“Well,” I said, and stood there for a moment, not knowing what else to say. “Well, thank you.”
“My pleasure,” she said. Then she turned around and continued on to her house.
Gerith and I spent that day at home instead of school. We opened cans of soup, stripped bananas out of their skins, ate stalks of celery with cream cheese spread in the grooves. We drank a six-pack of grape soda I found at the bottom of the bag, and smoked marijuana, which Gerith supplied, wondering aloud at what we’d missed in our classes. By evening, most of the food was gone. One banana lay curled on its side in the fruit bowl and two cans of clam chowder stocked our pantry shelves.
“So,” said Gerith, as we sat cross-legged on the braided rug in the living room. “Do you think Mrs. Burroway is crazy, or just very generous?”
I took a hit off the pipe and passed it back, holding the smoke inside until my lungs began to hurt. “Very generous,” I said, exhaling the smoke. “Though that doesn’t exclude the possibility of a mental disorder.”
“Wow.” Gerith shook his head. “That’s pretty amazing.”
I nodded, chuckling a little at Gerith’s astonishment.
“What?” he said. “Did I say something stupid?”
I told him it was nothing though, and waved away his question with a crazy, expansive gesture that made us both laugh until we’d forgotten what we’d been talking about.
Winter in Ohio that year filled the streets with snow and ice. The city became a stage for the weather to play on—ice-slicked streets, temperatures far below zero, and snowdrifts so big children cut tunnels through them. Winter that semester, I had International Finance, Human Impacts on the Environment, and Ballroom Dancing. By the end I still couldn’t write an essay on acid rain that made any sense, but I’d learned how to waltz. It didn’t matter. The finance course was my priority. Doing the work for that class drained me, but I kept reminding myself it would all be worth it one day.
Gerith, on the other hand, dropped his courses midway through the semester. He said he could finish them in summer, started to volunteer at the shelter, and soon everything he did and everyone he knew revolved around that.
One night in December, while I sat at my desk and studied the effects of chemical treatments on water, Gerith appeared in my bedroom door, ringing a bell. He lazily clanged it back and forth, smiling in a way I knew meant he wanted something. “I’m going to collect money for the Salvation Army at the grocery store,” he said. “You should come with me.”
“I have a final in two days,” I said, tapping the book spread out in front of me.
“Come on,” he said. “What are you going to learn tonight that you can’t cram in tomorrow?” He moved into my room and put his hand on my desk, tapping his fingers near the edge of the book.
“I can’t cram, Gerith. You know that.”
“Do something worthwhile for once,” he said.
“I am,” I said. “I’m trying to graduate.”
He flipped my book closed and grabbed my jacket off the doorknob.
“No more arguing,” he said. “You’re coming and that’s final. This will be food for your soul.”
We stood outside the grocery store fifteen minutes later, in a swirl of snow. Christmas lights lined the awning, filled the storefront window, blinking on and off in time to Christmas songs. The Salvation Army bucket stood propped between us, and Gerith rang his bell continuously, clanging it louder whenever anyone approached from the parking lot or whenever the electric doors behind us slid open. I had a bell, too, which I rang reluctantly, only putting out an effort when Gerith shot me looks.
“I should be studying,” I said.
“You’re going to do fine,” Gerith assured me. “You can take that test without opening a book.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve dropped out, and I have a C going into the final.”
The doors slid open behind us and a woman carrying two plastic bags of groceries exited. Gerith rang his bell in the air and looked intently at her. “Merry Christmas!” he said.
The woman nodded and returned the greeting. She moved one of her bags into her other hand and searched inside her purse. When she brought her hand out again, she had a small pile of copper and silver, which she threw in the bucket, then walked away.
“Thank you,” Gerith called after her. “See,” he said. “You just have to call attention to the cause.”
“Yeah,” I said. I looked at my watch. “How long do I have to do this?”
“Three more hours.” He raised his bell and rang it a few times to accent his answer.
“I’m going now,” I said. I set my bell down on the bucket, the tongue choking inside it, and started to leave.
“You can’t go now,” Gerith called after me. “David, I mean—”
I turned back around with my hands stuffed in my pockets and yelled, “What? Just what do you mean?”
He rolled his eyes and stamped his feet on the snow-packed ground, then pulled his hair away from his face. “I mean, God, why don’t you just care about something for once in your life? Something outside of yourself.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” I said. “You’re just as selfish as I am. Don’t think I buy into your Gerith-the-all-giving act. You do that for yourself as much as I study my ass off to graduate so I can get the hell out of here.” I kicked at a drift of snow and a chunk broke off, bursting into powder.
The doors behind Gerith slid open then, and Mrs. Burroway came toddling out, holding a bag of groceries in her arms. She looked at me and smiled, then looked at Gerith and asked, “When did you boys start ringing the bell? It was a nice old man when I went in.”
“We just started half an hour ago,” Gerith told her.
“Just missed you then,” said Mrs. Burroway. “Here, hold this for me.” She handed Gerith her bag, opened her purse and took out a few bills. She stuffed them in the bucket, her hand shaking as she pushed them inside. “Were you leaving just now?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I said, grateful for her distraction.
“Good. I have some food to send home with you. Can you carry my bag home for me?”
I nodded and told her of course. By now Gerith and I were accustomed to accepting food from Mrs. Burroway. She brought us a sack every week. Sometimes two. We never knew how she could afford it. She did the same for all our neighbors, and Gerith mentioned that she brought food to the shelter several times a week as well. I’d always assumed she was a well-off widow who lived modestly, but Rosa next door said Mrs. Burroway was as poor as anyone else in our neighborhood. “That Miss Burroway,” Rosa told me one day, “she’s a good woman. A saint. But you won’t catch me spending too much time on her porch.” I asked her to elaborate but Rosa would only say, “No white woman can cook like that.”
When I took hold of Mrs. Burroway’s bag that night in December, I didn’t notice any food inside. It was mostly just furniture polish and toiletries, soap and hair spray. But at the time that still didn’t seem strange to me.
“Thank you, David,” she said, swinging a scarf around her neck with a little flourish before she put her horse-head cane out in front of her feet to propel herself forward.
I didn’t look back at Gerith as we left. I couldn’t. If I did I might succumb to guilt. I had too much pride for that. I couldn’t let him beat me down for wanting something for myself.
Mrs. Burroway chattered beside me about the winter cold she’d just gotten over, about how terrible the weather was this year. We walked the few blocks to our street, and as we walked and spoke in that lunar landscape, I thought I could hear Gerith, ringing his bell behind us.
Gerith and I didn’t speak much after that. We moved around our home like ghosts or shadows, slipping out of the peripheries of each others vision. I kept to my room, planted at my desk, and Gerith continued to work at the shelter. During the late hours of the night, he’d come home from working there and ease the front door closed as quietly as possible. The front door cre
aked no matter how much we oiled it though, so I always knew when he’d returned. I’d listened to him pace the hardwood floor outside my room and make myself believe he was getting on fine without me.
In early April I was notified about a job I’d applied for in Chicago. I could start immediately after graduation if I liked, they said. I was ecstatic. A real job. Real money for the first time in my life. With the salary I’d be earning, I could pay back my school loans within two years. I called my parents to share the news, to show them that my schooling had paid off.
I had two months to graduate and tie up loose strings. There were few problems, really. The only person in my life who could cause me grief at that point was Gerith. I couldn’t tell him. All through April and halfway through May, I tried to gather the stubbornness I thought I’d need to counter his own. I knew he’d be angry with me for leaving, especially since half the house was mine.
The day I finally confronted him arrived in the last week of May, when I only had a few weeks left before I planned to leave. I waited for him on our porch, sitting on an old sofa we’d propped out there the summer before. A clay pot filled with dirt but no plant sat beside me. I wondered if we’d ever tried growing anything in it. Gerith had pulled an all-nighter the night before, so when I saw him turn onto our ragged little street with his overnight bag, walking sluggishly, I entertained the idea of not telling him at all. Just leave and forget about him, I told myself. Forget about Youngstown. The future was my destination.
He greeted me as he approached the house, a half salute that trailed off into a wave. His hair was bound behind his neck in a ponytail, the skin beneath his eyes was puffy and gray. “Hey there,” he said, climbing the steps. “How are things going?”
I shrugged.
“Something wrong?”
“I’m leaving,” I said suddenly, my chest tightening as I said it. There, I thought. It was finally out.
“Leaving?” Gerith arched his eyebrows and held one of his hands out, palm up. “What do you mean?”
“I have a job,” I said. I looked over at the dirt-filled pot and stuffed my fingers in the soil. “It’s in Chicago.”
Gerith didn’t say anything right off, and I kept playing with the dirt so I wouldn’t have to look at him. Eventually, though, I looked up.
His head was lowered, his eyes fixed on the peeling floorboards. He’d let his overnight bag slip from under his arm, and clung to it by a strap. He looked bewildered, as if he’d just won an enormous amount of money or lost a loved one in a freak accident. “Well,” he said, looking up again as he spoke. “Guess you’ll want me to buy your half of the house.”
“No,” I said. “It’s yours.”
He nodded and stared and finally he said, “I hope you don’t like it. That job, I mean. You belong here, David. You’ll always have a place here.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I don’t think I’ll be coming back.”
“It’ll be here,” he repeated. Then he went into the house.
I sat outside and wondered why he’d let me off so easy. It wasn’t like Gerith to not put up a fight. Maybe I’d caught him when he was too tired. Maybe he’d realized arguing about this would have been futile.
I didn’t move from the sofa. The sun moved across the sky like a hand on a watch and a pale crescent moon rose up to replace it. I noticed the Puerto Rican couple’s house next door was up for sale, even though the prospect of it selling was low. Rosa and Manuel had moved out two weeks before and, within a week of leaving, the neighborhood had picked their house clean. During the night, people had come—neighbors and others from nearby streets—to remove the aluminum siding, the copper pipes and brass doorknobs, the leftover chairs and sofas. Anything that could be turned over for money. The house sparkled in the twilight now, a house with silver insulation wrap exposed on all sides. It looked as though it had been covered in chewing gum wrappers. I’d seen this happen several other times over the year on Chalmers Street. Houses left behind were veins to be mined by the living.
Two days before I left, an ice storm hit Youngstown. It started as rain, but then the temperature dropped and soon the city was encased in ice. I watched the whole affair from my bedroom window until the storm glazed my view over with a sheet of corrugated ice and I turned back. My bags were packed; my room was empty. Anyone could have lived there, or no one.
The electricity shut off sometime during the evening, and I wandered through the house with a flashlight, sweeping through the dark with its swathe of light. The house creaked under the weight of the ice and I wanted to be in Chicago already, as if in Chicago there would never be any ice, as if any house I lived in there would be so sturdy it would never creak. Gerith was at the shelter. He’d called earlier to say he’d be spending the night.
It wasn’t until later, after night gathered and the storm receded, that I thought to check on Mrs. Burroway. All alone in her ramshackle house, she could have fallen in the dark of the blackout. So I put on my jacket and broke a seal of ice off the front door as I pushed out only to slip and fall in a tangle of limbs on the ice-glazed porch as soon as I stepped out.
When I got up, I saw that all the front lawns, sidewalks and streetlights had been covered with ice. Tree limbs sagged under the weight, grazing the ground. The neighborhood sparkled under the white light of the moon and stars like a world made of blown glass.
I moved cautiously down the steps and across the yard and street to Mrs. Burroway’s front porch. I couldn’t see any light through her front door’s windowpane though, no candles or lamps or flashlights. I knocked and ice slid away where my knuckles hit. No answer came, so I knocked again, but there was still no answer.
I stepped back down to the lawn. Grass crunched beneath my shoes as I circled around to the side of the house like a thief looking for an entrance. I wiped ice away from one of the side windows so I could peer in between cupped hands, hoping I’d find Mrs. Burroway safe.
With my face pressed against the chill of the kitchen window, all I could see was darkness at first. Then suddenly light entered the room, a small candle flame that shuddered and winked in the dark, throwing out shards of light, breaking the shadows. Behind the light, Mrs. Burroway followed. The flame spun and guttered in her shaking hand and when she set it on her kitchen table I saw oranges shining like globes of gold, turkey that steamed, sweating glistening juice, pies with cherry gel bursting from brown crusts, round chocolate cakes, cans of soup, jugs of milk, boxes of cereal, jars of honey. A feast.
Mrs. Burroway moved away from the table and disappeared into the shadows. A moment later she crept back into the light with a stack of brown paper bags in her hands. She set the bags on a chair, unfolded one, and began to pack fruit, cans of soup, jars of peanut butter, and cartons of eggs into it. She sliced the turkey and slid generous cuts into baggies before putting those in as well. My mouth watered as I watched her pack bag after bag. And when she finally emptied the table, she set the bags on the floor around it and wiped it down with a towel. I realized then I’d become enchanted by her ritual and was about to knock on the window when I saw something I never told anyone about afterward.
After Mrs. Burroway wiped down her table, the air shimmered faintly above the table surface, and more food, other kinds of food, materialized in place of what had been taken. Soon an abundance of grapes, Cornish hens, bags of rice and jars of golden-brown honey filled the space.
I fogged the window with my breath and wiped it away. But as I wiped, my hand squeaked against the glass and Mrs. Burroway turned toward me. At first she looked frightened, her eyes wide and jaw slack. Then she recognized me, and slowly she lifted a gnarled finger to her pursed lips.
I nodded and her mouth bloomed into a smile. She waved then, a silent goodbye, and I turned and went back to my own house.
I left Youngstown in possession of that secret image of the table and its feast. Now the thought of Mrs. Burroway’s house being stripped bare reminded me of what I needed to do. The neighborhood wo
uld take from her house what they could, but I had to make sure the table survived her.
I spent the night before the funeral with my parents rather than going to the house on Chalmers Street. I needed a night to myself before I faced Gerith, and my parents were happy to have a night to catch up with my life. Later I called my answering machine in Chicago. There was a message from my girlfriend saying to call when I could and that she hoped everything was all right.
In the morning I woke and dressed for the funeral and drove to the cemetery in a downpour. I was early, but the caravan of mourners arrived soon after. I waited in my car until everyone got out and hurried under purses and umbrellas to the chapel. I saw Gerith, in the line of pallbearers, grab a handle on Mrs. Burroway’s casket to lift it out of the hearse. His hair was combed back into a neat ponytail and he wore a black suit. It was the first time I’d ever seen him wear one.
After the priest delivered his sermon, we all left the chapel. Gerith stopped me at the door and put an arm around my shoulders. “It’s good to see you,” he said. I patted him on the back and nodded.
“I’m sorry,” I said, as abruptly as I must have when I told him I was leaving. I’m sure he probably thought I was talking about Mrs. Burroway, but I wasn’t. It was an apology for not visiting earlier, for leaving and not keeping in touch. For not telling him about the table. For that night in front of the grocery store.
“I found her,” he said. “No one had seen her for a couple of days, so I went over. I’d been visiting her every so often for the past few years to make sure she was okay. She was on her kitchen floor. A stroke, the doctor says. There was all this food on her table. She’d been cooking enough for an army again.”
Hearing that, I said, “I have to show you something,” and led him to my car. “Trust me,” I said. “It’s important.”
We drove back to Chalmers Street together. The old neighborhood had changed a little, but most things remained the same. Rosa and Manuel’s house had been razed. An empty lot was all that was left. Our house though, Gerith’s and my house, was still standing.
Before and Afterlives Page 18
