“Sure.” John handed him a silver-plated lighter embossed with the initials JS.
Harlan ran his thumb over the letters. “Nice,” he breathed.
Cigarette smoke mushroomed. John opened the window, removed a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, and shook a joint into the palm of his hand. “Hey, look what I got.”
Harlan eyed it, licking his lips. “Is that what I think it is? I haven’t had one of those in five years.”
“Well then, it looks like I came at the right damn time.”
“Fire it up.”
“I’m not smoking in your mama’s house. You know she hates this shit. Let’s take a drive, maybe go see the old neighborhood.”
“You got a car?”
“Negro, didn’t I tell you I was driving a cab?”
Harlan scratched his head. “Yeah, but you said you was driving a cab in New Jersey.”
John shot him an exasperated look. “What you think, the cab turns into a pumpkin if I drive it to New York? Man, you been shut up in this funky-ass room too long, the bad air in here is fucking with your mind.”
Harlan smashed his cigarette into an ashtray overflowing with butts and peanut shells. “Yeah, well, the old neighborhood ain’t nothing but dirt now. Mama said the city bought up all the houses and then tore them down; that’s why we had to move here.”
John nodded. “Don’t mean we can’t roll through, just for old time’s sake. We’ll go down to the water, burn this beauty over the river.”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Or, ” John suggested lightly, “we can drop in at Abyssinian.”
Harlan frowned. “The church?”
“Yeah.”
“You kidding? You went to war and came back religious?”
John gave him a sober look. “And you didn’t? Out in those trenches, me and God became the best of friends. He kept me safe and sent me back home to my mama, intact.”
“Well, I wasn’t in the war,” Harlan mumbled, dropping his head a bit.
“Them scars on your legs say different.”
Harlan lit a new cigarette and pulled hard.
“Look here, I got friends and you got friends who came back in bags with tags on their toes and some who didn’t come back at all, like your man Lizard. We the lucky ones. God brought us home for a reason. You think this all an accident? Nah, man, this is God’s plan.”
John pushed himself up from the sill, walked over to Harlan, and crouched down by the bed. “I know you been through some bad shit, and you dealing with some pain that you think no one understands. But I’m here to tell you that God understands, and because He loves you, He is willing to take all that pain and anger from you; all you got to do is give it to Him.”
Harlan’s mouth twitched. He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes; tears trickled down his forearms. “You full of shit,” he gurgled.
“Nah, man, not about this.” John patted Harlan’s knee. “You go on ahead and cry, ain’t nothing wrong with crying. It’s cleansing.”
After Harlan mopped his face with the edge of the blanket, he said, “You think God’s all right with us smoking weed?”
“Why wouldn’t He be? He the one created it. It grows outta the ground just like the flowers and the trees, don’t it?”
Chapter 82
It wasn’t a thing Harlan could tell people. Not his mother, father, or John Smith. If he even hinted at what he was seeing, the things he thought about doing to himself and others—well, it would mean a straitjacket and rubber room for him.
Sometimes Harlan looked at his mother and saw the image of that bitch who killed Lizard rippling like water over Emma’s sweet face. The first time it happened, he was sitting at the dinner table, blinking and blinking. Emma asked if there was anything wrong, if he’d gotten something in his eye. Harlan just kept blinking at the rice that was squirming on his plate like maggots. He shoved the plate away and stood. When he looked at Emma, the bitch was looking back at him. He cried out, his intestines knotted and then unraveled, and Harlan soiled himself right there in the dining room. Sam jumped up, hollering, but then fell quiet. He took Harlan by the arm. “Let’s get you cleaned up, son.” Whimpering like a child, Harlan pressed his face into Sam’s shoulder to hide his eyes from Emma’s startled ones.
That wasn’t something you worked into casual conversation.
And the ghosts? Who could he tell about the ghosts? Even with the lights on, the dead haunted him, crowding his room, wounds open and letting so much blood, it covered his floor like an ocean.
Harlan couldn’t tell a soul about that.
Outside of his window, the Harlem streets disappeared, the children, the cars—all vanished, replaced by the Buchenwald prison yard and the gallows and the guards glaring up at him, guns aimed.
No, that wasn’t anything he could talk about.
So he suffered, and not necessarily in silence. The haggard appearance of his parents was proof of that.
Harlan remained in that apartment for four straight years, rarely venturing out into the hallway or down onto the street.
Even if he hadn’t climbed onto the fire escape in the dead of winter, naked and screaming in German, they still would have had to move because the landlord had had it up to here with tenants’ complaints about Harlan’s screeching in the middle of the night; and so he was left with no other choice but to evict them.
* * *
Emma and Sam didn’t want to tell Harlan they were planning to move. When he questioned them about the boxes filled with family heirlooms, records, and such, Emma said that she was putting them in storage for safekeeping.
“From what?”
To that she replied, “Safe from paint splatter.”
So the apartment getting a fresh coat of paint was the first lie.
The second dilemma was how exactly they planned on getting Harlan out of the old apartment and into the new one.
Dr. Carter presented a viable solution: “Drug him.”
He came the day of the move, and shifted his eyes away from Harlan’s marble stare when he lied, “This will help with those rashes,” referring to the scarlet bumps—eerily resembling rope burns—that sometimes appeared around Harlan’s wrists.
Dr. Martin stuck the needle in Harlan’s arm and the sedative took hold within minutes. When the movers arrived, Harlan was sprawled on the sofa, snoring.
Sam pointed at his son. “Y’all gotta move him too.”
Sure that he was yanking their chains, the trio of muscled, bald-headed brothers laughed.
“Nah, I ain’t joking, I need one of you to carry him down to the taxi and then up to the new apartment.” Sam gave his watch a nervous glance. “We got ’bout four hours before he wakes up, so get the hominy grits out your asses.”
Chapter 83
Three more years of life swinging between chaos and calm.
Emma’s nerves were shot to hell, and her husband who did not drink was now spooning Scotch into his evening cup of coffee, instead of sugar.
Electric shock treatment had come up numerous times, but Emma quickly tabled the idea, claiming that she didn’t have the heart to plunge Harlan into that type of hell even though he was dragging them through his own.
The thing that finally saved their sanity was isoniazid.
Sam shook the bottle of pills at Dr. Carter. “You said this is used to treat TB? But Harlan don’t have that, so how’s it going to help him?”
“Sometimes,” Dr. Carter explained, “medicine is developed for one thing and ends up being just as good for another.”
Emma took the bottle from Sam and studied the label. “But will taking these pills give Harlan TB?”
“No, of course not.”
Harlan was sitting between his parents, lacing and unlacing his fingers. Emma looked at him and touched the bottle of pills to his thigh.
“What do you think, son? You think you want to give these a try?”
Not that he had a choice. Even if Harlan had
said no, Emma would have ground the pills to powder and sprinkled them into his glass of morning orange juice or onto his plate of hot grits.
* * *
And the pills really did seem to help. So after years of feeling unhinged, Emma started to feel more grounded, more hopeful for Harlan’s future.
* * *
“The money from the house is just sitting in the bank, collecting dust,” she pointed out one morning over breakfast.
“It’s called interest, Emma,” Sam replied.
“Whatever. It ain’t doing us no good.”
“What you wanna do with it?”
“Buy a house.”
“Another one? Where?”
“Jersey.”
“New Jersey?”
“It’s nice and quiet over there.”
“Far, though.”
“Far from what?”
“Far from here, where I make my living.”
“You think you can’t find work out there?”
“I can find work anywhere,” Sam said.
“So what’s the problem?”
“Ain’t no problem.”
“I think we need a change. It’d be nice to get away from these trifling Harlem niggers.”
“Trifling?”
“Uh-hum. ’Sides, I think it would do Harlan a world of good.”
“Well, he’s doing good right here. Them pills have worked wonders—he’s getting out some, back to playing his guitar. What more moving to Jersey gonna do?”
“Didn’t I already explain myself?”
“Trifling Harlem niggers?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t think they got those type of folk in New Jersey?”
“Sam, please!”
“Okay.”
“Maybe out there he’ll meet a decent girl, not like these hussies he running with here. He can get married and give us some grandbabies. Don’t you want some grands?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t wanna be a grandmother here in the city. I want a house with a porch and backyard where my grands can romp and play.”
“Well, why not go back to Macon?” Sam asked.
“And have to step off the sidewalk to ’low white people to pass? Can’t look ’em in the eye, gotta look at their shoes? No thank you. New Jersey is as far south as I am willing to go.”
“So, New Jersey then?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Well, you the boss, baby.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
Chapter 84
In the early 1950s, white people were fleeing Trenton, New Jersey for the quaint seaside towns along the shore. Those who hadn’t posted a For Sale sign in their yard were planning to do so.
For decades, Trenton residents had flat-out refused to sell to blacks. Those who did were ostracized and the new families terrorized. But by the ’50s, Trenton’s sister city, Newark, was growing blacker by the day. And anyone with an ounce of sense could see that Trenton was slowly succumbing to the same fate.
* * *
Seventeen Fountain Avenue. A two-story, pink-red brick house, three bedrooms, one bathroom, combined living and dining areas, and a rickety front porch slung over a patch of grass. Square in the middle of the yard grew an old, fat tree with thick, sloping branches.
“It’s a nice little house.”
“Need work though.” Sam scratched thoughtfully at his chin.
“Well, you the person for it.”
“You sure about this, Emma?”
She grabbed his hand. “It feels right. Don’t you feel it?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You think Harlan will like it?”
“Do he got a choice?”
“I think this is a good place to stay for a while.”
“A while? Woman, you planning on moving us again?”
“Not with boxes and moving men.”
“What you saying then?”
“I’m saying we gonna grow old here.”
“We already old, baby.”
“I mean older. The next time we move, it’ll be on up to heaven.”
Chapter 85
October 1952
Surrendering to the lullaby and goodnight of autumn, the flowers threw down their petals and wilted. The trees, as if ashamed, waited till night fell before dropping their golden leaves.
The fire department locked off the hydrants, barbecue grills were stored away, white shoes and purses moved to the shadowy corners of closets, children returned to school.
Labor Day was a month-old memory by the time the moving truck, followed by Sam, Emma, and Harlan (in their sun-yellow Chevrolet Fleetmaster), along with Lucille and her new husband Gomez Allen (in their powder-blue Ford De Luxe convertible coupe), pulled up to 17 Fountain Avenue and wrecked the doleful quiet of the dying season.
Car doors opened, radios on, the shriek of violin strings that prefaced Nat King Cole’s velvet voice caught the warm autumn breeze and sailed across the street into Patsy Harris’s sitting room.
Patricia “Patsy” Harris, a thirty-year-old fading prom queen and reluctant mother of three, had few luxuries in her life. Listening to Queen for a Day was one of them.
Glued to the radio, Patsy swatted at her ears as if the music was a bothersome fly. During the commercial break she stood to close the window, but spotting the spectacle, she reached for the phone instead.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Jill?”
“Patsy? Let me call you back after Queen for a Day goes off.”
“This is important.”
“Oh. The baby okay?”
“It’s not the baby. We just got some new neighbors.”
“Oh?”
“Niggers.”
“Oh!”
An hour later, Patsy, bouncing her four-month-old on her shoulder, was still at the window, phone fixed to her ear, rattling off descriptions of the people, their cars, and their furniture.
“Um, wait a minute, Jill. A Newark Checker cab just pulled up.”
“A cab, huh?”
“Another nigger.”
“A passenger?”
“No, the driver.”
John Smith leapt from the taxi, nodded at the moving men, strolled up the steps, and disappeared into the house.
“They unpack any watermelon?” Jill snickered from her house around the corner on Sweets Avenue.
“Not yet, but I expect to smell some fried chicken any second now.”
Minutes after he arrived, John left. He returned an hour later with Mayemma sitting in the passenger seat.
Before stepping from the car, Mayemma checked her lipstick and adjusted her wig. She was tilting the scales at three hundred pounds and Emma, who was waiting on the porch, couldn’t hide her surprise when Mayemma began ambling toward her.
“Oh my goodness,” Patsy breathed. “The taxi driver just came back with a hog!”
“You lying, Patsy. A real, live hog?”
* * *
They tried not to get teary-eyed, but it was hard. They’d both endured so much.
“Guuuurrl,” Emma crooned, grinning.
Mayemma tucked her chin into her chest and walked into Emma’s open arms.
* * *
“Well,” Jill sighed, “that makes four colored families in the neighborhood.”
“Six,” Patsy corrected.
“Six? Are you sure?”
“Yep. Donna called me a few days back and said she spotted coloreds moving into a house on Wayne Avenue.”
“Wayne Avenue? Wow.”
“And remember last February, that white man and his black wife bought that yellow house on New Rose Street?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot about them. You’re right, Patsy. Six.”
“I’ve gotta go, Jill. The baby needs to be changed and I want to catch Frank Agostino before he goes home for the day.”
“Something wrong with your pipes?”
“No, not the plumber, his cousin, the locksmith. I want hi
m to put dead bolts on the door. I don’t really feel safe living around all these type of people.”
“I know what you mean. Me and Charlie feel the same way, that’s why we bought a gun.”
Chapter 86
Unwelcomed. Incriminated by their dark skin—the white residents charged the Elliotts with wretchedness. Without benefit of judge or jury, they were found guilty and condemned to years of harassment.
At night, while they slept, garbage was dumped onto their little porch, bags of feces (canine and human) set ablaze on their neatly cut lawn, house keys were used to mutilate their car.
Yes, Harlan had a heavy foot and had been known on occasion to push the Fleetmaster beyond the speed limit, but even on those days when he was perfectly law-abiding, the cops still harassed him. Following those incidents, Harlan would be despondent for days, having developed a fear of white men in uniform; police officers, firemen, the security guard at Woolworth’s, and the postman—all made him shudder.
As tough as it was on him—on all of them—Emma refused to leave. She had made that house a home, had a flourishing vegetable garden and rosebushes that were the envy of the block.
“Fuck them,” she snarled whenever Sam suggested they go back to Harlem. “I ain’t gonna let them crackers drive me out. They want me gone, they gonna have to kill me.”
That first year, they had to have the car repainted three times. Sam bought a Doberman pinscher and tied it up in the yard to deter those night-creeping predators. A month later, the dog was dead from cyanide-laced meatballs.
“It wasn’t even this bad down south,” Sam complained.
Emma wasn’t going to talk about it again. She smiled at her husband, patted his hand, and gently changed the subject. “Did you meet the new family that moved in across the street? Aww, they such a good-looking couple. They remind me of us when we were young. And they got a little boy who is sweet enough to eat!”
Shaking his head, Sam returned to the backyard to finish digging the dog’s grave.
It took a few years and two more murdered dogs, but white flight had swooped in and one day the brown and black residents of Trenton, New Jersey woke to find that there was nary a white person around.
Relieved that his property was now relatively safe from racist vandalism, Sam set to work renovating the basement. He moisture-sealed the stone walls, installed overhead lighting, and covered the dirt floor in hardwood.
The Book of Harlan Page 21