I took the number and promised that I would call. But only because she insisted.
CHAPTER 32
Geraldine Gomes, or Gerri, as people called her, lived at the top of Mill Street in a modest single-family home in New Bedford’s West End. I parked across from the house and got out of my car, taking in the neighborhood. This part of town was more than familiar to me. I had passed through here countless times on errands with Willie. His battle with the cabdriver had happened right on this street, less than a block away. Years after that, I had often walked through this neighborhood of closely knitted homes on my way to school.
It was late on Friday afternoon when I pulled up to the curbside. A gentle breeze blew, and off in the distance I heard traffic humming on Rockdale Avenue. A silver-haired gentleman in a short-sleeved plaid shirt, who appeared to be in his midfifties, was sitting on the porch, rocking gently in a double rocker. We made eye contact as I emerged from my car; he bolted inside the house, moving so quickly that the rocker banged against the porch wall. As I approached the steps, I heard him calling “Gerri! Gerri!” from somewhere inside. I reached out to steady the rocker, which was still swaying from his sudden departure. I rang the doorbell, waiting for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, the man who had dashed inside appeared at the front door.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Steve.”
He waved me off. “I know who you are. I’m Manny, Gerri’s husband.” He gestured toward the living room. “Come on in. She’s in here.”
He opened the door, and I stepped into the home’s small foyer. One of my favorite poems, “Footprints in the Sand,” hung on the wall. I walked deeper into the living room. The windows were open, and white curtains fluttered gently in the breeze.
Sitting on the couch in a pink nurse’s uniform was a middle-aged African American woman. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap. When she saw me, she put her head down and began nodding to herself.
Before Manny left the room, he gestured toward the couch, indicating I should have a seat. “You’re going to have to give her some time.”
Gerri kept her head bowed a few moments longer, and in that time I sensed that a flood of memories were coming back to her. When she finally lifted her head, I could see that she had been crying. “I can’t believe it,” she said, smiling. “You are definitely one of us.” A flood of questions followed. Where had I grown up? (About a mile from your house, and I used to walk past your house all the time on the way to school.) Who was my mother? (A woman by the name of Marian Klakowicz.) Who raised me? (The Robinsons.) Do I have a girlfriend? (I’m still working on that.)
As we talked, I noticed the color of her eyes. Both of my parents had brown eyes, as did all four of my grandparents. Though I had already learned much about my biological family, I still hadn’t figured out where my blue eyes had come from. I had assumed they came from my mother’s family and her European origins. Now I was surprised to see that my aunt’s eyes were bluish green. Gerri told me that my grandmother Mary Cabral was actually Cape Verdean and that my eyes likely came from my father’s Cape Verdean origins.
Cape Verdeans are a beautiful people; they hail from a small archipelago of islands off the western coast of Africa and are of European, Portuguese, and African descent. Centuries of this fusion of cultures had created a people of skin hues, hair textures, and eye colors as diverse as the lands from which they came. Some of this had clearly been passed along to me.
As we chatted, she smiled from time to time and pointed out that I shared a lot of my father’s mannerisms—from the way I scratched my head to the way I looked skyward while I was thinking.
I had many questions for her, but I was reluctant to ask. Mrs. Dottin’s and Marc’s cautionary advice had stuck with me, and I knew enough about Kenny’s life and death to know that I needed to be careful.
“Can you tell me about him?” I asked. “What was he like?”
She laughed quietly. “You mean, other than that he thought he could walk on water?” Her voice turned more serious. “I know he had this tough street reputation, but he was always my mischievous little brother.”
She proceeded to give me details of Kenny’s story that greatly furthered what I’d already learned from Russell Almeida. Kenny was born into a large family in nearby Tiverton, Rhode Island, anchored by his mother, who loved and doted upon him just a bit more than her thirteen other children. Unfortunately, the family experienced a series of tragedies. An older brother, Gordon, died at eight years old, after surgeons botched his hernia operation. A sister, Elaine, died in a car accident at age fifteen. And then in 1956, faulty wiring caused a fire that burned down the family’s home. The family scattered, the children going to live with various relatives and friends while Kenny’s parents tried to piece their lives back together. Kenny’s youngest brother, Greg, and two sets of twin sisters—Cynthia and Sheila, Beverly and Colleen—were put into a Rhode Island orphanage and eventually were raised in foster homes.
The strain split up the marriage; Kenny’s father, Joe, moved to an apartment in Fall River. His mother suffered a coronary occlusion and died at age thirty-nine. She was upstairs in her bedroom when she collapsed. An ambulance sped Mary to St. Luke’s Hospital, but she was already gone. Kenny flew into a rage, storming into the garage and breaking all the windows with his bare fists. He was just fifteen.
At that point, it seems, Kenny threw himself into boxing with the fearlessness for which he became known. But the ring was not the only mistress pining for his attention. Kenny was also drawn to the allure of the streets, and by 1971 he had plunged into the chaotic darkness of New Bedford’s drug subculture, moving beyond recreational marijuana use to the more dangerous, violent pastime of selling and using heroin. As he fell further and further into addiction, Kenny became more emboldened as a thug, caring little about the consequences. One of his tactics was to beat up local dealers and take their drugs, usually for his own personal use. He also became embroiled in a dispute over territories, ignited by his unwillingness to respect previously defined boundaries.
Still, Kenny had a compassionate side. Geraldine told me that she, Kenny, and some of the other Pemberton children had a passion for horseback riding. “Kenny loved to ride,” she said. “Whether from selling drugs or some legitimate work, he came up with the money to buy a horse he called Hawkeye, and he would often leave New Bedford to go riding.” He stabled Hawkeye in Rochester, a small rural town nineteen miles north of New Bedford, and became familiar with the area. Perhaps it was the perfect escape for a city kid whose life was buffeted by poverty and trouble.
At the same time, Kenny made several vain attempts to kick his heroin habit. He turned to Geraldine, who tried desperately to keep the family together after their mother died. Kenny often came to her home in the West Lawn apartments at three or four o’clock in the morning, ringing the doorbell, looking for a place to crash and someone to talk to. She’d sigh and let him in. She made him sandwiches while he shared his emotional struggle. “I’m hooked, Gerri,” he told her. “I’m trying to get off, but it’s hard.”
Geraldine convinced Kenny to try a methadone clinic, and she drove him there daily for his shots. “I told him, ‘Kenny, you have to be careful. They’re gonna shoot you if you keep this up,’ ” Geraldine remembered.
“They’ll have to come at me from behind because nobody would give me the chance to see them coming.” Even the weight of addiction had done nothing to humble Kenny.
“He was a born fighter and he just had no fear,” Geraldine said, summing up my father’s life. To his way of thinking, it was you against him. And you were going to break before he would. “You couldn’t tell him different, either. Once he decided he was going to do something, you weren’t going to stop him. He was just a force of nature. The same things that made him the boxer he was are what got him killed.”
We sat in silence for a moment. A warm breeze pushed the curtains aside, and the sweet smell of summer entered the living room. I had never kno
wn where my stubborn resolve came from. Now hearing Gerri describe my father and his unyielding nature, I silently asked myself, Has he given me something after all? I barely registered the thought before I noticed my aunt on the verge of tears. “I’ll never forget the night Kenny died,” she said. “I got a call in the middle of the night. It was from the hospital in Fall River, asking if I knew a Kenny Pemberton . . . they called me because my number was the only one he had in his wallet. When I got to the hospital, he was already gone. They had a sheet over him, except for his face. I can still see the bandanna he had wrapped around his head . . . when I saw him, I just hit the floor . . .”
She shakily raised a tissue to her eyes, and I felt a pang of remorse for bringing her back down that road.
I leaned over to touch her hand. “If you would rather we not talk about this—” I began. But she cut me off, shaking her head.
“No, it’s okay,” she said. “You need to know this.” She spent a moment collecting herself.
“The thing about it was he had been trying to find me all day. He had come by my work, looking for me, and I was out on my break. He asked people on my job when I would be back, said he had something really important to tell me. He waited around for a bit, but then he left.” She paused for a minute and took a deep breath. “That will stay with me the rest of my life, that we kept missing each other that day. I never learned what it was he wanted to tell me. Maybe it was to tell me about you.”
It was time to say good-bye; I could tell Geraldine was exhausted emotionally, and so was I. I gave her a long hug and promised I would stay in touch. Manny walked me out to the porch. I paused at the bottom of the steps and looked around the neighborhood, thinking again just how many times I had walked past this house on my way to school. So many answers had been right inside. I turned to face Manny. There was a question I needed to ask. “Mr. Gomes, when I first came here, you ran inside, and I could hear you calling for Gerri. Can I ask what you told her?”
He looked up Mill Street for a moment and then turned to me. “I told her that she needed to sit down because Kenny’s son was walking across the street.”
It felt good to hear that—to hear myself finally acknowledged as having come from somewhere.
I smiled and nodded my head in understanding.
CHAPTER 33
During our conversation, my aunt Geraldine had warned me that Kenny’s brothers, Warren in particular, would have a more difficult time coming to grips with my sudden arrival. Kenny’s memory was difficult for them even after so many years, and they hadn’t considered the possibility that he might have had children. Geraldine was right, as I’d discover a few days later when I went to see Warren. He was the one who had called the newspaper asking why they had written this “lie” about Kenny.
Geraldine had given me Warren’s number and suggested I call him. I called him the following day from my university office. The voice on the other end was gravelly and curt. “So you think you’re Kenny’s son, huh?”
I wouldn’t let this slight pass. “No, I know I am.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said.
We agreed to meet in downtown New Bedford shortly after work. The location had been my suggestion. I wanted a large public venue with plenty of people. I had received enough warnings to know that when it came to Kenny Pemberton, I needed to remain cautious.
I found Warren dressed in a blue workman’s jumpsuit and sitting on a small brick ledge beside some potted plants. It was unbelievably hot, the type of heat that only a thunderstorm can relieve. A McDonald’s loomed over his shoulder. He wore a blue baseball hat pulled low, and large, dark sunglasses completely masked his eyes. Even with that disguise and from twenty yards away, I could see the resemblance between us. I saw later that he, too, had deep-set eyes and a strong prominent forehead.
As I approached, he mouthed something to himself. Then he turned his head and looked off in the distance, his eyes fixed on something far off. By the time he returned his gaze to my direction, I was standing right in front of him. He wouldn’t look at me and kept pawing the redbrick sidewalk in front of him, like a bull trying to break loose from his confines. I waited patiently, finally taking a seat a few feet away from him on the small ledge.
He pulled a pack of Newports from his breast pocket. “Smoke?” he asked, extending the small green-and-white box in my direction.
I shook my head. “No, thanks. I don’t smoke.”
He nodded, as if expecting this answer. Snapping open a stainless steel Zippo lighter, he lit his cigarette, took a long, slow drag, and expelled it into the atmosphere. A steady stream of foot traffic flowed in and out of the McDonald’s. A big yellow city bus lumbered up the street, spewing exhaust in its wake. “Gerri tells me you went to college in Boston.”
“I did.”
He nodded his approval. “She also tells me that the Robinsons raised you over there on Arnold Street.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Raised is not the word I would use to describe it, but yeah, that is where I grew up.”
He took another pull from his cigarette. “Sorry you had to deal with that.”
I looked at him quizzically. A quick breeze came through the plaza, but it did nothing to alleviate the humidity. “You knew about them, the kind of people they were?”
There were rumors about ’em, how they took kids in for money, treated ’em like animals. Nobody could ever prove it, though. But then there were stories about a kid who finally beat ’em at their own game. They never got any more kids after that.” He gestured to me with his cigarette. “Figurin’ that was you?”
I bobbed my head slowly, doing the best I could to hide my pride at the small victory.
He looked off in the distance. “If Kenny had known his son was there, he would have taken you out of there himself, brought you to us. And then he would have gone back and would have taken out Willie and Betty, too, for treating you like they did.
This picture of my father as the avenger was, I believed, revisionist history. I’d been told a great deal about Kenny, but Kenny had told no one of my existence. Is Warren suggesting that Kenny had not known about me? I dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it came to me. New Bedford was too small for him not to have known, I thought. Such a conclusion seemed less than concrete, however, and the question nagged at me: Had Kenny known that he had a son? Whether he had known about me or not, one thing seemed abundantly clear: by the time he died, he had no idea where I was or what had happened to me. The only thing that connected the two of us was a small sliver of time, a bitter irony I now shared with Warren. “I went to live with the Robinsons right after he died, August 1972,” I said.
He winced at the mention of Kenny’s death. Flicking away the remains of his cigarette across the plaza, he rose to his feet. “Has anyone taken you to his grave?”
“Uh, no,” I said. “I don’t even know where he is buried.”
He stood up. “Come on, then. I’ll take you.”
I felt uneasy about going, but I also sensed a begrudging acceptance from Warren that I was indeed Kenny’s son. We got in my car, and with Warren as my guide, wound our way through downtown New Bedford toward St. John’s Cemetery, Kenny’s final resting place. We traveled up Union Street, passing through the general area where I had grown up. I pointed out several childhood landmarks I recognized: my elementary school, Leed’s, Tailor’s, the small library next to Buttonwood Park. Staring out the window, Warren mumbled a word or two but said little else.
Many neighborhoods in the proud city of New Bedford are huddled together; homes are tightly clustered and there are few front yards or garages to speak of. Cars park on the street, and there is often a tango of traffic on the two-way streets. Located on Allen Street, fewer than ten minutes from downtown, St. John’s Cemetery was nestled snugly in between neighborhoods just like this. The cemetery is enormous, covering several city blocks.
We turned left into the graveyard and immediately bore right at a huge maple
tree, headed toward the cemetery’s southern end. Gravestones of various sizes and shapes were lined up in perfect order, interrupted only by the smooth paved road. The larger stones rose above the earth, timeless shrines that seemed to suggest the largeness of the lives they marked. It was a warm and sunny day, only a few clouds drifting overhead. Large green maples in the full flush of summer stood like guardians over this sanctified place.
We drove until the road ended and got out. Looking around, Warren led us down a neatly ordered row. A gentle breeze greeted us, bringing some relief from the humidity. I trailed behind, looking at the weather-beaten markers. The hundreds of stones in this area were all small and humble, running flat with the land; a few had even sunk below the unkempt grass, the names of the deceased now invisible. Inspecting the graves, I noticed that the dates of passing were mainly from 1970 and 1971. Flowers brightened some of the stones, but for the most part these lives had seen very little in the way of commemoration. Time and distance had taken their toll.
Warren stopped in the middle of the row and gazed down at the ground. Walking slowly toward him, I felt a surge of finality overcome me—the same feeling I had when Russell brought me my father’s picture. A childish thought danced in my mind: Maybe if I just turn around and go, there is still a chance he will come back.
Warren bent down and began pulling up weeds. Peering over his shoulder, I read the words inscribed on the light-gray stone, “Kenneth P. Pemberton,” and above that, his title, “Brother.” Kenny was born in 1946 and died in 1972, making him just twenty-six years old, two years older than I was when visiting his grave for the first time.
This cold, gray, emotionless slab of granite was all that marked my father’s memory—miniscule compared to the largeness of Kenny’s life and the long shadow he had cast over mine. A film of dust and dirt covered the stone, and grass and weeds framed its edges. I went to my trunk and grabbed the bucket and rags I used to wash the car. Spotting a nearby spigot, I filled the bucket and brought it back to the grave. I washed the stone while Warren dug out its sides, using a stick he’d found. We worked in silence, listening to the chirping of the birds and the sound of cars revving on nearby streets. I sensed Warren’s acceptance that I was indeed Kenny’s son, yet I also felt a subtle tension between us, one that I couldn’t articulate.
A Chance in the World Page 16