Speaking of Summer

by Kalisha Buckhanon

  I could not bear the grim meeting to be the total point of my day. So I initiated a call to Raymond, and agreement to rendezvous, my olive branch to atone for my nonresponse to his sincere messages: thinking of me, had a good time, hope I’m well, don’t disappear again. I would meet him at a real restaurant now.

  We Go On was a three-story stone house steadied between constricted five-story walk-ups on Sixty-Third Street. Its website showed me it had offices and special-events rooms people must have donated much for. Its location and ambience were a departure from social services organizations and clinics I skipped past uptown, in buildings ashen and dusty even as the janitors cleaned often. A buzzer system greeted me in a shiny foyer. I announced myself to a secretary I could see behind a large oak desk. The vintage décor inside included frilly dressed dolls with pearly faces on a shelf, tall vases with bamboo shoots, and cubes of short-stem fresh bouquets. Requisite inspiration highlighted the walls: images of ocean waves, flower fields, and swirling blue spheres as the settings for printed platitudes on hope, dreams, and tomorrow. The telephone was set to an annoyingly hushed ring; Becky put her finger up to me and answered it, for ensuing chitchat about a copy machine emergency. She hung up and apologized.

  “Hello, I’m Autumn, Autumn Spencer,” I told the young girl. She wore a fast-food style nametag that read BECKY, INTERN.

  Lovely. My crazy qualified me as case-study teaching fodder for future generations.

  Becky went to a computer to pull up a FileMaker Pro screen. Apparently all my surface details poured forth there: my name, address, age, marital status, educational background, social worker or psychiatrist, emergency contact, closest hospital, known medical conditions, and notes on my “event”—a section I had left blank.

  “Yes, we have you in for today,” Becky said. “You’re early.”

  “For a change,” I smiled.

  She led me back to a lounge reminiscent of higher-end telemarketing and sales companies where I had temped.

  “See you soon!” she beamed.

  She’d given me a glossy red folder. One fast open to glimpse the words support, risk factors, and engagement was enough. A peel-and-stick-on name tag paper-clipped to the folder’s pocket. I avoided it. Crisp, recent magazines splayed on a table. A tea collection folded out on the counter next to a Keurig. Snack bags leaned against one another in a wicker basket. I selected a pack of fruit snacks. I popped a capsule of green tea into the top of the Keurig. I went to one of two armchairs and picked up a New York Magazine on the table in between them. Luckily, I had my hot tea by the time a few people trickled into the lounge. I did not join them. They seemed intimates already, touchy and chummy. I soaked into the magazine.

  I was momentarily startled by an advertisement inside. It was for a line of luxury men’s suits, hats, and accoutrements out of Greenwich, Connecticut. Gabriel Johns must have licensed his name and image to the brand. He smiled back at me: a distinguished older gentleman smoking a cigar on his nutmeg tree estate, with enticing copy and quotes to make him appear a humble everyman who could still afford all this. I wanted to pull out my phone to call Chase, to congratulate him. But I would not know what to say if he asked me where I was and what I was doing.

  Instead, I looked up to see the group expanded to men and women who appeared dressed for work on Wall Street with a few prepped for nights on skid row. They moved in unison and automation, writing and sticking on name tags, patting each other on the back, speaking close to each other’s faces. My expectation of emo kids and goth adults was shamefully overturned. A silver-haired Black woman was part of the group, comported like a friend of Rosa Parks, down to a polka-dot handkerchief in the pocket of her red suit, grounded on sturdy pumps. She looked my way. Steadying herself at the head of the table, she spoke with a wet-haired White woman who seemed to provide an update on her housing situation. Wet Hair stuffed snack bags into her loose bag sashed over her body.

  At six on the dot a brunette man came into the room, clapped, and started hellos to everyone there—starting with me. His name tag read FRANK, VOLUNTEER. The rest rushed last-minute coffee and tea before seats at the table began to fill. The musical chairs left me right by Frank. I wanted to sit at the far end, in an empty chair. But Wet Hair’s saggy bag occupied that seat, so she could keep rummaging through it for gum, chips, a nail file, mirror, ChapStick, and other things.

  “Yes, I have gotten a haircut, finally,” Frank said when all places were taken. “Thank you everyone for noticing. It was time. The hairline was going to recede even if it grew to my waist, so I graduated myself to official middle-aged man last week.”

  “You look so much more handsome that way,” Rosa Parks’s friend said. “Like a real gentleman and nice young man now.”

  “Young?” Frank asked. “And the member of the year award goes to . . . Barbara!”

  “Who’s your barber?” a boy with painted black nails and his own shag asked.

  “Nowhere special,” Frank said. “I went to the Aveda school. Right on Spring.”

  He drummed at the table, pursed his lips for what seemed an announcement of merit and high reward: the next Miss America, Best Picture, a Pulitzer. And the winner is . . .

  “So, let’s get started, guys.”

  I had hoped to avoid that moment when you have to stand like a new visitor in a church you only plan to visit once. Frank began the roundtable of introductions.

  “We have a new person here today. I already know her name, but you guys don’t. And she does not know yours.”

  I would not be spared.

  “So, introductions as usual. My name is Frank Castling, and I am a survivor of suicide. As in suicide attempt. I don’t know anyone who’s actually taken their own life. But after a lifetime of bullying, and suffering in the closet in college and my twenties, I wanted to overdose on pills. I survived, finally came out as a gay man, and advocate today for both gay rights and the millions of people in this nation affected by suicide. Luis, please.”

  Luis was a construction worker with a wife, three children, and a family he left in Guatemala, and a history of alcoholism he goes to a group for too, and a brother he once paid $3,000 for, to a voice on the phone promising his Rio Grande crossing, but the brother has not called to say he is in America and it’s been five years. Carla, a redhead costumed for a Walmart family commercial, was a rape survivor who failed to get a conviction and wanted to die when new DNA techniques verified her attacker, but he could not be tried twice. Anthony was a soft-spoken, cherub-faced man who grew up with an abusive father whom he blames for his ongoing mental problems and the threats he made in college to shoot himself, which his mother talked him out of before she divorced his father they no longer talk to. Daniel was shocked when his nephew killed his brother, and prefers to share nothing more. I learned Barbara locked herself in her garage full of carbon monoxide before her neighbor came to see why her dog was barking so loud. Her catalyst was her daughter’s murder during a home invasion, while Barbara and her husband were at a holiday function. She’s still married to her daughter’s father. The dog just turned thirteen.

  Wet Hair’s name was Carolyn, and she was a heroin addict whose two precious babies were taken away, and her last suicide attempt was in April when managers of her group home called the hospital to come get her for not taking her meds and threatening to slit her throat with a kitchen knife; but she was taking her medications every day, and the social worker told her she could see her kids now in supervised visitation with protective services. She was trying to find a job and had a few interviews, and the supervisor of McDonald’s called her back to meet with his manager, but she was sick that day and then somebody stole her interview clothes when they were drying at the laundromat, and it would be better if she could find a job close to her new place in the Bronx, but there are no businesses there but family-owned stuff and liquor stores and bodegas with roaches and old milk, and a caseworker gave her fare for the train here but . . .

  “And now, Mis
sus Autumn Spencer, tell us about yourself,” Frank managed.

  The template seemed so personal. I stayed silent.

  “Whatever you want to share,” Frank nodded.

  “Well,” I thought on each word, “my name is Autumn Spencer. I’m an only child. I moved here from the Midwest. I have no parents. I live in Harlem. I work for myself. Friends there thought I should give this a try. And, well, it’s been quite a challenging year.”

  Frank moved on to the discussion topic of the day: service to those in our lives who need us, want us, and depend on us. For this, we were to make a list of five people we think look forward to seeing us and need us, and something about how we service them as a loved one. The group handled it like a pop quiz, with procrastinating questions.

  “What, these are people I live with?”

  “Do they gotta be family?”

  “What if you have more than five?”

  “Wait. What do you mean by ‘in service to’?”

  “I only got three. Is that okay?”

  Frank managed each question with a thorough answer while he never took his own pen off paper, writing with a promise to us he would be the first to go. I made the best of it.

  Asha: She knows I will always answer my door, I don’t charge her for mooching, I pay her when I sense she needs me to, and we always have fun no matter what.

  Cathy: She looks for my calls and emails, her family likes to see me come around, and her children will think I am their “Aunt” if she has anything to do with it.

  Aunt Mae: She calls me after a few months if she has not heard from me, and I can always stay with her if I ever move back to Hedgewood. She wants me to live with her.

  Cousin Terry: She looks forward to the gifts I send her children, she emails me her problems because she says I have smart answers, and my mom was her favorite aunt.

  ?

  The fifth space was one where I silently debated the fuzzy lines of want, need, and love—over relationships of convenience or shared circumstances. I mentally sorted revolving faces and names who would be in my life if the ties of time and space that bound us collapsed all of a sudden.

  Fran: She appreciates I am a good tenant, I cause no problems, I pay rent, and I have been a nice person to talk to over the years.

  All of us but Wet Hair managed to complete the assignment. Her questions continued long after she insisted, “Come to me last . . . I’m still thinking about it.”

  For everyone else in the group, the usual associations came up: Mom, Dad, husband, wife, son, daughter, grandchildren, brother, sister, pastor, even boss—one who actually appreciated his employees to be on time and stay past closing. These were the voids and absentees and deletions of my unorthodox existence.

  Finally, with Frank’s prompting, Wet Hair stretched her list past just her two kids.

  “I can go ahead and put down everybody’s name in here,” she told us. “And, I can say I service you because I come to group, even when it’s raining cats and dogs like it was last month, and I ain’t got no umbrella. And we talk about our lives and our problems. Well, it’s not always problems. Sometimes it’s just life. So that’s . . . Frank, Barbara, Carla, Luis, Daniel, and Anthony. And the staff. Becky, Diane, and the one guy’s name I always forget. He’s here in the daytime mostly. Everybody except for the new lady . . . what is it?”

  “Autumn.”

  “Yeah. It’s not I don’t think you’re a good person. It’s only we just met and all.”

  “I understand,” I smiled.

  “Thank you, Carolyn,” Frank said, and all others followed him. “So these services we perform to ease burdens and contribute to others’ lives increase our social footprint for the entire world. Seriously, the whole entire world. These footprints walk on well past us.”

  By the time we all shared our lists and comments, it was past eight o’clock. Raymond had called my silenced cell phone twice, and I was famished for much more than fruit snacks and tea. The table lingered in small talk I was not prompted to join in on, since “we just met and all.” Yet, the barriers to smiling at me had been crossed. I returned the gestures.

  Frank caught me before I made it to the exit: “I’m so happy you joined us.”

  “Thank you. I’m happy I joined too,” I said. I wished I had the “good hair,” straight enough to fuss behind my ears to signal it as impolite to pressure me to more nervousness.

  “How’d you hear about us?”

  “A friend,” I told him.

  “Great friend,” Frank said. “Well, we’re here every two weeks for this particular night group. Attendance comes and goes, but members stay consistent long-term. We have a lot of stuff between meetings too. Outings and trips to free stuff around the city. Are you subscribed to our newsletter?”

  “My freelancing has me running newsletters for a few business, so I know they can be especially valuable for engagement,” I said. “I’ll think about signing up. Good night.”

  He waved at me and then turned back to the room to clap his hands, “Okay, folks. Security’s peeking in, giving me the evil eye. Let’s let ’em lock up and get home!”

  I had urge to tinkle, one I withheld out of my duty to hear all. But I decided to bank on a McDonald’s or Starbucks rather than risk a conversation trap in the bathroom. This sacrifice against my bursting bladder was futile, however. Barbara came up behind me as I stood a little down the street on Sixty-Third looking from side to side to get my bearings.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I looked at the pain staining another woman’s eyes and forgot about my own. I was astonished to feel lucky.

  Barbara’s first suggestion was “a drink somewhere,” what I was supposed to do with Raymond. I did send him a text while I squat over a sprinkled-on toilet: “Hope you haven’t left yet . . . I’m running late.” He didn’t text back. I guess he gave up on me. So be it. I didn’t yet trust my ability to restrain myself to just one or two glasses of wine anyway. I weaseled in a coffee idea to substitute. Barbara and I quickly found a slow, uncrowded Starbucks.

  “I became president and founder of my own nonprofit, to keep folks in recovery from relapsing,” she explained. “That’s why I like Carolyn so much. She’s got heart. Lot of folks don’t get as far as she has. I’ve seen it myself.”

  She paused to sip tea and nibble a cheese Danish.

  “I had a network of small art studios, restaurants, hair salons, vintage boutiques, and even a record store. All on board with me, for no kickback. So long as recoverers who signed up did a monthly drop and met with a social worker, they could work.”

  The café’s loud music turned to Johnny Cash, “I Won’t Back Down.” She snapped her fingers, mouthed a verse. Then she quickly folded into the stiff posture I first saw her in.

  “I didn’t like the location. Worst part of Corona. Bad influences. However it’s often effective to fund programs in buildings in the projects. It’s the best guarantee people who need it will show up. So I made a difference in many hard lives. But I’d give it all back, though, the awards and big magazine mentions. The house. If I could get my daughter back. All those accomplishments backfired when I lost her. They never caught her killer.”

  I’d seen talk show guests like her: cast in stone, unruffled, and open to any question. For as much as her mini-autobiography forced another latte to give me something to do while she talked, I admired Barbara. Her stoicism and candor were light-years ahead of mine. But then again, she’d had more time.

  “What was your daughter’s name?” I asked. I could feel her brighten the air around us to think it.

  “Simple. Anne. I know it’s old-fashioned now. It was my grandmother’s.”

  “With a name like Autumn, I can’t be too judgmental.”

  This was a point I would have said I had a twin sister named Summer, the porno name of the pair. Yet I stopped this as it furled to my tongue. I sensed it would all be a lie.

  “I can’t know how you feel,” I offered. “My only daughter is a s
ponsored one. Fatu. Africa.”

  “That’s very good of you.”

  She had wiser counsel, I’m sure, than little me. I flatlined in her mind as just Autumn Spencer, from Illinois, now in Harlem, without my own mother—whom I let her know passed away from cancer. Casual passersby and nearby customers presumed us to be mother and daughter, perhaps.

  “How long have you been going to We Go On?” I asked her.

  “About three years now. I knew about it, from my own work in the community. Never thought I’d be a client.”

  “So, that means they’ve helped if you’ve been there that long, then.”

  “Oh, sure,” she insisted. “Of course. It’s that shared common thing, more than money or race or where I come from. Nobody else will talk about it with me. Least not for too long. They might know how it is to be low, because nobody gets outta here in one piece, but not so low you wanna die.”

  We’d both had similar heroines—neighbors, in a city scorned the world over for having the meanest streets on Earth. Chances are, had she or I been submerged in the wider geographies of a place like Hedgewood, where the only din of open-window weather is cats in heat, we would not be sitting together now. We would have succeeded in our final goal. Perhaps, because I was Black, she sensed obligation to reel me into more than a group setting. It’s something I would have done to the only dark face in a line, disaster, or conference room. Did it make me racist that I’d throw the oxygen mask to a young sister across the aisle before I passed it to the senior White woman in the middle seat next to me? I had hope that this comedic, haphazard tribalism would set aside when there was no time for us to see identities at first.