Song of the Shank

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  Voices reached her even before she and Mr. Tabbs reached the stone fence that rose up from the ground ten feet into the air above them. Passing through the gate, she saw a wild constellation of orphans roaming in playful circles across the wet grass of the main lawn, boys and girls alike dressed in cheerful uniforms (black pants, white shirt or blouse with a length of red tie extending down the front), their voices singing through her skin.

  Down, down, baby

  Down, down, baby

  Down by the riverside

  Grandma, grandma sick in bed

  She called the doctor and the doctor said

  Let’s get the rhythm of the head, ding dong (Heads rock bell-like side to side)

  Let’s get the rhythm of the head, ding dong (Heads rock)

  Let’s get the rhythm of the hands (Two claps)

  Let’s get the rhythm of the hands (Two claps)

  She relished this dance that she had seen many times before. Would it be too much to say that she wanted to join them with her old arms, legs, and hips? She pushed to know. They scattered away from the macadam walkway on her approach.

  Hey, Mr. Tabbs, sir, they said in one voice from both sides of the lawn. Did you bring us anything from the city?

  He got some chocolate.

  Some wine candy.

  Turtles.

  You eat that? That’s nasty.

  Nawl. Some cracklin.

  Nawl. Some Jumpin Jacks.

  Candy cane.

  It ain’t Christmas.

  He brought the lady.

  Who she?

  Who you?

  She a teacher.

  Nawl.

  Uh huh.

  She his wife.

  Nawl.

  Uh huh.

  No way.

  Is that yo wife?

  She his wife.

  Shut up.

  You shut up.

  Their next words like their last. A calm Sharpened her as she looked at the face of each child. Carried by memory, she wanted to hear all their voices at once, even if she had to close her eyes to hear them. (What the heart believes it needs.) And even if some (many? most?) of the orphans did not speak the way she was used to hearing niggers speak, but instead, like Mr. Tabbs, vocalized their say with that new city (Edgemere?) way of saying, a tongue that was already starting to sound familiar to her ears. (Mapping language.) She could feel the movement of shared blood, theirs and hers. Why could they not remain one body? They were niggers after all, and every nigger was a slave—so she had been told for as long as she could remember—Africa a whole country full of slaves where woogies could go shop and take their pick. Blood was blood, even if, as she was to learn, Mr. Tabbs and some of the orphans had been born here, on Edgemere or in the city.

  All of their humility drained away as they drifted around her, the ground saturated with their dance. Come on inside, Mamma. They wanted to look at her, touch her, get the closest look and feel that they could, eyes in their fingertips. She did not object; she was in thrall to all of them. She and Mr. Tabbs continued up the macadam walk toward the Home accompanied by dozens of rejoicing orphans, their dancing bodies bumping into her. A few minutes later they all moved as one through the dimness of a long wide corridor, the last rays of sunlight persevering in stained glass windows that she would later come to find in every room of the Home except for the chapel. Light shining through biblical scenes—Christ multiplying one dhow into a thousand, Elijah carried into heaven on a chariot of fire, and so on—in variegated pigments, a kind of red-yellow-blue combination (light interwoven) that stood out as the only color through the stained glass. (What Thomas cannot see you look at.) Little that she could make out amid the loose shadows on the rise (three flights of stairs? four?) to an upper floor, but she could tell that the Home was a formidable structure, sturdy and well built with the same thick stones that the other houses on the island were constructed from.

  They stopped before a room on a floor of many rooms, the line of children behind Mr. Tabbs and her. Mr. Tabbs slipped one hand into his waistcoat and removed an iron ring that encircled a well-notched key, then slid the key into the door and unlocked it for her to enter, which she did, a little dazed by the speed of things.

  This is your room, he said. I will bring your son. The look in his eyes made her feel strange. He took his leave, and the orphans followed him, mostly without complaint, waving their good-byes, feeling exactly the way they wanted to feel, the older children pulling the reluctant younger children along.

  Not long after an orphan brought her supper, three fish sleeping side by side on a plate. She ate. Then the night came to shut her in anxious waiting. She felt the walls contract as most of the air in the room swirled around her. Could feel the walls pressing on her skin. She sank off to sleep. Little did she know, it would be one week before she would see Thomas.

  Early the next (second) day, Mr. Tabbs called upon her with six or seven orphans in tow, carrying the dresses, blouses, skirts, gowns, stockings and undergarments, and shoes that constituted her new wardrobe. They filled her closets with the clothes and set her table for breakfast, then went away without a word. And Mr. Tabbs repeated what he had said the evening before, that he would bring Thomas to her.

  There in her quarters the world dropped away. Morning light so heavy that it almost shattered the stained glass windows as it fell into the room, so heavy that it hurt when it dropped onto her—bearing up in that light, bearing that light—every familiar object in the room (table, chair, bed, closet, lamp, bowl, basin) atremble (quivering), fragile, brittle in the face of such breakage. Like the clouds the walls changed color. She tried to keep very still in the fantastic temperatures of the room and make her way to the fires in her mind where Thomas might be, a place she could never hold for long, light distracting her, as she should be distracted, the sound (hearing) of light searing her flesh. (Light has many names.) Would lean out the window as far as she could, looking down into the ocean’s hush and hurry. And so time would wear on, each frame of the day free and clear in the unclenched light down to the dhows (mechanisms of wind) with their jagged sails, coming and going each hour, their giant hooks—gaffs they were called—coils of fishing line, and baskets visible even from her window. She would take her supper and settle into bed, until the moon appeared (at last) in the night sky, her shutters open and window swallowing a mouthful of stars.

  Rooted thus in her quarters, each day passed pretty much the same her first week on the island of Edgemere. The orphans would arrive in triplicate to bring her breakfast, her dinner, and her supper—eventually, she and they came to acknowledge one another without astonishment—and, supper done, she would have to get out of bed to receive a new visitor each evening. On the third supper-curtained day, a giant stooped under the lintel and lengthened his body into the room—the wonder of it, all her life happened long before this—then stood there in all of his tall broad majesty in his billowing robe, a wild mangle of folds. The curious circumstances of his height, which elicited feelings of attraction and repulsion, protection and terror, placed him beyond the physical confines of handsome and ugly. (His face hardly registered.) He introduced himself as Reverend Wire. Even his voice made a powerful impression on her. Sometimes God chooses not to explain. Sister Wiggins, if you need answers I would encourage you to sojourn to that place where only the Holy Ghost can take us through prayers. Whenever he delivered his weekly sermon to the seated assemblage in the chapel, it was the word of the Almighty writing Himself on her flesh. Many of us believe that God gives us too little. Oh, how wrong we are. Let me tell you, my children, that when God gives He gives in excess. Make no mistake about that. It is for each of us to take full advantage of His plentiful quantities. The five senses exist for more than five reasons. He who listens too hard does not see. And he who looks too hard does not hear. To all appearances he was completely at ease sermonizing from his lofty position at the pulpit, his long arms fully extended beneath him on either side of the podium to support
his long body, which jutted all the way forward over the podium at a precarious angle as if he were about to make an acrobatic effort to jacknife his lower extremities into the air and stand (balance) on his hands.

  Each Sunday the orphans make a spirited march into the chapel as one organized body, more than two hundred of them—how many lives can go on at once?—only to break into playful frenzy: bodies planted between the furrows of pews, hiding-and-seeking, hands scooping up coins of sunlight scattered across the floor, lips drumming rhymed banter—the Dozens they called it—all of their endeavors bright and hopeful. Talking, playing, laughing, until they realize that she is there in the chapel with them and they surge forward—the aspect of delight insists upon a closer look—welcoming her with daisied smiles. They want to hold, to be held. Perhaps she gives one or two of them a hug. The watching faces swoop down from the wall in a swarm of armed appearances so that the service can begin. We give thanks for the young ones among us, who remind us how much we need to do to create with them a better world. We should not indict our children with our deeds and ambitions. So what must we say? The orphans all hold her hand—what else means anything to them?—or the dense folds of her pleats. While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal. There’s a fullness here, some surplus, that she won’t respond to. (Is that it?) She can only empty herself with prayer. I was reading the Book of Corinthians the other day and I came across this strange verse. Let me read it to you: 1 Corinthians 12:17 says, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?” The rest of the verse is also strange: “If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?” She takes a good hard look at the children, her hesitations blurred. Each Sunday she brings herself to the chapel, but she knows she is not enough. For all of their dawdling, their moping and whining, their store of groans and paroxysms of wails and howls that accompany the sorrow of her leaving the chapel after Sunday service, Reverend Wire is reluctant to take the whip or rod to their backsides. They give reason for cruelty, but he has opted for accommodation. (Quiet feelings come to suffice.) God makes us good, but it is our duty and responsibility as Africans and as Christians to be better. Think about it. Turn it over in your heart.

  The fourth day, a figured shaft of air spiraled in the doorway, Deacon Double bringing the scent of earth and flowers. Awkwardly smiling, awkwardly received. He inclined his posture toward her—this impulse to lean forward, to lean across—nodded, and took her hand but took it too hard. A quaver, a fumbling, a missed beat, a smile held too long. His head rested egg-like softly on his shoulders, and his narrow eyes and broad forehead reminded her of a statue with its fixed sculpted eyes, an ancient granite face (his skin gray). He moved buoyantly around the candlelit room but with almost hoofed (goat, horse, deer) precision, stepping slowly and carefully as if on dangerous terrain. While circulating he looked around with curious insistence, intoning words as if he were singing in the voice of someone twice his size. Sister, he said, be patient, and keep your head high, for the one you are waiting for will soon be here. I believe that the time is at hand when the sons of God shall be revealed—stopping every now and again for a lingering look, that sconce on the wall, those porcelain knobs on the cupboard doors, the ill-fitting drawers, his skin changing color depending on where he stood in the room, now yellow like the bedsheets, now red like the clay pitcher, as she had heard that certain magical lizards could do in Africa. I saw a door standing open in heaven, and the same voice I had heard before spoke to me with the sun of a mighty trumpet blast. The voice said, Come up here, and I will show you what must happen after these things. So I went up and I saw. She tries to understand the riot of his words—I marvel at the sun which is not afraid to repeat itself and at the seasons that come again and again, or the bee returning to the flower, and at new things repeating the old—for he has a thousand proverbs and verses to hand, one for every occasion. Those are hurt who want to be hurt. Agony does not only belong to the heart. And thus do the innocent suffer. Not because God is punishing them but because they have very little power to stop what is causing their suffering. But power with others can change the world. The spirit bears the body forward. Charity pleased to learn something new and useful, although she said nothing to him about her gratification. Each glass-globed and sconced flame burning on the wall bent toward him as he passed. (He bent the light toward him.)

  After some time he stopped walking, light collecting around him. (She bedazzled, swayed by movement, words, light.) He lost the sense of inexhaustible and energetic joy and gained a certain mundane solemnity and rigidity, but even as he stood in place directly before her he kept touching himself—his shirt pockets, his trouser pockets, his hair—as if he were searching for something. Talking always, holding counsel. From all evidence he was a man who had lived and still lives a God-fearing and God-directed prayer-stained life. All of the schemes and deceptions of the past are past. You are with us now, you are among us now, you are one of us now. Here you have found sanctuary. This is your resting place. So be patient, sister. The hour of our redemption is soon near. Once he ceased to speak, he stood for a time in silence until she observed his right hand cross his body, disappear into the cavernous sleeve of his robe, and withdraw to her astonishment a weathered copy of the Good Book. He brought the tome to his lips, kissed it, allowed his book-heavy hand to fall to his side, then remained silent and completely still as if in preparation for more. A strong possibility that he had a second heavy book up the other sleeve. For all she knew this man full of words had an entire library hidden in the recesses of his garments or his body. He opened the book, the smell of an earlier time (Bible days) leaking out of the pages, and read some passage—… an old battleground (limbs strewn around)—the pages whispering as he turned them. He touched her arm. Spread his fingers on her back. Sister, I hope you are ready. Time is waiting. We—you, Tom, the church—we have much work to do. Multitudes will sing his name once again. But this time he will sing for us.

  Would it be that a dozen or more of the brightest orphans with their teachers (light shining through their dresses) paid her a brief visit the next morning, her fifth day? Not that they meant to tell her anything or take anything away from her. (Unlike her other visitors.) She was still an other, but they had decided to take her in with compassion and trust. How tender of them. After all she was somebody’s mother, somebody’s wife. Later she sat in the foreign evening thinking about the deacon’s words from the day before, seeing this place the way he saw it, as a getting-away place. And just as her thoughts began to settle, she heard the door. Found a man in his prime neatly tucked into his blue uniform, with his little cup of cap above his uneven eyes, his hair in glossy slicked-back waves, and a brass-buckled belt encircling his waist, with a revolver sheathed inside a polished leather holster, a braided cord looped in its handle. Lieutenant Drinkwater. His hand moved in swift short strokes, and their blood neared in a quick clasp, a brisk intensity. Wire brought word of your arrival, he said. He was so excited. I don’t think I have ever seen him so excited. So I was dandering by and thought I might as well call. The line of his thin brown lips eluding his words. What was there for her to say? (She brings little to the scene.) These simple facts closed an evening.

  Although she often wondered that week why Mr. Tabbs was taking so long to return with Thomas, truth be told, she was also happy to remain confined in her quarters, looking at dhows fixed on the sea, lapping waves, and the sun bobbing weightless on the horizon. (Where is the earth? Nowhere.) She knew nothing worth knowing, for the walls silenced all trace of the world, could keep any voices in earshot out of her, the small floating lives of all those orphans. (Some excitement puddling into laughter.) Nothing slowed or sped her. For her time was not divided into seconds and hours but into light and sound. (Hold sound and light apart.) So she assumed small guilts and was content to eat her meals, tolerate her
visitors, retire to bed, enjoy a night of unbroken sleep, and wake at daylight looking at the floor.

  She was among people far too eager to have her, to receive her. Their admiration, their enthusiasm. (If only she could feel incredible to herself.) Only her last caller seemed to express any reluctance, that small-hours visitant on the sixth day. As the door opened, he was slightly turned as if ready to go away, sensing he had disturbed her. Perhaps the candor of the light dismayed him. Then he turned to face her and her throat dried quicker than a match put to a kerosene-wet wick. He was well groomed and slim with a muscular elegance—how would you have him?—his medium-height frame encased in a perfectly tailored suit. She immediately felt underdressed in her new clothes and her old scarf on the sweat-wet nest of her hair. He made his sign, spoke his greeting. His well-shaved face did not know what expression to hold. She was happy to feel him take her hand, touch that convinces the hand. (Let’s see how she felt that day.) His voice rose up thick and comforting. You can take me or leave me. At her invitation he sat down easily in a chair at the table. The story is his thick hands holding a glass of water in the unruly afternoon light. So much is misunderstood about your presence here, he said. And your son. Especially him. His left hand pressed the loose fabric of his waistcoat to his chest. It is my sincere hope that both you and he come out the better for it. And that was the start of it, this Mr. Ruggles putting words together for her purpose.