Francis had not come around since the night at Cicero’s. And right then, he needed him because he needed his mother and the only way he could really remember his mother’s face was to look at his brother’s. Francis had the same narrow bridge to his nose, the same upward slant to his eyes when he smiled. Octavian thought about what would happen if he could introduce his mother to Mina. Would she feel the way he felt? That she was different somehow? Or would she feel like Brendon and remind him that there was no difference?
Octavian was farther down Delmar than he’d been in a long time. He stopped in front of the crack house where he’d often found his brother. From the outside, it was no different from the other run-down buildings on the block. The only thing identifiable about it was that it had a tower with a broken window.
Once upon a time, this had been the rich part of St. Louis. Octavian always imagined long ago, how a young girl might have sat in that tower, gazing down at the dignified boulevard dreaming of a different life. Never would she dream that one day her house would be ripped apart by desperate thieves and sold bit by bit. First the chandeliers and the crystal doorknobs and then the brass sconces. Next the crown molding, the stained glass, the carved mahogany banister, the lead-glass windows, the claw-foot tub. Finally, the bricks of the walls, smashed in and removed, sold to a building company in Chicago that remodeled gentrified kitchens. Eventually, the crooked tower with the broken window was the only thing that remained of the rich man’s home it once was.
Inside, the air was thin and Octavian retched at the smell of vomit, human shit, and urine. His beeper went off. 007. Mina was worried, he could tell. Across the room he was sure he saw Francis, but when he got closer, he was face-to-face with an old woman whose great height must have been stunning back in the day. She looked at Octavian out of one good eye and opened her arms wide.
“C’mere baby,” she said.
Octavian’s heart seized. For a brief moment, he thought he might collapse right into the woman’s outstretched arms. But instead his heart took off on a familiar breath-stealing dash. Not here, not now, Octavian thought as he pushed his way through the smoke-filled darkness, taking blind, careless steps over piles of people.
Someone yelled at him to watch the fuck out. Octavian’s chest tightened further. He choked on his own attempts to gather the polluted air into his lungs, but it was useless. He was going to have to sit down, right there in the crack house, and wait for the attack to pass. He tried to conjure Mina’s voice over the ringing in his ears as she sat on his bed a few days before, muttering the lyrics to “You Must Learn” under her breath while she flipped through the giant college directory Cyrus had brought home.
“Here, Tave,” Cyrus had said. “Time to get started.”
It’s calm yet wild the style that I speak,
Just filled with facts and you will never get weak, in the heart.
Weak in the heart, that’s what I am, Octavian thought. He wished he could reach in and hold it still for a moment, soothe its wild beating. He was sure that one day soon it was going to run itself down and stop, but he did not want it to be when he was in the crack house with a book of his mother’s poems in his back pocket.
In fact you’ll start to illuminate, knowledge to others in a song.
In his slippery confusion, Octavian couldn’t tell who spoke to him. Was it KRS or Mina? Or was it Brendon? His mom? Whoever it was, it kept him moving in the direction where he thought he remembered the door.
Let me demonstrate the force of knowledge,
Knowledge reigned supreme,
The ignorant is ripped to smithereens.
He pushed his way out and fell down the broken front steps. On the empty cold sidewalk he took giant, grateful breaths. His beeper went off again. 007.
Octavian crept, bewildered to the curb. He took his mother’s book out of his back pocket and looked at her photograph. It trembled in his hands. He heard Brendon’s voice and wondered what he would do if Cordelia was alive and told him to leave Mina alone. He stood up from the curb and wiped his hands on his jeans. Slowly he began walking west. He wished there was a way making the right decision could feel like something other than empty cold space. He stopped when he got to a pay phone, dropped a quarter into the slot, and dialed Clarissa’s number.
Mina answered. “Hey,” she said. “You okay? I came by the store and Freddy said you broke out.”
Octavian felt his courage dissolve at the sound of her worried voice, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m alright,” he said. “It’s been quite a night.”
“Where you at?” she asked.
“Down on Delmar and Goodfellow.”
“What are you doing way down there?”
“Looking for Frankie.”
“You find him?”
“Not yet.”
The quarter dropped to the bottom of the payphone signaling he only had a few seconds to add more money before the phone cut off.
“Um, Min, I’m going to keep on looking. I need to find Frankie. I’ll call you when I get…” There was a click and the phone went dead. Octavian reached into his pocket. He had more quarters, but he didn’t call back.
TRACK 7
Rebel Without
A Pause
OCTAVIAN DIDN’T CALL HER back the next day either, or the day after that. On Thanksgiving, he went with Cyrus to another professor’s house, and needing to walk away from the conversation at the table, he excused himself and wandered into the den. He started to pick up the phone, but then changed his mind. He let the battery on his beeper die and told his father he didn’t want to talk to anyone when the phone rang at home. The following morning, he called in sick to work.
“Tave, you know this is one of the busiest shopping days of the year. You sure your ass is sick?” Bones said.
“For real, Bones, I am. You don’t even want to know. It’s gross.”
“Aight, aight,” Bones said. “I don’t want to know.” There was a pause.
“Something else?” Octavian asked, trying to make his voice sound strained.
“Mina’s looking for you.”
“And?”
“I was just letting you know.”
“Okay.”
There was another pause and Bones said, “Hope you’re better by tomorrow. Fishbone gonna do an in-store before their show.”
Octavian sat up in bed and cursed under his breath. “I forgot to get tickets to the show. You still got some, right?”
Bones chuckled. “Nah man. You ass out. Mina took the last two.”
Octavian could hear him adding numbers on his antiquated calculator.
“You sure you’re still sick?” Bones said.
“Yeah. Going to puke now.”
“Umm hmmm.”
Octavian spent the day in bed even though he wasn’t sick. It had been four days since he collapsed in the crack house, four days since he talked to Mina. In the scarce times Octavian found himself involved with girls, either they’d stopped calling him or he’d stopped calling them and it only took a few days until he stopped thinking about them altogether. But it wasn’t working with Mina. Every day meant more and more things he wanted to talk to her about. And it didn’t help that Frankie wasn’t there to give him bad advice. There was still no sign of him, not even on Thanksgiving, which drove Cyrus to distraction, and even made Octavian consider worrying.
Whenever Octavian needed to talk about something, he went to Brendon, or Ivy. He sure as hell wasn’t going to talk to Brendon now, so at the end of the night, when he knew Ivy would be closing Rahsaan’s by himself, Octavian got out of bed and got dressed, knocked softly on his father’s door.
“Come in,” Cyrus said. There were papers piled around Cyrus, but Octavian could tell by the gravel in his voice that he’d fallen asleep.
“I’m going down to Rahsaan’s for a minute,” Octavian said.
Cyrus nodded. “When was the last time you saw Francis?”
>
“A couple of weeks ago. Over at Cicero’s starting shit.”
“It’s not like Francis not to come home around the holidays,” Cyrus said.
“I know,” Octavian said. “I went looking for him a couple of nights ago, but I couldn’t find him.”
Cyrus nodded and Octavian knew he wanted him to say more, but he wasn’t up to one of their empty conversations about Francis. Have you seen him? Yeah, I saw him. Nah, I ain’t seen him in a week, a month, two months. It’s been that long? Guess we better find him. Instead he kissed his father on the forehead and walked out of the apartment.
Ivy drove a 1984 Ford LTD station wagon named Lucinda. She had one working window and a glove compartment held shut with duct tape. Both the speedometer and the gas gauge were broken so Ivy stayed getting pulled over and running out of gas. Her plush brown interior was pockmarked with countless cigarette burns and, even though she was a station wagon, there was only room for one passenger because the whole back of the car was filled with subwoofers and speakers. Well before Ivy and Lucinda came into view, the haunting sound of a Public Enemy track could be heard through the neighborhood. And when they rolled up, the whole ground shook.
Octavian got in the car and Ivy pressed play on his CD player. “Yo, you heard that new 2Pacalypse Now shit just came out from that Digital Underground kid?” Ivy said.
Octavian nodded. “It’s dope.”
“Shol is. Still, no matter how much new shit comes out, all I ever want to listen to is Public Enemy,” Ivy said and laughed. “Where we going?”
“I don’t know,” Octavian said. “To the park, I guess.”
The night was abruptly warm the way St. Louis could turn around and be in late fall. They drove into Forest Park where a line of cars parked at the waterfall. Ivy started to slow down.
“Waterfall lookin’ like summertime and shit,” Ivy said. “Errybody’s up in here tonight.”
Evan and Brendon stood leaning against Evan’s mom’s car, and Octavian saw Clarissa getting out of Mina’s Volvo. “Keep driving,” he said.
“What for?” Ivy asked.
“Keep on,” Octavian said. “Drive up to the Pavilion or something.”
The World’s Fair Pavilion was at the top of Government Hill in Forest Park. During the day, it was a place for business lunches, weddings, and corporate events. And sometimes, at night, before the cops came, it was a place for getting drunk. Mostly, it was a place to take a date—the elegance of the open-air columns, the red roof, the light of the fountain at the bottom of the hill, gave it added romance and meaning.
“It’s straight dead up here,” Ivy said and jammed the car into park.
“Good.”
“You alright, Tave? What’s up?”
Octavian sighed and leaned his head back. “I’m not trying to deal with Brendon’s punk ass,” he said.
Ivy reached under his seat and pulled out a forty of Olde English 800. He held it up and started rapping Eazy E, and handed Octavian the bottle.
Octavian took a drink and spit it out. “Shit, Ivy, Eazy said he’d take it in a forty, quart, or a can, but he didn’t say he’d take it warm.”
“So?” Ivy said and grabbed back the bottle. “C’mon, let’s get out.”
They walked around to the picnic tables and sat down. The city spread out below them in a carpet of twinkling lights. Octavian could see that some of the families in the big houses on Lindell Boulevard already had their Christmas trees up.
Ivy took another drink and passed the bottle to Octavian. “Is it Frankie?”
Wasn’t it always Frankie? Had he ever had a problem that he couldn’t follow back, like a lifeline, to Francis? But no, this time it wasn’t Frankie. And yet Octavian’s head hurt because in reality, it was Francis’s advice he wanted, not Ivy’s.
“It’s Mina,” Octavian finally said.
“Mina? Mina Rose?”
“Yeah.”
“Y’all been kickin’ it?” Ivy said and gave Octavian a slight shove.
“You could say that.”
“What’s the problem?” Ivy asked. He lit a cigarette and took a drag, then handed it to Octavian.
“I think I like her a lot,” Octavian said, taking the cigarette.
Ivy smiled. “’Course you do. She’s mad chill. Crazy cute too.”
“You know, I’ve known her since fifth grade?”
“That’s right. She did go to Delmar Harvard before they moved out to Clayton,” Ivy said. He took the cigarette back and passed the now half-empty bottle back to Octavian. “That shit’s cool. I don’t know no girls from back in the day that I can even kinda stand. What’s the problem, you think she don’t like you or something?”
“No, she likes me,” Octavian said and took a sip. This time the bland warmth of the alcohol made the cloud of confusion he’d walked around in since he last went looking for Francis start to dissipate.
“So?”
“So she’s white,” Octavian said. It was the first time he’d let the words come out of his mouth. He looked at Ivy when he said it. Ivy, with his transparent white skin and blue veins that crisscrossed at his temples. “No offense.”
Ivy laughed. “I’m not offended,” he said. “Shit, I live with Brendon. I gotta hear about how white I am every day. And Francis is my best friend. To be honest, I agree with both of them most of the time.” Ivy looked at Octavian. “Problem is, none of that shit matters if you fall in love.”
“I’m not in love.”
“If you say so.”
“You know what my real thing is?”
“What’s that?”
“My mom.”
“What, you think Mrs. Munroe would trip off you being with Mina because she’s white?”
“That’s the problem,” Octavian said. “I can’t ask her.”
“No,” Ivy said. “You can’t.”
The cigarette and the forty were gone and Ivy was quiet. Below them the cars wound through the labyrinth of the park’s quiet streets, from the Art Museum to the Zoo to the History Museum to the skating rink.
“Listen,” Ivy said. “I know it’s not the same, and I don’t know if it means anything, but your mom loved me.”
Octavian laughed a little remembering the times when Ivy would spend days and nights over at their house—especially when Ivy’s own mother disappeared on a bender for weeks on end. They always joked with Ivy that Cordelia loved him so much because he could never get enough of her food.
“She did love you,” Octavian said. “Loved to feed you anyway.”
“For real though, Tave, you laugh, but you don’t know what that meant to me back then. Seeing as my mom’s called a good dinner some Frosted Flakes and shit—especially if it had milk in it. And I won’t never forget the time me and Frankie got in that fight and he busted up my lip. I mean we used to fight a lot, but that time, ooh, your mama was so mad at him. Didn’t matter that I’d given Francis a black eye, she was through with him for hurting me.”
“That’s because you were probably fifty pounds to Francis’s one hundred,” Octavian said. “Still don’t know how you even managed to get that punch in.”
“I remember when she was cleaning me up, she said something that made me laugh and I busted my lip open even more and that made both of us laugh harder. I was little, but she made me feel big, you know? I needed that back then.”
Octavian nodded and looked away. He didn’t care if Ivy saw him crying—shit, Ivy’d seen him cry many times. But he was sick of the feeling of tears in his eyes—the burning that came with them and the salty pressure in his throat. Would there ever be a time when he learned to hold them back? When they were no longer so quick to materialize?
“You know,” Ivy said, “your mom’s heart was bigger than anyone’s I ever met. And I don’t know, man. I mean, I think she’d probably prefer it if you were with a black girl, but at the same time, I don’t think she’d be mad at you for liking Mina. Min
a’s a good girl and she’s smart and nice and pretty. I think your mom would want you to be with a person like that, regardless.” Ivy gave Octavian a soft whack on the back of the head and said, “It might take a minute, and she might give you some hell at first, but I bet she’d like her, Tave. For real.”
TRACK 8
If Not Now…
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, the sun slanted through Rahsaan’s front window. The store was empty aside from Mina and Fred, and Tracy Chapman’s voice, which wrapped Octavian in questions the minute he walked in. Mina looked up, but she turned back to the records she was shelving as if Octavian was simply just another customer. Fred gave Octavian a wave and disappeared into the back of the store.
Octavian pulled his intention in close like an overcoat as he walked over to Mina. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you,” he said.
Mina pretended not to hear him.
“I was sick,” he said.
“For five days? You sure don’t look like someone who’s been sick that long.” She still wouldn’t look at him.
So he said, “Bones told me you bought the last two tickets to the Fishbone concert?”
He should have said something different. Maybe something about how she made him feel or how he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Or he could have told her all he wanted was to lay in her bed smelling the Nag Champa coming up from a shrine to Buddha in the living room. That he wanted to listen to her mix tapes, to sit in her window and smoke cigarettes. But he couldn’t think of any of those things when he saw the angry tendons of her neck as she clenched her teeth against him.
There You Are Page 17