by Bil Wright
“Where you wanna go, Ray-Ray? You wanna drive?” the girl who wasn’t writing asked him.
Ray Anthony shrugged and told them, “Naw, I ain’t drivin’. I don’t feel like drivin’.”
A woman came out of Big Lou’s with a full bag of groceries in each arm. As she passed the kids in front of the store, she called out, “Rita, honey, I think your mama’s lookin’ for you.”
The girl with the stick turned suddenly from the hood of the car and shouted, “I look like somebody’s Rita-honey to you?” The girl had black, bowling ball eyes that looked even bigger because she’d penciled thick lines on her upper and lower lids and drawn them out at the sides.
The woman stared at her for a moment, surprised. She walked quickly between the cars and across the street shaking her head from side to side, mumbling something I couldn’t hear.
They all laughed. I couldn’t see whether Ray Anthony was laughing or not because he still had his back to me. The giant said, “Crita, you crazy.”
“She’s so stupid!” The girl was still shouting. “She don’t know the difference between Crita and Rita, she need to keep her mouth shut. How she gonna be all in my business tellin’ me my mama’s lookin’ for me an’ she don’t know my mama’s Rita and I’m Crita?”
Whatever her name was, she was loud. She was shorter than any of them, but she looked like the oldest.
“Babyback, why don’t you drive if Ray Anthony don’t wanna? It’s your car. Shoot, we waited all this time for him and now what are we supposed to do? Not go nowhere just cause he don’t wanna drive?” As she said it, she stared up at Ray Anthony, daring him to argue with her. “I’m ready to go somewhere whether he go or not!”
Ray Anthony hunched up his shoulders. I wished I could get closer to see his face. Why would he let her talk to him this way? If he didn’t want to be with them, he could go somewhere with me. I had to wait to see if maybe there was a chance.
“You oughtsta let me drive some damn time, Babyback. I don’t know why you always axin’ him anyway.” It was the other guy, as tall as the giant, but darkskinned and as skinny as Babyback was wide.
“Nah huh! I ain’t goin’ nowhere with you drivin’, Bones. Y’all talkin’ about I’m crazy. Now he the one that’s crazy, for real crazy! I ain’t gettin’ in the car if Bones be drivin’.” Crita wrapped her open nylon jacket around her with the zipper hanging loose from one side. She pulled her green hairband farther down on her forehead so that her hair, no longer than the band was wide, stuck straight out away from her head like a halo of nails.
“Aw, Crita!” Bones pouted. “Ain’t nobody wanna drive you no place no how.”
I watched Ray Anthony’s back for some sign of what he was going to do.
“If Ray Anthony don’t wanna drive, then I’ll drive,” Babyback said. His side of the car sank to the curb when he got in and he looked upset when the door scraped loudly against the sidewalk as he pulled it shut. He rolled the window down and yelled, “What y’all waitin’ for? Geraldine, you come on in front with me.”
Geraldine giggled and went over to the other side and got in.
“Ray Anthony, you come on an’ get in the back with Crita.”
I held my breath. He turned around, yes he did turn around and look at me for just a moment before he went out into the street and got in Babyback’s car. I tried to see if he was sending me a message that maybe he didn’t want to go, or even if he did, he’d see me later. But if there was a message, I couldn’t figure it out.
Crazy Crita jumped in behind him and slid over as close as she could, squeezing him into a corner behind Babyback in the driver’s seat. Bones, left standing in the street, glared after Crita. He lit a cigarette and slouched around to the other side of the car.
Babyback said, “Oh, you comin’ too, Bones? I didn’t think you was comin’.”
But by the time time Babyback finished, Bones had already climbed in and slammed the door. He was in the backseat on one side, Ray Anthony was on the other. I stepped out from where I’d been hiding behind the car. As the five of them pulled off, I could see the outline of Crazy Crita’s halo of nails.
27
—Hello. Ray Anthony?
—You speakin’ to ’im.
—This is Louis. Across the courtyard.
—Yeah, I know.
—You did? How’d you know?
—I could tell from the voice. I don’t know nobody else talks like you do.
—Oh.
—So. What can I do for ya?
—Well, I wanted to call to wish you a Happy New Year. I was thinking I should do it now because you might be going to New York or something and I wouldn’t get a chance.
—I ain’t goin’ to New York for New Year’s.
—You’re not?
—Naw, I ain’t got no goin’ to New York money.
—So you’ll probably just go to some party or something around here, in Stratfield, huh?
—Somethin’. I don’t know what it’s gonna be yet.
— Maybe you’ll . . . maybe you’ll go to a party with those kids from Creighton Heights . . . uh . . . Babyback . . . and . . . uh . . . Crita.
—Maybe so. I tol’ ya, I don’t know yet.
—Oh . . . Ray Anthony?
—Yeah?
—Those kids. Are you really close friends with them?
—Whatchu mean, “close friends”?
—You know. Close friends. I didn’t even know you knew them.
—Whatchu mean, you didn’t know, you don’t hardly know me. We hang out, that’s what I do with them. You was lookin’ at what I do with them.
— I think that Crita girl . . . likes you.
—Crita? She don’t know what she like an’ what she don’t like from one minute to the next.
—I think she knows she likes you. I could tell.
—Yeah well, I ain’t thinkin’ nothin’ bout Crita.
—What about that Bones?
—What about Bones? You gonna tell me he like me too?
—No. What I was gonna say was how come Crita said he was the one who was really crazy? Is he?
— You got to ask Crita. She the one who said it.
—Oh come on, Ray Anthony, you’re friends with them. You probly know what she meant. Is he really crazy?
— You keep on comin’ around him, see what you think. You want me to introduce y’all so you can ask him right out?
— No.
—Well then, why you gonna ask me all kinda questions then? Huh?
— I’m sorry, I guess, I mean, I thought . . . I just wanted to ask you about them cause I thought they were your good friends, that’s all. I thought you’d wanna talk about them.
—I got to go.
—You mean get off the phone or . . . are you really going someplace?
— I mean both. I got to go.
—Well, me too. But I’ll probly be looking out the window when you leave your house. If you look across, you’ll probly be able to see me.
—Uh-huh.
—But if you forget, if you don’t see me, I’ll be around tomorrow too. I’m not going anywhere for New Year’s either.
—Uh-huh.
—So I’ll see you.
—Yeah.
I stood at the living room window and waited. Mom was upstairs, but I didn’t care this time if she’d heard me or not. Three or four minutes later, Ray Anthony ran out of his apartment building and started across the courtyard. At the sight of him, my whole body was ready to wave, to say yes, that was me you were talking to, that was me and here I am now. Louis.
He didn’t turn around until he was at the parking lot, but I knew that he would. When he did, I didn’t wave at all. I smiled and he nodded. Then it was too dark for me to really see him, crossing the parking lot out onto the street. I wondered if he was going to Big Lou’s. Would they be waiting for him, Crita and Geraldine, Babyback and Bones? How many other people waited for Ray Anthony like I did?
• • •
It was summertime in the dream. I was jumping the tracks. Feeling the heat through the soles of my sneakers. My bare legs burning in the sun. Skinny chicken legs, jumping the train tracks like a grasshopper in July.
There wasn’t anything on either side of me that let me know exactly where I was, but New York City was up ahead, waiting for me in the distance. Behind me, the tracks curved like a line of Cs strung together. What looked like the old Stratfield station platform turned out to be Big Lou’s Cigarettes and Candy. I walked toward the city staring back over my shoulder at it. Sweat rolled down my forehead and dropped from my eyelashes onto my cheeks. I yanked my T-shirt out of my shorts, wiped my face, my neck. When I looked again there they all were in front of the store, in their winter clothes. Babyback was holding on to the blue door of his car. The rest of the car wasn’t there, just the door. No one seemed to notice the car was missing. They were all sneering at me. Crita called out, “You’re lucky you got away. If you ever come back, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
When I turned away from them, the city wasn’t in front of me anymore. There was just one building, the one my grandfather lived in, standing at the other end of the tracks. He was on the stoop, with his back to me, wearing his cap with the plastic cover and his long black coat. He even had on the rubbers he’d loaned me. I had the same sick feeling in my stomach as when I saw him outside Greater Faith Harlem Baptist. It didn’t feel like I should be looking forward to New York any more than I should think about going back. I kept moving in his direction, though. He was my family and he hadn’t hurt me before. The Creighton Heights Projects gang didn’t have anything better to do.
When it looked like I was getting closer to my grandfather, I turned around toward Stratfield again. The four of them were moving up on me. I started to run. The tracks were so hot, it felt like my sneakers were melting under me. I’ve got to run faster. Faster. Someone was beside me, so close I could feel their breath on my neck. I could smell . . . Ed MacMillan. Ed MacMillan running beside me with his lying eyes and whining.
“Go away, you bastard. Go away!” I swung at him, aiming my fist at his mouth. My hand went right through his face, from one side to the other and out again. He wasn’t hurt, he didn’t seem to feel it at all. I ran faster. He couldn’t keep up. The sound of his breath, his smell was gone.
I focused toward the city. My grandfather began to turn slowly on his stoop. Even before I saw his face, I could tell that it wasn’t my grandfather anymore. It was another trap. Now, one of the goons from Creighton Heights was waiting for me on the other side too. But I couldn’t stop running in his direction, my feet wouldn’t do anything else. He turned. As he came around, his coat opened slowly and his cap flew off. There was a blaze of red, nappy hair.
The long black coat was gone. The only thing the man I ran toward had on was a pair of purple pants. Ray Anthony. I laughed. I wanted to see his face.
I ran faster. I could feel the Creighton Heights gang catching up. Faster still because the farther I got, the farther away Ray Anthony was. Slowly, he kept turning. I still couldn’t see his face. Even when the rest of his body was turned toward me, he wasn’t looking in my direction. I reached for his chest, his hair, his arms. Ray Anthony, I called to him. I couldn’t hear my own voice, but I called anyway. Look. It’s me. Louis. Reach for me, Ray Anthony. Reach. Please. Reach.
28
A kid in a dirty red coat with one button on it was wearing a silver paper hat with a rubber band under his chin. He kicked slush in the courtyard and told anybody who passed, “My mama’s givin’ a party tonight and she said everybody’s comin’.” He was the only sign of New Year’s Eve in the projects.
Miss Odessa came by in the morning and asked Mom if she wanted to go to church with her later that night. Mom said it was too dangerous to have to walk home in the dark with all the drunks out and she’d just as soon stay home. After Miss Odessa left, Mom said the real reason she’d said no was because every time she’d gone to church with Miss Odessa, she’d talked about people all through the service.
“Number one, it gives me a damn headache and number two, it makes people think I’ve got a mouth just as vicious as hers. People curse that mouth of hers,” Mom said, “and I don’t want anybody cursing me on New Year’s Eve. That’s the worst kind of luck you can bring on yourself, somebody cursing you for the New Year.”
“Well, I wish I was doing something tonight instead of sitting around here like I’ve done every New Year’s since I was born.”
Mom looked at me for a minute, with her eyebrows raised. “All of a sudden you’re a party boy, huh? Well, you have a particular party you wanna go to, tonight?”
I sure do, I thought. If only I knew what Ray Anthony was going to do. Maybe, I thought, I should tell her something just to get me out of the house and I could find out if he’d let me go wherever he was going. But it was too fast for me to think it through and I wound up sucking my teeth and saying, “No. No party. I’ll be here as usual.”
“Well,” she said, “I have a date tonight.” I didn’t believe her. Had she lost her mind? Who did she have a date with this soon after Ben’s death and why didn’t I know about him?
“Who with?” I asked her. I only hoped she wasn’t going to name somebody terrible, somebody new to worry about.
“Well, he’s kinda short, but I don’t mind. Cause he’s smart. Very smart.”
Like Ben, I thought. At the beginning she’d been so impressed that Ben was smart.
“So he’s smart, Mom. Big deal. There are a lot of smart guys around. Just not a lot in Stratfield. What’s his name?”
“Maybe he’s not as smart as I thought he was,” she said, waving the dish towel in the air and doing a strange kind of waltz step in circles around the living room.
So she had lost her mind. Whoever this was was going to be trouble, I was sure of it.
“Boy, don’t you know I have a date with you, Louis Bowman, and you have a date with me?”
I was embarrassed. I knew what a date was, even if I’d never had one. She was making fun not just of me, but of both of us, really.
“And I’ve asked Mr. Guy Lombardo and his orchestra to come right into our living room and play for us.”
I sat on the couch, trying not to be rude, but also trying to say enough, stop, I get the joke and it isn’t funny, please stop.
“I want you to make a list of all the things we’re gonna need to have ourselves a good time.” She was already in the kitchen getting a pad and pen. When she came back, she caught me rolling my eyes at the living room ceiling.
“Well, aren’t you a mess,” she said, dropping the pad into my lap. “Turning up your nose at spending an evening with your mother. I’m not used to men turning up their noses at me, you know.”
“What do you want me to write?” I wanted to get this part over with so she wouldn’t have to talk about it anymore.
“Now you know I know how to give a party. Get a quart of ice cream and one of those little pound cakes. A bottle of ginger ale for you and then I want you to go to the liquor store and get me a little scotch.”
“What’s a little? A fifth? A pint? Don’t you want champagne? It’s New Year’s.”
“I’d want champagne if I could afford the kind I wanted to drink. Cheap champagne’ll half kill you. After you’ve had the best, and I have, you don’t want to depress yourself on New Year’s Eve drinking the cheapest.”
“I have to change my pants.”
“To go to the grocery store? Why?”
I was already halfway to my room so I didn’t have to answer. I wanted to put on a new pair of jeans she’d given me for Christmas. They were a size too small, but I liked the way they looked, because they were tight and made my legs look bigger and longer. I wanted to wear them to Big Lou’s, just in case. I brought them into the bathroom with me along with a cigarette.
Every kid I knew either smoked or claimed they did but I’d never seriously considered it before. Most peop
le I watched didn’t look like they particularly enjoyed it. What was the point? People in movies did it with a lot more style. Definitely, Ray Anthony was in the movie star category and actually most of the time so was Mom. Smoking looked good on Ray Anthony but so did toothpicks, chewing gum, and patent leather shoes. Anyway, now I’d decided it was something we could have in common. The next time we talked and I ran out of things to say to him, I could offer him a cigarette and stall, thinking up a good topic while we lit up and took the first couple of puffs. I figured since I didn’t have a car to let him drive like Babyback did, it was at least something I could offer him.
I practiced the whole thing with the cigarette I’d stolen from Mom. I turned in my tight jeans and looked up at Ray Anthony.
“You wanna cigarette? . . . Sure, I smoke. You didn’t know cause you don’t know me that well.” I could see I’d made the right decision by his smile. I held out the pack and got the matches ready. I lit his cigarette and mine at the same time like the guy did for Bette Davis in Now Voyager. Ray Anthony’d probably never seen a Bette Davis movie in his life. He’d think it was something I came up with.
I only had it lit for a second, but a second was enough to set Mom’s radar off. No sooner was I in my room than she came barreling right in without knocking.
“If you think you’re gonna start the New Year off by smoking cigarettes in my house without my permission, you better think again, Louis.”
• • •
I wished I’d brushed my teeth afterwards. Even though I’d only had a couple of puffs, I felt a little nauseous going to Big Lou’s. I held my mouth open while I was walking and stuck my tongue out in the air, but my mouth still tasted like I’d been chewing oregano.
I saw Babyback’s blue car door down the block. He was standing in front of it alone outside the store, drinking a can of beer in a paper bag. He looked around him like he was either watching for cops or waiting for the rest of his gang to show up. Probably both. Did that mean Ray Anthony was on his way? I walked right up to Babyback but I didn’t have the guts to ask him. I went into Big Lou’s and couldn’t get to the freezer for the pound cake or the ice cream because of the long line in front of the counter. While I waited, watching through the store window for Ray Anthony, I had an idea. I got out of line and went to the back of the store to the pay phone. I’d memorized the number by now. 326-8757. I was about to hang up when he answered on the sixth ring.