“Only ’cause Hannah gave me words for you and I promised to deliver them.”
“That all I’m worth, second-hand words?”
“You wish.”
At his place, Mabi tried to put his arms around her.
“My love’s not coming down for you no more.”
“Fuck why?”
“For the way you making Badger your legacy. I’m taking him down home.” She paused. “And for what you done to Mayor Charlie’s kid.”
“I done nothing to that kid.”
She returned his gaze, even up and twice as hard. “Hannah knows. She’s not deaf, dumb, and blind, your momma.”
“What she know?”
“And them Falashas from the African Meeting House. You know what they be?”
“Some African tribe.”
“Some Jew African tribe. Shit! You as Jewish as that fucking Levy.”
“You lying lying or lying true?”
“Lying true.”
“Jim Ed?”
“Never knowed.” Silvy paused. “What goes ’round comes ’round.”
-4-
Maddie did not sleep that night. After her release from Blackbird’s, she took a bus to a neighborhood where she could hail a cab that would take her to the Government Center parking garage. When the garage elevator opened at the seventh floor, Spider jumped in and pushed the emergency stop button. Without saying a word, he crouched over her, pinning her shoulders with his knees. Like a drunken barber, he sheared her hair. She refused to scream, resolved not to give him the satisfaction. She lay as still as she could while he pulled her hair away from her scalp and chopped it off at the roots. More than once he drew blood.
At home, with an envelope of hair mixed with dirt and debris from the elevator floor, she felt like an escaped prisoner of war. Mabi had not confessed, at least not verbally, but she felt confident she had solved Bumper Sullivan’s murder. If she died before sharing her information, Mabi would fly free and Levy would be convicted. Reaching for a tissue, she knocked Elizabeth’s hospital photograph off the night table. “Baby Girl Gloucester.” Her eyes were closed, her skull misshapen, her skin wrinkled. Indentations from the forceps distorted the sides of her head. It had taken a month for the indentations to fill in. Maddie righted the photo.
At her make-up table, she looked herself in the eye, a stare-down with her soul to see who blinked first. When neither did, line by line she filled one page after another in a legal pad with a detailed statement of the information she had gathered and the inferences she drew from it. She explained the link between Bumper Sullivan’s murder and the desecration of the synagogue and why she concluded Mabi and the Trojans had committed both crimes. She recounted seeing al-Saffah’s name in Ugolino’s guest register and his testifying at the bail hearing, facts that in her mind established he was part of the plot. She described what had happened in the basement of Blackbird’s, recreating what Mabi had said almost verbatim. She included a paragraph on Spider’s assault in the parking garage elevator. She explained why she did not take this information to Ugolino, his attempt to bribe her with a Superior Court judgeship. She listed the physical evidence–the slide with the blood, the blood-stained stencil, Duncan Siward’s report, Badger’s identification bracelet, a remnant of olive blanket from Blackbird’s, the plastic bag with her hair and debris from the elevator floor, the photocopy of the last page of Bumper’s spiral notebook–and where she hid it all. The more she wrote, the calmer she felt, calm enough to end her statement with Yeats’s epitaph:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
Come morning, she would mail copies to Rabbi ben Reuben, Moskovitzky, Duncan Siward, Uncle George, and Trish Sullivan. She thought about adding a note to Trish’s copy, but what would she say? That jail no longer ran in the Devlin blood? But it did. More than ever. Their past may have been rewritten, revised, corrected, but it was still the death row within which they were imprisoned.
In the bathroom, Maddie moistened her head with a hot towel and shaved her scalp, not a fashion statement but an act of defiance, a battle scar she would wear proudly, exposed to the world rather than hidden beneath a scarf or wig. And if people mistook her for a cancer victim undergoing radiation or chemotherapy, let them; in a sense a cancer had lived within her since birth and now, at long last, she was vanquishing her disease.
Too charged up to sleep, she poured herself a Guinness, emptying the bottle straight down the center of the glass. Her father scolded her the first time she poured Guinness that way, but she liked to watch the brown foam rise to the rim, then recede as the black liquid rose in its place. The clock on the wall chimed the half-hour, 3:30 a.m.
She telephoned Michelle Furey. “I need a will.”
“At this hour?”
“Can you come here? I don’t want to go out.”
“You all right?”
“I will be when I have a will.”
“What about witnesses? I need two witnesses.”
“Please.”
While Maddie waited, she dumped the contents of her purse on the kitchen table and rifled through the mess, looking for the scrap of paper with the name of Uncle George’s Dublin hotel. It was among the food coupons in her supermarket envelope.
When Harriman came on the line, Maddie said, “Mabi killed Bumper.” The echo of her voice and the slight time lag in his response unnerved her.
“You sound in an awful way.”
She read him her statement.
“Prepare a second original in your own handwriting. Sign each page and hide it with the evidence so I can find it.”
Minutes later the front door buzzer sounded and Maddie let Michelle Furey into the building. “Christ, Maddie.” Furey recoiled. “What happened to you?”
Maddie led her to the kitchen table, offered her a Guinness, which Furey refused. “I need a will.”
“Come to my office in the morning. We’ll do it right. Witnesses. All the formalities.”
“I need it now.” Maddie patted the side of her head to straighten strands of hair that were no longer there. “Morning may be too late.”
“Chemotherapy? Is that why you shaved your head?”
“Read this.” Maddie gave Furey her statement.
“My folks have a cabin up country. Middle of nowhere. We can hide out there.”
“I’m done hiding out. Never again.”
Furey gazed at Maddie with the resignation, the understanding, of someone visiting a beloved relative on her death-bed. The sadness in Furey’s eyes comforted Maddie, told her that Furey cared.
“We could do a holographic will,” Furey said. “It’s better than nothing. It has to be in your handwriting. I’ll dictate the language.”
Maddie wrote as Furey spoke, then signed each page as well as the signature line on the last page attesting that she intended this holographic will to be her “last will and testament signed freely and voluntarily for the purposes set forth therein and with full knowledge and understanding of its contents.” Peace veiled Maddie in an inner calm. “Kiss me,” she said.
“I love you,” Maddie said after they made love. “Now, skedaddle.”
“I want to stay.”
“No. If it’s to be my fate, it’s my fate alone.”
CHAPTER 14
FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 1981
-1-
While Maddie Devlin prepared for Yeats’s horseman, Mabi paced the floor of his bedroom like a death row prisoner awaiting his last meal. His encounter with Silvy haunted him. Her words assailed him like the evil spirits that vexed Gideon. If Gideon’s hexing don’t make me a witch doctor, Mabi thought, and Hannah’s praying don’t make me a holy roller, being Falasha don’t make me Jew bait. Fear feasted on his innards like maggots on the dead. After all the years and all the training and all the chess games and all the missions and all the praying to Allah, after being sliced and diced–his manhood in al-Saffah’s hands and under al-Saffah’s kni
fe–after turning page after page in that god damn book, after all this, was being Jew bait his fucking ajal? If al-Saffah found out who he was by blood, he, like every other fucking Jew, would be the enemy.
He knew what it meant to be a nigga in the Birmingham of the North and he knew what it meant to be a Trojan; but to be Jew bait? His head spun like the wheels of Brother Ambrose’s skates. What was Falasha? A word. A fucking word. Because of this word and for no other reason, al-Saffah would now hate him. Fuck! He pounded his thigh with his fist. I ain’t had me no soul transplant. An hour after Friday’s dawn, he barged in on Hannah.
“Falashas, Momma. Speak on it.”
“No forgiving for Bumper Sullivan or Chelsea.”
“I’m not asking forgiving.”
“Knowing the meaning of your name don’t raise the dead.”
On his way out the door, Mabi paused at the photograph of Jim Ed in his Marine dress uniform. Jim Ed’s deep brown eyes stared out at him and suddenly he was eight years old again and swaggering in Jim Ed’s shadow as his brother faced off against Gabe Tucker while the embers of Boston burning still glowed; eight years old again and feeling his brother’s manhood surging through him, eight years old again and dreaming of being the crown prince to Jim Ed’s king. He turned away from the judgment in those eyes and their unanswered question: Whose backyard I be burning?
Friday’s rush hour clogged the streets as Mabi inched his way toward Copley Square and the Boston Public Library. He felt anxious, eager, scared all at the same time, like he did fronting Billy Sunshine outside the candy store. He didn’t like them old feelings.
Copley Square was a desert paved in brick. The Hancock Tower rose above it like a bronze totem that trapped in its mirrored face all who ventured into the brick desert. People, like camel caravans, snaked across its glass surface. Mabi searched for himself in the reflection. On the far side of the square, opposite Trinity Church, the library shimmered in the heat’s convection currents. Four black wrought iron light fixtures crowned with seven spikes hung above the Dartmouth Street entrance, one on each corner of a hexagon and the seventh in the center. Fall on them, Mabi thought, and you meat on a fork. He wished they were hanging over the front door of the Trojans’ chill pad. Above the fixtures, names were carved into the façade, Dvrer, Plavtvs, Theorcitvs, Clavd, Povssin. He had never seen so many V’s. Plavtavs. Plavitivis. He hesitated on the steps. The spikes were now spears, comic book spears impaling so many Greeks, so many Trojans, the agony of death frozen on their faces. He searched the façade for a name he knew. Homer. The comic book dude. At the top of the first block to the right of the entrance. Seeing that almost made him feel welcome.
“I want to study up on Falashas,” Mabi told the lobby attendant, Prudence according to her name tag, which also identified her as a Friend of the Library volunteer.
Prudence closed her book, An Illustrated History of Paul Revere Silver and Pewter, bookmarking her page with her thumb. Her eyes brimmed with skepticism. “Falashas?”
“Them’s a black tribe in Africa.”
“A school project?” Prudence raised her head so that she appeared to be looking down her nose at Mabi even though she was sitting and he was standing.
“You pointing me in the right direction or no?”
“Listen carefully for I shall not repeat myself. For reference, follow the hallway to my right, past the souvenir desk, which is closed, through the open court yard, to the lobby of the new wing; then, go up the staircase to the second floor, not the mezzanine, mind you, but the second floor, and a reference librarian will help you.”
Mabi wanted to haul Prudence to the roof and drop her on the spikes. Her and the rest of Wonder Bread white-assed Boston, white-assed America. He passed through a pair of swinging doors into a courtyard with an open roof. Sunlight streamed in, reflecting off walkways of crushed stone, illuminating potted plants and miniature trees. A fountain with a waterfall sprayed mist. Wooden chairs lined the walls, stone benches the walkways. Fuckin’ Mayor Charlie don’t clean garbage from black gutters, don’t plow snow off black streets, don’t trim weeds ’round black graves, but eagles for this shit he’s got. Mabi grabbed a handful of stones and hurled them at a cherub spouting water. In the new wing, the lobby rose like the inside of a hollow pyramid. The arrow directing patrons to the reference librarian pointed straight up. He circled the perimeter, then climbed the stairs, ninety-five steps from the lobby to the second floor, almost twice as many as from the basement of the Trojans’ crib to the rooftop. Two of them tenements standing on each other’s shoulders would fit inside this place with room for most of another.
“I’m here to read up on Falashas,” he announced at the reference desk. “Them’s a black tribe in Africa.”
The reference librarian, an Asian-American wearing a shapeless, colorless smock, smiled at him. She had straight black hair and no visible curves. “Books published before 1975 are listed in those volumes against the wall. Books published after 1975 are catalogued on microfilm. The readers are against the windows behind me. Everything’s alphabetical.”
Volume 20, Fah-Fam. He doubted Fam meant the same as in the hood. Two pages of Fal entries, but none under Falasha. Maybe I not reading it right, he thought. He wished Silvy were with him. He closed, then reopened the book. Still, two pages of entries beginning with Fal, but none for Falashas. After twenty minutes, a microfilm reader became available. He twisted around to the reference librarian. “How’s this work?”
“Shhh! Read the instructions.”
Mabi played with the switches until he found one that lit up the screen. Min. He turned the wheel and letters scrolled by in front of him, Min, Mil, Mih, blurring as they went faster. He slowed down at Est, then scrolled back. Fac, Fag, Fai, Fal. “You got three books on Falashas,” he shouted. “Bring me what you got.”
“We have an open stack system.” With a rubber tipped finger, she pointed to the catalog numbers. “Go to the DS shelves to your left inside the wall. The books are arranged in order. DS135 is between DS134 and DS136. The numbers are on the spines.”
No wonder brothers and sisters not using this place. He found the DS shelves, books about Jews, hundreds and hundreds of books about Jews; but the numbers went from DS135.E70 to DS135.E80, no E75’s.
“No books with them numbers,” he told the reference librarian.
“If you want to borrow them, submit a reserve request and we’ll notify you by mail in four to eight weeks. If you want to read them here, there are duplicate copies in the research library in the old wing. Upstairs opposite the main entrance. Do you have a library card?”
Mabi flashed his driver’s license. “That good enough ID for you?”
She copied the information from his license on to a form. “Here’s a temporary card. Your permanent card should arrive in four to eight weeks.”
Mabi retraced his path to the front entrance, shoved his temporary library card under Prudence’s nose, then followed the signs to the research library. He resented going to white places to find his past, search for his future. Falasha books should be with black books, not Jew books. Black books should be in black libraries where blacks would be welcomed instead of treated like gangbangers who can’t read past “See Spot run.” He felt his heritage being bleached out by whites squeezing it dry.
“I here to look up Falashas,” he told the librarian, a white woman whose velvety lips were designed for one thing. Between the legs of white pussy was one place he figured he’d always be welcome.
She gestured toward the card catalogue. He found the drawer labeled Fah-Fal. Eleven entries. Some in English. Others in a bunch of other languages. “All eleven.” He stood so his arm touched hers while she jotted numbers down on scrap paper. He felt her muscles move against his. He regretted not fucking Devlin. Next time. The librarian wrote down a twelfth number.
“Take this to the kiosk in the Abbey Room across the hall.” She stepped back and looked him in the eye. Her eyes were steel gray, like cemen
t, like Jim Ed’s empty coffin. He didn’t believe in the evil eye, but he felt himself weakening as her look battered the fortress he had built around himself. He felt as exposed as the time al-Saffah sliced him and diced him. She blinked and he felt pain between his legs as if her eyelids guillotined what al-Saffah had missed.
“What about stuff too new for books?”
“We have The New York Times Index. Under Falashas you’ll find the dates and page numbers. The papers are in the microfilm room.”
He took refuge in the microfilm room. The twelfth number was a phone number, a challenge he would never accept. Black pussy castrated their men. He’d be damned if he’d let this white pussy do the same. Pages of The New York Times passed before him until he reached the front page of the edition he wanted, a Sunday paper. He had the jitters of a person about to meet his grandparents for the first time and was afraid they wouldn’t like him.
He dawdled over the articles, reading each closely. In the Pantanal region of Brazil, poachers imperiled wild life, jaguars, capybaras, otters and alligators. Why did people care more about that shit than blacks in Boston? He lingered at the lingerie ads, beautiful women, all white, modeling frilly bras and slinky slips, their tits jutting out as if their bodies were for sale rather than the underwear. News stories passed before him like scenery outside a car window: authors disputing over what really happened leading up to Pearl Harbor, Turks asking for increased aid from Western Europe, Polish dairy workers threatening strikes, archeological discoveries under the streets of Sofia, a scientist finding a fossil of the world’s oldest bird, one hundred forty million years old. He wished his past were as long. The articles wearied him, and he realized he was avoiding doing what he had come to the library to do. He didn’t give a fuck about military unrest in Spain or labor problems in Singapore or who would be the next ruler of Tunisia.
He scrolled to the next page and a headline yanked his eyes out of his head: “Torture Reported of Ethiopian Jews.” His heart skipped a beat at the first line of the story: “Falashas, as the black Jews of Ethiopia are called . . .” He put his head inside the hood of the microfilm machine to read the small print in the dim light. The Ethiopian government, the article said, was arresting Falashas and torturing them, closing their schools, denying them exit visas to Israel, and barring them from decent farm land. He felt queasy at the description of the torture suffered by the Falashas, tied hand and foot to long poles, suspended upside down, beaten with clubs; flesh sliced open, the wounds becoming infested with worms; broken bones which were never set. ODing Brother Ambrose was God’s mercy compared to this shit. The more he read, the more he understood what Gideon and Hannah feared, why they covered up their past, his past, and why they never told him or Jim Ed what their name meant. He wondered how much of this shit was still happening.
The Fire This Time Page 33