I came out there this night to escape my thoughts. These swans helped, but my thoughts had caught up with me. All the alterations, conversations, and sights of the past twelve days had besieged me like swarming bees. I couldn’t get that picture of Alex’s trunk shaking in immobility at his desk, out of my mind. I could envision the ambulance, could see the dismay in Mrs. Slack’s eyes, could still hear Shironda telling me about his fractured neck, and the steel halo he’d have to wear for weeks. Inside, part of me said, “Poor Alex”; while another, angrier, defunct part said, “serves him right!”
I wondered if anyone said, “Poor Silas.” Probably not. I guessed that I’d now become just some bad memory. Well, I was history at that school now. Home tutoring was my means for the rest of the school year. I was too violent to be cut loose with kids. Sure, I was provoked some; but the school board wouldn’t and couldn’t take any chances.
I couldn’t get that picture of Marissa laughing at Alex’s jokes about my skin out of my mind. God, what a dagger. I still hemorrhaged over that.
Eight days later Sandra Jackson came over and she and Shironda sat me down to talk, to gently throw another grenade. Part of that conversation went like this:
“Silas, we have some information we have to tell you,” Sandra said in her affected, practiced, social worker tone.
“Yeah.”
Sandra looked at Shironda. They took deep breaths. “Tammy and I are moving down to Florida, Silas,” Shironda said. “We’re moving where Mr. Todd is, and he’s employed with a new company, and we’ve decided to commit to working our marriage right. It’s important for Tammy, and me—both of us. We been talkin’, and things are very hard for Tammy and I up here, makin’ ends meet and with working two jobs and everything, and well, we just feel it’s the best way to go right now.”
“Yeah. So I’m goin’ too?”
“No, honey, you’re not.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I belong to New York State.”
“Uh huh.”
“So I’m goin’ in a new foster home?” I wouldn’t look at them. I just stared down and tapped my feet on the floor and clasped my hands together, weaving my fingers, twisting them, revolving my thumbs around and around, hurried.
“Yes, Silas, we working on finding you a new home here in Cary County, honey.”
“It’s cause I broke Alex’s neck, right? you’re afraid for Tammy, right?”
“No, Silas. No, it isn’t at all. That’s not it at all! Don’t you be thinkin’ that now, here me?”
“Yeah.”
“We know you are gentle with Tammy. Tammy loves you and no one’s scared. Hear me, mister?”
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” I said.
Anyhow, that was pretty much the beef of that conversation. Nothing new under the sun. I verged upon a new foster home, and who knows where.
All this absorbed me these days and nights. All this current junk and all the settled old junk within me haunted me. I’d walked alone in this night, stopping for moments by this pond in the preserve, looking for rest like some fallen spirit, thirsting, barren, yearning, fiercely lonely, wheezing, scratching, thirteen, half white, half black. Nothing new under the sun. Earnest thoughts of suicide for the first time tempted me for the first time in my youth. Three ugly methods swiftly crossed my mind the way the three ducks crossed my vision, the sky. My anger had been lulled into a deep depression, and I just hated life.
Minutes lapsed. The swans’ soaring sounds died in the distance, and their wavelets completed their rippling over the pond’s surface. I wondered where they’d flown to. I thought about the day’s rain, which remained depleted, having poured itself out into the kills that filled the wide pools, like that swollen one I stood beside. Water still dripped and dripped from the still deciduous trees which had no blossoms, no leaves, only small closed buds. White clouds cracked, split apart in the heavens. Night’s blackness began to fill the cracks, and higher yet, scintillating stars eased that blackness. A small light from a window through scribbles of limbs seemed to reach out (I imagined) its warm hand toward me, toward my aloneness. This reminds me of what I’d mentioned early on, “I was placed ‘into’ homes, near other fires. I never really caught though. I wasn’t allowed to get too close, actually.” This was my life: I was the frizzy-haired furor always on the outside, looking in; always alone, reading thoroughly the friendly communion.
As I turned to walk back to Shironda’s house, I became freshly aware of the sounds that lived within that darkening stillness: peepers making their music in the pool; scarce half-quacks of weary ducks; the dull hum of the mile removed, roaring Atlantic; remote barks of dogs; car wheels on a far, rain-soaked street; this dripping; my foot-steps; my laboring lungs. Walking, I also became freshly aware of the sounds that lived within the darkened stillness of myself: my isolation, my desolation, my musing, my fears.
It’s in these pauses where I struggle to keep from reflecting too much into the past, where I struggle to accept what might be a tomorrow without a promise.
SEVENTEEN
TWELVE MOONS
One might superstitiously believe that the balmy, breezy, sunny day in May when I was delivered to my new foster home was a bright sign of the same sort of future; but it certainly wasn’t one for my immediate future. I was delivered in a typical way, in the county agency’s vehicle, with my worker Sandra doing the delivery—promptly, assiduously—along with my trunk. An old “retired” policeman named George was the chauffeur.
“Do you know where the new home is George?” Sandra said respectfully, conscious of my presence.
“Yeah. Off Verrazano Boulevard. Not far from the old Armory. Lousy section. Lotta blacks!”
“I beg your pardon!” Sandra said, with her erudite, social worker’s style, somewhat challenging.
Old George turned his seasoned face momentarily around, to look at Sandra with his yellowed eyes. Having overlooked Sandra’s color, realizing, he grinned, winking apologetically. “Bad area,” he said. “Lotta problems in the area! You know what I’m talkin’ about.” He snorted, hacked, opened the window, spat out into the passing street.
I sat belted in the front passenger seat of the van, wearing a brand-new Yankee cap which Molly had brought me, reading lyrics from the Christian music CD that I could still hear singing in my head, that she’d also brought me, that I had listened to repeatedly the night before. I turned to look at Sandra’s face in the back seat. At age thirteen, these adult tensions in conversations now rarely eluded me.
Sandra shook her head, wearing an angry, disgusted look, sighing deeply, long, exasperated. She wouldn’t look at me, resisting from combatively rebutting George. Unsure of whether it would be proper to dispute him on his racial illiteracy in my presence, she wisely refrained.
Being a black and white blend, I sometimes felt safe, but sometimes more vulnerable to these tensions. I wasn’t sure. In this case, I felt favored by Sandra, and most of the African-American community. I’m convinced my being bi-racial put me in the category of being black, as far as both the black community and the white community categorized me. I had that Shakespearean “dram of evil,” so to speak. I now felt warmly rejected by George, and felt that very same rebuff from some white people, especially those in their autumn years. Maybe some of it was all in my head. I didn’t care, really.
George turned on the radio, now grinning sardonically to himself. His deep-seated inflexibility, made inveterate probably from years on the streets of New York, took pleasure in striking a nerve in Sandra. That was not hard to see.
I went back to reading the lyrics on my lap, and could hear the echo in my inner ear, in the darkness of my skull, the sweet voice of the female vocalist who I liked to imagine was Molly herself, and the mellifluent acoustics beside her:
My lips will praise You
For You are holy
My voice will ever
Rise before Your throne
My heart will love You
For you are lovel
y
And You have called me
To become Your own
I am Your own
and I will worship You alone
I am Your child
And I will worship at Your throne
I am Your own
And I will love You.
How I wished that I could sing that! How I wished that I could say that! That I could cry! How I wished on that sparkling May morning that I could make some sort of breakthrough into some real clearing, and not just in the weather! Nevertheless, the heavenly lyrics kept visiting, and something inside me kept listening, and something kept pulling me toward a certain fire that, for most of my brief life, I had been removed from.
When Molly had found out about my moving again, she came to see me the evening beforehand. We sat on Shironda’s porch, hearing the singing of the many returned birds, scenting the fragrance of white and lavender lilacs in the breezes, watching the lengthening shadows as dusk had begun to encompass us. She’d divulged to me about how she’d miscarried a third time, and she told me very directly, like I was her friend whom she could confide in or something, and she’d spoken with tears: “I don’t know Silas. Maybe we’re not supposed to have our own children.” She shrugged her shoulders.
“Yeah, but you’d be the best mom, Molly.”
“Thank you, kiddo!”
“It’s nothin’.”
“I don’t know. For some reason we’re sent into these storms sometimes. You know? It’s like there’s some reason for the grief we endure, and it’s part of a big plan.”
I nodded. There was long silence among the songs of birds.
“I’ve learned, Silas, that the dentist often hurts, but that his hurts are really helps. I guess there’s a force very often works like the dentist. What do you think, kiddo? You know what I mean?”
I nodded again, smiling.
“I don’t even know if having my own biological babies is all that important anymore, at least not as much as it is to Bob.” She looked at me. “Bob really wants me to bear him a son.”
I just listened.
“You know that story about how Jesus sent His disciples out into that storm?”
“Yeah,” I nodded.
She nodded. “And it seems He sometimes deprives us of what’s most dear to us!” she said, not with complaint, but with injury of heart, and with discovery.
I nodded again, doubtful.
We gazed onto the street where straight shadows wove through the straight lines of this sprawling city’s suburbs. I didn’t understand her pain then, but I did know that she was feeling it; and that insight alone was enough for me to feel for her, while in a curious way it was a comfort for me as I plainly understood that others suffer too. As I recall, I think Molly may have been indirectly teaching me this, by telling me of her hurt. Hearing her, seeing her eyes shine with tears, somehow removed me from my own unsteady, depressing whereabouts. It really was nice of her to come all the way from Manhattan, across the bridge, to see me on the night before I was to be moved again.
“Could you bring me to the Hellers’ tomorrow?” I entreated her because I was scared.
Molly’s expression told me she was confused.
“The Hellers is the new people taking me.”
“Oh I see.” She paused. “I’m afraid Sandra has to do that Silas. It’s official, you see. She’s the worker on your case, you know. It’s just the way it’s done. Well, I could come along I suppose. Oh, no, I can’t, I just remembered Bob and I have to take care of something tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“I’m thinking of you Silas—all the time!”
“I think of you too Molly,” I said.
We were quiet for a while again, staring at the street. Traces of sunlight perceptibly diminished. We could hear a piano across the street, its tranquil sound seeping and twining out through a screen onto the street, mingling with the lilacs, reaching us onto that porch. Molly kept singing to herself in this serenity. She obviously knew this hymn. I could hear her sweet voice as I strained to listen, pretending not to: “Be thou my vision, oh Lord of my heart….” and then she hummed, so sweetly. It came from the depths of the sweetest person in the whole world, as far as I was concerned. I loved just listening.
“I read a really great chapter last night, Silas.”
“Ya did?”
“Yeah. I read about Peter. Well, there’s a lot about him.”
My fixed eyes told her that I wanted to hear about it.
“Jesus told Peter some things in advance, you know, Silas. He said, ‘Peter, when you were young you were allowed to choose and do and go wherever you wanted; but when you become old you’ll have to be brought to a place or situation you won’t like.’” Molly paused. “God does sometimes send us into tough spots and sad times. You know what I mean Silas?”
I could only nod. “Yeah,” I said, unready at that green age of thirteen to seriously venture into daring Molly’s sad certainties.
“God really does allow us to fall, and fail, and get disappointed. I think it’s a preparation period, for us, for our lives, for eternity! You see Silas?” Her pretty, earnest eyes remained fixed on mine.
I kept nodding, listening, adoring.
She looked out onto the street, finishing: “Some of us just go through longer periods. We go through hotter fires I guess.” She looked at me again. “Some of the very bad things that happen to people can be used for good you know. I think we gotta believe that!” Again she looked out at the street. “We gotta believe it, Silas. Otherwise there’s just nothing, nothing at all!”
Molly left me again, and drove off into Manhattan. I’d watched her drive down the street with her headlights beaming into the shadowy dusk.
Anyhow, on this next day the van pulled over beside the curb on Staten Street, at the Hellers’. Their home was a typical, tall one, very much like the one the Maddens owned, and very near that same neighborhood. Mrs. Heller sat on a white wicker chair, on her very small porch. The sun shone brightly against her. Her gray hair and squinting eyes made her look as though she were older, in pain. She was only fifty. She wore a yellow and white checkered house dress, and before the white siding and white wicker, she appeared brilliant.
Each of these houses had little patches of lawn in the front, very much like the backyards; and her twenty-three-year-old son Simon had just begun to mow. But when he saw us pull up, he shut the mower off and stepped toward the car.
Simon Heller was short, thin-legged, with a broad and muscular torso. He seemed to have long, orangutan-like arms which swung as he walked, hanging huge paw-like hands, hands with very long, thick fingers. He walked with his elbows bent out, pushed out by the thick brawn at his sides, elbowing as though he elbowed his way through a crowd, as though he moved through sellers and buyers on wall street, or in a merchandise market, or something. He kept smiling, wearing a blue and white checkered shirt, buttoned and tucked neatly, concealing his bulk, very much like his mother’s yellow and white pattern.
As I stepped out of the car, seeing him, I immediately felt smothered, somewhat revolted. His round head held colorless eyes, hairy brows, thin black hair, a prematurely receding hairline. He was only twenty-three, yet he smoked a cigar, something I’d only seen older men smoke. What remained of this thick, crammed cigar was about two inches of length, and it seemed fixed to his rubbery mouth, oozing tobacco juice which he wiped from his chin with his naked wrist. As he approached he momentarily removed this filthy thing to shake my hand, and turning his head slightly, he vigorously spat amber, tar colored saliva into the grass. He looked at his cigar butt, hesitated, then decided, flinging it into the gutter. His tremendous hands wore long untrimmed nails; and his manner was very forward, close, bold, aiming at what I’d hoped was friendliness. He reached out his hand to shake, and I limply offered mine.
“Hey buddy, how ya doin!” he said with a loud, nasal-cramped voice.
I forced a smile. His hands were clammy, or sweaty, or just wet. I
wiped my hand on the back of my pants.
He then lifted his immense, moist paw and grabbed my cheeks, squeezing like I were two years old or something, bunching my lips together. He himself was just above boyhood. This short, stocky, elbowing, big-pawed human moved about like a bulky monkey. His little gray eyes peered into me, then quickly all over me, as though I were an auctioned item or something. I felt uncomfortable, but was desperate to try to feel comfortable.
Sandra opened the back of the van. I grabbed my two plastic bags which were filled with my things. “Is this the boy’s?” Simon said, handling my trunk.
“Yes, that belongs to Silas,” Sandra said in her social worker tone.
Simon lifted it with ease, carrying it toward the house, passing the idle mower, muscling his way up the steps with its unwieldy weight, passing his smiling mother who then greeted me, saying, “Welcome.” She then stood in a stance of domination, shaking her head, saying firmly, “Simon, wait for the boy! What’s your hurry? My goodness!” She had a controlling manner, even though her expression suggested that somewhere, sometime she’d been vanquished. She had a story too, I knew.
“I am. This thing is heavy! I’m takin it to his room! Give me a break!”
“Oh, go ahead,” she said, pent-up, sitting down again, faltering off into the backdrop of this whole opening volley. As I entered through the entrance sideways with my bags, looking at her, making eye contact, she said, “Oh, he’s just a good for nothin’!” impetuously wanting to fill me in for some reason.
“Mom be quiet!” Simon shouted from within, muffled. “Silas, come on! Up here!” he shouted, excited, acting like a child who was having a friend sleep over. This was all so odd. I followed him into the first bedroom.
“This is your room.”
I stepped inside.
“Like it?”
Silas Dillon of Cary County Page 19