A Permanent Member of the Family

by Russell Banks

  Using her purse as a pillow, she lies down on her side, facing Ninety-seventh Street. She can’t hear the dog’s growls anymore or his heavy, wet, open-mouthed breathing and figures either he is lying in the dark nearby trying to trick her into coming down from the roof or he is just making his rounds and will soon come back to make sure that in his brief absence she hasn’t tried to climb over the fence. She suddenly realizes that she is exhausted and despite her fear can barely keep her eyes open.

  Then her eyes close.

  SHE MAY HAVE SLEPT for a few minutes or it might have been a few hours, but when she opens her eyes again it’s dark. On the sidewalk just beyond the fence someone in a gray hoodie is jouncing in place, hands deep in his pockets, looking straight at her. He’s half hidden in the shadow of the building, beyond the range of the streetlight on Seventh, a slender young black man or maybe a man-size teenage boy, she can’t tell.

  “Yo, lady, what you doin’ up there?”

  She says nothing at first. What is she doing up there? Then says, “There’s a bad dog won’t let me get down. And the gate is locked tight.”

  She sits up and sees now that he is a teenage boy, but not a boy she knows from the neighborhood. Mostly older folks live in the area, retired people who own their small homes and single parents of grown-up children and grandchildren like this one living in Overtown and Liberty City or out in Miami Gardens and the suburbs. He is younger than his size indicates, no more than thirteen or fourteen, probably visiting his mother or grandmother. He approaches the fence, when suddenly the dog emerges from darkness and rushes it, snarling and snapping through the bars, sending the boy back into the street.

  “Whoa! That a bad dog all right!”

  Ventana says, “Do me a favor. Go see if there’s a watchman or guard in the showroom. They not answering the phone when I try calling, but maybe somebody’s on duty there.”

  The boy walks around to the front of the building and peers through the window into the showroom. Seconds later he returns. “Anybody there, he be sittin’ in the dark.”

  The dog, panting with excitement, has staked out a position between the fence and the Ford Escape—his small yellow eyes, his forehead flat and hard as a shovel and his wide, lipless, tooth-filled mouth controlling both the boy on one side of the fence and Ventana on the other.

  “If you got a phone, lady, whyn’t you call 911?”

  “Be hard to explain to the police how I got in here,” she says.

  “Yeah, prob’ly would,” he says. “How did you get in there?”

  “Don’t matter. Looking for a car to buy. What matters is how am I gonna get out of here?”

  They are both silent for a moment. Finally he says, “Maybe somebody with a crane could do it. You know, lower a hook so you could grab onto it and get lifted out?”

  She pictures that and says, “No way. I’d end up on the evening news for sure.”

  “I’m gonna call 911 for you, lady. Don’t worry, they’ll get you outa there.”

  “No, don’t!” she cries, but it’s too late, he already has his cell phone out and is making the call.

  A dispatcher answers, and the boy says he’s calling to report that there is a lady trapped by a vicious dog inside a car lot on Northwest Seventh and Ninety-seventh Street. “She needs to be rescued,” he says.

  The dispatcher asks for the name of the car lot, and the boy tells her. She asks his name, and he says Reynaldo Rodriquez. Ventana connects his last name to the tag worn by a hugely fat woman she knows slightly who lives on Ninety-sixth and works the early shift at Esther’s Diner on 103rd. You can’t tell her age because of the fatness, but she’s likely the boy’s aunt or older sister, and he’s been visiting her. Obviously a nice boy. Like her Gordon Junior at the same age.

  She hears Reynaldo tell the dispatcher that he personally doesn’t know the lady in the Sunshine Cars USA lot or how she got in there. He says he doesn’t think there is a burglar alarm, he doesn’t hear one anyhow, all he can see or hear is a lady trapped inside a locked fence by a guard dog. He says she is sitting on the roof of one of the cars to escape the dog. He listens and after a pause asks why should he call the police? The lady isn’t doing anything illegal. He listens for a few seconds more, says okay and clicks off.

  “Told me the situation not 911’s job to decide on. Told me they just a call center, not the police. She said I was calling about a break-in. Told me to call the cops directly,” he says to Ventana. “Even gave me the precinct phone number.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Okay, I won’t. Too bad you not a cat in a tree. Fire department be over here in a minute, no questions asked.” He leans down and looks the dog in its small eyes, and the dog stares back and growls from somewhere deep in his chest.

  She says, “Whyn’t you go way over to the other side of the lot on Ninety-eighth? Make a bunch of noise by the fence, like you trying to get in. When the dog runs over to stop you, I’ll try to climb over the fence. Let’s try that.”

  “Okay. But I could get busted, y’ know, if it look like I’m trying to rob from these cars or break into the building. Which it would. They prob’ly have surveillance cameras. They everywhere, you know.”

  She agrees. She tells him to forget it, she’ll just have to spend the night up here on top of this SUV, hope it doesn’t rain, and wait till they open the door of the dealership in the morning.

  Reynaldo has his phone out again, has looked up a number and is tapping it in.

  “Who you calling now?”

  “If you see something, say something, yo. That’s what they always telling us, right?”

  “Who?”

  “The television people. Channel Five News,” he says. “I be seeing something, so now I be saying something.” And before she has a chance to tell him to stop, he is talking to a producer, telling her there is a lady held prisoner by a vicious mean pit bull inside a locked used-car lot on Northwest Seventh and Ninety-seventh Street. “That’s right,” he says, “Sunshine Cars USA. And 911, I called them for her myself, and they refused to help her. Re-fused! You should send a camera crew out here right now and put it on the eleven o’clock news, so this lady can get help. Maybe the people who own the used-car dealership will see it on TV and will come unlock the fence and call off their disgusting dog.”

  The producer asks him who he is, and he gives her his name and says he’s a passerby. The woman tells him to wait there for the crew to arrive, because they’d like to tape him too. She says they’ll be there in a matter of minutes.

  He says he’ll wait for them and clicks off. Grinning, he says to Ventana, “We gonna be famous, yo.”

  “I don’t want to be famous. I just want to get free of this dog and his fence and his cars and go home.”

  “Sometimes being famous the only way to get free,” the boy says. “What about Muhammad Ali? Famous. Or O.J.? Remember him? Famous. What about Jay-Z? Famous and free. I could name lots of people.”

  “Reynaldo, stop,” Ventana says. “You’re only a child.”

  “That’s okay,” he says and laughs. “I still know stuff.”

  For the next fifteen minutes Ventana and Reynaldo chat as if they are sitting across a table at Esther’s Diner, and indeed it turns out that the very large waitress at Esther’s whose name tag says Esmeralda Rodriquez is his mother. Reynaldo says he visits his moms once a week but lives with his father and his father’s new wife over in Miami Gardens, because supposedly the schools are better there, though he is not all that cool about his father’s new wife. Ventana asks why not, and he shrugs and says she is real young and disses his mother to him, which is definitely not cool. Ventana asks why he doesn’t talk to his father about it, ask him to make her stop talking bad about his mother. He says they don’t have that kind of relationship.

  She says, “Oh.” Then they go silent for a few moments. She likes the boy, but is not happy that he called the television station. Too late now. And maybe the boy is right, that somehow getting on t
elevision will set her free.

  A white van with the CBS eye and a large blue 5 painted on the side turns off Seventh Avenue onto Ninety-seventh Street and parks close to where Reynaldo stands on the sidewalk. The driver, a cameraman, and a sound man get out of the van and start removing lights, sound boom, cables, battery, camera and tripod from the back. Behind the van comes a pale green Ford Taurus, a lot like the one Ventana planned to test-drive, driven by a black woman with straightened hair. The tall young woman gets out of the car. She’s wearing a leather miniskirt and lavender silk blouse and looks like an actress or a model. Her face shines. She speaks with the cameraman and his crew for a moment, then walks over to Reynaldo. She asks if he is the person who called “See Something Say Something” at Channel 5.

  He says yes and points up at Ventana atop the silver Ford Escape. “She the one trapped inside the car lot, though. That dog there, he the one won’t let her get down off the car and climb over the fence.”

  While the reporter touches up her makeup she asks him if it is true that he called 911 and they refused to help, and he says yes. They just told him to call the police in case it was a break-in.

  The reporter says, “Was it a break-in?”

  He laughs. “A little early in the night for robbing. Whyn’t you ask her? Get it on camera,” Reynaldo suggests. “You can get me on camera too, y’ know. I recognize you from the TV,” he says. “Forgot your name, though.”

  “Autumn Fowler,” she says. When the cameraman has his camera set up with the high spiked fence, silver Ford Escape and Ventana clustered in the central background, the reporter steps directly into the central foreground. The soundman swings his boom over her head just out of camera range. The driver, their lighting man, has arranged his lights so he can illuminate Autumn Fowler, Ventana and Reynaldo in turn simply by swinging the reflector disk. By now the dog has moved into the bright circle of light and is bouncing up and down, growling and scowling like a boxer stepping into the ring, demonstrating to the crowd that he will explode with fury against anyone foolish enough to enter the ring with him.

  Several people have been hesitantly approaching along the sidewalk and edging up to the van. Others are emerging from nearby houses, and soon a crowd has gathered, drawn like moths to the lights, the camera, the tall, glamorous woman clipping a mic onto her blouse. One by one they realize why the camera, lights and mic and the famous TV reporter have come to their neighborhood—it is the frightened middle-aged woman atop a silver SUV, one of their neighbors, a friend to some of them, and she’s trapped inside a chained and locked used-car lot by a pit bull guard dog. Several of them say her name to one another and wonder how on earth Ventana Robertson got herself into this situation. A couple of them speculate that because Ventana’s so smart and resourceful it might be she’s doing it for a reality TV program.

  Autumn Fowler says to the cameraman, “Let me do the intro, then when I point to it pan down to the dog and up to the woman when I point to her. After I ask her a couple questions, come back to me, and then I’ll talk to the kid for a minute.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “How long will I be on TV?” Reynaldo asks.

  Autumn Fowler smiles at him. “Long enough for all your friends to recognize you.”

  “Awesome.”

  The reporter calls up to Ventana and asks her name.

  Ventana says, “I don’t want you to say my name on TV. I just want to get the people who own the dog to come put him on a leash so I can get down from here and go home.”

  “I understand. I may have to ask you to sign a release. Can you do that? You, too,” she says to Reynaldo.

  “If you can get me out of here, I’ll sign anything,” Ventana says.

  “Me, too. But you can say my name on TV. It’s Reynaldo Rodriquez,” he says and spells Reynaldo for her.

  “Thank you, Reynaldo.”

  “No problem, Autumn.”

  Autumn speaks to the camera for a few seconds, telling the viewers at home who she is and where she’s reporting from. She briefly describes Ventana’s plight, turns to Ventana and calls out to her, “Can you tell us how you got locked behind the fence, ma’am?”

  “I was looking to buy a car. I guess they forgot I was here, the people who own the cars, and they locked the gate and went home. I tried calling . . .”

  “And this dog,” Autumn says, interrupting her, “this vicious dog has kept you from climbing over the fence and getting out? Is that correct?” she says and signals for the cameraman to start filming the dog, who on cue promptly lunges snarling against the fence.

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “You have a cell phone, I understand. Did you call 911?”

  From behind her Reynaldo says, “I the one called 911. She didn’t want me to.”

  Autumn shakes her head with irritation. “I’ll get to you in a minute,” she says. Then, to Ventana, “Can you tell our viewers what happened when you called 911?”

  “They said it must be a break-in so it wasn’t their problem. It was something for the police,” Ventana says, adding that she left a message on the used-car dealer’s answering machine, but that didn’t do any good, either. “They must not be checking their messages. I hope they watch the TV news tonight, so they can come leash up this dog and unlock the gate.”

  “Otherwise?”

  “Otherwise I’ll be staying up here till tomorrow morning when they come in to work.”

  Autumn turns to the camera. “There you have it. A woman alone, forced to sleep outside in the cold damp night like a homeless person, terrorized by a vicious guard dog, locked inside a cage like an animal. And when she calls 911 for help, she’s turned away.” She signals for the cameraman and lighting and soundman to focus on Reynaldo. “You were the one who called 911 for her, is that correct?” she asks him.

  “Yes, ma’am. That is correct. My name is Reynaldo Rodriquez. From Miami Gardens.”

  Autumn turns away from him and faces the camera again. “Thank you, Reynaldo. A good Samaritan, a young man who heard something and then said something. Remember, folks, if you hear something, say something. Call us at 305-591-5555 or e-mail us at hearandsay at cbsmiami dot com. This is Autumn Fowler in Miami Shores.”

  She plucks the mike off her blouse and tells the cameraman she’s done.

  Reynaldo says, “Don’t you want to ask me or the lady there some more questions? Maybe you could call 911 yourself, do it with the camera running. That’d be awesome TV!”

  “Sorry, kid. This is sort of a cat stuck in a tree story. Not as big and exciting as you think.” She hands him the release to sign. He scrawls his name and gives the form back to her. She calls up to Ventana, “Don’t worry about signing the release, hon, since we never used your name.” She steps into her car and starts the engine. While the cameraman and his two assistants collect their equipment and cables and stash them in the van, she slowly parts the gathered crowd with her car and drives off. A minute later the crew and their van have departed from the scene.

  With the lights, camera and famous television reporter gone, the crowd of bystanders quickly loses interest. They’re not worried about Ventana: now that she’s been filmed for TV broadcast she’s entered a different and higher level of reality and power than theirs. They drift back to their homes and apartments, where they’ll wait to watch the late news on Channel 5, hoping to catch a glimpse of themselves in the background, their neighborhood, the used-car dealership they walk past every day of their lives, all of it made more radiant, color-soaked and multidimensional on high-definition TV than it could ever be in real life. The teenage son of their neighbor Esmeralda Rodriquez will be remembered mainly for standing in the way of a clear view of the reporter. The woman trapped behind the fence by the guard dog, their neighbor Ventana Robertson, her face and plight lost in the bright light of television and the presence right here in the neighborhood of the beautiful, charismatic reporter, will be all but forgotten. It’s as if an angel unexpectedly landed on Northw
est Seventh Avenue and Ninety-seventh Street, and afterward, when the angel flies back to her kingdom in the sky, no one tries to remember the occasion for her visit. They remember only that an angel was briefly here on earth, proving that a higher order of being truly does exist.

  “You okay?” Reynaldo says.

  “Of course not! I’m still up here, aren’t I? That dog’s still down there.”

  Reynaldo is silent for a moment. “Maybe when they show it on the eleven o’clock news . . .”

  “You poor child! Not gonna happen. You heard her, this just a cat up a tree story to her and her TV people. You g’wan home to your daddy’s house now. Takes a while to get across town to Miami Gardens by bus, and you prob’ly got a curfew.”

  He scrapes the toe of his left sneaker against the pavement. Then the right. “You gonna be all right?”

  “Yes! Now git!” She’s not angry at him, and in fact she’s grateful for his kindness, but nonetheless is shouting angrily at him, “G’wan, now git!”

  “Okay, okay, chill. I’m going.” He takes a few steps toward Seventh, then turns and says, “Hope it don’t rain on you.”

  “I said git!” she yells, and Reynaldo runs.

  VENTANA IS ALONE NOW. Except for the dog. He seems calmer since everyone’s left. And he’s no longer growling. He’s curled up like a thick gray knot of muscle at the front of the Honda van parked beside her SUV and seems to be sleeping. Ventana wishes she knew his name. If she knew his name she could talk to him, maybe reassure him as to her good intentions. He must know already that she means no harm to him and his owner. For over four hours she’s been his prisoner and has done nothing to threaten him. In the beginning when she ran from him and climbed up on the roof of the Taurus that she wanted to test-drive and maybe buy and then hopped from roof to roof until ending here on top of the silver Ford Escape, he must have reasoned, assuming guard dogs in some way reason, that she was guilty of a crime or was about to commit one. She probably shouldn’t have run like that, should have stood her ground instead, but he terrified her.