by C. E. Morgan
* * *
Down behind their building, down the shaft of the back stairwell was the cement garden, the hollow heart of the turn-of-the-century tenements that formed their block. The buildings towered forty feet high on every side and made a shady grove where the neighborhood girls played in the summertime. A Rottweiler lay chained in one corner, snoring with its caramel chin on its paws. Girls streamed from the building every morning—one always climbing out through her kitchen window—to argue and dance and scream and double Dutch, but retreated from the noon sun that heated the cement to a skillet, because once a turner had suddenly dropped her ropes, her head lolling like a bobblehead before she pitched face-first to the ground, and she still had the scabbed cheek to prove it. At noon, the girls huddled beneath a lintel and sucked on orange popsicles until the two o’clock shadows canted across their playground, and play resumed.
Allmon maintained a blinkless vigil from their second-story window for many months before he found the courage to creep out of the building to the cement garden. Even then, he was seized with a reserve so crippling that he simply stood on the doorjamb, gazing at the girls through the veil of his lashes. They were jumping and singing and calling while a girl skipped through the lines, her hands perched on her lean hips, her beads up and down and clacking. As Allmon watched, a tiny bunch of foil fell and two beads sailed off and spun away on the cement.
“Your hair! Your hair!” the girls cried, and the jumper leaped out of the eggbeater, her hands to her head, and spotted the boy. Two fingers pinching the braid tight, she cried, “The baby!”
“The baby!” Seven girls, all sweat and brightness and exhilarated jostling, pressed in toward him, though he hung back in a shy twist of limbs. The beadless girl was the first at his side, smiling down and petting him on the head as if he were a sweet dog.
“He has a face just like an old man,” she said as she inspected the preternaturally heavy brow, the knife-jut cheekbones, the hollow cheeks.
“Danelle, why you always talk so white?”
“I don’t!” the girl cried, wounded, whipping around.
“Yeah, you do!” in a chorus. They were circling him now, or her.
“Danelle wanna be white!”
“I don’t!”
“Danelle wanna—”
“Shut up and make the baby jump,” another girl interrupted, stepping forward, their tall, unspoken leader. She still held the end of the fallen ropes in her hands.
“I ain’t no baby,” Allmon said.
“You got a white daddy?” someone asked, and eyes all swerved to him again.
Allmon’s tongue was suddenly confused.
“I heard you got a white daddy!”
“Are you white?”
In the middle of those arms and legs and cocked heads, the lie was pure instinct. “My daddy black.”
“I wanna white daddy,” someone said.
“Naw, you don’t. White people don’t use no washcloths.”
The girl petting Allmon narrowed her eyes. “Is your daddy really black?” she asked, but Allmon, under the impress of her hand, could only nod.
“Jump, jump!” someone cried, and they took up the chorus and then they were reforming and slinging a single rope. He stepped forward—a muscular little boy in a ragged white undershirt, his hair poufed slightly out of form from soft neglect.
“I like coffee, I like tea,” they sang, “I like the baby boy to jump with me. Double Dutch!” Both ropes rasped now in duple. Allmon’s little knees pumped, his hands splayed, his face was angry with concentration. A shadow of cloud swept their playground and the turner—who bobbed her head with the rhythm of the ropes, her little pink tongue caught between her pressed lips—looked up. Allmon judged the descent of the rope and faked a hop and went down with a thud and a false “Ow!” and rolled on his back for the welcome, his arms wide.
They were on him. Oh, they laid their bodies over his and took his face in their hands and kissed on him, their breath hot and their mouths sticky.
“Allmon!”
The girls sprang back from his prone body and there, silhouetted against the sky, was Marie, leaning precipitously from their kitchen window, calling down, “Don’t you all molest my child!” The girls just studied the ground, and then one in their midst said, “Ain’t nobody molested nobody,” and Marie leaned even further out the window, so that she looked near to tumbling out, saying, “That wasn’t you on top of my boy? That child is four years old! Don’t put your greasy little hands on my boy’s business.” Someone tittered. Then Marie yelled, “Turkey vultures!” and the girls evaporated, fleeing into the shadows. But when Allmon looked up, Marie was smiling. “Get on up here,” she said. “I’ve got good news for you.”
Marie was crouched to his height when he ran into the apartment. She was grinning, and her dimples were deep enough to fit a thumb. “Guess what?”
“What?” he said, shy of surprises.
“Daddy’s coming to visit and y’all are going to the Northside carnival!”
“Ah!” he screeched, and would have run, but she snatched him to her, lifted him against her chest.
“Listen now,” she said into his ear. “You know how long it’s been since your daddy was up here? Oh God,” she said. “Forever. Forever. But he’s coming back. So I’m begging you. Allmon, your momma is begging you. You need to get some good behavior and be on it, be my little lamb, because—”
Allmon watched her face grow grave.
“—I need this family,” she said, barely above a whisper. “That man’s got my heart in his body. So just be good is all I’m asking. If we stay on our best behavior, maybe we can get him to stay a while.” With gentle hands now, Marie returned him to the ground, lifted his chin with a thumb, and said, “Be my best.”
“He be gonna stay?” he said, and the openness of his face, and the uninsured hope she saw there, caused her heart to stop. But all she said was, “Quit that baby talk, Allmon.”
* * *
He came on a Friday morning, bounding up the stairs with an enormous box in his hands, a box that contained a new, stainless steel cook set. Marie was preparing for work, but she stopped rummaging in her purse when he walked in with the late-summer air around him and pressed herself against the length of his body. Allmon could barely manage his joy. This man’s face, so wondrous after a long absence, brought the mystery of his beginnings. He wedged himself between his parents’ bodies.
“Now, I’ll be back at five,” Marie said, and, with a finger against his father’s chest, asked, “Want me to bring you dinner?”
“Yeah,” Mike said, shrugging. “Bring me something from the Fifth Amendment.”
“A pastrami sandwich? I know how you like that.”
He made a face and rolled his eyes. “Naw. Bring me a burger. I’m tired of that pastrami shit.” He looked down at Allmon, grinning crookedly and reaching for his cigarettes. “You tell somebody that you like pastrami, then—bam!—it’s pastrami all the time till you can’t stand the smell of it. God, woman.” He laughed, the tiniest dart of a glance in her direction. His long, straggly hair was gathered back in a ponytail to reveal his freckled cheekbones, stark from underweight.
“Now, Allmon gets a snack at ten and then—”
“I know, Marie.”
She smiled. “I know you know. I’ll shut up.” She kissed him, and he offered her his stubbly cheek.
“Have fun,” she said. “Be good…” A pointed glance in Allmon’s direction and then she was gone.
“Well,” said Mike, and he heaved his skinny shoulders up and down once, glancing around the sunny room. He made his way to the couch, but had only stretched out for a moment, not bothering to remove his shoes, when he perked up his head above the backrest and said, “Allmon, lock the door.” And Allmon, excited, watchful, dutiful, dragged a kitchen chair to the door, clambered atop it, and turned the latch. Then he turned around on the chair with his hands behind his back, grinning.
“Good boy.�
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“When we—”
“Whoa.” Mike laughed. “Whoa, whoa. We’re not going nowhere till way after lunch, so shut it down.”
Allmon clambered down and crept around the side of the couch where his father lay, first his dark, unruly hair showing, then a single eye. His father, drowsy, couldn’t help but laugh.
“You’re silly,” he said.
“What kind of animals is at the carnival?”
Mike ran the fingers of one hand lazily over Allmon’s Afro. “Bears,” he said. “Snakes, and horses and, like, um … They had baby crocodiles once, I think.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh fuck, I’m so tired. I got like three hours of sleep last night. I drove from Kansas City. Um, a crocodile is like a fish with fucked-up teeth and legs.”
“Ah!” Allmon made a frightened face.
Mike tucked his hands into his armpits and closed his eyes. “Wake me up in two hours,” he said.
Allmon immediately snatched a pillow from the couch and lay down on the floor in imitation of Mike. “Tell me a bedtime story,” he said.
“A story?” Mike said, settling further into the cushions, his brow furrowed. “I don’t know any stories. I’m no good at that. No, wait—wait. Okay, here’s one. So once there was this football game, and it was like really, really cold. Not just any cold, l’m talking like forty below. This shit was crazy; the guys couldn’t feel their fingers and toes, and the field was pretty much ice, so every time there was a tackle, it was cutting through their uniforms and shit. Guys were bleeding all over the place, they were fumbling punts, Green Bay’s kicker was missing the goddamn field goals, ’cause he couldn’t feel his feet. So fourth quarter, they’re all hypothermic as fuck and it’s about to be over, and then—tada—make way for Bart Starr.”
“Star?” said Allmon.
“Yeah, man. Bart Starr was the man, he was Jesus Christ. The great white hope. It’s the fourth quarter, Dallas is up three, Green Bay’s third and goal and this is it. Starr calls a time-out, and he’s got to make a decision. They’re really close, but Green Bay’s falling apart. And Bart Starr knows what’s what: sometimes you gotta bleed to drive the thing home. So what’s he do? Quarterback fucking sneak. He fucking dives in headfirst and burns Dallas down to the ground.” He yawned, so his face stretched horribly. “Best moment in football history right there. That’s how you win when the chips are down. Sacrifice yourself for the team. End of story.”
Mike wasn’t sleeping, but his eyes were closed again. “So, hey, Allmon,” he said, and he yawned another deep yawn that shook his body. “You know what … someday I’m gonna take you…” And then he was asleep.
When Allmon awoke, the sun was insistent, it pressed smothering heat into his face, causing itchy rivulets of sweat to travel into his hair. He reached up and touched the white hand of his father, which had fallen into the air between them. He gripped a finger and the man woke, his eyebrows starting.
“Hey, kid,” he said softly. “Did your ma buy me any beer?” His face was weary and worn as if he’d aged twenty years in his sleep. Lines from the pillow ran ridges along his cheek.
Allmon brought him two. He drank the first in two drafts. The second he drank lying down, in slow sips, while Allmon watched the sliding motions of his Adam’s apple.
“How’s your ma been?” he asked.
“Good,” said Allmon brightly.
“What time is it?”
Allmon only made a confused gesture and Mike said, “Oh shit,” but he didn’t rise. “One more beer,” he said, and Allmon’s grin was slipping, and then, “Two.” And then, after drinking the first, he was asleep again.
Allmon looked down at the body of his father on its berth, the man’s thin hands crossed on his chest. In a moment, Mike began to snore, a lumbering, unhealthy, grown-up sound. With an expression on his face like dawning suspicion, more rudimentary than anger, Allmon placed his small hand on his father’s shoulder. He shook him once, then again and with increasing force until the man was rolling on the couch like a log in heavy water. Finally, Mike brushed Allmon’s hand away. “Let me sleep,” he said thickly, without opening his eyes.
So a new scene begins, though the action follows through. Allmon simply unlocked the door, gripped the waxy banister as he navigated the creaking stairs, and then the full light of the sun was on him—and on his twin, impulse. The crowd on the street absorbed him as it flowed north toward the intersection, where the trucks had driven in with their animal cargo, though years ago the animals rumbled in on boxcars from Pittsburgh, halting just west of the main drag, so as the evening sun was setting, children in their beds heard the grieved crying of the leopards and the hollow hooting of monkeys.
At the roped-off intersection: snakes in grimy glass cages, a panther slinking in a boxcar, a bald red cat in a harness hissing at passersby, a giraffe in a cage half the height of a building. All around, the people of the neighborhood were drunk on beer and freedom, kissing their girlfriends in broad daylight like men on leave, carrying their children on their shoulders, those children held aloft like trophies, calling to one another in contented, proud recognition and cooing at the animals.
They were shoulder to shoulder, sewn together as a great, continuous garment. But look there beyond the tidal wave of people, beyond the ruction, at a horse. It isn’t impressive, just a nag snatched up by a carnie for forty bucks at the slaughterhouse in Peoria. She stands there with a ragged cob in her eyes, a disheveled thing perched on tender, surbated hooves. Her back scoops in at the middle and her rear legs pigeon inward. She’s missing hair at her sides, as if a saddle has long rubbed her permanently raw. Her eyes are very blue, eyes void of protest or argument, full of calm, momentful existence, maybe without memory, the eyes of an animal accustomed to the rowel on her bit and a man’s hard hand on her headstall. When she turns her head, one blue eye settles on Allmon.
“Guess how many hands high,” said the man who reined her, and in his shyness, Allmon said nothing at all, just twisted on one leg, staring up.
“How tall?” the man said again.
“She got a name?” said Allmon, pointing.
“You’ll get a prize for guessing how high.”
“A hundred,” he said softly.
“Huh?” said the man, his face ratcheted in irritation.
Then a woman’s risen voice said, “Who’s that child belong to?” In another moment, a woman halted him with a hand on his shoulder, saying, “Honey, where’s your parents at?” In an instant, his shoulder slipped her grasp and he was on the run, propelled by fear and wicked delight, skidding around bodies and trash cans until two victorious minutes later, the door closed and locked, he stood breathing raggedly over the snoring body of his father, the horse almost forgotten in the yeasty gloam of the room. He tallied seven gold cans on the floor by the couch, one only half-drunk. He stooped and studied his father’s face with care: the sharp, sure lines of his cheeks and chin, his brow creased even in sleep, his freckles like tiny brown smudges of dirt. And white skin—white the color of flour, of paper, of snow, of pearls, of stars.
“Wake up,” he whispered, and, when there was no response, he balled his hand into a fist and with all the strength he possessed, he struck his father on the bone of his shoulder. The snoring ceased and Mike’s bleary red eyes opened. They focused slowly on Allmon’s face. Then one hand reached forward and stopped a tear as it tracked down a cheek.
“Hey Jude,” he said, “don’t be sad.”
* * *
In the morning, his mind undressed by sleep, he padded along the old cupped floorboards to the kitchen, where he found Marie standing at the stove. The two casement windows on either side of her fired the room with sun, banking her into silhouette, as if she were standing in a tunnel of light. Her hair, inlit with red, curled out to one side, the other side still smashed tight to the shape of her head from sleep. Her right hand gripped the chrome handle of the oven door with whitening strength.
&
nbsp; “Daddy here?” said Allmon sleepily.
She didn’t turn around, her hand on the stove didn’t move. He stepped forward then, and with a tiny motion he touched her hip, a touch as soft as a cat’s paw. Her hand came to life then, springing off the stove and smacking his own hand away with such force that he was too startled to cry out, he just hopped back, drawing his wrist to his clavicle and staring up at her in shock, pupils huge with misgiving.
“I don’t need a man touching on me right now!” she hissed. Her eyes were deep as a bruise, her face stripped of everything that made it her face except its familiar shape.
“I mean, why?” she blurted suddenly, then her voice rising: “I just want somebody to tell me why!”
Allmon only stared.
“What’s wrong with me?” she cried. “I do everything right, I have his baby, I love him! No one loves him like I do! What’s wrong with me? He can’t stand my ugly face? Who’s here for me? Who? Tell me!” She was sinking down and crying openly, sobbing great senseless, wracking sobs, her T-shirt catching on the stove knob as she slid down, so it raised up over her soft belly, showing the white striping of old stretch marks. One hand clutched the folds of her belly and one hand held her breast, low-hung and braless behind the T-shirt, her legs sprawled crookedly before her.
“How come I have to do all the loving? Huh? Just tell me that! You all take all of me! And you don’t give anything back!”