Glass House

by Chris Wiltz

  As soon as she opened the door he started talking. “My name is Sonny Johnson, ma'am.” He held a driver's license at her eye level. “I'm with an envir'mental group called SAFE.” He held up another card showing member identification. “I'm not sellin anything and I promise—I'm safe.” He gave a short nervous laugh as he handed her a sheet explaining the purpose of his visit, which he was telling her himself as well. He talked fast, as if he were afraid she would slam the door in his face. Thea knew about talking fast. She used to talk fast too, at school, afraid that if she took too long, whomever she was talking to would turn away, leave her in midsentence.

  As close as he was to her, she could feel his nerves. “Maybe you heard of SAFE,” he was saying. “We're a group of more than two hundred concerned citizens who want to make New Orleans a better—” another short laugh “—a safer place to live. What we concerned ‘bout right now is them trucks carryin hazardous chemicals down Convent Street to the river.”

  “But I thought trucks weren't allowed to use Convent Street anymore,” Thea said. That battle had been fought while she was in high school, but it wasn't over hazardous chemicals; it was because the homeowners said the trucks were cracking their houses, causing the foundations to sink.

  She'd made him more nervous. He nodded quickly. “Yes ma'am. That's true. There's a city ordinance against the big trucks, but what they doin is carryin the chemicals in small trucks, like delivery trucks. You know, vans. We wouldn't've knowed about it ‘cept for an accident. Maybe you saw it in the paper. Twelve blocks was evacuated, right down there.” He pointed toward the river. “An accident could happen anywhere,” he said, rattling on as if his words could stop the door from closing. “Be specially bad over there by the project"—he pointed in its direction away from the river—"where they's always kids playin in the street, or here, right in front your house.” As he talked his eyes had grown large and round, magnified by his glasses, his eyebrows creeping up his forehead.

  Thea didn't want him to persuade her, she didn't want to watch his unease, his just-under-the-skin distrust of how she might treat him. She signed the petition asking the city council to rewrite the ordinance so that no hazardous chemical could be conveyed by any means on Convent Street. He held out his sheaf of explanatory materials so that she could use them as a support while she signed. He had perhaps twenty signatures, but she recognized only a couple of the names above hers. Most of the addresses were on the other side of Convent, near the project.

  “Thank you, ma'am.” He took the petition and papers from her. “Uh, it ain necessary or nothin,” he said, nervously hitting the side of his leg with the papers, “but if you want to make a contribution so we can keep on with our work, it'd be tax deductible.”

  She smiled at him. “Sure,” she said and stepped back to the hall table for her purse, but after Lyle's visit, she'd put it in the kitchen. She asked him to wait, felt awkward closing the door on him, and went back to the kitchen. She started to pull out a ten-dollar bill, thought better of giving him cash, and took out her checkbook instead. In compensation she wrote the check for twenty dollars.

  She shook her head as she walked back to the front: she was letting Lyle's distrust propel her, making her actions contradictory, absurd.

  She handed him the check. “Thank you, ma'am,” he said enthusiastically, as if the sum were so great, yet, ridiculously, making her feel cheap. He sped off in the direction of the river.

  She watched him, waiting to see if he went to the house next door, then caught herself double-checking to make sure the door was locked, though she knew Zora always locked it when she left. She closed the door as he was going up the steps to her neighbor's house. What was she doing? Why was she watching—like Lyle? What had Sonny Johnson done? He had committed the crime of being too nervous.

  Thea wanted to shake herself free of Lyle, and Aunt Althea and Michael too, like a dog shakes off water; they were getting to her. But it wouldn't be that easy. It would be more like a crab shedding its too-small shell: struggle, rest; shudder, ease out a bit. Once her father had gone crabbing and brought her back a crab just about to crack its shell and shed. He put it in a bucket so she could watch it become a soft crab. It was already partially out. She watched for over three hours, until all at once the crab took a swift step backward and was free of its confinement. Her father told her that once the crab's struggle is over, it has used up its excess weight; it is free and light and vulnerable.

  What to do. There was no point in brooding about the past, about what she had done. There was the future to think about with its many possibilities. She would finish the house, and if she still could not release it from Aunt Althea's powerful presence, then she would leave it. She must not become paralyzed by her many choices. If she got tired of thinking about the house, she would think about the garden. With that thought she gathered up some copies of Architectural Digest and a couple of Aunt Althea's garden books, poured herself a glass of vernaccia, and went to sit in the gazebo.

  It was quite pleasant outside late in the day like this, still warm but the sun beginning to go down. The gazebo itself, though, was just as uncomfortable as ever. Maybe if she had some cushions made for the benches it would help. Even so, nothing would help one's spine. She situated her backbone against the side of one of the posts, her legs stretched out along the seat. She sipped wine and leafed through the magazines, making dog-ears on the pages with ideas she liked.

  The first garden book she picked up opened automatically to an English cottage garden, borders of perennials flanking a curving walkway of grass, a garden densely planted with flowering shrubs and trees. She imagined her pain-in-the-back gazebo at the end of such a walkway and finally recognized what she had never liked about it: it had no setting; its placement seemed purely accidental, and so it looked out of place. It needed just the sort of intimate, romantic setting shown in the picture. She could plant more azaleas, perhaps a flowering plum . . .

  Thea shuddered, someone walking across her grave. The way the book had fallen open to this page, the crease on the binding faded to a thin stripe . . . she leaned forward to see past the roof of the gazebo. Was it possible that Aunt Althea's ghost was dictating to her from the third floor of the house?

  She laughed aloud at her superstitious thoughts—and hoped her laugh would break the spell. The doorbell rang inside. She jumped and spilled wine on the picture. Such a peculiar feeling this gave her, this bell ringing as she laughed . . .

  There must be bats in the belfry, Aunt Althea used to say to explain strange noises, eerie coincidences. And other people's lunacies.

  Thea opened the front door and Burgess said, “Hey, I know it's late, but I got two carpenters can start on your bookcases tomorrow, and I want to be sure I'm clear on the plans.”

  “That sounds like a polite way of asking me if I've changed my mind again,” Thea said.

  “You can change your mind when we finish if you want. We be glad to start all over again.”

  “Come on in,” she said. There was something slightly arrogant about Burgess. Maybe it wasn't arrogance but that trace of irony he always spoke with, his self-assuredness. She liked the way he didn't take everything she said with deadly seriousness. If she'd made the remark about changing her mind to any of the other men, there would have been a lot of Oh-no-ma'am protests.

  “I was just out back looking at magazines,” she said. “I can show you what I want.”

  “Good.”

  They reached the kitchen. “A beer?”

  “Sound real good.”

  She got him an Abita Amber from the refrigerator, took her bottle of wine as well, and led him out to the gazebo.

  It was strange that these two should be sitting in as unlikely a place as the gazebo. They leaned into the center of it, holding a magazine between them.

  “Something like that,” Thea said.

  “But your room is shaped entirely different.” Thea's room was chopped up with windows and doors and a fireplace.


  “Well, I know, but I mean the detail work on the edges of the shelves, the columns in between the cabinets. See? It's sort of a—” she didn't know how to describe it; she thought of the Hinder-manns’ house “—an updated traditional look.”

  He laughed, slow and lazy. “Yeah. Updated traditional.”

  In the fading light she hoped he couldn't see the heat she felt along her jawline, rising to her cheeks.

  He said, “We gon have to buy a new saw to do that.” He let go of the magazine and sat back.

  “Is that a problem?” she asked, holding the magazine suspended a few seconds longer before she closed it and sat back too.

  “Findin extra money's always a problem.”

  “Well, maybe I could front the money for the saw. We can work something out.”

  There was, for Thea, an embarrassed silence before he said, “Yeah, but first you got to decide where you gon put the shelves.”

  “I know. I'm just not sure yet.”

  “Well, look.” He leaned across to get the magazine and took an invoice folded lengthwise from his breast pocket. On the back of it he roughly sketched the room, talking about narrow spaces and corners, but Thea was finding it difficult to concentrate, her mind racing with thoughts totally unrelated to what he was saying: he didn't wear his black hat and mirrored sunglasses anymore; Zora didn't call people ma'am or sir either; Zora was angry at Burgess about something big, important; there was something oriental about the way his eyelids folded down at the corners; the way he was leaning forward now, his shirtsleeve riding up as he showed her his sketch, she could see part of a nasty-looking scar on the underside of his forearm. And then she was thinking about his life in the Convent and wondering if the scar was from a knife fight, if there were other scars, her mind leaping to guns, it was gunfights you heard about: had he ever been shot?

  Burgess was saying something about limited wall space for a library. He stopped talking and looked at her quizzically. “You with me?”

  “Urn, Burgess,” she said, “No, I'm not with you. I can't seem to focus on this right now. Let me think about it overnight and get with you in the morning.” Maybe Sandy could help her with this, with the renovation. All these decisions, it was getting entirely too complicated; his presence, the life he led when he was not here, that she could not get herself to stop thinking about, was making it too complicated.

  But he didn't get up to go right away. He sipped beer, she sipped wine, the evening lingered on.

  And from the third floor of the house, Aunt Althea's ghost raged at these two intruders drinking and talking and laughing low—the nerve, using her gazebo like that.

  16

  They sat in the gazebo way past dark, longer than Thea thought it was possible to sit in the gazebo without spinal injury.

  They talked all around things. She wanted to ask him what his mother was so angry at him about. He wanted to ask her about her parents and why she wasn't afraid to be sitting in the dark with a dangerous black man; except, of course, she didn't know he was dangerous.

  Burgess heard the commotion in the street first. He and Thea went to the tall wooden gate, unlatched it and opened it a crack, but all they could see was blue light careening from the oak leaves overhead, to the side of the house next door, the front of the one across the street. They eased out of the gate, Burgess first, to get a better look.

  The police car was in the middle of Convent Street, and two policemen had Sonny Johnson spread-eagled against the side of it.

  First Thea was confused: why were they doing this to him— because he was caught mugging someone, breaking and entering, trying to commit some crime? She realized she didn't believe he had committed a crime. And there was no one around that she could see, no victim. So why?

  Because he was black? Had one of her neighbors seen him going from house to house and called the police? It was carrying things a bit far. Thea looked at the houses across the street. Windows were dark or curtains were drawn. How many pairs of eyes were watching from behind dark windows and peeking from behind curtains?

  She moved closer to Burgess, whispering to him that the man was with an environmental group called SAFE. He smiled—there was that irony again—and nodded, never moving his eyes from the scene on the street.

  They watched. One cop was on the radio, sitting halfway in the car. They couldn't hear him, though they could hear the crackling of the radio and the metallic, indecipherable voice coming from it. The other cop stood behind Sonny Johnson.

  From his spread, stretched position against the car, Sonny turned his head toward the policeman on the radio. When he moved the cop behind him moved too and slammed his head down on the top of the car. Sonny cried out, his hand automatically seeking his wounded head. The cop picked his head up by the hair and slammed it again.

  An involuntary cry rose from Thea and she began to move forward, but Burgess stopped her, his hand on her arm, pulling her back at the crook of her elbow, shushing her.

  “But, Burgess, this is making me sick.”

  “Not yet,” he said softly, and they stood there, his hand at her elbow, hearing low moans whenever the radio cut off the incoherent, tinny words, metal twigs that snapped with a protest of harsh static.

  After another few minutes the police let Sonny go and drove off, leaving him without help. He was dazed, both hands going to his head. He took one lurching step and sat down on the sidewalk, rocking slightly back and forth.

  Burgess went after him with Thea at his heels. Together they led the punch-drunk black man across the street. Who had called the police? She hoped whoever it was watched them now.

  They sat Sonny Johnson on the den sofa in between them but finally had to lay him down. He'd been cut twice by his own glasses, a lesser cut in his eyebrow, a deeper one that Thea thought may have gone through his eyelid. He held a piece of gauze to his eye. The bent wire rims with one lens cracked into opaqueness sat on an end table laid out with peroxide, iodine, a box of cotton balls, packages of gauze, everything in the house Thea could find for first aid.

  But Sonny obviously needed to go to the hospital. Thea volunteered to take him, but Burgess said he would take care of it and made a phone call from the den phone. “I'm ready,” was all he said. Thea was disappointed; she wanted to go with them, but she didn't want to intrude on what suddenly seemed something between the two black men.

  Sonny began to rally, feeling well enough to get a bit heated over his ordeal. SAFE, he said, would press charges of police brutality.

  “You better get yourself checked out first, brother,” Burgess told him.

  “Look here at my glasses,” Sonny demanded. “They coulda put my eye out.”

  “Yeah, but they didn't.”

  “Don’ matter.”

  “Sure it does,” Burgess said. He grinned at Thea. “SAFE ain exactly an envir'mental group.” He asked Sonny, “What's SAFE stand for?”

  “Serious Advocates for Equality,” Sonny answered, and Thea didn't know how he accomplished it, but he stated the name of his organization with boyish pride, enthusiasm, and anger.

  “Yeah,” said Burgess, “serious.”

  It wasn't long before the oxidized-red truck pulled up in front of the house, the muffler's coughing and putting sounds announcing it half a block away. As Burgess was following Sonny through the door, Thea reached out and lightly touched the back of his white shirt sleeve.

  He turned around in the doorway, a look on his face not unlike that quizzical glance he'd given her in the gazebo.

  Thea had no idea exactly what it was she wanted to say to him. Something was different between them; they had a different sense of each other. And there had been a shift in power, to his side. She said, “Look, I don't mind being a witness.”

  She half expected his amused expression, as if she were so naïve, but he smiled, genuine this time, none of his irony. “I know,” he told her, “but I doubt it will come to that.”

  He hesitated with his smile another mome
nt, then was gone into the night with its hidden eyes.

  The nights were becoming like some sort of prison, a punishment—for what? For her ambivalence, for her doubts, for her aloneness.

  Bed especially, like solitary confinement. And all of her thoughts would come together there, keeping her awake so it could come prey upon her eventually, the fear . . .

  The events of the day kept turning in her mind, image after image: Zora, her shoulders rounded with meekness; Lyle, the lines of worry deep in his face; Sonny Johnson, his nervousness making her nervous, turning her into a watcher; Burgess, his hand on her arm, stopping her, shushing her, shifting the power between them.

  She lay in the dark trying to understand this shift. He understood the nature of street violence better than she, he had been the one in control, but that was not getting to the heart of the matter. She could only think that before Sonny Johnson she had the power because she was the property owner, she was the employer; because she was white. After Sonny Johnson, her being white meant she shared the burden of guilt with the white policemen.

  If that were so, then why didn't her parents’ being gunned down by two black men give her the right to hate all black people, make all black people share the burden of guilt? She had never thought she had that right.

  She wondered if some blacks felt guilt for the fear incited by others of their race. And then she realized that this was Lyle's excuse: make all black people the enemy; they were guilty of inciting fear if nothing else.

  She tried to imagine talking to Burgess about these matters but couldn't. Why not? Why couldn't people talk to each other? She turned irritably in the bed. It was because of Burgess that she was thinking about these things at all. And then, she wasn't sure how she jumped tracks, but she began to suspect that the shift in power between her and Burgess had not so much to do with black and white as with male and female. Here was the heart of the matter, but the problem was that she knew of no way to separate and remove the black and the white from the male and the female.