“Did he dive for cover and not come out? No, my friends. He raised himself from the ground when the bullets had barely ceased, and brought comfort to a young boy of this church, a boy known to many of you.
“He held him. He reassured him. He took care of him and waited for the ambulance that he had called. Indeed, he stayed long enough for some soulless thug to strike him down and take his wallet. Still, he stayed. And he stayed for hours in the hospital, to wait for a word on the young boy, and to comfort the boy’s family.
“My friends, that boy will live on. His name is Billy Jones. He has sat among us. He is the son of Harriet Jones, one of our most cherished sisters.
“The young man is also among us. His name is Langston Cane. Would you stand, friend?”
Mill poked and prodded me, so I could do nothing other than stand and stand tall.
Mill whispered, “Don’t get yourself a fat head, son. He just wanted to thank you.”
I got out of church as quickly as I could without offending Mill. I planned to climb back into bed, flip through the Sunday Sun, sleep an hour, and then keep writing. I wanted to have a go at my grandparents’ stay in Oakville. I had enough information to start putting it together. I would write until five-fifteen, shower and change, and skedaddle over to Mill’s for supper.
As I stood at the door, shoving my hand into a pocket for the key, I flicked the lid of my mailbox. I hadn’t opened the box lately. Inside, I saw a green envelope.
It was a handwritten envelope. It had my ex-wife’s messy handwriting. Hieroglyphics, almost. Sloppiest handwriting I’ve ever seen from a woman.
I got inside and slammed the door shut and locked it and tore into the green paper. In doing so, I ripped clean through a photo of my father and a story in the Toronto Times. It was the local version of the story about the Watson kidnapping and about my father’s comments.
“Langston,” Ellen’s note began. Not Dear Langston. Or Dearest. Or Lang, which would have carried a trace of affection. Just Langston.
Heard you moved to Baltimore. Not sure if you saw this clipping. Good luck. Love, Ellen.
I threw the note down, picked it back up, and read it again. No news of herself. Deliberate, that. A little motherly, that Good luck. And then that meaningless Love, Ellen. That one word would have made all the difference, had it been placed differently. Had it begun the note, as in Langston, my love. But Love at the end of a letter most definitely meant nothing. It meant nothing more than Sincerely over a politician’s signature.
I was in no state to write. I took the Baltimore Sun, got back in the car, and drove over to the Café Chez Washington.
I got a big bowl of café au lait and a seat at a window, and I opened the paper. I was not really in the mood to read, but I flipped the pages anyway until I got to the back of the foreign news section.
DOCTOR’S RANSOMERS DEMAND RELEASE OF BLACK PRISONERS
— Canadian Press, Toronto
A group claiming to have kidnapped a prominent physician in Toronto last week has demanded $100,000 and the release of five black men imprisoned for violent offenses.
In a communiqué sent yesterday to the Toronto media, a previously unknown organization calling itself Africa First demanded that the “white, mainstream police and judicial establishment set free these five innocent and wrongly convicted brothers” in exchange for Norville Watson, a semi-retired, 77-year-old urologist who disappeared last week.
“Dr. Watson is being treated with consideration, and certainly with more dignity than black men in Canadian prisons,” said the communiqué, composed of letters clipped from newspapers and glued onto paper.
I skipped over a few paragraphs giving the names and criminal records — ranging from aggravated assault to armed robbery — of the five black men in question. They were scattered in penitentiaries across the country. But I stopped to read the section about my father.
Dr. Langston Cane, a prominent black activist and a long-time antagonist of Dr. Watson’s, complained yesterday about being interrogated by police for the third time in as many days about the Watson kidnapping.
“I have been asked questions intimating that I have some connection with this incident, which is absolutely false. If the police wish to charge me with some trumped-up offense, let them proceed.”
Cane repeated his argument — one that has provoked some public anger — that the kidnapping may be a hoax.
“It doesn’t seem right. I can’t think of any — and I say any — group in the black community that would stoop to such a thing. I think this may be some sort of practical joke. I’m not saying that police authorities shouldn’t be investigating fully. But let’s not get carried away. Let’s keep our heads.”
What was going on up there in Toronto? Who had made off with Norville Watson? What, exactly, did my father think this was, if not a bona fide kidnapping?
It was time for the continuation of the Norville Watson story. I got a refill of café au lait and started writing.
I met Norville Watson when I was ten years old. I had heard about him many times, and had committed all the stories to memory. There had been that time when he had refused my parents rental accommodation. I knew that they had complained to the Ontario minister of labor, to no avail. I knew that the Toronto Times had chosen not to run a story about Watson refusing to rent to them, because it had determined that the man was acting within the law. I knew that my parents had gone after Watson again, once the Ontario government introduced the Fair Accommodations Act in 1953. They sent a black couple to try to rent from Watson, who told them the flat was already rented. Then they sent a white couple, who got the flat. The case went to court. My parents lost again. The judge determined that rental properties were excluded from the Act, and he commented in his ruling that it would be a sad day indeed when the state could start telling landlords to whom they had to rent.
I knew all this, and I knew that my father and Watson settled into a sort of uneasy truce over the subsequent years. Watson kept a small Toronto office, but set up a urology practice in Oakville and worked out of the Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, where my father also had privileges as a family practitioner.
And so it was with some discomfort that I found myself, one day, bleeding profusely in the emergency room of the hospital. My father was attending a medical conference in Stockholm. I had been playing hide-and-seek in a park just a block from the hospital. I had been crawling on the ground when suddenly I felt in my wrist a twinge like a low-grade shock. I looked down and saw a flash of ivory white deep in my forearm. Next came the flood of red. I slammed the spurting wrist against my chest and held it firm with my other hand, not because I understood the need to stanch the blood, but because the whiteness deep in the flesh horrified me. I said nothing. I whimpered, but didn’t cry. I walked into the emergency ward dripping all this brilliant red paint behind me, and saw heads snap up all around as my blood splashed to the floor. I started shaking.
The nurse asked to see my wrist, said she wanted to apply some pressure to it. I began to lift the wrist from my soaking shirt, but when I saw the red paint spurting again, I slammed the wrist back against my chest and she couldn’t pry it off.
A tall man was walking toward us. So tall, it seemed as if he’d have to stoop through a door frame. His blond hair flapped as he walked. He had an inch-long goatee.
The nurse said to him, “The doctor in emergency is tied up. Can you help, Dr. Watson? This boy has a dangerous cut.”
He stooped down and looked me in the eye. “We’re going to help you, son. Let me take your hand. It won’t hurt.” He tried to pry the wrist from my chest. I wouldn’t let him “Scared, aren’t you?” I nodded. “It’s okay. It’s just blood. You have lots of it. And if you need any extra, we have some here for you. Turn your head away. There, that’s better.” It was better. I turned my head so as not to see my arm. I let him take it. He raised it, clamped something soft against it, lifted me up, put me flat, kept my arm raised, wheeled me a
way. I knew who he was.
We were in a white room. There were a number of people around the bed. “Need his blood type,” the doctor said.
“It’s A negative,” I said.
“Check it anyway,” the doctor told somebody. “What’s your name, son?”
“Charles,” I said. Charles was my middle name. Charles seemed safe.
“Charles who?” “Just Charles,” I said. “How old are you?”
“Ten.”
“Where do you live, Charles?”
I started shaking uncontrollably. A nurse put a blanket on me. Watson ordered something to do with an IV and antibiotics. “Charlie. Can I call you Charlie?” I nodded.
“I’m going to clean up that cut. You’ve got some glass in there. It won’t hurt, because I’ve frozen your arm. Do you like sports?”
“Golf,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. I didn’t want him to guess who I was. Golf seemed about as far as possible from the subject of my family. And I knew he golfed.
“Ever had a hole in one?”
“No.”
“What about hockey? You like hockey?” “Just golf.” It occurred to me that, with my light skin, Dr. Watson wouldn’t know I was black. He would never guess who I was. I took a deep breath.
“Son, we do need to know who you are. We need to contact your parents.”
I nodded. I swallowed. His eyes were blue. Blue as lake water. Blue eyes, and a broad nose. A very broad nose. Aberdeen Williams had once said to me that it was silly to call people black or white, because half the world was at least some of both. I wondered if Norville Watson had a distant black ancestor.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “They won’t be angry with you.”
I said nothing.
“Okay, son, we’re just going to close up your cut now. It won’t hurt. You might feel some pressure on your wrist, but it won’t hurt.”
I nodded. A few minutes went by. My arm felt like a block of wood. The doctor prodded and pushed against it, but all I felt was the weight of his fingers.
“There. All done. Your arm will be as good as new. You have about twenty stitches. We’ll snip them out in a few weeks. You have to keep your arm clean, and dry. I have to go soon. By the way, how did you know your blood type?”
“My dad’s a doctor.”
Big mistake. I knew, as soon as the words were out, that I had given myself away. His lips parted in surprise. His eyes held mine. They looked at my hair and they fell over my face, my nose, my mouth.
“You’re Langston Cane’s boy!” I started to shiver. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. You’ll be fine. We’ll call him right away.” I waited for him to strike me. Or rip out the stitches. He spoke to the nurse. “Langston Cane. The residential number is on Sumner Avenue.”
“It’s 338-2994,” I said. “My mom’s home. My dad’s out of town.”
“That’s right,” Watson said. “He’s at that convention in Stockholm, isn’t he?” I nodded. “So are you going to be a doctor, too?” Watson asked.
“No. I don’t like blood.”
“I can see that. But you get used to it. You didn’t really lose that much. It looked worse than it really was. You’re lucky. That glass came close to an artery.”
“Is it true that you don’t like black people?”
Watson patted me on the head. “No, son. That’s not the case at all. I like all people. We need all people in this world. All people, all countries, all nationalities.”
“Is it true you wouldn’t let black people stay in your home?”
Dr. Watson exhaled loudly. He chewed the inside of his cheek. I saw thick black hair on the backs of his fingers.
“Your father and I have had some differences, but that doesn’t matter in the hospital. I’m a doctor, the same as your father. My job is to treat you as well as I would my own son.”
“But would you let black people into your house? To live?”
“Yes. Of course. I have had many black people in my home. Some of my friends are black people, son. Maybe your father and I will be friends, one day. Maybe you and I will be friends, too.
All right?” “All right.”
“My work is done here, son, and other people need my help. I have to go now. You take care of yourself. No more scrambling around on your hands and knees in the park.”
“Okay. Thanks for taking care of me.”
The nurse came to say that my mother would be right over.
Chapter 15
I WAS NOT LOOKING FORWARD to Mill’s dinner party. There would be women in church hats. There would be more fried chicken. It was the only thing Mill knew how to make, apart from potato salad. But I wanted to keep looking at Mill’s box of information on my grandfather, Langston the Third, and figured I could sneak a peek — or perhaps even borrow some materials — if I attended. So I drove over, like the dutiful nephew, and brought along Yoyo.
Annette Morton opened Mill’s door. She was young. Too young. Twenty-seven, tops.
“Hi. Come on in. How are you, Langston?”
“Annette, how’re you doing? This is my friend, Yoyo.”
She nodded and shook his hand, watched Yoyo get ushered inside by Mill, turned back to me, and took my hand. Her hand was warm, as if it had been in a pocket, and it held mine long enough to be more than a formality. I felt a quick stirring in my groin and tried to check it by telling myself that it would be just my luck to mistake the signals of a born-again Christian. Still, I couldn’t help looking at her again. Her eyes were burnt hazel, her lips on the edge of a grin. She smelled of strawberries.
“Are you two gonna eye each other all night or are you gonna join the party?” Mill broke in. “There’s people for you to meet, Langston. Annette, check the corn bread, will you?”
I was reintroduced to Eleanor and Maggie, the two women I’d met when first walking to the A.M.E. church. I met Ishmael, who had watched over my car, twice, while I was in church. Ishmael was a high school senior. He had brought along his older brother, Derek, who wanted to talk. Derek wanted to talk awfully bad. It appeared that he’d been wanting to talk for five years, and that I was the first person willing to listen. After several minutes, Annette came up behind me. I turned to acknowledge her, but was dragged back into Derek’s rant.
“It’s rough here, rough in Baltimore,” he said. “How you find it here? I mean, being a black man and all. Well, partially black, I guess you qualify, especially if you identify, if your thoughts, your mind, your culture are one with ours. I mean, man, I’ve got to assume that, since you’ve been at Bethel and up on Pennsylvania. I’ll assume you’ve accepted the burden of blackness. So how do you find it here, compared to Canada?”
“It’s an interesting city. It’s —”
“Interesting is a white word, man. Interesting isn’t a word for people of color. It’s a word for politicians, man. But I’ll cut you some slack, coming from Canada and all. Black people use that word up there?”
“Well,” I said, “where I’m from, I haven’t run into masses of black people fleeing the word interesting. It’s not generally seen as a betrayal of one’s racial identity.”
“Aha! I detect a capacity for irony. A sign of higher intelligence, no doubt. Racial identity, that’s a happening concept. I —” Annette took my arm. “Cool it, Derek. The man hasn’t even had something to drink yet, and you want to get into the only thing you know how to talk about.”
“Drink, drink. Be my guest. Make off with the lovely Annette, but return, my friend. Place some interesting ice cubes in an interesting mug of Canada Dry ginger ale and come back for some more interesting and elucidating rap.”
“Right,” I said. Annette had her arm through mine. It felt lovely. She released me in the kitchen. “I had to get you out of there. You have to steer around Derek. If you get drawn into a conversation, you’ll never get away.”
I considered asking how I should talk so that she wouldn’t get away from me, but ditched the idea. Instead,
I poured her a soft drink, gallant gent that I am, and poured myself one, and stood by her silently. We watched Derek work on Yoyo.
“Man, I hear you’re an African. That must feel deep, Yoyo. You must have a real sense of racial resonance.”
Yoyo laughed loudly and pleasantly. “I don’t know much about resonance, my friend. I’m tone deaf.”
“But you’re black, man. Indisputably undiluted.”
“Yes, and I have ten toes and ten fingers, too, but I don’t spend much time thinking about how perfect they are.”
“What did it feel like, to be in a country where everybody is black, I mean, all the people in power are black, and you know who you are, and what your rights are, and where you’re headed as a people?”
“Not toward civil war, I hope. We’ve got 250 ethnic groups in Cameroon. And as for what it feels like to be in a country where everybody is black, I don’t think of it that way. First of all, not everybody is black. There are a few whites. There are some in-betweens. There are some Asians. We, the black Cameroonians, feel very united. Many people who are young and educated spend their time figuring out how to leave.”
“Leave?”
“Travel. Visit America. Visit Canada. See the world. You want to see what’s out there. You feel you haven’t lived a full life unless you get out and see the world.”
“But man, what is there to see out here? Racism and ruination. Crippled cities, crippled people. The only —”
Mill stopped Derek this time. She put a drumstick in his hand. “Put that mouth of yours to use on some chicken. If you keep talking about racism and ruination, just as sure as Moses came down from the mount, my kitchen broom is gonna come down on your head.”
Derek took a bite and asked Yoyo what he did.
“I clean houses, lately. You know anybody who needs housecleaning?”
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