The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  I don’t have time for game playing. You think I’m about to go back to that cage on account of letting a ten-year-old drive?

  Pop drive you to a couple of places round town. First, to the supermarket where lobsters chop at the glass tank like they saying help man get me out of this place. The manager there know Pop and say he can’t take on no felon. That ain’t him. That’s policy from on high. Then Pop drive to the used-tire garage, but the men there don’t even let him out the car. They bang on the hood and tell Pop to get ghost before they bust him in the mouth. One of the men come over to Pop open window. He got one gold tooth, but the tooth next to it missing.

  I’d cap you right now if your offspring wasn’t with you, the man say. He kick the car door, and Pop shout, but we drive away.

  You go to Robinson Pizza under the highway bridge. Inside, Mr. Robinson come out from behind the counter. Something crawl by, and Mr. Robinson step on it. He see Pop and throw his hands up.

  I don’t want no trouble, Timmy, Mr. Robinson say. Pop frown at Mr. Robinson. Then Mr. Robinson tap him on the jaw real light. They hug. Pop say something in Mr. Robinson ear. Mr. Robinson slap Pop back and tell you hey, little Tim, you gonna be a sumo wrestler one day.

  I need to make some money, Pop say. Lights due. Rent due. Life due.

  Kitchen Sink Tyrone got sent to federal lockup in Mississippi, Mr. Robinson say. And nobody ain’t seen Jupe since Christmas. Jupe was Pop best friend. The last time you saw him he and Pop showed you how to crack open a steering wheel column and hot-wire a car.

  No, Pop say, not that kind of money. Mr. Robinson raise his eyebrow. You for real?

  Can’t a man change his hustle? I want to pay taxes and shit. Is that wrong? If I could sell my blood, I would, but I ain’t got that much blood. You feel me? Mr. Robinson pinch Pop shoulder and wink at you.

  Your old man growing up, son.

  * * *

  —

  Pop can cook, but Mr. Robinson’s kitchen full up. That’s why you and Pop riding up the avenue to where all the white college dorms at. You got hot pizza and breadsticks on your lap. It smell good and you want to grab a bite of something, so you reach in and pinch a hunk of pineapple and anchovies. Who the shit order pineapple and anchovies? You don’t want Pop to see what you did so you eat the nasty stuff. It burn the roof of your mouth.

  Pop stuck a Robinson Pizza sign on the roof of Mama car. The sign keep slapping the roof. Wuk. Wuk. Wuk. The back of your head still hurt. Now your mouth hurt, too, and your stomach gurgling from the fruit and fish fighting inside.

  Pop park by a big house with symbols on the front you can’t read. Make you feel stupid, and you don’t like that feeling, so you make up a meaning for them. Crazy White People.

  You follow Pop up the stairs to the house, holding the pizza box. A boy with a belt wrapped round his head answer the door. He call back for somebody named Charlie, and a white girl come to the door. Her eyes open, but she looking woozy like she dreaming on her feet.

  Hold it, Mr. Cosby, she say real slow. I have to give you a proper pourboire.

  Somebody in the house yell out What, no Jell-O pudding pops? The girl flip through some money and count off dollars one by one, all the way to seventeen. She shut the door. Pop grin.

  You ain’t use to Pop grinning so much at least not without the feeling something bad about to happen. When you asked Mama if y’all could see Pop in prison she said no. She said prison was just a way for rich people to decide who was the worst people and by deciding that, and locking them up, they could stay rich and on top. And that seeing Pop would mess up your head too much. They treated men like dogs, running them from food bowl to water bowl to the yard where they barked at each other. You wonder if when someone free of that kind of living it make somebody smile more.

  That’s an alright tip, Pop say. Pop turn quick from the steps of the house toward the car and yell. Hey! What you doing by my car?

  A white boy in a baseball cap is sitting in the driver seat. He crank the engine, and the back tire spin before the car move. Pop a fast runner, but he only get a little way down the street before Mama car out of reach.

  * * *

  —

  At the police station, Pop talk to a cop for a while. You don’t like being in the station, but Pop say it’s about time the cops do something to help him for a change. A skinny cop at the desk tell him they’ll look into it, but not to get his hopes up. A man in a black suit comes around the corner and seeing Pop calls his name. The man look like a funeral man. Pop don’t look him in the eye.

  I didn’t expect to see you back here so soon, Funeral Man say. You people just can’t fly right, can you?

  Pop tell him about the car. Funeral Man snort.

  Well, was it retaliation? Funeral Man say. What goes around. He makes a circle with his finger.

  I ain’t got to take this, Pop say, and pull you up from the chair you sitting on by your elbow.

  You’ll take what I give you, Funeral Man say. Causing trouble is a violation of your parole. I can have you back in central lockup before your kid bellies up for fried chicken tonight.

  * * *

  —

  Outside, Pop walk away from the station real quick. You get out of breath trying to keep up, and you can’t. His legs too long. Your legs too short. He stop around the corner and shove the meaty part of his hands in his eyes.

  You shoulda punched him, you say.

  You think I deserved to go away like I did? To prison?

  No, Pop. They did you wrong ’cause they could.

  I did me wrong, he say. Don’t be a dummy. You know I stole stuff. They didn’t even get me for half what I took.

  But you just borrowed that, you say. Pop told you a long time ago the difference between borrowing and stealing. Thieves steal ’cause they heartless and like to hurt people. Good people like him borrow because they need it more than who they taking from. Good people give to others. Like how Pop gave all that jewelry to Mama.

  I took a ring, Pop say. A real pretty ring with emeralds set in the side for your Mama, but lost it running away that night they got me. I did what I did and took my lick. But I need you to listen to me. You listening? Just because I messed up don’t mean I can’t be somebody else now.

  * * *

  —

  It’s a long walk from the police station to the horse racetrack, but you get there fast. Chop Shop Alley, Pop call it. A bunch of garages lined up shoulder to shoulder. This was Pop and Jupe hangout spot. Two dudes talk by the garage farthest down. One of them is the white boy with the baseball cap. Pop start running, you follow, but trip on the gravel. The baseball hat white boy see Pop and run to the back, where Mama car is. Pop can’t see where he went, but he hear the car start up and the crunch of the gravel as it speeds off. Mama car gone again.

  Pop goes after the other dude, holding him by the arm. Pop ask the dude where Baseball Cap live.

  Who? the guy say and shrug Pop hand off his arm.

  Why you playing stupid? Pop ask. The cat you was just talking to.

  I don’t know him. He asked if I had a lighter, but I don’t smoke.

  * * *

  —

  Your feet tired from all the walking.

  Maybe he already gave it to another chop shop, you say. Maybe we just too late. Maybe we should just go tell Mama. She might—

  Pop pop you in the back of the head again. It makes you stumble, but you make sure you don’t stop walking.

  And you better not cry, Pop say. And even though your eyes want to let go, you don’t cry.

  After a while, Pop put an arm around your shoulder. He rub the side of your head.

  I don’t mean to do that so hard, he say. Let’s go in there, he say in front of Cherry’s Restaurant. You go in and Pop order ribs and Cokes, and you tear those ribs up quick, eat some gree
ns, and wash it all down. The table next to you full of people, like a family reunion or something. They waitress bring out a big cart of desserts with dishes of bread pudding and pecan pie. You know some of that would set the pounding in your head straight, but you know better than to ask for dessert.

  You almost home, when you and Pop walk past a block party happening. Cars are parked all around. Fancy cars with fancy rims. Hoopties with garbage bags over the back windows. Pickups. Station wagons. It’s like every car in the world here.

  A few blocks away in front of a liquor store, there’s a car kind of like Mama’s. Only it’s newer, and the tires shiny like they was just washed. Pop go to the car and graze the window with his hand like he stroking a kitten.

  * * *

  —

  When we get home and tell Mama what happen, she ask what kind of man get home from prison for not even a whole day and manage to make things worse. She say she can’t live like this. Pop sit at the kitchen table, next to a candle, with his hand over his eyes.

  Timithea crying ’cause she hate the dark. You hate the dark, too, but you hate how hot it is with no AC even more. A light glow into your room from outside. The family next door TV on, and light and laughing come through your window from they window. You get up. You get the rod and screwdriver you keep under your bed and climb out the window. On the way down, your shirt tear on the hurricane fence, and you know Mama gonna kill you for ruining good clothes, but you also know you about to make it up.

  You walk back to where that look-alike car was, and it’s still there. You slide the rod into the gap between the window and the door. You feel the rod catch like you found the lock, but the door don’t come open. You push the rod deeper. Nothing move. You check, but nobody watching you. A car with a broken window worth almost as much as a normal one. You find a brick on the street. The brick heavy enough to break the window without even throwing it hard.

  But first you try the door, you pull it, and it open. You get in the car and shut the door. You jam the screwdriver into the steering wheel column quick and you feel something give.

  Mercury Forges

  My job was to make sure Mercury Forges didn’t escape. He was a stocky black guy in for drugs and guns. He’d gotten out of the Orleans Parish Prison twice and no one knew how he did it.

  Funny thing is he got captured within a few blocks of the prison both times.

  “I get turned around when I get out there, Deputy Benoit,” Mercury said once, “but I’ll get free for good, just you wait.”

  When the hurricane hit and flooded everything, we brought the inmates out to the Broad Street overpass. I wasn’t too panicked because one of the other deputies, Ronnie Dismas, said our families had made it out of town before the water came. It’d be easy to look after myself with them out of harm’s way.

  Mercury snuck away as soon as I turned my back. He was in a pirogue about five blocks away, bobbing like an apple. I ran across the overpass and climbed down some scaffolding to his boat, which I grabbed. We hadn’t cuffed any of the inmates. It would have been impossible to move them with all the climbing we had to do to get to dry land.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked. I had a hand on my sidearm.

  “Got to find Humanity Street,” he said. “That’s where my pops lives.” I knew his dad. A good guy who delivered the food plates we deputies ate for lunch. I liked his dad. But that shouldn’t have mattered at the moment.

  I can’t really tell you why I didn’t make him bring us back to the detention area. After a while, we floated up to a yellow house with floodwater almost to the awning.

  Mercury yanked a metal pole from the water, broke through the attic window, and climbed in. There was shuffling inside and I wondered if I should go in after him. I thought this might be part of his big getaway plan, but soon he grunted out of the window and pulled his father’s body out wrapped in a heavy blanket. The old man hadn’t had a chance.

  “Bring us back, Dep,” said Mercury. And that was what I did.

  Caesara Pittman, or a Negress of God

  “Do you, Miss Caesara Pittman, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-six, aver to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” Davidson, the attorney of the City of New Orleans, asks. It’s hot outside and hot in the courtroom. Too hot for so many people to be on those benches, close as piglets on a mama pig’s teats.

  I touch the Good Book, my fingers touching on the gold edges. That man, Buford—now I know his family name—sits at the table by his own lawyer, who wears those round glasses. Buford’s eyes wide with hate. He making all kind of faces at me. With those stitches down his cheek, looks like he’s Lucifer hisself. But this book never sent me wrong. I place my hand on my left breast.

  “Yessuh, I do,” I say. “I promise on my very heart.”

  “Where were you on the evening of Wednesday, July 25, 1866?” Davidson rests his hands behind his back, making his belly stick out some. He’s more than a couple of feet away. But I smell talc and pipe tobacco every time he pass by.

  “As you say, mister. It was Wednesday, and I was down on Good Children Street to buy baguettes. I make bread pudding for my husband and young ones on Saturdays.”

  “On Saturdays?” Davidson’s curled mustache shakes.

  “You got to let it stale up good before you use it.”

  “Of course.” Davidson laughs. Some of my folk in the gallery laugh good, too.

  “It was long about sunset…” I wasn’t far from home, had a basket on my arm. Had left the butcher where I cut offal for other free Creoles like myself. Had just passed the barn where they keep the streetcar mules when footsteps made themselves known to me. Some girls had been handled wrong lately. And some of them had been shamefully desecrated.

  “I didn’t come down here for no Devil work,” I said, hoping to be heard. A man came out the shadow. Under the gaslight, this white man wore the clothing of a man of God. A white collar around his neck. A cross hanging underneath that.

  “Just taking note of one of our Father’s children.” In the light, he rubbed his hands like he was cold.

  But he had big shoulders and big, rough grabbing hands. The kind of hands that plowed soil or worked a cargo ship. Not the kind of hands that prayed over the sick or baptized little ones. I held my hand out, palm up. “You ain’t no kind of priest.”

  He smiled, all the yellow teeth in his mouth shining at me. Looked like a mouth full of kernels.

  “I don’t take offense in the ignorance of your kind none,” he said. And I wondered if I was wrong about who he might be. But I thought on the book and words came to my mouth.

  And I saith: “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.”

  “What?”

  “I rebuke you!” I knew enough to know that a priest should have got a twinkle in his eye when you said the Scripture to him. But this heathen’s eyes stayed black. He might as well have been deaf. I dropped my basket and ran. I was fast but got tangled in my skirts. Fell on those cobblestones. Hurt my wrist.

  He fell on top me, clawing at my clothes. Pushed me on my back. He pulled at my chignon. That made me madder than what I already had reason to be mad about. He shouldn’t have done it. But, the exacerbated madness reminded me of the poultry knife I kept in my hair. I bought my manumission five years before the war. I was a free woman, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have to prove it from time to time. When slave traders needled me, I had my papers in one hand and my shiny little knife in the other.

  This man’s sick breath was on my face, and he was yanking my skirt. So, I jugged that knife in right under his left eye and drug it down to his lip. I smelled the metal that’s in blood. He yowled like a pitiful li’l dog. If I would have drug up instead of down, I could have popped his eyeball out like a—

  Davidson raises his arm. “T
hank you, Miss Pittman. That will do enough. We do not wish to give the jury night terrors.”

  I huffed.

  “What about my terrors?” I say, but he don’t hear.

  Davidson points at Buford. “Is this the man who accosted you?” Buford still making faces. He ugly as a pot of chitlings. His outside match his insides. I like that I did that to him.

  Outside the courtroom window, the paddleboat toots. I watch a colored man throw bread at a duck. Some changes done happened since the war between the states. I was a slave most of my life working the house on a plantation up near St. Francisville. I ain’t a slave no more, but I know these people in the juror box. Few of them would have wished any of us found freedom. Mr. Barker with the ruddy red cheeks sells candles and other fine things. The man with the mutton chops runs carriages. The dandy one on the end is from Virginia, almost a carpetbagger. Virginians used to sell my people to New Orleans for punishment. They hoped heat and terror work would kill us all. And then there’s all the marching men the white mob killed at the convention not long after my meeting with Buford. The whites trapped the good men inside that Mechanics’ Institute. When the men surrendered, dropping weapons, hands up, the white mob murdered them anyway, right in the streets. Paul Dostie was holding a white flag when they shot him.

  I expect no kind of justice here. I’m just another darky, hardly worth throwing away the life of one of their own, guilty or not.

  So, we really only here on account of how loud Buford screamed when I cut him. Like a babe with the colic. They saw my clothes, shredded like I’d been clawed by a lion. And they saw Buford, too big around the shoulders and too rough around the hands to be a priest. The police grabbed Buford on the spot. We made the papers. That’s why we here. Because of all the attention.

  “That man at that table over there?” I ask.

  “Yes, miss,” Davidson, the attorney of the City of New Orleans, says. “Have you seen him afore?”