“Well,” Miriam said, “you’re safe up there. Plus, he does have the best view. Can you bring us the gelato?”
Okay, this was my chance. I’d been waiting for a week for the right time, and here they were, laughing and smiling and encouraging me to go up to some strange man’s house. This had to be it. I placed the ice cream on the table. The label on which Miriam had written “don’t touch!” curled on one side.
“Um, Miriam . . . Sol? I need to ask you a question, please.” Ben ran down the hall to his room. I held the back of his empty high chair. “What about the sponsorship? When would you want to start that?” There. I’d said it.
Miriam licked the back of her spoon. “Grace, let’s wait and see. You’ve been here a week. Who knows, maybe you won’t want to come back next week.”
I had to be persistent. “Wait for how long, exactly?”
“Mmmm . . . Let’s wait one month,” Sol said. “If in a month everything’s working out, you’re comfortable and Ben’s doing well, we’ll go ahead and start the filing. How does that sound to you?”
That wasn’t unreasonable. “Okay, thanks. By the end of April, then,” I said, with a longing glance at Ben’s abandoned ice cream.
BEFORE SHE LEFT FOR work Wednesday morning, Miriam called me into Ben’s room and closed the door. She placed a pair of denim overalls on the bed. “Dress Ben in these when he gets up from his nap,” she told me. “Take cash from the money cup for a cab, and bring back receipts for both directions. Ettie’s address is on the list.”
“Okay. How long should we stay?”
She chewed the corner of her lip, eating a good third of her left red splotch. “Listen, Grace”—Miriam turned to see that the door was closed all the way—“don’t tell Ettie anything, okay?”
“Anything about what?”
“Anything about anything. Whatever she asks about, you just smile and tell her you don’t know anything.”
I nodded.
“And make sure Ben wears the overalls, even if he doesn’t want to.”
“Sure, of course.”
“Thanks, Grace,” she said. “I mean it.”
THIS TIME JANE SMILED when she saw me. She knelt and unbuckled Ben from the carriage and managed to get a quick kiss before he ran into the apartment calling, “Choo choo.”
“Is amazing ’ow much ’im look like Sol when ’im was likkle,” she said, showing me where to park the carriage.
“You have pictures of Sol as a baby?” I asked her.
Jane stopped and cocked her head. “Me not talking ’bout some pictures, you know. Is not me self who mind Solomon from ’im born out Ettie belly? I tell you last time I been working for this family for too damn long. I mind Solomon and the next one. But this is the end.” She dusted her hands together. “Next year I am going back to sweet Jamaica. Old Jane tired stand on these two foot.”
Jesus Christ in the wilderness. Forty years of domestic labor. I tried to imagine knowing Ben’s wife and children and still working for Sol and Miriam at fifty-seven.
“Miss Ettie and Nancy gone to the stores, but them soon come.” She paused outside the kitchen. “You and Ben done eat lunch already?” she asked. We had. “Okay, you can go in the back and see what Ben and the old man doing. Come to the kitchen if you want anything.”
Ben knew the drill and had run straight into the room where his grandfather’s model train was set up. I followed and was greeted by Big Ben, wearing saggy denim overalls, a bulky turtleneck, and a striped cap.
“Wow,” I said, walking over, “this is amazing.” And it was. Big Ben had a real setup. The tracks rested on a platform about the size of two pool tables, with rails that looped around glassy ponds and over a river with a fancy metal bridge. The tracks snaked up steep hills with orange and red fall foliage; miniature cows grazed in cool, green pastures. Tiny people in warm winter gear clustered in the waiting areas of the two stations, while porters permanently strained under the weight of their packed trunks.
“It’s not bad, is it,” said Big Ben. “Seems wrong for a grown man to be playing with toys, but I love it.” He looked down at Ben. “Let’s show Grace how she runs.”
He eased the throttle, and the train slowly shunted into the station. On cue Ben called out, “All aboard!” The whistle screeched as the locomotive pulled out, leaving the people and porters on the platform despite Ben’s warning. Even though Ben must have seen this circuit countless times, he leaned against the tabletop edge and followed the train’s progress without missing a curve or a climb.
“I want to drive a big dump truck and a choo-choo train when I grow up. Choo choo,” Ben said.
Big Ben laid his head against the chair and worked his fingers in Ben’s red curls. “You can be anything you want if it makes you happy.” And then to me, “What about you, Grace? What do you want to do?”
That question again, and I realized I still didn’t have an answer. I had wanted to get away from the island and from my mother. I had wanted to come to New York. Now that I was here, I didn’t know what to do, or how. I shrugged. “Go to school?”
“Grace, you have to get on the school bus,” Ben said.
His grandfather agreed. “Look into the city schools, Grace. Hunter, City, Brooklyn’s good too. I used to sit on their board a long time ago. Everything was a long time ago now. But school is the right place to start.”
He closed his wet eyes, and Ben relaxed against his chest, the flame of the child’s red hair burning bright against the dull gray of his grandfather’s turtleneck.
LATER I MET NANCY, another tall, redheaded Bruckner. She looked normal. You couldn’t tell she was a lesbian.
“Mom, you were right. She is just gorgeous. But, Grace,” she said, “what are you doing working for Sol and Miriam? You should come down to Perry Street, to my studio. I could paint you all day long.”
“Thank you,” I said, waiting for one of them to ask me to sit down. “You are a painter?”
“Oh, and I love the way you speak.” She singsonged, “You are a pain-ter.” Then “Yep, I’m the artist in this family.”
I thought about that, being an artist, painting all day long. Walking around the city, looking for inspiration, and then coming home to put it all down on canvas. “What do you paint?”
“Oh, darling, do not get her started,” Ettie said. “Sit down and talk to us. How’re Sol and Miriam doing?”
“They’re good,” I managed.
Ettie snorted. “Good, is that all they are? How’s Miriam feeling? Has she been shopping?”
“Mom, don’t pick on Grace.”
“Is that what I’m doing? Well, sorry, Grace. I don’t want to pick on you.” To Nancy, she said, “I bet you she’s been buying more of those precious animal figurines. God, she must have about two hundred of those things.”
Nancy laughed. “They mean something to her, Mother. And you know Sol buys them for her too, so it’s not just Miriam to blame.”
“Peasant roots.”
“Grace, you will have to excuse my mother. She’s quite a snob, really,” Nancy told me.
Ettie turned to face her daughter. “Is that what you think, Nancy? That I’m a snob?”
Nancy didn’t flinch, and she didn’t change her tone. “You’re so hard on Miriam, Mom. You won’t give her a break. Not everyone comes from”—she cast one arm out at the room—“this.”
Ettie sat up. “Precisely, Nancy. Not everyone comes from this, but certainly, certainly—and even Grace from Africa I’m sure will agree with me—even if you don’t come from it, once you are exposed to this, as you call it”—and here she mimicked Nancy’s sweeping arm—“shouldn’t your instincts be able to . . . to appreciate, to want, okay, if not want then at least to know. One wants objects that please the eyes, not offend. Surely you of all people agree with me, Nancy.”
Nancy eyed Ettie. “I’m not agreeing to anything, Mother. Maybe Miriam finds beauty in her figurines. Maybe it’s as simple as that. Ask Grace.” Nancy turned
to me. “Grace, what do you think about Miriam’s collection?”
I didn’t think anything, except that they collected dust.
“Now you leave Grace out of this, darling,” Ettie said, pressing her palms on the seat to push herself up. “I’ll just go in and see what my boys are doing at the station.”
NANCY SHARED OUR CAB downtown, Ben half asleep between us. She twisted in her seat, looking over at me as the car inched through heavy traffic. I glanced at her fingernails to see how long they were. At the convent where I had gone to school, the lore was that the girls with short nails were lesbians. Sure enough, Nancy’s nails were cut to the quick and unpolished. I shifted a little closer to the door.
“So how long have you lived in New York?” she asked me.
“Just over a year,” I said, and because I didn’t want her to question me the entire ride home, I asked her, “Is Sol older or younger than you?”
She reached over to scratch Ben’s head. “Solly is my baby brother. You know, Grace, I saw the other woman Sol and Miriam interviewed, and I liked her. She seemed very prim, you know, a proper nanny for Ben.” She smiled at me. “But now I know why Mom and Dad preferred you, though.”
“Why?”
“Are you kidding me?”
I shook my head.
“Look at you. You’re perfect for Mom, and Mom gets what she wants, usually. She’s probably the one paying your salary, for all I know.”
I thought about this, and since Nancy seemed willing to talk, asked, “So what, Miriam didn’t have a choice?”
“Of course she had a choice, darling.” Nancy patted her nephew’s head. “But even if you weren’t the nanny she wanted, you’re the nanny she’s convinced she should have.”
Chapter 19
Sylvia wasn’t expecting me. I had called from the Bruckners’ and told her Miriam needed me to work extra, that I might be in as late as midnight and she shouldn’t wait up. As long as I didn’t make too much noise when I came in, she said, I was to please my mind. For once I was going to do just that. The night was cold and fresh, and I felt full of energy and ready for anything.
I met Brent outside the Nostrand Avenue stop. He was sitting on a bench with his legs squared open and his arms spread wide across the back, watching traffic go by on the parkway. He had on jeans, work boots, and an enormous black coat that looked like a shiny quilt. “ ’Ello, darkie,” he whispered as he kissed me. I closed my eyes and leaned all my weight into him, inhaling great gulps of his cigarette and cinnamon smell.
“Aye,” he said, “you gone to sleep, or what?”
I rubbed my forehead against his chest, unwilling to move, then finally pulled away. And then I felt shy. He took my hand. “Come on.”
We walked over to a small green car. “I didn’t know you drove,” I said. He held open the passenger door for me before getting in, then he leaned over the gears and kissed me properly.
“So where you want go?”
I wanted him to kiss me again. “Can we just drive around for while? You can drive and talk at the same time, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, laughing, and I loved the deep sound, “me think me can manage that.”
But we drove in silence, coasting down Eastern Parkway, down by the big museum and past the library and looping around the great arch at Grand Army Plaza, landmarks I knew only from underground. Brent hadn’t turned on the music, but the silence in the car was comfortable. “So, what you want talk about?” he asked.
I wanted to talk about him. I wanted to ask what he did for work and if he had a girlfriend or any children and brothers and sisters and if his parents lived in America or if they were still back in Jamaica, and how had he and Donovan met, but instead I asked, “So, how was your week?”
“ ’Ard work, you know? But Friday come and me dey here with you, so things good, right? Wha’ ’bout you? You work ’ard for them white people them too?”
On Thursday morning before Miriam had left for work, she had pulled a stepladder from the hall closet and shown me some yellowish spots on the ceilings of both bathrooms she wanted me scrub out. I also had to move all the figurines off their shelves, wipe them with a soft cloth, and line them back up in order as best as I could remember. And just before I left, she had asked me to use the brush under the toilet rim, where bits of vomit had caked from her morning sickness.
“Not too hard,” I said to Brent. “It’s just work, you know.”
“Trust me, me know. You want get something to eat?”
“Yes, please. I’m starving. Did you hear my belly just now?”
“You a funny woman. Nah, me didn’t hear you belly. You want pick up some Chinee food?”
“I hate Chinese food.”
“What? You the first person in America me ever hear what hate Chinee food. You want go Yardies?”
“No, not there. I’m not dressed up enough for Yardies.”
“Ah, what you chat ’bout? Me bet say you look better than any woman what sit down in there right now.”
I loved the way he talked, jutting his chin forward for emphasis. “Okay, so Yardies then.”
Barrington greeted Brent just as warmly as he had Donovan. I willed myself not to worry about what he did for a living.
“You see,” he said, “no woman in ’ere can touch you.”
“Except that waitress,” I muttered as the same gorgeous server from Saturday wended her way through the tables to give us menus. I understood only one word of the deep patois she spoke to Brent: “Donovan.”
“Tell me what kind of work do you do,” I asked.
“Mule work.”
“What?”
“No, no”—he laughed—“not that kind of mule. All me mean is that me work ’ard. ’Ard work to break man back. Scene.”
“Construction?”
“Nah, not no construction.” He didn’t say what but asked, “So where Mammy and Daddy?”
I thought this funny, a grown man asking about my mammy and daddy. “Trinidad. I have a younger sister too.”
The waitress slunk over with our drinks, a frothy golden ginger beer for me and a Red Stripe for Brent.
“You know, me never ask you how much years you have.”
I looked at my watch before answering, thinking Kathy must have forgot to tell him. “Today is my birthday. Eighteen.”
“Whoa! For real? Today self is your birthday? ’Ow come you never did tell me, man? We’da gone and do something well special.”
“This is special.”
He flicked his wrist. “Now me ’ave to make this up to you. Don’t worry.”
I wasn’t worried. My telling Brent about my birthday made him forget he’d asked about my family, and I was glad. How had I ended up in Babylon? Stubbornness, my mother would say. But even this, just being able to go out with a friend and have a meal on my eighteenth birthday, would have been unthinkable back under her roof in that village. I shook my head, ashamed. Had I come to America for a plate of oxtails and rice, for a glass of ginger beer?
“What happen?” Brent asked. “What you shake your head for?”
“I just can’t believe I’m eighteen already, is all. I’m getting old.”
“Wait till thirty.”
I pounced on that. “Is that how old you are, then?”
He squinted at me. “Sometime you talk real stush, you know.”
“Thanks, but answer the question.”
“Thirty-one come August. That too old for you?”
“And no children?”
“Two daughters and a likkle man,” he said without pause.
I reached for my drink. “Here or in Jamaica?”
“My big girl, she eleven already, she with her granny back Jamaica. The younger two—”
I didn’t want to hear anymore. “Okay, okay. I don’t want to know all your business.” And I didn’t. I just wanted to have my meal, to listen the music, and to talk about anything. How Kathy did it, I didn’t know. If Brent had children, then he had a woman
. Even if they were broken up, he was still tied to his children’s mother, and I would always come after that. The ginger beer burned my throat going down, and I told myself that the wetness in my eyes came from its sharp sting.
“You coming to Kathy birthday bash next month?” I asked him.
“For sure, yeah.”
“Are you coming alone?”
“You want me to come alone?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
I smiled too, in spite of myself. The hussy waitress came over with our food, the stewed oxtails hot and curling steam. “Yes,” I said, “I want you to come alone.”
It was after midnight by the time Brent dropped me off. I hoped Sylvia would be in the bedroom, not wanting her to see my lips swollen from kissing Brent for half an hour in the car on the parkway. She was snoring hard on the couch but woke up as soon as I opened the front door.
“What time it is, Grace?”
The apartment was wrecked worse than usual. I could barely see carpet on the floor for all the clothes and toys scattered about.
“Just past twelve.”
“Them white people and them give you cab fare, though?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You take a cab, or you keep the money and take the train?”
“Cab. Miriam tell the doorman to hail a cab, so I had to take it.” I hoped I didn’t smell like Brent’s cologne.
“You is a ass.” Sylvia struggled up from the couch. “You should have tell the driver, Mister, take me right around the corner to the number four train.”
“How come you still up?” I sat in the armchair, across from her.
“Is you I was waiting for,” she told me. “You mother call.”
The oxtails rose sour to my throat. “Oh, God, what happen? Daddy? Oh, God.”
“Grace, stop playing the ass before you give yourself a heart attack and dead in my house. You mother call to tell you happy birthday. I didn’t even know today was your birthday, self. And them white people them make you work. You tell them was your birthday?”
I was so relieved.
“Better to not tell them nothing, anyway. So yes, she call to say happy birthday and she say your father say happy birthday too. You mother sound like a nice nice lady.”
Minding Ben Page 17