The game that afternoon was dodgeball. Because Ava and Geo shared their street with lots of kids their age, and because they both made friends easily, there were always kids to play with. Besides Kenny, their best friends were Miss Maddy’s children, Jack and Ellen, Rudy Lucas, and Juanita and Louis Jackson, who lived a few houses up from them. They were all among the kids playing dodgeball that day in the street right in front of the church. Sondra and Lamar were at opposite ends of the invisible court, each acting as thrower, as usual, because the ball belonged to Lamar. Kids ran in all directions as they tried to avoid getting hit, squealing with excitement with every bounce of the overlarge red ball.
Geo was the best at dodgeball. He had a knack for timing his dodges and almost always got out of the way in time. He was the last one standing after the first round and he raised his arms in triumph. Ava, Kenny, and all their friends cheered, then scrambled back into the line of fire for another round. This time, the first throw, from Sondra, came directly at Ava and she dodged it. The second one, from Lamar, skimmed the edge of the crowd, eliminating Juanita. The next one came directly at Ava again. Every time Sondra threw the ball, she aimed for Ava. After it had happened several times in a row, Ava screamed, “You’re aiming right at me! That’s not fair!” But Sondra didn’t stop. Time and time again, she hurled the ball at Ava and Ava dodged it. Finally, Lamar threw the ball into the crowd and tagged Ava and she was out.
Geo won that round, too, and then a bunch of them took a break and sat on the front steps of the church, while Sondra, Lamar, and some of the other kids continued to play. Everybody was lauding Geo’s dodging skills, and discussing possibly going down to Cobbs Creek later, when a whizzing sound cut through the air, and Ava looked up just in time to see the dodge ball, once again coming right at her. She ducked and barely avoided it, and it smashed into the side of Geo’s head with a hard boing, causing him to fall off the steps onto the ground.
Ava looked over and saw Sondra standing there, grinning.
Geo rubbed the side of his head and tried not to cry.
“We were on a time-out!” Ava yelled.
Ellen screamed, “You can’t throw at us when we aint playing!”
“I just did!” Sondra hollered back.
Ava glared at her. “Imbecile!” she screamed.
Sondra ran over and grabbed Ava by the arm, pushed her down onto the ground. “What you call me?”
“Did I stutter?” Ava asked, unafraid.
Lamar rushed over, looking eager at the idea of a fight.
"You think you so smart, don't you?" Sondra sneered, holding Ava down by her shoulders. Ellen ran over, and Geo and Kenny followed, and they all tried to pull Sondra off, but for an eleven-year-old girl she was large, and taller than both boys. She glared down at Ava. “You think you better than everybody.”
Ava rolled her eyes. She was sick of this.
“Oh, you got a eye problem,” Sondra said. “Well, I’m gone fix it for you.”
Kenny and Geo looked at each other, and at Ava, who looked less concerned than either boy thought she ought to be.
“I aint scared of you,” Ava said.
Sondra put her face close to Ava’s. “Then you aint as smart as everybody think you is.”
From her position on the ground, looking up, Ava saw something in one of the windows of the church, and she blinked, trying to focus, and saw Pastor Goode looking down, watching them. She expected him to call out, to tell them to stop all this roughhousing, but he only watched, saying nothing.
Ellen, Kenny, and Geo managed to pull Sondra off of Ava, and Ava scrambled up off the ground. Geo grabbed his sister’s arm. “Come on, Ava, let’s go home,” he said, pulling her away, towards their house. Ellen, Kenny, and their other friends followed.
Once they were inside, Ava jerked out of Geo’s grip. “Why you pull me away? I aint scared of that girl.”
“She twice as big as you,” Geo said.
Ellen shook her head. “Three times.”
“So, what? I got—”
“Right on your side?” Geo asked.
She nodded.
“I hope right got a good left hook,” Kenny said, and Ava laughed.
Geo was relieved. It was the second time in a week that Lamar and Sondra had started something with Ava, and he didn’t like it.
Ellen put her hand in Ava’s and said, “Y’all want to listen to records?” and since the twins had recently gotten Little Richard’s Rip It Up, they all decided that was a good way to spend the afternoon.
1976
Though she tried, Sarah could not stop looking at the clock. From the moment she sat down behind her teller window at exactly nine that morning, she turned her head to glance up at the clock above the bank’s front entrance every three or four minutes. By ten o’clock, she was already getting a crick in her neck. She rubbed it, gingerly, and deposited two fifteen-dollar checks for a customer who had a large piece of spinach between her teeth. When the spinach-toothed woman was gone, Sarah glanced again at the clock. Her pre-occupation with the time was so obvious that her co-worker, Mildred, a white girl who sat behind the window next to Sarah’s, leaned over and whispered, “You got a long time to go before closing. You got a hot date or something?”
Sarah wasn’t actually waiting for four o’clock. She never waited for four o’clock. She liked her job and most of her customers and liked the view out the front windows of the bank, where all day she could see Center City life taking place: meter maids writing tickets to delivery men who sneered or gave them the finger; the lines of sophisticated-looking, business-suited men and women, waiting for hot dogs from street vendors. Usually, when four o’clock came, she felt a little bit sorry.
She was waiting for noon. Lunchtime. It came later than usual. She was sure of it. When she stepped out into the August sunshine, she immediately turned and looked down the street to see if the bus was coming. It wasn’t. She frowned. How in the world was she going to make it all the way down to Old City, find the fire-eating man, and be back at work in an hour? She could take a cab, but that would mean spending money she really didn’t want to spend. She could walk, except that it was fifteen blocks down, and fifteen back. She checked her watch, which was always five minutes fast. It read twelve-ten, so she knew it was really only five minutes past. She decided to just start walking, and when the bus caught up to her she could take it the rest of the way.
Center City was always crowded during the day, especially around lunchtime. She moved quickly, passing the shiny, square, silver food vendor boxes that lined the streets and made the air smell like grease and coffee and fried onions. She walked as fast as she could in the shoes she was wearing. Her heels weren’t high, but nor were they made for speed. She had gone four blocks when she saw the bus approaching from behind, and she got on it, and sat in the front seat so she could get right off at her stop. It seemed to take forever. When the bus got to Penn’s Landing, she was the last passenger. She stepped down and the bus pulled away with a grunt of heavy, dark gray smoke.
She hadn’t been down here in years, but it all looked the same. On one side, facing the Delaware River, there were the same little stores that had
been there in sixty-five, including a tailor and a couple of antique shops. On the other side, near the water, there were huge warehouses and, in the water, the huge ships that lined the piers. Large brick and cement staircases linked Penn’s Landing to Market and Walnut streets. From where she was standing, at Front and Market, she could see out over the river, to the Ben Franklin Bridge, and beyond, to New Jersey. She walked south, towards the spot where she remembered the fire-eating man had performed years ago.
She had decided, while lying in bed the night before, that the only way to erase the humiliation of being called a liar by Ava, right in front of Helena, was to turn that lie into the God’s honest truth. She would find the fire-eating man and talk to him, just like she’d told Helena she had done.
When she saw him, in the same spot wh
ere he had been eleven years earlier, she was surprised. He was standing in the same place he had been in the lie she’d told Helena, but she realized now how unlikely it was to find him still there, and she was surprised Helena had believed it. If she had. Maybe she had known it was a lie all along and was just humoring Sarah. That thought made her even more determined and she went and joined the small crowd of people standing around the performer.
He looked different than she remembered. Shorter, for one thing. For another thing, the scruffy, alley-cat look he once had was gone, his hair and beard much shorter and well-groomed. The sweet face she remembered was harder around the edges, though, and lined around the eyes with eleven more years of life. He didn’t notice her, just as she knew he wouldn’t, and she stood there wondering how in the world she was going to get him by himself so she could talk to him. The lie had not only been that she had seen him again, but that they had talked. And, also, that he had remembered her and asked her to come back again. She had no idea how she was going to make those last two lies into the truth, but she could at least talk to him. She hoped. She checked her watch. It was twenty after twelve already.
His act had changed since she had last seen it. He had added some dancing and also some flips. No matter what else he was doing, though, it was the flaming batons that held all eyes as he juggled them high in the air. Sarah enjoyed the movement of the flames, felt almost hypnotized by it, and she remembered why she had come here every day for a whole year. He was wonderful to watch.
He did another flip and the crowd applauded. When he was upright again, he smiled at them all and said, “Thank you, friends, thank you very much.” His voice was still light and young, happy-sounding, and he had an accent that she hadn’t remembered that made him sound a little like a Kennedy. Considering how he looked and what he did for a living, it was a strange thought, and she laughed to herself.
The show went on for several more minutes and ended with the fire-eating man eating the fire from the tip of each baton. The audience applauded again, and the air filled with the sound of coins tinkling against each other as they were dropped into his hat. As the crowd thinned, the fire-eating man turned and bent down over a black case, arranging the now-fireless batons inside it. Sarah watched the back of him, standing a few feet away, and willed herself to say something. He was packing his things quickly, almost throwing the batons into the case, and dumping the change from the hat in with them, without even counting it, and Sarah decided he must be in a hurry. She shouldn’t bother him now. She checked her watch and saw that it was twelve-forty. She needed to get back to work. But she stood there, staring at his back and trying to think of something, anything to say. He closed the case and put the empty hat onto his head and, without even turning around, he walked in the other direction, away from her. She started to call out to him, but no sound came. Instead, she watched him walk away and, when he turned the corner at Market and was out of sight, she turned and walked back to the bus stop.
When George clocked out of work at five and exited the city building through a side door, which let him out on Market, he was sure he saw Chuck Ellis standing across the street, right out front of the post office, looking at him. But when a mail truck pulled up it blocked his view, and when it pulled away a few seconds later, no one was there. He lit a cigarette and walked down the street in the other direction, towards the el station, feeling uneasy. When he got to the el station, he ran to catch the westbound train but missed it, the doors sliding closed just as he reached the platform. He cursed, feeling more annoyed than he should be, considering the trains ran every five minutes or so at this time of day. He sat down on a bench and took a long drag off his cigarette. A woman in a nurse’s uniform smiled at him and he smiled back with exaggerated interest, then rested his elbows on his knees and lowered his head, staring down at the platform floor beneath his feet. He was tired. He’d worked a long day collecting Philadelphia’s garbage and his shoulders and neck ached. His body couldn’t handle hard work the way it used to. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and sighed.
He felt someone watching him and thought it was the pretty nurse who had smiled at him, and he looked up grinning, ready to give her the earnest, but ultimately empty, attention he always gave to women who flirted with him. It wasn’t the nurse looking at him, though. It was Chuck. He was standing by the stairs that led up to the street surface and he was watching George, whose grin faded.
The el pulled into the station and George stepped up to the doors of one car just as Chuck approached the adjoining car. Once inside the train, George could see Chuck through the windowed doors separating the compartments. Chuck wasn’t watching him anymore. George took a forward-facing seat, putting his back to Chuck and the adjoining car. When he got off at Sixtieth Street, he did not see Chuck as he walked towards the stairs and down to the street.
When he got to his front door, he was just putting his key in the lock when he heard footsteps behind him and, startled, he turned, and saw Chuck standing behind him.
“I think you got the wrong house,” George said. “The devil’s in here.”
Chuck frowned. “I aint never been a part of all that.”
“You aint never stopped nobody else from being part of all that, either.”
“George, I need to confess something.”
“Sounds to me like you need a priest. You thinking about converting?”
“I’d like to come in a minute, if I could,” Chuck said.
“Nigger, you must be crazy.”
Chuck swallowed hard and said, “I aint got a right to ask you for nothing. But I’m asking anyway. Just for a minute. Please. And then, if you want, I’ll go and never come back here again.”
“So, if I say no, you gone keep coming back?”
“I aint trying to harass you or nothing. I just need to say a few words to you, and that’s all. Please.”
George didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to hear a few words. But he also didn’t want Chuck coming back. He opened the front door and listened. The house was quiet. “Alright,” he said, unsure. “For a minute. And then you got to go.”
They stood on opposite sides of the living room. Chuck kept wiping his palms on his pant legs. When he spoke, his voice was shaky. “I wasn’t honest with you, George. That time at the Christmas party. You know what I’m talking about?”
George didn’t answer.
“When I said I wasn’t like that. It wasn’t true. Well, I mean…I guess I didn’t know what I was like. Or I didn’t want to know. Do that make sense?” He shifted his weight to his other leg, wiped his palms again, cleared his throat. “What I’m saying is, I felt things I didn’t want to feel. I was scared of those feelings. But I couldn’t make them stop. So, I tried to ignore them. Every time you came to prayer service, I’d be so happy to see you, but terrified, too. When I’d go home, I’d look at my wife and wonder why I didn’t get that excited seeing her.” He looked pained, his eyebrows drawn tight together, remembering. “Then that night when you tried to…well, I couldn’t handle it. I mean, I wanted it. I felt it. But when it started to happen, I got scared. I knew it meant something. Thinking about it was one thing. Doing it was something else.”
George looked away from him, down at the floor.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you, George. But I know I did.”
George could feel Chuck’s eyes on his face, but he didn’t want to look at him. He didn’t want Chuck to see the pain inside him, the pain that was always there, eating him up from the inside out, the pain of knowing he wasn’t good enough, not for a woman or a man, not for his mother or his father, not for his children. The pain of being this other thing, this strange being that belonged nowhere, least of all in the company of God. He felt Chuck move closer to him, felt his hand come up and touch his back, between his shoulder blades, and then move up to his shoulders, massaging his tense muscles with strong fingers. George closed his eyes. He tried to think only of Chuck, of this man he had once
felt so close to, this gentle, kind man with his soft voice and delicate-looking-but-strong hands, this man he had wanted so much and still wanted.
Chuck’s hand moved from George’s shoulder to his head, his fingers in George’s hair, and in one moment he turned George’s head so that they faced each other, and pulled him close, and pressed his open mouth against George’s. George felt the heat and wetness of Chuck’s tongue against his lips, and he opened his mouth and let it slide in, at the same time feeling a pressure in his crotch as his excitement strained against his zipper.
There were footsteps, and George moved away from Chuck, just as Helena appeared in the doorway. She looked from George to Chuck and didn’t say anything. A moment later, Ava appeared at her side.
“Oh. Daddy. When did you come in?”
“Couple minutes ago,” George said, willing his voice to sound normal. Begging it to. “I didn’t know nobody was home.”
“We were in the backyard,” Ava said.
“Oh. Well, you remember Deacon Ellis?” George asked, now standing several feet away from Chuck.
Ava nodded. “Hello.”
“Hello, Ava. It’s nice to see you.”
“This is my sister-in-law, Helena.”
While Chuck and Helena exchanged hellos, George searched Helena’s eyes for some sign of what she might have seen, what she might be thinking.
“Well, I have to be going,” Chuck said.
Ava and Helena said goodbye and then went into the kitchen.
“Meet me at the church tomorrow tonight. After prayer service,” Chuck whispered to George. “At the back door.”
“Alright.”
At the front door, Chuck peered out into the street and, seeing no one, slipped quietly out of the house.
Mother Haley had been dead four years, but she stood in the kitchen, by the stove, wearing the hat and dress she had been buried in. Regina had been at the refrigerator, taking the meat out for dinner, when the ghost appeared. Startled, she had dropped the package of ground beef onto the floor. “What in the world are you doing here?” Regina asked her.
The Summer We Got Free Page 16