Eggplant Man

by Margo De Leaver

  She took this opportunity to observe him unnoticed. Half of his body was hanging off her cot. His form was long, lean, and muscular, like that of a dancer. The sunlight caressing his skin cast vertical beams onto his naked, somnolent figure. It revealed that his entire body was covered with a flawless indigo pigment, matching his facial tone. The coarse silver strands infiltrating the black coils of his unruly hair glistened wherever they caught the sunlight.

  Ruby felt a moment of tranquility, something she had never felt before. Ma’ Dear’s voice was just a whisper in her ear. “People die and men leave, Baby.” Ruby could not manage a “Yes, Ma’ Dear” this time. She could not imagine either of the two options.

  The calm she had felt upon waking was ephemeral, as anxiety edged its way into her mind. Her scar began to twitch. Ruby stood under the cool stream flowing from the shower faucet. She positioned herself so that the water ran down the center of her body, creating erotic sensations in her pelvis. Anywhere she touched gave her small electric pulses. It forced her to think about the amorous events of the preceding hours. She was taken aback by the intensity of pleasure she was now feeling.

  Ruby tried to dissipate these sensations by giving herself a thorough brown soap scrubbing. She pulled on her uniform of khakis and white tee, brushed her hair the mandatory 113 strokes, applied coconut oil and re-plaited the two braids.

  Eggplant Man stirred with his subconscious brain recognition of the sweet-smelling oil. Not knowing what to say, she did not attempt to wake him. She slipped out of the apartment into the alley. Ruby needed to go for a walk and clear her head. It was Saturday and there was no garbage pick-up. Her plan was to stop by the mission on 119th Street to pick up some more soap, candles, toilet paper and tee shirts. It was part of the Daddy Grace legacy. Ruby would have remained helpless on the streets if it were not for the generosity of Daddy Grace and his followers.

  She headed uptown toward the mission. The line was long this Saturday morning and it took more than two hours of waiting until her turn came.

  She gathered the items for which she had come. Today they also had fresh fruit. Her favorite fruits, peaches and apples were in the selections. The red peaches, looking very juicy, enticed her. She took two peaches—one for Eggplant Man—and two apples for the same reason. Ruby then headed back uptown to her abode and back to her new man and new life paradigm.

  She could feel some advice from Ma’ Dear trying to push through. She had been suppressing her mother’s whisperings since she had headed for her place last night with Eggplant Man.

  “Baby, never let no man be yo’ raison d’etre.” It was not unusual for her mother, a Creole, to use French phrases in her conversations. “Fo’ sure, they gonna disappoint you, Baby.” Ruby knew it was too late for her to hold Eggplant Man in that regard. Her soul was already engaged. She was entangled.

  CHAPTER 22

  Dream Interrupted

  Eggplant Man woke up about one half hour after Ruby left. He reached around in the haziness of just having opened his eyes in a dimly lit room. He needed to feel her soft skin under his rough fingertips, to make sure it was real. However, there was no Ruby to touch. Her fragrance still dangled in the air. He began to reminisce over the night’s sweet encounter. His plan was to take Ruby to get something to eat and then to just spend the day with her, sitting in Central Park and getting to know her even better.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he surveyed Ruby’s place. “So this is where she escapes to each day,” he thought out loud. It was a gloomy cache. There was an orderly stack of candles on the floor arranged by size and color, a makeshift cardboard box dresser containing folded white tee shirts, bras and panties. There were piles of tidily stacked newspapers on one side of a desk, and three large bottles of water lined up against the wall. There was a hair brush and a bottle of coconut oil placed next to the stack of papers. A few personal items also lay on the desk. These things represented her sparse life, nothing in excess, just the bare minimum. The only light entering the space came from the narrow beams of sunlight that streamed in through the cracks above the wood and steel plates over the windows. Eggplant Man contemplated that this was much more than he owned. All he had were the clothes on his back and his banjo. It was his banjo that saved him. For Ruby, he surmised it was her secret abode that saved her.

  Guessing Ruby had gone for a walk, Eggplant Man decided he would go out to get some coffee and bagels for them. He wanted to take Ruby to Central Park and play a song he had created for her. His socks were not easily located on the floor. Finding them, he felt his left sock for the money he had placed there. Three dollars and change were left over from last night’s meal. “We’ll have to share the bagel,” he mused.

  Eggplant Man rinsed off in the thin stream of trickling water from the corroded shower head. He used Ruby’s brown soap and could still detect her scent lingering in the bar. Afterwards, he quickly got dressed. All the while he kept having flashbacks of moments with Ruby. He had not been intimate with a woman for years. He was aware his member was now in full salute and he ached for Ruby again. In the past, whenever he had sexual urges, he would strum on his banjo and hum a bluesy refrain or satisfy himself in various dark alleys afforded by Harlem’s streets. Now there was actually a being to desire. It all seemed surreal to him. Had the God his mother always talked about finally decided to shine light in his direction?

  Ruby was definitely the woman for him. He’d felt it the moment he had touched her hand, when she gave him the vegetable skin. Or was it when he first saw her wounded eyes staring back at him from the Metairie newspaper years ago? Their lovemaking was a profound prayer. Their feral moans were primal. It was a calling out to each other from their cores. The groans uttered were a pleading to their souls to return to their abdicated thrones. In the midst of the passion, possibilities were overflowing. Promise lingered in the air…a hope for creation of an alternate paradigm, an option, a chance at a new life.

  Eggplant Man eyed his banjo leaning upright against the desk. He had passed it to Ruby before he himself had entered through the window. It was begging him to be played. He decided to wait until they were in the park.

  He grasped his banjo, stepped up onto the desk and exited Ruby’s apartment. He replaced the steel plate so that she could re-enter without difficulty. He headed uptown to get the coffee and bagel. When he arrived at Amsterdam Avenue, he looked up and down the streets to see if he could catch sight of Ruby, but he did not see her.

  Eggplant Man was in a happy daze. Thoughts of Ruby were swirling in his head. He was open to wherever this new relationship would lead him. He felt full of purpose for the first time since he left Metairie. He hardly noticed the familiar lady in blue heading towards him down Amsterdam. She looked intent on saying something to him this time.

  Trying not to allow other thoughts into his head, he stepped off the curb of 125th and Amsterdam and was immediately hit head on by a yellow cab heading downtown. The last thought he had was of Ruby as he heard the sound of screeching tires.

  The Saturday afternoon Harlem inhabitants and looky-loo’s rapidly surrounded the fallen man. The cab driver was busy shouting obscenities about the homeless and explaining how he was not at fault. Sirens could be heard in the near distance making their way through busy Saturday afternoon traffic.

  When the ambulance arrived, the crowd parted, allowing the medics to assess the crumpled figure for signs of salvage ability. They applied a neck splint and stabilized the spine of the unconscious man, lifted him onto a stretcher and loaded him into the back of the ambulance. Just as they were about to close the ambulance door, a tall stranger dressed in a cream linen suit, with a Stetson hat and brown and white Spectator shoes, picked up Eggplant Man’s undamaged banjo and handed it to the attendant.

  “He plays a mean banjo,” the man informed the medic. The apathetic attendant reluctantly took the instrument. As the ambulance sped off to Harlem Hospital
on 135th and Lenox Ave., the lady dressed all in blue with a matching hat and shoes shook her head in disbelief and pulled out her cigarettes. All that remained on the street was a large pool of blood already congealing in the Harlem heat, attracting many flies and displaying skid marks from the offending taxi.

  CHAPTER 23

  Mama Said There’d Be

  Days Like This

  Ruby returned to her place after almost three hours. She was nervous and excited about seeing Eggplant Man. Should she start to call him LeRoy now? She could not wait to look into his eyes and to feel his reassuring arms around her. Her scar was now in motion, gyrating and tingling. He would calm it down for her, she anticipated. The metal plate had been repositioned and she noticed an almost hidden latch was in place behind the plate. Ruby knew Eggplant Man had fashioned this to make it safer and to facilitate her exit and entry. As she opened the plate, she slid her candles, teas, soap and fruit in first. In the heat of the afternoon she could smell Eggplant Man’s scent lingering in the air. Her excitement was all encompassing. Her secret molasses river of heat had reached its mark a block before she arrived at her domicile.

  Once inside, she saw no one. The emptiness was palpable. Perhaps he had gone to get something to eat? Ruby noted his banjo was gone. She was angry at herself for taking so long to return. Why had she not wakened him before she left? Did he go back to Bubba’s to play his Banjo? Ruby had an ominous feeling. It scared her.

  She waited three more hours for Eggplant Man’s return. She decided to walk to 125th and Amsterdam and see if he were sitting in front of the barbershop. The walk was long and she felt the force of gravity with each step. Her heart was pounding, her mouth dry and her chest heavy. Ruby was one block away and she was struck with the fear of what to say when she encountered him.

  Her mother’s whispers turned into screams, a cacophony of warnings and advice crowding her brain. “Slam bam thank you ma’am, men leave and people die, a good man is hard to find, why buy the cow when the milk is free, turn ‘em upside down and they’re all the same, they’ll love you then you leave you lonely.”

  At the corner of 125th and Amsterdam. Ruby looked down the block and saw the empty space in front of Bubba’s. She stood on that corner for two hours, afraid to move, to miss him.

  The lady in sky blue sat on the porch steps of the corner apartment building, a brownstone in need of much renovation. She was watching Ruby, almost studying her, as she blew perfect circles of smoke from her cigarette. Ruby’s hazel eyes were in full nystagmus now. Night was beginning to fall. Discouraged, Ruby headed back to her place.

  The lady in blue took a long nostalgic drag on her cigarette, then put it out, smashing it punitively into the step. Ruby had a last hope that Eggplant Man might be in her apartment waiting for her. When she entered her dusky room, his aroma was still there. It hung stale and unpromising in the humid air. Ma’ Dear was right after all. Ruby murmured in a whispered, defeated voice, “Yes, Ma’ Dear.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Staying Alive

  Eggplant Man arrived at Harlem Hospital’s emergency room in critical condition. He endured a basilar and parietal skull fracture with both blood and cerebral spinal fluid dripping from his fractured nose. There was a small bleed into the subdural area of his brain. He had a fracture at his fourth thoracic vertebrae, multiple rib fractures, one of which had punctured his lung. He could take only shallow, labored breaths, due to both a pneumothorax and hemothorax. Having sustained a displaced femur fracture, his right upper leg was grossly distorted, and swollen. His entire body was covered with multiple lacerations, abrasions and contusions. He had a brain concussion and remained unconscious.

  After multiple units of blood and surgery to repair his fractures, he was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. For five days, he remained in a coma. It was touch and go and his condition was listed as critical. They had shaved his head in order to take care of his head wounds. His crown of tightly coiled silver and black strands had fallen unceremoniously to the hospital floor. With no identification on his person, Eggplant Man was listed as a John Doe. He had lost so much blood the doctors were not sure he would survive the first 72 hours after admission, or if he would ever fully recover. The brain damage was mainly to the speech, memory and language processing areas. The swelling in his brain would take time to resolve. Yet he was alive!

  CHAPTER 25

  Remains of the Day

  In her apartment, Ruby walked around in circles. Where a few hours earlier there had been ecstasy, all that remained was paralyzing fear and emotional devastation. What if Eggplant Man had abandoned her? How could she find him? Her routine garbage salvaging tours limited her to a set radius she had established 20 years ago. It would not allow her to venture too far north from 125th or south of 114th Street, or more than three blocks east or west of Amsterdam.

  In the short time they had spent together, she had shared her wounded and fragile soul with Eggplant Man. Ruby could sense her eyes jumping erratically. Her scar began to ache like a fresh bruise. She undressed and let her body stand under the stream of cool water leaving the rusty shower head. It was her second shower that day and it brought her no relief. When she left the shower, Ruby made no attempt to dry off or get dressed. Trapped by her feelings, she wanted nothing to touch her body. She decided to light two candles. She needed to gather her thoughts.

  Candles always facilitated her attempts to focus on her feelings. Ruby observed the flames hop around each other like two unrequited lovers, communicating in a strange dance of defeat. Two briny channels of tears effortlessly coursed her cheeks. Her blemish singed as one rivulet traversed over it. Reaching her thirsting lips, the salty streams entered her parched mouth. Ruby remained entranced by the dancing candle fires. Without any forethought, Ruby extinguished the fantasized fiery couple. She allowed the warm wax to melt into her fingertips.

  Under her pillow, which had remained on her cot despite the adventures of the early morning, her little dolls were all in disarray. She carefully arranged them into an orderly line, methodically placing the pillow on top. Ruby curled up into the familiar fetal position on her cot, finger to nose, and fell into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER 26

  Healing Music

  A full week passed before Eggplant Man showed any signs of rousing. He became agitated and had to be restrained for his own safety. He was in and out of consciousness, and was not clearly verbalizing anything. The exceptions were the moans and groans related to his level of discomfort. He was prescribed ‘round the clock’ pain medication which muted the groans and forced sleep.

  In a cast from head to toe, Eggplant Man resembled a gigantic mummy with splashes of onyx peeping through the bandages here and there. Although he was able to breathe on his own, he remained on a ventilator, which sporadically kicked on just in case he forgot or was unable to breathe adequately. By day 10, his pneumothorax and hemothorax had almost completely resolved, but tubes were still hanging out of his chest.

  Despite his injuries, Eggplant Man was recovering well. The medical staff at Harlem Hospital playfully referred to him as Big John, although his hospital chart read John Doe. The hospital’s utilization department was already making plans for his transfer to an ancillary rehabilitation facility once Eggplant Man was off the critical list and his recovery was imminent. The plan was the probable transfer to Franklin Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in Flushing, New York. It would be an extended rehabilitative process.

  By day 12, he was taken off the critical list and moved out of the Intensive Care Unit. He had begun to open his eyes off and on. He would stare in bewilderment at the white ceilings, sliding curtains and metal trays and railings. Still in pain, his wincing served as a clue to the nursing staff that his pain medications were due. He had no idea where he was or why. He felt as if he were in a haze of muffled voices and blurred faces and odd beeps, rings and mechanical sounds. He found himself thinking of his mother�
��s biscuits with butter and syrup, which made him realize he was hungry. Each morning at seven-thirty a group of physicians and nurses would make joint rounds on John Doe. All tubes were removed by the fourteenth day and Eggplant Man needed no further assistance with his breathing. He was able to remain in a sitting position for most of the day without excruciating pain. His diet was unrestricted at this point. One of the interns had explained that he had been hit by a taxi on Amsterdam Avenue about two weeks earlier, and that he had been in Harlem Hospital ever since.

  The attending of the rounding physicians asked him his name each morning. He had no response to the query. He understood the question but for some reason could not muster an answer. Eggplant Man had no recollection of the taxi event. He was aware, however, that the staff was calling him John and that was not his name. The third time someone called him John, he simply said, “LeRoy, LeRoy Vaughn Reed,” in his characteristic deep tenor voice.

  Over the next two weeks, his recovery was continually progressive. He was assisted with walking the corridors daily and he had physical therapy three times a week.

  Three days before his scheduled transfer to the rehab center in Flushing, one of the nurses recalled he had been admitted with a musical instrument. It had been his only belonging, other than the clothes he wore. After rounds, she brought it to his bedside. Eggplant Man emitted a deep guffaw, followed by a rush of emotion. Tears of joy flowed down his face. He had forgotten his lifelong friend and companion. The nurse cautiously handed him the instrument. His large hand first wrapped around the neck of his banjo. His calloused fingers knowingly began to slide over the top tuning pegs, then gingerly over the nut and frets to the fifth tuning peg, resting there for several moments. They continued their descent down the neck and fingerboard all the way to the bridge and tail piece. Running his fingers over the head, he circled the rim several times. The familiarity led to multitude of déjà vu memories flowing non-stop. Faces and places swirled around in his head. He tried fervidly to sort them into a chronological order. It overwhelmed him. For hours, he held tightly to his banjo. It was his connection to all that was. The nurses were unable to pry the instrument from his grip. Feeling some compassion, they allowed Eggplant Man the pleasure of his companion.