Grace

by Robert Ward

  No, I had to keep him out of it, get her to come down on her own.

  I put the window back down, quickly threw on my jeans, a T-shirt, a crewneck sweater, and my Jack Purcells, then crept out of the room and hurried (tiptoeing as I went) down the steps and through the house.

  I made sure the back door didn’t slam as I went out into the yard. Then I leaned on the trunk of the old holly tree and looked up at the roof.

  “Ahem,” I half-whispered. “Grace …”

  Nothing. She turned a little, though, and for a second I thought she’d heard me. Then I realized she was merely turning with the sun. “Grace,” I hissed again. “Hey …” Now she looked down on me. “Yes, honey,” she said. “Isn’t it a glorious morning?”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “Is it nice up there on the roof?”

  “Why don’t you come up and find out?” That was not what I had expected her to say. “Come on,” she said. “You can sit with me.”

  “But what if Cap sees us?” I said.

  “Rob? He’s asleep. If they dropped the atom bomb, it wouldn’t bother him. Come on.”

  “Well, okay,” I said. Maybe if I humored her a little, I could get her to come with me.

  I went around the back of the old garages and walked up onto the weed-filled lot, which was almost even with the garage tops. Then I stepped up on the first cement block some kid had put there God knew how many years ago and pulled myself up on the rooftops. It wasn’t what you would call a hard climb, but it wasn’t a snap either. I wondered how my grandmother had managed it.

  I walked across the Weavers’, the Richardsons’, and the Latrobes’ garages before I got to my lotus-sitting grandmother and her now dozing, curled-up cat.

  I sat down next to her, but the old tar roof was already heating up, and I quickly jumped up.

  “Here,” she said, moving over on the Indian rug she was using. “I can share this with you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, sitting down.

  “You’re very welcome.”

  “Grace, do you mind if I ask what you’re doing up here?”

  She folded her arms and smiled pleasantly.

  “I am breathing in and out.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I kind of thought so.”

  My grandmother smiled, but there was pain in that smile, not happiness.

  “There is a story Mr. Pran told me about an angry man who had lost his wife and his business. A monk told him if he sat by a magic stone in the lake and breathed deeply and listened intently, he would receive satori, or enlightenment. So the man sat by the spring for two years. Finally, at the end of the second year the stone spoke to him and said, ‘You must forgive your enemy.’ The stone said something else as well, but the man was so angry at the first part of the sentence he failed to hear the end of it. He walked away, but he felt no relief from his pain. He met the monk who had sent him there in the first place, and berated him for wasting his time. The monk smiled at him and said, ‘I, too, heard the message, but I heard all of it.’ The man said, All right, then, what was the rest?’ And the monk said to him, ‘Even if your enemy is dressed in your own robes.’ At that the man smiled and felt satori. He went back to his village and began his life anew.”

  I said nothing, but I felt a strange stirring inside.

  “Then are you the man?” I said to Grace.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “But I’m waiting. And I think it’s a nice story.”

  “How long have you been … waiting?”

  “Two years, give or take a few weeks.”

  “Two years?” I said. “But why on the garage rooftop?”

  “Why not? I’d rather it be a mountain. But I don’t have time to drive out to western Maryland. This will do. Gandhi used to meditate in prison or right on the street.”

  “Oh,” I said. I was still thinking about the story she had told me.

  “Do you like the dress?” Grace said.

  “Yes, very much.”

  “Mr. Pran gave it to me.”

  “I know,” I said. “I was there when you got it. But on the garage roof? In Baltimore?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think I improve the roof.”

  “Undoubtedly. But what about the neighbors?” I said, smiling.

  “The only one who’s said anything is the Watkins family,” Grace said. “And we don’t bow to trash like them. Meditation is a wonderful thing. I thank God that I met Mr. Pran. Sometimes I think that God sent him to me …”

  Then she stopped and looked troubled. “What is it?” I said.

  “Oh, nothing … just one of life’s little ironies.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said.

  “It’s too complex to get into,” she said.

  “Does anybody in the family know you do this?” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Why should they? They’d just think I’m getting crazy in my old age, and you know what? They’d be right.”

  I shook my head. “Sometimes I feel as if I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “That, my dear grandson, is a feeling that will increase as you grow older and wiser. Believe me … I don’t know a tenth of the things I used to be dead-certain of when I was your age.”

  “No?” I said, bewildered.

  “No. But the ones that I do know, the few I do know … I really believe. And one of them is that it’s good to meditate on the rooftop of the garage early in the morning. It’s a time when your spirit is open, and maybe God’s spirit as well. And there are things I sorely need guidance on. That’s the truth.”

  “Like the civil rights movement?” I said.

  “Like mind your own business,” she said. But she said it gently, then asked, “Would you like to meditate with me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The last time I got a headache.”

  “You have to just breathe through that. Let’s try.”

  “Oh, boy,” I said.

  “Now the trick is to breathe slowly and deeply, until you slowly lose self-consciousness … which, by the way, could be, for you, a very good thing.”

  Grace was smiling again, and she folded her arms and took a deep breath.

  I folded my own arms and took a deep breath. “Do you close your eyes?” I said.

  “You do if you don’t have sunglasses,” my grandmother said.

  “ ‘Cause without them you’ll be seeing sunspots all day.”

  “And we wouldn’t want that,” I said, laughing.

  “No,” my grandmother said. “Now breathe, close your eyes and feel the goodness of the sun …”

  I shut my eyes and breathed deeply and smelled the tar rooftops.

  I heard my grandmother breathe deeply again, and I tried it myself.

  Within a few minutes our breaths were in synch and something began to happen to me. I forgot the fact that the neighbors might be watching us from their kitchens or bedrooms, I stopped thinking that any minute the police were going to come and send both of us to Spring Grove, and I felt strangely peaceful. Grace was right. The sun was warm and good, and I was flooded with sweet sensations. I took another breath and forgot where I was. It was uncanny, wonderful.

  I wasn’t on the old tar roof of the battered old garages behind my grandmother’s house in Waverly. I was floating over … over the Ganges, and there were Indians in loincloths bathing below me, and there was Mahatma Gandhi in the river pouring holy oil over the head of one of the faithful.

  Then I opened my eyes—just for a second—because though meditation was very pleasant, there was still a certain insecurity involved. Like I might fall off the garage roof and break my neck.

  What I saw shocked me again. My grandmother’s eyes were open, and she was looking straight ahead. But all her breezy jocularity was gone, and she seemed to be staring (as she had the night of her nightmare) at something so horrible, so terrible that it was literally frightening her out of her wits.

  “Gracie,” I said. “Are you okay?”

&
nbsp; But she didn’t answer. She continued to stare straight ahead. Then she began to utter a deep moan.

  “Ooooooooooh, Ooooooooooh.”

  My throat got dry, and I reached over and held her hand.

  “Grace,” I whispered. “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Ooooooooh,” she said.

  “Grace,” I said, louder.

  She blinked and looked at me, her face full of fear.

  “Honey,” she said.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Get me out of here,” she said.

  “Okay,”

  I uncoiled myself and stood up, then slowly helped her to her feet. “You were moaning and you looked like you were in pain,” I said. “I was. The pain was terrible,” she said. “Let’s go inside. I think we’re done for today.”

  “You looked like you were seeing something, a ghost,” I said. “Could you say what it was?”

  She looked at me and shook her head. “No,” she said. “I couldn’t say.”

  I was sure she was holding back. I wanted to press her to tell me, but suddenly we were interrupted by a sleepy voice from the back of her house. My grandfather’s voice:

  “Grace, when you two come down from there, would you have Bobby run down to the corner and pick up some milk?”

  I turned and saw my grandfather looking out the window. “Honey, would you mind?” she said to me, giving Cap a little wave. “Not at all,” I said.

  I looked up and saluted my grandfather. He gave me a snappy salute back, then closed the venetian blinds.

  “You can put it on our tab at Pop’s,” she said. “Thanks, honey.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said as she opened the gate and walked toward the back door.

  Dazed, I started down to the corner store. I was in a mild state of shock. My grandmother meditated on the garage rooftop, and my tough old grandfather knew all about it and seemed not one whit concerned.

  He knew a lot more about my grandmother than he was letting on. And I suddenly thought that maybe he also knew what phantom was following her.

  But I doubted I’d ever get it out of him or her.

  I turned by the Bradys’ house, the end house on the row with a bay window. And there in that window was one of Sue Retalliata’s now-famous screen paintings of a waterfall, a blond-haired milkmaid, and some ultra-green pasture land in what looked like the mountain country of western Maryland.

  I stopped still and stared at it. Grace’s oldest friend, Sue, of course.

  Maybe my first day of meditation had given me an answer after all.

  I called Sue that day, but she wasn’t in. Her maid, Alma, told me she was giving a screen painting workshop and speaking at a folk arts conference in mountain country, Cumberland, Maryland. She wouldn’t be back for three days. There was nothing that could be done until then.

  Then I remembered Howard Murray, my Negro friend from school. We had talked about playing over at Waverly Rec many times, but I’d never actually made the call.

  Now I wondered about that. Why hadn’t I called him? Sure, I was busy, and a lot was going on in my life, but wasn’t the plain truth that I was scared?

  I condemned Grace for talking about civil rights without doing anything about it, but was I any better?

  And why did I have to wait for her lead at all?

  I met Howard at the Waverly Junior High Rec Center at four o’clock. I was twenty minutes early. My stomach had a serious case of butterflies. I remembered my great happiness the night before when I had finally gotten the nerve to call him, how I was sure I was doing the right thing, but now, as I waited for him to show up, I wondered where all my resolve and spirit had gone.

  I felt small, scared, self-conscious. Waverly Rec Center wasn’t even my own rec center. It was only five blocks from Grace’s and I played there occasionally, but I didn’t know many of the guys who hung out there, only Johnny Brandau, Ray Lane, and two tall blond brothers, Timmy and Billy Weaver. They were all good guys and I was sure they wouldn’t mind, but there were other boys who hung out there whom I didn’t know, who had long “drape” hair, as we called it back then. (Even in the ‘90s the ducktail “drape cut” is still the haircut of choice among many of the poor whites in Hampden and the Harford Road.) These boys were rough badasses, most of whom had recently migrated from the Deep South or nearby West Virginia. I got along with most of them. The truth was, only a few of them were really bad, but all of them wanted to look bad … and I was pretty sure none of them wanted to be caught liking a Negro or would help if it came to an unfair fight.

  There was a tall rangy boy named Tommy Harkey who worried me, and the two horrible Harper brothers, who looked like skinny clods of dirt shoved over some muscles and sinew, and who liked to fight over anything or nothing. There was another big kid nicknamed Shelf (because his forehead looked like a concrete shelf), who lumbered about mumbling to himself. Shelf brought a switchblade knife to the court one time, and though he hadn’t cut anybody with it, I didn’t like the idea that he was probably going to be basket hanging and calling fouls on Howard.

  And if that weren’t worry enough, it occurred to me, just as Howard Murray rode up on his very cool three-speed English bicycle, that Waverly Rec was the place where Buddy and Nelson sometimes hung out. Neither of them played ball. Nelson was too old to play with kids and Buddy too muscle-bound to be any kind of basketball player, but he hung out with the Harpers, making comments and ragging on anybody who missed a shot.

  As I greeted Howard and we walked into the gym, I felt my heart go into my mouth. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t any battler. If anything uncool went down, all that would happen was that Howard and I would both get the hell beaten out of us … or worse.

  I couldn’t look anybody in the eye as Howard and I started warming up. Howard was a good ballplayer, a great leaper and a smart passer. I had a better outside shot, or at least I always had at school. Suddenly, I found myself with such a case of nerves that I couldn’t hit a ten-footer. Then Howard smiled and started whipping me passes, and I got into the flow of the game, found my rhythm, and my jumper started falling.

  I hit five in a row, then fed Howard, who made two beautiful reverse layups, and soon I didn’t care when the Harpers showed up and started mumbling to themselves in the corner of the gym.

  I had no doubt what they were talking about, but I took my cue from Howard himself, who remained cool, and concentrated on his shot.

  A few seconds later Mouse Harper came over and started shooting with us. He wasn’t a bad player, and Howard smartly set him up with a couple of good passes, which he converted into buckets. His bigger brother Butch stayed on the side, though, watching and scratching his chin stubble.

  Another boy joined Harper, then Kohl, a big, heavyset guy I knew who’d developed a stutter after sniffing glue.

  Indeed, he had once tried to enlist me in his favorite hobby, saying, “C-c—come on W-W-Ward, g-g-glue is h-h-harmless.”

  But today he seemed in an affable mood; when he got closer to me, I realized he was stoned. His eyeballs rotated in different directions.

  We had warmed up for about as long as you can do that before people get anxious for a game, and I found myself anxiously looking to the door.

  My prayers were answered a few minutes later. My friends Johnny Brandau and Ray Lane arrived together. They were both terrific players, and better, I knew that they had both played ball with Negroes many times at school.

  Without saying a word, both of them understood that Waverly Recreation Center was undergoing a historic change. They greeted Howard with hugs, and their presence broke the tension. Nobody was going to mess with Howard Murray with them around, and I quietly let out a sigh of relief.

  But, as it turned out, things got even better than that, because Lane, a huge, well-muscled but extremely athletic guy, knew Murray from school.

  “Hey, Howard,” Lane said. “You come over here to teach Ward how to shoot?”

  “Something like that,” Mu
rray said.

  “Got your work cut out for you,” Johnny Brandau said, laughing.

  “You guys are going to have to eat those words,” I said.

  And with that, Murray and I began playing two on two against Brandau and Lane, and something like the miraculous happened. Maybe it was the sheer relief I felt knowing that we weren’t alone, or maybe the chemistry between us was a by-product of the amazing high we both felt from what we were doing. Whatever, things clicked between us. We knew where each of us was going to be, we anticipated rebounds, put back tip-ins, passed expert behind-the-back passes, ran perfect pick-and-rolls, and beat Lane and Brandau, both smooth players, by two baskets.

  Afterwards, we all drank water from the fountain (the same fountain) and just hung out together in a way that felt somehow heightened and charged with excitement. Though no one said anything about it (to say something would be uncool), I think everyone realized right here and now that the Waverly Rec Center would never be the same again.

  We felt so damned good, all of us, that we went back inside and played another game. That caught a couple of the kids off guard. Now Mouse Harper, who obviously hoped this whole thing was a fluke and that the nigger and his friends were gone, gave us a snarl. But Ray Lane went over to him, put his huge weightlifter’s arm around him, and said, “Little Mouse, you’re looking bad. You want to rumble?” All said kiddingly, of course, but Little Mouse wasn’t quite as moronic as he looked. He understood the tone of things, so he just laughed and talked his usual bullshit and quickly disappeared out the door.

  That’s the way it went until five o’clock, with Howard Murray and I on some fantastic wavelength, making shot after shot, and everyone laughing, joking, picking up on our good vibes.

  Then, as we packed our things to go, I looked at a couple of the hairhoppers, and it occurred to me that they seemed relieved as well … and I thought that maybe they had all secretly dreaded the day Negroes would show up and they would be forced to act like the creeps their parents expected them to be. Maybe they were damn well relieved that they had behaved better than they expected, too, and that deep down nobody wanted to be the asshole in Montgomery, Alabama, who was caught by a photographer pouring a Coke over a Negro student’s head as the kid tried to get service in a lunchroom.