Gumbo

by E. Lynn Harris

  As you walk to the car he reaches for your hand. This time you do not falter in your touch, grateful for the way the boy's palm in yours steadies you, even for just a moment.

  Parked in front of your mother-in-law's house, where your wife and children now live, he asks, “Daddy, can you come inside? Can you stay?” He is sliding his hands up and down the seat belt.

  “Juwan, you know I can't stay.”

  Your words inspire that sad-eyed, near-tears, stricken look that you hate. But this time it's a show of love, you're sure. Not like when you force him to go outside and play with the other boys in the neighborhood. Boys who had stopped coming to knock on the door to ask for Juwan because he's always in his room, his head stuck in a book or drawing (not even playing video games like the other boys, like his sisters even).

  “I can't come in, but you'll be coming home soon.” You hear the arch, almost sinister trembling in your voice. You're sure he hears it, too.

  But he asks hopefully, a smile shattering the solemnity of only a moment ago. “To stay?”

  “To stay.” Just saying the words, assuring the boy of what you fear is a lie, melts a measure of the disdain gnawing at you. After all, you and the boy want the same thing. For them to come home.

  “Your mom and me just gotta work some things out.” You feel suddenly generous and pull out your wallet and press a five dollar bill in his hand.

  “This is just for you. Put it in your bank.”

  “My bank's at home.”

  “Well put it wherever you keep your stuff here. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Juwan releases the safety belt, lifts his parka, and stuffs the bill into the pocket of his pants.

  “Now, go tell your mom to come out. I want to talk to her.” The words sound like a court order, like a summons, although they spring, in fact, from the hungry soil of your need for Bunny, for him, for the girls.

  “Okay,” the boy says, reaching to open the door, then hesitating as the eyes look again at you and ask, as they always do, for more than you can give.

  You playfully punch him on the jaw and say, “I'll call you tomorrow.” You watch him walk away from the car to the house, wondering if you will call him tomorrow, what you will say.

  Once the front door is open you hear Juwan's excited, pleading voice. Bunny stares at you through the glass top of the storm door and nods. Then she closes the door. She'll probably make you wait like last time. Ten fucking minutes before she came to the car. Her mother, Elmira, had told you she'd prefer if you waited for the children outside.

  “I don't have much,” she'd told you, blocking your entry that day, “but I want to keep it. I don't want anything to get started in my house.” Like you can't be trusted in the same room with your own wife and kids. Like you're dangerous. You only ever hit Bunny that one time. One time because everything was falling apart. Everything still is. Elmira, short, stout, her hands on her wide hips as she looked up at you contemptuously. Her graying hair is nappy, uncombed, shooting out all over her head. She reminds you of a pit bull, always looking for trouble. And Bunny letting her talk to you that way.

  “What do you want, Carson?”

  You hadn't even heard Bunny approach the car. You turn on the ceiling light. She's leaning through the open window on the passenger side, her long auburn hair grazing her arms. Her arms and hair are inside the car, filling it with the fragrance of Dove soap, hair conditioner, and Jergens lotion. You aren't like some men. You even know what size bra (36D) and panties (6), and shoes (8 ½) she wears. You know everything you are sure, about your wife. The car is thick with her smell, the scent of a woman who has had your babies and whose love is the only thing you want in this world or the next. Her arms and her hair are inside the car. But she keeps her face outside. You look at her hands. She's still wearing her wedding ring. Your wedding ring. A dark deep brownish-red color stains her lips and her skin glows like she's just had a facial or maybe great sex.

  “You look good,” you say slowly, seeing in her gaze that you look like shit. You haven't slept a full night since she left. And you feel like you've always felt, even in the uniform, even with the badge and the night stick, like a too-short, freckle-faced, sandy-haired red-bone runt. You don't know how you ended up with her.

  “What is it, Carson? What do you want?”

  “I wanna talk.”

  Bunny rolls her eyes, looks away, staring back at the house, pursing her lips as though your request, simple, humble even, is causing her pain. You follow her glance back to the house and see the porch lights on. Until this moment you had not realized how dark it is. Not until your wife asks, “What is it Carson? What do you want?” do you realize that night has fallen and you feel it close and smothering.

  “Come on, get in.”

  “Now you wanna talk.”

  “Yeah, now I wanna talk.” You keep the words forceful but strong, tap down the rage you feel. Begging your own wife to talk to you. Bunny, like everybody else, against you. On the other side. Standing there looking at you like you're some jive nigguh on the corner trying to rap to her. You remind her, “I still got rights.”

  Bunny opens the door and slides into the car. She sits where only moments before Juwan sat staring at you. You openly appraise her, the black wool turtleneck sweater and the tight jeans, the big hoop earrings. You've been apart thirty-eight days, and every time you see her she looks better. Rested. She's even shed some of the weight she'd gained years ago with the twins. Thirty-eight days. Nine hundred and twelve hours. Fifty-four thousand seven hundred and twenty minutes. Bunny squirms beneath your gaze, and looks at her hands, looks anywhere but at you.

  “If you'd come back . . .” You lean closer to her, all the smells mingling, enveloping you in a cocoon of hope and longing, and she slides away from you, closer to the door. Bitch.

  “Carson we've been there.”

  “Well, let's go there again.” You lean in closer, just to fuck with her. Your lips almost touch. You want to kiss her. You could kiss her. You're still my wife.

  “Why you freaking? Acting like I'm gonna hurt you. Like you don't even want me to touch you, huh? I mean, look at this. You take my kids. Leave me at the worst possible time. I'm getting sued. I got lawyer's fees.”

  Hearing your voice, everything you've just said, how the words careen and pile up, how they ring with the sound of ruin. You decide to back off.

  “Carson, I'd been thinking about leaving for a long time.”

  “I quit the force. Isn't that what you wanted? Isn't it what you've always wanted?” You ask her this gently. A peace offering.

  “Once I thought it might make a difference. I thought that might save us. I thought I couldn't get close to you because you were always wearing your uniform. Even when you weren't in it. But after what happened, I saw it wasn't the uniform. It was you.” She's looking at you as she says this and now you wish she'd look at her hands. You offer peace. She wants war.

  “Carson, just give us some time,” she says, reaching to touch you. You want to feel her hands on you. Even if she just touches your jacket. You're sure you'll feel her fingers through the cloth. You miss her that bad. But instead this time you pull away.

  “I don't have time. Not anymore,” you say, shaking your head, quick, fast, with everything inside you. Like Juwan. “I can't live like this. Visiting my kids on the weekends. My own wife not wanting me to get close to her.”

  “Carson—”

  “Standing by while you get involved with some other man.” The accusation slithers through your lips as you look at Bunny out of the corner of your eye. You look at her and you are not moving, not breathing. So you can catch the flinch, the giveaway expression she'll try to hide.

  “You know there's no one else.”

  “Do I?”

  “Carson, it's only been a month.”

  “It's been five weeks,” you correct her, stung by the “only,” when you've felt each day like an eternity.

  “We've needed some time apart for
a while.”

  “Maybe you've needed to be away from me. But I've never needed to be away from you.”

  Bunny looks at you skeptically and you see all your sins in her gaze. “I haven't been perfect. I know that—”

  “Don't say anymore, Carson, please.”

  “Maybe you can live without me. I can't live without you.” There you said it. You've been whipped since you first laid eyes on her. You're pushing too hard. You feel her pulling away again. Not her body this time, but her feelings. Stop. Stop. Back off. She's still your wife.

  But you can't stop. “I want you and the kids back. I'm not gonna let you screw me like the department did, stringing me along for months, making me think I had a chance and then kicking me off the force, telling me to resign or I'd be fired. What kind of choice is that? Like I'm a murderer. Like what happened to me couldn't have happened to one of them in a second. In a split second. Bunny, I want to know by the end of the week if you're coming back. Fuck this trial-separation crap. This isn't anything I want to try on for size.”

  These are the words that have filled you head with a wayward clamoring. And yet, you say them quietly. Quietly. You don't want to frighten her. You want her back.

  “Bunny, whatever it's gonna be, tell me.”

  “I will, Carson,” she whispers.

  “I still want the kids this weekend.”

  “I'll bring them over on Friday, after school.”

  She squeezes your hand, which is tight and red-knuckled, gripping the steering wheel. You don't touch her, because if you do, touching her hand, her arm or her face won't be enough. You'll want everything. And you don't want to scare her. Not when what you're feeling for her and about everything is scaring you.

  “I'll have the girls call you tonight.” The words sound like a salve, but they are salt eating into your wounds. I should be grateful.

  “Alright.”

  “Good-bye.” With that word, she's out of the car.

  You watch her walk toward the house. If she looks back, even with a glance tossed over her shoulder like looking at an object she no longer needs. Even if she turns to look quickly, hoping you won't see, no matter. Just look back. But Bunny walks away from you with long, defiant strides. Like she's crossing the Sahara. Climbing Everest. Treading a path she's charted in her mind, alone, without you. Her arms are folded in front of her. Sealing her tight. Against you. She doesn't look back. The front door closes behind her and stares at you like the smug, grim face of the entrance to a vault.

  Fifteen minutes later, you're cruising the streets of your old beat. Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard is a wide, four-lane stretch of road that's always busy. Every major city you've visited in America has got a street named for King and it's always the main drag of the ghetto. Even when you weren't in your squad car patrolling the area, the hyper, unpredictable energy of this commercial zone clung to you like sweat. Although it's been eight months since you were last on duty, driving these streets that you will never patrol again, you still have the eyes of a cop. Suspicious, probing, curious, you had to know the street and be prepared for anything, all the time. They didn't ask much of you being a cop, just the damn near impossible.

  There are the fast-food places, Popeyes, KFC, McDonald's, Wendy's, the liquor stores, like outposts, one every third intersection, the car washes, and the pawn shop housed in an old laundromat, the words PAWN SHOP large in garish green and yellow neon, crowning the building. Until this moment you've never wondered why cops called the stretch of territory you'd been sworn to protect against crime and mayhem a beat. But that's what the streets did to you. The length and breadth of this section of Cartersville is veiled in a permanent gloom. Cops call it “Dodge City.”

  If you were still on the force, you'd have started your shift at four o'clock, savoring the early near-quiet first hour before the traffic accidents, speeders and red-light runners took over. Then when people got home, got settled, and the domestic disturbances flared like summer brush fires. People couldn't wait to get home, but then soon as they open the front door, they lose it. Two brothers argue over who controls the T.V. remote control. One lands in the hospital, the other in jail. A woman locks her boyfriend out of the apartment and throws his clothes out the window into the parking lot. You're called to mediate. Kids spray paint store windows. Complaints of barking dogs. A couple that's lived together three years argues, the woman accuses the man of rape, then recants the story an hour later. You collar three fourteen-year-olds selling weed in the unlocked basement of an elementary school. A father suspects his son of stealing his money to buy drugs and wants you to evict him from the house.

  You pull into a gas station and get out to fill up. The gas station mini-mart is crowded. You walk over to the coffee stand and pour a decaf into a large Styrofoam cup. Tear open two packs of sugar, stir, snap the top on and get in line. It's almost nine o'clock. You stand behind a burly, gray-haired taxi driver who pulled in moments before you. The line for lottery tickets at the second cash register is long and you recall having seen something on the news about the state lottery. Was it fifty, sixty, eighty million dollars? The people in line haven't got a prayer and they seem to know it, standing solemn, cheerless, quiet as penitents clutching crinkled bills in their hands, staring into space, or deep in thought, worrying about bills, wondering what they'll do if they win. The odds against them are criminal. And even if they won, nothing would change, you think. Nothing that matters, anyway.

  The Pakistani who owns the station smiles at you in recognition. “Sergeant Blake,” he says, the words clipped and heavily accented, the voice flush with a respect for you that you have never heard in an American voice. He's got large, droopy dark eyes and a thin angular face that tells you nothing of his age. He reaches for the dollar and quarter for the coffee. But when you tell him “Twenty on number seven,” he nods and waves a brown hand, his skin darker than yours, saying, “Have a good night.”

  Since you arrested the men who robbed him and his son a two years ago, he's insisted on giving you a free fill-up when you come in. They burst through the door of the mini-mart two minutes before closing, pistol-whipped the son, blinding him in one eye, then tied father and son up and locked them in the back storage room. All for $387.50. Two nights later you caught the two at the end of a high-speed chase that lasted half an hour and involved six squad cars. They were driving away from the third station they'd held up in an hour and a half. It took a year for the case to come to trial. They got five years. After the arrest, Mohammed Musharraf's wife brought a banquet of Pakistani dishes to the station one night as a show of thanks. Standing in the station house Musharraf kept shaking your hand, and saying “Anything, anything, I can do for you just tell me.” He knows what happened. Knows you're not on the force anymore, but calls you “Sergeant” anyway. You let him.

  Outside you put the nozzle in the tank and fill up. In the distance, atop a rise that is part of the Belle Manor apartment complex, you see a group of boys shooting hoops on a tiny patch of cement court. It's a Monday night. You've seen those boys shooting hoops in the snow. In the rain. A mural of Tupac, sloe-eyed and watchful, hovers over the boys' shoulders.

  You've made one hundred and fifty arrests in twelve years, and “Dodge City” still overflows with drugs. It's a wasteland. You're not a sergeant. You're a garbage collector. (You will always think like a cop. It will always be present tense for you.) The still neat but weathered bungalows that line the streets adjacent to King Boulevard are home to some of the first blacks who moved out to Cartersville from D.C. Some of their kids are dealers. Some of them are buyers.

  To the drug dealers, you're the interloper, the intruder, hassling them on their turf. Their hatred of you rubs off on the kids, turning them into urban Robin Hoods. Even the hardworking adults who don't hate you, don't trust you either. They never look you straight in the eye, scream brutality if you look ready to touch them, but never tell you you've done a good job when you throw the dealers in jail.

&
nbsp; You stopped seeing their faces years ago. But there are some faces you can still see. Some you always will. The seven people you've shot at, or wounded. The young man I killed.

  You politely dismiss the orange-hatted elderly who actually think that a group of sixty- or seventy-year-olds sitting on a corner, or patrolling with flashlights, decreases crime. (The smartest dealers simply put out the word not to touch the old people because of the heat it will bring down on them). And to the middle-aged couples who make dozens of calls, to complain about the weekend night drag racing along the boulevard (thirty or forty cars that scatter as soon as you drive up and then regroup once you leave), you keep your advice simple: “Move.” Your old beat. You beat. And got beat. Leaning on your trunk, watching the familiar scene the thudding, taut wires of your heart activate your hands that reach reflexively for the gun in the holster at your side that no longer is there. That pulse kept you sharp. Kept you on top. Kept you alive.

  Bunny accusing you of “wearing your uniform all the time.” What are you supposed to do? You carry a gun everywhere. You sleep with a gun. Not in your hands but in your head. You're a cop twenty four/seven. A cop banging your wife or girlfriend, your mistress, or a quick piece of surprise “bonus pussy” you lucked up on. A cop singing hymns in church on Sunday morning. A cop sitting in a restaurant with your family, eyes scanning the place (you can't help it; it's automatic), hoping, Please nobody go crazy in here and start acting a fool. But just in case, you got your revolver strapped to your ankle. A cop stumbling out of some bar in plainclothes, head tight, but not quite wasted, coming upon a burglary. The sight instantly clears you and as you pull out your revolver a fellow officer, in uniform arrives, and you're yelling, “I'm on the job. I'm on the job,” thrusting your shield into the darkness.