After the first scotch, the barman had no olives in his bar, I was aware of the lightness of my spirit. I spun my stool and faced the stores in the College Park indoor shopping plaza, and saw a woman getting her fingers painted red and made longer with false nails, and a woman with a white apron, which covered most of his body, was squinting her eyes as the shampoo dropped into her eyes which were closed, after her hair was aged with the white soapiness and fell in strands of dreadlocks. And inside the bar itself, the other tables were filling up with men and women after work, drinking beer. The man beside me smelled of perspiration and after-shave lotion. It could have been one of these two smells, the sweat or the lotion that I found offensive to my allergies. It could have been my own odour, the sweat from shadowing. The man beside me was dressed in a crimpolene suit of royal blue. His shirt was striped in broad lines of blue and white. His tie was stained at the knot. It was striped in thicker splashes of blue and white. He had not shaved since yesterday. He was talking to the man on the other side of me. I was the sandwich of their conversation. He leaned over each time he had something to say to the other man. He released from his mouth, as he did so, small, white, thick balls which evaporated before they reached the shiny black arborite counter of the bar. The waiter remained standing in front of the three of us, making circles with the wet cloth on the polished counter. He did not miss one drop. The man on the other side of me was dressed in a white T-shirt and a blue cardigan sweater and black trousers. I thought of moving one stool to my right to allow these two friends to carry on their conversation without having the spit from one of them fall into the second scotch before me, and to allow the waiter a cleaner sweep and larger circles with his cloth.
“Said he’d be here,” said the man in the cardigan, “in fifteen minutes. We’ve been here more than fifteen minutes.”
“Long as that?” said the man in the striped tie and striped shirt. “It’s only five minutes.” He seemed irritated.
“That makes ten more minutes, then.”
“Yes, ten.”
“And in ten he should be here, then.”
“Five from fifteen.”
“I know that!”
“Thought you’d forgot.”
“Why’re you talking to me as if . . .”
At this point I thought it best to get out of the sandwich. “Would you mind?” I told the man in stripes.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Sure thing,” the other said.
I was already buried deep in thought, in a dream, trying to remember when I had had the dream, picking the pieces up from my bed which was lumpy and which did not take my body that night in any restfulness; putting these pieces together as if the snatches from the dream I was trying to recall were the cardboard snippets in a puzzle; recalling now a chair that was ornamental and shaped like a peacock or a nightingale, and made of metal that looked green in the dream, the colour of some precious stone, and moving this chair from its leaning position on a wall, to discover it had no legs; but when I stood it upright, legs grew into place as if they were there from the moment of manufacture; and when I went to place the chair amongst the other furniture in the room, all of a sudden the floor disappeared. The floor had been there when I discovered the nightingale chair. But the floor disappeared when I held the chair in my hands. I began to stir the four cubes in my third scotch. Dreams are dreams, I said to the cubes. Are just damn puzzles to make your life miserable, and cause you to see things that are not there. But I really did not believe what I was thinking.
“How much you say he got?”
“Well, from what he said . . .”
“Jackpot?”
“He had a damn good picture of the place.”
“One o’ those fancy places, weren’t it?”
“Not far from here, neither.”
“Townhouse job.”
“You shouldda seen the things in that joint, he says to me. Christ! Like a museum, he says to me. And what does he take?”
“Don’t say it.”
“Like hell, don’t say it!”
“Paintings. Pictures. Silverware. Things galore. And books.”
“We’re not in the book business, Ted.”
“Sure, sure! But the things!”
“Ain’t it funny? When you do a job like this, the things you know about the person!”
“Andthe place.”
“You could get to know the person. If you had time. And if you didn’t have to get out so goddamn quick.”
“A helluva thing. The things you find out.”
“You could maybe draw a picture of the owner. Sometimes even blackmail the bastard.”
“With a quick eye,” the man in stripes said, “you know his personality from the things you touch and select to take.”
I had been taking the pieces of the dream from the assembled interpretation, and was dissatisfied by the easy assembly; and I was taking them apart again when I found myself, against my better sense of decency, eavesdropping on their conversation. I was taken in by their language, more than by what they were saying, and I tried to place them in their status, in the houses they lived in, and in the context of their existence. But I could not. This city was too democratic. And all it took to give an impression was the right-looking clothes. If you had the money, you had the class. It could be bought at certain cheap places and prices in this city.
“Frinstance!” the man in stripes was saying. “He says to me, he says he’s sure it was a black house.”
“What you mean?”
“A black.”
“Colour?”
“The owner. He says he knew this from something. You know what?”
“Photograph!”
“Too simple. For Chrissakes, a blind man won’t need eyes to know from a photo,that!”
“Clothes?”
“Don’t be a goddamn—”
“What’s so silly about clothes?”
“Don’t you live in this city? Don’t you see that you can’t hardly tell from clothes if it’s a man or a goddamn woman?”
“Yeah, they wear some weird clothes in this city! Some weird colours and weirder cuts!”
“Is there anything you can think of? Anything? That you can tell between them and us? Any goddamn thing at all?”
“I won’t name the obvious.”
“No.”
“Anything, you say. Now, lemme think. Any thing. Anything. Any thing. Colour!”
“You mean, like, they’re black. And we white? Now, that’s dumb. Of course, we are white! And they’re black.”
“But I’m talking about nobody in a goddamn house, and you’ll still know who the goddamn person is.”
“Black? Or white? Well, shit, I said so, didn’t I? A photo could tell you that!”
“There’s no goddamn photo! Don’t you understand? There is no goddamn photo in the place! Want another beer?”
“Sure. No photo.”
“Two beers!”
“I got it. I just got it. Size o’ shoes!”
“Drink the goddamn beer, will ya!”
“Thanks.”
“Hair.”
“Here? Here where?”
“Hair! Hair! Like on your head.”
“But you said there wasn’t no photograph!”
“For Chrissakes! There was two Afro combs in the second-floor bathroom. Here’s our man now.”
“Ten minutes.”
“Yeah, it took him ten minutes.”
“What took you so long?”
“I had a class. In psychology. I missed the last two Fridays. And I didn’t want the prof to . . .”
He was dressed in faded jeans. The jeans were no longer blue. There was a hole in the ass. He was wearing running shoes. And from the short distance I was, I could see Adidas barely visible and recognizable in the battered shapeless shoes. He had on a light-weight windbreaker over his pale blue V-necked sweater. His hair was long and stringy. And his hands moved nervously. You can tell a thief is a thie
f, my mother always said, by his fingers and his hands. This young man who joined the one in the cardigan and the one in the stripes, moved his hands and his ten fingers, touching and wiping them, as if he were rubbing dice, caressing them before a throw.
“Mike here’s been telling me what an easy . . .”
“Piece o’ cake! Gimme a sip of your beer. Got a cigarette? Piece of cake. Thanks. Snow was on the ground. So I had to be damn careful, so I jump over the fence adjoining, and nobody seen me. Shit, and I landed right on the step, the back step of the back door. And it was so easy, so I put a little weight on the back door and Jees! you shoudda seen how it sent in, and all I could think of.”
“But you got the stuff!”
“I have the money.”
“And the only mistake I think I made—”
“No goddamn mistakes, now!”
“Man, we don’t want to hear none!”
“A little mistake. I forgot to nail back the beading on the back door. Left it leaning at an angle, forty-five degrees.”
“Why an angle?” the man in stripes said.
“Why forty-five? For Chrissakes, why not thirty-five, or fifty-five? For Chrissakes!”
It was not the same man I had been shadowing in Chinatown, near Bay.
“Did you expect me to take out a pair o’ compasses and measure the goddamn angle, for Chrissakes?”
SOMETIMES, A MOTHERLESS CHILD
She went back on her knees beside the bed. But the words did not come. “I can’t commune with you this morning, Lord.” She got up, rubbed the circulation back into her knees, pulled the pyjamas leg from sticking to her body, passed her hands over her hips, promised to eat less food so late at night, touched her breasts for cancer, and said, “Lord, another day, another dollars.” She walked out of the bedroom and into the cold hallway, four paces long, passed through the living room, which served also as a dining room and kitchen, and into the tiny bathroom, colder than the short hallway. She looked up at the colour print of a man with a red beard grown into two points, strong piercing eyes, thin face and sallow complexion. The man’s heart was not only bare, but outside. Something like a diadem, or a crown made of two strands of branches, thick and plaited with thorns sticking into the man’s head, was causing drops of blood to fall from his skull. The colour print was above the sink. “Father God,” she said. She closed her eyes and continued to pee. The man’s hand was raised, the right hand, in a salute like that made by a boy scout, or like a gesturing giving benediction. It was this gesture which made her say, “Thank you.” And with that, she felt better. But the words they were saying, and the words written about the Jamaican; and the sad memories that the snapshot of her husband brought back; and the drying up of her own words so necessary to begin the morning with; and the snoring behind the wall, all these worries passed from her mind and made her step light and carefree as she stepped into the shower. She hated showers. But they were quick. And this morning, in her hurry to be happy, she pulled out the new-fashioned circular knob, and the water, cold as winter, pounded against her body as if it contained small pellets of ice. She shrieked.
And before the scream died down, she was on the telephone to her landlord, who lived above her head. She hated that more than she hated showers.
“Mister Petrochuck!”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Am I paying you rent for this place? And I can’t take a proper bath in peace without the water turning cold, cold, cold as Niagara Falls, and freezing my blasted body?”
Through the receiver she heard his hearty laugh and words in some foreign language, which she hated next to having to take showers, which, after five years she still did not know the origin of; and when his laughter abated, and her angered lowered, she heard Mr. Petrochuck explaining the difficulty.
“I tell you two times now, Mrs. Jones, he was saying, no longer with laughter in his voice, for in a way he both feared and respected her. “Two times I explain it now. You turn knob to left for the cold. And you turn knob to the right for the hot. And you turn before you pull out knob.”
She felt ashamed to have to be told these explanations again. “So, how the hell am I to know that? Where I come from, you turn to the left for the hot. To the left!” She tried to imitate his accent, to diffuse both her frustration and her anger. “And you turn the knob to the right for the cold.”
“That’s right.”
It was her time now to laugh, and to laugh and talk as she teased him.
“Thanks, Mister.”
“Thank you, Mrs. J.”
“Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child . . .” She was already in the shower, and the water was warm, and her voice was beautiful and clear above the sound of the water which came out in jets, as if it was mixed with marbles that had been taken from a furnace and mixed in cold water. “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child . . .”
When she was dressed, she started to prepare a sandwich, using Wonder Bread and canned salmon. She put a slice of tomato and a leaf of lettuce between the soft white slices. She wrapped it in a large white napkin, then into greaseproof paper, then into plastic. She dropped it into a brown paper bag. She placed a five-dollar note on the paper bag, and secured it with a paperclip.
She pushed the door of the small room behind the wall where she was standing in the kitchen, and looked at the large body curled in the shape of an embryo, on his left side, breathing heavily through his mouth. And she admired his smooth black body, muscular in the places where men his age are muscular; and with his hair cut in that odd style which she never liked, with two things that looked like lightning marks shaved deep into his short hair; and after she had taken in all this, as she does every morning during the week, she turned the light on.
“You!” she shouted.
This is the way she greeted him every morning; the way she chose to rouse him from his sleep. There was a smile in her shout, as she stood by the door, blocking it, sturdy as if she was a prison guard. “You!”
Her voice penetrated the sleep that he had been embracing, and it might have penetrated also the nightmare that his sleep had wrapped him into, for with the second call he sprung upright, and started to tremble in terror. She noticed that he had a hard-on. But she was his mother.
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” There was terror in his pleading.
“Who shooting you? Boy, who are shooting you?”
“Sorry Mom.”
“Is somebody shooting you? Look, fix yourself in front of me, do.”
He pulled the sheet up, and covered his nakedness.
“School isn’t this morning?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Well, get up, you!”
“Thanks, Mom.”
And she laughed and hugged him tight, as if it was a farewell of love. He wrapped his strong black arms round her body, and she could feel his heart, and she was sure she could feel his blood. Then, she released him. She turned the light off. She closed the door. She shook her head from side to side in profound satisfaction at the way he was getting along, making plans for him and for herself, but more than anything else, making plans for his future. She was so proud of him. So proud. And he was growing so well. She gathered up her purse. She selected a large bag. She folded it and put it into the leather bag in which she carried her purse and other things. She turned the lights off in the rest of the apartment. But she was worried about something. Why would he say, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot?” But just as soon, she put it out of her mind. He was such an obedient boy. She began to hum, and before she closed the front door, and before the clock on the mantelpiece chimed seven times, she heard him say, “Bye, Mom. Have a good day.”
Her shower this morning was warm and embracing, and the water soaked her body as if she was still bathing in the waves of the sea. She was feeling better. She would manage her work today, and not complain. She would even change her mind about taking showers.
“Life is so good!” she said, turning the key in the lock.
When she walked down the short path, covered with snow with ice beneath, her steps went gingerly, and she didn’t mind the winter. “Some-times, I feel, like a mother-less child . . .”
“BJ! BJ! Hey, man! It’s Marco, man! BJ!” He waited as usual, until he was sure, until the caller had identified himself by name, before he even moved from the chair where he was reading a book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He wanted to be sure. He had to be sure that he was opening his mother’s door to the right person.
“Hey, BJ! It’s Marco, man!”
Years ago, when he skipped school on the smallest pretext, and felt he was clever in doing so, his mother got the landlord, Mr. Petrochuck, to check on him; and Mr. Petrochuck asked her how he could check on her son, and she told him how. “He can’t fool me, Mr. P, so don’t let him fool you. Just look along the alleyway between my place and the house next door, and see if you see if my son left. Make a note of the footprints in the snow, and I sure, Mr. P, that a man with your experience in the Second World War, as you always telling me you was in the Alpine Battalion with skis and a gun on your shoulder, that you would know what time may son passed through the alleyway on his way to school.” The landlord’s laugher, and hers, and his remark that she was a better spy than any he had faced in the Russian Army, lasted throughout the rest of the conversation that ended with her giving him her number at work, with the instruction to call her back. She spent that morning with her hands in the rich foamy water in the double sink, washing crystal glasses from the party the night before. But her laughter turned to anger and violence when she heard Mr. P’s report; and when she got home at seven o’clock that night, she was tired and blue with fuming, but her energy came back to her, just as she was revived from the morning shower, and she stood over him, ten years old on that cold Monday night, and she counted twenty-one times that the leather slipper was raised and landed on his back, and she stopped counting, and did not hear her words as she drove the slipper across his back, ripping away one of the thongs, and shouting and muttering and screaming as she flogged him. ”Let me tell you something, you hear me? Let me tell you something, young man. If you don’t want to go to school, I will take you myself, to the nearest police station, and let them lock you up, you hear me?” And it went on that way, the sharp blows from the slipper rising in their unsatisfied anger, and her voice piercing the peace of her place which she kept clean and in which she made no noise, careful to be decent and respectable. “. . . And, and-and, living in this place with all the things happening to black people, to men and boys like you, and you wanting to turn out like them?” And it stopped only when there was a pause in her energy, and in her anger, and she heard the pounding at the door. At first she thought it was the police. And she got scared. And then she felt grateful that they had come to take her son away. “Serve you damn right!” And then she was terrified. She saw herself in handcuffs, taken out to the police cruiser and placed in the back seat, with the road of neighbours watching, and led into the station, the same police station she was going to take him to, and have her fingers placed on the ink pad, and in ten small spaces, printed as a criminal, and the charge of assault, or bodily harm, or violent assault, whichever charge they wanted to lay on her. And then she recognized Mr. Petrochuck’s voice. “Are you going to kill this boy?” And the relief, and the protection his presence brought, as if he was still in the Alpine Battalion and had rescued a detachment of his men ambushed and encircled by their own loss of control and nerves. She did not lower the broken leather slipper again but held it in her right hand, as her eyes filled up with tears. And she embraced Mr. Petrochuck, and she asked him to sit with her for a while, and she remained silent and heavy with her grief which shook her body in spasms from time to time. That morning when they had spied on him, as he explained it to Marco on the telephone, hours later, the snow had betrayed him. It had remained firm and pure, clean and like innocence itself, without a blemish, because he had remained in his room all day, listening to music. Marco had supplied the school principal with a note of excuse, with his mother’s signature forged on it. But he learned his lesson and deceived the landlord who continued to report his activities to his mother; and excelled in class through his brilliance, and because he was bright he had more time to do the things he wanted to do. So, this morning, when he heard her leave, as he has been doing for years, he put his coat, a fur-lined jeanjacket over his pyjamas, put on his sneakers, and walked from the back door, his private entrance, through the deep snow, right to the alleyway, and through the alleyway to the front of the house. Then carefully, he walked backwards, placing the sneakers exactly into the footprints going away from the back door, retracing his steps, right back into the house. He had been doing this so often that he no longer regarded it as a skill. Or as deceit. It was like brushing his teeth as the first activity after getting out of bed. He took off his sneakers, brushed them off on the mat covered with a copy of yesterday’s Star. He dusted the snow off his jacket, as he had brushed the low-hanging branches of the tree in the alleyway, and put it back into the cupboard where he kept his stereo and CD player and his clothes, and which he had covered with a piece of cloth he had bought from the Third World Books & Crafts store on Bathurst Street. The cloth was Kente cloth. He had read somewhere in his voracious appetite for books that Malcolm X was married in Kente cloth.
In this City Page 18