Solomon approached Daisy about it. Hitched his pants and stood his ground like the man he’d always wanted to be, the strong man Grammy said his father had been.
They discussed it, fought about it, and then fell into each other’s arms and cried about it until Daisy assured him that there had been just one other man, a man she thought she loved, but knew now that it wasn’t that at all, not love, not like what she was feeling for Solomon.
They married at the justice of the peace, and Solomon didn’t even spend the entire first night with his new bride, because Grammy didn’t allow him to stay out past two a.m. “Man or no man, you going to respect my house.” And he did, so he came in at a quarter to two and slipped the gold band off his ring finger and tucked it into his pants pocket before checking on Grammy, who was propped up in her bed, waiting.
Two more nights passed, and Daisy was left alone in their brand-new studio apartment in Jamaica, Queens, her mother on the phone trying to quiet her daughter’s tears, her father in the background calling Solomon a “boy and not a man. What kinda man can’t tell his mother he done married? Sneaking around with his own damn wife—what kind of shit is that?”
Daisy putting up with his silliness. Loving her husband after work and well into the night because it would take him little more than an hour to get home by two so he had to leave before one a.m. and, “Don’t worry, I’m going to tell her tomorrow,” spoken into her neck when they said goodbye at the door.
A whole week had passed before he was able to finally tell Grammy. She had slapped him across his face and then caught him by his throat before she even realized what she was doing. That little hussy had stolen her son right from beneath her nose, and she would hate her for the rest of their married life.
Some months later, Daisy cut her hair and began wearing it puffed out on her head like those suede vest–sporting, miniskirt-adorned, bead-wearing hippies who smoked those reefer cigarettes and ended their conversations with, “Peace, my brother.”
Well, that’s what Grammy said. Told her that straight to her face after Solomon had convinced her to have them both over for Sunday dinner.
“Babies do something to women. You know your sister Jackie had a wild spirit. Nothing I could do, but that baby, that baby calmed her right down,” Grammy had whispered in Solomon’s ear before they left.
* * *
Daisy was perplexed. “We said we would wait a few years.”
“Well, I don’t want to wait,” Solomon said, and banged his water glass down on the table. The dangling earrings and leather band bracelet she wore seemed to mock him.
“But—but we were going to try to save up for a house. We talked about London and Paris . . .”
Regular black people don’t go them places. He could hear Grammy in his ears.
“I want a baby. Those other things will come,” Solomon said. Break her spirit, calm her down.
Daisy folded, and Solomon dropped her diaphragm in the garbage among the baby peas, spare rib bones, and white rice they’d had for dinner.
She let her hair grow long again, and her belly pulled away from her and reached out into the world, her breasts ballooned out before her, and her nose spread across her face and the gap seemed more noticeable when she smiled her thick-lipped smile. She was ugly, and Grammy told her so. “Must be a girl child ’cause she taking all your beauty from you,” she said with a laugh and quick pat to Daisy’s belly.
Grammy had never thought she was beautiful.
The baby came in July, the hottest summer on record, born on the fifth, just missing Independence Day, a fate that followed him the rest of his life.
A boy—seven pounds, three ounces. Long and yellow with a clean head and pug nose. He kept his eyes closed for three days. Fists balled up and toes curled under like he was scared—not just scared but petrified of what life had in store for him.
“Should name him Homer after your daddy,” Grammy suggested when she came to see him.
Daisy was on the hospital bed between them, baby boy resting in her arms, Grammy on the side closest to the door, Solomon to her right blocking the July sun coming in through the window.
Her head bounced between Grammy and Solomon, and her eyes dared him to agree.
“Nah, we got a name for him,” Solomon said, and glowed when he looked down at his son. “We gonna give him a name that starts with Daisy and ends with me.” He reached down to stroke the baby’s balled fist.
Grammy pursed her lips and rolled her eyes.
“Donovan,” Solomon said, and grinned.
Grammy flipped it over in her head a few times. “How that begin with her and end with you?” she asked, feeling they were making fun of her sixth-grade education.
Daisy said nothing.
“Daisy starts with D and Solomon ends with N, so Donovan,” Solomon said, and then a full smile spread across his face.
Grammy considered that for a moment. “Why can’t it start with you and end with her? You planted the seed.”
Daisy just shook her head. There was no pleasing this woman.
After the children—Donovan first and Elaine some years later—Daisy’s body reached its full and womanly potential. Round hips and ample bosom, plump ass bouncing beneath those white pants Grammy talked about and hated so much that she made Solomon hate them too.
Men calling out to her, even if Solomon was right by her side pushing his mind to slip back to the first time they slept together and how unashamed she had been of her naked body, the way she guided his lips to her nipples, how her hips knew just when to turn, push, and pull back when he was inside her.
He thought of those things even as he walked the pavement of every borough he was assigned to. The images blinded him; he couldn’t even see the numbers on the doors, the Beware of Dog signs on the fences, or the names on envelopes, his mind all the time running on how many before him and now how many men since.
They moved to a two-bedroom apartment in the same building, where Donovan and Elaine shared a room, and Daisy got a phone extension in the bedroom, good for Solomon—good for him to pick up and listen in on her phone conversations when she thinks he’s sleeping.
Girl talk, hair and nails, people at work, clothing, movies. “Did you hear that new song?”
Nothing that suggests another man. Nothing. But then, maybe they were talking in code. Grammy said women talked in code. She should know; she was a woman.
He’s delivering mail in Brooklyn and sometimes Staten Island, but he needs to be in Queens, close by, so that on Saturdays when he’s working and she’s home with the kids, he can pop by and make sure she’s home with the kids.
Those kids don’t break her spirit or even calm her down; she still plays the music loud and even got the kids dancing and spinning along with her, and then there are the Saturday-night bingo games with her girlfriends and sometimes dinner and a movie too. Daisy goes whether he agrees to it or not, walks right out the door, leaving the kids he wanted to have in his care.
Solomon can’t see how he’s going to take her down a notch and stop her from wearing that hot-pink lipstick and having her hair corn-braided and beaded at the ends.
Grammy says, “Let me think.”
Daisy hangs in there, even though there ain’t no house and no plans for one, even though Paris and London have been replaced in her head with just leaving—packing up her kids and getting far and away from Solomon and Grammy and that whole Barrows tribe, especially those stupid-ass sisters-in-law of hers who breed children like cattle and never say anything against their mama or their husbands.
But she hangs in there, and the arguments get worse and worse, and she leaves and comes back, leaves and comes back.
“This was who I was when you married me. You loved me for me then—what happened between then and now?” Daisy says for the umpteenth time.
Solomon’s not sure about anything anymore except that she’s not the wife she’s supposed to be, and he hears Grammy’s words in his head and says, “
I want another baby.”
Because Grammy thinks that two children aren’t enough. “A third one would calm her down for sure.”
That’s it for Daisy. She’s gone.
* * *
So there they were, Solomon and Donovan pulling up in front of Grammy’s house, number 43 St. Felix Street, Brooklyn, New York.
Three-story brick house, potted plants on each one of the eight steps that led up to the front door that was wide open, exposing the pink-and-white-striped wallpaper and carpeted staircase that led up to the bedrooms and the vacant apartment above that.
String beans and ham hocks cooking on the stove and corn bread cooling on the table, Donovan could smell all of that and the talcum powder on Grammy’s body when she rushed to the door and wrapped her arms around him.
She held on much too long. He felt just the way Solomon felt against her when he was that age. God had given her a second chance and a double blessing, Grammy thought.
Praise the Lord.
AGE NINE
Clyde Walker was a distant relative who’d followed Grammy and Homer down from Michigan back in the fifties. He’d never married, and Grammy always thought that was such a shame because he was a good-looking man, hardworking and kind.
He needed a place to stay.
The basement would do—he’d lived in basements for most of his time in New York. The basement would do.
Private entrance, insulated walls, and lime-green indoor-outdoor carpet on the floor. Boiler might be a problem, Grammy warned. It gets noisy in the wintertime, but he could be sure it kept the whole house toasty and warm.
“I’d only need it for six months. No more than that.”
Grammy smiled. “We’d love to have you.”
“Going out West,” Clyde confided over the second piece of apple pie Grammy rested down before him. “I just need a place till my money come through, and then I’m out West.”
“Los Angeles?” Donovan chirped.
“San Fran-cisco!” Clyde bellowed, and slapped his hand down on the table. “The land of milk and honey.” He laughed and then winked at Solomon. “I sure do like the honey, ya know?” He laughed again.
Solomon knew. But he hadn’t had any honey since Daisy left him.
“You always moving about. Here and there, no one place can hold you down, huh?” Grammy said, and sat down to devour her own slice of pie.
“No one place and no one woman,” Clyde replied, and winked again at Solomon.
“So what money you waiting on?” Solomon asked, desperately wanting to move the subject away from women.
Grammy’s eyebrows went up. “That ain’t none of our business, Solomon.”
“It’s okay, Edna,” Clyde said. “Fell down a manhole the year before. Wintertime, you know, snow piled up knee high.” Clyde wiped at his mouth and then scratched his chin. “Fell right through it, broke my hip and fractured my foot. Was out of commission for a few months. The ladies weren’t happy about that, not at all.”
Another wink and then the laughter. Solomon cringed.
“It’s the city’s responsibility to keep up on things like that, so since they didn’t, they got to pay for their mistake.”
Solomon nodded his head.
“My lawyers say another six months and my case should be settled. West Coast been calling me for quite awhile, quite awhile,” Clyde said.
Six months turned to eight and then twelve.
He’d become quite comfortable at 43 St. Felix Street, spending most of his day chatting with Grammy in the living room, shoes off, stubby toes pushing into the soft pile carpet. His belly heavy with Grammy’s good cooking, heavy and spilling over the waistband of his pants.
Clyde winking and laughing and sometimes his hand lingering a little too long on Grammy’s knee when he was trying to make a point or needed her to listen real careful to what he was trying to say, and Grammy blushing like some schoolgirl and sometimes resting her hand on top of his and looking a little too deeply into his eyes, listening a little too intently to his words.
Clyde smoked cigars down in the basement, and the smoke, the stinking scent of them, would climb up to the main floor—and Grammy didn’t even complain, didn’t say a word against it, even though she wouldn’t let any of her daughters’ husbands smoke in the house, not even outside on the front stoop.
Grammy not keeping her hair tied up anymore while she’s in the house, going to the hairdresser every week, no matter what, and getting her hair washed and curled and making sure to get that blue rinse put in once a month.
Clyde said it made her look younger.
Grammy powdering herself a little bit more heavily with the talcum—under her heavy breasts and up near her collarbones, and the white of it settling around her neck like the dust that she made sure never had more than a day’s rest on her coffee table and china cabinet.
Solomon is watching all of this and the fact that Clyde is at home enough to stand over the stove, lifting the tops off the pots, sniffing and dipping his spoon in the soups and stews and gravys, tasting and then suggesting, “Maybe a bit more salt, Edna?”
“It’s been more than six months. When he going?” Solomon ventures quietly, softly, so as not to upset Grammy.
“Oh, Solomon,” Grammy breathes and waves her hand at him before calling down to Clyde that dinner is ready, that there’s ice cream and cake for dessert.
Solomon just smirks.
Donovan adores Clyde because the man makes time for him. He takes him to play stickball in the park and to the corner store for candy and soda while Solomon is at work or locked away in his bedroom, sipping from the bottle he sneaks in every day under his arm.
Sometimes after school Donovan gathers his plastic toy soldiers and descends the stairs to Clyde’s place in the basement, and they arrange the soldiers across that indoor-outdoor carpet and play war games until Grammy calls them up for dinner.
Clyde calls Donovan Cappy and Donovan refers to him as General Clyde, and they make explosive noises with their mouths, and Donovan sprays the soldiers and that indoor-outdoor carpet with spit when he tries to imitate the sound of a machine gun.
And whether Donovan wins the war game or not, Clyde rewards him, inviting him to dip his hand into the crystal bowl that’s full of the peppermints Clyde loves so much.
And sometimes before Donovan scrambles up the stairs, he hugs Clyde tight around the waist and says, “Thanks,” or, “I love you.”
* * *
The soft young skin, the scent of them, clean or not, drove him crazy.
He loved to watch them, all of them, male and female, as they moved up and down the street, playing games that children play.
He beckoned to them, enticing them with candy, money, or both.
He’d been able to touch some, able to get even further with others. “Show me,” he’d say, and many did.
“Can I?” he inquired, and he would reach a steady hand out to touch a pair of young nipples.
“They’re beautiful,” he’d say, and bend to kiss them. “I love you,” he’d mumble, and his hands would lift them up and into his lap. “See mine,” he’d state, and lift his T-shirt. “You can touch them, if you want to,” he’d breathe, and guide their hands.
He’d had penises in his mouth, young supple organs that quivered against his tongue, and he’d lain between the legs of babes.
“Don’t cry,” he’d whisper, “Don’t cry, I love you.”
None of them told. Not one. They wouldn’t, couldn’t—they were as much at fault as he was. Just as dirty. He’d convinced them that they were.
“What would your mama think if you told her about what you let me do to you?”
That’s all he had to say. Those words were like glue on their lips.
Some got sick, though. Took to bed or just stopped talking altogether. One got pregnant. That had been a surprise; he thought he was sterile.
It had been so easy for so long. Little girls and little boys were much more exciting
than women. He could have them do anything, anything at all, and they never asked for anything in return.
He kept a pocket full of peppermints. It was the peppermints that endeared him to them to begin with, the peppermints that got him alone with them, and the peppermints were what he left them with when he was done touching their young bodies and twisting their minds into knots.
Peppermints are what those children would think of later as adults whenever their lovers reached out to them and they found themselves unable to respond.
* * *
On that day before Donovan’s birthday, something dark and lonely was playing on the turntable. Music that reminded Donovan that his mother was gone for good. The divorce papers had come in the mail just yesterday, and now he supposed that his father would weep in the shower every day and not just on Thursdays and every other Sunday when he went for Elaine and Daisy wouldn’t even take the time to say hello to him.
Tree leaves limp with heat and lack of water (it hadn’t rained for three weeks) threatened to let go of their branches, even though autumn was weeks and weeks away.
The sunflowers, their petals beginning to brown and dry at the tips, wept over the wire fences, and the blacktopped street began to sweat and melt.
Inside, Donovan lay in his bed, flat on his back, dressed only in his undershorts.
“If you stay still, you’ll stay cool,” Grammy had advised before walking out the door. “Your father and I will be back soon. Clyde is here if you need anything.” She dabbed at the moisture around her hairline and above her lip.
“You sure you don’t want to come along?” Solomon had asked as he wiped at his neck and sideburns with the handkerchief he kept in his back pocket.
“Nah,” Donovan said. “I’ll just stay here.”
“Just stay upstairs. Don’t bother Mr. Walker,” Solomon said before pulling the door closed.
The sound of the firecrackers, that and the slow sad music climbing up from the basement and some little girl outside on the sidewalk singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” made the intense heat seem even more unbearable.
He decided that he would go downstairs and see Clyde, even though his father had told him not to.
Loving Donovan Page 8