“No. He ain’t have to act that way. It was just a dance.”
“Well, you better jump him. That’s all I’m saying. Jump his ass—and carry something. You know he packing. You want me to get you something?”
“Don’t worry about that. I got me a blade. I’ll use it if I have to.”
“It’s cold,” Isaac said. Rick did not respond. “It’s going to be plenty hot where you going. You going be wishing you had some of this cold. They say it get to be two hundred degrees over there.”
Rick cut his eyes at Isaac. “Sometimes I know why they sent you to O.E. What kind of stupid shit is that? Two hundred degrees.”
Isaac bent down and began picking up the pennies from the game. He did not want to look at Rick. He was looking at the ground when he said, “That’s just what I heard.”
“And you’ll never know,” Rick said. Isaac looked at him, looked into his eyes for what he should say, but he could find nothing.
It was not until after eleven that Jesús appeared. Rick saw him walking down Steelawanna, his head bowed against the wind, his hands in his pockets. “I think that’s him,” Isaac said.
“I see him,” Rick said.
“I got your back,” Isaac said.
Rick and Isaac stood against the cold wall, hidden in the enormous shadow the store cast. Invisible and formless and black. They let Jesús pass them, let him get a big lead before they struck out after him. He was already halfway across the field when they caught sight of him again. They were slowed because they went single file down the path, trying not to rustle the dried weeds. Rick led the way, and Isaac walked quickly behind him, shaking.
Rick caught up to Jesús as he reached his block. Rick had the chance to turn back, and he almost did when he saw the yard at 50, but he moved on. He ran up behind Jesús, closed his arms around his neck, and rode him to the ground.
Upstairs in his bed, Mikey awoke. He was cold, too cold to get up and close his window. He heard a sound coming from outside, like the beating of wings. He left his bed and went to the window despite the cold. He saw two figures on the ground right in his back yard, rolling in the grass, and there was a third figure standing in the shadow, or was it a shadow? Mikey seemed to be the only witness to the fight, and he would have a story to tell. He stood quietly, punching the air, urging them on. “Get ’em, get ’em,” he whispered, wishing he could see better, wishing he could hear. But there was nothing to hear except the beating of wings, until someone shouted, “Isaac.” The suddenness of the sound scared Mikey. It echoed off the buildings, and there it was again, “Isaac.” Mikey looked for Isaac, looked toward the shadow, but the shadow was gone. He stopped cheering and shrunk down, peeking over the window sill.
Squares of yellow appeared. And then a rectangle of light, long and wide, opened up in the blackness of the yard. César came out of it. Mikey could see Jesús there on top of someone, sitting on someone’s chest, and he could see the blade of a knife arching through the air. Mikey heard screaming, but it wasn’t the voice that had called for Isaac. César pulled his brother off of the figure on the ground. César was yelling, and as he and Jesús ran toward their house, they set tops spinning through the air. Their words spun and spun and ran off into the night.
Mikey could see the man on the ground was Rick. There was blood on his neck, on his hands, on his jacket. He was still, lying on his back as though he were looking up at the sky, counting the stars. The rectangle closed over him.
Mikey ran to his bed. He closed his eyes and pulled the covers over his head. He could hear screaming. Doors were opening, and there was more screaming, and voices below, under his window. He heard his parents get up, first his father, then his mother. They ran downstairs and the back door opened. His mother shrieked. The door closed. There were sirens. His parents’ footsteps were on the stairs.
Sleep, sleep, sleep, he thought. Be sleep. He turned his head to the wall. The footsteps entered his room and the light came on. He held his breath.
“He sleep,” his mother said. Her voice was shaky. His window was closed. “He lucky. Kids can sleep through anything.”
His father said, “No point in no ambulance coming. That boy dead.”
“I want to leave here. We got to move,” his mother said. She was crying.
“Move? To where? White people want us right here,” his father said.
Mikey held his breath. His heart hurt like he had been running in some great race. His mother was crying. The light went out and the door closed. The footsteps left. Mikey breathed out.
Be sleep. Be sleep.
In the morning Mikey awoke, surprised to find he had even slept. He could hear his father up, walking around, getting dressed for work. Martin, the new baby, was crying, and his mother was moving through the kitchen below. He was afraid to lift his head from under the covers, afraid to get up and look out the window. He thought he would see Rick there.
But Rick was gone. He was gone like he had never been there. And Jesús was gone too. He had flown away.
15
Fast Track
THE PEOPLE of All-Bright Court expected to see new stores rise from the ashes of Ridge Road, as if rain and sun would start a new cycle, buildings would come pushing through the blackness, incipient and translucent shafts of green. They had the notion they were part of the civilized world. Surely no one could expect them to live in a war zone. But the people came to know they were living in another world, a dying planet that was spinning away from what they had come to know. They had pulled civilization down around them.
Not one of the burned buildings was reopened. The charred remains were left as they were, a testament. Over on the other side of the bridge in Capital Heights, the world kept right on spinning, full of life and services. Life continued, even in their dying world.
Men filed in and out of the plant. Clouds of orange scudded overhead. Silver fell from the sky. Beneath the roar of the stacks, parents went about figuring out how to raise their children among the ruins. In every city that had gone up in flames, in every other project and run-down house, black and brown parents were trying to figure out the same thing. What they wanted was a way out, if not for them, then at least for their children. At the end of the summer when a man walked on the moon, a chance came for Mikey.
The previous spring he had taken an achievement test and had done well, well enough to be considered “gifted.”
Mikey nearly missed taking the test. He had a cold and a slight fever on the day of the test, but his mother sent him anyway. She had received a note from his teacher, Mrs. Brezenski, stating that there would be a morning of testing. All of the children had to attend.
With ringing ears, a headache, and a dripping nose, Mikey had sat and answered the questions. He held his head in one hand and wrote with the other. He carefully filled in the ovals with his number 2 pencil, wiping his nose with his father’s big, soft handkerchief. It was completely wet after the first half hour. All Mikey wanted to do was go home. His mother had promised he could stay home for the afternoon when he came back for lunch. She would make him tea with honey, and instead of watching her soap operas, she would let him watch cartoons. He finished the test and went home and slept the afternoon away on the couch. Neither he nor his parents thought more of the matter.
Mikey and his classmates had taken tests like these before, filled in ovals or rectangles with number 2 pencils issued by their teachers. The only students who ever heard any results were the ones who were pronounced “slow” or “problem learners.” Their parents would receive a letter from the school requesting a meeting. There the parents would be assaulted with numbers that told them why their child had to go to the O.E. school. Even Puerto Rican parents, some of whom could grasp only a few words of what they were being told, patiently nodded their heads, acquiescing to the truth. Numbers typed neatly on clean white paper told a truth so absolute they dared not question it. Quietly, year by year, students vanished. Though the slow and the problem learners were
identified, no one noticed the aberrations at the other end of the scale. Just as the slow were conjured out of the numbers, so were the gifted. But their names were locked in a gray file cabinet in the principal’s office.
After the urban wars their names were released. The country was filled with anger, guilt, fear. These feelings, just as much as a true sense of altruism, led to the formation of groups like D.O.V.E.
D.O.V.E. was a nonprofit organization formed in Chicago to help inner-city students—those students Deserving Of a Viable Education. It was the organization’s mission to find gifted inner-city students and place them in the best schools, the best being the New England prep schools. Exeter, Andover, Milton, Concord, Groton. D.O.V.E. placed younger children, those not old enough to board, in schools near them. Mikey’s name came to the organization through Mrs. Brezenski.
She had not told Mikey’s parents she had sent his name in, because she did not want to raise their hopes. D.O.V.E. had his name released from the file cabinet, but no one contacted Mrs. Brezenski until the week before school was to start in the fall. A place had been found for Mikey in a private school.
Mrs. Brezenski called his parents to the school. “Your son did very well on the achievements we gave last spring. He did so well, in fact,” she said, handing a brochure to Mrs. Taylor, “that these people have procured a scholarship for him to a private school in Buffalo. Classes have not begun yet. The admissions officer says he can start this year. Next week.”
Mrs. Taylor held the glossy brochure. On the cover was a picture of a lone black boy surrounded by a group of white boys. All of them were laughing.
Mrs. Brezenski explained the organization while the Taylors tried to read the information they had been presented. “You see, they are concerned with giving children a viable education, ‘viable’ being the operative word. The acronym is not just clever, but apropos. Your son has the chance to be a little ambassador, a dove of peace who can teach so much to the other boys at Essex.”
“What school?” Mr. Taylor asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Brezenski said, handing them a catalog. “The Essex Academy is one of the finest prep schools in western New York. I’m going to be honest with you. Michael is a very bright boy. I don’t have to tell you that. There’s not much we can do for a boy like him in a ghetto school. He’s gifted, and he deserves a chance to have a quality education. If you let him go to Essex, he will give the boys there a chance to learn that Negroes are real people, just like white people. A boy like Michael can help change the future, help bring about a truly colorblind society, and he will receive a fine education, one of the best educations money can buy. He’s been accepted to a wonderful school, and he can go for free.”
“Things seem kind of rushed,” Mr. Taylor said. “When we got to let you know?”
“As soon as possible. Tomorrow would be great. I’m sorry about the haste, but this slot opened up suddenly when a boy from Niagara Falls canceled out,” Mrs. Brezenski said. “Think it over. This is the chance of a lifetime.”
Mikey’s parents discussed it that night when the children were in bed.
“Sam, I want him to have a good education, but he too young to go all the way to Buffalo to school.”
Samuel said, “I think he need a good education too. Do you see him getting one out here?”
“I don’t know. He getting more of a education than we got at his age.”
“What’s that saying? Segregated schools, not enough books, not enough nothing. We ain’t had nothing.”
“I know you right,” Mary Kate said. “But Sam, he just a little boy, and we fenna send him to a school full of white people, and that teacher, the way she was carrying on. He going to be a dove. Look at this little book the teacher give us. How many coloreds you see? What’s going to happen to my baby all alone?”
“Come on, Kate. He ain’t no baby. I think that teacher was just saying they got the best there. We want the best for him. Maybe he can teach them white boys something. It’s probably some Negro boys there. They just didn’t put them in the book. He be all right. And I think he can handle it. He a smart boy. You heard what his teacher said. The boy got a gift. We got to give him a chance. We never had no chance. It ain’t going to cost us nothing. How can we hold him back? If he not happy, we can always take him out.”
They agreed to let Mikey go after they toured the campus. Samuel took the next day off from work. Mary Kate had Venita come over and sit with the children while she, Samuel, and Mikey went. All three were impressed by what they saw.
The fifty-acre campus was tucked in the northwest corner of Buffalo. The gray stone, slate-roofed buildings were surrounded by well-groomed lawns, perfectly cut hedges. There was a football field, lacrosse field, baseball field, a field house, a swimming pool, tennis courts, squash courts. The splendor they saw was blinding. They had entered a different world. Their guide was a white boy dressed in a blue blazer, khaki pants, a white shirt, blue-and-gray-striped tie. They didn’t ask any questions.
Essex arranged for Mikey’s transportation. Mrs. Cox would take him until he learned how to catch the bus. Mrs. Cox was a cafeteria worker at Essex who lived in Lackawanna, not that far from All-Bright Court, in one of the old houses on School Street.
On the first morning Mikey was to go to Essex, he put on his uniform and stood before his mother for inspection. She decided his neck looked dirty. She was out of alcohol, so she scrubbed his neck with Clorox.
“My neck clean,” Mikey said.
“It don’t look too clean to me,” his mother said, “and you wearing that white shirt. I can’t have you going off to that school having white people thinking you nasty. They not going to think it’s just you nasty. They going to think all black boys is nasty. They think that anyway, that we nasty.”
“How you know what white people think, Mama? You don’t know no white people,” Mikey said.
“Don’t you give me no back talk, boy. You go to that school and mind your manners. Hear me? Don’t go there asking a whole bunch of questions.”
“I won’t, Mama. I’m going to be good, and I’m going to make friends. You’ll see.”
“I’m not sending you to this school to make friends. I’m sending you to learn. Your friends right here in this house, hear me?” his mother said.
His sisters laughed. Their mother had descended on them before with a bottle of alcohol and a rough cloth. She had attacked their knees and elbows, their necks, their feet. She tried to scrub some of the blackness from their small bodies.
“Why your knees so black? I don’t believe they that black. Go get me the alcohol and a washrag,” she would say. And she would scrub her children until they were raw, but very seldom would she find any dirt on them.
“I guess your knees really that black,” she would say if she found no dirt. If she found dirt, she would say, “See here, you nasty,” and she would show them the cloth to prove it.
This morning his sisters watched Mikey squirm, and so did his baby brother, Martin. The baby took the cue from his sisters and laughed when they laughed.
“Ya’ll don’t be laughing at me,” Mikey said.
“Don’t ya’ll be laughing,” their mother said. “I’ll get ya’ll next.”
There was no dirt on Mikey’s neck. “I guess your neck really that black,” their mother said.
“Now I smell like bleach, Mama,” Mikey said. He wanted to cry because his neck was burning. And there was a horn blowing outside, Mrs. Cox.
Mikey’s mother wiped off his neck with a wet cloth. She kept wiping and sniffing until the smell was gone. “Now let me take a look at you,” she said. She sucked her teeth. “Dorene, run upstairs and get the Vaseline.”
“What’s wrong, Mama?” Mikey said.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong? You look like a ash cat. You ain’t put no grease on your face and hands. You can’t leave out of here like this. What them white people going to think?”
Dorene came down with the grease,
and there was a knock on the front door. Dorene let Mrs. Cox in.
She was a thin woman dressed in a white uniform. She smiled as she entered the house. “Is your mother in?”
“Good morning,” their mother said, entering the living room, wiping her hands on a towel. “We running a little late, ma’am.”
“Call me Sue. And your name is Mary, right?”
“Yes ma’am, Mary Kate.”
“She said call her Sue,” Mary said.
“Hush your mouth,” their mother said. “Wasn’t nobody talking to you. You speak when somebody speaking to you.”
“These are all your children?”
“Yes. This is Mary, Dorene, Olivia, Martin, and you met Michael. He ready,” their mother said, wiping a thin film of Vaseline on his face and hands until they shone like a polished cherry.
“What a beautiful family, and another on the way. When is the baby due?”
“After the first of the year . . . Ya’ll better be going.”
“Yes, you’re right, Mary Kate. We wouldn’t want him to be late his first day,” Mrs. Cox said, catching hold of Mikey’s hand.
“Now, you be a good boy,” their mother said as Mikey and Mrs. Cox left the house. “You do your best and you be all right.” She thought she was going to cry, but she held it in. He looked so smart in his blue blazer, his khaki pants, his blue-and-gray-striped tie. He was a gift.
As he came to the end of the sidewalk, he turned Mrs. Cox’s hand loose and ran back to his mother. He hugged her, and she bent and kissed him.
“I’m going to try, Mama,” he said. And then he was off and running.
16
Ebb
BLITZKRIEG. That is what it seemed like to the men of Capital. Industrywide, one hundred thousand steelworkers were losing their jobs. That many men being displaced did not seem to be a random strike of lightning. The loss seemed deliberate, planned and executed to catch them unawares. Blitzkrieg.
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