“That’s bourgeois.”
“I’m not bourgeois yet,” Yoyo said. “But I’m working on it. Maybe I’ll be bourgeois after I’ve cleaned another two hundred houses.”
Mill ordered everybody to sit at the table. Yoyo helped her to carry out the plates. I sat next to Mill. Annette slipped in beside me. She put her hand on my arm, touched my foot with hers. We smiled.
On display were honey ham, baked corn biscuits, fried chicken, potato salad, baked acorn squash with honey and butter, Coke and ginger ale and white wine, potato chips, taco chips, and salted cashews. There was also lemonade. The eight of us sat around the table. Mill said grace.
“For what we are about to receive, all these good things, all these good people, for people like Langston here, who sticks up for little ones on Pennsylvania Avenue, for people like Yoyo, who has nothing and doesn’t yap about it and works his backside off and never runs his mouth except to ask for more money, which I won’t give him, for people like Maggie and Eleanor and Ishmael and me, who give so much time to the church, for people like Annette for their beauty and their brains, but not in that order, for people like Derek, who have their heart in the right place even if they say the wrong thing, but mostly for life and for love between people, may the Lord make us truly thankful, Amen. You can dig in now.”
The table fell silent for a few seconds, except for the clinking of knives and forks and spoons and the dropping of bread and squash onto plates. We all started eating. Annette’s foot pressed against mine. I turned to look at her. Mill nudged me with her elbow. “Cute, isn’t she?”
I pretended I hadn’t heard. Thankfully, we were interrupted by three sharp raps on the door. I knew those raps. Instantly. Not too many people think enough of themselves to announce their arrival that way. He used to do it when I was a child, in my room, and he had something to say to me. Rap Rap Rap. Son. May I have a word with you? If I didn’t answer him pronto, he would open the door anyway.
Mill, too, recognized the sound.
“You know who that is, don’t you?” she said, looking at me. “I never did like people come visiting without announcing themselves.”
Mill got up, wiped an ant-sized trace of squash from the corner of her mouth, and walked to the door, mumbling. She slid the bolts free. Removed the chain. Turned the knob.
“You’re just in time for dinner, come on in.” Mill returned to the table. As she sat down, she called over her shoulder, “Turn those bolts back in place, fix the chain, and pull up a chair.”
“What kind of way is that to welcome your brother after forty-odd years?” My father took off his coat, slid open the closet door. “I can’t believe this, Mill. There’s actually a place to hang a coat. There are actually guests sitting at your table. Have you changed? Some sort of profound organizational metamorphosis?”
“You should have left all them extra syllables up in Canada,” Mill said. “No. I ain’t changed. It was cleaned up by Yoyo, that’s all.”
“Cleaned up by Yoyo,” my father mimicked. “I won’t even hazard a guess as to the meaning of that. A form of Zen meditation, perhaps.”
“Yoyo is my name, Dr. Cane,” Yoyo said, standing up. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I am a friend of your sister’s, and of your son’s.”
My father allowed his hand to be shaken. He peered at Yoyo’s face. “Pleasure to meet you, too. Pleasure to meet somebody sufficiently civilized to stand up and shake a stranger’s hand.”
“Civilized!” Mill mumbled. “Is dropping in unannounced civilized?”
Eleanor and Maggie gushed over my father, and said how proud the congregation was of me. Mill prevailed upon him to join us at the table.
My father’s gaze fell swiftly on my face. My right eye and cheekbone were still swollen and discolored from the rubbing I had taken.
“I can see that he handled himself adroitly on Pennsylvania Avenue,” my father said. “I’m not even going to ask what a son of mine was doing on Pennsylvania Avenue in this day and age.”
“Handling himself more honorably than his tomcatting father used to do on the same street half a century ago,” said Mill, who passed him a plate of ham and potatoes. “How in the world did you hear about it?” I asked “From Aberdeen,” my father said. I looked at Mill.
“All I did was tell Aberdeen what happened,” Mill said. “If you don’t want me talking about you, then don’t go getting yourself half killed on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Derek Wedburner, the man of monologues, the master of diatribes, inserted himself in the conversation.
“I can see, Dr. Cane, that you’re a man of some distinction. Of a refined vocabulary, undoubtedly the product of a sound education. That must be something of a shock for whites in Canada — to see such an educated African man in their midst.”
My father cut him off. “I’m not an African. Yoyo, from the sound of his accent, is likely an African. I’m not an African, any more than you.”
“But I am an African,” Derek said.
“If you are an African,” Yoyo said, “tell me the capital city of Burkina Faso.”
“I don’t know, but —”
“It’s Ouagadougou,” Yoyo said, “and if you were African, you would know it.”
“This is not a matter of geography,” Derek said. “It’s a matter of the diaspora. We people of color —”
“People of color,” my father snorted. “For all its pretension, it sounds to me just the same as colored people.”
“It’s not the same,” Derek said. “Not the same at all, if I may beg to differ. Colored people comes straight out of our American heritage of slavery and segregation. People of color evokes a diaspora, a scattering, a collectivity of people of all races —”
“Except whites,” I said. “Except maybe Latin Americans.
And Sicilians in the summer. Or perhaps you should have a new category for them: people nearly of color.”
Mill clapped her hands. “I guess that’s about what you’d be, Langston,” she said “Let me introduce you-all to my nephew of near color.”
Derek said, “People of color have some things in common, and should move collectively to —”
“I’ve never known Indians and blacks and Asians to get together with each other any more than they get together with whites,” my father said, “and I don’t see how the term people of color is going to make them all start loving each other.”
I asked Yoyo what he thought. He said he wanted to think about it. Perhaps he would write an opinion piece on the subject for the op-ed page of the Toronto Times. He could use the money, anyway.
“So you’re a journalist, are you?” Derek asked.
“Well, I was in Cameroon. But I know somebody at the Toronto Times. She could help me get it published there, I bet.”
“And why did you leave your country? Why have you contributed to the brain drain from Africa?”
“Brain drain,” Yoyo said. “That’s very funny. My brain would probably have been draining, thanks to a blow from a shovel or a bullet, had I returned to Cameroon. I was a political columnist in a newspaper run by the government. And while I was over here on an assignment, the government was overthrown.”
“Forget that political stuff, nobody cares about it anyway,” Mill said. “Clean homes. Set yourself up a little company. Keep your prices low. If you keep working as well as you did for me, I could find you ten new customers next week. You could make yourself a pot of money.”
“Son,” my father said, “I’d like to have a word with you.”
“You haven’t come all this way to taste my chicken?” Mill said. “Why don’t you leave that boy alone? He ain’t botherin’ no one. If he wants to look through old boxes and write us all up in his story, what’s the problem?”
My father stood up and walked over to the window. He pulled back a blind, stared out into the night, and turned back. “I’d rather not discuss this in a community forum.”
“These are my dinner guests, Langston. These
are the first dinner guests I believe I’ve had since you abandoned the U.S.A. And I’m not asking them to leave. So why don’t you just eat some chicken like ordinary folks do?”
My father surprised me by joining us again at the table and eating most of what Mill gave him.
When we had all finished eating, Mill looked at my father and asked, “You’re not mixed up in that kidnapping, are you?”
“No.”
“You should stick to doctoring.” “Thanks for your opinion.”
“You’ve grown older, Langston. You’ve put on weight. Where’d all your hair go?”
“That’s unkind, Mill, but I won’t reciprocate.”
“You always liked to use big words when you were uneasy, Langston. So what do you want with us, then? Why have you come all this way?”
My father looked at me. “I want you to come home, son I don’t want you mugged again on the streets of Baltimore. I want you to stop poking around in things that are best left alone. I’ll tell you all you need to know.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. “I’ve got a few things to do down here yet. But I’ll let you know when I’m ready to come back.”
“Son,” my father said, “It’s been a long day and I’m tired. I’m staying at the Lincoln Hotel on St. Paul Street, which isn’t far, I believe, from where you are. Come have breakfast with me tomorrow morning. I have some things to talk about with you.” “Okay,” I told him.
“You don’t have to stay at no hotel,” Mill said. “I got an extra bedroom here. It’s clean. Yoyo fixed it up.”
“Thanks, Mill, but I’ve made a hotel reservation.” I noticed Annette again, who looked at me, too. My father stayed for an hour, absorbing mild barbs from Mill without reacting, and helping himself to peach pie and ice cream. He left after a decent interval. So did Maggie and Eleanor. I offered to give Annette, Derek, Ishmael, and Yoyo rides home, and managed to drop off the men first.
Making love to someone within a day of meeting her has not happened to me before, and I doubt it will happen again. Annette’s front teeth were small and white and had the narrowest of spaces between them and seemed all the more delicious as I ran my tongue over them. But I had been moving quickly all day and I felt embarrassed about smelling bad. Those of us who haven’t had sex or had any chance of it for a month or a year or a decade tend to let a few items of intimate hygiene slip. I was in need of a shower and I told her so, and I stayed in there for five or ten minutes, shampooing, cream-rinsing, sudsing until I felt a swoosh of the shower curtain and a nudge — no, two soft nudges against my back — and there was Annette pressing herself against me under the falling water. I had finished washing myself, so I washed her. I started with a bar of soap and a blue facecloth, and I moved it around her forehead, which was broad, and her lips, which were round, and her neck, which was smooth and cool, and everywhere the washcloth and soap had been, my mouth followed. It followed down her neck, along her arms, across her breasts, which sloped down and lifted out and up, perkily, and over her nipples, which were dark, very dark, and standing in salutation. I found her navel, and parts lower, and got to my knees. While she tugged my ears and played with my hair, I washed her and rinsed her and nibbled and sucked. She slid onto all fours and raised her lovely labia at me from behind and I entered her while reaching around to stroke her swollen clitoris and hanging breasts and she turned her mouth to the side and took mine in hers between gasps. That did not go on long, I will admit. Not nearly long enough. I lost my charge within minutes, but she seemed patient, seemed ready to wait. We separated and got out of the bathtub and toweled each other. She stretched me out on her bed and told me to close my eyes. That was the first thing she said. It was one of the only things she said that night. I had nothing to say at all. Wanted to say not a word. She began oiling and massaging and stroking my feet, and ankles, and calves, and — well, I am still amazed to think how many times and in how many ways we loved each other that night.
I found a parking ticket appended to my windshield wiper at four that morning. I didn’t care. I unlocked the door. Had I really done those things? Home, Langston. Go home, I told myself. Get yourself three and a half hours of sleep. We know it will be deep. Get yourself up, shower, and get on over to meet your father.
I met my father in his hotel restaurant. “What exactly are you doing down here, son, and how long do you plan to stay?”
My father sat well back in his chair, legs folded, in contrast to the directness of his question. He had already eaten, so I just ordered tea with cream. I have always liked cream in tea. I thought of Annette. You want anything? Tea? Coffee? she had asked as I was leaving.
No, I’ve had everything I could need or want. But a phone number. How about a phone number?
Why don’t we just see when and where we meet again? You told me your address. And you know mine. Let’s just leave this as simple as it has been.
“If this is to be an interrogation, I don’t think I’ll take part,” I told my father.
“Fair enough,” he said. I could see him thinking. You can build homes, build your life, build your career. You can even fertilize the egg that grows into a human being. You can fertilize five or ten of them, and nurture them. But you can’t force an infant to eat something he won’t eat. You can’t force an infant to sleep when he won’t sleep. And you can’t force a son to grow up in a father’s mold.
I stirred my tea. I put sugar in it. I never put sugar in tea, but it occupied my hands. My father was aging. His hair had faded gray, almost white. He had deep grooves under his eyes. He was a brown-skinned man of the indisputable variety. Your unthreatening black professional type.
“How’s Mom?” I said.
“Wonderful. As usual. I love that woman, Langston. She’s worried about me. This kidnapping stuff has not been easy on us. For the first two days of the kidnapping, reporters camped outside our house. Every time I came in or went out, they wanted a statement. It has affected her sleep. She’s been up a lot at night.” “But she’s okay?”
“Yes. And doing better. Things seem to be settling down. No more press around all the time. They really run you ragged.” My father cracked his knuckles one by one.
“Mill is quite the woman,” I said. “I’m sorry I missed out on her, all those years.”
“Well, we’ve been through a few things. I’m sure you’ll find out about them. When you do, be generous, son. Be generous to your elders. You can’t possibly know everything, even when you think you do.”
“I think I like you more when we’re not at home together. In Oakville. At the house, I mean.” “I catch your drift,” Dad said.
“Catch my drift? Don’t tell me you’re going to start talking like Derek.”
“You mean the people-of-color guy over at Mill’s? No danger of that.”
“So what’s this kidnapping all about, Dad?”
“I don’t know. You’ve seen the papers. Norville Watson was out walking and never came home. Some group that calls itself Africa First is tabling ridiculous demands. It sent a video of Watson to a news station yesterday. I saw it on TV last night. Watson was shown sitting quietly, apparently unharmed, on a chair in an unmarked room. I’m sure the cops are viewing it carefully. He looked at the camera and said he hadn’t been harmed, and seemed about to say that he would not cooperate when the tape was killed. He’s one tough monkey.”
“You remember the time he sewed me up?” “He phoned me in Stockholm to tell me about it. His secretary tracked me down and put Watson on the line, and he told me what had happened and that you were fine. He was very professional. I was grateful for that.”
“So what kind of hoax do you think is being pulled?”
“I don’t think it’s a black group that’s got him.”
“That’s a striking thing to say.”
“Because if a black group had taken him, they wouldn’t be using inflammatory rhetoric. They’d be bending over to make sure everyone knew they were pros, and in control, and
wouldn’t act rashly. They wouldn’t have asked for a measly hundred thousand dollars, because they would have known it would mark them as amateurs. And, being black, they sure as hell would have known that the government would never release black prisoners. So I think somebody else has Watson, and is trying to use the black community as a decoy. And it’s working. In the last four days, police have brought in more than fifty blacks for questioning.”
“So what do you think this other group wants? Who do you think they are?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
I finally gave in to my hunger and ordered a croissant and two poached eggs and a tall glass of orange juice.
“Good to see you’re eating well, son.” My father grinned. “When Aberdeen told me about your little accident, I wanted to come right down and see you.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Heard from Ellen lately, by the way?”
“Just a note the other day, basically telling me to get lost. Why?”
“Just wondering. Take care of yourself, son. You could have been hurt on Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s worse than when I used to hang out there.”
“You knew it well, did you?”
“There was barely a bar I didn’t know, or a bed I didn’t share.” He smiled. “But that was before I met your mother.” He stood up. He said his plane was leaving in two hours.
“Mill will be sorry you didn’t attend church with her.”
“Well, I’m not waiting until next Sunday. Anyway, I couldn’t stand it. They would make me stand up. They would treat me like a long lost son, instead of the miserable atheist that I am. They would invoke the wondrous names and accomplishments of my father and grandfather. And they would make me eat chicken. Which I detest. I can’t face all that stuff. I’ll leave it to you.”
“Thanks for dropping the interrogation, Dad.”
“It wouldn’t have worked, anyway. See you soon, son. I hope.” He shook my hand and left the restaurant.
A week or so later, while I was with Annette again, and most of the rest of Baltimore was sleeping, Yoyo sat at his kitchen table and brought his pen to paper. I know, because he told me about it. Diversify, diversify, he kept telling himself. He had to keep all sorts of activities going. He had been selling barbecued meat, but had to let that go. He had sold croissants at the Saturday market, but now he had to let that go. He was getting more cleaning work now — at the dinner party, Maggie and Eleanor had both asked him to come over next week to clean their homes, and Yoyo had agreed, but wouldn’t give a fixed price until he had seen their houses. But that was the only thing he had going now. What if that fell through?
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