A Lucky Man

by Jamel Brinkley

  Freddy crept into a room that made him gasp. It had no furniture and was painted in two clashing colors. The right side was a delicate yellow, with an image of a tall white tree on one wall. White paper flowers hung from the branches or fell from them in a pretty pattern. Leaning against this wall was a long, narrow cardboard box, unopened and unmarked. The left side of the room was painted pale green, and it had words in curvy white letters:

  What shall I call thee?

  I happy am

  Joy is my name

  He kept coming back to that second line. He used to make dumb mistakes like that when he was younger, misspelling words or writing them out of order. His mother would help him with his homework back then, correcting his errors before he got to school, but she didn’t do that anymore. Since Aunt Ava’s passing she looked at his notebook the way she looked at everything, including her own reflection, including him: with dead eyes, as though she was tired—bone-tired, as she liked to say—and what was left in the world simply had to wait. So now when Freddy got to school, he sometimes embarrassed himself.

  He stared at the two walls for a while and tried to set his mind free to play in the room. He expected the words to rearrange themselves or something amazing to leap from the image of the tree. Nothing happened. It all remained still. He walked around the room, sensing something invisible. But there was only a creepy sensation, like feathers all over his body.

  He peeked into the next room. In it, Arlene was lying on a bed, already facing him in the doorway.

  “Come on,” she said. “No monsters in here, nothing evil. Just me.” Her voice was more soft but less steady than before. “It’s Freddy, right?”

  He nodded and took shy steps into the dim, curtained light. Her head rested on a mass of pillows, her hands folded below her chest. She wore the same clothes as earlier, aside from a pair of loose khaki shorts, and her feet were bare. Her dark glasses lay beside the lamp on the night table. He hadn’t seen her eyes before now. One was opened a bit more than the other.

  “Have you calmed yourself down yet?” she said.

  Freddy nodded.

  “You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”

  He studied the floor, still feeling the feathers from the other room on his skin. He didn’t know if he was good.

  “You like snooping around in people’s houses?”

  Freddy shook his head.

  “At least tell me what you think of it.”

  He thought about what he should say. “It’s fine.”

  Laughing, she held herself as though she might break into pieces. Sit at the foot of the bed, she told him, and he did. “Tell the truth now, child. Would you want to live here?”

  “Mrs. Clinksdale, I—”

  “Arlene.”

  “I already have a place,” he said. “We all do.”

  “Oh, I know that. But if you and your family could trade—”

  “It’s just me and my mom.”

  “Okay. How about if you and your mama could trade for just a little while, like a week, would you?”

  Freddy shrugged. “It’s a nice neighborhood, right?”

  “Not the very best, but it’s nice, yeah.”

  “Do the Johnsons live here?”

  “Close enough,” she said.

  “I heard they have a real nice house. I heard they’re real good people.”

  Arlene smiled and slowly nodded, like she was saying, Well, all right then to a spurt of pain. “They do have a lovely home,” she told him.

  “I’d trade for that,” he said.

  She grimaced. “But Freddy, you ain’t even been there.”

  He shrugged again. “I don’t know.” At first he wasn’t sure how else to reply, but then he said, “I don’t want to live in the ghetto no more. Ghetto people live in the ghetto.”

  Arlene’s eyes widened until they were the same size, then went back to normal. She made a face like she was thinking hard. “Come here,” she told him.

  He stood closer to the head of the bed.

  “The Johnsons … Well, they have these pictures up in their parlor, shots of all the groups from camps like St. Rita’s who have been up to visit and use their pool over the years. So many boys—brown boys, like you—just smiling all big and giving the thumbs-up, every one of them, like they were told to.” She gave a thumbs-up herself. “The pictures are in these fancy wood frames and hung right beside the plaques and trophies and awards. The Johnsons show these pictures to all their guests. Did you know that?”

  “That sounds nice, Mrs. Clinksdale—”

  “My name’s Arlene.”

  Freddy frowned.

  “What’re you thinking, child?”

  He asked the simplest question he had. “What’s a parlor?”

  Arlene laughed again and wriggled her toes. “Shoot, what is a parlor?” she said. “A room where you keep all the stuff you’re mad to show off to certain people, I guess. Something this house don’t have.”

  On the night table, faceup next to her glasses, lay a photograph in a plastic frame. Arlene was in it, a bit younger and thinner. She smiled in the arms of a man with a mustache, a white man. Was this Mr. Clinksdale? He was handsome and tall, like the men Freddy’s mother had liked to watch on soap operas, but this man held himself in an odd way, so that only the very top part of his body made contact with Arlene’s.

  “Don’t worry,” Freddy said, “you’ll get a parlor one day.” This was the kind of thing his mother used to say to quiet him as he dozed off at bedtime.

  Arlene’s smile was similar to the one in the photograph. “I’m forty-one years old,” she said, as though talking to herself, or to someone who wasn’t Freddy. “Forty-one. There’s things I used to want and just don’t no more, even some of the things I have now. There’s other things I want with all my heart, and if I don’t get them soon I never will.”

  Then she parted her robe, fully exposing her shorts and the top of her bathing suit. Between them rose the little round of her belly. It was slightly larger than the paunch his mother had developed since she started staying out late, but it sat differently on Arlene. Seeing it and the parts of her body not covered by her shorts and bathing suit made Freddy aware of his own near-nakedness. He wanted to leave, but he wanted to stay too.

  “You don’t think my baby will like this house?”

  “It’s a baby?” Freddy said.

  “Of course it is, silly. Fifteen weeks of one anyway. Never made it this far before.”

  “Is it a boy? Or a girl?”

  “You know,” Arlene said, “I was thinking girl all the way this time, but just before you came in here I decided it could be nice to have a little boy too. But not if he’s gonna be fighting like you and Santos. Not if he can’t forgive and mean it when he says sorry. He’s gotta act right and do better.”

  Freddy tilted his head downward.

  “I’ll admit it though. I got plenty of boy names running through my mind.”

  He stared at her belly. “Is that man your husband?” he asked.

  Arlene looked at the framed photo on the table as though it was something she had forgotten to put away. “He’s a person who takes care of me. Or used to. I don’t think he wants to anymore.” She seemed to be talking to someone else again.

  Freddy was still staring at her belly. He wanted to hide his fists between his knees, but he couldn’t move.

  “Why don’t you touch it,” Arlene said.

  “What—?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can,” she said. “I read somewhere it’s good luck. Need a lot of luck in this terrible world. Could be there’s some kind of way it works the opposite too. A little luck for you and maybe some for me. Me and my baby. Here, give me your hands.”

  Freddy’s hands were so tightly clenched they trembled and ached. He got closer, hesitating at first, but then gave them to her. In her hands his fell open, and then she turned them over and placed his palms on her belly
. It was softer than he’d expected, and warmer.

  “Well, what do you think?” she said.

  He wasn’t sure what she meant. All he could think about was his mother lying half-awake on the couch, telling him and the old man with peaches and the rest of the world to wait.

  “What do you think it is?” she asked. “You tell me. Boy or girl?”

  He stared at her belly once more, but it didn’t reveal anything to him.

  “Boy or a girl?” she asked again, and the question seemed to echo from her, from the bed, and out from the room.

  Freddy’s imagination could turn him into an angel or a wizard or a knight. Through it, he could become a robot, one that created maps he used to protect himself. The robot also knew what was happening and what would happen next. It was quiet outside now, by the pool. Sister Pamela was in the house below them, calling his name. At any moment she would decide to come upstairs. She would peer in the first room and not find him. He would hear her approaching, and when he looked up at her startled eyes and brown teeth, his hands, by a shared choice, would still be open on the curve of this woman’s belly.

  But it wasn’t Freddy’s imagination to which Arlene spoke, and which continued to fire with every passing moment of contact with her skin. She spoke instead to what his imagination guarded. It was lost in thoughts and feelings about mothers and babies and parlors and the dark brown face of Jesus, and could only begin to make sense of them. This part of him, not yet grown, didn’t know the answer to her question, or to any questions that hid behind her question, and so it didn’t know how to reply. It did know that this, what was happening, was a thing he might never forget, but for now it could hardly speak.

  Everything the Mouth Eats

  I’ve started this story many times and deleted the pages many times. The reasons aren’t a mystery. I keep seeing the face of my brother, to the exclusion of anything else, and I keep getting lost. But perhaps there’s no other way it can be written. The face of my brother, which resembles my face much more than I’ve ever been willing to admit, in many ways is the story. Also, if I’m going to be honest, I have to confess from the outset that I’ve always been terribly lost. I want to tell this story, and I want to tell it honestly.

  The trip to the capoeira event that morning, years ago now, should have taken less than an hour, but somehow I ended up driving us west of Arlington and I messed up again near Springfield. My brother, Carlos, sat in the back with baby Rosa. His girlfriend, Sulay, beside me in the passenger seat, was growing increasingly baffled. Her hazel eyes waxed full, mouth opening and closing as she reluctantly surrendered to the strict silence Carlos and I had sealed into the space of the car. She probably felt every single effort we had made, to first create the germ of silence and then to cultivate it, conspiring to be cruel to each other.

  We drove in their beat-up black Honda. Energy bar wrappers, water bottles, juice boxes, and flat orange peels were strewn all over. The red corner of a children’s book and a library copy of In Our Time peeked out from the gap between the passenger seat and the console box. Next to Carlos, three pairs of unlaced sneakers had been tossed on top of a pile of folded pants and T-shirts. On the rear deck behind his head sat musical instruments, or parts of them: three painted cabaças, some caxixis, and a few coils of unused arame. The strong sweet and sour odor of a small child, an odor Carlos and Sulay probably didn’t notice anymore, infected the car’s cooled air. Beneath this hung the stale, heavy smell of cigarettes.

  When I’d insisted on driving, Carlos had immediately announced he would sit in the back with their daughter. I had claimed I knew the DC area and could get us from there to Prince William Forest Park in Virginia. This on the basis of trips I’d been making from New York down to Northeast to see a girl I couldn’t bring myself to love. But I’m a terrible driver. I get especially nervous on highways. Something seems apocalyptic about them. It’s difficult to see other people clearly in their cars, and the speed of it all recalls the desperation of escape. I’m awful at figuring out when to change lanes. The deceptive monotony gets to me, and the arrows point all over the damn place. My eyes dart from mirror to mirror, and I end up misreading signs or not seeing them at all.

  I somehow failed to get us onto the interstate, and Sulay couldn’t contain herself any longer. She turned to Carlos and her face asked him for help, but none was forthcoming. Despite her harried appearance, Sulay sounded calm when she turned back and spoke to me in her lilting voice. “Eric, are you sure you don’t want one of us to drive?”

  I shook my head stiffly, slicing the air twice with my chin. My grip on the steering wheel tightened as Carlos, whom I had seen grinning in the rearview mirror since we left their apartment in Takoma Park, seemed to decide on his line of attack. For a moment, our gazes met.

  “You know 95 is pretty big, don’t you?” he said, not to me but to Sulay. “One of the longest interstates in the country, if I’m remembering right. Main artery of the East Coast. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”

  He had lifted one hand from the car seat to carve shapes in the air—a conductor of his own voice—and then settled it somewhere near his chin. The tip of his finger played in the patch of fuzzy hair under his bottom lip. His other hand was agitated in his pocket, jangling keys and coins as Rosa sneezed herself awake.

  “Your uncle is just like me,” he said to his daughter. “Got those fat, juicy veins in his arms. A doctor’s dream. But every once in a while you get one of those who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he stabs your arm all to hell trying to draw blood. Meanwhile there’s a fat, juicy vein sitting right there.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sulay asked.

  Carlos gave a short laugh. “I swear, one time I nearly grabbed the damn needle and stuck it in myself. No lie.” The rhythmic ring of metal in his pocket had stopped. “Life is hard enough,” he said. “It pains me—it physically hurts—when people fuck up what’s easy and obvious.”

  I inhaled deeply to stay calm and then smiled at Sulay. “So,” I said, “he’s still smoking, huh?”

  Carlos winked at her. “Babe, tell my brother it’s actually been months. No, no, tell him this: it just takes a long time for old stink to go away.”

  I hadn’t had a talk—a real talk—with my brother in many years. Maybe we’d never had one. In any case, I wasn’t sure either of us even knew how. The truth was, I didn’t really want to talk to him, but I felt guilty, or duty-bound to our mother. So on this trip I kept trying to persuade myself that I would try.

  The only way Carlos and I were going to speak to each other right now was to argue. Since I didn’t want to start a full-on argument in the car, I didn’t ask Sulay about his drinking or his search for a steadier job. The relatively “good” terms of our relationship were a new and tenuous development. Surely he felt as much as I did the strain of proceeding—word by word, gesture by gesture—with so much delicacy. We’d been rebuilding things slowly, ever since I’d found out from our mother that he’d been, essentially, homeless. Going to the capoeira conference together was a part of that rebuilding. I was trying to show that my interest in him and in the things that mattered to him was real. Also—and I never would have admitted this until now—I wanted to understand how the hell he, with all his troubles, had ended up with a woman like Sulay.

  Since we’d started talking again, Carlos would go on and on about what he called his “blessings,” which he said had saved his life. At first there were two, Sulay and capoeira angola; Rosa became the third. He would go on and on, and the repetition was something he could rely on in the strangeness of our attempts to communicate. One day, over tea in a chilly Dupont Circle café, when I was tired of him repeating himself, I stared at Sulay—I’d been staring at her all afternoon—and asked about capoeira. I knew a little about it. I worked as an adjunct literature professor in downtown Manhattan and had seen a circle of people doing capoeira in Union Square Park, or, rather, I had seen other people crowde
d around the people doing it. Amid the clamor of Fourteenth Street traffic, the pedestrian multitudes, and the constant noise of my own thoughts, came the half-heard music—wah-wah sounds interspersed with vague buzzing and high-toned flutters. My question was for Sulay but my brother was the one who spoke.

  “First of all,” he’d said, “you don’t do capoeira; you play capoeira. And you live it.” He started talking about African martial art traditions and enslaved Africans in Brazil, the development of the form there, and its spread to the United States and other countries. He talked, more rapidly now, about music and rituals and perspective. After mentioning “antagonistic cooperation,” a phrase I associated with the writer Ralph Ellison, he went on to philosophize about what it meant “to see the world upside down.” He wasn’t answering the question, he was lecturing.

  “Just tell me what the hell it is,” I said.

  He reached over to Sulay and held one of her blue-mittened hands. “A capoeira é tudo que a boca come,” he said, to her, and then became quiet. His silence then was supposed be as profound as the one he settled into now in the black Honda, after successfully having the last word. It would be a relief to finally arrive and escape the space of the car, which felt increasingly small with every passing mile.

  Carlos and I refer to each other as brothers, but technically we’re half-brothers. I was born to our mother in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and he was born in New York City. Our mother met the man who would become my stepfather, Carlos’s father, in Brooklyn, when she was struggling and unhappy with her job at Montgomery Ward. He was a career counselor then, and in those days, though I find it hard to believe, he treated my mother with great kindness. She says he gave her sound advice, but, more important, he took an interest in her beyond her employment, an interest that alleviated her loneliness. Soon enough they were seeing each other, and then we were leaving Brooklyn for the Bronx to move in with him. My own father is a man I have no memory or evidence of.