“Yeah.”
“And I’m going to keep on taking care of us. You know that?”
“Yeah.” He looks at the ground.
I put my arm around his shoulder, pull him to me, resting my chin on his head. “Hawk, baby, I know it’s hard on you not having a daddy. I don’t have either my mama or my daddy. But you and me got each other, got Bibi and Uncle Ray. More family than many folks have.”
“Yeah.”
I can feel the sad in his voice.
* * *
The kids are a block away when I hear them coming home from school, singing loud enough to wake the dead. Nobody in the neighborhood home this afternoon except Dooby Franklin trying to sweep his front yard, Mr. Stone on his way back to the store. The kids peel off as they go into their houses till it’s only Hawk and Desmond. The silly song they’re singing echoes off the sidewalks. I look out the front door, see him doing what he call skipping: hop on one foot, leap with the other, while carrying on with the song. Sounds to me like he’s saying, “Hair he go,” and something about Lulu, like the girl in the comics. He gets closer and I start understanding the strange words:
Here we go loopty loo,
Here we go loopty light,
Here we go loopty loo,
All on a Saturday night.
You put your right hand in . . .
He winds up his right arm and throws his hand out in front of him.
You take your right hand out . . .
He throws his hand up in the air.
You give your hand a shake, shake, shake . . .
Which is what he does.
And turn yourself about ...
He whirls in a circle.
“Hawk!” I call from the front door. He stops and whoops out laughing when he sees me.
“Hey, Mama, I’m loopty-looing.”
“I can see that.”
He say “Bye!” to Desmond, who waves to him and heads for his house. “This my right hand,” he runs up the front walk, wiggling his hand out to his side. I’ve been trying to teach him left from right. Now here he comes home singing a song, knowing which is which.
“How’d you learn that?”
“Miss Madison. I got a pocket here”—he touches his shirt—“and my heart is under it, going thumpety-thump. See? My right is the side with no pocket or heart.”
Simple thing. Why I’m not a teacher.
He comes bouncing up the steps. “You got me a sandwich?”
“I do if you got me a kiss.” He jumps up, brushes his mouth on my cheek, runs into the house. I like working first shift so I can be here when he gets home from school.
He sits at the kitchen table, slurping milk while I spread peanut butter on one piece of bread, grape jelly on another. “Mary Anne, at school . . .”
“Yeah, I know, you’re always talking about Mary Anne.”
“Her mama cuts the crust off her sandwiches.”
“Okay, I can do that.” I reach behind me for the bread knife. “’Course if I do, it’ll be less for you to eat.”
He thinks on that. “Leave ’em on. No-crust sandwiches are for girls.” I put his plate on the table and he takes a bite. “Mary Anne’s mama fixes her hot chocolate when she gets home.” His red-brown curls make his head look big.
“Good for her mama.”
“I want hot chocolate.”
“And I want a convertible.”
“I want one, too, like Mr. Franklin got.”
“Then you gotta get you a job.”
He laugh. “I’m six. What can I do?” His gray eyes—his daddy’s eyes—are hard to look away from.
“Your friend Mary Anne’s mama, does she work?”
He takes another bite. “How’m I gon know that?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
“Then stop axing me stuff.”
“Asking. You say asking, not axing.” I sit down beside him, pat him on his shoulder. He shrugs me off. Lately he doesn’t like being touched much. Use to crawl up on me and go to sleep, his head on my chest.
He pulls some papers from his book bag, pushes them across the table to me. “You have to read this.”
Another notice about the PTA, Parent-Teacher Association, asking me to sign up for hall monitor or safety mother, to come to meetings, to “get involved in your child’s education.” First few he brings home I throw away. No way I can do more than I do, and I don’t like them keeping after me. But here I am, feeling bad for not joining the PTA. I crumple it.
“No! Miss Madison say for you to read it.”
Uncle Ray comes through the back door. “Read what?”
I smooth out the paper. “Notice about a parent and teacher thing, meeting at the school. They want me to work there.”
“For pay?”
“You’re dreaming. They wanting me to help out, make things better for the students.”
“You gon do it?”
“Between the S&W and mopping the floor and mending your britches is when I’m gon work for nothing.”
“I might could do it.” Uncle Ray spreads peanut butter on a cracker, his fingers twisted around the knife, his knuckles lumpy. “You haven’t got the time and Livvie hasn’t got the mind.”
“Uncle Ray, you’re not serious.”
“I’m not Roebuck.”
Hawk giggles. Sears Roebuck is his favorite place to go. “Uncle Ray, he’s not Roebuck.” Hawk laughs and laughs.
Maybe it’s not such a bad idea, Uncle Ray and the PTA. He is the closest thing Hawk’s got to a daddy, always showing him how stuff works, telling him why things happen the way they do. Once I heard Hawk ask Uncle Ray about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. “Adam and Eve, were they white or colored?”
Uncle Ray was quiet for a minute. “The way I look at it, one had to be white and the other colored, else how did we all get here?”
I think about me and Mr. Griffin, and I like that answer.
* * *
Raining off and on since early morning, bus running late. I’m glad all over again Uncle Ray’s there for Hawk and Bibi. What would I do without him? I come huffing home, toting the cardboard containers of beans and potato salad left over from yesterday at the S&W, one more thing Mr. Griffin does for my family. He leaves stuff for me in a paper bag under the counter, nodding to it when nobody’s looking.
“Hey!” I hear the radio Bibi leaves going, even after her stories are finished in the afternoon. “Anybody gon say hey?”
“Hey, Mama.” Hawk comes sliding down the hall in his socks on the waxed floor, explodes into me in the living room. I grab him, laughing into his neck. “What you learn in school today?”
“Everything.”
“You already know everything? Then you don’t need to go back.”
“Mama, you silly.” He pushes away, runs back down the hall to our room.
Uncle Ray’s in the kitchen. “Chicken is baking. What you got in the bag?”
At least once a week, he bakes chicken with lemon juice, garlic, and butter. He only has a few recipes, but he does well with them.
“Beans and potato salad, plenty of both.”
Uncle Ray stares out the window at the rain coming down. “If I do that PTA thing, Loraylee, maybe I can make the school better, get us a bus. Something.”
CHAPTER 11
Eben was fixing lunch when the phone rang.
“I’m calling from Mayor Jones’ office,” a woman said, “to extend an invitation—”
“Yes?”
“—for you to attend the meeting of the Redevelopment Commission.” Her voice was deep, a smoker’s voice. “The meeting is scheduled for seven p.m. next Tuesday. That’s April 24, 1962.”
Does she think I don’t know what year it is? “Yes, I believe I’m free then.”
“It’s in the second floor conference room of the City Hall on East Trade.”
“I know the building.”
She cleared her throat. “The mayor wants you to consider joining the comm
ission. It’s a real honor, you know. Bye-bye.” A click and a dial tone.
* * *
Tuesday evening Eben stood in the doorway to his closet, wishing he could ask Nettie’s advice. She always knew how to dress for these occasions, which of his two business suits looked best with this shirt or that tie. After considering the few possibilities, he chose his black suit and clerical collar. He’d been invited for two reasons: first as a Negro, and secondly as a preacher. A proper representative of Brooklyn, a man who had to have at least some education. As he left the manse, he took a last glance in the oval mirror of the hat rack, assuring himself that he looked every inch a minister, and that he was getting old. Ah, well, he thought.
He parked on Trade Street in front of City Hall in the eerie after-dark quiet, no traffic, no pedestrians. He climbed the stone steps to the lobby, feeling lost under the towering ceiling as he waited for the pain in his knee to ease before taking the elevator. In the wide hall of the second floor, he heard a rumble of voices muted by closed doors.
He entered the meeting room and talk subsided. I’m the only one here who could stop them in their tracks. At the first encounter he extended his hand. “Reverend Ebenezer Polk. Is this the meeting of the Brooklyn redevelopment project?”
“This is it.” The man mumbled a name he didn’t quite catch, dropped his hand immediately, looked around. “Reverend, you say?”
“Yes. St. Timothy’s Second Presbyterian.”
The man walked away, left Eben standing alone as the room filled again with talk.
Windows on the west wall looked out at downtown. The Liberty Life building was lit up. Eli Patterson, a member of St. Tim’s who worked as a janitor there, had come to see Eben when his job title changed to sanitation supervisor, with no raise in pay. “They seem to think,” Eli had said, “that a fancy title puts food on the table.” All Eben could offer was sympathy.
He saw Mayor Hiram Jones among a group of men by the head table, talking animatedly, patting one man on the shoulder. He knew enough about Jones to have a grudging respect for the man, the never-met-a-stranger sort, but with an impressive sincerity. In his mid-fifties, the mayor maintained the athletic build that had made him first-string basketball at Davidson, where he’d displayed amazing agility and speed to compensate for his height disadvantage at six feet even. Jones had pulled his own type of sit-in, after the one in Greensboro. When a similar protest happened in Charlotte, the mayor quietly organized an “eat-in,” pairing white and black leaders to dine together in prominent restaurants. Though he was sure that the mayor’s motive was to prevent drawing national attention to an imbroglio in Charlotte, at least the man had taken a stand. He liked thinking about the delightful fiasco Jones created by making a lunch reservation for two at the City Club, then arriving with a black man as his guest. Where was that man now? Had he been invited to this meeting?
The mayor saw him, called out across the room, “Welcome, Reverend Polk,” and turned back to the man beside him.
Ashtrays littered long rectangular tables set in a square such that all attendees could be seen from any seat in the room. A slide projector on the table at the bottom of the square faced a screen on the opposite wall. Cigarette smoke wafted toward the ceiling. He looked around to see where he might sit to best advantage, then noticed the triangular nameplates, printed front and back to be read from anywhere in the room. A seat near the projector identified him as PASTOR EBENEZER POLK. Across the room a short white man in clerical collar stood by a seat labeled THE REVEREND TERRENCE TIMMONS. The minister crossed the room. “Reverend Polk? Terry Timmons. Glad you’re here.” He shook Eben’s hand vigorously.
“Good to see you, Reverend. I believe we met at the Ministerial Association last year, over at Covenant.”
“Oh, yes, knew I’d seen you before.” Timmons touched the lapel of his black suit with pudgy fingers. “Forgive my poor memory, but where are you?”
“St. Timothy’s Second Presbyterian, McDowell Street.”
Understanding lit the man’s face. “So that’s why you’re here. Brooklyn.”
Eben decided to test the waters. “Yes, and as a token.”
This brought a twinkle to Reverend Timmons’ eyes. “Of course you are.” He touched his thinning gray hair.
He began to feel more at ease. “You’re Providence Methodist, right?”
“I am. Was associate at Myers Park Methodist for several years, then Providence called me.” Both men chuckled at the unintended pun. Timmons took out a pack of Tareytons, offering one to Eben.
“No, thanks, I quit when I got a bad cough I couldn’t shake.” True, if not the entire truth.
Timmons lit the cigarette. “Someday I’ll quit, but not today. Are we going to shake them up, Ebenezer?”
“I believe I’ve already done that by walking in the door.”
Timmons’ laugh was interrupted by a loud tapping.
A woman stood in front of the head table, holding a gavel. “Gentlemen? We need to get started.” Eben recognized the scratchy voice of the woman who’d called him. A nameplate on a stenographer’s stand identified her: RHONDA OLSEN, SECRETARY TO THE MAYOR.
She glanced his way, stared from black cat’s-eye glasses, looking not at him but through him as she opened the meeting. This was clearly an important moment for her. “All those convened before the Honorable Hiram B. Jones, Mayor, and the City of Charlotte Redevelopment Commission, gather to speak now before this august body.”
Mayor Jones motioned for her to proceed. She introduced the Reverend Timmons, who bowed his head and gave a pro forma invocation, not so much a prayer as an acknowledgment of God’s blessing for any action taken by the august body.
Once the minutes of the previous meeting were approved, Mayor Jones introduced the first speaker. “Mr. Blaire Marshall, real estate attorney, will address the commission on an ongoing matter: the proposed disposition of properties in the Second Ward area of Brooklyn, also known as Blue Heaven.” At these last words someone laughed, stopped abruptly. The mayor and several other men who’d been seated at the head table moved their chairs to the side, with a great clatter. Once they were seated again, Blaire Marshall walked to the slide projector. Tall and tanned, he spoke in a confident courtroom voice. “Good evening, gentlemen and Mrs. Olsen.”
So it is Mrs. Eben wanted to remember that if he spoke to the woman again.
Marshall touched a button on the projector, and a slide lit up the screen on the wall over the head table:
REDEVELOPMENT SECTION NO. 1
Project no. N.C. R-14. BROOKLYN URBAN RENEWAL AREA.
This 36-Acre Redevelopment Project is the First of Five Projects Scheduled to clear the 238-Acre Brooklyn Area.
Renewal of this Area is funded with Financial Aid from
URBAN RENEWAL ADMINISTRATION, UNITED STATES HOUSING & HOME FINANCE AGENCY, and THE REDEVELOPMENT COMMISSION OF THE CITY OF CHARLOTTE.
Marshall said, “This next slide—”
The door opened and a man came in. A stocky Negro. He raised his arm, addressed the crowd. “Sorry, gentlemen, we experienced an undue delay.”
Mrs. Olsen spoke louder than was necessary. “Your name?”
The man lowered his glasses. “Gideon Rhyne, ma’am. If you’re the mayor’s secretary, we spoke yesterday.”
Mrs. Olsen sounded confused. “I, yes, Mister—I mean, a man by that name called our office.” She turned in her seat and spoke to the mayor. “I gave you a note about him.”
“Mr. Rhyne, your attendance caught us unprepared.” Mayor Jones stood. “We don’t have a nameplate for you, but there are plenty of extra chairs.”
“Thank you, Mayor. Apologies for the interruption.”
The mayor spoke again. “What brings you to the commission, Mr. Rhyne?”
“As explained to Mrs. Olsen yesterday, we have only just arrived in Charlotte, which we hope to make our home. We’ll be living in Brooklyn for the present, and after hearing what is planned for that neighborhood, we found
ourselves quite interested. This is an open meeting, is that right? Open to the public, that is.”
“That’s correct.” The mayor turned back to Marshall. “Blaire, please continue.”
Marshall waited until Rhyne sat. “I’ve been given the pleasurable task of showing you the model drawings prepared by the architect, Lloyd Lewiston, for the areas contiguous to downtown Charlotte, how they will look after the proposed redevelopment.” A click. A smoke-filled beam projected a section of Trade Street between Caldwell and McDowell, featuring the proposed new County Courthouse, followed by murmurs of approval. “The roughly rectangular hash-marked section surrounding the courthouse represents the two hundred and thirty-eight acres of blight known as Brooklyn.”
Eben felt a wave of nausea. It is coming. All those families, schools, churches. The graves. McDowell Street between Fourth and Stonewall, which included St. Timothy’s and the graveyard, sat in the middle of the hash-marked area.
He felt someone’s gaze, turned to see Gideon Rhyne grinning at him, nodding.
Marshall touched the projector. Click, the same slide. Click, click, again the awful pronouncement of the purpose of the committee. “Someday we’ll have something more reliable than slide projectors,” Marshall said. Another click, a new slide. “There we go. This and the following are photos of the slum areas.” The first slide depicted the houses on Cedar Alley, which Eben knew to be the worst of Brooklyn. The next photo showed a listing outhouse that you could almost smell. The only such structure he knew of was down on Morrow Street, near the creek, not in use for many years. Slide after slide showed dirt streets, decaying dwellings, garbage piled in front yards, sagging foundations. What about the lovely old homes on McDowell, the well-kept cottages on First and Myers, the successful business district on Second Street?
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