Blueschild Baby

by George Cain

  I know the effort it cost my mother to come to this conclusion, to sell this house and return to the jungle. It was her dream where the youngest sons would grow and escape the fate of the elder, a victim of urbanity. Years of labor and self-sacrifice. To end up surrounded, hounded and harassed by the white mob. Driven from her dream. I would kill them all if I knew how.

  “What did we do wrong George? I mean there must’ve been something. We made all you nuts. You didn’t just happen.”

  My father comes in and turns on the news. Hearing the sound of small arms fire I think it’s a report from Nam, till I see the black civilians running through city streets. Tanks moving in such a setting is unbelievable and I keep thinking it is a movie. There’s a young boy shot as a looter lying among a heap of goods. Suddenly angry my father snaps the set off. We sit stunned and I see the picture of the boy fading on the screen or is it still before my mind?

  “I got something for you son.”

  I react to the word son. He never calls me son except to lecture me, to define our positions prior to talking. He is the father and I his son who must accept what he says regardless of how I feel about it.

  “Come in the room, I want to talk with you.”

  We go inside and I sit at the foot of the bed as I always have. Wishing I was his child son again, careless and without the responsibility for my life. Wanting to cry and have him console me, but that time is past. He fumbles about in the bureau and pulls out a wooden case.

  “I’ve got a present for you, go ahead open it.”

  It’s a gun, a brand new luger.

  “You know how to use it?”

  He breaks it down and spends half an hour showing me how to use and maintain it.

  “I got that for you during the war. I’ve had it for twenty-five years. Kept it in good shape, knowing but hoping I wouldn’t have to give it to you. Know it seems inconsistent with my position and way of life to hand you a gun, but part of a father’s job is to equip his children to get along in the world. This is the last thing I can or will give you George. Everything else, a good home, education, things, all those you rejected and poisoned. Unlike your mother I don’t feel guilty about anything, that your shortcomings and troubles are somehow the result of my or our negligence. She blames herself for everything, but that’s a woman’s way. Those things were all meant to aid you in life and this is the last thing I can give. Please, don’t misuse it as you have everything else. You can leave it here till you’re ready to leave. Keith went over to pick up your daughter, really you should see her. Your mother’s been under quite a strain, the kids will drive her crazy.”

  He leaves me and I sit considering the man just revealed me. My father, a hardworking man who in all his life never hinted at anger, wanting only the best out of life and going quietly about it, advising his children to do the same. But the anger is in all of us, needing only the time or incident to blossom. Fear has done what countless leaders couldn’t, rallied us together. Like a riot in the penitentiary, there is no middle ground or neutrals, color of skin determines the side you’re on. No longer is there choice or free will. We’re trapped in this house. I close the case and return it to the drawer.

  Keith bursts through the door chased by the twins, they wrestle to the floor, laughing and bumping around. Tasha sets up a howl at her master’s arrival and my mother yells for them to cut out the noise. The uproar unsettles me and I hide in the bathroom to calm myself with a fix. Hear my mother telling them I’m here and they pound upstairs to my room looking for me. I come up and they’re seated on the bed.

  “Hey brer,” Keith greets me.

  “What’s happening?”

  The twins rush up and we swap fives.

  “Say Akbar, Abdul, why don’t you two go downstairs for a while. Let me talk to George. We’ll be down in a minute.”

  “You coming right down? Want to play you some pool for money.”

  “Get on, we’ll be down. You two ain’t nothing. Lemonade? Go get the table ready.”

  “Yeah Raschid you owe us money already.”

  “Go on down.”

  They leave the room arguing with themselves who’ll shoot first.

  “Brought Sabrina out. She’s outside with Pop.”

  “Wanna smoke?”

  While he rolls the joints, I stand in the window watching my daughter and father. Have not seen her in four years since the day she was born and find it hard to believe she is of me. A beautiful half-breed child with golden hair playing with and loving the black man she calls Granddad. From here I can hear the tiny voice and his, deep and reassuring. He is strange, my father, had never thought him capable of such open love and warmth. I’ve never experienced or seen it before. He laughs and smiles happily, indulging her, answering any question, pointing out things and finally packing her on his shoulders, brings her inside. We smoke and reefer struggles with scag for my head.

  “So what’s happening with you Keith?”

  “Raschid brother, Raschid. Keith is dead. I killed him.”

  “Sorry, keep forgetting. The twins Muslims too?”

  “Yeah, Mom doesn’t know yet. She’ll hit the ceiling when she finds out, already thinks I’m crazy. When you gonna make that move? Islam is where it’s at.”

  “Got to get myself together first before I do something as important as that.”

  “That’s true. I got a Koran and tried to mail it to you in the joint but they sent it back. Give it to you soon as I make absolution.”

  “How’s school?”

  “Okay. At N.Y.U. now on a full scholarship. You should try getting in, with your smarts and the way they screaming for brothers. They think they’re slick, they got this new program for minority groups where they’re bringing three hundred brothers off the streets into the school. I don’t mean people who’re qualified either, just three hundred blacks. All they want to do is meet this quota, knowing the brothers aren’t prepared for this academic thing and when it fails, they’ll say we told you so. But they don’t know. Brother we got it together. Every day we drill and help each other. It’s beautiful working your people, but really you should check it out. Know you can get in.”

  “With my record?”

  “You’d be surprised. It might be an asset. They got this thing now where they’re directing their efforts toward the more intractable segment of the population. I guess, figuring if they can work their magic on them, they’ll have no trouble with the rest of the population. I thought they weren’t going to give me a scholarship cause I wasn’t fucked up enough. Didn’t come from a broken home, never been busted, only thing I had going for me was that funny Army discharge.”

  “Let’s go down.”

  Walking down we meet Sabrina.

  “Daddy George?”

  Confusion and questions flit across her face and she begins crying. Don’t know how to reassure her, we are strangers. Daddy George only an identifying sound to distinguish me from the other male adults, all those uncles Nichole has had for lovers. Strangers parading in and out of her life none giving or demanding love. Only that she be quiet and go to bed early. Daddy George, someone she has been told about but never expected to see, a chimera or good luck fairy who left quarters under the pillow but never appeared. I pick her up and she clings, feel the heart and tiny body trembling against me like a frightened animal. I’ve seen her twice in life and she was too young to recall either time. Since then my family has taken care of her on weekends and holidays, presenting her gifts and a family in the name of Father George. I don’t think anyone expected or planned us meeting. We are unprepared for one another.

  SHOOTING THE LAST OF THE DOPE, feel panic race through me. Shall soon be sick without the energy to hustle money or dope. The pain begins, only a pinpoint between the eyes. It was always there, even when a child, that slight pulsing on the brain, pushing out my eyes. It will grow to consume my mind without attention. Only dope alleviates it. In prison I never knew it. It never came and I woke every morning at pe
ace and free.

  It is times like now that I’ve wished for a gun. When broke and at the end of hope, my sickness coming on. Go out there and take what I need from the first thing that looks like it’s got it. A gun is good as money, money is spent and goes, but a gun is constant and never fails to bring what you want. The true Everything Card, good everywhere with no questions asked. I put it back and hurry into the streets to hunt a score. Am walking down Broadway checking cars for something worth stealing when I see Lolly struggling toward me with cameras and a trunk on his back. He calls me over.

  “Hey Cain you live round here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look. Do me a favor? Help me carry this trunk and stash it at your place and I’ll do something for you?”

  “Okay. Damn man, what in this trunk? Heavy like a motherfucker.”

  “Don’t know yet. It’s locked. Didn’t have time to fuck with it, so threw it on my back. Sorry I did now, probably ain’t worth nothing anyway.”

  “You some kind of thief. Taking shit and don’t even know what it is.”

  “Know I should’ve left it. Done passed a thousand police. They’re probably saying to themselves, he couldn’t have stolen that, it got to be his. Who the hell would steal something like that and flat foot it through the streets at this hour. Nobody. That’s how you got to be, fantastic, that’s why I took it. If they just saw me walking down the street with all these cameras, looking like I look, they’d hurry up and stop me wanting to know where a nigger got all that shit, but they see me lugging this trunk they think just another crazy nigger.”

  “Better be something in this motherfucker. Heavy as it is. Feels like books or something.”

  “Probably what it is, fucken books or something. Took this stuff from a faggot’s pad. He go to school downtown somewhere and his place is full of books. Drop that shit Cain, don’t need it. I got a pocket full of dope and money.”

  “We’re almost there. Sounds like a nice sting you made.”

  “Chump had about two hundred dollars’ cash laying round and these some good cameras, know they worth a taste. Wish you’d been with me, could’ve gotten more, he had TV, stereo and things but I couldn’t take it by myself without a car. This trunk was the only thing I could carry and it’s too much, good thing I ran into you, couldn’t carry it much further.

  “Talk about luck, wasn’t even out looking. Like I say, got a pocket full of dope. Don’t be stealing when I’m together. Hooked on dope, not like some cats who hooked on the hassle. Stealing, just to be stealing. No, that ain’t me. Was sitting up in this bar downtown waiting for Sleepy to show, when this cat slides up to me. Right away I see he’s a faggot, no big thing. We get to rapping and shit and he invites me on up his house. We drink awhile and the lame hits to cop my joint and while he’s on his knees, I off him. He’s still out. Bet he be a mad, mad motherfucker when he gets it together.”

  “Here, this is it. Damn this thing is heavy.”

  We haul it upstairs and into my room and fall on the bed to recuperate.

  “You got works Cain?”

  “Yeah, let me go get em.”

  When I returned he’s bent over the trunk.

  “Still can’t get this thing open.”

  “Want a hammer?”

  “No this a good trunk here. Can get some bread for it. Don’t wanna fuck it up. Might even keep it myself.”

  “How you gonna open it without messing it up?”

  “Sleepy’ll take care of it. He’s good with locks and things. You got the gimmicks? Let me go first, all that work made me sick.”

  We get high, sit back and nod.

  “Say Cain you remember when we got busted stealing them cookies in the third grade? I’ll never forget that. What was that teacher’s name?”

  “Mrs. Browdy?”

  “Yeah, that’s her, Mrs. Browdy. I’ll never forget that bitch. I got the blame for it all and it was your idea. She came in the room and there I was on your shoulders reaching into her locker to get them cookies. You were so good, they wouldn’t believe you could do wrong, even after you told them you did it. She made my people pay for the cookies and my mother beat me, right there in front of the class. I wanted to kill you. What’d she tell your mother? ‘Mrs. Cain, you keep George away from Charles, he’s no good and can’t teach your son anything but wrong. George is a darling child and Charles is nothing but trouble, a bad influence.’”

  “You remember that?”

  “Man how could I forget that shit. Wanted to bust you in the head with something, but I knew I’d better stay clear of you, cause if anything happened I was gonna ride the beef. What happened to you anyway Cain? You went to school and everything, I’d a been made if I were you, stead of being out here like I am now.”

  I was king. To whom all good things were to come. But here we are, together, reduced to the same thing. Me, whose expectations were great. Used to envy Lolly as a child, his freedom and adult manner, he was never a child. A ten-year-old who stayed out all night and didn’t go to school when he didn’t want to and drank wine. He grew up funny, always an old man, no different now than ten years ago, somehow skipping adolescence. On his own so early, he had no time for childish diversions or games. To support himself he gambled with the old men and preyed on women. Remember them talking about bad young Lolly in the barbershop when I was young. Fifteen years old in long shiny shoes with upturned toes, baggy silk pants, cashmere coats, and bald head, indistinguishable from the thirty- and forty-year-old men with whom he associated.

  “Say, you know where we can get some girl, feel good, like partying. Got all this dope and money, gonna lay up for awhile.”

  “No.”

  “Let’s get off again.”

  We cook up and hit again.

  “Man, it feels good to have some money for a change. Don’t have to get up in the morning sick and have to go out and hustle. Been so long, don’t know how to act. But I been due, ain’t had no breaks in a long time. What I’d really like to do is make one big sting. Say ten or twenty thousand. Could really take care of business. Wouldn’t never be sick or have to hustle. Buy a piece of good stuff and put it on the street, some boss rags, a Cadillac, get a good woman, maybe open a little business. Yeah, I’d really take care of business. After I down these cameras should have some money. Bet nobody in my family, Mom, Pop, grandpeople ever had this much cash at one time in their lives. Yeah, tomorrow when I get straight, gonna buy some clothes, saw this leather down at Phil’s for two bills, a suit, sharkskin or mohair, and I’m gonna sit up in the Gunsmoke and let everybody see me, buy everybody a drink, gonna be somebody for a little while. You be around tomorrow, down in the bar and watch. Dig Cain, wanna leave this trunk here a while till I find Sleepy. What’s ever in it can wait. Be back tonight or tomorrow for it. Here’s something for helping me.”

  He throws two bags of dope and a ten dollar bill at me and stumbles out. Sit on the bed fighting down an urge to run down the hall and mug him, take him off for everything he’s got. He’s so high he’d never know what happened. The unfairness of it all galls me. That he should have that money and no idea of what it can do for him, what he can do with it. He doesn’t deserve it, so ignorant of the world and its pleasures, knowing no more than the street corner he was born on and will die on. Thinking the world begins and ends on 64th Street. Would never occur to him to walk across the street to Lincoln Center or to take a trip out of this place and leave it all behind, begin anew somewhere else. Clothes, Cadillacs, women, money and more money, another king for a day, he’ll be greasy as ever next week, out there exactly as he began, with nothing. I forget him, pocket the money, shoot a bag and sit debating to open the trunk or not.

  It’s a good trunk, got to be something valuable inside. A treasure of some sort. Money, that’s what it is, money. I know it, sure as anything, it’s a trunk full of money. Look around for something hard to pry it open with, the silverware just bends. Tip down the hall and get the pipe. The thought of this mon
ey, can’t keep my hands from shaking, so shoot my last bag for calm and strength. Using the pipe like a crowbar send the lock flying across the room and raise the lid.

  I dig through the pile of books and struck by the sight of money, get vertigo and my knees buckle. Snatching a bill, hold it to the light, smell it, taste it, crumple some and put it in my pocket. It’s real money, more than I can count or reason about. Like those figures in the paper of stock exchanges and millionaires’ income. That’s not the same money that you and I slave forty hours a week for and can buy so little with. It’s not the same thing, but some other rate of exchange used by fictitious people out of fairy tales, but it couldn’t be dollars. If it was, how could any one person have so much of it and so many so little? Taking more bills, I stick them in my pockets and run to the window to see if Lolly has gone. Watch him get into a cab on the avenue. Slam the trunk and throw it on my back and hit the streets.