by Bil Wright
“That mess you done back there at the drive-in? That wasn’t nothin’.” Ray Anthony didn’t look at her. She moved closer, as though he was hard of hearing. “It wasn’t shit.”
He shifted his toothpick from one side to the other. Slowly, Crita stepped out and slammed the door so hard, the car shook. Just before Ray Anthony pulled away, she smiled at me in the backseat. It was the smile from the dream I’d had, the smile that said, “You’re lucky I’m letting you get away.”
• • •
“I gotta go back to Big Lou’s,” I told Ray Anthony. I thought I’d start with the shopping and figure out the rest, like what to tell Mom. Babyback was still there in front of the store when we drove up, shivering and blowing into his palms. When I jumped out of the car, he looked surprised to see I’d been in it all the time.
I’d almost forgotten Mom’s scotch. When I turned around to get it, the empty bag was on the floor, but the bottle wasn’t. I tried to slam Babyback’s car door harder than Crita had and dared either one of them to say anything about it.
“Louis.” I didn’t remember Ray Anthony ever calling me by my name before, and now, the first time he did, I was too furious to answer.
“Take this.” He was holding rolled-up money out the window. I went around to him and snatched it from between his fingers.
“It ain’t my fault,” he said. For the first time, I didn’t care what he said.
I went to the back of Big Lou’s to the pay booth and called Mom. It barely rang before she answered.
“Mom—” I started. Beginning a lie you don’t know the end of is like diving. You just go to the end of the board and jump, because if you wait too long, you ruin any chance of it turning out good. “I’m at Big Lou’s, Mom, but there’s a really long line and I went to the liquor store once, but I have to go back again.”
“You’re at Big Lou’s?”
“Yeah, Mom.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m alright.”
I was in the middle of the air with the water waiting under me when I heard her crying.
“God, Louis. I was so afraid. I thought you were . . . I thought you . . . went away.”
I remembered how tight she’d hugged me when I got off the train from New York. I still didn’t know what Grandaddy had told her or what she thought I’d told him. The point was, I didn’t have to lie about where I’d been instead of shopping for our New Year’s Eve together. She was relieved to know I’d be there with her and for the moment that was all she cared about. That much, I guessed, was good luck. Watching Babyback driving Ray Anthony away, I wondered what kind of luck it was that I felt him watching me through the window. When I looked at him, he nodded the same as he had before, but this time neither one of us smiled.
• • •
Mom and I never really talked about where I’d been. I volunteered that I’d met a classmate who wanted to know about Ben’s funeral and how I’d stood there in the cold outside Big Lou’s and reported all the details to him. I knew Mom didn’t believe me, but it didn’t matter. She opened the bottle of scotch as soon as I gave it to her and had a drink and a cigarette. She glanced at me a few times as if she was actually listening to me lying to her, but I could see that wherever she’d gone in her head for the hours I was with Ray Anthony and Crita had worn her out. Now that I was home again she could rest and if she was listening at all, it was probably to record the lie.
That night, for the first part of her New Year’s Eve party, the three of us ate lamb chops and mashed potatoes in the living room on trays in our laps. We watched The Great Ziegfeld. Mom did her imitation of Luise Rainer’s French accent sighing, “Oh, Flo!” while I mouthed it. Even though I knew I could do it better, I didn’t dare compete with her.
After dessert, Lorelle fell asleep with her head in my lap. That was my excuse for not dancing with Mom when Guy Lombardo’s New Year’s Eve special came on. But Mom woke her up anyway, singing “Let old acquaintance be forgot” and crying when the New Year came in. I looked across the courtyard. There was a light up on the fifth floor in Ray Anthony’s mother’s living room.
“What are you looking at?” Mom asked. “Aren’t you going to drink your champagne cocktail?” She held up the glass she’d chilled for me and filled with ginger ale and a capful of scotch.
“I’m looking at the New Year,” I told her. “Happy New Year,” I whispered, looking up at the window across the projects courtyard. “Happy New Year.”
30
“Raay-Raay! Sweet, sweeet Sugar Raay! Come on down here, Ray Anthony sweetie!”
It was early, a few minutes after eight, but I was definitely awake. I heard her as loudly as if she was outside our door calling my name. I pulled on a sweater, pants, and my shoes and ran downstairs. Mom was smoking a cigarette, watching out the window but standing over to the side so she couldn’t be seen. She looked like she was trying to avoid getting shot.
There was Crita in front of 4B with Bones and a boy I didn’t know. All of her hair was sticking straight up all around like porcupine quills. Otherwise, she looked almost the same as she had the day before, except her jacket was open so I could see her pink blouse hanging over her pants. She had on the same dirty sneakers with no socks and holes that made me cold just looking at them.
“Shuuugarrraaay!” she yelled again. She threw her head back and her arms stretched out and jerked around in the air. “Ain’tchu comin’ out, Raaay Aanthooneee? I got some boys down here for you to play with!”
Part of me wanted to run back upstairs. I didn’t want to be in the room, knowing my mother was observing every detail, but I had to stay. I had to be a witness to this, I had no choice.
“I said I brought you some boys to play with, Ray Anthony Robinson! Cause you like boys so much, you punk faggot!”
Bones shoved his friend and they both stumbled around in the snow, howling. Crita put her hands on her hips and repeated slowly, “You punk faggot!”
“Geez!” Mom whispered like she was watching a car accident. Her lips curled in disgust, she stuck her cigarette between them and took a deep, long drag. I wanted to tell her to go away, I’d report everything that happened, but I couldn’t say anything. That morning, Mom was probably the only woman in the projects who worried about being seen snooping. As Crita continued to yell up to the fifth floor, I could see people on all the other floors looking down to the courtyard from their windows. Where was Ray Anthony? His mother’s shade was down. Was he up there standing behind it? Were they both there?
“Come out here, punk! Whatchu doin’ up there?”
Crita was punishing him. I remembered her smile when she got out of the car. I hadn’t been wrong.
Bones reached down and gathered some snow. I closed my eyes. Please, God. Don’t let them be that stupid. But he and his friend started hurling snowballs at the window while Crita continued to shout. From the time I’d first heard her to the second the 4B door flew open seemed like hours, but the moment I saw Ray Anthony, time suddenly sped up and I could barely keep track of what was happening.
“Get the hell away from here, y’all! Get the hell away!”
His voice was high, torn sounding, like a choked trumpet. He was wearing an undershirt, sleeveless, and his purple pants, patent leather shoes.
Crita ran to him. “You want a boy, faggot?! I brought you a damn boy!” She swung at Ray Anthony’s head, but he stepped out of her way. “Get him, Bones!” she snarled. “Get him!”
Bones threw up his fists and danced toward Ray Anthony, grinning. “Heh, heh. Come on, punk. I always knew you wasn’t nothin’ but a punk. Come on.”
Ray Anthony’s arm shot out into Bones’s face so suddenly, both Mom and I jumped like it was us who’d been punched. From then on, he hit him without stopping. He hit him until Bones started to sink. The whole time, Crita hollered, “Get him, Bones!” as if she was blindfolded and couldn’t see what was really happening a foot in front of her.
By now, peopl
e had come out of their apartments and crowded in a circle around the three of them so it was harder for me to see what was going on. Mom and I were at opposite sides of the window, dodging from side to side, trying to follow the movement of the bodies. I didn’t see Crita get behind Ray Anthony, but suddenly, she was on his back with her legs circling his waist, her arm around his neck like a hangman’s noose. Bones got up. He was too weak to hit Ray Anthony very hard, but now his friend jumped in and the two of them beat him at the same time.
Ray Anthony went down backwards and Crita tumbled to his side. Bones’s friend pushed him onto Ray Anthony. Bones sat on Ray Anthony’s chest, hammering into his face.
I don’t remember running out of the apartment and across the courtyard. Or pushing through the circle of people watching Bones carve into Ray Anthony’s eyes and mouth with his fists. Afterwards, Miss Odessa told Mom it looked like I had the strength of a grown man twice my size when I threw myself against Bones and knocked him over.
Ray Anthony staggered to his feet again, his eye bloody and sagging. Bones rolled over to try to get up too, but Ray Anthony was too fast for him. He pulled Bones’s head from the ground with both hands. Then he began to pound it against the concrete step outside 4B.
Ray Anthony’s mouth twisted into a thick line of rope from ear to ear. But what I first thought was anger in his eyes, I suddenly recognized as something different. Something I’d seen in my mother’s eyes, and my own. But I’d never seen it in Ray Anthony’s before. I’d never seen fear in his eyes.
Maybe it had nothing to do with Bones. Maybe he was afraid because of what Crita had yelled, afraid someone might believe her. Maybe he was afraid for himself, afraid he really would rather be in a car with me than her. Had he called her name in the car, or mine? What I knew for certain was that Ray Anthony would beat Bones until he didn’t feel afraid anymore, no matter how long it took or how much of Bones’s skull he had to split open.
I jumped onto Ray Anthony like he was a speeding car, punching him with a strength I’d never felt before. But he didn’t seem to know I was there at all. When he wouldn’t let go of Bones, I bit into his shoulder. Hard. “Don’t. You’re going to kill him. Don’t kill him, Ray Anthony. Don’t.”
I held on to him until he blurred in front of me. I don’t remember letting go.
When the cops called the ambulance, they had to make the crowd stand back so they could get the stretcher through, the same as they had not two weeks before with Ben. It was a longer walk for them this time, from the parking lot to the courtyard and back. When they carried Bones away, half the projects followed as if what happened to him really mattered to them. The other half lagged behind, choosing to follow Ray Anthony and Crita to the police car instead.
Mom was making sure the cops didn’t take me. Shoving her way through the crowd, she pulled me away from Ray Anthony and tried to block me from them. Ray Anthony stared at me like I was some stranger who’d run up to him out of nowhere, jumped him, and bitten into his shoulder.
“Keep your white hands off me,” Crita spat at the cop who tried to pull her along by her jacket collar. When he took her arm instead, she paraded to the police car, enjoying herself. Bones’s friend claimed he’d only tried to break up the fight, but the crowd pushed him away from them toward the cops yelling, “Liar! Liar! Take him, too! Take him!”
Where was Ray Anthony’s mother? When they handcuffed him, the shades on the fifth floor were still down. If she hadn’t come by the time they drove him away, who would even know where they were taking him?
Watching for his mother is what kept me from running along beside him like everyone else was as they were taking him away. It’s how I saw the silver key chain with the red rabbit’s foot and the nail clippers on it. It must’ve fallen out of his pocket during the fight. I grabbed it out of the snow and ran toward the parking lot. Mom called to me not to go, but it sounded as if she was a thousand miles away.
The ambulance had just pulled off wailing and Crita and Bones’s friend were already in the back of one of the police cars. Crita was smirking through the window. The two cops were about to shove Ray Anthony into a second car.
“Ray Anthony!”
I ran, holding the red rabbit’s foot out to him. “I found it! It fell out of your pocket!”
Everyone was watching. The cops, the people from the projects. Watching and listening, as if I’d found important evidence and everyone was waiting to see what it would mean.
Ray Anthony’s eye was bleeding badly. His shoulder, where I’d bitten him, looked like he’d been stabbed. My legs trembled. I didn’t feel like the person who’d hurt him only minutes before.
“Here.”
They’d cuffed his hands, so I tried to put his rabbit’s foot in his pocket.
“Uh-huh. You. You keep it. See does it bring ya any luck.”
I wanted to get him his leather jacket so he’d be warm, to ask the cops where they were taking him so he couldn’t just disappear. I wanted to go with him. I could make things different because I knew the truth and could explain it.
But all I did was watch like everyone else when they pushed Ray Anthony down into the backseat with his hands locked behind him. They folded him up like cardboard. A big brown cardboard cutout of a man with a thick cloud of nappy hair the color of brick, wearing patent leather shoes. They folded him up into the back of their car. Then they drove him away from me.
31
I stayed in my room, avoiding Mom’s questions and trying to figure out what the police could charge Ray Anthony with. Twice, Miss Odessa came to the apartment trying to sniff out a story she could take with her from door to door. A few minutes before noon, Mom called me from downstairs. I grabbed Ivanhoe and took it with me to give the impression it was important for me to get back to it as soon as possible. Mom was in the kitchen, sitting at the table.
“I was reading,” I announced to her.
“You can go back to it. I just wanted to tell you”—she stopped and pushed an envelope on the table toward me—“this came for you yesterday.”
I didn’t recognize the handwriting, but it had more stamps on the envelope than on any letter I’d ever been sent. The postage mark said, “Jamaica, West Indies.” I knew immediately who it was from.
“Yesterday?”
Why had Mom waited? I turned the envelope over. Had she read it already? Had she thought about not giving it to me at all?
“I meant to give it to you. I forgot. I was upset yesterday. Remember?”
I tried to grab my letter from the table as casually as I could and keep myself from running for the stairs. I got halfway up when she stopped me.
“Louis, who do you know in Jamaica?”
I started to answer without turning around at all, but I thought better of it.
“I think it’s probably from Dr. Davis. She’s a therapist at Burgess.”
I wanted to say “my therapist,” that’s what came to me, but I knew what I’d said was safer.
“Why the hell is she writing you letters?”
“I don’t know why she wrote me. I’ll have to read it to find out.”
It was the kind of answer I could have been knocked down for. Instead she said, “Just remember whose house you live in. She’s writing letters to the house where I pay rent. I don’t have to receive any mail I don’t want to receive.”
With that, she turned and walked back into the kitchen. I jumped the rest of the stairs two at a time, ran into my room and locked the door behind me as quietly as possible.
It wasn’t a letter. It was a postcard inside an envelope. I was sure Dr. Davis had mailed it that way so I’d feel like I had some privacy. The front of it was sliced down the middle on an angle by a green line and on either side of the line was a different photograph. One photograph was of two dark brown women wearing bright blue dresses, with white smiles and their arms around each other dancing in the street at night. On the other side was a picture of sand almost as white as the women’s
smiles and beyond it, water that matched their dresses. The sand reminded me of being at the beach with Ray Anthony and Crita. The card said, “Happy Holidays. I’ll see you soon. Dr. Davis.”
It was all printed out in neat, black, block letters. Neat. That was the word. I’d been trying to figure out what happened when I talked to her that made me feel different when I came out of her office. That was it. Everything felt neater. It was all still there inside of me, all the things I’d told her and all the things I hadn’t. But it felt like I’d sorted them out and put things in different piles. She was good at that. Her postcard made me think she must be good at it for herself, too.
I looked at the space above her name where she could have written “Love.” I guess if she had, it would have seemed unprofessional, especially if somebody else had seen it. But I knew that’s what she meant. I was sure of it. She meant “Love.”
I got the book she’d given me and opened to where Ray Anthony had written his number. I knew the number, I’d just never connected him and Dr. Davis in any way before. It was okay that he’d written in the book she’d given me. She would have thought so too.
I wanted to call Ray Anthony’s mother and ask her if she knew if he was in jail and did she have a lawyer? When they’d carried Bones away, he was unconscious, but that wasn’t dead. They couldn’t keep Ray Anthony if Bones wasn’t dead, could they? How could they keep him in jail for fighting him? People fought each other all the time in the projects, but nobody got arrested for it unless they killed somebody. Were the cops so sure Bones was going to die?
• • •
It was the phone that woke me. I’d been going over the details of the fight in my head and I must’ve fallen asleep. I could hear Mom on the phone. A few minutes later, she called me. I jumped up and went out to the head of the stairs. Maybe I’d jumped up too quickly. The bottom of the stairs seemed to be moving. Rippling, black linoleum waves. I couldn’t catch my breath.