The Book of Harlan

by Bernice L. McFadden

  As they sped along, Sam shivered and said, “Harlan, close that damn window. It ain’t summertime.”

  “Aw, Sam, if the boy wants some air, let him have it.” Emma coiled her scarf around her head.

  “Okay, okay, just one more gulp.” Harlan pushed his entire head out the window. Yes, he thought to himself, freedom not only smells sweet, it tastes sweet too.

  “Boy,” Emma cried, slapping him on the shoulder, “get your big head back in this window before it’s knocked clean off your shoulders!”

  Sam turned to him. “You look like a dog with your head hanging out the window like that. Like an old mangy retriever!”

  They were all laughing when Sam shot through the stop sign right into the path of a speeding fire truck, and was killed instantly.

  Emma’s spine, pelvis, and legs were mangled unrecognizable.

  Harlan was ejected through the window like an arrow.

  * * *

  Miraculously, Harlan only suffered a broken arm and skin lacerations, so he was at Emma’s side when, two days after the accident, she let go of this life and slipped into the next.

  It took three male nurses to wrench Harlan’s hand from hers.

  During their long and short careers, the hospital staff had bore witness to many things, but none of them could ever remember hearing a man scream the way Harlan did after his mother died. The gut-wrenching howl he released over Emma’s quiet body would haunt them for years.

  Chapter 94

  While Harlan had been in prison, Gomez developed a cough that turned out to be lung cancer. A week after he was diagnosed, he died at home in Harlem, leaving his wife grief-stricken and alone. Lucille was still battling despair when Emma, her oldest and dearest friend in the whole wide world, passed away.

  Lucille wasn’t in the best of health, but nothing could keep her from saying a final goodbye to the woman who had been more like a sister to her than her own kin. And besides, Harlan was the son she’d never had.

  When Lucille stepped off that Greyhound bus and saw Harlan standing there, looking the epitome of the motherless child he now truly was, her heart broke into pieces. He stared out at her from eyes so dark and recessed, they seemed like black holes. And he was thin, nearly as thin as he’d been when he first came home from Germany.

  To be fair, Lucille didn’t look much better. Her old eyes were red and puffy, her knees were swollen to the size of cantaloupes, and the wig she wore was dusty and ill-fitting.

  They greeted each other with forced smiles and firm hugs.

  Harlan reached for the blue cosmetics case Lucille carried. “Is this all you have?”

  “No. The suitcase is under the bus.”

  Sure he could manage the army-green Samsonite with his one good hand, Harlan pulled on the case’s handle, but the weight of it nearly dislocated his arm. “What you got in here, Lucille?”

  He had to ask a stranger to place it in the trunk of the borrowed Cadillac.

  In the car, a litany of sad songs that neither of them wanted to hear streamed from the radio. Harlan lowered the volume. They had ridden in silence for a few miles before Lucille raised a question.

  “You get in touch with your people down in Macon?”

  Uncle John had died in ’49. As for his uncle James, he’d married, moved to Texas, and that was the last anyone knew. Seth was dead as well, and Emma hadn’t kept in touch with his widow or their children, so who knew if they were still in Macon or had moved on to some other city or state. Harlan hadn’t bothered to investigate because he didn’t know them very well to begin with. As far as he was concerned, the only family he had now was Lucille.

  He chewed a sliver of skin from his bottom lip and spat it into the air. “Nah, I didn’t.”

  “Hmmm,” Lucille sounded. “Well, I hope you don’t mind, but I went ahead and placed an obituary in the Macon Telegraph. I think there might be some people left there who still remember your parents.”

  * * *

  Once at the house, Harlan called on a neighbor to haul Lucille’s suitcase into the living room. Not having received an answer to his first inquiry, Harlan asked again: “What’s in this suitcase?”

  Lucille sighed, unlatched the case, and flipped it open. Harlan cast a puzzled look over the contents—a jumble of clothes, loaves of bread, cans of beans, tuna fish, and Spam.

  Lucille blushed like a caught child. “I don’t know what happened. I put my clothes in, but it looked so empty, it didn’t feel right. It just wasn’t full enough. I know that sounds stupid. I just started throwing things in. Suitcases should always be full . . .” She let her words trail off, embarrassed.

  After a long moment Harlan said, “Well, that’s okay.” He knew he was supposed to comfort her, but he didn’t have it in him.

  Eyes glistening, Lucille stood waiting for a hug that never came.

  Harlan cleared his throat, crouched over the suitcase, and scooped up three loaves of bread. “I’ll put these in the kitchen.”

  * * *

  The funeral service was held at the Union Baptist Church on Pennington Avenue, where Sam and Emma had been members.

  Although Harlan had never attended the church, or even stepped foot in the building, he had become acquainted with a few of the congregants—people Sam and Emma had had over to the house for dinner or a game of spades.

  That day, the pews were filled with men in dark suits and women wearing big black hats touching handkerchiefs to the corners of their eyes.

  When Harlan arrived, the familiars swooped in, hugging him, cupping his face in their hands, kissing his wet cheeks.

  “They were real good people. Real good.”

  “Your mama sure did love you.”

  “If you need anything, anything at all, you just call me.”

  “Tragic, tragic!”

  Harlan must have said thank you a thousand times that day.

  With Lucille, John, and Mayemma at his side, he swayed before the matching pearl-colored caskets. He didn’t think he had any tears left, but when he looked down into his parents’ still and silent faces—sadness flooded his chest and he began to weep.

  Chapter 95

  In May of ’71, Emma’s garden burst to life.

  Harlan spent an entire day sitting in the backyard, staring at the flowers and sipping Scotch. When the bottle was empty, he went into the house, removed a container of bleach from beneath the kitchen sink, and dumped it all over the delicate blooms.

  Back in the house, he hung a noose from the attic rafters, moved the toaster into the bathroom, placed all of his parents’ various medications into a jar, and set it on the floor by his bed. Some months earlier, he’d discovered a gun in the hall closet, hidden away in an old hatbox. There was one bullet in the chamber.

  Every day Harlan walked to and from the liquor store to buy a bottle of Scotch. Every three days he bought a carton of cigarettes. Sometimes he picked up a chicken or fish dinner, but mostly he survived on canned soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

  Harlan kept the house closed up and dark, rarely answered the door or the telephone. Neighbors and friends finally took the hint and left him alone. He spent sleepless hours gazing at family photos, listening to old records, lying on the couch crucified and drunk, sitting so still he could hear the blood sloshing through his veins.

  The days came and went; the dead crowded his dreams. He knew the only way he could escape the ghosts was to join them.

  When June arrived the fire hydrants were opened and young girls kicked off their shoes, slipped dandelions into their braids, and skipped through the spray.

  On the night before the day he decided to take his life, Harlan went to a neighborhood bar. Way back by the jukebox, he stood alone savoring the music and drinking beer.

  The following morning, he woke to fingers of light curled around the tattered window shades. It was Saturday. The air was fragrant with the scent of cut grass. Children on bicycles and roller skates streaked up and down the sidewalks. In the streets,
older kids played stickball and skelly. In the driveways, men washed and waxed their automobiles.

  Harlan went down to the kitchen and stood at the window, watching the world churn on despite him. He folded a piece of buttered bread into his mouth and went back to his room.

  He sat on the bed and rattled the jar of pills near his ear. On the porch next door, a group of teenagers sang raucous and off-key, while the hum of crickets rose and fell above their sloppy serenade.

  After a while, Harlan went into his parents’ bedroom and stood on the carpeted floor, trembling like a newborn foal. The room was as they had left it—bed neatly made, curtains parted. A pair of Sam’s trousers were draped neatly over the back of the leather armchair. Bottles of perfume lined the dressing table; a Bible sat closed on the nightstand. On the wall hung framed pictures of Harlan as a child, Emma’s parents, Sam’s mother, and the group photo taken in Montmartre.

  When he felt ready, Harlan unscrewed the jar, grabbed a handful of pills, dropped one onto his tongue, and then another. The closet door squeaked ajar just as the third pill careened down his throat.

  That door.

  It had been the bane of Emma’s existence from the time they’d moved in. No matter what Sam did—oil the hinges, change the knob—the door refused to stay shut.

  Harlan set the jar down and crossed the room. A foot from the closet, he spotted a pair of shoes peaking out from the shadows.

  His heart quickened. When had the intruder broken in? While he was passed out drunk? He squinted at the shoes and swore he saw them move.

  “Hey, man, hey, I don’t want no trouble.” Harlan scanned the bedroom for a weapon. “I got a gun, man. I will blow you the fuck away!” If he could hear the fright in his own voice, so could the trespasser. “You come out now, and I’ll let you be on your way. No cops, I promise.”

  The telephone blared, and a startled Harlan stumbled backward, toppling the jar of pills, scattering the pink, yellow, and white tablets everywhere. He stood paralyzed with his back against the wall. His eyes remained glued to the threat in the closet. The phone continued to ring. Minutes ticked away and the only thing that changed in the room was the light.

  Finally, summoning all of the courage he’d stored away for his suicide, Harlan flew at the closet door, ripped it open, and lunged into the darkness, arms whirling like a propeller.

  His knuckles scraped cloth and cold wire hangers.

  Harlan laughed at his own foolishness. How the brown shoes had broken rank and found their way to the front of the closet, he did not know. He picked them up and ran his fingers over the stiff chocolate-colored leather before flipping them over, exposing the mildly scuffed soles.

  The shoes were laced. Harlan thought that was odd. He couldn’t recall ever seeing Sam wear them, yet they looked familiar. So familiar that it triggered a memory he couldn’t quite grasp.

  The phone blared again.

  “Hello?”

  Lucille’s concerned voice drifted into his ear: “Hey, baby, I’m just calling to check on you . . .”

  Harlan’s lips trembled.

  “Harlan?”

  “Yeah. Hey, Lucille.” His voice rose, dipped, and splintered.

  “You okay?”

  “No. No, I’m not.” Tears spilled down his cheeks, landed on the shoes, and tunneled clean tracks through the dust. “I don’t want to be here no more,” he sobbed.

  “Well, baby,” Lucille sighed, “you don’t have to be there. You can be here, with me.”

  * * *

  Harlan left Trenton that very night.

  He didn’t take much, just a few pieces of clothing, some photos, and his favorite guitar. Initially, he packed the brown shoes, but returned them at the last moment to the closet floor.

  Locking the front door, Harlan set off down the street beneath a violet sky. By some divining he didn’t understand, he knew he would never pass that way again.

  Chapter 96

  Lucille still lived in Harlem, but not in the grand home of her heyday. She had been forced to leave that palace decades ago when her star had faded and she’d stopped making music and started emptying bedpans for a living. Now she lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment on the sixth floor of a ten-story tenement building.

  “It’s not much, but it’s home.”

  The apartment was crammed with relics from her former residence—large pieces of furniture, gaudy sculptures, and six-foot-tall vases filled with colorful plumes. Nearly every inch of wall was hidden beneath an array of family photos and framed memorabilia.

  She pointed at the floral sofa. “You’ll sleep there. It’s one of those convertible beds. The bathroom is back there, kitchen over there. I think there’s room in the hall closet to hang your clothes. What doesn’t fit, you’ll just have to leave in your suitcase.” Lucille stopped talking, rested her hands on her hips, and considered her surroundings. “So this is it.”

  She slipped a set of keys from the pocket of her orange housedress and handed them to Harlan. “I think your mama and daddy would be glad to know that you’re here.”

  * * *

  The convertible bed turned out to be a monster that nightly sought to impale Harlan with its coiled metal springs.

  The other problem was this: Every day, Lucille rose before dawn, clomped loudly into the kitchen (which was an extension of the living room), and flicked on the bright overhead lights and the radio. She made her coffee, clipped coupons, and placed telephone calls to various companies that were, according to her, “trying to railroad an old woman.”

  When she was done with Ma Bell and the others, Lucille spent an hour or so complaining about the rowdy neighbors above her, the president, the mayor, and the skank next door who didn’t have the decency to keep her music to a respectable level when she knew good goddamn well there was a senior citizen on the other side of her wall.

  Lucille would then march into the living room and stand above Harlan until he opened his eyes.

  “Morning, Lucille.”

  “Well, good morning to you too. You want a cup of coffee? Some eggs? Bacon?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. Do you want some eggs? Bacon?” She was also becoming forgetful.

  * * *

  For a time, being back in Harlem was exactly what Harlan needed.

  He’d stopped drinking. Cold turkey. Didn’t even think about copping a bag of weed. He took up walking—covering miles each day. Sometimes he would just find a shaded park bench and sit for hours people-watching.

  For a brief period Harlan would buy a newspaper and read it from cover to cover, but he found the news too depressing.

  Twin Boys Found Strangled to Death in Bushwick Apartment Building.

  Entire Family Lost in Early-Morning Three-Alarm Fire.

  In a case of “mistaken identity,” prominent black poet Henry Dumas was shot to death at a Harlem train station by a New York Transit Authority police officer.

  Another Nazi War Criminal Found in . . .

  Thoughts of suicide still lingered—coming and going like his desire for alcohol and reefer.

  * * *

  One steamy August day, Harlan walked himself all the way to his old neighborhood and stood in the shadow of the colossal housing tenement that had displaced his and hundreds of other families.

  Flooded with memories and despondent, Harlan continued east on 133rd Street, somehow made it across the busy Harlem River Drive, and spent an hour mesmerized by the ebb and flow of the filthy river. He found himself gripped by a melancholy so severe, he had to fight the urge to plunge himself over the railing into the murky waters.

  The episode was as unnerving as it was sobering.

  Harlem held many memories, but the ghosts that remained were bitter and vengeful. Harlan was fragile, which made him easy prey—he knew he couldn’t stay in Harlem, not if he intended to live long enough to figure out what God had planned for him.

  Chapter 97

  He had been living with Lucille for a year when in
the summer of 1972 she decided to rid herself of the awful dusty wig she’d been wearing for a decade. Her intention that day was to chop off her processed hair for a natural cropped style, made popular by the forward-thinking women of the Black Is Beautiful movement.

  Harlan tagged along for moral support.

  Lucille climbed into the red-leather and chrome chair, snatched the scarf from her head, and said, “Take it all off.”

  The barber, a young man with silver slats between his teeth, twirled a black comb in his hand like a baton. “You sure that’s what you want?”

  Lucille shot him a lopsided look. “Don’t let this gray hair fool you, baby. I still know what I want and when I want it.” She was the only woman in the shop that day, the grand dame amongst a bevy of loud-talking men, unused to having to censor themselves in the very place they had always been able to speak freely. More than just a place to get a haircut, the barbershop was a church, meeting hall, classroom, and sanctuary all balled into one.

  But all of that changed when the women started wearing their hair like the men. Now they crowded into the barbershops reeking of musk oil and Afro Sheen, wearing dashikis, wooden bracelets stacked clear up their forearms, and ridiculously large hooped earrings.

  The women fully expected to be treated like the black queens they claimed their ancestors to be. All of this to say, there was to be no cursing when a lady was in the shop. Even the bull-dagger barbers rolled their eyes when they saw them coming.

  * * *

  After the barber had worked his magic on Lucille, he spun the chair around, bringing her face-to-face with her mirrored image. She sat stupefied, gently fingering her cropped silver hair.

  “Lawd,” she whispered, looking at Harlan. “Whadya think?”

  “I think you look beautiful.” He rested his hand on her shoulder. “Now all you need is a pair of those big hoop earrings the sistas wear.”

  Lucille shook her head. “Nah, I’m fine with my pearls. Those things they wearing look too much like handcuffs.”