Brooklyn is a ghost town, the laundry shut up tight, the drugstore with a sign on the door, GONE TO THE QUEEN CITY CLASSIC. Two doors up First Street is a blank space, like a missing tooth, where Steadman’s Flowers use to be. I will never forget Jonny No Age and the bouquets he brought Bibi. She looks at the dirt lot where his store was, shakes her head but keeps on walking. More and more buildings have been torn down, and empty houses look haunted where folks have moved out.
Before we even see the marchers, we hear the band music, start stepping in time to it. A thick crowd stands at the corner, but folks part to let Hawk get in front. He grins back at me, letting me know he’s okay alone. I wouldn’t worry anyway. Most everybody knows Hawk, gon watch out for him.
It’s a chilly fall day, the sky gray blue, streaky clouds, but nothing to make me think it’ll rain on the game tonight. Here comes the Second Ward High School band in blue and white, the drum major out front, twirling. I get chills listening to the school song, start singing out loud, “Dear Second Ward, our alma mater, we pledge ourselves to thee.” Several people around me join in, voices rising as the band marches down the street, the cheerleaders high-stepping in saddle oxfords.
What’s it feel like to be seventeen and popular? Back then I had cares. My mama long gone, my daddy long dead. End of my sophomore year, I drop out, start working, first at the pharmacy, then for the Stones at the grocery, then the S&W. Too busy to march in a band.
Bibi grabs my hand. “Look, there goes Dooby’s grand-boy, playing that horn.” I see the boy with the trombone, the slide going in and out, and wish Dooby could have lived to see him. A bit of wind stings my eyes and I look down, see Bibi’s toe tapping. Across the street is Pastor Polk, waving to the band, standing next to Mr. and Mrs. Stone. Such fine folks went to my same high school thirty-forty years ago.
“Mama!” Hawk’s voice, shouting over the crowd. “A princess!”
People step aside to let me get to him. He’s pointing up the street and here comes what does look like a princess, sitting on the back of a convertible in a white gown, waving. I’m thinking she’s got to be chilly, nothing on her shoulders, but she looks like she hasn’t a care in the world. Then someone’s reading my mind. A man holds out a coat. She takes it, waving all the while, and puts it on.
“She’s from West Charlotte,” somebody say, “and behind her, here comes the Second Ward girl.”
“See, Mama,” Hawk say, “princesses.”
Right behind the convertibles with the pretty girls come the West Charlotte band in maroon and gold, roars coming from the crowd. Maybe more lions here today than tigers, but we hold our own.
We stop at Jimmie’s Burgers, where our ride is gon pick us up, and Uncle Ray orders two hot dogs. Hawk say, “Me too,” and for once I don’t argue. He wants the same thing Uncle Ray gets, no matter what. If Hawk doesn’t eat the second one, I will. When she brings our order, the waitress yells over her shoulder, “We low on dogs!” Makes me chuckle and Hawk ask, “What’s funny?” I say to him, “We low on dogs.” He laughs so hard.
At the stadium Uncle Ray takes charge. “Don’t need to be in the ticket line. This way.” We follow him like he’s a mother duck, and he sure enough knows where to go. Hawk stops when he sees a girl selling popcorn, his eyes asking for some. Uncle Ray buys us all a bag and I decide not to think about money this evening, or my hips.
We sit a few rows behind the Second Ward band, facing West Charlotte on the other side of the field. The bench is hard and cold. Some people brought pillows to sit on, wish I had.
Down on the field, the cheerleaders are moving around in bunches in hand-me-down uniforms from white high schools—ours from Central and West Charlotte’s from Harding. Hand-me-down colors, too.
Both bands play the national anthem and folks stand, hands over hearts, to sing. Second Ward people stay standing while our band plays the school song. Everybody joins with me singing it, even Hawk; he does well for someone not knowing the words. Soon as West Charlotte is done with theirs, the bands break into a fast tune. The cheerleaders run to the end of the stadium and form two lines for the Second Ward Tigers to charge onto the field. The whole place goes wild. Hawk jumps up and down, clapping. Same thing happens for the West Charlotte Lions, and the game gets going.
Hawk already understands football in a way I never will. He follows the ball, yells, “Pass it, pass it!” before I even knew who has it. He shouts, “Yay! Flag!” I look around to see it before realizing he’s not talking about the Stars and Stripes. A bit later he say, “That’s what I’m gon play.”
“Football?”
“No, him.” He points. “Number four. I’m gon be the quarterback.”
I watch number four start to run with the ball, then get tackled. He hits the ground hard. I’m not too sure about football.
The halftime show starts with those same pretty girls from the convertibles walking out onto the field wearing long capes, other girls walking behind them holding the capes to keep them from dragging through the grass. Boys in suits and ties walk beside the princesses, proceed to the middle of the field. The bands go quiet and the loudspeaker announces, “Please stand for the crowning of the Queen City Classic Queen of 1965, Miss Bree-Anne Allred of Second Ward High School.”
The shouting becomes a roar. A sparkling tiara is put on the head of one of the girls. She waves and waves in her beautiful white dress as they all walk off the field.
Hawk say, “Now the princess is a queen.”
“You right,” Bibi tell him. “That’s something, those pretty girls.”
The loudspeaker again, “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a big hand for the battle of the bands!”
The bands march onto opposite ends of the field. The drum majors and majorettes for both schools meet in the middle, holding batons with rags on the ends. The lights go down, there’s a long roll of drums as the rags get lit, then the majors and majorettes begin to dance, swirling the fiery batons, tossing them in the air, catching them, circling themselves with fire, running around each other. One of them throw hers high in the air, does a flip, catches it. “Oh, my,” say Bibi, “oh, my.”
The lights come back on, the bands break into the same tune together and march off the field. Smoke drifts up into the stadium.
My bottom hurts from the bench and I wiggle as the game starts back up, trying to get comfortable. Couple rows below us is a family, the man on the aisle, stretching his long legs. Two children, a boy and a girl about Hawk’s age, between him and the woman I reckon his wife. She’s got on a brown coat with a fur collar, a hat, a plaid pillow under her, a Co-Cola in her gloved hand. I look away, remember what Bibi always telling me about not knowing somebody’s life from the outside looking in. Right then I don’t believe that one bit.
It almost breaks Hawk’s heart when West Charlotte wins the game. Only one point, but he’s so disappointed. “A point after kick, right there at the end,” he tells Uncle Ray on the way home. “Stupid one-point kick. But Second Ward gon win the next one, right, Uncle Ray?”
“You got that right.”
We come through the front door and Bibi’s on the couch before I can stop her. She stretches out, closes her eyes. I go for a blanket to put over her, wishing I’d got her to pee first, hoping she won’t wet the couch the way she does the bed too often now. Oh well, I say in my head as I go with Hawk to our room. It’s been a fine day.
CHAPTER 29
“Raylee!” Bibi shrieking wakes me up. Something roars, like it’s in the house. The clock on the bureau say seven forty-five. I stumble from bed, run to the kitchen. Bibi’s in her nightgown, pointing out the screen door, her finger trembling. A bulldozer’s pushing itself into the house where Hawk’s friend Desmond use to live, behind us on Watts Street all these years. The floor throbs under my bare feet and the kitchen smells like gasoline.
“The end is here!” Bibi grabs at me. “Oh, child, the devil is eating up the Whitin house.”
I pull her close. “Sh-h-
h, Bibi, not the devil, just a bulldozer.” She’s frail under her gown. “We knew this gon happen. Sh-h-h.”
Her eyes are wild like she’s seen a haint. “You wrong. The devil fooling us, looking like a bulldozer.”
The machine backs away, comes at the house from the side. Its jaws take a bite from the roof. The gutter falls away, the chimney breaks up in a shower of bricks.
“Mama!” Hawk slams into the kitchen, runs to the door. “Pow!” he yells. “Wham!”
I stop him from going outside. “They’re tearing down Desmond’s house. I told you last week the city would do that, remember?”
“Yeah. His family is staying at his auntie’s until they find another house.” There’s a button missing on his pajama top, makes me want to fix it right now.
“That’s right,” I say, “and we hoping we’ll be neighbors again.”
“Yeah,” say Hawk, “that’s what Mr. Whitin told me.”
Timbers split with loud cracks. A sink thuds to the ground, followed by a toilet. A roll of paper bounces across the grass.
Hawk shouts, “The bathroom’s in the backyard!”
Siding falls on the cab of the dozer. The white man driving it turns off the machine, calls to the dump truck sitting on the street. “Harry, back it on over here.”
A week ago kids started throwing rocks at the windows of the deserted house, busting out the glass, leaving empty squares. The last official thing we heard say it would begin behind us, and Uncle Ray said we lucky to be on the edge of Brooklyn. “They’ll eat up the middle before they take down the border. Folks passing by won’t know it’s happening.”
I touch Bibi’s shoulder. “Sit down, calm yourself. Nothing we can do.”
She takes her place at the table. Hawk stands beside her, excited, not wanting to sit. “Oh, Lordy,” she say. “Oh, Lordy.”
Hawk keeps looking into the yard. The bulldozer opens its mouth and picks up a pile of broken house, drops it in the truck.
Uncle Ray comes up behind me. “No matter. Let’s eat.” He closes the back door, dulling the noise.
I take the percolator to the sink, start filling it.
Uncle Ray say, “I’ll set the grits to boil. Hawk, put milk and juice on the table. Livvie, see about the bacon.” He’s bossy, not like him, but it’s what we need.
Hawk ask, “What if the dozer comes to our house?”
“We’ll be living here awhile yet.” I touch his cheek, and he pulls back, too old for such things. “Do what Uncle Ray tells you . . . milk and juice.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Hawk goes to the icebox, looking over his shoulder at the closed door.
Bibi stands, smoothing her gown. “You right, Ray. Even at the end of the world I want breakfast.” She makes me laugh, she always does. “Raylee, why you not dressed for work?”
“It’s Monday, Bibi.”
“Oh.” She looks blank but she say, “I know that.”
We sit at the table eating like it was ordinary to have men yelling out back, the dozer rumbling. A normal breakfast except for a loud bang that makes Bibi drop her fork, except for Hawk eating too fast so he can look outside again.
Soon as we done, he jumps from his chair and opens the door, staring through the screen at the machine moving back and forth. He’s nearly eleven, getting tall like his daddy, growing so quick.
After he leaves for school, I do the dishes, watching out the window as the dozer pushes against the two remaining walls. A kitchen light breaks off, slides down the crooked floor. The house collapses, empty window frames crumbling. The dozer moves in, tossing stuff in the dump truck, one mouthful, then another.
By eleven o’clock it’s a mound of boards, brick, shingles. A flap of linoleum, blue and white, lying on top. The dozer climbs over the heap, rolls back and forth, flattening it.
Uncle Ray looks out at the mess. “Thing I’m gone miss the most is Boyce’s garden.” He sits back down at the table. “Helping him turn the ground, planting potatoes in the fall, beans and such in the spring.”
I look through the window. “I’ll miss the vegetables.” Amazing what came out of a scraggly patch of ground. Tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, bright colors like Christmas.
It’s happening, and we can’t stop it. Bibi is right, the devil has come to Brooklyn.
* * *
Tuesday morning I’m back at work, filling a metal basket with eggs from the fridge. The S&W is a world apart from Brown Street. Bustling with busy people, who say hello, make jokes, laugh while doing what they do every day. The kitchen smells of breakfast cooking to feed a hundred or more by the time the door opens at seven-thirty. Dishes rattle, water runs into pots, ham and bacon sizzle on the fry top.
Retta sees me. “Hi, Loraylee, how’s it going?” She’s chopping cantaloupe, strawberries, bananas, her hands flying with the knife barely missing the tips of her fingers, making a chunk-a-chunk rhythm. She’s the best chopper at the S&W.
“Going good,” I lie.
Mr. Griffin comes up beside me while I’m whipping cheese into a bowl of scrambled eggs. “You all right?”
I get a whiff of his Old Spice aftershave, and I almost crumble. Feel tears coming. I swallow them away. “They started the tear-down yesterday behind us.” I whisper, looking into his gray eyes. Hawk’s eyes. “The house was pretty much gone by noon.”
“And your house, is it . . .” He turns away, pretending we not talking personal, careful like he always is.
“We lucky to be on the edge. It’ll be another six or eight months before they get to us.”
“Half hour!” the fry cook calls out, and I go back to whipping up the omelet. Mr. Griffin walks over to the chalkboard where he keeps track of the meal prep, scribbles on it. He puts the chalk down, looks over his shoulder at me before he goes into his office, a tender look that gets me through the morning rush.
Retta and me go to the alley for our ten-thirty break, like we always do now, with Cokes and her Chesterfields. After she lights up, she say, “What’s going on with you and Archibald?”
For a second I don’t know who she mean, but remember that when she teasing, she say Archibald instead of Mr. Griffin. I go hot all over, thinking somebody know something, but I say, “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about how he always speaks to you.” She tilts her chin up, stretches her neck, and I know what’s coming. A smoke ring. Then another one inside the first. Amazes me she can do such a thing.
“He’s always checking on everybody, you too.”
She looks sideways at me, sly like. “Okay.” She swats at the smoke with one of her chapped hands.
“Okay?”
“Yep. Okay if you don’t want to talk about it. But I know something’s going on between you two.”
She doesn’t say anything else as a truck turns into the alley off Church Street, slow. It doesn’t quite make it, has to back up, try again. On the second try it gets all the way into the alley, comes rolling toward us, stopping at the shoe store.
The back door to the paint store opens, and I say, “Here he comes. Watch.”
Retta laughs. “That man wastes a lot of energy.”
The man from the paint store raises his fist, shaking it at the truck driver, who has started unloading boxes from the back of the truck. “Move the goddamn truck, you hear me? I got a delivery coming any minute.”
The driver hollers back, “Cool it, Joe. You don’t own this alley.”
Same thing happens once or twice a month, fun to watch.
When I get home I walk around to the back instead of going through the front door like usual. I touch our clothesline as I pass it and see nothing but mud where the Whitins use to live. Something catches my eye, part of a bowl sticking out of the dirt, bright blue on the outside and white where it broke. I rub the mud off with my thumb and think of Veola Whitin mashing potatoes in that blue bowl, making supper for Boyce and Desmond. The same blue was in the linoleum that went away on the dump truck. Veola kept
a good house. They’re living with her sister in Third Ward until they find their own place, and Veola say it’s awful crowded. The day they moved we promised we’d figure out a way for Hawk and Desmond to see each other.
I go up the back steps into the kitchen. Bibi has beans baking, filling the house with the smell of molasses and fatback, the way Uncle Ray and Hawk like them. Hamburgers frying in a pan, baked apples and slaw in bowls on the table, rolls ready to go in the oven at the last minute. She’s all right today, not burning anything, moving around with a ladle in her hand when I come in. She puts it in the spoon rest on the stove. “Everything okay at the S&W?”
“Good. Real good.” I close the back door. This evening I want to pretend that the quiet across the backyard is like always, people sitting down for supper after working all day.
“Hawk’s with Ray. You tell them ten minutes.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll do that.” Everything’s back to the way it’s supposed to be. I call out, “Hawk? Uncle Ray? I’m home.”
CHAPTER 30
The phone was ringing when Eben came in the front door but stopped before he could get to it. He stifled his frustration, thinking of how he’d advise others, “Don’t worry, if it’s important, they’ll call back.” An hour later he was fixing lunch when it rang again, and he answered. A man said, “I’m calling about Oscar Simpson Polk. Are you a relative?”
What has Oscar done now? “Yes, this is Eben Polk, his brother.”
“Oh.” A moment of silence, then, “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
“Who’s calling?”
“Harvey Wiggins, in administration at Charlotte Memorial Hospital. Mr. Polk, I’m sorry to tell you that your brother passed away early this morning.”
“Passed away?” Eben sank into a chair by the wall phone.
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