A MURDER IN MARCUS GARVEY PARK by G. MIKI HAYDEN
One of the wood-carvers at the market from her homeland of Ghana had suggested Miriam try the African specialty shops, with her grass-and-frond baskets. So Miriam and her co-wife Nana had ventured out early, trying to get the merchandise into some neighborhood stores. The shopkeepers liked the baskets, they really did—but business was slow. People wanted fabrics, or paintings, or leather goods these days—not baskets. Customers could buy handsome Indonesian baskets cheaply in Marshalls department store, nearby.
Dispirited, and with every single basket still in her possession—well, Nana was carrying most of them—Miriam led Nana back on 124th by Marcus Garvey Park. How amazing that each fall the trees changed their colors to red and gold. When Miriam had lived on the West African coast so many years before, she had never seen the change of seasons as she did here in New York's Harlem.
"I like those baskets in Marshalls,” Nana enthused, for they had gone in there to take a peek. “What a great store! The prices are good too, I think. We could buy many things in there for ... Christmas.” The girl stared off into the distance, apparently ensnared by the spell of a holiday that was not even her own.
Miriam felt somewhat betrayed. Did the girl not appreciate the fineness, the individuality of the baskets her co-wife produced? Perhaps Miriam might lower her own prices a little, she conceded to herself. Sales on the days she perched on a stool in the Shabazz Market on 116th were not brisk.
They rounded the corner from the north side of the park to the west, where they were met by an unusual sight—a bevy of policemen descending the lookout. A couple of the men carried a stretcher between them with something on it. Miriam's insides suddenly lurched before her brain even registered what she was seeing—the stretcher held a body on top. The officers were bringing not just a body down from the area of the watchtower heights, but the body of a white female.
A white woman dead in Marcus Garvey Park. Not a good thing at all. A white woman probably murdered in the middle of Harlem.
"Oh, Mama, look. A white woman,” said Nana unnecessarily. “Poor thing. And she's pretty. Do you think she's dead?"
Miriam knew the woman was dead. How could one see the body and the way they carried it and not know? “Yes, of course,” she answered. She looked at Nana, ever curious about the girl's unpredictable reactions to life.
How long had the girl lived here with Kofi and Miriam? Less than a year. Miriam wanted to understand something about the young woman but had hardly been able to make out who she was and what she thought, aside from the little oddities that showed on the surface.
The two came closer to the police and a gathering crowd of observers, who wanted simply to look on. Miriam and Nana stopped among the curious passersby.
"A dump job,” Miriam heard someone say.
"A dump job,” Miriam repeated softly to no one but herself. She wasn't sure just what that meant. Unless it meant a human being, a woman, had been discarded like a piece of trash—dumped in the park because she was no longer of use to the one who had thrown her there. The fact that she was a white woman too—so much in the minority in this community—made the thought of violence done against her rather frightening. What might it say about how the people here treated any from outside their circle. Let us not be that way. Tears formed in her eyes.
"What do you think, Mama?” Nana asked. “The husband or the boyfriend got rid of her, I think. Maybe men can do that to their women here like sometimes at home.” Nana seemed seriously to be considering that potential fact of life.
"Of course not,” snapped Miriam. The idea—not Nana—offended her greatly, maybe because a thread of truth lay in the girl's statement. “All people are valuable. No human may decide who can live and who can die.” But men did kill their women sometimes—or someone else's woman, maybe, too. And she thought with an inward revulsion of the trokosi slaves in her homeland, taken at whim or for vengeance against a family by the local priests. The girls were used as sexual slaves, as well as being made to work the fields. Their offspring became slaves too, in time.
And as for the spread of HIV/AIDS in the West African countries and the inability of women to refuse unprotected sex—that was discussed all the time in the newspapers Kofi still received from “home.” Twenty-five years had passed, and they still thought of Ghana as home.
The dead woman was put into a red and white ambulance and taken away, and with nothing left to see, Miriam began to move off toward their apartment, leaving Nana to figure out the change in direction and hurry to catch up.
"Oh, Mama, do you think that women are of value too?” asked the girl, who was not the slightest out of breath, though trotting quickly. “Even if it isn't true, you say that so nice."
Miriam raised her eyebrows, furrowing her forehead. She tried to make exact sense of what the girl had said and why. Was Nana about to ask a favor of Miriam now? What kind? Had Nana done something wrong and was asking forgiveness?
"You are very smart, Mama. Maybe you can solve this crime and find out what happened to the poor white woman if she's dead.” After they'd crossed the street and were closer to home, Nana turned back and watched the lingering onlookers behind them.
"First of all, that's ridiculous,” objected Miriam. “I have no idea who she is or what happened to her any more than you do. Second of all, why should you care?"
"Oh I don't care,” Nana agreed. “I don't care at all. I just know that you could do it—find out what went wrong and fix it, like you do everything else. Sometimes a woman might be killed, and I know it's nothing really. Her parents might care a little bit for a time, but no one else.” Nana seemed absorbed in some disturbing memory behind the thought, and Miriam wondered about the girl's first marriage, the one from which she'd been returned to her family, making her worn goods and only fit to send to an old man in the United States as a useless second wife to feed and clothe.
Then Miriam dismissed the discussion from her mind and concentrated on climbing the stairs inside, while Nana took all the awkward packages and ascended without holding the railing. Nana, of course, was not really useless, Miriam amended to herself.
* * * *
By the next day, Miriam ought to have forgotten about the white woman while fretting over her own lack of luck in selling her baskets, but strangely enough, the opposite was true. In her mind's eye she could see nothing but the white face drained of all color by death and the surrounding artificially blond hair accentuating the ghostly tone of unresponsive flesh.
Of course, when Nana said that Miriam could figure everything out, the young woman was wrong. The police, Miriam knew from television, had many advanced technologies they would apply. She supposed they might have found footprints high in the bushes and were even now determining the type of footwear worn by the man who'd disposed of the woman up there. And they would have taken tissue from under nails and could identify the felon's DNA, which would light up a name on a special NYPD computer within minutes. She had seen these things.
Not that Kofi liked for Miriam to watch such shows. He didn't. He thought long athletic contests in which men kicked a ball here and there, trying to get it into a wide wire mesh, was the most appropriate entertainment for Miriam, for Nana, and for himself. Soccer, though the national sport of most of the English-speaking world, including Ghana, gave Miriam not the slightest lift at all. So she and Nana would watch other shows when Kofi was out talking with the men or had gone into the bedroom for a nap—a home makeover to suit the girl, or a nice homicide investigation just as Miriam enjoyed.
This morning, after they had eaten their breakfast and Kofi had packed up the goods he sold at the market and had left for the day, Nana ran a bath for herself—she would take forever—and Miriam went to the Ninety-Nine Cent Shop on 125th to buy for their dinner whatever might be on sale. Much to her delight, she found frozen chicken. She couldn't believe it. Big packages of frozen chicken for ninety-nine cents each. She bought several. The thr
ee of them could have chicken for their dinner for at least two nights, at no more than fifty cents for each person's meal. The bargains sometimes available were very amazing.
She did come back by way of Fifth Avenue to Marcus Garvey Park, just out of a sense of general interest. Not that she expected to see anything unusual, no. But she felt as if she had unfinished business on her plate.
A boy from the building—could he be twelve or thirteen?—walked right by her, and she nodded pleasantly. “Can I help you with your packages?” he asked. All the children in the apartment house were so well trained that she marveled. On television the children in Harlem ran with gangs. In real life, their parents would have locked them in the house at the first sign of trouble. These were good kids.
She debated, then gave him her package with frozen chicken and frozen okra just to keep him alongside her. “You play in the park here, Martin,” she said.
"Yes, ma'am.” Oh, his mother Karen would be so proud; she'd feel satisfied. Miriam would report this good behavior to her directly.
"Did you see that they found a dead woman there yesterday?” Perhaps she wouldn't mention the conversation to the mother. In fact, perhaps she really shouldn't bring up such a matter to the child. She eyed him steadily to judge his reaction. He cast his gaze down.
"Uh ... yes,” he said.
"Well, I'm not with the police, so don't be so nervous,” she remarked hastily.
"I know,” he answered. The Fifth Avenue bus came slowly along the west side of the park.
"Look.” Miriam pointed to a very large advertisement on the bus's exterior. “If you see something, say something,” she read. “That is the new rule.” Of course she had been told that the advisory pertained to any terrorist threats, and she wasn't at all sure what that “something” might amount to in such a regard.
"I know,” he repeated and nodded as if that saying was meaningful to him. “I did see something the other night. At least I guess I did. I was just hanging out. It was a little late, and I had to get home."
"Of course,” said Miriam. She stopped. They were near the building, and she wanted him to have a chance to speak his piece. She was going to defrost the chicken anyway.
He halted alongside and looked at her seriously. “I saw the white limousine. Do you know the one I mean?"
Miriam didn't.
"The man they call the Judge owns it.” Martin turned and pointed toward where the police cars and the ambulance had sat yesterday evening. “The limousine was parked over there.” He gazed down at the ground again and shrugged. “That's all I saw, really. I didn't want to get involved."
"That's all right,” Miriam said, and she resumed their progression. But was it all right? Certainly not. Now she was responsible for holding this very important piece of information, probably the key to the entire murder case. In a minute, feeling confused and guilty, she entered the building and began to struggle up the four flights to home.
* * * *
Miriam often kept Nana close to her side simply because she didn't know what else to do with the girl and not wanting her to get into any serious trouble. From time to time Miriam found an errand for her, however, such as today, when Miriam sent Nana to seek out any sign of a white limousine owned by a black man, somewhere in Harlem. Harlem was large, but the girl was hearty and healthy, and the day, however cold, was sunny.
Moreover, Nana had a warm jacket Miriam had bought for her last week for twenty-nine dollars in the Salvation Army thrift shop on 125th. The coat was a nice, respectable, dark blue, though Nana had kept her eye on a skimpier red one all the while they stood in line at the cash register to pay. The red had even been a little lower in price, but Miriam was having none of that, and in the end, Nana was happy for the jacket once they'd hung it in the closet at home.
Twenty-nine dollars, Miriam mused, as she set out a few baskets on a brown and green African-style cloth near her husband's table at the crafts market on 116th. If Nana were her own child, she couldn't treat the girl any better than she did. At that thought, she felt relieved because when Kofi had sent for his high school friend's daughter as a second wife, Miriam had felt angry and jealous and had worried she would take it out on the woman coming through no fault of her own. Thank God the worst had not happened, and instead, the two had become what the English (who had ruled Ghana once upon a time) called bosom companions.
When Nana returned after an hour, a vague smile on her face, Miriam decided the girl had met an interesting man, and looking for the limo had slipped her mind. “It's lunchtime,” Nana said when she came near to Miriam, who sat with the same number of baskets she had brought to this spot earlier in the day. Nana looked at her nice watch—eight dollars on the street, out of Miriam's egg money. How Miriam loved those clever English expressions, though this one she wasn't sure about. Maybe it meant that, like eggs, the money came in a certain fashion. What fashion would that be?
Miriam reached into her plastic lunch bag and, speaking of eggs, gave Nana a hard-boiled one along with a yam. Then she gave Kofi two eggs and a yam. Naturally, the man would get an egg more than the women. Why was that exactly? Miriam took her own egg and cracked it on the concrete next to where Nana had settled herself.
"Do you have salt?” Nana asked, then added, as if the information was the last thing on her mind, “I found the automobile."
Miriam handed the girl a little packet of pepper, all she had left of her stockpile, and noticed Kofi looking at the packet with some interest. Miriam pretended she hadn't observed his desire for the condiment.
"Now you tell me,” Miriam answered. “We could have gone first and then had lunch.” But maybe that was just why Nana had smartly waited to tell her co-wife.
* * * *
A white limousine was parked on the curb outside the Judge Newcomb Community Service building on 120th Street, a narrow townhouse in need of renovation. The license on the car, what Miriam had heard called “vanity plates,” said HERE COMES THE JUDGE. Miriam had never noticed the place before, but she had certainly been told recently that these buildings, not so long ago bought for fifty and sixty thousand dollars, were currently selling for between one and two million.
Nana stood admiring the long, elegant white car until Miriam took her by the arm and led her to the building entrance. There, the senior wife tapped timidly at the door. “Go on in,” shouted a neighbor on the sidewalk. He waved them with a push, in clear indication. So Miriam walked in, making sure that Nana entered too. The place was as shabby inside as it was out.
A woman standing at a long, high desk barred their further ingress in the front room and looked at the two visitors without much enthusiasm. “WhakinIdofuryou?” she asked.
Miriam took a moment to decipher the message, then she pondered. What kind of community service might she want from a judge? “I'd like help getting my peddler's license,” she said shyly. With a license, she'd be able to offer her baskets for sale on 125th Street. No one else sold baskets out there, only books about an idyllic life once upon a time in Africa, shea butter, incense, oils, framed pictures based on African themes, and fruit.
"Oh,” said the woman. She seemed familiar with Miriam's request and reached underneath her table, fetching up an official-looking form. “Fill it out and come back,” she enunciated. “Bring two pictures.” She looked Miriam over unapologetically. “But you probably aren't going to get the license unless you're a military veteran. The city only gives a certain number, and those are long gone.” She shrugged. “Maybe the judge...” She shook her head dubiously. “Citizen?” she asked. “Green card?"
That, indeed, was a troubling question, and Miriam wasn't sure of the answer. This was the sort of thing she had never even tried to ask her husband.
"Citizen,” she said softly, though she didn't know.
"Fill it out. Come back,” repeated the woman.
Miriam took the form, thanked her, and withdrew, Nana following close behind.
"How lucky you are,” said Nana aft
er they stepped out. “I'd like to get a peddler's license too.” Miriam refrained from commenting on the whole absurd scenario.
Now both women stopped and stared at the limo—and at the tall black man in his shirtsleeves, despite the cold, who ran a clean rag over the spotless surface of the car. He was a fine man, and if Miriam had only been thirty years younger ... But she wasn't. She looked at her co-wife, whose eyes shined at the sight.
Nana led and Miriam followed to the street where they both examined the car further with rapt and well-focused attention. “This is a good car,” Nana said. “Of course I have driven in many cars before, but I would sometime like to ride in a car like this.” Then she acted as if she'd just noticed the man wiping off the car. “This must be your car,” she said admiringly. She smiled.
The man stopped his work and began, in Miriam's opinion, to make a complete fool of himself. Miriam sighed. They always did. Such was the effect of Nana upon men.
The car was his—Wallace's—but at the same time it wasn't, he explained. Though surely someday soon he would give Nana a ride. He'd drive her anywhere she wanted to go—and back again—even if the car was not actually his. After all, he was—his muscles seemed to flex on their own accord—the car's driver.
"Then you would drive it every night,” suggested Miriam, jumping into the conversation.
"Oh well, the Judge often takes it out himself,” the young man admitted. “But other times I drive for him, or I might take it myself.” The lungs inflated the chest again, and he looked at Nana hopefully.
* * * *
At home that evening, with Kofi in his presiding chair, Miriam allowed as how the women had gone to the center the judge ran. And she was about to mention the peddler's application, so as to see what Kofi might say about their status in this country.
But Kofi reacted quickly to the mention of the judge. “He's a bad man, and you two had best stay away from him.” He glanced at Nana, seemingly uncertain as to how much he could say in front of her, as if she were a child. That was the posture, in fact, the two had taken toward the girl. And Kofi didn't sleep with her. Something had gone wrong in that department, and the usual expectations of marriage were never mentioned among the three of them. Certainly Nana would never talk about any such thing. She was patently interested in much younger men. Men her own age. Men with firm muscles or a little extra cash in their pockets, or perhaps the use of an elegant car.
AHMM, January-February 2007 Page 6