant to be creator. Life-giver.
That's how I know God is a woman.
Ebbie gives me permission. That's all, permission. Like someone sayin' it's all right to just be. And whatever all I was meant to be in the first place. Before they told me that girls couldn't chew gum or climb trees or wear jeans. That a woman's value counted on how well she fed her husband and children and the way she kept up her home. Before they told me a girlchild was what you wanted only after findin' out you couldn't have anythin' at all. I believed 'em, every one of those baldfaced lies. And them some powerful lies, too, anytime they can talk a person out of bein' what God made her to be. Talk a person right out of her soul. But Ebbie come along and tell me the truth of the matter. Truth always burn away anything that ain't like it.
Selfishly, I tell Ebbie that I could go on like this forever. As soon as I say it, I see somethin' in her eyes shrink from my words. At that moment, I know it's only a matter of time before she leaves again. I tell her how it gets harder for me to fit myself into a life that someone else created for me. Never understood that it wasn't even supposed to be thataway. And when I leave her, I'm scared and angry all at the same time. Scared to think of what I have to go back to if she ever leaves me, angry at the ones who made it so.
Tired of bein' treated like a fall hog.
Ruthie comes to me after two days, her eyes hidden, black ice cupped by purple moons. I look at her bruised face with both anger and guilt. Someone else's desecration making me feel responsible, and her ashamed of her womanhood, her vulnerability. She says Leonard beat her because she refused to cook and clean. I don't tell her he beat her because she stopped making him believe that he was the only reason she ever existed at all. Like the husbands of the maniacs, he knows that the young girl he married is already a memory.
When we go to leave the orchards that night, a chill invading the air, disturbing the illusion given by our Indian summer, I know I have to go. For a brief moment it's been enough to know that someone else is as I am. To find myself in someone else. So I won't have to feel so very alone. But I'm the one who made it that way, forcing my own nature on her and maybe even on Pontella if I were to stay.
I say it's getting too cold for us to meet. I promise I'll see her in the spring. I hold her close, inhale the nutty scent of wet earth from her hair, holding back the pain of unshed tears in my chest, knowing it will be the last time. Winter will come and I will settle in with the child I created, make memories of my own.
Ruthie talks about forever as if there really is such a thing. When even our future is already our past. But for a time our souls met, and danced, and soared. We were able to live like the maniacs, and we were comforted by that knowledge.
It's not until spring I learn Ebbie has left me and Pontella. Left before I could tell her she gave me back my seed. Now I walk through my life like one who goes by a familiar place that has been torn to rubble, one who can't quite remember what once stood.
I feel the months slide by and I watch my skin stretch taut over the swell of promise. I could almost pretend like this never happened at all, except for the movement in my belly, like dove wings, remindin' me of my nights with Ebbie and what it felt like to be really free, pullin' me from Leonard's side each night. I sleep beneath maples cast in shadows, lettin' tears fall warm and without excuse. Folks talk so, but to Leonard's face they tell him it's my bein' pregnant. That I'll return to normal once I have the baby. While every night I lie on a bed of grass-covered earth, fall into a sleep filled with dreams more real than this world, where I am a fish the color of rainbows, a bird that soars to the depths of the ocean. They say when a woman is full with life, she dreams strange dreams.
Fire: An Origin Tale
I'm nearly sixteen years old before I learn the true story of my birth. It is the spring of 1979, fifteen months before snowcapped Mount Saint Helens will wake up a few hundred miles away and create a new country; seventeen years after my teenage mother lay down on the floor of her father's house and contemplated suicide. I can picture her in 1962 with her apple cheeks and light brown ponytail, lying flat against the gray carpet, looking too brunette to be Scandinavian and much younger than her nineteen years. She might have been wearing a sleeveless blue cotton smock, the patch pockets stuffed with half-used tissues, and a mannish pair of black glasses. Those droopy blue eyes of hers, so deceptively sleepy, would have been wide open for once. Seventeen years later, except the short bowl haircut swirled with cowlicks, she looks exactly the same.
Time has stopped in the living room of our tiny house. It's as if my mother's silence, has cast a spell that descends over us like the ash when Mount Saint Helens erupts, turning cars and flowerbeds silver. We will have to wear surgical masks outside, just like at the Annual Portland Rose Festival to the south, thousands of spectators and beauty queens waving to each other from behind white paper cones. But for now, my mother contemplates the ceiling, and the cats on the roof fall asleep, whiskered chins upturned in the shade of the honeysuckle vine.
Bound by the spill of her silence, no one on Gregory Avenue moves. Next door, Mr. Graham turns to stone in the midst of his prized hybrid teas and floribunda. Across the street, Tommy the Plumber stalls, tattoos motionless in the hairy forests of his arms and legs and chest. At the end of the street, the boys on the high school wrestling team---state champions for three years straight---slump, drooling, onto gym mats, while next door at my mother's junior high, three kids smoking joints topple over on the football field.
The entire town of Sunnyside, Washington---where according to the Chamber of Commerce, the sun shines 360 days a year---holds its breath. At the feedlot near the sign welcoming visitors to SUNNYSIDE---HOME OF ASTRONANT BONNIE DUNBAR, the milk-faced Herefords and polled Angus stand vacant-eyed and slack-jawed, just like when the volcano blows. In the tiny business district, the Rotarians and Kiwanis and Elks and Eagles stop singing in mid-song; the neon warrior on the awning of the Safari Lounge watches his spear and shield blink and fizzle out; and the Golden Pheasant Chinese restaurant actually closes.
The blond kids up on Harrison Hill drift in their blue swimming pools, while Mexican workers doze on ladders in the sooty fruit orchards, their burlap bags slipping to the ground. Nothing much was happening to start with at the big Catholic and Mormon and Episcopalian and Methodist and Baptist and Presbyterian churches, but in the tiny new churches that are continually forming and separating at any time of day---so many that Sunnyside is in the Guinness Book of World Records---the congregations begin to snore in their folding chairs.
This hush, while I wait for my mother to call the true tale of my origins up from hibernation, carries out of town, past Old Doc Querin's big animal practice, past the huge Dutch dairies with their tin-roofed barns, past fields strung high and beaded with hops. It wafts along the restricted road to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which did the plutonium finishing for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and where people say that strange, new insects breed in the chalky limestone. It floats by the Moore farm with its collapsing barn and twelve kids, the Kludas farm with its narrow lambing shed and single giant son, and my grandparents' farm wedged in between. For once the woodpecker attacking their trees is quiet, enjoying the bright pink blossoms on the thorny Hawthorn, the heart-shaped leaves of the Catalpa, the drooping Weeping Willow. The silence winds along the irrigation ditch to the asparagus fields at the tiny airport, the same fields where my mother walked barefoot in 1962, the soil damp between her toes, and considered killing herself and her unborn child.
"I need the form that shows you have custody of me," I repeat, in case my mother didn't hear me. A permission slip for a study program in Mexico rests on the sofa cushion between us.
A few minutes ago, when I announced that the study program required the signatures of both parents---unless one can prove sole custody---my mother grunted, setting the spell. Now her eyes contemplate the ceiling, blue specks beneath a field of gently waving cowlicks.
I wait. It is 1979, my sophomore year of high school, the moment for which I have been raised. From our monthly United Nations Day dinners where my mother and I dress in makeshift rebosas and saris and dashikis and make optimistic stabs at crêpes and piroshki and kimchee from the Time Life international cookbooks series, to the home curriculum she designs for me from her college anthropology textbooks, to our mispronounced mutterings over the kinara ("Umoja means 'unity' . . .") and the Haggadah ("We were slaves of Pharaoh . . .") and the shahãda ("There is no god but God . . ."), my mother has been preparing me for this. It is to be my first trip out of North America---the escape from Sunnyside she never quite managed herself. The only thing standing in the way is my father's signature.
"I'll get the custody agreement." I offer, holding out a pen. Program enrollment to Mexico is on a first come--first served basis. "Where is it?"
Anything having to do with my father, who lives overseas, is a bit of a mystery. He and my mother divorced when I was still a baby, and in time she returned to her hometown and he to his. His photograph---a college man with close-cropped curls, thick glasses matching hers, and a green wool overcoat---hangs above my bed. Occasionally I write to him, and his affectionate replies drag themselves in months later. I know what he looks like and I know his handwriting. I know that he loves me very much. I just can't remember ever having seen him.
If I think about this, I'm a bit bewildered. I believe that, no matter how young I was when he left, I should remember my father. At least the sharp bouquet of Lux soap, the scratch of green wool against my cheek, the rich bass of his full-throated laugh, the lush Rs of his accent. He is, after all, the only one in the family like me. The only one who is black.
Being black matters. It was the reason for the trouble. Though my mother's story is sparse, always the same information presented in the exact same words, she has always been forthcoming about the trouble. For years I've watched her bee-stung lips twist into tight shapes as she describes how my grandfather demanded that she stop seeing my father, a Nigerian graduate student. How, when she refused, he forced her to transfer to another college hundreds of miles away.
It was 1961, a moment of firsts. My father was the first in his family to come to the West; my mother was the first in her family of Scandinavian immigrants to go to college. "I was wild about it," she confesses, eyes gleaming. "All those books---I thought I had died and gone to heaven!" Her freshman year she met my father, and they became the first interracial couple on campus. This among ten thousand college students.
After my mother was sent away, my parents met in secret and were married at the Seattle courthouse one Saturday. "I wore a pale green princess-style dress with matching jacket like Jackie Kennedy might have worn---only much cheaper," she says, smile firmly in place, "and your grandfather immediately disowned me." Without his support, she was forced to drop out of college and banned from ever going home or seeing her mother and brother.
The newlyweds were broke. The apartment swelled with international students who were also broke and who stopped by for dinners of vegetable curry and groundnut stew. I remember being poor---a chalky taste like scorched kidney beans---and I remember the stew, my mother's wooden spoon swirling peanut butter into tomato sauce---a vivid, oily spiral of red and brown. I remember murmured discussions about Cuba and Vietnam lasting late into the night, backed by Bob Dylan's whine or smooth African Highlife on the hi-fi. I remember the scent of vanilla drifting from the coffee table and the squish of warm wax between my fingertips as I caught candle drips before being chased off to bed. I don't remember my father.
After politics, my parents' great loves were movies and dancing. I know little else. But if we are riding the bus and pass a former hangout of theirs, or if I come across a photograph of one of their friends, my mother dusts off a memory and presents it to me. "Your poppie used to like this place," she might say, or "That girl was dating a West African too, and once we doubledated." She chooses these anecdotes carefully, sparingly, as if we are still poor.
I was born at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital in Spokane, Washington, in 1963. I don't know why Spokane, which is hundreds of miles from Seattle. I do know that my mother enjoyed being pregnant: sleepy, swollen, with a ready-made excuse to spend entire days reading. I can see her seventeen years ago, propped against the sofa bed of their tiny apartment, stacks of history textbooks and news magazines and dime-store mysteries covering every inch of the linoleum.
"Tell me again what the nurses said when they saw me for the first time," I demand.
She laughs, dog-earing a page of The Guerrilla---And How to Fight Him and settling my head in her lap. On this last point she is always eloquent. The nurses had never seen a mixed baby before, she recounts, slim fingers working my curls. "They fussed over you for days. Everyone did. For years strangers stopped us in the street and gave you presents---pieces of candy, shiny dimes---old men who looked like they had nothing to give."
Despite the sun shining from my face, my parents divorced soon after, and my father returned to West Africa. We haven't seen him since.
Before we could afford to buy the Norse legends and African folktales that peopled my childhood, my mother wrote stories set in mythic African lands and illustrated them with her own watercolor paintings of wise queens and beautiful warrior princesses in pastel tunics. Every morning and evening she read aloud to me, creating different voices for each character. Sometimes, if she was tired from teaching, she lost a voice, and I would bolt upright, protesting. "That's not the right voice!"
"No?" she would say, blinking rapidly as she does when she's trying to think. "Was it higher?" She would try again. "Dear Prince Amalu---"
My eyes would widen in horror.
"Lower? Ahem, Dear Prince---"
"No!" I'd wail, hands trembling like leaves.
"Okay, pause for a minute." She would lean forward and enact her usual ritual---a sip of tepid water masquerading as tea, a quick blow of her nose, the unwrapping of a half-sucked cough drop, and the popping it into her mouth.
Throughout all this, I would squirm. How could she take so long? How could she have forgotten this character who'd been living with us for days?
"Okay, let's see." She'd clear her throat and begin anew.
Not until she recaptured the correct voice---or invented a new one close enough to placate me---could I resume my curl in her lap, accept the narrative. Her own tale, however, she delivered in a detached, matter-of-fact tone.
"Who was at your wedding?" I'd ask periodically, hungry for the details of my origins. Some of my father's African classmates? What about her college roommate, the one who borrowed her nicest outfit, a sophisticated black cocktail dress with tiny buttons, and never returned it, despite my mother's increasingly bitter letters?
"Oh, no one really," she'd answer, glancing up from Report from a Chinese Village. "Just a pal of your poppie's and his girlfriend. I can't even remember their names."
I don't understand it. For years she labored to create the definitive family history, spending hours hunched over an old manual typewriter, clacking out family names and places and dates. She drew floor plans of childhood houses she remembered her mother and aunt describing. She pored over albums and scrapbooks and boxes of photographs. As with her anecdotes about my father, she was reductionist, a perfectionist. She chose photographs the same way she chose her memories---only the most representative and best preserved. History in her hands was finite. I wonder why major family events like my grandparents' wedding got a single photograph in the album. Did she have only one, or was it her rigid aesthetic taste?
The spring of 1979, the year before Mount Saint Helens decides to wake from her 123-year slumber, the self my mother has kept dormant these seventeen years creeps out of the past. The last time the mountain blew was 1857, the same year the U.S. Supreme Court decided that blacks were not citizens. And like the pressure now building beneath our feet, the Dred Scott case weakened the fault line between the Northern abolitionists and Southern slaveholders, four years later exploding into civil war.
Mount Saint Helens' very first outburst was the stuff of legends, an origin tale that also pitted brother against brother. According to the Klickitat, who call her Tah-one-lat-cha ("Fire Mountain"), and the Puyallup, who call her Loowitlatka or Loowit ("Lady of Fire"), and the Yakima, our local tribe, the mountain was a lovely, white-clad maiden with whom both sons of the Creator fell in love. They battled each other for her, causing the sun to darken and the earth to tremble. As they hurled molten rock back and forth, entire forests and villages disappeared in flames. Angered, the Creator turned one son into Mount Adams, the other into Mount Hood, and Loowit into the symmetrically beautiful Mount Saint Helens, perennially encased in ice and snow.
For three months in 1980, prior to the eruption, the ground beneath her will tremble---ten thousand quakes in seven weeks. A crater will yawn in her mouth, growing at a rate of six feet per day. Though geologists and biologists recognize the signs, they will ignore them. When at last Loowit succumbs to the pressure, the avalanche preceding the blast will splash water 850 feet high, temperatures will reach 1,000 degrees, and 500 million cubic yards of rock will be released in one of the largest volcanic explosions in North American history. The entire mountaintop will slide into the Toutle River Valley.
Two hundred miles away in Sunnyside, we will sit openmouthed before the television, watching thick white smoke curdle like brain matter against a blackened crater. We will hear the stunned cries of journalists and rescue workers. "It doesn't even look like the same country!" someone shouts into a radio. "I can't find any landmarks. It doesn't look like anyplace I've ever been before."
The Lady of Fire will forge an entirely new country. Before the explosion, Sunnyside is so dry that when it rains, school closes. When Loowit blows, the largest landslide in recorded history will level 230 square miles of forest in three minutes, wiping out entire populations of elk, deer, bear, and coyote. Glistening Spirit Lake, where my cousin Heidi and I crest through snow thaw, will become a bowl of mud, as will the Columbia River, going from a depth of forty feet to thirteen and stranding four dozen freighters in the process. The silvery ash will drift in a fifteen-mile-high column all the way here to southeast Washington. By noon, ash will be falling in Idaho. In two weeks, it will circle the globe. After that, rain in Sunnyside becomes normal and school is never canceled.
The spring before our geography irrevocably changes, my mother breaks the spell that holds us to the living room sofa. "Well," she says, rubbing her temple with the same hand that now holds the permission slip to Mexico, "can you keep a secret?" She half-grins.
I bite the insides of my mouth to keep from smiling back. This must be big, bigger even than my first trip abroad. I nod, as chill as mountain runoff. "Sure."
"Well . . ." she begins, tilting her head to the side and looking a bit like me when caught rifling her drawers for old photographs and letters. "I can't prove sole custody because"---she pauses---"your father and I were never divorced." She gives me an amused, expectant look.
After a minute I ask, "What do you mean---did Dad die?" Even as I say it, I suspect it can't be the explanation. My father writes to me, after all. And though I haven't heard from him in five years, as we learned following his three-year silence during the Nigerian civil war, as we will learn a mere three weeks after Loowit blows when horsetail rushes and fireweed pop up through the still-smoldering ash, followed by a scurry of pocket gophers and ground squirrels, rebirth is always possible.
My mother shakes her head, and unbidden, The Question arises from childhood memory, where it dozes fitful, ever near. I can feel it rumble through my stomach, force its way into my head as clearly as if I am on the playground, surrounded by a crowd of children who have just seen my mother's white skin for the first time and won't stop asking. "Is that your real mom?"
"Uh-huh" is my reply, rushing to head off the inevitable barrage of questions. I shut down my mind and chant my answer like a nursery rhyme: "My father is black. He's darker than me. My mother is white. Black and white together make brown." I present my arm for inspection. "See?"
Sometimes the scowls relax, the play resumes. There is frequently one who doubts. "Nuh-uh," he or she insists, balled hands against Toughskin-clad hips, as if this were high noon at the O.K. Kiddie Corral. "She can't be your real mom." Pale eyes squint through potential holes in my story. Then, the drawled challenge: "Where's your real mom?"
Suddenly it's The Big Country, and I'm Gregory Peck, Eastern navy captain turned rancher, raised to reason. I flail, repeating my claim to my mother, tender-footed and at a loss out here in the Western territories. Only a grown-up can save me. But when they arrive, it's often clear that the parents have no more idea than their offspring how I could possibly be my mother's child. Herding my challenger away, they glance back over their shoulders, as if the question of my origins is somehow unspeakable.
When I'm lucky, my mother herself appears, cowlicks crackling and baby cheeks aflame as she marches, all five-feet-two of her, up to full-grown men and jeering teenagers. "Do you have something to say to my daughter?" she roars, loud as any natural phenomenon. She stands on tiptoe and jabs a finger in their faces. They could be big as Burl Ives, Gregory Peck's Big Country nemesis, or belligerent as Chuck Conners, his rotten son; she doesn't care.
Kids "too young to know any better" get hugged. "Hey, hey," she says, kneeling on the asphalt, dimpled arms firmly encircling her captive. "What's going on here?"
By now Gregory Peck and Chuck Conners are both wailing, snot streaking our faces. Through my tears I watch her pink cheeks, her mouth working close to the kid's ear. I never hear what she says, other than her prerelease signal---"Okay?"---more statement than query.
The stranger's son or daughter nods, Toughskins tensed to flee and yet surely relieved, too, to have the unexplainable explained by someone so certain of right and wrong.
At times even I wonder about my origins. For all her efforts to create our definitive history, there are no photographs of my parents' wedding in the family album, none of my mother pregnant, and none of me as a newborn. There is a lone snapshot of me taken before the age of seven months: a blurry infant in light blue, teetering on a bed I do not recognize. I see little resemblance to the buttery-colored baby my mother claimed I had been, the newborn whose sloping forehead and masses of wavy hair looked "just like a Mayan or Egyptian princess." Whenever I demand proof of this previous incarnation, she explains wistfully that they could not afford a camera. By the time they got one, my forehead had rounded out and my hair tightened into curls. But that was fine, too, according to her.
Back rigid against the sofa, I now unfurl The Question onto my tongue. Though I am nearly sixteen, it drags in my throat. "So . . . I'm adopted?"
My mother whips her head from side to side. "No, no, no. I'm just saying that your poppie and I were never married." A faint smile lurks around the corners of her mouth.
Not married! My best friend Cheryl will undoubtedly add this to her list of why my mother and I are going to Everlasting Hellfire---first being my refusal to accept Jesus as my personal savior and second my inability to get my mother to vote Republican. I can see her now asking her youth group to take a break from playing rock records backward in the church basement in attempt to detect messages from Satan, so that they can spend an afternoon praying for my bastard soul.
I grin, mildly titillated by my parents' unconventionality. Here at last are the romance and drama of my origins. I sit back, eager to hear the rest.
My mother explains that the last time she saw my father was June 1962, his final secret visit to Seattle, during which they broke up. A few months later, she discovered she was pregnant. They made some gestures toward reconciliation, but my father was on his way to the East Coast for his doctorate and they soon realized it wouldn't work.
When my grandfather found out, he was furious, insisting that my mother get an abortion. She refused. That was the real reason he disowned her. The reason she had dropped to the living room floor after wandering barefoot in the asparagus fields. The reason I had been born in Spokane.
My mother cocks a brow and takes me by surprise: "That's where the home for unwed mothers was." She winces a bit, waits.
The home for unwed mothers? In a good origin tale, miraculous babes are found beneath garden leaves, nestled on riverbanks, even in the womb of a she-wolf, rarely in state-run institutions reeking of cabbage and shame. My mouth drops, and it occurs to me that she is making this whole thing sound easier than it was. This version may be more truthful, but it's still a story. Perhaps my mother's decision to have a mixed-race child alone was not a carefree slap in the face of convention after all. Perhaps---I try this idea on for the first time---she was not in control of her fate.
The image of my self-sufficient mother being hustled out of town in the middle of the night to give birth at some secret institution hundreds of miles from home is so foreign that I feel my mind withering. My scope of my questions shrinks to meet it. "How did you get pregnant?"
She confesses that she had been intentionally careless. "I think I knew we were breaking up," she confides, "and subconsciously I wanted a baby."
"What about Saint Elizabeth's?" Was Saint Elizabeth's a lie? And what of the nurses who vied to hold me, who had never seen such well-defined features in a newborn, such heavily lashed eyes, such a full rosebud mouth? Who had really been there as I took my first breath?
My mother assures me that both the nurses and Saint Elizabeth's were real. The only difference is that I had been born in the home's maternity ward. Saint Elizabeth's Hospital sent nurses and doctors to the home to oversee the deliveries. Together the two institutions collaborated on a procedure of secrecy. Saint Elizabeth's staff signed my birth certificate and registered my arrival with the hospital so that no record of my true birthplace would exist.
I hear this, and the mother I believe I know slips out of focus. I squint at her, as I might have squinted at myself on the playground, had I advanced such a tale. "What about your wedding outfit?" I have such a vivid image of the pale green suit and corsage that I've constructed a photograph of my mother the bride---pouty mouth, slim hand in a white glove, lacy sprig of baby's breath against a soft lapel. My father as groom is the same bespectacled graduate student who stares out from my bedroom wall. I imagine separate portraits hanging over my bed, almost touching in their cheap gilt frames. Until now I had not noticed never imagining my parents together in the same scene.
She laughs and tugs the loose curls at the back of my neck. Yes, the green suit was a real suit, a detail recalled from one of my father's visits.
My mother then teaches me how to lie: "It's always best to stay as close to the truth as possible," she says, as if she has not just spent sixteen years drilling the importance of honesty into me. I have been trained to return extra change to the penny, to raise my hand to confess wrongdoing, to resist the pressure of peers and authority figures alike.
She grimaces and gives her head a rueful shake. "I'm not a very good liar," she confesses. "I have such a poor memory."
I will later discover that my mother's poor memory spans most of my parents' breakup and the entire duration of her pregnancy. This is partly because her family kept her hidden like an insane aunt in the attic. No verbal or photographic record exists of her experience. Her recollection is a series of brief vignettes, fading into a broader, cloudy background like the constant rotation of a camera lens seeking focus.
And what she does remember is difficult to verify. "If you keep telling the same lies over and over," she warns me, "after a while you forget the truth."
My mother does not remember telling her parents she was pregnant. "But I remember roaming barefoot at dusk through the asparagus fields and contemplating suicide. Your grandfather was threatening to toss me into the street if I didn't get an abortion, and of course I didn't have any money of my own and neither did your poppie. He was the eldest of eleven and had been supporting himself on meager teaching fellowships for years." It was at this point that my nineteen-year-old mother fell to the floor of her father's house and resolved not to get up until she had decided once and for all what to do.
In 1979 as we sit on the sofa together, she gazes out the picture window at the spellbound landscape and recalls one of the few images that has stayed with her: a yellow farmhouse in a knot of trees, uncharacteristically empty. Her parents and brother had gone to town. My mother, who has always preferred solitude to companionship, had extended her arms and muddy feet as if making snow angels. The textured gray carpet had felt solid beneath her, the design swirling between her fingers. She'd stared up at the ceiling with its glitter flecks and reminded herself that she could be just as stubborn as her father.
She was lying on the floor of white, rural, Christian, soon-to-be-middle-class, pre--Roe v. Wade America. "And I had four options: illegal abortion, marriage, adoption, or death." She did not want a backstreet abortion and she did not want to marry my father. She rolled on her side, feeling the scratch of the carpet against her cheek.
Now her voice is light. "That left two options: have the baby and give it up for adoption, or kill us both."
Adoption wouldn't solve the problem of being destitute and having to drop out of college. Besides, in some secret recess of her mind she wished she could somehow keep the baby. "I worried, who would adopt a mixed-race baby?"
That left suicide.
Even at sixteen I know that my mother is not the kind of woman who considers suicide. For sixteen years she has been fierce, hugging tolerance into strangers' intolerant children, creating pastel-clad African queens to talk to me. Besides, there are simply too many books to read.
What nearly toppled my mother as she teetered on the edge of suicide was the fact that she wouldn't be able to finish college. College. The collective dream of her immigrant, just-leaving-working-class family---the collective dream of her entire dusty town, really. Her escape from life on the farm, from the World's Record for Most Churches Per Capita, Small Town Division, from 360 days of sun. Her release from a country where fathers packed their daughters away for life or married them off to sweaty farmboys at the end of a shotgun or paid strangers to fish around inside them with a rusting coat hanger.
As soon as my mother hefted death in one hand and thunked its roundness with her knuckle, everything fell into place. "It was all so simple." She shrugs, the mother I know returned to join us on the sofa. "The situation was not about suicide or shame or having no options. Money was the only thing holding me back from what I truly wanted---from college, from keeping the baby." Money and her father, wielding it like a weapon against her. "Money, nothing more."
And so she set herself free. "Let him disown me, I thought," she says, flipping her hands palms up. The ground as she got up off the floor of her father's house was solid beneath her feet. She would act without her father, without a husband, without anyone's approval. "I decided to have the baby, you."
Her voice drops, tender as a spring seedling. And it hits me, the message in my name. Despite fighting with my father and the entire town of Sunnyside over their staunch Christianity, despite claiming not to know why she chose the name---regardless of what she can or cannot remember---the evidence is there. It is the photograph she couldn't afford upon my arrival, the decision she made from her four options, the gift she prayed for---Faith.
There was, as to be expected, much more to the tale of my origins that my mother would reveal when I was older. The story of whom she called and what happened in the home. Still later would be the stories I had to uncover for myself. The rest of my name and what happened to my father. Who knows how much I would have been able to comprehend, had she been able to recall it, that spring day in 1979? I was sixteen, my primary concern getting to Mexico.
As if sensing this, my mother takes her arms from around me and offers to write a letter explaining that she is a single mother and have it notarized. I can give it, on the condition of secrecy, to the tour leader.
I frown. This is degrading. Why lie? Why give power to some unknown tour leader of undetermined discretion?
My mother turns to me. There will be no youth group praying for our souls in the church basement. "I confided in you," she stresses, "because you're old enough to know the truth, but you have to swear not to tell a soul; I could lose my job."
I protest. "C'mon, this is 1979. You've been teaching forever. No one cares."
"This is still Sunnyside," she replies. The town she had grown up in and tried to escape, then been cast out of. The town to which she eventually returned to raise me. A dip in the earth that resists each new decade with the fervor of the recently converted. A Christian holdout on the edge of the desert soon to be covered in 600,000 tons of volcanic ash. A mere forty-five minutes after the Lady of Fire blows, the sky will become black as night, and though it is only nine-thirty in the morning, all over Sunnyside, streetlights will sputter into light.
I have heard my mother's friends in the living room. I know that one teacher lost his job for lingering too long in the high school parking lot with a woman who was not his wife. Another found himself jailed after admitting his sexual orientation. Careers have been lost on more suspicion.
And so I inherit my mother's secret, continuing what is---though I do not know it then---a time-honored tradition among the women of our family. Neither of us has any way of knowing that this secret I force down my throat will turn out to be as bruising as the chunks of pumice that rain down from Loowit. My mother is mistaken---I am not old enough to know the truth. At least, not old enough to carry it, like my heavy, unpronounceable African name, out into the world alone.
Like any good creation myth, the true tale of my origins is deceptive. Upon first telling, it seems harmless enough. The major themes endure: My parents cared for each other and loved me; my mother managed alone. The only differences, I tell myself, are simple matters of legality and geography---the absence of a marriage certificate, a birth at a forgotten address across town. But beneath the thin crust of the earth we think we know, the new world shifts and steams.
Tan Son Nhut Airport,Ho Chi Minh City, 1997
BY GENARO KY LY SMITHFROM The Land South of the Clouds
To some extent I can understand their suspicions. Long before we boarded the plane in Los Angeles, Uncle Ngo told me this would happen. It's not every day that they see a Vietnamese man with an African American man in Ho Chi Minh City. Alone, he'd be fine. They could easily buy Uncle Ngo's story: He wants to return home, to see relatives he hasn't seen since leaving in 1972. In my case they might think I'm a Vietnam vet making a personal journey to heal emotional wounds, except that I'm only twenty-eight.
So, when they asked me in English the nature of my visit, I told them the truth: I was here to see my mother. They became quiet, turning to one another with opened mouths. Then they both studied my passport. The woman looked up and pursed her lips to speak. I knew she wanted to say, "No. Really?" Instead she raised the passport up to her face and frowned into the black and white photo, at the name Long-Vanh Nguyen printed next to it. All the information was correct: place of birth (Nha Trang), date of birth (6/17/68), citizenship (U.S.); the name was distinctly Vietnamese, as was the long neck with the vulnerable Adam's apple, the large mouth. Everything checked out except the dark skin and the short, neatly cropped hairstyle worn by African Americans nowadays. They didn't match with everything else.
Uncle Ngo and I are now in a room with a picture of a gaunt-looking Ho Chi Minh hanging on the wall, his white goatee covering the buttoned collar of his shirt. Standing side by side Uncle Ngo and I watch as the customs officers slide and wriggle their hands inside tight-fitting latex gloves, snap them against their wrists, then pull neatly folded shirts and jeans from our suitcases one by one, and shake them free of their perfect creases. Their hands plunge inside the pockets, front and back, and when they are through with each article of clothing, they pile them on the table. The woman opens my jar of Noxzema and sniffs it. Scrunching up her nose, she holds it out to us and asks, "Cái gi dây?"
"Dê rua mat," Uncle Ngo says, making a circular motion with his hands in front of his face. He turns to me and asks, "Better than soap, huh?"
"Ah, yes. It cleans the pores." I clear my throat.
The woman stares at my face as if to see how well it has worked on my complexion. They peer inside the jar, frowning at the white substance. Replacing the cap, she sets the jar to the side.
I want to look behind me and count the number of officers standing in front of the closed door. At times I hear them opening and closing the door, and only when they come and go can I hear other people walking about, dragging their luggage behind them, and a woman speaking over the intercom in a language I never learned. But I am afraid to turn my head. However many there are, I can feel them staring at the back of my head, and my neck burns from their constant gaze. Sweat forms on my forehead, and I wish they'd turn on the fan. There are no windows in the room.
I watch Uncle Ngo from out of the corners of my eyes. He's standing still, and I do the same, leaving my arms at my side and staring straight ahead, but my arms tremble. The way the officers go through our things with such intense concentration on their brows convinces me they'll find something I overlooked. Maybe something in my Noxzema doesn't smell right. Perhaps the ammonium level is too high by Vietnamese standards. And part of me wishes they were crooked enough to plant an ounce of coke or dried-up buds in my suitcase. Anything to keep me from that moment I drive into Nha Trang and see my mother for the first time in the seventeen years since she left Los Angeles.
When I got the phone call several weeks ago, I hadn't expected it to be Mother. How could I? I hadn't thought she had been dead these past seventeen years, but when I hadn't heard from her once, I'd simply accepted the fact that I had no mother, dead or alive. But there was her voice at the other end just as I remembered it from my childhood, stern and absent of feelings. And I thought, How can she speak that way? After so much time?
But I was only able to say "Mother." I'm not sure if I stammered, or if my voice echoed in the receiver within the walls of white noise caused by long distances.
That was all I could say, over and over, before Uncle Ngo took the phone out of my hand. I stood beside him and listened as he spoke to her in Vietnamese, his voice low. I could not understand a word. All I heard were the rise and fall of syllables, mere sounds. Then he hung up, and we stared at each other without saying a word.
The customs officer continue to go through our things quietly. When the man uncaps a tube of Crest toothpaste and squeezes enough of it to cover the tip of his finger, Uncle Ngo lets out a low grunt. The woman shakes the can of Gillette shaving cream and presses the tab until her hand cups foam. Holding it up to her nose, she sniffs before wiping her hand on the table. The male officer tears open a box of Irish Spring soap. With a switchblade he pares layers off the way one would a fruit.
I reach inside my shirt pocket, take out my pack of Marlboros, and jerk one free with a quick flick of the wrist. Before I even have a chance to put it in my mouth, the woman says, snapping each syllable, "Dep di. Cam hut tuoc."
I raise both hands, and hear the officers stirring behind me, but I don't look back. The man hurries from around the table and snatches the pack out of my one hand and my cigarette from the other. Uncle Ngo reaches inside his denim pocket and produces his pack of cigarettes.
"Nó chì la thuòc´ lá thôi. Coi. See." Uncle Ngo holds his pack out to the officer but doesn't look at him.
The inspector snaps the cigarette at the filter, sniffs it, and rubs one end between two fingers so that the tobacco spills onto the floor. Again, Uncle Ngo shows the officer his pack of cigarettes, talking at the same time. The officer nods his head, walks back behind the table, and sets my pack down.
"Dây," Uncle Ngo gives me a cigarette from his pack. "You take mine." He fishes inside his pocket for his Zippo lighter; at the same time he flips the lid open, it lights; a trick I can't do.
I puff until the cigarette catches, then I take a drag, holding it in for a moment before exhaling. The officers go back to inspecting our luggage. Uncle Ngo lights up a cigarette. After my third drag I start to feel dizzy, so I hold the cigarette between my fingers and stare at it, thinking how lucky Uncle Ngo is that he gets to keep his pack. But I can only stare at my cigarette for so long.
Our suitcases lie wide open and empty. The officers feel around the edges, smooth the palms of their hands against the lining. Ho Chi Minh sits high on the wall, staring over our heads toward the back. I continue to smoke despite how it makes me feel.
Then the male officer does something that makes me gasp. He stoops down to pick up a rectangular box and sets it on the table. I turn to Uncle Ngo then, but he only smokes his cigarette. Opening his switchblade, the officer cuts the string that holds it all together, then slices the box right down the middle, parting the seams and corners where I've taped it.
He pockets the switchblade, opens the flaps, and together, he and the female officer bring out the ao dais, long-sleeved satin gowns, and the black pantaloons that go with them. They turn them over with their gloved hands, smooth their palms over the length of the dresses, rub the material between their fingers, fondle the hem. The woman even holds one up against her body, checking the length. Thus, as though remembering who she is and what her duties are, she catches herself and looks at me, bringing the ao dai away from her body.
"They're my mother's. She left them behind."
She merely blinks her eyes several times before folding the ao dai in half and setting it on top of everything else. The man takes out two bundles of letters bound by rubber bands. He inspects the cover of one of them reading the addresses in the center and lefthand corner. He sets them aside and proceeds to the manila envelope. He digs his hand inside and extracts Polaroids of me and Mother and Dad. The man says something that I take to mean look because the woman leans in and together they gaze at each photo, frowning for long moments, most likely dissecting Mother and Dad to see their features in me. After they are through, he puts them back in the envelope. Catching sight of one he missed, he takes it out. It is an eight-by-ten photograph, the only big one in the set. He raises it to his face, and his eyes widen.
"Ba Nguyen," I say. "My grandfather."
The man looks up at me and he says something to the woman. She nods her head and frowns, and it's as if the darkness of my skin has turned pale for them, and my hair became straight and gray. And I want them to say it, admit how much I look like my grandfather despite my dark skin and hair, admit that I am one of you. But the man simply replaces the photo in the envelope and closes the flap.
Stepping away from the table, the officers yank the latex gloves off their hands. They speak to Uncle Ngo, and he nods his head eagerly. He tosses his cigarette on the floor and crushes it with the heel of his shoe. I let mine burn between my fingers.
"Come on Long-Vanh." Uncle Ngo waves me forward as he walks up to the table.
Uncle Ngo picks up a pair of jeans and begins to fold them. I set what's left of my cigarette at the edge of the table and sort through the pile. Both officers are speaking to Uncle Ngo. He nods his head at times, says "um-hm" as he folds the sleeves of his shirts behind their backs before doubling them at the torsos. Still, they continue to speak, and like Uncle Ngo, I don't look up at them. One of them, the male officer, extends his hand out and Uncle Ngo drops a pair of boxers onto the table to shake it. He pumps it several times while exchanging words. He even smiles. When Uncle Ngo lets go of his hand, the woman extends hers and he shakes it. The officers come from around the table with the box and leave the room.
"What's happening? Where are they going with Mother's things?" I whisper.
"Later," Uncle Ngo says. "Just fold clothes."
We continue to untangle long shirt sleeves from around pant legs.
"What next?" I ask.
Uncle Ngo lights his cigarette, snaps shut the Zippo, takes a long drag, and exhales before he sits back into the bench.
"They keep our passports, your Mother's ao dais, the letters, pho-to-graphs. For two days . . . maybe three. For now, we stay here."
"Here in the airport?" I point at the floor.
"No. Here. Ho Chi Minh City. We stay. Besides, we cannot go an-ee-where without passport," he says slowly, enunciating each syllable so that he's not misunderstood.
I rub my hands together and look about the airport. Our luggage is beside us. In a room that looks like a warehouse, people stand behind a queue with slips of papers in their hands, the same slip they gave me to claim the items they are holding for further inspection. Officers stand on the other side and shelved behind them are the people's luggage. Other officers retrieve luggage from off the shelves and hand them it to people.
Often, the officers point at the luggage they hand the patrons, insisting that it is theirs. And it's funny. It's funny because even though they've spent so much time packing their belongings into suitcases, once the suitcases have been taken from them, they forget which is theirs despite differences in color, size, and weight. Confused, they are doubtful that they've been handed the right suitcase until they think to check the tags.
After they get their luggage, the people make their way past Uncle Ngo and me, and every one of them stares. I nod my head, even give a slight wave of my hand, but they don't return a greeting of any kind. They just continue parading past us, some even bumping into the person in front of them. One man is videotaping as he walks along, and he turns his Camcorder in our direction, giving commentary. He, along with everyone else, makes his way to the far end of the lobby to where guards stand with holstered firearms. Behind them, men, women, and children wait. Most of them hold up signs with names written on them, and I recognize some of the names: Phuong, Lop, Thanh, Huang. And although I know Mother is not here to meet us, I search each card, expecting to find my name on one of them. But I don't see Long-Vanh, and even if she were here, I wonder if Mother will look the same or if the only way I'll recognize her will be by seeing a sign bearing my name in the hands of a woman I don't know.
Between Black and White
In my father's dreams, there is no color, only varying shades of black. And the blackness haunts him. So, in every waking moment, he runs to whiteness.
That's how he met my mother.
She seemed everything he was not. She was everything he desired. Her skin, like cream, contrasted his coal color. Her hair, like corn silk, was silent as his raged. Her voice, like tiny bells, tinkled; his boomed. She was everything the women of his past were not, and he wanted to possess her. But, like the child who cradles a wounded bird too tightly, he crushed her. Almost. In the split second it took him to reposition his hands to get a tighter hold, she saw the crack of light from the outside world and rushed toward it. Leaving him. Leaving me. And I'm not enough for him.
My memories of them together come in like waves, and like the waves, they threaten to drown me. But I gasp and struggle through, remembering that always there is a surface, and with the surface comes air, and in the air, I'll be okay.
We had lived in Mt. Airy from the time I was born. The cozy community was far enough from what my father called "North Philly Nigga Shit" and close enough to chic Chestnut Hill for it to feel like a real home. Mt. Airy was a cauldron of cultures, bubbling and stewing until they became one. One common way of speaking. One common style of dress. One common way of thinking. My father believed that Mt. Airy was the place where he and my mother would live as one forever. And they did, we did, for a time.
I remember my first day of school. My mother stood at the corner bus stop, waving to me. She looked like an angel, only she was crying. I never thought that angels cried, but when I looked at my mother's face, I knew that God's helpers shed tears from time to time.
I remember that until I started school, I lived in racial oblivion. I was just another shade in my community, just another shade in my family. I just was. Then I boarded the school bus heading toward Rush Elementary School in Chestnut Hill.
I remember marching toward the bus bravely like a big girl, knowing that my mother was watching me. I wanted her to be proud, so I raised my chin like I had seen actors do before showdowns. I didn't know, I couldn't know, that that one act, the slight lifting of the chin, would define people's reactions to me forever. Forever. Forever different. Forever an outsider. Forever alone.
I remember that the ride to school was uneventful, yet my mind raced with anticipation. Questions about cubby holes and midmorning snacks raced through my head as I stared out the window. So fast and furious were my thoughts that I didn't notice the furtive looks cast my way or the fingers pointing at me. It was better that I didn't or else I, like a crab being removed from the bushel, would have sensed the impending death of my innocent spirit.
I remember approaching the morning with optimism. Sitting at my desk, I folded my hands just like my mother taught me. Every now and then I would catch some of the girls looking at me. Sometimes it was a brown girl who would grin shyly if I caught her eye. Other times, it was a tan girl who would stare unsmiling, trying to decipher the puzzle that was me.
I remember lingering longer than necessary in the cubbyhole room, trying to see if anyone would invite me to play with them. After I removed my jump rope, I repacked and zipped my book bag. One of the brown girls sidled up to me.
I remember the envy in her eyes as she eyed my two honey-colored ponytails before saying, "You've got pretty hair."
I remember another brown girl tapping her foot impatiently. Half disgusted, half hateful, she snorted, "Come on, Tiffany."
Then Tiffany left, and I remember walking outside last and alone while everyone else formed Noah's Ark--like pairs ahead of me. It was an early representation of what would define the rest of my life.
Hope swirled in my head the next day when I awoke. Things will be different, I had assured myself before drifting into sleep.
The wait at the bus stop was the same. But how much different could that possibly be? All the kids were waiting with their parents. The ride on the bus was the same. But how much different could that be? It's a short ride from Mt. Airy to Chestnut Hill, and besides, the bus can get a little noisy with all those gears shifting and all. The first part of the school day was the same. But how different could that be? It's wrong to talk in class despite the fact that other kids managed to sneak in jokes and share some secrets. Their names got written on the board, but I got a star for good conduct. The walk to the cubby hole room was the same. Then I got nervous. Suppose everything was the same, and I ended up with that same lonesome feeling.
Then a change. A little girl, who looked all golden and fair like my mother, approached me.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," I returned shyly.
"Do you want to play with us?" she asked, gesturing toward a small group of tan girls.
I smiled and nodded my head. Gathering my rope, I fell in step beside her.
"I asked my mom if it would be okay to play with you," she said innocently. "I told her that you're almost my color, just a little darker. You aren't nearly as dirty as those other girls, so you must be one of us."
My mouth fell open, partly from shock, partly from my desire to tell her that the brown is not dirt. It's not like mud.
Before I could say anything, she continued. "Besides, Heather said that she saw your mom, and she's one of us. I told my mom, and she said that at least you're half good, so you can play with us."
Her words did not immediately register in my head, but my heart felt them. Then my stomach quivered as if epic memories of burning bodies and burning crosses resurfaced into my consciousness. I ran to the bathroom to throw up the vestiges of Emmett Till and the four little girls. My teacher ran after me.
I was spared from recess that day. Looking out the window of the nurse's office, I watched as the other kids naturally fell into groups together. Tan girls. Brown girls. Brown boys. Tan boys. As I watched, the tans became white and the browns became black. And I fell somewhere in between black and white.
Every day my mother waited for me at the bus stop. Her eyes anxious, her mouth ready to smile. Her aura was light, heavenly. She seemed so happy, I didn't want to crush her with stories of my colored confusion. So I lied.
Every day I filled her ears with tales of my popularity and acceptance. I told her that so many girls wanted to play with me at recess that I had to choose. I told her that girls always wanted to share their snacks with me, and that was why I wasn't really hungry at dinner. I told her that one of my classmates invited me to her birthday party this Saturday, but because we were going to Baltimore, I declined. I told her that one of the black girls, though it was brown girls for her virgin ears, brushed my hair at recess every day, telling me that it was the most beautiful hair she'd ever seen.
And I learned that mothers and white people were gullible enough to be fooled by a good story and a smile.
Into the bathroom, the black girls came."Hi, Shana," one said, sneering my name."Shana, we don't like you. You think you're cute.""Don't look surprised, honey, we've got proof.""Remember the bus rides all those years in the past?""You were too good to speak on the bus and in class.""You always looked down your nose at us.""I didn't say anything, didn't want to cause a fuss.""But, you zebra bitch, your cozy days are through.""We'll make these school days a living hell for you."With those final words came a slap across my face.And they taught me that among them I had no place.
The fingers. They pinch.The mouths. They spit.The feet. They kick.The hands. They hit.The fists. The punch.The teeth. They crunch.The hands. They shove.The mouths. They munch.The feet. They smoosh.The hands. They push.The shoes. The squoosh.The doors. They smush.
And they almost never leave a mark.
I tried to tell, but the words got stuck in my throat. And when they were dislodged, they came out all wrong.
The three of us were sitting in the sunroom. Dad, Mom, and me. Black. white, and between. I was eight years old, but my soul felt so much older. I was weary from years of uncried tears.
I looked from mother to father, noting all of their differences. Her softness, his hardness. Her pleasantness, his sternness. Her hope, his anger. Her optimism, his pessimism. I decided to shoot straight down the middle, making my words plain.
"I don't like my school," I said, then held my breath.
My mother looked up from her book. My father didn't look up at all.
"Honey, why not?" she asked, her light voice incompatible with the heaviness in my heart.
I inhaled deeply though clenched teeth, gathering strength before saying, "Nobody likes me."
"Of course, they do. They're always sharing their snacks with you and inviting you places."
Before I could fix my lips around the words, the dam broke, and my face was flooded with three years of uncried tears.
My mother rushed over to me, scooping me into her arms, holding me so close that between my snot and her sweater, I felt that I would suffocate.
I heard my father's voice demand, "Is somebody messing with you?"
"Shh," my mother snapped. "Girls don't cry only if someone is hitting them. You should know that by now."
"Well, why is she crying?"
"I don't know," she said, rocking me. She probably had a bad day."
I heard my father mumble something. Then I heard his heavy feet walk across the sunroom and go into the house. Then my ears were filled with my mother's humming while my heart was still filled with grief.
We were at Miles Park for a picnic on Memorial Day. I remember it like it was yesterday because it marked the onset of a series of changes in my life. I should have known that the picnic was just the beginning of imminent change because things always happen in threes.
Mom, determined to bring us closer as a family, had packed a picnic basket of delectable delicacies. Shrimp salad on fat, crusty bagels from Rosensweig's deli. Corn and tomato salsa to cover gourmet chicken burritos from Don Pepe's. Sweet Potato French Fries and Surprise Iced Tea from Sugarene's Soul Food Spot.
Dad had laid out the blanket and was beginning a game of solitaire while Mom had pulled out her latest Danielle Steel fantasy read. I pulled out my jump rope and attempted to jump rope on a flat patch of grass.
Conversation was sparse in our household, and I was used to it, but sometimes under my father's watchful, wordless stare I grew uncomfortable. It seemed that in his watching, he was waiting. Waiting. Ever waiting for me to make a mistake. Mess up. And when I did, he would pounce.
"Watch what you're doing!" "You're making a mess!" "Look at yourself! You're such a slob." "Damn it! Can't you do anything right?"
So I tried to be perfect. Maybe in my perfection, I thought, I could gain his acceptance. That Memorial Day, I gained more that acceptance. I gained his love. At least temporarily.
Tired of jumping rope, I went to explore the "Kiddie Community." There were mini-houses like sheds, complete with flower boxes and benches. Uninterested in the frilly girl's stuff inside, I peered up to the roof. There boys walked their big-stepped walk, happy and free. The sun beat down on their faces, and under its warm glare, their colors melted into one. They were all golden brown in its rays. I wanted to be up there. In the sun. In with the others. Like the others.
So I climbed up and up like Jack and the Beanstalk until I reached the top. It wasn't that high, only about seven feet, but on top, I felt like the queen of the world. I tried to do the big-stepped walk, claiming every inch between my feet, on top of the roof, in the world. I wanted to be big, complete, perfect, but in my quest for perfection, I stumbled, and I, like Icarus, came crashing to the earth. The sun, my betrayer, beat down on me.
From outside of my body, I watched my father spring into action. He scooped me up, carrying me to the car. Alone, just the two of us, he charged down Germantown Pike, racing for my life. Through stoplights he sped, pressing his shirt under my chin, trying to stop the bleeding. There in the car, through the fear, through the worry, through the pain, I saw that the way to his heart was through danger. As long as my physical needs were met, he didn't worry. Yet if I were in harm's way, he would save me.
I turned nine that summer, and I had my first real birthday party, complete with decorations and a cake. My dad had broken his rule about staying out of North Philly. He had bitten the bullet and gone to Denise's Delicacies for my cake.
"They have the best cakes in the city," my mother had whined. My father's jaw had been tight as he clenched his teeth and looked at me. I scratched my chin, and I could see guilt dance in his eyes before he snapped at me.
"Leave your face alone!"
Mumbling, he collected his keys and headed back to the place from which he hailed, the place he grew to despise.
"Mommy, why does he hate going to North Philly?" I questioned after hearing his car pull away.
She sighed and wiped her hands on her apron, wondering what to say and how to say it.
"Your dad had a hard childhood," she began, wondering where to tread and what to reveal.
My innocent eyes compelled her to continue speaking.
"I don't really know how to explain it, because I'm not sure if I understand it myself. He just got tired of poverty and despair."
"But if there's a good bakery there, and other good businesses are there, can it be all that bad?"
"I don't know, honey. But he hates everything that reminds him of there, and he loves anything that's different," she said.
Then I heard her sniffle before her head went down. She wept silently while fingering her wedding band.
That afternoon, my mother's family poured into our home to celebrate my birthday. My mom dished up the cake while my dad served drinks. He kept his glass filled, and every time he got the chance, he refilled the glass of my mom's younger sister. She smiled appreciatively and soon she began giggling whenever he approached. Soon, the two of them disappeared. Together.
My mother was gone. She left us at the end of the summer. Just walked away, leaving a note for my father in her stead.
James,
I should have known. I should have known that you could never love me when you hate yourself. I thought I could help heal you. Lift you up. Lead you to love, but you never even lit the path.
Know that I don't hate you. I don't hate my sister. I don't hate any of the others. I don't hate my child. Please make sure she knows that. I just need to preserve myself since no one else will.
I love you. Tell Shana that I love her with all of my heart, but I have to go. Please love her, James. Let her know that the skin she's in is not a curse. Make her know that she has a place between black and white.
Elizabeth
He folded up her letter and put it in a drawer. He never mentioned her again.
I fell in love with the lens when I was fifteen. In that stage of swirling emotions, I dug the way I could manipulate the lens and create flatness. Flatness of emotion and energy. Yet if I wished, I could also capture frenzy and excitement. The camera and the lens became my means of control. Despite the circumstances surrounding me, despite the drama, I could create peace. Thinking of it still gives me a rush, and in my egomaniacal moments, I imagine, just for a split second, what it's like to be God.
Around my high school, I came to be known as something of a beatnik, what with my weed-smoking and endless supply of black clothes. I was the Herb Ritz of Girls' High. I was the Photography Club and the Art Club. I didn't like taking pictures for the newspaper or the yearbook because the shots were always so staged.
"Here's Becky, the president of Rotary Interact. Smile, Becky."
Click.
"Here's Yolanda, captain of the basketball team. Yolanda, hold up that basketball for us and say cheese."
Click.
Even the ones that were supposed to be candid were fake.
"See the Key Club as they box up the donations from this year's Christmas Drive. Aren't they magnanimous?"
Click.
All people have an image they want to convey, a way they want to be seen. Then, there's the truth. That's what I try to capture on film. The truth. But truth is fleeting. Yet still I try.
I've always tried to freeze people in the moment their raw purity is exposed. Those moments just come to me. I can't create them. So I must wait. That's what I was doing the first time I saw him.
He raced into my peripheral vision as I sat on a bench on Thirteenth Street in the heart of Temple University's campus. Leaning my back against the table, my camera resting on my stomach, I felt his heat before I saw him. I fumbled for my camera, my breath catching in my chest as I watched the northbound specimen in admiration. His white tank top revealed his glowing golden skin. His tight shoulders led to arms etched with muscles. His torso was lean; his stomach, flat. His behind was tight and high, and his legs, ripped with muscles, carried him quickly as he sprinted away.
Something stayed with me long after he was gone. Though his face looked relaxed, his hands were drawn into tight fists, telling me that his heart was torn. I wanted to get inside of that torn heart, to mend it from the inside out.
ONE O'CLOCK
I determined that with his runner's discipline, he was a creature of habit. That habit would lead him back to Thirteenth Street where he would run north like his ancestors had probably done generations before. He would pass briefly through my life again at one o'clock. I sat ready, like a cheetah waiting to pounce, camera poised to capture his naked edge.
Again I felt his heat before I saw him. I wondered what it was about him that made me sense his presence. It was like I was a heat-seeking missile, and he was my target, only that analogy made me feel too predatory. Whatever it was, whatever I called it, it drew me toward him, and I hoped that the camera's eye could catch and preserve it until I could catch him.
I lifted the camera to my eye and pointed it in his direction, moving slowly to match his pace as he approached.
Click.
Calm.
Click.
Ease.
Click.
Despair.
Click.
Peace.
Click.
Pleasure.
Click.
Pain.
Click.
Happiness.
Click.
A nod and a smile at me.
Click.
Got him.
The next day was Friday, and I wanted to see him once more before the weekend claimed him. Camera in hand, I headed toward my usual spot after my eleven-thirty African American Lit Class ended. Gladfelter Hall on Twelfth Street was the only place on campus where I didn't feel quite so different. It housed the African American Studies Department and, from the moment I stepped off the elevator onto the eighth floor, I felt at home. Only my own home was not this warm. Anyway, leaving Gladfelter felt like leaving a cocoon, but it was okay. I could feel a similar heat radiate from him. I knew that I would feel it even more once I was actually able to get next to him.
As I walked up Montgomery toward Thirteenth, something felt different. I felt the heat, but I knew I shouldn't have felt it so soon. I checked my watch. Twelve forty-five. He was early. What was he doing down here?
I slowed my pace and scanned the street looking for him. I spotted him on the other side of the street, also approaching Thirteenth. He waved at me as he passed. I waved back, hoping that his feet and heart would guide him to me. Instead, once he reached Thirteenth, he turned left and headed south.
And I was left with my camera in hand, heart on my sleeve, wondering why.
"So where do you go when you run?" I asked, looking into his eyes.
"It depends on my mood," he said, staring boldly back.
"Explain."
He looked down for a second, as if gathering strength. "I run north on Thirteenth Street when I'm trying to remember---"
"Remember what?" I asked interrupting.
"When I'm trying to remember my roots and where I've been."
"And you run south on Thirteenth when . . ."
"I run south when I'm trying to forget."
"What are you trying to forget, Lionel?" I asked, looking directly into his eyes. Waiting.
"Shana, I believe in being completely honest, but I'm not ready to tell you that yet. Okay?"
"Okay."
We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on Kelly Drive, where I took pictures of boats passing along the Schuykill River. As his hand came to rest on my thigh, I felt his heat combine with my own, and the result for me was almost orgasmic.
Hincty
BY KAREN GRIGSBY BATESFROM The Chosen People
James Simpson Lee Hastings, Jr. was a chunk of the nineteenth century that had been vomited into the lap of the twenty-first. Simp Hastings; as he'd been known since his days at an East Coast boarding school, had been a moderately competent Boston accountant who had put himself on the mainstream media map by becoming the social arbiter of modern Negro society. His gossipy history of same, Chosen People, had briefly been on the New York Times bestseller list. Since then, Hastings had all but quit his day job to make the circuit, describing to innocent and unknowing white people Who Counts---and Who Doesn't---in black communities across the country.
The West Coast swing of a speaking tour had landed him here in Los Angeles, at Ashanti Books, one of the country's biggest and best black bookstores. I'd dropped down to see, firsthand, what all the fuss had been about, and perhaps to get column out of it.
My name is Alex Powell, and I am a journalist. I write a column for The Los Angeles Standard that runs in the Metro section on Thursdays and Sundays, and I'm always looking for good ideas.
This, however, might not have been one of them. Simp Hastings' book had been the cause of considerable ire in several sectors of black communities across the country. Although many of the upper-crust black folks about whom Simp had chosen to write had resolutely refused to talk to him "If we keep quiet," one Philadelphia doyenne had sniffed, "perhaps he'll just go away . . ." A few had cooperated and, augmented by a raft of eager wannabes, given him interviews. As a result, Chosen People spent several hundred pages chronicling the "I gots" of a certain kind of black person, and listing the Right Clubs and Organizations to which strivers should strive to belong.
Some of the Negro Old Guard thought Simp suspect as well as traitorous. "Really," grumbled one Chicago doctor; "who is he, anyway? I've never heard of him. My children have never heard of him." A Charleston socialite from a family that had been living in that city for over 150 years simply sighed and said (to one of my aunts), "The bad part is, they get it wrong and we---myself included, I'm sorry to say---don't speak up and correct them when they do."
Black activists who'd struggled for decades to minimize class differences among us in the interest of developing a more progressive agenda that would benefit all of us were furious. They felt that Simp was ripping the scab off old hurts covering touchy issues such as skin color, hair texture, and the keenness of one's features. They bitterly mocked his now-trademark inquiry to every new acquaintance: "Do I know your people?"
So here I was, at 7 P.M. on a rainy Monday night, crowded into a standing-room-only group of people who'd come to be given The Word from J.S.L. Hastings, Jr., as he was listed on the book's cover.
The room seemed to be about equally divided between business-suited professionals and afrocentrically-dressed people in cowrie-tipped dreadlocks and clothes from the Motherland. The room quieted as Hastings stepped to the podium.
"Good evening," he began.
His voice was high-pitched and boyish, like Mike Tyson's. But unlike Tyson's Bronx accent, Simpson's was a carefully-aped Locust Valley Lockjaw, a nasal, almost whiny voice, kind of like millionaire Thurston Howell III's had been, on Gilligan's Island.
And instead of the onetime heavyweight champ's massive body, James Simpson Lee Hastings, Jr., was tiny, elfin. His skin was a deep, unattractive yellow---almost orange---as if he'd just gotten over a severe case of jaundice. His hair crunched in poorly suppressed waves all about his head. There was less of his chin than there should have been, proportionately speaking, and his nose stuck out of his flat-cheeked face like Pinocchio's.
Hastings did possess two saving graces, however: He had a magnificent set of teeth---white, even and natural---and beautiful eyes that I'd seen change color from bright green to gold to light brown, depending on what he was wearing.
Tonight they were greenish, and fairly snapping with excitement. And maybe just a little malice. Hastings shot his cuffs, straightened his tie, took a drink from the glass of flat mineral water that had been carefully placed at his elbow, and smiled out at the assembled.
"Good evening," he cooed to his audience, again.
"Good evening," the audience dutifully responded.
"Whassup?" yelled some wag from the back.
When the laughter subsided, Simp Hastings continued.
"What's up, indeed? That's why we're here tonight, isn't it?---to discuss what is up with the depiction of black people in this country. For too long, the only images of us have been of happy slaves, buffoons, or criminals. Today when the media writes about 'real black life,' it's always welfare mothers with eight children and no daddy, gangbangers, and crack addicts."
There were murmurs of assent from some in the audience.
"Well, I'm sure those people do exist---I know they do---but those people are not my people. My people get up and go to work every day, and they are successful at what they do . . ."
"Uh-hum," a fiftyish lady in a burgundy tweed suit murmured, nodding in assent.
"My people live in lovely homes, with original art on the walls and inherited silver in their sideboard drawers . . ."
Two women my mother's age nudged each other as if to say "Finally!" while a young woman with expensively monogrammed everythings---purse, tote bag, shoes, and earrings---waved her hand, revival-style, in the air and said "Tell it!"
"My people have been summering with other people like them, in the same places for decades . . ."
"Hincty muthafucka," snorted a man near me, shaking his head in disgust.
"My people are not ashamed to have servants, and they know what to do with them . . ."
Uncertain looks all around.
"In short, my people have not been discussed by mainstream America, which has no idea we exist. Which is why I wrote Chosen People: I want America to know that we are here. I want us to take our rightful place in American society. I want people with money and taste and breeding to stop hiding these assets and to be proud of them. We should be proud: We are special. We are different. We are chosen. And now is our time to shine."
The room broke into vigorous applause from the people who felt strongly as Simp did. Others kept their hands in their pockets, frowning. Some people shook their heads, as if they couldn't believe what they were hearing. And about four folks simply got up and left.
During all this, a white magazine journalist for the local monthly was scribbling furiously into his notebook. Clearly he'd never met or heard from anyone like JSL Hastings, Jr., and was fascinated.
"Now, I could go on for hours," Hastings chuckled. "My fiancée---who some of you out here may know; she has an M.D. and a J.D. from Yale and she's a medical correspondent for the Today show---Dr. Sheila Howe?---says I go on all the time. But I'll stop, because I'm sure you have questions, and I'd love to hear them. And answer them."
So saying, he drank some more water, and looked over the rim of his glass at the audience. You could hear chairs squeaking as people shifted.
"Come on, don't be shy! What's on your mind?---Tell me!"
A tall, thin woman rose slowly. She was elegantly dressed, all in beige, with a cream-colored cashmere shawl draped gracefully around her shoulders.
"What I'd like to know, Mr. Hastings, is this: Why?"
He blinked.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Why bring all this up now? We've gone through so much as a people, this is such a hurtful subject for many in our community. Why do you insist on raising it?"
Her voice was well modulated and confident. She was probably in her late sixties. Her gold bracelets jingled softly as she sat again.
"Well, Mrs . . . ?"
"Elton, Grace Elton."
"Oh my God---I cannot believe I'm talking to you, finally!" Simp squeaked. "Does anybody here not know who this is?"
Many people looked at him as if saying "Duh---of course we do." A few people shrugged, confused. They didn't remain unenlightened for long.
"This is the wife of Dr. Howard Elton, one of the premiere civil rights activists in this city. Dr. Elton's father established the first black hospital in Los Angeles. You may be too young to remember any of this---I am, too, actually, but I did my homework: The hospital Dr. Elton senior started is now Los Angeles Municipal Children's Hospital."
Gasps of recognition.
"You're exactly who I wanted to write about in this book!" Simp Hastings chided the woman old enough to be his mother. "You should have let me interview you!"
Mrs. Elton rose again, and looked squarely at him.
"I had no interest in being in your book, Mr. Simpson. Like my late husband, I feel strongly that if we are to move forward as a people, we have to concentrate on what binds us together, not focus on what could tear us apart. This book never should have been written. Or perhaps it should have been written---by someone else. I have no quarrel with a book that outlines the achievements of successful blacks, but this is not that book. This is merely a . . . a shopping list of things to have and to get, and a wretched catalogue of the worst snobberies and sillinesses some of our people insist on displaying. So I have become a Chosen Person: I have chosen to remove myself from any association with it at all. I wish some of the people who had decided otherwise had had second thoughts. And I pity you, Mr. Hastings. You have completely missed the boat on what being black means in this day and age.
"I'm sorry," Grace Elton turned and apologized to those around her; "I'm becoming a little emotional. I wish you all a good evening."
And, wrapping her shawl more closely around her, the chic Mrs. Elton picked up her purse and left to thundering applause.
Simp Hastings wasn't fazed in the least.
"Well," he said, only a smidge huffily, "some people are still in denial about their station in life. Such a pity. She would have been fabulous to include. Other questions?"
It went on for about a half hour, with varying degrees of civility: why had he included So-and-So but not Thus-and-So? Why hadn't he thought to include more cities in the Midwest? Would he consider, ever, doing a history of "the best sororities and fraternities? White folks need to understand we've had these organizations for years . . ." Was it true that he'd signed on as a consultant to a Movie of the Week about life on the East Coast's now-vanished black summer resorts?
After the questions, Simp Hastings signed books for another half hour. Some people bought loads---one for themselves, several as presents. Many people bought them for their children "because they need to know this about us."
Toward the end, a big, burly brother with twists and a Malcolm X T-shirt came up to the signing table, leaned forward and said, softly:
"We should be beyond this shit by now. It's niggers like you that are holding us back. You need to rethink your utility to the community, brother."
The menace in his voice was unmistakable.
"I'll be sure to do that," Simp said blandly as the angry man stalked out of the store.
"What's with him?" wondered Logo Lady, who was having three books signed.
"E-N-V-Y," Simp said, looking at her knowingly. She nodded, and slipped the books into a stylish tote with a big metal G on its front.
Hastings had promised a brief interview after all this was over to both me and the white guy from the city magazine, so we hung around waiting for the last person to receive a signed copy.
Unfortunately for the remaining few, Ashanti had run out of books. Simp had sold seventy-five in thirty minutes.
"Oh no!" one disappointed customer moaned. "I'd wanted to give one to my mother for her birthday."
"We're getting another shipment in two days," the store owner assured her.
"My mother's birthday is tomorrow," the woman said stonily.
The owner retreated to the cash register, muttering something about "last-minute Negroes who think they can just throw a present together when their mama's birthday is the same day, every year."
Disappointed Customer rolled her eyes at him.
"Know what? I think I have a few extra in the back of my car," Simp said. "Let me go out and look, and if I do, they're yours."
"Oh, would you? Thank you! Do I make the check out to you?"
"Yes," he called as he walked out into the misty night air. "I'll be right back."
Either he had a huge trunk or he was having trouble finding the books, because after ten minutes, Simp Hastings hadn't returned.
"Maybe he's out having a smoke," someone suggested.
"Or making a call on his cell phone."
"Or," said the bookstore owner, "he can't see. Those rental cars are notorious for leaving off as many of the essentials as possible. I'll bring him a flashlight."
He was back in forty-five seconds, looking ashen.
"Call the police---now!" he snapped to his startled cashier.
The few of us left in the store looked up.
"Something bad has happened," the bookstore owner said tersely. "Nobody go outside."
Which meant, of course, that everyone immediately did.
Logo Lady started screaming at once. I pushed her aside to look, and wished I hadn't.
There, on the ground, promised books in his outstretched hand, was James Simpson Lee Hastings, Jr., wearing an ear to ear grin.
On his neck.
To Haiti or To Hell
BY ALEXS D. PATE
Arrow stood on the bow of the Starry Eye as it hit the breakwater. He felt powerful standing there. If it would have borne his weight, he'd have stood on the very tip of the bowsprit. If he could, he'd stand there with his shirt open, his large brown chest with its thick nest of kinky coils the only protection from the salt spray, and ride the rolling power of the water below him. But even from this place, even sliding along the tranquil waters of this Tortuga Bay, he could feel the gentle bucking and bobbing of the ship as they approached port.
He was ready to touch dry land. Much had happened since he'd last stepped foot ashore, and he had the booty to prove it. And although his crew was tense, he knew they were also satisfied that their adventures had returned a profit. Brethren of the coast, they were. Scallywags all. Arrow didn't like the word "pirate," and refused to let that word be used in his presence. But regardless of what he called them, he knew what they were. They were out for themselves.
Luckly, Arrow also knew who he was. If you made a mistake and crossed his path in free and open waters, then you'd better have a very fast ship or an army hidden in your hull. He straightened his crisscrossed leather sashes so that they intersected at the center of his chest, just below the cut in the neck of his shirt. Affixed on these sashes was a collection of razor-sharp throwing knives. Twenty in all. And no one could throw knives as quickly and accurately as Arrow. That was how he'd gotten his name. He threw knives with an archer's skill. But faster. So fast that he could pepper a group of ten or twelve men with those darts in an eye's blink. So fast that men who witnessed his skill often turned on their heels. In shipboard fights, when he joined boarding parties, he could stand in one place and cause the ruin of a third of a small ship's company. Arrow would also carry and use his firearm, but by the time he got to his pistol, there would already be a handful of dead men lying about. He was the Black Arrow. A knife throwing terror who now sailed on his fastest ship yet, the Starry Eye.
Arrow turned aft and headed amidships, ordering sails dropped and the anchor readied. Their journey was over. His strong voice danced about the decks, over the trouble he could feel brewing. Yes, they had come into some fortune and the crew was happy about that. But last night after they'd divided up the booty and each man received his share, and before the rum keg was opened, Arrow had announced his plans to sail to St. Domingo after a short stay in Tortuga. He knew they were uneasy about it, given the rumors about the revolution that was coming there.
But there had been no way to have a deliberation about that then. Everyone had been too excited to be sailing into the port the next morning. They were almost giddy as the shares were divided. That spontaneous ceremony had graduated into a carnage of rum, petty fights, and loud singing. Now even he felt a little light-headed in the midday sun. He was ready for a good meal, some drink, and a standing bed. And he would present no strong argument to the first pretty woman who offered to join him there.
His loins stirred with a force only a woman could tame. He looked forward to the surrender his body was determined to make.
As with the end of every voyage he'd taken, there was a natural sadness that overtook the ship when the next port was sighted. Yes, everyone wanted to hit shore. Everyone wanted the same things, and most of those things were found on land. To the seaman dreams exist on land. The only reason to be engaged in the business of piracy was to get money so that life on land was better. Well, that wasn't entirely true. There were some, whom Arrow knew, who loved the sea more than anyone or anything else. On land, these men were hopeless drunks or beat-down husbands. But once the ship was under way they became crackerjack shipmates. Foisting and heaving and battling at the slightest need. But that wasn't what had driven Arrow to the sea, wasn't what had pushed him to the ostensible command of his crew of sixty-seven men. Oh, he loved the sea. He did. But it was a lucky thing that he loved it. He was there because it was the only place in the entire world where he actually was free.
No, he didn't just feel free, he was really free on his ship with his men. He'd once been a slave. A man of bondage. He shuddered whenever he remembered it. For nearly twenty years he'd been nothing more than a thinking work animal. But providence had intervened. Or more accurately, it was the meeting of providence and preparation. Arrow, then known as Luke Dunly, had, under the tuteladge of an uncle on the same plantation, developed a skill in knife throwing. He practiced every minute he could behind the outer ring of slave quarters. He'd knifed up the back of so many shacks people took to pleading with him to practice farther out in the woods. And then, one night as he was sneaking back to the men's quarters, three of his friends had dashed past him. He'd called to them, but they hadn't even turned around. So he'd taken off after them. After about twenty strides, one named Jingo had stopped and faced Arrow.
"Boy, get back."
"Where y'all goin'?"
"We'se gonna freedom." With that Jingo had turned and taken off again. Arrow had just stood there listening as their footfalls disappeared into the woods. And then he'd heard new footsteps and realized he would be taken for a runaway. And just as this thought had formed in his head, he'd seen Breathin' Heavy, the overseer's bloodhound, come galloping down the path. He'd instinctively brought Breathin' Heavy down with one of the two knives he had in his hand. And then he too had taken flight along the same route as those who'd gone before. The point where preparation and providence came together.
That was a bit more than five years ago. How things had changed. He'd found his way to the sea. They said it was the water that had brought him here. Maybe water could take him away. And it had, in a way. He now knew that Africa was on the other side of the world and he wasn't sure that's where he wanted to go. He had six Africans in his crew. Pulled them from a slave ship on a previous voyage and offered them a place. He always offered black men a choice. They could join him or they could try to make their own way. Most chose to be let go, not realizing that on this side of the world, when a white man wanted a black man he almost just had to claim him. He never saw or at least recognized any of those he set free. But ten had stayed with him. Four of them had died, two in battle, two from sickness.
Fortune had brought him to the Caribbean and now the Caribbean was his fortune. He plied it like the best of his ilk.
There was no feeling like being out on the high seas, trying to command movement when the sea itself had such a great will. An overwhelming will. No maps and all the instinct in the world could not save you from an angry sea bent on your destruction.
And he'd not sailed them in peace. Far from it. Arrow and his crew had taken two ships on this voyage. The last being the ship he was now putting into port, the Starry Eye. When he'd ousted its English captain, a Mister Downs, he'd asked politely if the good captain minded if he rechristened her. And of course Downs, seeing clearly that he was at a large disadvantage joyfully assented.
"Yes, yes . . ." He spat, trying to smile docilely, "Please sir, if I may insist. Name her as you will."
At which moment, Arrow graciously swept his upper body forward, bowing at the waist, uncovering his hat in the manner of the fine European gentlemen he'd had the great pleasure of knowing. And he'd known them all. From royalty to the lowest Jack Tar he knew them. He'd been a slave to one. And now he was teaching them the wrongs of their ways. They could no longer keep him down. Not the Black Arrow.
Arrow leaned close to the puffy face of Captain Downs, "I see by ya clothes that you be a gentleman, sir. And by your manner, of which I do approve, sir, I would love to accommodate your request for leniency, sir." They were in Down's quarters. Arrow, Downs and Dirty Bill who was Arrow's quartermaster and de facto, the ship's mediator and dispenser of justice. Dirty Bill was completely loyal to Arrow, seeing as how it was him who'd saved his life more than once and who'd taken him on in the first place. But, as was usual when Arrow was present, Dirty Bill stood back, calmly, watching.
"I truly would like to see a fine gentleman like yo'self to be free to strut about with those fine clothes and all the things you dearly love. I truly would. But you see, I must . . . you see," Arrow stopped abruptly and turned his back on Downs. He walked toward Dirty Bill, whose sun burned, muscled face in the shadows looked demon-like to Arrow. His eyes, dark from the previous night's celebration, stared blankly ahead of him. Not really looking at Arrow. He knew what was about to happen. He knew Arrow had no choice. Poor Captain Downs was to meet his destiny in the form of the Main's most notorious colored pirate captain. Arrow could no more let the good Captain live than throw his gold in the drink.
With a sudden swoosh, Arrow whirled around, in the same motion unloosing one of his blades and still, even to Dirty Bill---who'd seen this same motion so many times he'd could never account for them all---in the very same movement of torso and arms sent that same blade into Down's heart. The man slumped immediately. Arrow continued his turn until he was again facing Dirty Bill. "You see, sir, I must increase the fear of me. I must make it legendary or I will not be respected. I did not ask for this life and its needs. I truly did not. Tell him Bill. Tell him that if this world were different, I'd be different too. Isn't that true Bill?"
"Aye, Cap'n." Dirty Bill stood perfectly still.
"But, forgive the immodesty, sir. I am the Black Arrow, and in this world of legendary thieves and brigands of all sorts, fakers mostly, men of limited skill whose reputations seem so great in the pubs when I goes to 'em and hear about all these exploits and how many ships they takes and all this fancy talk, I figured I had to follow suit if you know what I mean to say. But," Arrow tuned now to the dead captain, "I want to thank you for your clothes which I will take good care of and especially those boots you got on. Yes. Well, Bill, get Mobley and Frenchie to clean this place up. We got permission to rename this lady." And with that he walked by Dirty Bill and went above decks to survey the loot.
And now he was returning to a port in which his safe passage and accommodation were all but assured. The gold and jewels the ship carried, even after the split, along with bolts of materials and other sundry items, would be more than enough to grease the palms of various officials and provide for a little relaxation before they took to the seas again. Besides there were four other ships of questionable registry already sitting in the harbor. Tortuga looked to be busy with the brethren of the sea.
The crew had decided before the drinking started on the previous night to take two long boats into port, leaving behind a skeleton crew for protection. It was also decided that Arrow would be in the first boat so as to make the appropriate arrangements. They'd not been to Tortuga in nearly a half year. And on the Spanish Main, officials changed with the whim of queens and kings thousands of miles away.
Arrow changed into an outfit he'd picked from Captain Downs' locker. His pants were a tough but smooth broadcloth, dyed dark blue. His shirt was a dingy white made from the same material. It, as were most of the shirts Arrow favored, opened two inches above his navel and flared out to its rather long collars. Over this he flung his knife belts. As he strode briskly past his men in Captain Downs' scuffed, but still quite fine leather boots, Arrow felt a feeling he knew well. He was in fact, the captain. These were his men. Men who he'd fought alongside, ate and drank with and, in moments when someone had to say what to do, commanded. He knew that some of them resented his leadership, but Dirty Bill kept them honest and there had been only a few minor purges. Besides no man aboard the Starry Eye was willing, in his right mind, to go against the Black Arrow.
As he passed through the crew on his way to the ladder to climb down into the boat, he felt strong, prideful. His knives gleamed and showed all of the effort Frenchie had put into the their polish. He was greeted with the rising energy of a sea crazy crew an hour away from the beach.
"Ayyyyyy," Dockson called. "Look at the captain, here. Decked out he is. Tryin to get there 'fore we do, eh Cap'n? Wants 'em all for hisself, he does, dressed like that."
"You'll have your turn, Dockson," Arrow said smiling. Dockson was a tall muscular man, English and mean. Dirty Bill had often reminded Arrow that Dockson might one day prove a threat. But today, Dockson's salt-worn face showed levity. Arrow smiled back. "And if I remember correctly you already have a 'lady' waitin for you. And if I can say it plainly in front of your mates, here, she was a mighty powerful little somethin'." Laughter began to bubble around them.
"Aye, Cap'n you've made your point."
"I thought I might, Dockson, for you're much more the scoundrel everywhere but here. And since I go ashore before you do, if I were you, I'd keep my trap shut and go in peace when your turn comes." That was Arrow at his best. And his men appreciated it. He could give as good as he got.
"Now you dregs," Arrow went on, now in full voice, "We've come a full circle. And we've got the profits of it in our belts. But do not let land lull you to sleep. We will not grow root here." Arrow craned his neck to see to the back of the group. "How long will it take you to drink up this here loot, Bracken? How long?"
Everyone turned to look at Bracken, an Irishman who could drink a stone to sand. He was propped against a storage locker, barely able to stand after last night's binge. "Well Captain, after I settles a few previously made notes I won't have enough to make it to more than two-three months. At least best I can gather with my head spinnin' the way it is."
Arrow laughed. "Hear that, mates? Three months. We all know that if we stay here that long, you'll be dead, Bracken. And we won't have that will we?" There were shouts of agreement. "No, we will be under weigh in a fortnight. So, stay out of jail. Try to keep from getting married. And keep your legs seaworthy because before you know it we'll be fightin' the swells."
The crew cheered its agreement and the first boat was loaded and disembarked.
Four hours later, Arrow was seated in the shadows of a rum house, stomach full, head spinning, picking at his nails with one of his knives. But he was only half focused on his fingers, his gaze kept cutting across the hazy room. From one group of sailors playing cards, to the games of other sailors, to the women who bounced about like buoys in a storm---from one man to the next---to the sullen loners, like himself who were content to drink themselves into empty moments of empty mindlessness. It was odd how they could come ashore in the afternoon and by night have steadied their legs well enough to feel some semblance of normalcy. It was also strange the way the crews of the various ships knew each other, had fought with or in some instances against each other, and yet there was a sense of family between them. Although most were European---Frenchmen, Englishmen, Dutchmen, Norse---there were a smattering of runaways, Indians, Caribs, Africans, even a few Asians jammed into the tavern. And they understood at least one thing that bound them all together. They knew that each one of them depended on the seas and the weakness of the Spanish or the arrogance of the British merchants for their livelihood.
"Cap'n." It was Dirty Bill suddenly standing off to Arrow's side. He waited there, asking with his body for permission to sit.
Barely turning his head toward him, Arrow nodded his assent. "How goes it, Bill? Where were ye?" Arrow was a self-educated man. Most of his book learning came from one slave or another who'd had the courage to defy the law and teach him. He knew how to read and did when he could find something to read. And even more significantly he could write. Not many of his mates could claim that. But when he spoke, you wouldn't necessarily figure he'd grown up on a southern plantation. More likely you'd think he'd been an urchin in the streets near the docks of London. Arrow had learned early among the pirates, that the more like them he talked, the better they treated him.
"The Flyin' Fish. There's more of our men there than here. Cap'n Flagg's crew is there besides. Much merriment over there. More women and ah . . . a looser sort than here."
"Ah." Arrow could imagine the bacchanal that was probably in progress. He hoped that he'd be able to reassemble his crew when the time came. "Nothin like one of our heathens loose in the world with his pockets full of gold. Nothin's safe, Bill. Not a farthing or a silk slip."
"Aye, that's for sure." He paused, Arrow could feel him trying to decide whether or not to say something. And then, before Arrow could command him to do so, Dirty Bill continued. "Ah . . . Cap'n, there's some men that's a little worried about what you said last night before we got our shares. . . . about going to St. Domingo to help those nig . . . ah. . . . to . . . well . . . just about going there."
Arrow was motionless. He'd known when he'd told them of his intentions there might be disagreement. He held his rigid pose for a bit, then leaned his chair back against the wall. Most of what it meant to be captain of a pirate ship was the ability to keep the crew together. They did nearly everything by majority decision. He was captain when there was a battle. He was captain when it came time to chose leeward or windward approach or when it came to the decision to spare someone's life or not. But for the decisions concerning the actual business of the ship, everyone wanted to have their say. It was his chore to listen and make his case. The proof that he had their ears and their hearts was in the fact that they always agreed to do what he wanted. Now he wanted to go to Haiti to help the black people there in their fight for freedom. He wanted to go because he could see the beginning of the end of slavery there. There, in Santo Domingo, was a powerful force just coming together under the leadership of Jean Jacques Desalines. There were stories floating about that black sailors were making their way there, especially runaways, because a liberated Haiti would probably provide legal relief from slavery.
"So, they's worried are they?" Arrow asked finally.
"We are white men, Cap'n. What in the world we want to go there for? We're out for the loot. If we wanted to fight for the sake of fightin' we'd have stayed in Her Majesty's Royal Navy, prison though it is. No we come out for ourselves. For the gold and the chance to get some fortune in this paradise."
Arrow looked up at him. "Sit down, Bill." He watched the hulking man as he labored into the chair. "Now you know I'd cut off my arms for my men. You know that."
"I do, Cap'n. I know that. But . . ."
"And I ain't white, Bill."
"Aye, that's a fact."
"But I am the captain, unless something's happened I don't know about."
"No Cap'n, you still Captain."
"That's good Bill. That's real good. Because when we weigh anchor I'm bound for Haiti."
"But Cap'n, it's just gonna make . . ."
"Worried? Scared?"
"Not scared, Cap'n. Not scared. We ain't scared of nothin'. It's just . . . well . . . as you said, you as sure as God is black and they don't hold that against you because you served our former captain well and you've shown your true colors to us on many occasions. But that don't make us blind. These islands is full of blacks. You the only one I ever met on the open water.
"You know yourself, Bill, that there are many black pilots."
"Port pilots, yes, but ship captains?" He sucked his teeth. "I been all over the Caribbean and I ain't never seen no other black man but you at the helm of a ship."
"Well, seein' as how I have this great distinction, Bill, as your captain I order you to tell me what the devil this is all about."
"You see, Cap'n, up to now, the fact that you're a . . . ah . . . black wasn't a concern. You did good by us and you're one of the best sailors I know. Able. Very able. But now, you're askin' us to give comfort to those niggers in Haiti and that don't sit well." He paused again, relieved to have said it. "It don't sit well at all. Where's the profit in that?"
"When we took the Drury, loaded with slaves, and I say let them go or let them join us . . ."
"We ain't slavers, Cap'n. We didn't want nothin' to do with that. That was fine by us. Let 'em go. Some white man would kill or claim them, anyway. That's just the way the world is. That's not our business. We're"---again he paused, searching for a word when he knew all the time what he had to say---"we're pirates."
"Mind you." Arrow put an edge in voice.
"But we are, Cap'n. I know you don't like that word, but that's what we are. We're pirates, not mercenaries. Besides our fellow brothers are starting to laugh at us. There were two fights over at the Flyin' Fish before I left."
"Laughing? Why?"
"They say we're being led by a monkey. 'Captain Monkey' they called you, and the one who said it paid dearly. But the laughter was still there."
"I see." Arrow sighed. "And the crew is affected by this talk?"
"Aye."
"Bill, that ship out there is mine. Those men are mine. You," he righted his chair and now leaned into Dirty Bill's face, "You are mine." Their eyes locked. In Bill's he saw, for the first time a fear. At first he wasn't sure what the fear was, but as he stared into those eyes, Arrow could feel the meaning. Dirty Bill was afraid that they were approaching a parting of the way. And then the fear loosened and Dirty Bill smiled.
"I am Cap'n Arrow. I am yours for the time. And I don't want that to change."
Arrow slowly brought his strong right arm up to Dirty Bill's neck, his charcoal fingers encircling the thick throated man. "I can squeeze the life right out of your empty head." Dirty Bill tried to say something, but Arrow, swiftly brought his other hand up and put in it in front of Dirty Bill's mouth. "You needn't utter one more word, Bill. Not one more or you won't ever say momma. Or Jesus or anything. I have not killed and plundered this small world, nor served our fine Captain Threatcher 'til his untimely death with every breath I had to be bullied by you or any man. White or whatever. Now, I love you Bill, like a brother. And I will die for you. But I demand the same. Or I'll kill you right here. Right now. Do we see eye to eye?"
Dirty Bill, trying to keep from gasping, nodded his head. Arrow loosened his grip. "I weren't talkin mutiny Cap'n. I am yours . . ."
At that moment a crowd of men burst through the doors bringing, it seemed, a thundercloud of noise and tension with them. It was then that Arrow realized that many in the room had been watching him and Bill the entire time. They'd seen his black hands around Bill's white throat. But before he could fully consider the meaning in all this, Dockson stood before him with many of his crew and some sundry others crowding up behind.
"Cap'n, we ain't interested in goin to Haiti. That's not our fight."
Arrow leaned back again. He waited a moment and then asked very softly, "Am I your captain?"
Dockson was taken off guard. The talk at the Flyin' Fish had pumped him and he'd forgotten who Arrow really was. "Yes, you are my captain. But we . . ."
"Don't want to follow a nigger? Do you mean to say that you will not be led by a nigger? A black man?"
"No! Cap'n . . . I mean yes. . . . I ahhh . . . I . . . We have followed you this far. But . . ."
"This Captain Monkey has gotten too far ahead of himself, taking us into the grip of more monkeys who have forgotten their place? Is this what you mean to say?"
Dockson had broken out in a profuse sweat. He looked around. The red faces behind him flashed all manner of expressions. Some, obviously up for the fight. Some, in full retreat. Seeing this unhinged Dockson even more. He fell silent.
"Monkey talk." Someone in the back shouted. "It ain't right. No white man should take that from that animal." All eyes went in that direction. Standing at the bar were four from the notorious pirate Captain Flagg's crew. To the side of them, maybe ten more of their crew.
"This is private crew business," Dockson shouted to him.
"Aye. I'd believe you if I didn't see a monkey at the helm." Dockson moved in the man's direction. Arrow remained motionless. Dirty Bill stood. It was as if a bell had rung, immediately cutlasses were openly displayed.
"You owe me an apology, brother," Dockson said approaching the man.
"There will be none, my brother. You have lost my respect and someone must put these things aright." He advanced on Dockson. Their steel clashed. Everyone around them located their closest adversary and prepared their defense or offense as the case warranted.
In truth there were two Arrows. One was the Black Arrow, who in a moment or two would kill two men in an instant. The other was the man who was filled with dismay. His struggles were meaningless in a world where other men had to fight for his own right to be a man. And yet, that was precisely why he was bound for Haiti. To fight for other men to be free. At this moment he even loved Dockson. But he was also intensely sad. This was his fight. It was about him. Simply because he was.
Dockson and his opponent had only touched cutlass a few times before Arrow stood and, let fly three knives, felling two of the original four men, including the one who was about to take advantage of Dockson's slow reflexes. They stumbled once and hit the floor. The third knife lodged in another man's thigh. Everyone stopped and looked at Arrow.
"If I had known a name like Captain Monkey, would excite you so I might have taken such a name. Especially if it caused you to fear me. For fear me you should. But, alas, I was limited by my experience. I could only contrive this name, Arrow. So I am Captain Arrow, and if you are lucky and will live to tell of what you've seen and you may say to the lucky hearer of your tale that you once saw the Black Arrow stick this man or that. And that then you saw him sail off under the black flag that is his true color. Off into the horizon with his crew of men who will take no quarter and who will do to their advantage without regard to this primate's heritage."
And with that he walked slowly toward the door, his men forming a wall at his back. "To hell with this," he shouted, "To Haiti or to hell!"
Mirror Image
Six stops. White people got on, then black, some Latinos, a sprinkling of Asians---in the six stops between Brooklyn and Manhattan, the racial composition of my subway train changed six times. Every morning for the past five years, I'd watched this underground metamorphosis, feeling something of a traitor when I got off the train with all the white people at the first stop in Manhattan---Wall Street.
Men with hair slicked stiff and wet-looking from too much gel, in dark suits and ties with tiny symbols of power printed hundreds of times on them, jostled against one another. Expensive silk scarves were knotted at the necks of the few suited women, most of whom looked very driven and very tired. I emerged from the station with them and entered the sweep of people pushed along the financial district's ancient narrow streets. A clear division of power was visible; the men, Wall Street Journals tucked under arms weighted by leather briefcases, strode down the sidewalks, cleaving paths through the gaggles of female secretaries wearing floral dresses, white pantyhose, and sneakers, gossiping and delaying the beginning of another dreary day. There were almost no black men to be seen, even fewer black women.
I was one of the suited women. I tied silk scarves at my neck, pulled my hair back into a neat bun to expose dainty gold hoops, wore nude pantyhose and business suits in neutral colors, skirts no more than two inches above my knee. Briefcase, trench coat, New York Times---I blended in.
My mother taught me how important this is---the art of blending in. I would watch her getting dressed in the morning in designer suits, silk blouses, gold brooches, pearl earrings. In this outfit she would cease to be my mother, instead becoming the Radcliffe B.A., President and CEO of Rose Advertising. It was only when she came home, kicked off the heels, changed into some pants, and put on some old jazz record that she became more accessible. From college on, Mom was always one of a few, the only, or the first black woman; she told me that it wasn't as if no one noticed her, but she'd simply figured out how to dress, speak, and carry herself as if there could be no doubt as to whether or not she actually belonged. I never questioned her---never thought about the consequences of blending in---because she made it seem as if I had no choice.
During my senior year of college, Mom tried her best to convince me to join her at Rose Advertising after I graduated. "It'll be the greatest opportunity in the world. It's your birthright," she insisted. After several months of fruitless visits to the career services office, I almost agreed. But the thought of returning to St. Louis made me keep trying, until I finally convinced a large commercial bank that four years of last minute papers and barely-studied-for exams qualified me to be a research coordinator in their corporate finance division. Eventually Mom agreed that I'd actually found a good job on my own and bought me five suits, ten shirts, three pairs of shoes, and a jewelry box full of appropriately conservative necklaces, earrings, and pins. I added a few of my own touches over the years but never strayed from the basics, and every morning I put on a well-cut, tastefully accessorized suit of armor. At night I came home, took down my hair, turned on the stereo and felt like me again. No one at the office ever saw my toenails painted black, my pierced navel, the circular tattoo in the small of my back depicting the sun in six stages of eclipse.
I arrived at work over half an hour late, soaked with sweat and flustered. After trotting through the streets to the bank, I paused for breath at the massive doors to my building before pushing them open to feel the initial sting of frigid air. The lobby was quiet---9:07am---everyone was already at their desks. I hurried to the Media and Communications department on the 38th floor, furtively walked to my cubicle, and turned on my computer so its dark screen wouldn't betray the fact that I'd just arrived. No such luck. Marie, the only other black senior analyst on the floor, emerged from the ladies room.
"Linda's been looking for you," she said, leaning against my desk. I could smell the strong perfume she had on and hoped it would wear off as the day progressed. Marie reached up, adjusted the scarf tied securely under her chin and ran a hand over her short, careful hair. As usual, not a strand was out of place.
"You know what she wanted?" I asked.
"No idea," Marie bent forward to examine what files I was opening on my hard drive. "I had to tell her that I hadn't seen you all morning."
"Thanks Marie." She must have loved that, I thought as she shrugged and sauntered off. I'd been promoted to senior analyst a few months before her and she'd decided that it was because I'd made sure to befriend the right people, which was only one of the reasons she didn't like me.
I walked down the long hallway, wondering what had convinced the decorator to use only shades of gray: ash-colored carpeting, pearl and taupe cubicles, steel accents. Under the long rows of fluorescent lights humming along the ceiling, the large space looked cold and stony as a mausoleum. On the right, the row of glass-enclosed offices was full, the vice presidents on their phones, bent over their desks or staring at their computers. I'd never caught any of them procrastinating---reading a magazine, staring out of the window. On the left, the secretaries all had coffee on their desks and were talking loudly to one another. As I passed they called out, "What's doing, Dana?" "Cheer up, hump day's the worst." "Hot as shit outside, eh?" "How's that fine man of yours?"
In her glass office, Linda was on the phone but she waved me in and ended her conversation. Her skin was even more sun-tanned than usual, probably from another evening at the tanning salon, and her hair was a brassier shade of blond. She seemed to spend a lot of time and money on her appearance---exercising every day, constantly changing her hairstyle, buying new clothing---but this only accentuated the coarseness of her features, her large pores, her thick, short limbs. She cocked her head and frowned as if reading my mind. I smiled brightly to dispel any doubt that I was thinking anything that wasn't work-related.
"I missed you this morning," she said, now smiling but with slightly raised eyebrows.
"Train trouble."
"Oh that's right. You come in from Brooklyn." To Linda Whitelaw, Brooklyn was too far from the Upper East Side to be considered a part of New York City even though I'd explained to her that my commute rarely took longer than 20 minutes. "Anyway," Linda went on, "I just wanted to check on the Southstar report."
"I'll have it to you before lunch," I said.
"Excellent, Dana. Very good, then." She dismissed me with a wave of her manicured hand.
Back at my desk I flipped the page on my desk calendar to August 28th and, as I had the past three days, made a small red X on the page to indicate the heat wave. Then I picked up a blue pen and wrote 44, then a green 289, and a black 1548. I was often asked what the color coding was but refused to tell. Not that it would have been particularly interesting to anyone other than myself, but it was private, to protect from strangers who would have thought me odd for choosing to make a careful and deliberate record of the weather, days until my birthday, days until my mother's birthday, and days since she died. Why would anyone understand why the calendar was such a minefield for me? The beginning of the year was horrible because the holidays in November and December, which I spent by myself or with somebody else's family, depressed me well into January. Valentine's Day was usually anti-climactic. Then I'd get a respite of a few months until Mother's Day in May. The summer would crawl by, my mother's birthday and the anniversary of her death having started it off in June. A few months until my birthday at the beginning of October, then the holidays would start all over again. I'd simply given in to this cycle and written in the painful events as official holidays.
I slowly turned the pages of the calendar to June 3rd. Four years ago on this date I went to my mother's funeral in St. Louis, and this was the last time I'd seen the house that I'd lived in from kindergarten through high school---first with my mother and father, then Mom alone, and finally Mom and Gerald. After the funeral I'd flown back to New York and tried to forget what I'd left behind. Now I had thirteen years of belongings to sort out and I couldn't put it off any longer. I bought a plane ticket to St. Louis for that weekend, then called Gerald and left a message on his answering machine. "Hi, it's Dana. Sorry about yesterday. I can't ever seem to be normal talking about Mom. I'm coming in Friday night but I'll just take a cab from the airport."
Just before lunch I gave Linda my credit report, which she handed back with only a few minor changes to my five year projections. The figures were a little too low and she complained that I was always too harsh with my future predictions. "Even for a bank there's no need to be quite this severe. Although I applaud your research," she told me.
Linda had a point; I was absolutely thorough and I cut no slack, even for longtime clients. I picked over annual reports looking for signs of deception. I studied Moody's and Value Line analyses for any perceivable weaknesses. I looked for potential causes of industry fluctuation, indicators that the company could lose competitive advantage, character flaws in the principal officers. I was relentless; this was the most enjoyable part of my job. I'm a Libra, the balancer, which, when you look at life away from the office, makes sense. But when I did a credit report, I felt my astrological sign was a fluke, an accident of my having been born two weeks late. I was meant to be a Virgo, the analyzer, and if not for my pre-natal stubbornness, my desire to stay put inside my mother's safe womb, I would have been.
It had taken me all afternoon to spread the balance sheet and income statement numbers again and I'd just given Linda the new projections when Will called me. "We still on?" he asked.
"Yup. I'm psyched to try this place."
"So you still want Vietnamese?" he asked.
I sighed, "I said I was psyched."
"You have been known to change your mind lately."
"What are you talking about?"
"Remember last Thursday? We left the first bar because the crowd was too conservative, the next because the people were too young, and the last because you saw that woman you hated from college."
"That was different. We're just talking about dinner, here. Besides, it was fun."
"That night was supposed to be just drinks. And Leo and Maya didn't seem to like schlepping all over the City."
"That's my word. You're copying again."
"As long as we don't get to the restaurant and have you decide you feel like pizza."
"Okay, fine. But Will, you always talk like me. Schlep sounds so weird coming out of your mouth." I could hear him light a cigarette, exhale with a faint whistle. "And you smoke every time we talk on the phone," I said.
"Now that bugs you too?" I could hear him blowing more smoke although I could tell he'd turned his head away from the phone to do it.
"So what time?" Will continued, ignoring my lack of response.
"Seven, out front."
"Cool."
I replaced the phone and reached a hand up to press my fingers against my rigid neck muscles, closed my eyes for a moment when the phone rang again. I figured it was Will since he'd often call me back immediately after I'd hung up the phone, saying, "Hey, Dana. Forgot to mention . . . ," and proceeded to tell me something that definitely could have waited.
I picked up.
"Dana. Sean. Guess what?"
It was exciting, still exciting, to hear his voice. "How could I, Sean. I never know what you're going to say these days," I said carefully.
"Oh come on. You underestimate yourself, as usual."
"Underestimate?" I asked incredulously.
"No matter. Anyway I had to call you with the big news."
"All right. What is it?"
"Okay, so Pace came by this morning. Pace, you recall, is the Director of Research."
"I recall."
"Okay, so Pace came by to give me my quarterly review. And then he offered me the plum spot of vice president."
"Which you readily accepted. Congratulations."
"Declined. Know why?" he asked.
"I'm sure this is going to be good," I said, but was not at all surprised when Sean proceeded to tell me he'd be joining a venture capital firm specializing in telecommunications companies. I used to wonder why research didn't bore him more since he was such a risk-taker.
"You're going to love playing with fire every day," I told him.
"That's one way of looking at venture capital. I prefer to think of it as bringing a young company to life. Helping it through its infancy."
"Infancy? God, you sound like a proud parent. Why didn't you think of this before?"
"Oh, but I did. I had it all planned."
"And I thought you hated to plan."
"That was before." He seemed unsure of what to say next.
"You mean before your recent maturation," I said before he could continue. "The whole, 'But Dana, I'm truly ready to be an adult, now' thing." There was a long pause during which I realized I should get off the phone before the conversation descended into the usual recriminatory bullshit. "Look, I should go. Linda's been on me lately."
"I know you must be getting a kick out of this, but I'm really quite serious, about everything," Sean said before I could hang up.
"Just tell me why I should believe you?" I asked.
"There's no good reason," he sighed. "You have no good reason to trust me. You've already expressed that."
I could hear the frustration in his voice, but I didn't care. "What did you expect?" I asked. "For me to drop everything and get back together with you just because you say you're ready to be an adult? Because you think you're ready to commit to me?"
"Just admit it. You still love me," he said. "You know we belong together."
I wished I could tell him, 'No. No, I don't,' and mean it enough so that he'd believe me and leave me alone. But I couldn't. Instead, I asked, "Whatever happened to Maureen?"
"I told you, already. That was just a temporary, meaningless thing."
"And you think I'm permanent?"
"Yes."
I gave a short laugh, more of a nervous snort, "I just wonder what would happen if I called your bluff."
"Then we'd go ring shopping this weekend."
I caught my breath, immediately hoping he didn't hear. When Sean and I were together I'd fantasized about him on bended knee, ring box in hand.
"I can't talk about this now," I whispered. "I've got a bunch of work to do before I meet Will for dinner."
"I won't keep you, then," he said quickly. "Have fun with Will."
"Hey, congratulations on the new job."
"Thanks," Sean said and hung up.
He'd sounded so annoyed I almost regretted letting him go on that note. His calls had been regular enough over the past few months that I'd come to expect them---maybe even depend on them---even though by the end of almost every conversation I'd been pissed off, more angry than I'd felt since we'd broken up. After the shock of Sean's betrayal had worn off, I'd found myself reluctantly missing him. I would have even taken him back if he'd groveled just a little bit; I wouldn't have wanted to, but I'd have been helpless in the face of whatever meager remorse he offered. When it became obvious that he wasn't going to come back on his knees, I'd been furious; nothing had ever made me feel so strongly, not even my mother's death. Then, after a long while, I'd felt nothing; that's when I'd thought I was over him, totally safe. Will and I had met just as my anger was fading into numbness and I'd credited him with that final transition. Now that Sean was affecting me so deeply again, I didn't know what to think.
As usual, Will and I met on the street in front of the bank. I loved to see him through the throng of wrinkled suits, sneakered women, and tired faces. Will was always dressed in black. It was his trademark, the monochromatic uniform of downtown chic. Once I'd bought him some bright shirts to wear under a black sweater or jacket---lime, indigo, orange---and he hated them, although he never told me. To be truthful, he was right. Any departure from black---except the occasional brown or charcoal gray---made him look oddly childish; in those loud shirts he'd seemed vulnerable and needy, but in dark colors will looked vaguely gangsterish, someone to be taken seriously---an appearance I liked because it allowed me to pretend there was real toughness in his personality. The bright shirts gradually slunk and slouched to the back of his closet.
I'd met Will a year and a half before in a wine tasting class which he, the lunch chef at a well-known Midtown restaurant, was taking so he'd be able to contribute ideas to the wine list. I had enrolled in the class looking for a new adventure, something I hadn't yet tried, and against the crowd of white faces and white button-down shirts, Will seemed to be just what I'd come for. He was wearing jeans, heavy boots and a T-shirt---all black, of course, and in the class of thirty, we were the only black people. My mother taught me that if I was somewhere where there were only a few other black folks and you happen to run across one, always be friendly. So, I'd smiled at him---not too hard to do since he was really attractive. Seeing that he wasn't going to make the first move, I introduced myself.
Naturally, Will remembered everything we were taught in that class. I, meanwhile, could no longer recall the difference between Pouilly-Fumé and Pouilly-Fuissé, any of the wine-making regions of Germany, even the major red and white grape varieties.
During the first few months we hung out he bought me elaborate meals in places where his restaurant colleagues would have the waiters would bring us free appetizers and desserts; he knew romantic spots I'd never been to like the Cloisters and the roof garden at the Met; he lit my cigarettes before his own and tagged along to all my favorite clubs and bars, ordering martinis and looking elegant in his black turtleneck and slacks. And I fell in love, fast. Only later did I discover that he wore black not because of some rebellious desire to look dangerous, but because it was the easiest way to appear "cool," and that what I had mistaken for fearlessness and strength was actually steadfastness and competence.
Will never could reconcile the contradictions in his life: his Daddy's-a-doctor-Mommy's-a-lawyer strict upbringing with his spectator's fascination with downtown culture; his Ivy League education with his desire to work with his hands, to knead bread and massage spices onto chicken and de-bone salmon for a living; his black heritage with his mostly white neighborhood, schools, and profession. His hands shook slightly when he met new people and he followed me around when we were in a crowd; he was afraid to challenge himself and refused to pursue opening his own restaurant; he would try his best to avoid any kind of confrontation; and he hated to be alone, would do anything to avoid the emotional demands of silence. I knew I shouldn't judge him so harshly for having become diffident and quiet. It was just hard to comprehend why he seemed to shrink smaller and smaller the larger his world became, why his experiences didn't make him more insightful and diplomatic, confident in most situations instead of unsure.
One hand in his pocket, the other dangling a cigarette, shoulders sloping forward, Will waited---on time, as usual. I stood in the lobby and looked at him---his back facing me, his delicate features and smooth redbrown skin only visible when he glanced sidelong at the doors. I watched him flick the cigarette into the street, straighten the silver buckle on his belt, affect boredom. He projected confidence to the casual onlooker, and seeing this from a distance made him attractive to me. I walked out into Will's arms and breathed in his familiar smell of smoke and cinnamon gum.
The Vietnamese restaurant was nearly empty and the noise we made bursting through the door---laughing, the paper bag that held the wine crinkling, my heels clacking on the cheap linoleum floor---filled the spare room. We ordered a huge dinner of steamed rice crepes with chicken and shrimp, hot and sour seafood broth, green papaya salad with grilled beef, and red curried prawns in coconut milk; Will wanted to sample different dishes because he was looking for one more spice to enliven a coulis he meant to serve over striped bass.
"I checked out some restaurants on Atlantic Avenue because I thought I'd go North African. You know, use some harissa. But that whole thing's been played out," he said, dipping a spoon into the Banh Hoi sauce. "I was also thinking maybe thyme---so classic it's unexpected. Right? But then lemongrass or basil and lime could be interesting. Nice and light."
I watched him, saying nothing, having nothing to say. I'd never been that particular about food. I'd inherited my mother's long limbs, but not her curves; instead, I got my father's fast metabolism along with his terrible eating habits: scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast and a hamburger and fries for dinner one day, no breakfast and cereal for dinner the next. Mom would try to get me to eat better, but I always fell back on my old habits. It wouldn't matter how much I ate, I always looked the same---limber from dance class, but way too gangling with no butt or breasts at all, earning me the nickname "firepole" from the none-too-sympathetic boys in my school. Since Mom died I cared even less about food, eating only when I had to, and then efficiently, with little passion.
"Good idea," I said.
"Or something totally different," He kept on, oblivious to my disinterest. "Blacken it or maybe pan-fried with garlic mashed potatoes?"
"I don't understand this whole comfort food trend." I took up my knife and fork, cut a piece of broccoli in half. "I mean, why go out for mashed potatoes?"
"People want to feel at home everywhere. Part of the whole cocooning thing."
"Well, that's exactly how I do not want to feel."
"Maybe if you ate more." Will gestured at my plate; he'd served me and the beef and prawn were piled dangerously high atop a mountain of rice. "You're so skinny."
"You never complained about my body before."
"And I never would. I just want to feed you."
"Because you're a chef."
"Maybe." He paused, wiped his hands then touched my knee under the table. "Spend this weekend at home with me?"
I'd forgotten to tell him about St. Louis, or maybe was avoiding talking about it. "My stepfather called yesterday at the crack of dawn to say he was selling the house and could I please come and get my things," I told him. "I'm leaving Friday."
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I meant to."
"You always say that, and you still don't tell me stuff."
"Whatever, Will." His mannerisms---the constant little shrugs, the way most of his statements ended in questions, the way he jiggled his right foot---suddenly began to get on my nerves. Irrationally, I knew, I was angry. I could always feel myself being impatient and unreasonable with Will, but usually couldn't stop the comments from slipping from my mouth like noxious wisps of smoke. "Look, I'm just a little pissed off that I have to deal with this right now."
"Okay, but don't take it out on me."
"Well, don't make everything about you."
Will shrugged again. "You're right," he said.
"I guess, I just can't believe it. I still have a key to that house."
"It has been four years since your Mom died," he said, ripping the tail off a prawn and taking a bite.
"And?" I asked drawing out the word and raising my eyebrow---a warning sign that he should have recognized.
"Why shouldn't he sell it?"
I rolled my eyes and leaned forward to whisper, "Is it so hard to understand that I don't want strangers to live in the house I grew up in?"
Will shrank back a little in his seat. "Nobody wants random people in their childhood bedrooms, but it's not like you ever go back, or have very much with you from St. Louis, for that matter," he said.
"That doesn't mean I never want to again."
"Maybe Gerald doesn't know that. Anyway, don't you think he has a right to move on?"
"A right to move on? Are you saying that he has a right to sell my mother's shit and move to Rio with the money?" I couldn't coax the hardness out of my voice.
"I only meant that Gerald might not be able to get on with his life living there. Why read everything you don't want to hear into what I say?"
"Because you sound just like Gerald."
"I'm on your side, Dana." Will waited for me to say something. "I'll go with you," he offered.
"What do you mean?"
"To St. Louis."
"No," I said quickly and regretted my tactlessness. Will ran a hand over the top of his short hair in the direction that he'd trained it to lie against his head---back to front. There was always a part at the top of his head separating the hair he brushed toward his neck from the hair he brushed forward. Thinking of that vulnerable line of pale scalp, of Will in the morning brushing his half inch of hair flatter and flatter, I couldn't be mad any longer; I was only irritated, and very tired.
"I'm going to be rushing around packing and there'd be nothing for you to do. I'll be fine." I reached for his hand. His skin was soft, his palm vaguely moist, and I curled my fingers through his. Will couldn't come with me. His very presence---solidity and calm fortified by his large stable family, happily married parents, a brother and two sisters and too many cousins, grandparents, and aunts and uncles to name---would be enough to remind me that I was in my childhood home with no blood relatives, packing my things to take away and never return.
"I'm sorry," I said after a minute. "You know how I get when I talk about this."
"No, actually. No, I don't." Will withdrew his hand and called for our check.
The heat settled heavy over the City. Still, I wanted to be outside for awhile. I left Will at a subway station and began to walk west through Chinatown. The twisted streets were filled with shops, open and crowded despite the late hour, and busy restaurants whose names promised "Golden Life" and "Prosperity" or, at the very least, "Lovely Food." I walked by stooped women carrying three and four orange plastic bags of groceries, teenage girls with shy faces and too much eye makeup, and groups of boys wearing black leather jackets and combat boots, until I emerged from Chinatown's convoluted center. The streets widened. Yellow lines on the sidewalk demarcated truck loading areas on both sides of the street as people, shops, and tenements buildings gave way to warehouses and long-closed industrial supply stores secured by locked metal gates. I was at the edge of TriBeCa, about to turn south toward the subway on Chambers Street, when I stopped at a street corner. I felt totally alone, not lonely so much as isolated, and decided that I wasn't quite ready to go back to Brooklyn.
I made a right instead of a left and ended up at the bar of a Mexican restaurant on Franklin Street with a pack of Camels and a margarita sitting in front of me. Some guy two stools down lit my first cigarette. He was no more than twenty years old and looked exhausted and underfed. His hands twitched as he held up the match and I could see his dark-ringed eyes blinking too fast, the pupils only pinpoints. I swung away from him to face the dining room. It's 11:00 on a Wednesday, I thought, I ought to be in bed, covers up over my head. At the same time I was glad not to be waiting in a hot subway station for a train that would take me back to my dark apartment.
The dining room was half full, the tables holding mostly empty plates and glasses, the diners lingering over one last drink; I wanted to go sit at one of the tables, to blend in with the crowd of people who obviously did not set their alarms for 6:30am every weekday morning. Then across the room a guy wearing a business suit held up a martini in a toast to his dinner companion who I couldn't see from my stool. A sturdy-looking man with wavy auburn hair, ruddy cheeks, a blunt nose, and broad shoulders. Sean. He'd never ordered a martini in the two years that he and I were together, but it looked like Sean. Though I hadn't seen him in over a year, my stomach clenched and I finished my margarita in one gulp. I reminded myself, almost murmuring aloud, that it was different now---he'd been calling me for the past few months, had even called me today. He wanted me.
I stood up and, pretending to look for the ladies room, wove around the tables toward the man. I drew close and saw the person he was with---a Japanese woman with blond highlights unevenly striating her dark hair like veins of fat in a porterhouse. She glanced up at me as I approached, wary at first, but I must have looked too nervous to be threatening and she let out a soft condescending laugh. Then the man looked over and I opened my mouth to say, "Sean, hi! What a coincidence," when I realized that it wasn't him. I registered the difference first in his mouth---it was too thin with mean little wrinkles at the corners; the man's skin wasn't healthy red but martini-flushed; his eyes were green instead of hazel; flesh gathered under his chin and filled out his midsection. I stopped, twisted my head to the left and right as if trying to find something, then turned toward the restrooms. Locked in a stall, heart pounding with adrenaline and embarrassment, I waited long minutes until I had the courage to pass through the dining room to the street and hail a taxi to Brooklyn.
FROM What You Owe Me
The Braddock Hotel was the rich old uncle of downtown Los Angeles. I'd never seen anything as grand in Inez, where the largest hotel was only three stories high and always needed a new coat of paint. Braddock was nearly fifty years old and took up half a city block; the entire front was beige marble, and the entrance was two huge glass doors. Inside there were fifteen floors and a gigantic ballroom. The lobby was grand, with two huge crystal chandeliers, exactly like the one that was in the ballroom. The walls were the color of cream and the carpet was a swirl of soft rose and green. Plush sofas, comfortable armchairs, and carved tables sitting on a soft rug---it was like a magazine picture. The guest rooms were spacious and furnished even more luxuriously than the lobby. Mostly businessmen came to Braddock, and the place got its share of conventions, too.
It was not far from the Hollywood Freeway. I was used to one-lane highways and dirt roads, but LA had the Hollywood and the Pasadena freeways, and more were being built every day, connecting different parts of the city and even the suburbs, which I'd only heard about. From the upper floors in Braddock I could look out the windows and watch cars that seemed to fly along the asphalt ribbon that was divided into three lanes. I'd never seen so many automobiles in my life, and the sight of them, the thrumming sound they made, excited me and made me imagine going places far away from brooms and mops.
By the time she'd been working at Braddock for a year, we all were used to Gilda's quiet ways. Mr. Weinstock put Gilda and me on the same shift. Some days we worked from five o'clock in the morning until two or three in the afternoon. Early morning was the time we washed the linens and towels and folded everything. We mopped the grand hotel lobby, polished all the marble and glass. Sometimes when I was giving her the ammonia our hands would touch. She had soft hands, and I wondered how long they would stay nice.
Thanksgiving rolled around again. The maids weren't looking forward to the holidays, at least not working them. There were always lots of parties and formal affairs at Braddock during this time. People would get plenty liquored up, and drunk people are not the most fastidious. This was the time of year we had to wipe up vomit and urine that didn't make it to the toilet bowl. And then, too, even though Los Angeles didn't have a real winter like the ones in Texas that could turn your skin the kind of gray colored folks call ashy, people still caught colds. A lot of the maids would stay out sick, and then Mr. Weinstock would put us on double shift. By Christmas we'd be too worn out to enjoy our own festivities. But what else was new?
The first weekend in December, Gilda and I both got put on midday and late shift, which meant we had to come in at one and we didn't go home until after midnight. You wouldn't think that there would be that much to do late at night but that's when Mr. Weinstock wanted us to wash windows, clean the mezzanine bathrooms, and change the big Chinese vases of flowers that were always in the lobby. It took two people to carry those vases. And he liked to have some maids on hand when there were big parties in the hotel. People would stay in bed all day and then go out at night, and when they came back they expected clean rooms.
That Saturday night around ten o'clock, Mr. Weinstock told us to go up to the sixth floor. Guests had just left, and two rooms needed to be made up. When we got there, the floor seemed deserted, except for Brewster, who did repairs. He was carrying his toolbox, standing in front of the service elevator when we got off. He smiled politely when he saw us, especially at Gilda. "How are you girls doing tonight?"
"Fine," we both said.
We chatted with him for a few minutes before we made our way down the hall.
I worked on one room and Gilda cleaned the other. They were only about three doors apart. Maybe because I trained Gilda, she and I had similar timing, and we'd end up at the carts together. That's where we were when the man came in holding the boy by the hand.
We both smelled evil at the same moment. The first thing that hit me was that the man was white and the boy, who must have been about seven or eight, was Mexican. He was a scrawny little kid, not dressed for the chilly weather. He was wearing shorts and an undershirt, and he had on sandals. His little legs and arms were dirty. The man was drunk, and the boy looked scared, the kind of scared that means he has to go along with the show because of the money that's waiting when the curtain comes down. I'd seen that fear before at Braddock, in the eyes of young hookers with old johns who stumbled down the hall beside them. I'd never seen that expression on a child's face, and to tell you the truth, I didn't want to look.
They went into the room between the ones we'd just made up. When the door closed, my eyes met Gilda's. She whispered, "He is a bad man." When she said the words her body started shaking, and she had to wipe away the moisture that started popping out on her forehead.
I knew he was a bad man but he was a bad white man, and he was a guest. I thought about calling Mr. Weinstock, but Ole Sweat and Farts wouldn't do anything to help a Mexican street kid if it meant offending a paying customer. I considered contacting the police, but then I'd have to give my name, take them to the room, and by that time the damage would be done. And if Mr. Weinstock found out, I could forget about my job, and my candy store.
Gilda walked right to the room. We could hear the boy crying, soft, pitiful sounds. I knocked on the door and said, "Is everything all right in there?" I tried to sound stern, like a teacher, which is what I would have been if my daddy had had money for college.
Before he could answer, Gilda had pulled out her key and opened the door. "Girrrrrrl," I said, and put my hand on her shoulder to hold her back. But she shook it off and walked in, and I followed her.
The room smelled like sour milk. The little boy was naked, lying on the bed facedown. The man was on top of him with his pants and shorts around his ankles. He jumped up. His penis was hard and red. His cheeks looked slapped. "What the hell are you doing in here?" he said. "Get out, the both of you."
"You stop hurting that boy," Gilda said.
"Get the hell outta here." He turned back to the child.
Gilda pulled something shiny out of her sweater pocket. When I saw it was a knife, I opened my mouth and couldn't close it, but not a sound came out. The next thing I knew she was stabbing the man in his ass.
He jumped up and grabbed himself, wiping off the blood and staring at Gilda as though he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Truth be told, I was looking at her the same way.
"Get out! Get out! Get out!" She was screaming, waving the knife. He started coming toward Gilda. I grabbed the table lamp and held it like I was going to bash his head in. He stopped when he saw me do that, then he started backing up toward the door, pulling up his pants. Crazy Gilda kept coming toward him, waving the knife so close to him that I was afraid he was going to take it away from her and I would have to hit him upside his head. But he kept backing up. She got right up on him and then her voice went down real low. She said, "You go tell. See what happens to you tonight. I have the key."
"Fucking bitch," he said, and with his next breath he turned to me. "Nigger." Then he fled out the door.
After he left, Gilda went over to the little boy. He was still crying and whimpering something in Spanish. We took him in the bathroom, gave him a bath and washed his hair. Gilda dried him off and took a small bottle from her sweater pocket, poured something white and creamy in her palms, and started rubbing him all over with it. Then we helped him get dressed. He didn't say anything, but he wasn't crying anymore.
We took him down the back stairwell that led to the street. Outside the air was biting. Gilda took off her sweater and put it on the child, and we each gave him a dollar. Then we watched as he walked back to wherever he came from.
"Damn, girl," I said when we were riding up on the service elevator. I kept looking at her, trying to see what I couldn't see.
We were back in Our Room when I noticed the numbers on Gilda's arm, little blue tattooed numbers, a brand. Then I figured things out, but not all of it. Even on this side of the fence, there are some things I'll never understand.
We were sitting on the broken-down sofa. There was some church music playing in the background. Gilda started talking. Gilda loved gospel music and all kinds of hymns. The first time I played the Five Blind Boys for her, she started crying. On this night, The Mighty Clouds of Joy were singing a real slow song. I can't remember the name of it but the lyrics seemed to meld into her story. She told me how the Germans rounded up her family and put them in the death camps and how everybody she loved---her mother, father, brother, aunts, uncles, grandparents---had been killed. Her father's brother had settled in America before the war. When she was liberated she came to Los Angeles, because he and his wife lived here with their children. Four people were her only remaining relatives. It was her uncle who got her the job. Mr. Weinstock's brother owned the apartment building where they lived.
Her crying started as a tiny, weak noise, like a newborn might make. Came from way down inside her somewhere and then kept rising and getting deeper. I pulled her into my chest and held her, rubbed her back a little, told her not to be afraid, that everything was all right now. I spoke the words as soon as they came to my mind. "You need to take those numbers off your arm."
She sat up, looked at me, then cried a little bit more. She said, "I have no one, no one, no one," the words an echo that kept turning on itself.
"You do have someone," I said. "You have you. And you have what's in you. That's how you survived, girl."
Gilda didn't say anything for a long time. Then she looked at me and said, "Will you take me to get it done?"
I took her to the dentist first. The way I figured, the sooner she started smiling, the better for her. I asked her if she knew of any dentists in her neighborhood but she looked troubled and told me that we couldn't go there. So, one day after work, I took her to a colored dentist over on Central Avenue. He seemed surprised to see the two of us together, but that was just in his eyes. He didn't say anything. She had to go back a couple of times but he cleaned her teeth, got all the brown off, and when she smiled that first time, she looked pretty, not like Lana Turner or Liz Taylor, or any of the movie stars or models. She had her own special kind of frizzy-haired beauty, which wasn't even American, at least not yet.
We went to a tattoo parlor not too far from the dentist and the owner examined the numbers under a magnifying glass, and then patted her arm the same kind of way my daddy used to when I fell down or was crying. He told her that whatever he could do for her would leave a scar. Gilda hesitated, then she said, "Go ahead." I guess she figured that the numbers were the worst scar. He used needles and some kind of acid. Gilda was moaning a little bit the entire time he was working on her. She grabbed my hand while he was doing it, and she liked to squeezed me to death.
Riding the bus on our way back from the tattoo place, I told her about Inez. Gilda said it was another kind of death camp, that the poison gas came out in spurts, not enough to kill the body, just the soul. She had a lot of questions for me. She wanted to know why colored people couldn't go certain places, why our hair wasn't as long as white people's, why our voices sounded different from theirs. I didn't have all the answers but I did my best.
"They are envious of you," she told me.
"Who?"
"The white people."
"Why?"
"Because you have the most beautiful skin. White people sit in the sun to try to get your color. Your features, your lips and nose, are warm. You make wonderful music. And your spirit is powerful. They try to crush your spirit, but they can't."
We never heard from the man Gilda stabbed, and she and I never mentioned him. I found myself looking whenever I saw a group of Mexicans, but I didn't see the little boy again either. Gilda and I seemed to be together a lot more after what happened. When we had lunch at the same time, we ate side by side. Sometimes at the end of our break, she'd pull out a book and start reading. She still studied from the English manual, but she read other things as well. Her books were about history and science, and she liked novels, too. Often she'd read a portion to me and get me so interested in the story that when she finished, I'd pick it up. A couple of times, Fern would ask me what I was reading, and I'd share it with her.
Gilda told me that she had been attending college when the war broke out. "I studied literature," she said, and there was sadness in her voice.
I hadn't ever had enough time to read just for the pure pleasure of it, but that's one hobby I acquired from Gilda. As I read, I became aware of mistakes that I was making when I spoke, and I began to improve, little by little. In a way, I started sounding like Thomasine, who Tuney had broken up with, thank God.
The other maids noticed the new way I was speaking. One time when I finished saying something, Winnie said, "La-di-da," and looked toward Hattie, who was muttering under her breath that I was trying to be white. She knew better than to say it to my face. But those "la-di-das" put an alley between the other women and me. Gilda and I were walking down the main boulevard together.
Will Not Be Televised
I slammed through the elegantly carved wood door of the hotel's Mayflower Bar like government forces were on my trail and flung myself onto a bar stool at the far corner of an extravagant expanse of mahogany. I knew this shit would happen. CL Leonard still has radar, after all these years. Why is it that the last man in the world you want to see is always the first one in your path? I pretended not to be hiding from an ex-boyfriend as I turned away from two twenty-something white guys in expensive lawyer suits who were trying not to notice my dramatic entrance. How could I still be so annoyed with a man I haven't said more than ten words to in thirty years?
See! I knew I didn't need to come to some damn reunion. Who wants yesterday sitting up in your face? With my luck Sheila would be next. And the only thing worse than an "ex" you can't stand is your slightly testy, former roommate carrying a thirty-year grudge about a burning stick of patchouli incense accidentally falling on her favorite Marvin Gaye album or some other ancient madness.
I knew that couldn't be the only reason Sheila and I lost contact after graduation, but I was hanging onto to it like a life raft. Inseparable for four years, we practically invented student unrest together on our mostly white Boston campus. Churning out the black weekly paper, Off the Pig, and turning the ever popular sit-in into an art form were a major part of our curriculum. Those old days may not all have been good but they changed how we saw the world and how the world saw us. Everything I feel about activism today started right there in our dorm room where we waded through the most effective methods for reporting Nelson Mandela's imprisonment and figured out whether to invite The Last Poets or Tina Turner to campus first.
I volunteer at the Bethany AIDS hospice and attend community board meetings today just because I can remember the tears and the rage in Sheila's eyes when we read about the Black students shot at Jackson State. All those late night political conversations made us promise each other to always follow our motto: "Don't just mourn---do something."
There had to be a monumental reason Sheila was angry with me. Was it something I said about Baldy after they got married? Did I not send them birthday cards regularly after graduation? Had I gotten so involved in my marriage that I put our friendship too far at the back of the stove? Half the cells that store my memory are on an accelerating path to oblivion so how am I supposed to know? And I've always been too chicken to contact her and find out.
Call me the sensitive child of divorced parents, call me a menopausal wuss but deliberately putting myself in the down draft of one of Sheila's notorious icy breezes was not my idea of a good time. I only needed to be given the cold shoulder once---which I was when I bumped into her the afternoon I was photographing a conference in Washington fifteen years ago.
I peered back at the door to be sure CL hadn't followed, then ordered a glass of Merlot to forget the chill. I took the first sip to wash the thought of him and Sheila out of my mind. It went down so smoothly I closed my eyes, cut their images loose and let them drift away. I didn't even wave goodbye.
I glanced behind the bar at my face reflected in the highly polished mirror, which was the size of a small town skating rink. The burnt orange silk and linen jacket I'd finally settled on was just right for my oak-brown skin and dark eyes. I'd recently cut my dreadlocks to shoulder length and was pleased with the effect. The roundness of my face, no longer a surprise to me, was actually appealing. As my favorite aunt Henrietta says: a few extra pounds never hurt anyone. So what was it about CL's attentions, be it 1971 or 2001, that set me off? Maybe it was as simple as I wasn't interested and he always chose to ignore my signals. I was going to have to brush up on my rejection skills in order to get through this weekend.
Insistent beads of perspiration decorated my forehead and I blotted them with the skimpy little napkin they always set out with drinks as if you were going to leave a water ring on their grandmother's table. I wasn't sure if my rising heat was the effect of the wine, of running into CL, or one of those predictable hormonal flushes, but I took another sip and leaned back. I closed my eyes again to really push the image of CL away. What replaced it were pictures just as old as my relationship with him.
The moment that sealed the sisterhood between Sheila and me unfurled in my mind and I could almost feel the breeze on my face. A tingle of panic had crawled across my skin as my brain registered that the view from the fourth floor of the administration building might as well have been from the fortieth. Clutching the window frame, I gulped for air as the Temptations song, "I Can't Get Next to You," played in my head. I stretched dangerously out the window. Still the banner remained out of my reach. I looked to see if campus security had shown up yet. No sign of the cops, but Tank was below, waving down the "Say Brother" news van that was pulling into the quadrangle. At least that part of Sheila's plan was going right. "Don't look down!" Sheila called from the fifth-floor window where she held the top end of the red, black and green banner. Her voice caught me and the dizziness cleared. Swinging my gaze back up toward the symbol of Black Power flapping in the breeze, I did my version of a prayer.
"Shit!"
If I screwed this up just because I'd skipped all those physical education classes I wouldn't have to worry about being expelled for staging a building takeover. I'd die of embarrassment first. I dropped my olive-drab jacket behind me onto the floor of the office and dug my toes practically through my Frye boots into my perch---the top of the air conditioning unit just inside the window---as I stretched out again. "Shit" became my mantra as I pushed my fingers higher, climbing the gray brick wall like Spiderman.
How could this part foul up? Our group had negotiated the support of other progressive student caucuses. We'd gotten ourselves into the administration building with enough food for a week and managed to chain all the exits and get word to the press. Our allies, consisting of Edie, the Jewish girl who lived across the hall from me and Sheila in the dorm, and her boyfriend in from Brandeis for the weekend, were distracting campus police over by the parking lot. Tank was getting our leaflets into the hands of anybody who passed. Now, if I could just get the damn banner!
I still didn't hear any sirens. Good sign. I exhaled, shoved myself against the window frame like it was the last man I'd ever have, and reached out one more time. The red, black and green banner waved just beyond my fingertips. I looked up at Sheila terrified I'd mess up and our occupation of the admin building would go down the tubes. Her eyes were glistening with fear and excitement. Her look told me I could do it.
Pretend it's George Wallace's neck, I thought. Grab it! Damn, if only I had those fake nails like Blanche, I'd have . . . Got it!
"Right on!!!" I exclaimed.
Then I realized someone was standing beside me at the bar; I was almost too embarrassed to open my eyes. I peeked through one, prepared to put my boxing gloves back on if it was CL, I was relieved to see Tank grinning down at me.
"Sisters should never drink alone especially when it makes 'em talk to themselves!"
I slid off the stool, my embarrassment and surprised squelched by my genuine joy at seeing him. A lot of folks, back in the day, used to think Tank was an agent but I'd never believed it. He threw his arms open and we stood in the big loud embrace of people who've known each other's youth.
"Roxie Page! Hey, hey, hey," he kept saying through his laughter like a suave Fat Albert. In fact he kind of looked like Bill Cosby, if the Coz had been a defensive tackle.
"God, you look great," I said, meaning it.
"Look who's talking."
"I knew I'd be seeing you all but it's still a shock."
"Hey, sister we survived, what more to say."
He still had a broad, appealing smile. A little thicker than he'd been when we graduated in '71, his dark skin was heightened by silver that gleamed sexily at the temples of his close cut hair. With every ball player in the big time favoring the menacing Mr. Clean look today, Tank's tightly napped hair was a welcome sight. His tailored jacket and sharply creased slacks, neither of which were wrinkled, told me he certainly hadn't just gotten off a plane.
"So when'd you get in?" I asked.
"This morning. I wanted to walk around a little. I saw Jerome, 'course he got in yesterday, and what's her name . . . Sarah . . . used to play cards all night? She's helping him organize this shindig."
"Did I just hear you say 'shindig' " I laughed.
"Wait 'til I catch you in one, my sister!"
"Black is power," I said and raised my glass.
"Black is power," Tank answered repeating the name of our old student group.
We both laughed and shook our heads thinking about Jerome. It was a wonder we'd all gotten as far is the hotel with him pulling the reunion together.
Whenever he'd attempted to organize anything for the BIPs it was fraught with complications. His last screw up negotiating with the administration was why I ended up dangling from the fourth floor ledge of McMillan Hall before we occupied the building for three days. I wondered what we would wind up doing this time.
I listened as Tank talked about his job with a radio station in Atlanta and his divorce. He showed me pictures of his not so young kids and talked like a man who knew more about them than just their names and where they worked.
I did a quick reality check to make sure I wasn't feeling regret that I'd decided not to have children. With all the traveling Dennis and I did when we got together it just wasn't a good idea. We'd built an amazing photographic archive, keeping track of faces and issues that were quickly fading from the news. For me, little could compete with the triumph of a subtle shot of the young Amiri Baraka holding a group of students mesmerized with his poems or capturing Nikki Giovanni's fire in my flash.
Besides I firmly believe in Zero Population Growth, so it didn't seem like a total sacrifice. I did a photo shoot for an article on Black adoptions about seven years back and the idea had begun to appeal to me, then Dennis got sick. But the notion kept swirling around inside, popping to the surface every once and a while, especially in situations like this.
I oohed and aahed dutifully at each of Tank's snapshots but kept thinking how odd it was that I was talking to the guy people thought was an FBI agent. I really liked Tank, he was like his nickname---solid. He'd played football, how could he have been an agent? I wondered shaking my head
"I know, hard to believe, isn't it. Man, sometimes I thought I'd get my head---or my nuts---knocked off on that field and never have any kids."
"Why were you playing?"
"For the cash, of course. You guys got the brain money, I got the brawn money. I had to work a couple of years after high school to save up, my coach kept pushing me even then. He's the one who wangled me the scholarship."
My picture of Tank began to shift. I didn't know why I hadn't known any of this already.
"Once I got in I was going to get that piece of paper if it took forever. Which it almost did. But, god, do I hate football!"
"You're kidding!"
"Nope. I did some coaching in the pee wee league when my boy was young, that's as close to a field as they could ever get me. Now, I catch some basketball on TV, the girls' teams are great. But football? That got me through here and that's it."
I looked at Tank's mammoth shoulders, firm against the elegance of his suit, and started laughing, "Yeah, I can see all that muscle's gone to fat."
"A gym is a beautiful thing, ain't it?"
"I really expected you to go on to a professional team or something," I said, still finding this new picture of Tank hard to get into focus.
"Never happen!" Tanks laugh boomed again. "You know why I couldn't do that whole occupation thing with you guys? You know, get locked up in admin and all? I was afraid I'd get kicked off the team---lose my scholarship," he said his voice still colored with regret after all those years.
I was surprised. Of the many reasons we used to toss around about Tank not joining us in the building I couldn't believe not one of us thought it could be about money.
"I felt really bad, like I was letting you all down. But damn if it wasn't the best thing I ever did," he said. When I looked puzzled he went on.
"Hanging out with the news crews in the quad was how I figured out I wanted to maybe pursue broadcasting. You know, I was digging on how they did everything and then seeing it on TV that night. They were so scared you were going to blow up the building, and kind of hoping you would at the same time. It was weird," Tank said shaking his head.
"But I dug being the liaison between you all, and seeing how they figured out what to say about us. I was hooked by the second day."
Tank looked almost shy at that moment and it reminded me of how young we'd been at the time. Even if he was a year or two older than most of us he would have still been a kid.
"We didn't feel like you were letting us down, Tank. In fact you were probably the only thing I could see from the window when I was hanging on for my life trying to grab that damn banner!"
"Sister, lemme tell you. I thought I was gonna have to retrieve your butt when you came tumbling down!"
"Yeah right. You were just waiting to see if Sheila would drop out the sky into your arms!" I said laughing and squeezing Tank's biceps. Sheila had been the campus' Black beauty queen, at least half the brothers had been waiting for her to fall into their arms.
"Now that would have been a hell of a save." Tank grinned as he savored the thought of Sheila, the girl every guy dreamed about.
"Hey, she coming?"
I shrugged, honestly having no idea. "Have you heard anything from her?" I asked trying not to let my unsettled feelings seep through.
"I can't believe y'all haven't talked! What's up with that?" Tank was genuinely puzzled. He peered at me unable to conceal his confusion.
"Uh, nothing. You know how time slips through your fingers."
"Umph," Tank muttered unconvinced. "I saw her picture in Ebony when she made partner in that law firm, out there in San Francisco, I think."
"Yeah, I saw that. Great, huh?"
I sipped my wine. Tank shredded the damp napkin.
"You know," he started, "I heard---"
He was interrupted by a generalized squeal of delight at the entrance to the lounge. Then Tank's barrel-chested: "Hey, hey, hey" put an end to whatever news he was about to pass on. I turned knowing it had to be Blanche. Nobody ever squealed in quite the same way. Omigod, she's doing the matron thing!
Her sandy brown Afro was now confined to a tight upsweep, her mascara and blush were Essence Magazine perfect. The regulation fatigue pants and Malcolm X T-shirt were replaced by the unmistakably fluid elegance of a Tamotsu suit that had to cost $700 if it cost a dime. No longer size 12---more like an 18---but she was still a squiggler. Something about the way she walked and talked gave the impression that all her parts were moving at once. And guys still loved it.
She was lost in Tank's massive arms and somehow managed not to wrinkle her suit, smudge her makeup or stop moving. When she turned to me her engine lowered to idle but she was still a wonder of biodynamics.
"Girrrrl . . ." Blanche said in her high pitched voice, dragging out the word as if she were just up from Charleston and was still charming the dorm floor. "Look at youuuu!"
I found myself enveloped in her scented embrace; no longer Arabian musk, it was more like something from the ground floor at Macy's. In that moment I flashed on how much she used to irritate me. It usually took about twenty minutes of her girlish, high-pitched enthusiasm before I wanted to tie her to a chair and stick a cork in her mouth. I tried to do some multiplication in my head: I hadn't seen her since graduation, let's see---thirty years times twenty minutes---how long before I would have to restrain myself?
"Come on, let's get comfortable," Tank said, taking Blanche's arm and dragging us both away from the bar to a grouping of banquettes and cocktail tables. I smiled, remembering when Tank's barely concealed desire to drag Blanche off used to be a running joke. She'd usually been too busy with one out of town Don Juan or another to be bothered.
"Any other Angelas coming?" he asked.
"Hell, don't start on that." Blanche said
The look of alarm on her face was not far from her expression in the cafeteria when she'd told us about being detained by the police because someone thought she looked like Angela Davis. Other than her Afro and lighter brown skin she didn't remotely resemble Angela, whose picture was plastered all over post offices and newspapers, but the differences hadn't registered with white cops eager to see themselves on the evening news after catching America's most wanted Black radical. The same thing happened that year to Ernestine and Aisha, who didn't look much like each other or Angela either.
"That mess almost lost me my first big job."
"Oh come on," I said.
"No really!" When I finally got an interview at Della Robbia, I'd been struggling to get into advertising forever. Then I had to fill out this form and when I got to where it asked if I'd ever been arrested I froze. I mean really, like paralytic."
Tank and I erupted into laughter.
"Who the hell was going to think being mistaken for an FBI fugitive was amusing?"
"So what'd you do?" I asked trying to keep sarcasm out of my voice. I couldn't imagine Ernestine or Aisha in such a quandary.
"What any good revolutionary does when pinned down by the man---I lied."
Tank's laugh again filled the room. It was obvious he was still susceptible to her charms.
"Technically it wasn't an arrest," I said dryly. I don't know why, but I felt like we were being disloyal to Angela. "You didn't even stay overnight."
"Sitting in a job interview in a corner office on Madison Avenue, literally on Madison Avenue . . . in New York City . . . didn't seem like the time to discuss subtle legal philosophy, my sister."
I had to smile even though her condescending tone usually got on my last nerve.
"Hey, I'm going to order some grumbles," Tank interrupted, still running interference between folks when it looked like some kind of disagreement was on the horizon. "Any requests?"
"Grumbles? Tank I haven't heard that word since---"
"Now don't you start, too. You want food or not."
"Yeah," Blanche and I answered together like we were cheerleaders, which we'd never been. He went off to the bar to put in a request for a selection of appetizers.
"You still in advertising?" I asked.
"Yeah, it's a living," Blanche said with the lowest level of enthusiasm I'd ever heard in her voice. "My ex-husband has a small firm and I manage his office."
"Ex?"
"Believe me it was cheaper to stay working there than try to get anything out of him!"
I was surprised to hear the edge of disappointment in Blanche's voice.
"Business is going great," Blanche said re-igniting her spark, as if she needed to refute my thoughts. "We keep a steady flow of work going. I can't complain."
From the cut of her suit it looked like she really was doing fine despite the unusual arrangement, but clearly there was something missing.
"You still doing photography?"
"Oh yeah."
"You know, I have seen your pictures." Blanche rolled her eyes upward and seemed to search her perfectly colored coif for a memory: "Once, in the Times, I think. I couldn't believe it!"
Why the hell not! I was just about to spit out when Tank came back with another BIP in tow.
"Edwin!" Blanche squealed and leaped up from her seat as if she were relieved we weren't going to talk about our professions any more. He'd always been the quietest Black man I ever met, and when he said hello it sounded like he hadn't changed much. You still had to lean in to hear what he said; but now the manner had a subtle authority. The fullness in his face was new and the oversized leather FUBU jacket almost concealed his extra pounds.
"Brother man, it's like old times," Tank said.
"I hope not," Edwin shot back as he clasped Tank's hand in the multiple grips of the Black Power handshake that went on for four minutes.
I hadn't seen Edwin in years, but we had spoken on the phone a while back when I gave him permission to use some of our photos for a PBS documentary he was directing. Even though he'd filled out, Edwin's tightly coiled energy gave the impression he was wiry.
"The last time I saw you two together Tank was beating your ass in a game of bid whist and you were chugging on a bottle of Creme White Concord!" I said.
"Still cracking wise Miss Roxie." Edwin's grin widened further as he hugged me. The waiter arrived with a couple of bottles of New York State champagne and glasses.
"At least we don't drink screw top wine anymore," Edwin dropped into a chair as we widened the circle.
"Righton!" Blanche said, deliberately enunciating like a Black Vanna White. I could see the young, white waiter working hard not to smile as he was popping the cork.
"I loved the last piece you produced for . . . was it "Lehrer News Hour"?" Tank said.
"Oh yeah, Edwin, that really was good," I said, remembering I'd seen it too.
"It was deep," Tank said solemnly.
"What, what?" Blanche asked, wriggling in her seat.
There's something that happens around people's eyes when they don't want you to see inside. Edwin masked his discomfort almost completely. "It was a documentary about people who're mixed race."
"Mixed . . . ?" Blanche didn't squeal. Her voice, perplexed, dropped down to her ample chest. There are always some details that get lost in memory.
"You know, like Tiger Woods," I said, trying not to sound like I was talking to an adolescent.
"Like me," Edwin added.
I could see Blanche reassessing Edwin's medium brown skin tones and lightly waved hair, searching to remember if she knew this information already. He'd always been a gung ho nationalist, yet avoided the harshest "hate whitey" rhetoric. He was one of only a few BIPs who'd been on the losing side with me when the controversy broke about changing the name of our newspaper from Off the Pig to Black Times.
"Basically I got a chance to look at the larger idea of what it means to be Black in the U.S. and not rely on some constructed mythology of race or cultural purity that we all know is . . . well just myth."
"Go, brother, I hear you." Tank's enthusiasm seemed sincere. Did that weigh in on the side of agent or not?
"That may be the last you hear of me," Edwin said shaking his head wearily. "The way money is drying up now, if your name ain't Burns, don't even think about getting funds for a documentary these days."
"Well . . ." Tank intoned as if he were in the amen corner.
"His stuff is good." Edwin jumped back in, not wanting to sound like he was bad-mouthing another filmmaker. "But I can name you three other black guys who've been trying for the past twenty years to rustle up money for films on blacks in baseball and in jazz."
There was silence while we each sipped champagne and wondered how depressed we'd make ourselves before the reunion really got going.
"Speaking of white devils," Blanche said after a moment, tickled with herself. "You know who's coming tomorrow, don't you?"
It didn't take much thought for us to say simultaneously: "Jackson Wright." He overused that epithet so much by the time we graduated, he'd worked everybody's nerves, including the one brother who was aspiring to be FOI for The Nation.
Blanche led the laughter this time. If I wasn't mistaken, it looked like Blanche's sparkle was spreading itself in Tank's direction very specifically.
"Man!" Edwin said in disgust. "That guy . . ." His voice trailed off and each of us remembered Jackson Wright's way of dealing with people who disagreed with him: nail them to the wall for not being "Black enough." Unfortunately, since he's an award-winning poet and our most famous alum to date, Jackson was booked to be the featured speaker at the Saturday-night program.
No matter what the poem, he eventually had to break into an egotistical rant that skewered some Black person he judged to be betraying Blackness, or a white person who was betraying him. His tongue was so sharp it should have been registered as a weapon. Wright is brilliant, I'll give him that, but . . .
"They need to put some of those contestants from one of those survivor TV shows in a room with Wright and see who lasts to win the million!" Edwin said, breaking into my thoughts. "Did you check him out on that BET talk show awhile back?"
We all shook our heads together slowly, as if we were synchronized swimmers.
"You really missed a scene. He went on and on about white feminists ruining his career. I think that was when he was filing a class-action suit against the National Organization of Women."
"Oh stop!" I exploded.
"The host was egging him on like Wright was the second coming, I kid you not."
"Talk about ecology . . . what a waste of air!" Blanche sucked her teeth.
"He should have been spending the time pushing for some more money from the networks or public TV for Black producers or something. But not this guy." The anger was ripe in Edwin's words.
"That was during the 'Me' decade, wasn't it?" I asked rhetorically, knowing that whenever Jackson Wright turned up it was the "Me" decade. Seeing all the optimism that had fueled us reduced to careerism, midlife crises, and BMWs made me a little nauseous. But unless there's a national emergency, I was resigned to enduring the Saturday-night program.
"Jackson did have a tendency to go a little overboard," Tank said in his most conciliatory tone.
"You know," Blanche said, the pitch rising in her voice along with the sparkle in her eye as she tried to keep a straight face, "they're having a separate reunion this weekend . . ." Her pause were perfectly timed, then she went on: "All the young white girls Jackson slept with when he was head of Afro House . . . over at Harvard Stadium!"
The laughter burst from us as if we were still huddled together in the student lounge. It almost scared away the waiter who was now delivering a tray of appetizers.
"There was some serious jungle fever going on all around, brothers, so don't be laughing too hard at Mr. Wright," Blanche said knowingly. "Don't get me started naming names!"
There were a couple of coughs, then genuine laughter again. Blanche had put us back in sync while we settled into the familiar act of eating together. I almost expected Otis to pop up beside the table with French fries he'd smuggled out of the hot food line.
"Hey, has anyone heard from Otis?" I wondered out loud.
"Otis?" Blanche wrinkled her forehead.
"Otis, right. He used to work in the cafeteria." Edwin was digging through his memory. "He wasn't registered though, was he?"
"Naw," Tank said, chewing on a Buffalo chicken wing and still looking elegant.
"He was in some kind of probation program . . . got him the job in the school cafeteria. That brother tightened up the Black table every day!"
"He was trying to get his life together. I remember now," Blanche said.
"You never went to Wally's with me and Sheila?" I asked, recalling the name of a local bar we used to sneak off to.
"That pit?" Edwin said with enough middle-class disdain to make the Dean of Students proud.
"Hey! Wally's wasn't as bad as some buckets of blood I went to back in Chicago. Otis was a great dancer."
As the memory flooded in, I realized how disappointed I was that no one had heard from him. I'd thought about Otis every once in a while over the years. In addition to an incredible smile and smooth dance moves, he'd been a stalwart supporter of the BIPs. He must have been the same age as we were, but he had the edge of someone who knew things about the world he wished he didn't.
Me and Tank and some of the others had come from neighborhoods not too different from the South End where Otis lived. It was literally on the other side of the railroad tracks from the university; undercapitalized and forgotten by the politicians, except when the police were sent in. Then the Movement had stepped in instead.
"Affirmative Action babies," they call us now, which rankles my nerves. There was nothing babyish about clawing my way out of the cycle of street shootings and pregnancies in my 'hood. And certainly nothing babyfied about trying to survive on a white campus where teachers and students looked at us like we were space aliens. That was before space aliens got their own TV shows.
I'd spent my freshman year mystified by academic topics no high school teacher had ever bothered to mention. And being humiliated by financial aid administrators who acted like they were giving me money out of their own little piggy banks. If they treated Black students that bad I couldn't imagine what working in the cafeteria had been like for Otis.
"Earth to Roxie." Blanche snapped me back to the table. "What're you sucking your teeth about, girl?"
"The dim-wits trashing Affirmative Action, so don't get me started."
"Oh, there she go!" Tank teased.
"How the hell did we end up in this mess?" I asked without the tiniest hope of an answer.
"Girl, when I saw what they put Anita Hill through on TV I knew it was the end of civilization as we know it." The tinkle in Blanche's voice was greatly subdued.
"And that's only the stuff they let us see," Edwin said.
"You just got to keep pushing," Tank said, as if trying to convince himself. "There is good stuff happening out there."
"Nothing to make the evening news, my brother," Edwin said.
"Maybe we better not be counting on the evening news," Tank responded from a serious place deep in his chest.
"People are too busy shopping on the Web for revolution now," Blanche spouted, the disillusion I'd heard earlier returning to her voice.
I know I'm something of a ranter, which is how I ended up coming to this reunion thing, so I decided to keep my mouth shut. The plushly carpeted room around us soaked up the disappointment that was spilling out of our reminiscences.
It was hard to believe we were sitting here, only a few blocks from the campus where we'd spent four years determined to change the world. I almost felt like I was the same person I was back in the day. I didn't care any less now about people being hungry or not learning to read or making drugs their religion. Maybe I was a little slower, but still I worked forty-and fifty-hour weeks leaping in front of other news photographers and setting up impossible shooting angles. Hanging out the fourth-floor window of McMillan Hall had paid off.
Tank looked like he could still take on the first string of anybody's opposing team, and was much smarter than I remembered. Even Blanche still had the spirit when she didn't try to flirt too much. I'm not one who believes you have to be young and poor to be hungry for action and change. But something was missing. And the comfort of the hotel bar was starting to feel like a trap.
"Anybody mind if I take a few shots while we're hanging?" I pulled my favorite little Leica from the Le Sportsac bag I carried everywhere, relieved to stand and get some energy going.
"Roxie!" Blanche protested as she grabbed her Fendi purse up from the floor and reapplied her lipstick. "Don't be snapping me with my mouth full."
"Blanche, would I do that to you?"
"Yes." Her pinky went up as she dropped her purse back to the floor, hoisted a small square of something from the tray of snacks, and popped it into her perfectly painted mouth.
"Did you work on the slide show for tomorrow?" Edwin asked, excited.
"I sent in some of the shots we had from the demo." Oops, there was that "we" again. I went on quickly: "But I think the "Say Brother" folks from WGBH had a bunch of material. You all sent pictures in, too, right?"
"Yeah, but you're the professional." Tank smiled at me.
"Not then I wasn't," I said. I snapped Tank just as he turned his high beams on Blanche.
"Roxie, I never sent a card or anything, but I was sorry to hear about Dennis passing," Edwin said it in that soft voice of his. His awkward sincerity was soothing, not the hard slap I'd been afraid I'd feel when I first heard Dennis' name out loud. These had been my best friends when Dennis and I met. Our occupation of McMillan Hall provided the chance for Dennis's first professional breakthrough. The pictures he'd taken in those three days documented a serious leap in the significance of Black student activism and in the relationship between us. These were the friends who'd nurtured both events. I looked at Edwin directly, not through the camera lens and smiled. I was afraid to try to say thanks out loud. It doesn't look good for folks from Chicago to cry.
"Those shots he took when y'all were locked up inside McMillan Hall were kickin' it!" Tank said.
"I still have that one he sent me, I'm sleeping under that desk, remember?" Blanche said wistfully.
I nodded and slipped back behind the camera appreciative that they felt good about Dennis. At the same time I tried to fight the feeling that Dennis was the celebrity and I was just the girl who married him. I used to really identify with Yoko Ono when she hooked up with John Lennon and the other Beatle boys got set on ragging her. Fortunately I was never going to try singing rock and roll.
"I don't suppose you got a sympathy card from CL?" Blanche said slyly after a moment.
"No, I don't suppose I did."
"Oh, don't look so grim, girl. I was just teasing. After 30 years who cares about Charles Leonard?"
"Charles Leonard would be first on that list," I said. Blanche almost fell out of her chair laughing. The sound of it made my anxiety ease up. I'd been so busy remembering the things about Blanche that got on my nerves I'd forgotten how many laughs we always had together.
"I don't know why you sisters were so hard on CL," Edwin said.
"You don't know what?" Blanche's voice raised only slightly, but small strands of hair threatened to explode from her do. I returned to my camera. I'd done my battling just getting myself past him in the lobby, I wasn't about to break down CL to these guys.
"He had his nose stuck in the air a little but, damn, he was always down with us," Tank tried to keep the conversation light.
"Charles 'CL' Leonard made Mike Tyson look like the Image Award winner at the NAACP."
"Aw, come on . . . let's . . ." Edwin was startled by the anger in Blanche's voice.
"Let's what? Okay, how 'bout let's each of you tell me how many times you slapped your girlfriends upside their heads?"
The guys were silent and I was too, except for the click of my shutter. Despite the statistics, it was impossible for me to conjure up a picture of either Tank or Edwin doing something like that.
"Okay," Blanche said letting up. "But I didn't see none of you rushing in to school that brother on keeping his hands in his pockets."
"That was all rumors, Blanche," Edwin said.
"Maybe to you all, if you didn't want to see the facts."
Tank looked disturbed and, for once, had no words of defense.
'Go girl!' I was thinking but I figured we didn't need to have this conversation in the hotel bar. "You know folks, CL's actually here. I saw him earlier. So, uh . . ."
We each looked up at the door as if our parents might catch us swearing. Then we returned to our champagne, everyone in an uneasy silence. I sipped from my glass remembering CL's girlfriend after me, a freshman. She'd arrived at a BIPs meeting more than once with more makeup on than was required for cranking out a newsletter. The guys never noticed and I know I never said anything. I guess nobody wanted to see what was really up. Fortunately for CL, he and I weren't dating long enough for me to find out.
"So, do you have an archive, your own, I mean?" Edwin asked, carefully guiding us back to comfortable ground.
"Oh yeah! We . . . I've got every demo ever staged, that was our specialty for a while." I chewed the inside of my lip, wondering when I'd be comfortable with the singularity of the word. Even though there had been time enough for me to be used to being on my own I'd been resisting it way too long. I might as well start here and now. "I have a major collection I'm thinking of donating to some HBC sometime."
"Right on!" Tank said raising his glass of champagne.
"You should do a book," Edwin said, his eyes twinkling with enthusiasm.
At that moment I wondered if it were possible that some of my friends back home in Chicago had somehow gotten in touch with the BIPs and bribed them to read their lines. One or another of them was always driving me crazy with ideas of photo books I should do: Black Male Professionals, Black Women Professionals, Young Black Athletes, Old Black Athletes. I could never figure out where the hell people got these ideas.
"Yeah! A book on us. It's just the right time." Suddenly Blanche was a publishing consultant.
"Blanche got something, Roxie. Listen to the woman." Edwin sat up in his chair as if he were seeing the cover right then and there.
Whenever the idea of my doing a book came up I felt a ripple of fear pulse through my body as if a police siren was wailing outside my door. I knew I should do it. Time was passing and who better to document the awakening of the 1960s than a photographer? And now, before our eyesight gets so bad we can't see the pictures. I took some deep breaths trying to keep the ripple from turning into a tidal wave.
"Hey, I saw that spread you did on Curtis at his marketing company a couple of years ago. In Ebony, right?" Tank leapt in for the save.
"Didn't he look great?"
"So that's what he's up to?" Edwin asked.
"Public relations. In Connecticut," Blanche answered. "We did a job with him a couple of years ago! Is he coming?"
"Maybe. He emailed me a month or so back." I was happy to have a new topic.
"I can't believe he's still around." Edwin said with a tightness in his voice that was puzzling. I wondered what's that all about, then I got it.
"Of course, he's still around," I said. "Curtis is just gay, not terminal."
"I know, I know . . . but that last year was hard on him. Then AIDS and everything."
"Let's be clear, the year wasn't hard on Curtis, it was CL and Jackson Wright that were hard on him." Blanche was in rare form, reminding me of another reason I couldn't stand my ex and Mr. Afro House.
"Yeah, that was the only thing they could ever agree on," Tank said glumly.
"Egotistical shits," I said with a shudder.
"I don't know what the big deal was," Edwin said. "Long as Curtis kept his johnson in his pants around me, what'd I care?"
"I don't think most folks felt that casual about him, Edwin," I said flashing on the disaster our last BIPs party had turned into, at least for Curtis. When his folks came to graduation he told them that the black eye and cracked rib were from a car accident.
"And just because Curtis is gay doesn't mean he's got to die with HIV." I tried to keep my voice level but memory was making it hard. After four years of sister this and As Salaam Alaikum that, I was still livid at how shallow brotherhood could be. I assumed Edwin would have a deeper perspective, working in film and all.
"Well, like I said, I'm just glad to hear he's . . . you know . . . doing okay." Edwin's discomfort hung around him bigger than his jacket.
"You know what's her name," Blanched waggled her hand in the air trying to pull down a name. ". . . what's her name? You know, she got the one part in "West Side Story" they bothered to give to somebody colored. Uh . . . uh . . . you know . . . really tall, hazel eyes? She was on our floor, but down the other end."
"Always wore that huge green shawl!" The image began to resolve in my head. "She used to bring a big box of chocolate chip cookies back from break!"
"Yeah!" Tanks deep voice boomed. Food would be the thing to jog his memory.
"She's gay, too," Blanche said as she took a sip of her champagne.
"You're kidding?" Shock rang in Edwin's voice.
"Uh huh. I ran into her at a conference. She works in advertising too; more television than print. It was an industry thing, in Denver a while back. She was there, with her significant other. Good looking girl, from St. Croix I think."
I was surprised Blanche was so casual but clearly she was not having the problem with it Edwin was. He just kept asking her if she was kidding.
"I'm telling you I met the woman!" Blanche reiterated impatiently. "She's a nurse or something."
"Damn!" Edwin said.
"Don't be a drip, Edwin." Blanche was clearly getting to the end of her tolerance. As I watched her through the lens the set in the lines of her face wiped out all of the giggle and squiggle. I could see where Blanche was maybe deeper than her affect suggested.
"No point getting tense." Tank poured more champagne in Edwin's glass. "I did a program a year or so back, just for the locals, you know. Atlanta has quite a gay community," Tank continued shyly. "If statistics are right we're due to have at least 7 more gay people show this weekend, my brother."
Edwin slugged the champagne down like that would make everything clearer.
Well, we were certainly striking out with the contemporary issues. I know men can't talk about sex unless they're in the middle of having it but Edwin was about to blow our high. I figured I'd take the lull in conversation as a cue to make my exit. I searched in my bag for money to put on the table.
Then Tank looked up and did his best imitation of an Isaac Hayes riff. All talking stopped. "Ooh Miss Hot Buttered Soul herself!!!"
"That's Ms. Hot Buttered Soul," Sheila Mills Baldwin said as she grabbed a chair from one of the other tables, moving across the room like the Black campus queen she'd been. Sheila was tall and slender, one of those people who always looked elegant, even in the days of combat fatigues. Her lilac silk pants suit complimented her smooth dark skin; a close ring of curls had replaced the intricate weave of braided rows. The hands that had sown together our red black and green banner were now manicured to perfection. The smile lines at the corners of her eyes only gave her character. She looked like not a day had passed, or at least no more than a week.
My honest response was pure joy and then I felt bad that our friendship had lapsed. Hadn't friendship been at the heart of all the work we'd done? Did I let it go too easily?
I snapped a picture of Sheila just as she eased into the circle we'd formed and tossed her large matching lilac leather Coach bag onto the floor. Her smile was luminous as the voices of the other's swirled around her in greeting. Her perfume mixed with Blanche's and Tanks after shave, filling the air around me so I couldn't think. Tank and Blanche disentangled themselves from embracing Sheila while Edwin held her chair for her.
I stood, put my Leica back in my bag and was uncertain which direction to turn. Through a lens it's easy to put everything into focus. It only took a slight turn of the wrist and the picture was clear and clean. Too bad real life wasn't so easy. When she sat down Sheila fixed me with an impassive stare that dared me to leave.
Yeah, this was going to be one long weekend. Shit!
Fear of Floating
"Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius. . . ."
---EDWARD GIBBON, The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire
I will say to you this: Melancholy, that wretched cousin to Sorrow, is, without a doubt, a parasite of the soul that devours its host until spirit and body are inspired to divide. For those of you who consider this hyperbole, I would argue that you have never truly known blue, gray, or black---colors of the river through which flows despair . . . And since this condition (your ignorance) means that you are among a privileged few, I shall, despite envy, so that you might at once become familiar with the sentiments I profess, bring to you this adventure, in which is contained the horrors of the spectrum.
FEAR OF FLOATING(VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY CERVANTES)
To whom this may concern (specifically, to the good and fair people of Promenade management):
In this complex I have lived twenty-one years; I am, therefore, especially knowledgeable concerning the history of this dwelling, more so than yourselves, who have worked here for way less than half that time. Needless to say, I am aware of the recent tumult our establishment has suffered, for I, too, have endured its fall.
As I am mostly confined to my apartment (due to a debilitating illness), I seldom venture beyond the security of my front door; however, on one such occasion, having exited the first-level entranceway, I was accosted by three youths who, I believe, also live in this complex (and as a result of Section-8\*1)---youths who, because of their previous environment no doubt, still find it necessary to behave like the inhabitants of a zoo, the place from which they were rescued by our wretched benefactors, the city.
Understand: I am not writing to bemoan my molestation, but to proclaim---both for myself and for my fellow cooperators (men and women who lead exemplary lives, and have done so without interruption)---that further desecration of our homes must not, and will not, go unpunished; for if it does, if the usurpers are continued to be allowed here, then, like Rome before us, which foolishly permitted to sully their regions the barbarian Goths, our dwelling, as did the empire, will most certainly perish. And so to prevent this, I have gathered here a few suggestions which should, if followed strictly, aid in the dismissal of the pillaging few:
(1) Our enemies: Unlike most, I believe, absolutely, in Swift's contention that man is an unreasonable brute who sometimes, on occasion, behaves reasonably. From this we must conclude there is but one way to deal with our foes: to treat them not as thinkers (higher man) but as actors (lower man), who know nothing of discretion, modesty, or subtlety---for all these require thought, which, as you know, they can perform only on occasion. A speedy justice must be exacted; families of the villains expelled; and announcements---many announcements---discharged to responsible officials, warning them that the Promenade is not a haven for the haplessly low, nor a shelter for the neglected multiudes, by this I mean, savages, who, because of ill birth, have risen no further than the lowest rungs of life.
(2) Our allies: Living here for many years I have come to know my neighbors; though personal contact has been scarce (due to my condition), I have, nevertheless, learned that most are industrious employees, diligent pupils, loving parents, and caring friends; and, because of this, I no doubt believe they would gladly sacrifice a few dollars to maintain our tranquillity. This suggests the obvious: Rally the legions, secure the boundaries, display the purple (and the pride therefrom), and at once move against the uncivilized, who will know, and for all time, the Promenade is not a place for them.
(3) Our benefactors: Being that we are here and they are not, it shouldn't be too difficult to understand their apathy regarding our decay; for our triumph or fall affects them not in the least. And so we alone must wield the sword, inflict the wound, shed the blood; for if we delay, or, even worse, fail to act at all, then I fear the Promenade will be lost to the vulgar and the plain, as occurred on the final days of a once great empire.
Sincerely,A Concerned Citizen
This was the epistle sent to the uninformed, by a man who feared that he would someday fly away.
Imagine your life this way: Each day, and so each month and year, alone, afraid, consumed by a thought---that Gravity, a phantom whose cause is to maintain the heavens (and the creatures within), was a monster, lurking perpetually, and preparing for your doom!\*2---And though this life may seem a ridiculous one, and remote, you should know that not too long before this day lived a man whose curse it was to live it. His name was \*\*\*\*\*, and as was revealed in his letter, he suffered an illness which kept him mostly from the world.
In his pockets he carried stones; on his wrists and ankles the heaviest weights; and against his skin layers of dense fabric that, while indoors, kept him safe from the sky and stratosphere; for he was terrified of gravity, that it would one day disappear, pushing him above the clouds, into space, and towards the fires of a star. How he came to be this way no one knows, and I, the author, can only dabble in conjecture, so my opinion will stay where it belongs, in a dark and quiet place.
To continue then: In his home he stayed; and in that space was born a child named Loneliness, whom he spoke to often, but never for as long as he would have liked. While isolated he read and studied, and in the shadows he listened to Chopin, whose genius moved him to record these words:
Let us talk of Chopin---specifically, Sonata No. 3, in B minor:
There are very few artists who endeavor to achieve the impossible, and in this magnificent work the master does just that; for here, within precise and immaculate keystrokes, Chopin does something I once thought unattainable: he actually makes beauty . . . palatable.
One day, when courage had come to move him so, \*\*\*\*\*, for reasons of necessity, escaped his home to be amongst his fellow men, who, though free of his psychosis, were still just as disturbed; for not moments from the doorway, just seconds from the home, \*\*\*\*\* was harassed and beaten; and though in his pockets were the weapons of hard stones, he dared not touch them, for of floating.
Soon after this assault was written the letter previously disclosed, which contained both genius and contempt, but left anonymous the penman's name; but few who read it were unclear of the work's composer: for many had seen his mugging, and had quickly spread the news of its having occurred, and to everyone but the authorities, who would have done their best to do nothing, I'm sure. Be that as it may, having read \*\*\*\*\*'s epistle, many were so moved by his sapience, so impressed by his profundity, that, shortly after its publication, knowing who he was and where he lived (for such is the ability of gossips)---I say, shortly after this, envelopes began to appear beneath \*\*\*\*\*'s door, cluttering the foyer, containing requests for the inhabitant's wisdom.
At first he left them to gather dust, feeling no need ot entertain his attackers, whom he mistakenly believed were responsible for the parcels; but eventually, overtime, curiosity provoked him to open one, then all of the correspondence; and though some were unintelligible pros written by lowborn scoundrels---neighbors who hadn't liked being called savages---most were concise, well-written appeals for prudence that was uniquely his own. And so, moved that he had touched so many, and elated that his acumen could aid his fellow man, \*\*\*\*\* acquiesced, and responded to his neighbors. Of the letters he chose these, which most concerned him:
Dear Sir---
I am seventeen, nearing my eighteenth year, and am with child. I am desperate for your words. I do not want to kill my baby, but I do not want to kill my future either (for all will be lost if the child is born). My question to you is this: Being that I am only in my third week of pregnancy, and since the thing inside me as yet resembles a boy or girl, or anything close to these, if I choose to abort, would it in fact be killing? For so early is my condition can whatever is inside me truly, and accurately, be called human?
Most sincerely,A Troubled Soul
And to this he answered:
To Troubled Soul---
Your concerns are dear, and your circumstance dire; but do not transform concern into sophistry. The question you are asking is a simple one: When is a baby a baby?---and I shall respond in this way (for doing so will guarantee your understanding me): When making a cake, one, usually, follows a recipe containing a list of ingredients---flour, sugar, vanilla, eggs, etc.---and none of these, before they are combined, can be said to be a cake, only a maniac would dispute this. Moreover, all of these components, and whatever else it requires to make a cake, if gathered together, side by side, but remain unmixed, are nothing but parts, parts which may, possibly, become a greater whole---nothing more. However, when these ingredients are combined---either sufficiently or haphazardly---even in this primordial, gelatinous state (for how else does one describe batter), I say, what you will have is cake; for no other purpose are these ingredients combined, for no other utility would they serve; and indeed, no matter how you choose to bake it, when or where, trapped in tin foil or dispersed in a muffin pan---what you will have, once put into the oven and baked, I repeat, what you will have is cake---maybe malformed, possibly burnt and crispy, but, nevertheless, cake. And what makes reality even more potent than my analogy is this: one could argue (and their are some who will, I'm sure) that only in the oven does baking begin, and it is ultimately through this process that a cake is truly born. And, for reasons of amusement, let us say I agree with this (and do so alacritously, because in their argument is found the greatest truth): Would you not, then, concede that our baby, our cake---whether he be angel or devil food, lightly sweetened or saccharine laced---begins baking as soon as sperm punctures egg?\*3 and that in his mother is found the most glorous oven ever designed by Nature?
Troubled Soul, I burden you with my pros only to belabor this point: that you not diminish the act you are considering, which, because it so violently impacts your life, and more so than anyone else now capable of opinion---because of this, you, and you alone, must decide your embryo's fate, and then live, and perhaps suffer, with the choice you've made.---I hope that I've been helpful.
Sincerely,A Concernced Citizen
The second note was as follows:
To Occupant:
I observed your letter as it was printed in the Promenade, and was so impressed by your correspondence that I was moved to send you this note, which has taken me forever to compose.
I am a husband and a parent, and love dearly my wife and daughter; but yesterday (a few days before your receiving this), I cheated---at least, I think I did; for never did my genitals touch another's, which means, in the literal sense, there was no sex; and if there was no sex, then, I believe, as does my favorite President, I did nothing wrong, for what is mere petting but harmless play? Indeed, I go to sleep at night free from guilt because I know---as you do, I'm sure---that nothing I did can be interpreted as cheating. Still, I would very much like your opinion on the matter.
Thank you,Friend of the President
Which inspired this response:
Dear Friend:
Being that I, like you, am a man, and therefore know well your desires, I can truly empathize with your position; for we are sadly, loathsome creatures driven towards monsters more loathsome than ourselves. Be that as it may, what you are suggesting is ridiculous, and for this reason: A man sticks his tongue in your wife's ear---how do you feel? He then puts his pinkie on each of her butt-cheeks (which she allows free from guilt, for what is mere petting but harmless play?)---again, how do you feel? And then, simply because it thrills him to do so, he places a toe between her breasts---once more, how do you feel? . . . My point is simply this: Intimate contact of any kind, with someone---anyone!---beyond your significant other is cheating, and wherever the placement of genitalia; I'm sure your anger, given life by my merely proposing such debauches, is proof enough that I speak true. Admit to this now, and, maybe, possibly, I'll remove my toe from between your wife's tits.
Sincerely,A Concerned Citizen
The third correspondence went this way:
To a wise and knowledgeable fellow:
Please answer this (for your doing so, quickly and promptly, will at once alleviate a tremendous load which threatens, daily, my bones and extremities): What's the deal with the Fed?\*4 and moreover, its chairman, Alan Greenspan? I ask this because over the past year Fortune has blessed me, and I have, aided by her keen advice, acquired lots of things---money, car, clothes, women---and enjoy each immensely; however, I am quite fearful of the Joker at the bank, whose tinkering promises to deprive me of all these.---What say you?
Impatient for your reply,A Restless Neighbor
Which was answered thusly:
To Restless Neighbor:
Being that I am a simple man, I am uncertain how to respond to your note; of its parts, the first is too vague, but the second, however, is a matter I myself have contemplated often, and can best answer thusly: A man in his car is on a road headed for "Prosperity"; every mile takes him closer to where he wants to be, and each mile seems (and is) smoother than the one before it, making his ride a joyous one; but for fear of an accident which has yet to occur, caused by an oil-spill he has yet to see, the man slows then stops his motion, allowing the car no progress beyond its passing through time (which cannot be altered by deceleration). So afraid is he of the "might" and the "maybe" that the traveler doesn't dare go further, even reversing the car so to move away from impending doom, which, of course, he has only imagined. Eventually, over time, when he determines it safe to continue, the car, for whatever reason, stalls, though ultimately progresses, but only after much coaxing from its driver. Still, when it does go the vehicle moves much slower than before, and its handling isn't nearly as steady: the road has changed, as has the car, for on this journey time is the only constant; and so the driver, for lack of speed, finds "Prosperity" to be much farther away.
On Alan Greenspan I say to you this: When traveling, no matter the distance or destination, one should, one must, have courage---and Greenspan lacks this.
Having written thusly, I trust my anecdote was readily understood; for you are, it seems, a very shrewd man; one does not amass the sums you have on simple good fortune. Still, beyond your query, there is a more relevant question before us, one which, upon my asking, should help alleviate your fear concerning Greenspan's actions: Why does having "things" matter to you?---and what are you without them? I ask the latter because: when a man is himself nothing, he requires additions to make him whole, i.e., money, car, clothes, women---anything that might bring to him greater visibility---by this I mean, relevance. Ponder this, answer this, and learn from that result; for only then will you have something which, it appears, Fortune has yet to grant you . . . peace.
Sincerely,A Concerned Citizen
The fourth:
Kind Sir---
My boyfriend and I argue incessantly, and always about the same thing: My clothes. Being that I am young, beautiful, and shapely---and will be none of these forever---I feel it is both my right and duty to display to the world my magnificence; for is not beauty meant to be shared, adored, and admired?---Am I not doing, by wearing clothes that reveal to lesser eyes my glory---I say, am I not doing only what is right?
Without shame,Venus
Which inspired this:
Dear Venus---
I agree: Beauty is a thing that should be shared and admired; nevertheless, you got to have class with that ass.
The fifth:
To whomever is capable of answering this:
My dilemma is a desperate one; for it deals with the heart, a broken heart, and one belonging to me.
Three years ago I broke up with my dearest love, a woman whom I cherished more than anything or anyone, in this world or the one beyond it. Nevertheless, despite my affection, I, using faithful logic, one day determined that this woman---this angel!---though fulfilling all my emotional and sexual needs, was my lesser intellectually, and could never placate that part of me which requires more than simple hugs and kisses. Still, as I have said, it has been three years since my leaving, and my soul screams for her, as it did when we were lovers. Because of this I cannot sustain a relationship beyond a few months, so long is the shadow she casts, so black is my heart, which dies form lack of sun, its peddles . . . wilting. and so I have chosen to remain alone (for circumstance will not permit our reuniting). I hate being this way, but what am I to do? I ask you: Will I ever love again?
With reverence,Anteros
And to this he responded:
Anteros:
Know this: The question is not will you ever love again? but will you ever stop loving? For it is only when you no longer love this girl will you be free to love another.
Sincerely,A Concerned Citizen
The Sixth:
To you who would quell my sorrow; at least, to you who would try--
On the 15th of May was born my only child---the sweetest melody, the loveliest portrait, the finest poem has yet to be which could describe to you the boy, who was from God, who was . . . mine.---On the 18th of May, three days' following his eleventh year, was born my gravest sorrow, my darkest day . . . it was then . . . when Ian was no more.
I write to you now not for pity but for relief; it has been four years since Ian's departure, and my tears come just as quickly as the day when first he left. I cannot eat or sleep, and every child I pass---boy or girl---reminds me of him. Even now I cry . . . even not I see his face. I ask you: When shall there be sleep? When shall there be peace? When shall I not know pain? . . .
Somberly,Less
And this way he replied:
My dearest Less---
There are no words . . . only these: A child is an extension of the soul, the soul of its progenitor, the parent; and as the child grows, becomes strong, robust---the parent, the entity from whence he came, becomes . . . less; for that is the order of things: The parent (prima causa) sacrifices for the child his self, his soul, until resources are depleted, until nothing is left, and the parent is no more; not even Cronos could alter this. However, if the effect (the child) perishes before the affect (the parent), the soul is disturbed; for its growth, its extension, is lost, thus disturbing the order of things, thus disturbing order.
But these words only illustrate why you are hurting, and explain nothing about your future mending, which, sadly, I have no knowlege of. Be that as it may, know that your sorrow now extends to me; for I too shall bare your burden, as if Ian were the child to whom my soul would someday pass. And so, Less, with me you are more.---
Most Sincerely,A Concerned Citizen
The seventh (and final):
To him:
---Happiness is something I will never know, not will it ever know me.
---No greater pain have I ever known than that which comes from reflection.
---The worst thing, however, is that at 27 the best is over, and now I must face the rest of my days knowing no future as grand as childhood.
---And she can give to me nothing!---not the love I want, nor the acceptance I require.
---When I die, I don't want Heaven; give me the universe!
---There is no hate more potent than mine for life---for my own or anyone else's.
---Today I began carrying a hammer in my gym bag; and as I carried it (the bag in which the hammer rested), I dreamt that every woman was a nail.
---There are moments on this earth when nothing matters: not the pleasant breeze of summer, nor the calming warmth of my lover's arms. It was during one such moment that I decided to leave this place for another, in search of solitude and better days.
---What ought to be . . . will.
Frankly,Me
And the response:
To Me (and to the heart of the matter):
You no doubt suffer from depression; I too suffer from this, which comes and goes and comes again---indeed, there is rarely a day when I don't fear its arrival, never a moment when I don't look for it to appear. The following is a passage from when last depression touched me; I hope my thoughts are helpful.
The mind---by this I mean, that part of us resting just beneath the conscious, far beyond the reach of man or machine---the mind, I say, never lies; and it is for this reason that mortals suffer depression: for while the conscious can be tricked into believing falsities, the subconscious (the mind) is impervious to our fairy tales, which we create to make life less severe.
Beyond its inability to hide from truth, the mind (the subconscious) is perpetual, that is, it never stops its work---thinking, constructing, destroying, conjoining ideas without rest, and doing so for no other cause than the fulfillment of its purpose, which is discovery! ---and it discovers no matter how harsh or unpleasant the result, no matter our feelings; for what is emotion to the mind, which knows only reason.
Again: The mind is a device for absorbing truth, and the knowledge it consumes is redirected by us, to be altered and obscured; to the conscious goes the tainted truth, and to the subconscious goes the pure---and our ability to access the latter's information is determined by innate predispositions; for example: The dim have almost no entranceway into the mind, and, because of this, have its contents infected by the conscious, which almost always spoils its fruits. The smart, however, who are intellectually inclined (though only somewhat), have greater access to the mind, but are unable to do this freely and are often confused by the gifts of the subconcious, and so stumble around using mostly intuition, like the dumb, just not as feebly. It is only those blessed with genius who, at so high a perch, have the best view and thus passage into the mind, and, as a result, can both easily access and comprehend its treasures; for genius has the ability to tap into the subconscious and bring the idea to the fore, the pure idea, the uncut idea, one not diluted by commonness. This is why, more often than not, the genius, being surrounded by us who are mostly deaf and blind, the genius, I say, is rarely understood, for he is speaking to those who cannot possibly see or hear him.
(DEPRESSION: HOW THE MIND SUPPLIES IT FUEL)
As we previously noted, the mind is composed of two parts---the conscious and the subconscious---and both have a significant purpose: the subconscious, to discern the truth; the conscious, to mainly protect us from it---indeed, most would be unable to function if the truth of their world were revealed. For example: How could the poor bare their lives if, suddenly, they understood that most, despite their efforts, will remain impoverished until death? And how could the ugly, the homely, the wretchedly offensive---how could they endure a second knowing what the subconscious knows, that no matter how many pretty clothes they purchase, or pretty people they befriend, no matter how much money they acquire to be spent on pretty things, no matter these, they will always be ugly? And so the conscious, to protect them from harshest truth, keeps reality at bay and supplies each with hope, the most effective hallucinogen.
However, sometines the conscious is overwhelmed; for some have existence so miserable that all truth cannot be kept behind the veil---this, of course, ultimately leads to depression, a state in which the world (your world) beomes all too clear.
(THE VOICE OF REASON:HOW IT WHISPERS UNTIL WE ARE DEAF)
Once the subconscious begins to crack, to break, then eventually, to burst, a sudden stream of awareness makes its way into our thoughts, and we are, understandably, overwhelmed. In order to function, the conscious, newly burdened, creates for itself a helper (a hindrance), which manifests itself in a voice we soon come to hear. At first the voice is quite reasonable (afterall, it was created to help us); however, over time, as reality makes itself know (for now it bares no masks, and we are entirely exposed), the voice becomes too honest, and guides us towards escape, by this I mean, suicide, which was an option previously unrealized before reason made it known.
To extend beyond this point: The spirit is separate from the mind---moreover, the spirit is separate from the body, the world, the universe, and is free to explore all things. The spirit, unlike the mind, has no stake in our being, that is, it exists beyond us, despite us, and will do so long after we are gone.
(ON THE SPIRIT'S SELF-INTERESTED DESIGN,AND HOW WE SUFFER FROM IT)
The spirit, however liberated from the body, is, nevertheless, trapped; for as long as there is a body, and with it a mind, it (the spirit, the soul) is deprived of omniscience, which occurs because of us, who are but anchors of the soul. And so, the spirit has as its design a complete and total separation from its jailer, man, which it accomplishes upon his death; and since the spirit is impatient, it hastens our end by twisting logic and altering reason, which happily assures us that, to be free of torment, death is the only way.---
These are just a few of my notes on the subject; I do not wish to burden you with more, which would, because of volume, bring you to the floor.---Keep healthy, by strengthening your mind: suffer books, endure symphonies, so that, like me, you will be able to resist the voice which so often calls our name.
Sincerely,Me Too
Having ended with these words, \*\*\*\*\* named and sealed each envelope, then slid all beneath his door, unconcerned if any reached their destinations, for his mind was consumed by other things. The correspondence had taken its toll; the notes, each of them (but especially the latter two), had freed emotions which had, he thought, long been restrained, held down, and put to rest; but before him now was Sorrow, Anger, Grief, and Despair, who had come for conversation.
Chopin played, beautifully, and as the notes descended, so too did the listener, whose mood grew dark, whose pleasantness faded into shadow; for suddenly, before him was the truth, uncut and pure: he was pathetic, he was alone, he was afraid . . . of gravity.
Slowly, cautiously, he began removing from his pockets all that they contained, and, moving for the window, felt his body rising from the floor, his soul smiling from the heavens (for soon it would be free). Shortly after, \*\*\*\*\* was no more; and though he had long believed it to be his enemy, on this day, Gravity was his friend.
FROM The Queen of Harlem
Yo. Yo wassup?" asks a young man, planting himself in front of me. Though the temperature hardly warrants it, he's already wearing his new black parka, with fur trimming the hood. The coat is his business suit, different from the one I wear but a business suit nonetheless. "You cool?" That is all he says, and I fully understand the nature of the weather report.
I smile, somewhat tempted by the offer, but I pass with a simple lift of the hands. The moment does find me cool, so the young man, with a swagger and a sway, pushes off on his way. He doesn't take it personally; in his business, and in mine, a no is a yes, an offer away.
"Great day, huh?" says a guy walking by with a briefcase.
"Yeah," I say. "Can't complain."
"I hear ya. Have a good one."
"You too."
Autumn has alwyas been my favorite season. It's when time turns back on itself, if only for an hour.
Spring forward. Fall back.
I sit on the stoop of the town house, checking out the refurbished Marcus Garvey Park, which has been renamed Mount Morris. The leaves, going through their changes, sway with the breeze in the air as though Billie Holiday is singing "Autumn in New York."
I cherish the moment because I haven't been back to this street, haven't been back to New York, in four years. But here I sit where it all began.
A group of kids on the sidewalk across the street are double-Dutching, maybe hoping to one day take the crown back from the Japanese team. They are screaming with delight and the sting of the frayed extension cord they use goes unnoticed. They are used to its touch.
I bob my head to the sound of the cord slapping the concrete; my dreads swing to its cadence, almost as though my turn is coming up. Watching the kids, I'm loving their natural high.
An old woman tosses bread crumbs for the pigeons, and their velvet coos attract a swarm and they settle on the sidewalk at her feet. All the pigeons look alike to me, but I'm certain the old woman can spot a few of her favorites, her "babies"; perhaps the ones that most resemble doves. The pigeons begin to scurry as a car passes, but the little girls across the street double-Dutching never miss a beat.
"Mr. Randolph?"
"Yes," I say, standing, closing my journal.
"Diane Turner," she says, sticking out her hand. "So nice to meet you. Sorry I'm tardy, but this area is booming and I've had to show four other town houses today. Of course, this one is the prize."
"That's fine. I was having a great time just sitting here checking things out."
"Yes. The neighborhood has changed drastically in the last several years. This town house is a jewel." I suspect she knows what time it is, but she takes a look at her watch. "I actually have another client coming to see it in an hour. Shall we?" Diane Turner walks up the steps. I follow.
"Didn't that park used to be called Marcus Garvey?" I ask.
"Yes. Well, actually it was Mount Morris Park first, then it was renamed Marcus Garvey Park in 1973, but due to the current changes in the area they thought it would be best to again call it Mount Morris. Full circle, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes. It seems so. Malcolm X Boulevard hasn't been renamed, has it?" She smiles but gives no answer.
"After you," says Diane Turner, opening the door. "As you can see, fabulous." She places her hand behind her ear. "Just listen. You hear that? That's the sound of history."
Though the place has been renovated it's still as familiar to me as a childhood scar.
"I see you've brought a notebook," says Diane Turner, glancing at my old journal. She looks like a fancy black doll in her tangerine designer suit and matching suede shoes. A black and gold silk scarf covers her neck, and her lips are painted into a permanent smile. "That's wise. It's amazing how much people forget."
"Yes. It's just something to refer to."
"You said you're new in town?
"Somewhat. But I like the area."
"I'm sure you'll enjoy New York. Harlem is definitely the place to be. It's as the kids say, 'All that.' You'll find this town house to be a worthy investment. The best space for the buck. It's all in the details."
"You've got that right."
"I don't normally advertise, but I used to be the only broker handling properties up here. White brokers wouldn't touch it with a gloved hand when it was just shit. Anyone can appreciate the harvest, but few have seen the seeds I've sown. We do what we can. I'm sure as a young brother, and a lawyer no less, you understand."
"Yes," I say, catching her eye. "I think I do."
A cell phone rings and I reach inside my jacket pocket. "Oh, that's me," she says, taking her black alligator purse off her shoulder, digging inside. "This will only take a sec." Then into the phone, "Diane Turner . . . Hello, dahling. How are you? . . . Yes . . . Well, we do what we can . . . Um huh . . . Well, I'm showing another house at the moment . . . Yes, of course. Hold on." Diane Turner covers the phone, then whispers to me like telling a friend a secret, "Listen, hon, a couple interested in a property around the corner---mind you, not nearly as fabulous as this---is waiting for me. They want to take another look. Do you mind if I just --- "
"No, please. Feel free to go. I'll just make myself at home."
"Clever. Clever," she says, slapping me on the arm playfully. "I feel good about this. I think it's going to work out for you here." Diane Turner winks at me. "I have another appointment to show the house in an hour, but I'll try to be back before then. I think this deal around the corner is about to come together. A lovely couple, they. Did you say you were married?"
"No," I say. "I'm not."
"Well, FYI, a great many gay people have moved into the neighborhood. Follow the gays, I say. They really are the best people. Just fabulous. Give gays a ghetto and they'll fix it right up . . . Not that I'm implying you're gay, but if you were, just know, it certainly wouldn't be held against you."
I open my mouth to speak, but Diane Turner with a hold-that-thought gesture returns to her phone call. "Hello. Yes, I'll be right there . . . Nonononono, don't be silly. Anything for you . . . I'm just around the corner. I had a feeling you would want to take another look."
Yes, another look. but for me it was more than that.
I'd been staying at Jim's East Village apartment for two weeks, but as we sat in his favorite bar on East Fourth Street downing dollar drafts, the air was let out of the keg.
"Listen, Mason, it's been cool having you crash, but if you wanna keep kicking it in New York you're gonna need to find your own place."
Jim was your average hipster whose claim to fame was that he was the first white guy, that he knew, to have dreadlocks. All summer I had been twisting my hair, trying to attach myself to something associated with black heritage.
I know. I've been looking," I said. "I've checked the ads every day."
"Fuck the ads," said Jim, holding up his empty mug to the tattooed bartender. "Just tell everybody you meet that you're looking. It's the only way. That's how I found my place."
The "place" was a railroad flat. At least that's what they're called in New York. In the South it's called a shotgun house. But at that moment it was more than I had.
I'd crossed out all the possible ads but one remained:
HOUSEMATE WANTEDTO SHARE TOWN HOUSE450/month. Rarely homeNo. 20 W. 120th St.Appt. 4--4:15, 15 October
I'd circled it as a lark. Sure, I was going to go to Harlem, at some point, to check it out, but I'd never really considered living there.
"Please be sure to take all of your belongings when leaving the train. And be mindful of your wallets, for the hand in your pocket may not be your own." Voice over the intercom of the 6 train, tunneling through Manhattan's East Side.
I got out of the subway at 125th Street, and the rush of color, fabric as well as skin, filled me like a Jamaican patty. The air was different, alive. Incense filled my nose, and the different languages and accents felt good in my ears.
Harlem.
"Dreads?" said the West African woman, stepping up to me. "You want dreads? Twist?"
"No, thank you," I said with a smile as I walked on, avoiding the rolling tumbleweeds of hair that hadn't made it onto someone's head.
"Yo. Yo, playa. Wassup?" said a voice. I turned around as he stood on a stoop. His three friends stayed on the steps, sipping forties and sporting their latest bubble coats. "You a-ight? You need something?"
"Nah, man. I'm cool. Thanks," I said, stopping, hoping to strike up a conversation. Bond with the brothers.
" 'I'm cool. Thanks,' " he said, not at all trying to cover his mocking tone. His friends started laughing like Richard Pryor was doing a show. "Yeah, I see. You one of them uppity niggas. Probably get your shit delivered. Look at this motherfucker," he said, turning back to the peanut gallery. "He look like one of them niggas they always have in an ad, peeping out from behind the white boys. Like he don't care they got his ass stuck in the back. 'Just so happy to be here, massa.' Black boy blending."
I smiled, trying to brush off the situation. That I was used to, but not this.
"Your name's probably Theo. You a Huxtable?"
"Nah, man. It's not like that," I said, trying to change my voice, deepen it. "My name's Mason."
" 'No. My name's Mason.' "
"Malik," said one of the guys on the stoop. I glanced over at the guy, happy for the interruption. "Give the brother a break."
"Brother? This nigga ain't no brother. You ain't from up here, are you?" asked Malik. I wanted to just walk away but I didn't want to turn my back on him.
"No," I said. "But I'm checking out a place, though."
" 'I'm checking . . .' Nigga, you better head on back downtown. Harlem ain't for you. You too soft." He pushed me hard in the chest and I stumbled back. I couldn't smile anymore. At the end of the street I could see a cop car turning the corner and rolling our way.
"Malik," said one of his friends. "Chill, man. Damn."
"I'm just fucking with this li'l nigga." Malik looked me up and down, then starting laughing. He reached out his hand and I shook it, feeling the calluses on his palm as he slid his hand from mine and headed back to the stoop.
The cop car stopped but the policemen didn't get out, fully aware that their presence was more than enough. "How's it going, fellas?"
"It's all good," said Malik. "Just keeping it real, ain't that right, Theo?"
He changed my name so easily; he saw me as Theo, and as far as he was concerned, that's who I was: a black TV character from the eighties, living in a brownstone, successful parents, beautiful sisters, no troubles in the world. Theo Huxtable, easy as that. "Fine, Officer," I said, using this as an excuse to start walking away. I felt Malik's eyes on me, but I just walked on, hands jammed in my pockets, a slight ache in my chest.
I thought of going back to the ads, back downtown, back to something familiar, but I wasn't going to let one incident stop me. Still a man, in Harlem, I marched on.
My steps weren't as strong as they were before running into Malik and they became even more strained when I turned the corner off of Fifth Avenue onto 120th Street. Standing outside of the town house was a mostly white crowd, all looking attentive, ready to claim the space. I stopped for a moment, nervously twisting my hair; dreading rejection.
Black hair is hard work.
As I stood there it was like Malik had left his friends on the stoop and was standing in front of me, forty in hand, then spitting in my face, "Black boy blending." I crossed the street and went into Marcus Garvey Park. I took off the sweater I'd gotten in Ireland and stuffed it in my backpack. I pulled out my shirt and T-shirt and let the tails hang. There was no way to hide my loafers so I took off my belt and pushed my khakis down as far as they could go without falling off.
The park was hardly a telephone booth and Superman I wasn't, but with a slow swagger I walked toward the group standing outside of the town house like I belonged in the neighborhood and they were mere loiterers. "Wassup?" A few people nodded their heads but didn't say anything. I made my way to the back of the crowd, hoping that being set off from the rest would draw attention to me, praying that on this trip a whale in the distance is more alluring than those circling the boat.
We didn't have to wait long. At four o'clock the front doors of the town house opened. A woman stepped out and my body straightened and I shifted my weight from foot to foot to try to get a better look.
She closed the door and walked down the steps, leisurely as though an aria was ending, the cadenza on its way. She had on a fitted black sweater, a gray ankle-length skirt with a slit up the side, and tied around her shoulders was a light blue cardigan. Her hair was high on her head, as though pulling up her neck, where a strand of pearls pulled it all together.
"Women," she said, looking over our heads. She said it like it was the only word worth saying. "You may leave."
My penis had helped me survive the first cut of the apartment hunt bris and I was thankful for it.
"I gather you boys are here to see me," said the woman, a gleam in her eyes. Her voice was intimate and soothing. Chocolate mocha ice cream. A few men started to leave. I guess it wasn't their cup of black oolong, but I felt like honey ready to melt into the mix. Stir it up.
"You and you," then pointing with eyes only, way in the back toward me, "and you. The rest of you, thank you." She did this with ease, no exuberance, no explanation. It was like I'd called on God and he'd put me on hold, but at least Mahalia Jackson was singing while I waited. I pulled up my sagging pants as I made my way up to the front, stoked to be one of the Yous. I could feel the eyes on me and I loved it. Who da man? Who da man? How ya like me now?
"Hello," she said as we stood in the entryway. "I'm Carmen England."
"Richard Downing," said one of the guys, wearing a designer pin-striped suit and spit-shined shoes. He'd gone all out and I started to worry.
"Nice to meet you," said Carmen, then looking at the other guy.
"Scott Franklin," he said. His dark hair was cut short in the back and the sides, but he'd left it full on top. He had huge dimples and couldn't seem to stop smiling.
"A pleasure," said Carmen, then she looked at me. "And you?"
"Ma-Malik," I said, tugging on my pants, slightly slouching, giving aloof. "Malik Randolph."
I instantly felt alive. I didn't care that it wasn't my name, but just saying it made me feel powerful. Assertive. Assured. Just the name alone made me feel as though I could walk down the streets of Harlem without scorn or ridicule; bubble coat on my back, forty-ounce in my hand. If I wasn't going to get the place, it wasn't going to be because I was blending.
"Wassup?" I said, extending my hand to her.
Carmen arched her eyebrow, then said, "Never extend your hand to a lady unless she offers hers first."
I dropped my hand back to my side and started rubbing it against my pant leg, hoping that would salve the sting before it began to swell.
"Sorry."
"Don't be. It's nice to meet you, Mamalik."
"What? Uh, oh," I said, "It's just Malik."
"That's very seventies. Power to the people."
"You know," I said, trying to compete with Scott's smile. "Gotta keep it real."
My twists and the way I was wearing my clothes would have made my mother have a fit and it would have even made those at Johnny's Barbershop, an institution in Layton, Louisiana, pause. Though appointments weren't taken at Johnny's, people would line up for hours before the shop opened to be one of the first to take a number.
Clovis was the most skilled barber and always cut my hair. If you wanted any style, Clovis was your man. But he never got to try them fully on my nonthreatening fade.
There was always lively conversation going on, but once the soap operas started, all attention went to the television on top of the "pop" machine. These men were as avid about their "stories" as any woman and were loyal to the CBS lineup. They would talk about when Nikki was a stripper before marrying Victor or when Mrs. Chancler had her first facelift, long before she met Rex, or they'd talk about Billy and his drinking problem. They'd shake their heads at the woes of the television rich.
But whenever I'd walk into the shop they'd want to know what was up with the "Randolph boy." I don't think many of them knew my first name, but they knew, or knew of, my father and I was his son.
One day I was getting a haircut because I was going to Baton Rouge to represent Layton in the Louisiana State Spelling Bee. I'd told Clovis and he made a point to share the news. As usual, the old men sitting in the chairs that lined the wall, beneath the coat hooks and old posters of old hairdos sure to come back, were encouraging.
Clovis finished my cut, put the stinging green rubbing alcohol around the hairline and brushed me down with talc powder. He removed the barber's cloth and I stepped down from the chair, but before I could start to leave, Joe motioned me over.
Blue-eyed Joe was a fixture in the shop. He'd take the lunch orders and phone them in to Marianne's, the soul food joint a few doors down. He also swept up the different textures of hair that had fallen around the base of the chairs, all becoming one.
Black hair is hard work.
The bluish haze coating his left eye was how he got his name. No one knew if he could see out of it and no one ever asked. Mr. Joe never said more than he had to.
He patted the fold-out chair next to him. I sat, but he didn't look at me. He kept looking at the action in the pool hall in the back of the shop.
"Don't ever smile too big when thangs going good for you," said Joe. "We's proud of you here, hear?"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Joe."
"Just know, ever'body in that world out there ain't gonna be like that. Some people, Colored or other, ain't never gonna want to see no black man looking too happy. Godspeed."
Joe turned away from the pool hall and looked up to the television set. As I opened my mouth he put his hand up to stop me.
As the World Turns was starting.
Carmen showed us the room available for rent. It was small, right across from the kitchen and under the stairs, but a window looked onto the garden. I knew I could work with it.
We followed her back down the hall and into "the parlor." I looked around, taking it all in. The gilt mirror over the mahogany fireplace, the wainscoting, the decanters on the drinks cabinet, the ceiling cornices, the Oriental rugs and the pocket doors that closed off another room. The smell of the old didn't bother me.
She eased down onto the edge of a chair and motioned for us to take a seat. Richard headed for the chair to her right.
"Not in that chair, dear heart," she said. "It may not appear so, but the arm is loose and I can't be bothered to have it mended. I broke it when I was a child. When fine things begin to fall apart, only then do they reveal their true essence. Trust." Richard made his way over and joined us on the sofa.
"So. What is it that you boys do," she said, and after a brief pause, "for a living?"
I listened, getting nervous, as they spoke. Scott was a model, Richard a lawyer. Carmen focused on them with debutante attention and it took everything I had not to start twisting my hair. When they finished she looked at me.
"I don't have a job." I found myself thinking, Oh, now you wanna tell the truth. I could feel the sweat huddling in my armpits, ready to fall like rain from a dark cloud on a New Orleans afternoon. "Yet."
Carmen laughed and the other two guys relaxed in their seats, all of us certain that I'd blown my chance.
"I just got to the city a couple of weeks ago," I said, forgetting that I was trying to be cool, trying to be down, trying to turn this dead end into a cul-de-sac. "But you know, I have some leads and I do have enough for the deposit and the first month's rent. As soon as I find a crib I'll focus on the job, but you need shelter." Then against my better judgment I mumbled, "It's hard on a brother out there."
Carmen looked at me for a moment like she was a doctor examing an X ray, trying to see if there was something she missed, seeing if I'd break. "Well then, it's evident to me that you're in need of the place more than these two gentlemen."
"Yes," I said. Victory mine.
"And an excellent winner to boot," said Carmen. I sunk into the sofa. I knew this outburst would make her change her mind. But she smiled and said, "I like that. Modesty is a learned affectation, wouldn't you say?"
Relief.
Carmen got up from her chair and the two guys stood, knowing they had to keep looking.
"It was nice of you to come," she said, like a host at the end of a party. She touched each of them on the back and walked them to the entryway. "You're both fine young men and I'm certain neither of you will have any difficulty finding a place."
I heard the front door close. The sound of the lock made me wonder what I'd gotten myself into. I sat waiting for her to come back into the room, but she didn't. She walked down the hall like she'd forgotten I was there. I wasn't sure what I should do, but I got up and quietly walked to the door and looked down the hall. I didn't see her.
"Ms. England," I said, like being alone in a dark empty house and asking if anyone is there. "Ms. England."
I heard a noise behind me and I jumped. "Please. Call me Carmen," she said, sliding open the pocket doors that separated the parlor from the dining room. She had a bottle of champagne and two flutes. "I suppose we're housemates, which is cause for champers."
"Sounds good," I said, walking back to the sofa. I sat then stood, trying to figure out which was best. I decided to stand. She opened the bottle and when the cork flew off she screamed like it was New Year's Eve, then poured for two. She walked toward me until she was just a few inches away and handed me a flute. "Cheers."
"Cheers," I said, focusing on the flute like it held a magic potion.
She took her finger and placed it under my chin, then lifted my head. "You should always look in the eyes of the person you're toasting. If you can't have a connection with the person with whom you're toasting, then you really shouldn't toast."
"Oh, I'm sorry." I was nervous, certain I was doing everything wrong and would soon be back on the hunt.
"Don't be." She moved in a little closer. "Let's try it again. To us," she said.
"To us."
She took her first sip and this time I held her gaze for as long as I could. The champagne had warmed in my mouth before I was able to swallow. I moved away and walked back over to the sofa and sat down. She walked around the room as though looking at everything for the first time. Her champagne flute swung in her hand like a pendulum and I was ready to be hypnotized. I watched every move: the gleam of leg peeping out of the slit of her skirt; the red of her painted toes peeking out of her shoes; the way her tennis bracelet slid down her forearm when she raised the flute to her mouth; the lipstick kiss on the rim. I watched and she didn't seem to mind.
She picked up the champagne bottle from the mantel, refilled her glass, then walked over to me and topped off mine. I watched as the bubbles reached the top of the glass but refused to fall over. She put the bottle on the coffee table. I could see my mother coming over and picking it up. That's why we have coasters. I took a swallow of the champagne, trying to shake the image of my mother out of my mind. Carmen walked back to her chair and finally sat. She leaned back and crossed her legs, letting her arms rest on the chair's. I sat back on the sofa, more for support than comfort. I was trying to think of something to say, but I didn't have to.
"I don't have staff here, but you should know that I do have a cleaning lady, Rosita, who comes in once a week. The way she acts, one would think she owns the place. I make every effort to see that I'm not home when she arrives." Carmen took a deep breath, and when she released it, she said, "This maison de ville has been in my family since Harlem was chic, lost its chic, then became chic again, and that's a damn long time. Uptown real estate is becoming popular and people are starting to pay cute money for properties. 'Gentrification.' Such a nice-sounding word. Much better than 'Take your shit and get.' "
I started to relax; the champagne didn't hurt. "You know," I said, "I didn't think I had a shot at the place."
"Really. You were my favorite from the beginning."
I perked up a bit. "Why's that?" I asked, reeling out the line for an ego pat.
"Just a hunch. I can't quite put a finger on it, but I saw something familiar in you."
"Gotta keep it real."
"Yes. I believe you mentioned that."
"And one hand does wash the other," I said, pulling out the race card.
"Indeed. But two hands wash the face." That almost knocked me through the sofa, but I took it and slowly eased back. "But if you must know---" She stopped then said, "What's your name again?"
There it was. I'd forgotten that little detail. My grip tightened around the champagne flute. I thought of coming clean, telling her the truth. But I was in and I wanted to savor it. Wanted to live in Harlem. Wanted to experience her. I ran my hand over my twists and those words came back to me: Black boy blending.
"Malik. Malik Randolph."
"Yes, Malik. Right. You see, the model was definitely eye candy and would have been a nice bauble on my arm, yet white boys that age can be gorgeous one day and ass-ugly the next. So a proper five-to-ten-year scan is always necessary. Trust."
I felt drunk, but not just from the "champers." She downed the rest of her flute, then held it out toward me. I picked up the bottle, walked over and refilled her glass.
"You're too kind," she said, touching my forearm. I felt the hairs rise under my shirt. I walked back to the sofa and put the bottle on the coaster, then I moved it, trying to stay in the moment, remain cool, appear at ease. If she didn't mind a water stain, why should I?
"As for the lawyer," she said. "He's probably just out of school. Columbia, perhaps, which means he's nothing more than a well-dressed gofer. He's definitely from a good Northeastern family because the firm he mentioned rarely lets outsiders roast marshmallows at their fire.
"In a few years he will have moved up in the firm, and as this is a rather small town, I will more than likely run across him again, socially. He'll pretend to forget his experience here today, but will be a good little soldier and play nice, realizing that I may prove helpful in the future. And even if he's engaged to some poor girl who will have done more than just put in her time for his grandmother's ring, he'll still want to fuck me.
I laughed. I had to. I'd always found something sexy about a woman who could say "fuck" without hesitation, claiming it, owning it.
"You are a sweetie," she said, getting up and walking over to the sofa. She sat down. I was about to move over, but I caught myself and eased back into the cushions, opening my legs wide and placing my arm along its top like I imagined Malik would do. Just chilling.
"You're a Southerner, aren't you?"
"Yeah," I said. "I'm from---"
"Wait. Let me guess." She placed her index finger behind her ear as if trying to pick up the radio waves of my accent. "Mississippi!" Her answer wasn't presented as a question so I was more than happy to let her be right. Why not? If I could be Malik, I could be from Mississippi. It was a sister state.
"Good ear."
"Never question a woman's skills," she said with a self-assured glow. "Southerners are so respectful and well behaved. Everyone knows their place. Lovely."
My mood suddenly turned and I began to feel uncomfortable. I felt defensive, but I forced a smile. My life had been built on staying in my place, not rocking the boat. But I wasn't in the South. I was in New York, in Harlem, in a house with Carmen, trying to change the subject, trying to change.
"Thanks for the hookup," I said. "I really needed a place and you don't have to worry about the rent."
"I'm not worried about that. I bet you're a hard little worker bee. We like that," she said. She put her hand lightly on my leg and I flinched. She smiled. "I think it'll work out wonderfully."
Carmen again held up her empty glass and I picked up the champagne bottle and refilled it. The last drop went to her.
"Move in when you like. The key is on the hook near the door," she said, standing. "Be a dear and let yourself out. It's time for my nap."
She walked out of the room and started up the stairs. I sat there for a while longer, almost like I was waiting for permission to get up, be dismissed, waiting for direction from Carmen England.
My Girl Mona
He's short and bald, round like a black snowman but handsome. He's my head doctor, the third psychiatrist I've seen this year. The doctor leans back in his soft green leather chair and brings the tips of his fingers together like he's wise. He's not the smiley type. He nods and that's my cue to start talking.
Mona is forty-three and still got the kind of body that makes brothers act a fool, I say.
I look at Doctor like, You know what I'm saying? Doctor clears his throat.
We was sitting in that little diner off US-150 catching up like we do once a month, I tell him. I was sipping my 7-Up trying not to think about how much better Mona looks than me. More kids, more husbands, but she still looks like she did in junior high. Dark skin, perky titties, a waist that curves in tight then fans out into hourglass hips for miles.
The doctor says I'm having panic attacks, I tell Mona, and I go through the rigmarole of symptoms: heart flutters, dizzy spells, the sweats, an odd feeling of otherworldliness. When I say otherworldliness, Mona looks at me like she's being held hostage, but I keep talking. She takes a toke off her third cigarette, which takes away from her good looks. I've heard brothers say that about her, you know, wrinkling up their noses like smoking a cancer stick sends Mona from fine to ugly that quick.
You know what I mean? I say to Doctor not as a real question but just to be saying it. He just nods like he knows.
The waitress, who is so skinny her collarbones show through her tight-knit blouse, freshens Mona's coffee with a trembling hand like the pot is full of rocks. She looks at Mona with an eyebrow raised. Mona with all her flash is a fish out of water in Stanford now.
Mona's always been a part of my life, I say to Doctor. I still see us as little girls sometimes even now when we get together. Doesn't seem that long ago when we played down by the old creamery or recited our memorized verses in unison in front of God and everybody in the church, but it's been almost thirty years now. I was the everyday girl---not bony, not fat, not dark, not light---the girl who carried her opinions in her neck. Right here, I say to him and press my fingers into the center of my throat, a big old knot.
You were in training for panic attacks even then, Doctor says.
Doctor, she was something, I say. Mona was the one who could draw every eye across a room.
Back when everybody was trying to have that perfect Angela Davis fro, Mona opted for the Farrah Fawcett look even before it caught on. She had long hair for a dark sister---down past her shoulders. Mona was always trying to shellac her skin with lightener, but I loved her walnut-hull brown. She was the first black girl in Stanford to be prom queen. Mona was always first. The first to get her period, the first to sprout butt and tits, the first to "do it." If Doctor had been a light-skinned brother or a white man, he would have turned red.
The summer I turned fourteen, Junior, my husband to this day, was the one boy we could tolerate. He was the kind of boy who was all-boy but could hang out with the girls without grabbing his private place. He wasn't like all them other nappy-heads who played kick ball under the streetlight. The girls would sit on the curb in our halter-tops and hot pants, trading pullout posters from Right On! magazine---swapping Ricky Sylvers for Michael Jackson and listening to the Ohio Players on Mona's eight track. When the game was over, the boys turned their attention to us. We all stayed out until our mamas called us home. Or until the mosquitoes started biting so hard that we all would run home itching, whelps rising up all over our little hot bodies.
That year it seemed like me and Mona spent every day of our lives wondering what it would be like to be kissed by a boy. We watched our mamas' stories on TV and read the dirty parts of every romance book we could find. We wondered what "doing it" really was, even though neither of us wanted the label that came with the girls who let boys touch. But we already knew there were girls like Jeanette Stokes, who actually went into one of the unlocked cars parked along the streeet and let a boy untie her top so he could see her breasts. And she let one of the boys she really liked finger her in the dark. The ironic thing about it though was that even through all that, Jeanette Stokes was still a virgin when we graduated from high school but Mona wasn't.
Doctor catches me remembering, staring off into empty space that makes up my yesterdays and then I come on back.
Through the smoke cloud, Mona strokes her red acrylic nails, extends them out like crawdad claws to pick up her knife and cuts her chicken sandwich, I continue telling Doctor. She clears her throat and fidgets with the collar of her blouse, then smoothes invisible wrinkles from her skirt. I know she can't wait for me to hush, but I keep on talking like my life depends on it.
Imagine that, I tell her. Hell, I've never had anything like this before. Junior had to take me to the emergency room the first time it happened. I thought I was having a heart attack. I've always been healthy. No, never had anything like this before. Not when cancer took Grandmamma or when they fired me up at the factory. They said it was a permanent layoff. Not even when Junior messed around on me with that white woman.
That bit of juice gets Mona's attention and I stop talking for just a second before I start back up, timing it just right, making sure it's not long enough for her to jump in.
Oh, I guess shit happens, I say. Guess I'm getting older. Right at that moment, as always, I'm trying to figure out on my own exactly why Mona's been my girl all these years.
And why do you think that is? Doctor asks me, leaning forward like he's getting close to an answer.
Don't know, I say to him, It's a long story.
So I can see that I am making Mona nervous, I continue telling him. I'm waiting for Mona to chime in with a friend's concern or at least to tell me how sorry she is to hear about my nervous condition but she don't. I'm waiting to hear, What are you going to do? Is there anything I can do? Can they give you something for it? But her mascara-rimmed eyes are meddling with the people eating in the booths around us. Flirting with Mr. Taylor, who's stuffing a hamburger in his mouth, mustard running down his chin. Nodding hello to Callie Sumner, who owns the restaurant. We went to high school with Callie. She saunters by with a large orange tray filled with hamburgers and fries held high above her head, her flabby arms flopping in her own wind.
I guess we are all getting old. Getting fat. Mona's not even listening to me. When she looks back in my direction, I switch subjects and tell her about Junior's teaching job up at the middle school. He is one of the first black teachers in the county.
Did you know that, Doctor?
No, I didn't that's interesting.
I tell her about Daddy's trip to the hospital with appendicitis. I finish by telling her about my daughter, Shauna, getting caught shoplifting in Lexington.
She's just driving us crazy, I say. We had to go up there and get a hotel for two days to get it all straightened out.
But all of these are things Mona probably already knows from the newspaper or the grapevine. Nobody's business is sacred in a small town.
I can see that I've got Doctor's full attention. He's looking at me starry-eyed like a boy listening to a tall tale.
By the end of that summer all of us girls had at least been kissed, I tell him. Even Candy Patton, the quietest and most religious among us, prayed for seven straight days not to go to hell because she let Peanut rub her ass. It's all right, they're married now.
I should have said hind end in front of Doctor but I didn't. I was comfortable, like we were old friends.
Somehow we had willed the girlness out of our bodies, I say. Instead of playing hide-and-go-seek, or hopscotch, or Chinese jump rope, or watching the boys play kick ball, in the shadows against somebody's daddy's Plymouth or Nova, we paired up with the boys and kissed. We turned our heads to the side, puckered and kept our lips shut tight so the boys could keep their germs to themselves.
I can't help but to start laughing.
Anything else? Doctor says to me crossing his expensive britches legs and adjusting his self, wide in the chair, where I can see the folds of his crotch and not cracking a smile.
What do you remember most about this? Tell me everything, Doctor says and reaches over and squeezes my wrist like that's a comfort. And it sure nuff is.
Me and Mona named ourselves the kissing experts after seeing my brother, Kiki, and his girlfriend, Ina, on the couch, I say. We crouched outside the doorway of the living room, a place my mother never let us go into. The living room that was always ten times cleaner than the rest of the house, where the antiques and the good coffee table and the glass-topped lamp stood. The centerpiece was the white couch, still covered in plastic, that Daddy bought for Mama one year with the income-tax money. That living room was the show-off room only reserved for company, especially out-of-town company. It was the one thing my country mother had that rivaled anything belonging to the relatives who would ease back home from Cincinnati driving their new Cadillacs or Bonnevilles.
Kiki met Ina up at the Lexington Mall and drove his green Impala up to see her every weekend. When he brought her home to meet us, Mama told me and Mona to stay out from underfoot and let Kiki have his privacy. But me and Mona were looking through a crack in the door to the living room when Kiki and Ina kissed so much, their tongues going in and out of each others' mouths, that they looked hungry, like two starved people feasting on Christmas dinner. Me and Mona looked at each other horrified at first, but we were also looking when Kiki's hand rubbed all over Ina like mad and disappeared under her green paisley culottes. We took notes in our diaries and secured our secrets with the turn of the little gold diary keys we wore around our necks.
Now we know how it works, Mona says in a whisper, clutching her diary to her chest, her eyes fluttering up toward the ceiling like a prayer had been answered. I nodded, yes, without speaking a word. Stunned. Never knowing my brother, who I deemed Big Nasty for not lifting the seat on the toilet, the one who denied me his barbecue potato chips or candy sticks, the brother who tried to coax me into washing his funky laundry, was capable of making a girl moan and smile the way Ina did.
Later that day, Kiki walked hand-in-hand with Ina all over Stanford. Ina with her fashion-model looks and in-style clothes and Kiki with his football-player muscles were a sight to see. Everybody saw them walking down Water to Maxwell Street on their way to Carter's Grocery for ice cream, their perfect eight-inch Afros side by side like two black moons.
While they were gone, me and Mona pilfered Ina's purse and claimed her Satin Dreams lip gloss for our own. We shared it as a token of our sexual orientation. In secret we slathered it on our lips and tried to cut our eyes and walk with our hips rocking the way Ina did. We even talked Kiki into driving us to the Lexington Mall one weekend so we could buy ourselves some wooden high-heeled shoes just like the ones that Ina wore with her hip hugger blue jeans. Up until the time Kiki and Ina broke up, me and Mona would stare at her and follow her around when she was in town, hoping to get hold of some of her twenty-year-old womanly secrets.
I laugh and Doctor smiles, then catches himself and takes the smile back quick. I guess he thinks he's not being professional. I'm wishing he would just come off this for a minute and just be the black man that a sister girl needs to share her problems with and not the doctor.
So anyway, I sat to Doctor. I know Mona's been waiting for the conversation to open up one fraction so she can come in full force and fill it to the brim with her, so I ask her how she's doing.
Well, she says, running her fingers through her hair, then patting it down in the front and pursing her lips together to refresh her lipstick, I'm doing fine. No drama, she says.
But of course that was just warm-up talk; with Mona there's always drama. Soon Mona is smiling and gesturing wildly across the table. I listen as she sifts through child support and alimony, great sex and the kids like she's prom queen again---fake smiling so wide her unsightly dark gums show. It's an unflattering look and I catch myself relishing in the snickers that Mona doesn't notice coming from two lanky brown girls who are drinking milkshakes across from us. Look at that old lady trying to be hip, is what I'm sure they're saying. Well maybe "hip" is not the word they use these days.
Mona doesn't seem like she's from Stanford at all anymore. She has swallowed her small-town twang and is speaking in some generic tone that doesn't even say Lexington. I wonder how she could have moved only fifty-miles north of here and be such an outlander. Her clothes are young---a bright blue blouse with enough opened buttons to show a peek of the black bra underneath, a tight black skirt that I can see only the beginnings of above the table, her legs are crossed and one of her white girlish platform shoes is bobbing up and down into the aisle while she talks.
Doctor, Mona outgrew me in high school. I just looked up one day and she was a younger version of our mamas and I was still a girl. It wasn't her body so much, which had blossomed in junior high, but something else. She was suddenly able to gold a gaze with a man without giggling or looking away. I first saw her use it on my brother, Kiki, who was twenty-five at the time.
I stop talking.
Continue, Doctor says. Interesting, he says like I'm a bug under a microscope. And so I keep on with my story like I have to.
Mona stayed over one Saturday night our junior year, I continue enjoying Doctor's full attention. We had planned to stay up all night, cornrow each other's hair and try on new makeup, but Mona spent the whole night sitting in my bed, straddle-legged in her baby doll pajamas, trying to hold my brother's attention as he walked by the room. She told me she had to use the bathroom, but soon I heard her in Kiki's room.
Get out of here girl, I heard Kiki say through the walls.
But soon their voices were lowered and I could hear the familiar squeaking of the bed and the grunts and snorts that Kiki made when he would sneak girls over. I expected silence from Mona. Thought she'd try to protect me from knowing, but the moaning sounds she made were so loud that I feared that my parents would come to investigate.
Later, I heard water running in the bathroom, but Mona still brought the smell of sex with her into my bedroom.
Y'all out of toilet paper, she said, never saying a word about screwing my brother.
I stared at her and rolled my eyes.
What? She said.
What you think? I said.
Didn't nothing happen, she said. But I knew she was lying.
After that I think Mona hoped Kiki would prance her around like he had Ina, but when Mona was around, Kiki would sull up and find a reason to rev up his Impala and be gone. I could tell she was hurt by it all, but she never let on. Even as close as me and Mona were, there were a million miles between us.
Keep going, Doctor says prodding out my lifetime.
A short time after that, we went to the skating rink in Danville. I watched Mona skate right over to Junior and rub his chest. Under the black lights and the strobe flashing with the music playing a slow song, Junior looked as helpless as I felt when Mona kissed him full on the lips. Junior, who was supposed to be my boyfriend, followed her around for weeks, lingering at my locker, talking to me, but waiting on Mona to come by. It was clear that Mona really didn't want Junior, that he was being used for target practice and looking back, I want to think that she didn't mean me any harm. That she was just testing herself, trying to grab back something lost. Junior tells me to this day that it was nothing.
I married you didn't I, he says. Leave the past in the past.
When he messed around on me, I barely gave him a chance to apologize before I took him back.
Doctor says I should have expressed my feelings.
Later that night when Junior holds me in his arms I will get tickled about that. If I had expressed my feelings, Junior would still have a skillet mark on his head.
What you laughing at? Junior will ask me and I will say, Nothing.
Ever wish you married Mona? I ask him sometimes.
Woman, he says back, we were teenagers ain't you ever gonna give up on that?
Then he kisses me and we make love. But even then with him on top of me I am less assured. Feel like I'm a second place trophy.
I slow down my story to make sure Doctor is still following me.
So when Mona says, Darling, I have a blessed life, like she's the Gabor sister from Green Acres or some other made-for-TV white woman, my heart pounds out of my chest and sweat pours down my back. My chest is closing in and I'm shaking like a leaf. I am sure that any moment somebody in the restaurant will notice my predicament and holler for Callie to call the life squad. I'm waiting for that shift of time when Mona leaves her own world for just a second and notices that I'm in trouble. But nobody notices. All the eyes in the place are darting towards Mona. I don't say a world and just ride that one out.
Good! Doctor says, louder than I think he means too. You have to teach yourself to do that, to speak to your rational self and as you say, ride it out.
Mona's voice dims to the humming the deep freezer makes when I'm ironing clothes in the basement.
I'm not dying. I'm not dying, I say to myself over and over. It's just another spell. It's just another spell.
In a matter of minutes that seem to draw out for a lifetime, everything leaves then becomes clear again.
In the parking lot, after we've parted, Mona turns, waves to me and hollers, See you next time. I'll let you know about the wedding, she says and winks.
There is no I hope you feel better or let me know how you're doing. I wave back and watch her heels clicking across the asphalt toward her Volvo.
I couldn't say anything I had on my mind to say, I tell Doctor. I feel tears rising up in my neck.
I see, Doctor says, knocking his posed fingers against his forehead. You did well though, he says, I think you are getting better. You are gaining control. And you look so good today, he adds, well rested.
But I know he's thinking I'm screwed up in the head. He's a brother too, which makes it worse. There is so much more I want to say. So much more I want to know. I want to ask him if he's married, and if he is would he cheat on his wife. I am wondering if he would find Mona attractive. I want to ask him if he's hungry. If he wants to go get a bite to eat just to talk some more. I want to bury my head into his shoulder and just cry but I can't, I've already told him too much. In a few minutes he will write me a prescription, shake my hand, and schedule me another appointment. But before that moment he gives me a smile. A genuine smile that I snuggle in and feel clear down to my toes. And I am waiting with hope for what comes next.
About the Contributors
FAITH ADIELE has received the Dorothy & Granville Hicks Residency in Literature from the Yaddo Corporation, as well as fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Additional honors include the first Willard R. Espy Award in Nonfiction and the PEN New England Emerging Writer Award. Faith divides her time between Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Iowa City, Iowa, where she is currently enrolled in The Writers Workshop and the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She is at work on a memoir.
JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN is the author of the novel Rails Under My Back and Harbors and Spirits, a collection of poems. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois in Chicago.
UNOMA N. AZUAH received the Hellman/Hammett grant for her writings on women's issues as well as the 2000 Leonard Trawick creative writing award from the English Department at Cleveland State University, where she got her MA in English. Ms. Azuah served as the secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA Lagos), and as the publicity secretary of Women Writers of Nigeria (WRITA).
NICOLE BAILEY-WILLIAMS is the author of A Little Piece of Sky, a novel that spent two months in the #1 bestselling position for coming-of-age novels on Amazon.com. In addition to being an English teacher with the Ewing Township Board of Education, she is a freelance writer and co-host of The Literary Review, a book review show which airs on WDAS (1480 AM). She writes for Publishers Weekly, Black Issues Book Review, and QBR (Quarterly Black Review), and was a contributing writer in the Notable Black American Men reference book. She currently resides in Mercer County, New Jersey, with her husband, Gregory.
STEVEN BARNES, the author of fifteen novels including Lion's Blood and as many teleplays, has been nominated for both the Hugo and Cable Ace awards. Mr. Barnes lives in Washington with his wife, author Tananarive Due, and his daughter.
AMY DUBOIS BARNETT is editor-in-chief of Honey magazine and an award-winning journalist. Previously, Barnett spent two years at Essence magazine, where she oversaw five sections: Food, Home, Entertaining, Travel, and Parenting. She also top-edited the magazine's fashion stories and edited features. Prior to that, Barnett was Fashion and Beauty Features Editor at Essence magazine. She is the recipient of the Hurston/Wright Foundation Award for fiction writing and is currently working on a novel.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES is the author of Plain Brown Wrapper (an Alex Powell Novel) and coauthor of Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times. She is also a contributing columnist for the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times, has written for Vogue, the New York Times, Quarterly Black Review of Books, Essence, Emerge, and other publications. She is a correspondent on National Public Radio's The Tavis Smiley Show and her commentaries frequently appear on NPR's All Things Considered.
BERTICE BERRY, Ph.D., is an inspirational speaker, sociologist, and former standup comedian. She is the author of four works of nonfiction and the novels Redemption Song, The Haunting of Hip-Hop, and Jim and Louella's Homemade Heart-Fix Remedy. She lives in San Diego, California.
MICHELE ANDREA BOWEN, the author of Church Folk, graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with master's degrees in both history and public health. She lives in North Carolina.
CONNIE BRISCOE is the author of P.G. County, Sisters & Lovers, Big Girls Don't Cry, and A Long Way from Home. She is the former managing editor of the American Annals of the Deaf at Gallaudet University and has been hearing-impaired for most of her adult life. She lives in Ellicott City, Maryland.
LORI BRYANT-WOOLRIDGE, the author of the novel Read Between the Lies, is a veteran of the television broadcasting business. She spent seven years at ABC and has worked at PBS and Black Entertainment Television. She has won an Emmy Award for Individual Achievement in Writing.
CRIS BURKS earned her MFA in creative writing at Columbia College in Chicago, where she taught fiction writing for several years. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in several literary publications, including Shooting Star Review and Short Fiction by Women. She lives in Sacramento, California, and is the author of SilkyDreamGirl.
BEBE MOORE CAMPBELL is the author of three acclaimed novels: Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, which won an NAACP Image Award for Literature, What You Owe Me, and the New York Times bestsellers Brothers and Sisters and Singing in the Comeback Choir. She lives in Los Angeles.
LORENE CARY is the author of Black Ice, a memoir, and the novels Pride and The Price of a Child. She teaches writing at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two children.
VERONICA CHAMBERS, a former editor at The New York Times Magazine is the author of the memoir Mama's Girl. Currently, Veronica is a cultural writer for Newsweek. She is a frequent contributor to both The New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and author of a book about filmmaker John Singleton, Poetic Justice: Filmmaking in South Central. She is also the author of two children's books, Amistad Rising: The Battle for Freedom and Marisol and Magdalena. She is in the early stages of other fiction projects.
MAXINE CLAIR is the author of the novel October Suite and Rattlebone, a collection of short stories, which won the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for fiction, among other awards. She is also a Guggenheim Fellow.
PEARL CLEAGE is the author of the novels I Wish I Had a Red Dress and What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day as well as Mad at Miles: A Black Woman's Guide to Truth and Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot. She is an accomplished playwright and a cofounder of the literary magazine Catalyst. Ms. Cleage lives in Atlanta with her husband.
J. CALIFORNIA COOPER is the author of The Future Has a Past and five other collections of short stories, including Homemade Love, winner of the 1989 American Book Award, and the novels The Wake of the Wind, Family, and In Search of Satisfaction. She lives in northern California.
DANA CRUM is a journalist and poet who lives in Harlem. Crum has built an impressive résumé as a freelance writer. Since getting his first big break in the urban magazine The Source, Crum has successfully made a name for himself in both commercial and underground syndication.
EDWIDGE DANTICAT is the author of After the Dance and two novels, The Farming of Bones and Breath, Eyes, Memory. Krik? Krak!, her collection of stories, was nominated for a National Book Award. Critical acclaim and awards for her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, included a Granta Regional Award for the Best Young American Novelists, a Pushcart Prize, and fiction awards from Essence and Seventeen magazines.
R. ERICA DOYLE 's fiction has appeared in Blithe House Quarterly. She has published poems and articles in Callalloo, Ms., Best American Poetry 2001, and Black Issues Book Review, among other venues.
TANANARIVE DUE is the author of the novels The Living Blood, The Black Rose, My Soul to Keep, and The Between. Freedom in the Family, a book written with her mother, Patricia Stephens Due, will be published in 2003. Due has a BS in journalism from Northwestern University and an MA in English literature from the University of Leeds, England, where she specialized in Nigerian literature as a Rotary Foundation Scholar.
DAVID ANTHONY DURHAM is the author of Gabriel's Story and A Walk Through Darkness. He was born in New York City and spent his formative years in Trinidad, his parents' homeland. He received a BA and MFA from the University of Maryland and won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Fiction Award in 1992. Durham, along with his wife and children, divides his time between Scotland and the United States.
PATRICIA ELAM is the author of Breathing Room. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in The Washington Post, Essence, Emerge, Newsday, and in anthologies such as Fathers' Songs and New Stories from the South. A winner of the O. Henry Award, she has been a commentator for National Public Radio, NBC News, CNN, and the BBC. She lives in Washington, D.C.
PERCIVAL EVERETT is a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of fourteen books, including Glyph, Frenzy, Watershed, and Suder. He lives in Los Angeles.
ROBERT FLEMING, a former award-winning reporter at the New York Daily News, is the author of The Wisdom Of The Elders, The African American Writer's Handbook, Havoc After Dark: Tales of Terror, and the editor of After Hours: A Collection of Erotic Writing by Black Men. His poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in numerous periodicals and books, such as Brotherman, UpSouth, Sacred Fire, Brown Sugar, and Dark Matter. He lives in New York City.
ARTHUR FLOWERS is the author of two novels, De Mojo Blues and Another Good Loving Blues. He is a cofounder of the New Renaissance Writers Guild.
THOMAS GLAVE is the author of Whose Song? And Other Stories. Voted a "Writer on the Verge" in June 2000's the Village Voice Literary Supplement, he has won many writing awards, among them the prestigious O. Henry Prize. He is only the second gay black writer, after James Baldwin, to claim that honor. A 1993 honors graduate of Bowdoin College and a graduate of Brown University, he traveled as a Fulbright Scholar in 1998--99 to Jamaica, where he studied Jamaican historiography and Jamaican-Caribbean intellectual and literary traditions. Glave has been published and praised in many prestigious literary journals and his work has appeared in various anthologies. Born in the Bronx, New York, he was raised there and in Kingston, Jamaica. He is assistant professor of English at the State University of New York, Binghamton.
MARITA GOLDEN is the author of nine works of fiction and nonfiction, including her memoir, Migrations of the Heart, and the bestselling books Long Distance Life and Saving Our Sons. Her most recent novel is The Edge of Heaven. Marita Golden serves as president of the Hurston/Wright Foundation.
JEWELLE GOMEZ is an activist, teacher, arts administrator, and literary critic. A transplanted Bostonian, she has lived in New York for twenty years, most recently in Brooklyn. She is the author of The Gilda Stories.
E. LYNN HARRIS is a former IBM computer sales executive and a graduate of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He is the author of eight previous novels: A Love of My Own, Any Way the Wind Blows, Not a Day Goes By, Abide with Me, If This World Were Mine, This Too Shall Pass, Just as I Am, and Invisible Life. In 1996 and 2002 Just as I Am and Any Way the Wind Blows were named Novel of the Year by the Blackboard African American Bestsellers, Inc. If This World Were Mine won the James Baldwin Award for Literary Excellence. In 2000 and 2001 Harris was named one of the fifty-five "Most Intriguing African Americans" by Ebony and inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame. In 2002, Harris was included in Savoy magazine's "100 Leaders and Heroes in Black America." Harris divides his time between New York City and Atlanta, Georgia.
DAVID HAYNES is the author of a number of books including All American Dream Dolls, Somebody Else's Mama, and Right By My Side, which was a winner in the 1992 Minnesota Voices Project and was selected by the American Library Association as one of 1994's best books for young adults. Two of Haynes's stories have been recorded for the National Public Radio series Selected Shorts. In 1996 Haynes was named by Granta magazine as one of the best young American novelists. Haynes is at work on his next novel, The Majordomo's Daughter.
RAVI HOWARD is a graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. A native of Montgomery, Alabama, Ravi's winning story Like Trees, Walking was inspired by the 1981 lynching of Michael Donald by the Ku Klux Klan. Howard is at work on the novel Like Trees Walking.
BRIAN KEITH JACKSON is the author of The Queen of Harlem, Walking Through Mirrors, and The View from Here. Jackson has received fellowships from Art Matters, the Jerome Foundation, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. The View from Here won the American Library Association Literary Award for First Fiction from the Black Caucus of America. Jackson lives in Harlem.
MITCHELL JACKSON is a native or Portland, Oregon. He received a BS in Speech Communications and an MA in creative writing from Portland State University. Jackson is currently living in New York City, freelance writing and attending New York University's MFA program.
SANDRA JACKSON-OPOKU is the author of Hot Johnny and The River Where Blood Is Born, which won the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award for Fiction in 1998. Jackson-Opoku has received several honors and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and two Gwendolyn Brooks Poet Laureate Awards.
KENJI JASPER is the author of the novels Dakota Grand and Dark. His work has appeared in Vibe, Essence, The Source, and other publications. A native of Washington, D.C., and a graduate of Morehouse College, he now lives in Brooklyn.
YOLANDA JOE is the author of the novels This Just In, Bebe's By Golly Wow, He Say, She Say, and Falling Leaves of Ivy. She also writes mysteries under the name Ardella Garland. Joe is a native of Chicago and received her MS from the Columbia School of Journalism in New York. After returning to Chicago, she began working in news radio for CBS, then switched to television news and worked as a writer/producer for a decade before beginning a full-time writing career.
MAT JOHNSON is the author of Drop. He was a recipient of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, and received his MFA from Columbia University. He is currently at work on his second novel, set in Harlem where he lives.
R.M. JOHNSON is the author of the novels Father Found and The Harris Men. He lives in Chicago.
EDWARD P. JONES 's debut collection of short stories Lost in the City: Stories was nominated for the National Book Award in 1992 and won the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for best first fiction.
TAYARI JONES is the author of the novel Leaving Atlanta. She is a native of Atlanta, Georgia.
AGYMAH KAMAU is the author of Flickering Shadows and Pictures of a Dying Man. He is originally from Barbados.
MICHAEL KAYODE lives in Washington, D.C., where he is at work on a novel.
VICTOR D. LAVALLE is the author of Slapboxing with Jesus, a collection of stories, and the novel The Ecstatic. He graduated from Cornell University with a degree in English and received his MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. He has been a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Currently he is at work on his first novel.
HELEN ELAINE LEE is the author of the novels Water Marked and The Serpent's Gift. She teaches in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT. Educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Lee won rave reviews and a BCALA First Novel Award for The Serpent's Gift. She lives in the Boston area.
WILLIAM HENRY LEWIS is the author of a collection of stories, In the Arms of Our Elders, and his work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Best American Short Stories 1996.
CHRISTINE LINCOLN is the author of Sap Rising. Lincoln was born and raised in Baltimore. At age thirty-four, she graduated from Washington College and was awarded the school's Sophie Kerr Prize, an event that was covered by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
BERNICE L. MCFADDEN was born, raised, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. In 1997, Ms. McFadden quit her job and dedicated seven months to rewriting the novel that would become Sugar. McFadden is the author of three novels, the national bestsellers Sugar and The Warmest December, and This Bitter Earth. The trade paperback edition of The Warmest December was published in January 2002.
TERRY MCMILLAN is the author of Mama, Disappearing Acts, and the bestsellers Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and A Day Late and a Dollar Short. She is also the editor of the groundbreaking anthology Breaking Ice.
WALTER MOSLEY is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series, Blue Light, and RL's Dream, and two collections of stories featuring the character Socrates Fortlow: Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wold Award, and Walkin' the Dog. He was born in Los Angeles and lives in New York.
ANIKA NAILAH is the author of Free: And Other Stories. Nailah is the director of Books of Hope, a program that encourages young people to write and self-publish their own books. Her stories have appeared in several African American newspapers, including Reunion and Flare. She lives in Massachusetts.
GLORIA NAYLOR is the author of The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, Mama Day, and Bailey's Cafe.
ELIZABETH NUNEZ is the author of four novels, including Discretion and Bruised Hibiscus, the winner of an American Book Award. She lives in Amityville, New York. A new novel, Grace, will be published in 2003.
GWENDOLYN M. PARKER is the author of The Passing and These Same Long Bones. She lives in Connecticut.
ALEXS D. PATE 's work has appeared in The Washington Post, Utne Reader, and Artpaper. He is the author of the novels West of Rehobeth, The Multicultiboho Sideshow, Sideshow, Losing Absalom, and Finding Makeba.
AUDREY PETTY teaches at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where she is completing her first novel. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Crab Orchard Review.
CONNIE PORTER is the author of Imani All Mine. She has taught English and creative writing at Emerson College in Massachusetts and at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Porter's Addy books for young readers have sold more than three million copies. Named a regional winner in Granta's Best Young American Novelists contest for her first novel, All-Bright Court, she lives in Virginia.
SCOTT POULSON BRYANT was one of the founding editors of the hip-hop magazine Vibe. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, The New York Times, The Source, Essence, and Spin magazine. He divides his time between New York and Miami.
NANCY RAWLES is a novelist and playwright who grew up in Los Angeles and began her career as a professional writer in Chicago. Her first novel, Love Like Gumbo, was awarded the 1998 American Book Award and Washington State's Governor's Writers Award, and her plays have been produced in Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Seattle. She lives and teaches creative writing in Seattle. Her next novel, Crawfish Dreams, will be published in 2003.
JEWELL PARKER RHODES is the author of the novels Voodoo Dreams and Magic City and has received a National Endowment for the Arts award in fiction and a Yaddo Creative Writing Residency. Rhodes is also a professor of creative writing and American literature at Arizona State University. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. She is also the author of The African American Guide to Nonfiction and Free Within Ourselves: Fiction Lessons for Black Authors.
NELLY ROSARIO is the author of Song of the Water Saints. She earned a bachelor's degree in engineering from MIT and an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. She has received numerous awards, including a 1999 Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Fellowship, the Bronx Writers' Center Van Lier Literary Fellowship for 1999--2000, two National Arts Club Writing Fellowships, the 1997 Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction, and most recently she has been chosen as a "Writer on the Verge" by the Village Voice Literary Supplement for 2001. Rosario is published in the anthology Becoming American (Hyperion, 2000). She now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her daughter Olivia.
DANZY SENNA is the author of Caucasia. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, where she received several creative writing awards. She lives in New York City.
GENARO KY LY SMITH of Lake Charles, Louisiana, won the ninth annual Hurston/Wright Award for his novel excerpt Land South of the Clouds. Smith is a student at McNeese State University.
DAWN TURNER TRICE is the author of Only Twice I've Wished for Heaven and An Eighth of August. She writes for the Chicago Tribune and NPR's Morning Edition. She lives outside Chicago with her husband.
VALERIE WILSON WESLEY is the author of the nationally bestselling Tamara Hayle mystery series, which includes When Death Comes Stealing, Devil's Gonna Get Him, Where Evil Sleeps, No Hiding Place, and Easier to Kill. Her mysteries are also published in Germany, France, Poland, and the UK. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Essence, Ms., The New York Times, and numerous other publications. She was the recipient of the 2000 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award for Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do. Ms. Wesley has two daughters and is married to noted screenwriter and playwright Richard Wesley.
JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN is the author of a number of books including Brothers and Keepers, Philadelphia Fire, Sent for You Yesterday, Hoop Roots Fever, and The Hiding Place. His work has been widely anthologized.
CRYSTAL WILKINSON is the 2002 recipient of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature and a member of a Lexington-based writing collective, The Affrilachian Poets. She has presented workshops and readings throughout the country, including the Sixth International Conference on the Short Story in English at the University of Iowa and the African American Women Writers Conference at the University of the District of Columbia. She is the author of two books, Blackberries, Blackberries (July 2000), and Water Street (September 2002), both published by Toby Press. Wilkinson is currently Writer in Residence at Eastern Kentucky University.
DAVID WRIGHT is the author of Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Life Savers. His fiction has appeared in Sixty-Four, Southern Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and African American Review. He has published essays on Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Ernest Hemingway, James Baldwin, and the teaching of literacy. His television feature, The Pea Island Story, won a Salute to Excellence First Prize from the National Association of Black Journalists. He has received an NEH Fellowship, a Paul Cuffe Fellowship, and the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award.
SHAY YOUNGBLOOD is the Georgia-born author of the novels Black Girl in Paris and Soul Kiss and a collection of short fiction, The Big Mama Stories. Her plays, Amazing Grace, Shakin' the Mess Outta Misery, and Talking Bones (Dramatic Publishing Company), have been widely produced. Her other plays include Black Power Barbie and Communism Killed My Dog. An Edward Albee honoree, and the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Pushcart Prize for fiction, a Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, several NAACP Theater Awards, and an Astraea Writers' Award for fiction, Ms. Youngblood graduated from Clark-Atlanta University and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University. She has worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in the eastern Caribbean, as an au pair, artist's model, and poet's helper in Paris, and as a creative writing instructor in a Rhode Island women's prison. She is a member of the Writers' Guild of America and the Dramatists' and Authors' Guild. She lives in New York City.
Credits
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint the stories in this volume:
"The Dew Breaker," by Edwidge Danticat, reprinted by permission from the author; from RL's Dream, by Walter Mosley, copyright © 1995 by Walter Mosley, all rights reserved; "The Boy-Fish" by David Anthony Durham, reprinted by permission from the author; "The Way I See It," from A Day Late and a Dollar Short, by Terry McMillan, reprinted by permission from the author; from Pride, by Lorene Cary, reprinted by permission from the author; "Mourning Glo," by Lori Bryant-Woolridge, reprinted by permission from the author; from These Same Long Bones by Gwendolyn Parker, reprinted by permission from the author; "Your Child Can Be a Model!" by David Haynes, © 2001 David Haynes; from Song of the Water Saints, by Nelly Rosario, copyright © 2002 by Nelly Rosario, used by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.; "Miss Prissy and the Penitentiary," by Yolanda Joe, reprinted by permission from the author; "Luminous Days," by Mitchell Jackson, reprinted by permission from the author; from Only Twice I've Wished for Heaven, by Dawn Turner Trice, reprinted by permission from the author; "Sonny-Boy," from Pictures of a Dying Man, by Agymah Kamau, reprinted by permission from the author; from Water Marked, by Helen Elaine Lee, reprinted by permission from the author; from October Suite by Maxine Clair, copyright © 2001 by Maxine Clair, used by permission of Random House, Inc.; "Like Trees, Walking," by Ravi Howard, reprinted by permission from the author; "Weight," by John Edgar Wideman, reprinted by permission from the author; from P. G. County, by Connie Briscoe, reprinted by permission from the author; "My Heavenly Father," by Dana Crum, copyright © 2000 by Dana Crum, "My Heavenly Father" originally appeared in 64 Magazine and is reprinted here by permission of 64 Magazine and the author; "Lion's Blood," by Steven Barnes, copyright © 2002 by Steven Barnes; "The Knowing," by Tananarive Due, © 2002 by Tananarive Due; "Luscious," from Loving Donovan, by Bernice L. McFadden, reprinted by permission from the author; from Crawfish Dreams by Nancy Rawles, reprinted by permission from the author; "Press and Curl," by Tayari Jones, reprinted by permission from the author (this story inspired the novel Leaving Atlanta, Warner Books, 2002); "I Don't Know Nothin' 'Bout Birthin' No Babies," from The River Where Blood Is Born," by Sandra Jackson-Opoku, reprinted by permission from the author; "Draggin' the Dog," by Anika Nailah, © 2002 Anika Nailah; "Museum Guide," from Black Girl in Paris, by Shay Youngblood, Copyright © 2000 by Shay Youngblood, used by permission of Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc., and by permission from the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency; "School," from Miss Black America, by Veronica Chambers, reprinted by permission from the author; "Ghost Story," from Slapboxing with Jesus, by Victor D. LaValle, reprinted by permission from the author; "Clarity," by David Wright, reprinted by permission from the author; "My Mama, Your Mama," from Imani All Mine, by Connie Porter, reprinted by permission from the author; from Rails Under My Back, by Jeffery Renard Allen, reprinted by permission from the author; "Meeting Frederick," from Douglas's Women, published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, 2002, reprinted by permission from the author; "Eva and Isaiah," from Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do, by Valerie Wilson Wesley, published by Avon/HarperCollins, 1999, reprinted by permission from the author; "An Orange Line Train to Ballston," by Edward P. Jones, reprinted by permission from the author; "Lucielia Louise Turner," from The Women of Brewster Place, by Gloria Naylor, reprinted by permission from the author; "Fortune," by R. Erica Doyle, reprinted by permission from the author ("Fortune" first appeared in Voices Rising: An Anthology of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Writing); "Are You Experienced?" by Danzy Senna, reprinted by permission from the author; "Love," by Bertice Berry, reprinted by permission from the author; from Breathing Room, by Patricia Elam, Pocket Books 2001 publication, reprinted by permission from the author; "Love," excerpted from Drop by Mat Johnson © 2002, reprinted with permission from Bloomsbury Publishing; "Antiquated Desires," by Cris Burks, reprinted by permission from the author; excerpt from the novel Rest for the Weary by Arthur Flowers, reprinted by permission of Ellen Levine Literary Agency, Inc., copyright © Arthur Flowers; "Black and Boo," by Michael Kayode, reprinted by permission from the author; "Here," by Audrey Petty, reprinted by permission from the author; "Summer Comes Later," by Robert Fleming, reprinted by permission from the author; "The Bulging Bag," by Unoma N. Azuah, reprinted by permission from the author; from Sap Rising, by Christine Lincoln, © 2001 by Christine Lincoln; "Fire: An Origin Tale," by Faith Adiele, reprinted by permission from the author; "Tan Son Nhut Aiport, Ho Chi Minh City, 1997," from The Land South of the Clouds, by Genaro Ky Ly Smith, reprinted by permission from the author; "Between Black and White," by Nicole Bailey-Williams, reprinted by permission from the author; "Hincty," from The Chosen People, by Karen Bates, © 2002 by Karen Grigsby Bates, from The Chosen People, An Alex Powell Novel; "To Haiti or to Hell," by Alexs Pate, reprinted by permission from the author; "Mirror Image," by Amy Du Bois Barnett, reprinted by permission from the author; from What You Owe Me, by Bebe Moore Campbell, reprinted by permission from the author; "My Girl Mona," by Crystal Wilkinson, reprinted by permission from the author (this work was winner at the Indiana Review's 2002 Fiction Prize and appears in Crystal Wilkinson's second book Water Street, 1979, released from Toby Press in Fall 2002).
GUMBO. Copyright © 2002 by E. Lynn Harris and Marita Golden. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Gumbo: a celebration of African American writing / edited by Marita Golden and E. Lynn Harris.---1st ed.
p. cm.
1. American literature---African American authors. 2. African Americans---Literary collections. I. Golden, Marita. II. Harris, E. Lynn.
PS508.N3 G86 2002
810.8'0896073---dc21
2002068660
eISBN: 978-0-7679-1046-0
v3.0
To return to the corresponding text, click on "Return to text."
\*1Author's note: Section-8, as referenced here, is a federally subsidized program which allocates funds for public and private housing, provided that a fixed number of apartments be set aside for the poor and indigent.Return to text.
\*2For those readers who are, at bottom, inquisitive, I believe the condition is referred to as Barophobia: Fear of Gravity.Return to text.
\*3And will do so always, unless sperm or egg is defective.Return to text.
\*4Federal Reserve Board.Return to text.

