by Bil Wright
“Y’alright?”
“Yeah. I gotta get off.”
He laughed. “Shoot, I gotta get off, too. Friday night. One Twenty-fifth Street and Christmastime, too. Whatchu think?”
What I thought was that this was the time most people were going home for Christmas. I looked at the dent in his chin. Cleft. It was called a cleft chin. It was deep enough to stick my finger in. I looked down toward his shoes. That was the safest place. There was a key chain with a red rabbit’s foot and a nail clipper lying on the seat.
“You dropped your rabbit’s foot,” I told him.
He picked it up and tried to slide it back into his pants.
“Can’t have no luck without my foot.” His pants were too snug for him to get it very far down into his pocket. It looked like he might lose it soon. I hoped he didn’t believe in it too much.
Stepping back, Ray Anthony let me pass. I started down the aisle, but I was still picturing the cleft. I could see my finger pressed firmly into the middle of his chin.
When I stepped onto the platform, I studied my grandfather’s face, trying to figure out if I should introduce him. I thought I heard Ray Anthony behind me, asking again, “Y’alright?”
“Yeah. I am. I’m alright.”
I turned around ready to tell him, “This is my grandfather,” but he was already going down the stairs toward 125th Street.
On the bus, I thought about whether I’d lied to him when I’d told him I was alright. Dr. Davis used to tell me she didn’t trust it whenever I said it. She said she considered it a way of saying something was wrong, but I didn’t want to talk about it. I disagree, though. For me, it’s like the time I went to the dentist and Ellease, Dr. Horne’s receptionist, told me I had to wait before he could see me. Inside his office, I could hear Dr. Horne calling, “Are you alright, Gladys? Are you alright?”
Ellease kept getting up from her desk and peeking into the office. When she came out, she’d look at me, slowly shake her head no, and roll her eyes. The fourth time she did it, I thought it would be okay to ask her, “What’s the matter?”
Ellease whispered, “It’s Mrs. Bentley. Dr. Horne gave her gas to pull her teeth and she passed right out. He thinks he might’ve killed her.” Ellease looked at me, then down into her lap. I could tell she was stifling a laugh.
The office door opened and Dr. Horne came out with his arm around this elderly, mud-colored woman who wasn’t any taller than I was, but probably weighed less. There was something familiar about her. I wondered for the first time what Mom would look like when she got old. The woman was creeping across the floor like the soles of her shoes had glue on them. I could see her trembling as she came toward me. Her grayed knot of a head, her whole body, trembling. She held her hands out in front of her like she was blind, feeling her way.
“Tell me now, Gladys. How do you feel now?” Dr. Horne asked her. “Can you feel the floor?”
The old woman stopped. She took a breath and at first, nothing. Then she said straight out into the room, “Yes. I can feel the floor, now. I can feel the floor.” She smiled. “I’m alright.”
That was what I’d wanted to tell Ray Anthony. That I thought I could feel my feet hitting the ground. I could feel the floor.
My grandfather and I got off the bus at 162nd Street and I asked myself, to make sure. Can you feel the floor, Louis? Can you feel the floor? Yes. Sure, I can. I can feel the floor.
• • •
Sitting on my grandfather’s couch looking out onto the street, I thought more about Ray Anthony than I did about running away and wondered what he was going to do in New York. He was probably going to somebody’s Christmas party in his purple pants and leather coat. There’d be people there his own age, not like the young kids who were at Delilah Buggman’s party.
When he’d asked me, “You ain’t got no number where you’re goin’?” I wished I’d asked him back, “Where are you going?” Was he going to be at some guy’s house, or a girl’s? When I thought about it being a girl, I tried to picture her, but it made me nervous or sad or something. It was a friend’s house, I decided, or maybe a relative’s, and I tried to imagine what Ray Anthony slept in when he wasn’t sleeping on trains. I slept in pajamas. Some guys, I knew, slept in their underwear or said they did, but Mom said that was a real nasty habit, so I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t imagine Ray Anthony in pajamas, though. When I sat there and blocked out 162nd Street, closing my eyes to picture Ray Anthony sleeping, it wasn’t in a bed. It was on a couch like the one I was sitting on and he was wearing his purple pants and that was all. I couldn’t see his face. I could see only his bare feet hanging off the end of the couch and his back, long and wide and brown. His round butt jutted off the side of the couch. And when I couldn’t stop staring at that, there was his fuzzy red hair, nappy and flat on his head. I tried to make him turn toward me, but he wouldn’t. I thought, if only he’d turn this way, I could get up closer. I could see his lips shine when he runs his tongue over them. But his back kept me where I was, watching from farther away. I couldn’t stop looking at this smooth, brown wall, praying for it to move. But I couldn’t get any closer to it, either. I fell asleep picturing Ray Anthony.
Grandaddy woke me up and told me to pull down the shade and put the sheet on the couch. “Why’re you sitting in here, sleeping in your clothes?”
“Sorry,” I told him. I wasn’t, though. I spread the sheet over the couch, turned out the light and got undressed. I stood there for a moment in my underwear before I put on my pajamas. Held my breath and posed like the oily men on the covers of the muscle magazines. I should sleep like this, I thought. Like other guys. There’s nobody here to stop me. But that would make me the sneak Mom already thinks I am. She’d be right, after all. Liarsneakliar. I pulled the shade, got into my pajamas and slowly, carefully laid down on the couch.
He was still there. He had his wall of a back to me, but he was still there.
24
People are always trying to get somewhere in Harlem, at all hours of the day and night, even in snowstorms. In Stratfield, people stay inside during bad weather. Even when it isn’t bad, after the early morning when there are people everywhere, they all disappear until two-thirty when the kids get out of school. Occasionally, from the window at school I’d see one or two cars or a couple of guys driving delivery trucks. But walking the streets in the middle of the day? You might see a mother pushing a stroller once in a while, or a mangy dog wandering down the street like he owns it, peeing on every other tree and stopping to scratch. Other than that, Stratfield keeps itself inside, waiting for some kind of signal. In Harlem, everybody’s moving all the time. Even the dogs in Harlem look they’ve got someplace to go, like they have to pee fast and move on.
• • •
I woke up Saturday, knowing I had to make a decision about running away. It seemed like a pretty stupid idea by then, especially since we were in the middle of a snowstorm, but I wasn’t sure. Grandaddy was already up, drinking coffee in a white dress shirt and black, sharply creased wool trousers, as though he had a business appointment to keep. It was the way he always dressed, but as far as I could tell, he hardly ever went anywhere.
“I made grits,” he said. “I left a fire under ’em so they wouldn’t get cold.”
I didn’t much care for grits. When I went to the pot and saw how hard and dry they looked from sitting so long, I put a couple of tablespoons on my plate with a chunk of butter in the middle and mashed and stirred, hoping Grandaddy would finish his coffee soon and leave the kitchen. When he finally did, I sat there mashing and stirring some more trying to make my decision.
Grandaddy was in the middle of one of his radio projects. He had two of them taken apart and spread out on a sheet from the head to the foot of his bed. He sat on the side, chewing on an unlit cigar, picking up tiny wires and tubes and wiping them down with a dirty washcloth. A third giant radio, the color of eggplant with chipped gold numbers painted across the front of it like a cro
oked smile, was on the bureau playing the all-news station. I didn’t usually go into Grandaddy’s room, I waited until he came out before I said anything to him. But it felt like he’d tried to be friendly, making the grits for me, and I was trying to be friendly back without really knowing how.
I asked him, “You fixing these?”
“Yeah.” He spoke through his teeth so the cigar never moved. I stood in the corner at first, really concentrating on him wiping each wire and screw, then just staring at the metal jigsaw puzzle on his bed and daydreaming until I felt my left leg go numb. Finally, I had an idea.
“Grandaddy? Sir, would it be alright if I . . . well, if I maybe took a walk?”
He looked up at me for the first time in almost two hours.
“A walk?! What kinda walk? There’s a damn storm out there!”
“Just to get a paper. We’re supposed to read the papers every day for school.” It was true. I just didn’t do it, usually.
“I get a paper most always,” Grandaddy told me. “I woulda gone out myself if I’d known you wanted one. You need money?”
“No, I got some.”
I went to my suitcase and got my envelope of running-away money. It was filled with loose change I’d stolen from around the house for the past few weeks. I hadn’t bothered to count it, I knew it wasn’t going to be that much and I didn’t want to be disappointed. But it was better than not having any money at all.
I stuffed the envelope into my pocket and put on my jacket and hat. When I got to the door, Grandaddy yelled out, “You got boots? You need boots out there.”
“No,” I answered him quietly. “I don’t have any boots. I mean I have some, but I didn’t bring them.”
“Why the devil would Jeanette send you out without any boots? She had to know it was gonna snow sooner or later. They been talkin’ about this storm for days now.”
I stood at the door, thinking I should let myself out quietly, when he came down the hall toward me, carrying a pair of old-man rubbers.
“Here. Stuff some paper bags in ’em if you have to. There’s a stack under the sink in the kitchen.”
“Thanks. Thank you, Grandaddy. Thanks.” The rubbers were ugly and a little big, but not by much. I wasn’t going out wearing any paper bags if I could help it.
I ran downstairs and around the corner, laughing. Now I was one of the people someone might be watching from the window of one of the old gray tenement buildings hurrying to get somewhere in Harlem. At the other end of the block was a phone booth. I emptied all my change out onto the metal ledge, unzipped my jacket and pulled out my blue notebook. I slid in a dime and dialed the operator.
“Long distance, please. To Stratfield, Connecticut.”
I didn’t really think Ray Anthony would be at home. I was pretty sure he was still in New York waiting to go to another party tonight, Saturday night. Like he’d said to me, “Shoot. Whatchu think?” I only called his number in Stratfield to hear his phone ring because he told me I could. When the operator told me to, I dropped several more quarters in and waited. I almost dropped the phone when it stopped ringing and a woman’s voice answered flatly, “Yes?” I’d never heard anyone answer the phone like that before. She sounded as if she’d already made up her mind she wasn’t especially interested in talking to whoever was at the other end of the line.
I was trying to think quickly whether I should ask for Ray Anthony, on the chance that he was there.
“Yes?” the woman repeated. It had to be Mrs. Robinson. I should tell her, I thought, “It’s Louis Bowman. I live across the courtyard. Is Ray Anthony at home, please?” But I didn’t.
The voice said, “If you’re the same one who keeps callin’ for Ray Anthony, he’s still not here and I don’t know when he’s comin’ back. Now, please don’t keep ringin’ this phone!”
I held my breath and waited for her to hang up first. I wondered who else called him enough for her to say that? I never saw him with anybody. If we ever got to be friends, I’d wait awhile, then I’d ask him.
Walking back to my grandfather’s, I repeated to myself the rhythm in Mrs. Robinson’s voice when she said, “Now please don’t keep ringin’ this phone!” Upstairs in the apartment, I whispered it so Grandaddy wouldn’t hear me. I sat by the window and tried different ways of saying it, sounding even more exasperated than she had. I put my hands on my hips and imitated how she probably knotted up her face when she realized whoever it was was calling Ray Anthony again.
“What’re you doin’?”
I jumped. “Nothin’.” My grandfather was standing in the doorway. I didn’t know how much he’d seen. “I was just talking to myself.”
“You get a paper?”
I’d completely forgotten about it.
“No. They were sold out already. The guy said they didn’t get that many causa the storm.” I thought of how my mother said I was the quickest liar she’d ever known.
Grandaddy stared at me like he still wanted to know what I thought I was doing sitting on his couch with my hands on my hips pretending to be some woman, but he went back into his room without asking me. After a couple of hours he came back out. I was still on the couch, going through a pile of his old Ebony magazines.
“You goin’ around the corner tomorrow morning?”
“Yes sir.” I hadn’t thought about going to church at all. But it was another excuse to get out. Even if I couldn’t sneak my things out with me, I’d be by myself again. My trip to the phone booth made me think there were all kinds of possibilities once I got out into the street alone.
“Yes, I’m going.” I went back to the Ebony article I was reading about Eartha Kitt, “Down to Earth with Eartha.” When I was sure Grandaddy was back in his room, I told the ghost of somebody at the other end of the couch, “Please don’t keep ringin’ this phone.” Only this time I did it in my Eartha Kitt voice. It sounded like I was gargling.
25
Gingerbread women. Filing through the snow in their Christmas garden hats. Mink tails looped over gold net. Purple and green velvet bubbles. Red satin helmets with cascading silver stars. They weaved into Greater Faith Harlem Baptist Tabernacle in twos, one arm linked to another’s, steadying each other on the snowy pavement. A little weary but content, they looked as though they’d been traveling in pairs for years. Finally, they were home, the Sunday before Christmas.
I trailed behind in Grandaddy’s old-man rubbers, almost to the entrance. I’d planned on sitting in the back. After an hour with the Greater Faith ladies, singing, swaying, and clapping for the birth of Baby Jesus, I’d slip out without being noticed and take a walk through the neighborhood. But when I got right up to the door, it occurred to me that I should take advantage of all the time I had outside by myself. Maybe if I walked long enough, I might walk into Ray Anthony.
Not really knowing Harlem or where exactly I was going, I headed downtown, deciding on 100th Street as a stopping point. I’d see how I felt once I got there. It could also be kind of a rehearsal so if I did run away . . .
Run away. It was sounding more and more like one of those TV shows about little white boys who packed peanut butter sandwiches and took their dogs with them. They usually got picked up by two cops who, before they saw the kid, were sitting in their car looking straight ahead, trancelike, at an empty street. When they questioned the boy, they’d wink at each other the whole time they were talking to him. They knew he couldn’t have anything to run away from. So they’d drive him home to his mother and sure enough she’d open the door wearing a ruffled apron, high heels and button earrings. He’d be just in time for an extra helping of pot roast, once he ran upstairs and washed his hands. I hardly saw any cops in Harlem and when I did they weren’t jumping out of their car to ask any kids if they were lost.
I’d gotten as far as 128th Street. No Ray Anthony. No one that even looked like him. I thought about turning around right then but I convinced myself I should keep walking, just in case he was only blocks away and I’d miss him if I
gave up.
One hundred and twenty-fifth. I couldn’t walk any faster. Grandaddy’s rubbers kept sliding off and I’d have to stop and pull them back onto my heels. There was a woman on the other side of the street with her little girl, waiting to cross. I thought of Mom and Lorelle at the bus stop in the rain before I left, Mom looking like she was still in that front seat with Ben, in the middle of the fight. It hadn’t been the biggest they’d had, but it was the worst because he’d died during it, so it definitely wasn’t a win for her. She’d survived it, maybe, but I could see she wasn’t considering that a big victory.
Maybe I should go back, I thought. Maybe with only the three of us left . . . I stood there on the corner of 125th Street and watched the woman and her little girl cross over to where I was. I turned and followed them back uptown.
If I’m lucky, I’ll see him now.
I looked in windows on both sides of the street. If I saw somebody even out of the corner of my eye who looked like he might be Ray Anthony, I’d go back and wait for the guy to come to the window again to make sure.
He’ll be just getting up and stretching, looking outside to see how much snow has fallen.
Once I started this game, I knew it would take me twice as long to get back to 161 Street.
When I did get back, I clomped up to Greater Faith thinking I’d sneak in for the rest of the service. There couldn’t be that much left. It felt like I’d been walking for hours.
I knew before I got to the doors of the church that I was too late. With Greater Faith, you could hear the service from halfway down the block. Not only did I know service was over, I knew I couldn’t tell my grandfather I’d ever gone at all. Wearing a plastic-covered cap and a long black coat with a wide belt, he was there with his back to me staring toward the empty church.
I almost ran backwards in the other direction when he turned sharply as though he’d heard me thinking. He stared like he was making sure it was me. He’s probably strong enough to knock me down with one punch, I thought, and then maybe it’ll be over. But when he got closer, his own face was too full of fear for me to be afraid for myself.