by Richard Dry
Lida listened to the silence of the day. She reached her mind out of the room, out of the building, across the freeway, and out toward West Oakland. She listened and waited for something, some answer from somewhere. But she heard nothing.
“You saved me, so you can do what you want,” she said.
“I guess that means yes.”
There was another moment of silence as she shook her head. But then she said, “If that’s what you want.”
* * *
IT TOOK RUBY six months to accept that she was really going to be alone, that Lida wasn’t coming back, and neither was Easton.
Dinnertime was sacred now. She was her own special guest. The carved rock elephants sat on the center of the table by the tall yellow candle. She laid out two red-fringed place mats, one for the pots and one for her place setting, the silverware imprinted with flowers. She didn’t bring up disagreeable conversation topics at this time, that is what she said to herself if her mind wandered. “This is not a time to reflect.”
She dressed up each night. She wore her red shawl over a black evening gown. This dress was the last style she’d made, and they didn’t all sell. The factories that had moved overseas and the sweatshops in Chinatown now produced a hundred garments at the cost she charged for ten. She hadn’t sewn since the burial, when she made a patch-quilt blanket to lay over Easton; she read her Bible instead.
She lit the candle and said grace, then opened the cloth napkin and spread it out neatly on her lap. She picked up the fork and brought the potato to her lips without leaning close or hurrying in any way.
This was a time to taste the yams, to slowly chew their buttery orange sugar. There was the rest of the day to remember Easton, to worry about Lida or bills. This was a time when nothing could be done about those things, and it didn’t do any good to think of them and ruin a meal.
This year she would turn forty, and she wondered what she might give herself as a present. And it came to her all at once, maybe because she had been dusting the pictures on the wall earlier, or maybe because she would be forty this year and always thought of her mother as being forty. If she could save, start saving right now, she would take a trip in the fall to South Carolina. She hadn’t seen her mother in person for nearly eighteen years, almost half her life. She picked up another forkful of yams and smiled, the first real smile she’d felt on her face in months.
SANTA RITA JAIL
TODAY, I READ to you from C. G. Parson’s Inside View of Slavery:
“Take off your shoes, Sylva,” said Mrs. A., “and let this gentleman see your feet.”
“I don’t want to,” said Sylva.
“But I want you to,” said her mistress.
“I don’t care if you do,” replied Sylva sullenly.
“You must,” said the mistress firmly.
The fear of punishment impelled her to remove the shoes. Four toes on one foot, and two on the other were wanting! “There!” said the mistress, “my husband, who learned the blacksmith’s trade for the purpose of teaching it to the slaves, to increase their market value, has with his own hands, pounded off and wrung off all those toes, when insane with passion. And it was only last week that he thought Sylva was saucy to me, and he gave her thirty lashes with the horse whip. She was so old that I could not bear to see it, and I left the house.
“Sylva says,” Mrs. A. continued, “that she has been the mother of thirteen children, every one of whom she has destroyed with her own hands, in their infancy, rather than have them suffer slavery!”
CHAPTER 10
NOVEMBER 1993 • LOVE 14, LI’L PIT 10, RUBY 55
LOVE PEELED OPEN a six-ounce can of sausages and ate them with his fingers while sitting on the couch watching the Power Rangers with Li’l Pit. The room was dark. Though it had been a month since the drive-by, the windows were still covered with wooden boards.
“This is tight. Watch this.” Li’l Pit knelt on the floor three feet from the color TV screen. The Power Rangers linked hands and flipped off a cliff together amid fiery explosions, landing flawlessly, ready for more trouble. “Ahhh, that tight.” He stood up and went around to the back of the couch, took a running start, and somersaulted over it onto the pillows.
“Shit, dog, watch out!” Love yelled.
Li’l Pit got up and danced, his arms out in front of him, wrists crossed.
I’m a Power Ranger
Ain’t afraid of no danger
I’ll melt your mind
Like a TV changer.
“Man, you silly,” Love said. Li’l Pit collapsed on the couch laughing, and Love smiled.
“Here comes the grandmother,” Ruby said as she climbed down the stairs holding the handrail firmly, shifting her hips with each step. “Time to pretend you studyin.”
She walked across the living room and took a seat in the rocking chair. “How you expect him to go to school if you ain’t even going? You’ll know whose fault it is when he grow up stupid.”
Love shrugged and stared at the TV.
“You know the police are going to come take you from me if you don’t show up to school, least sometime.”
“Poh-Poh don’t scare me,” Li’l Pit said. “I’ll just run away.”
“Don’t eat those sausages over my couch without a plate.”
“I’m going out,” Love said. He put the empty can on the table.
“Where to?”
“Just out.”
“Don’t ‘just out’ me. I won’t let you turn into a rat child and keep on all night. Bad enough we ain’t got no more windows.”
“That isn’t my fault,” he said. He put on his leather jacket. “I didn’t shoot those windows. I’m the reason why it won’t happen again. I’m protecting this family.”
Li’l Pit covered his ears and scooted even closer to the TV Love opened the front door and put on black leather gloves, another of Easton’s garments that Ruby had given him. He pushed his feet into his new high-tops, which he’d bought with his first money from Freight.
“I know you doing what you need to,” she said. “You almost a man now. But a man can listen to what I got to say and take it or leave it without running away.”
Love sighed and rolled his eyes. “What you want?”
“I want you to come back inside and I’ll just tell you something.”
Li’l Pit let his hands fall from his ears and looked at his brother. Love shook his head and walked back inside.
“Close the door first,” Ruby said.
“Come on, dog. What you want from me?”
“I’m not going to have you calling me a dog. You can leave.”
“I just say that. It don’t mean nothing.”
“No.” Ruby waved him away. “I won’t have you disrespecting me in my own home. Go on. You go on out and you and your other dog friends can go sniffin around the neighborhood or whatever it is you do.” Love’s hard face broke into a smile, like the embarrassed wizard coming out from behind the curtain.
“What you want to tell me?” He sat back on the couch, and Ruby eased into the rocking chair.
“Turn that TV down so I can talk without shouting.” Li’l Pit turned it down and moved even closer to it, his nose a foot from the screen.
“This a story about back in Norma.”
“I ain’t got all day to listen to a ‘back in Norma’ story again,” Love said.
“I ain’t your mother, but you ain’t got nobody else, so if you’re smart, you’ll hear what I got to say.”
“What you want already?”
“This has to do with you. This is something for you. I don’t have a better way to put it but to tell you a story. Love E used to be scared of these boys who live over at the next farm.”
“I ain’t scared of my homies. They’re my pahtnahs.”
“Shush. Listen. All these boys was his senior, and big like one another, and they mean, too. Kalvin Palmer and his two younger brothers, Harold and Louis. They used to throw rocks at him when he was comin home
from school over the bridge. And he even once jumped into the water to get away, and then he came home like a wet mop and his daddy, Papa Samuel, that’s his blood papa, he ask him what happened, and he said he fell into the water tryin to catch a frog. But Papa Samuel knowd there ain’t no frogs round that time a year and he told him to go get a switch. Papa Samuel whipped Love E good and told him he got to fight back against Kalvin and his brothers. Whip him so bad he do his business standing up all week long. Worse than anything them Palmer boys coulda done to him.
“Now, Ronal, your granpapa, he was just a young man, but he took Love E under his wing and he help Love E to read and talked to him ’bout how Papa Samuel couldn’t beat up on him forever; he say that in the future, he an Love E gonna be somethin bigger than any these Palmer boys or Papa Samuel could imagine.
“So then one day them boys ambush him on the bridge, Kalvin up front and his two brothers behind. There weren’t nowhere to go, ’cause if he jump in the river, then Papa Samuel gonna get him. He couldn’t pull out this knife cause then they’d pull out theirs. So he seem trapped, and it seem like he was gonna get it any way he turn. He say it was like being inside a box and every side on fire, and coming closer, too. He didn’t see no way out. And then the sky thundered and there was lightning and it was about to rain and he knowd he could jump over that bridge into the water ’cause everyone was gonna be soaking wet that day when they get home, and Papa Samuel wouldn’t be wise to him.” Ruby looked up to the ceiling, like she could see the rain coming down.
“So he jumped in?” Love asked.
“No, he didn’t jump in. No, he just stand there. He just waited right there ’cause he knowd he’d still have to face them boys every day and get beat up sometime. He want it would just get over with. And if he fight, then they’d let him alone, or at least someday they’d get older and move away. He say he just started walking toward Kalvin and thinking of the future, how the only escaping that box was to look on into the future when things’ll get better. ’Cause a trap only a trap if you can’t see pass it, how it’s gonna be different in the future.”
“So they beat him up?”
“Sure. There was three of them and one of him.”
“Ahhh, that’s scandalous.”
“And then Papa Samuel beat him good, too, ’cause he looked like he let them boys beat him up.”
“No! That’s scan-da-lous.” Both Love and Li’l Pit laughed again.
“And those boys beat him up again and again, almost every day. But he saw beyond all that. Nothin ever came of those boys. But Love E, he kept going to school, and he turned into something. He was on TV and he was part of something important. Shoulda seen all these people at his funeral. He knew someday he’d be something. So he could look pass his present trouble.”
“That’s back in the day,” Love said. “I wouldn’t let myself be beat on like that. I’d take out a AK-47 and stand on that bridge and bloom! Them boys would be divin in that river themselves.”
Ruby shook her head. “I guess there’s no getting through your thick skull bone.”
“Is that all you wanted to tell me?”
“Go on and get.” Ruby stood up. “I got so much truth to tell and nowhere to put it.”
* * *
LATER THAT NIGHT, Love walked up Cranston, nodding his head and practicing his mean mug. He looked at the empty houses and imagined someone staring at him on the neighbor’s stoop. He flipped his head back slightly, pushed his top lip up with his bottom, and narrowed his eyes. Even after he passed the stoop, he turned and continued to stare until he imagined his rival backing down. He kept that cut-eye glare as he approached the liquor store.
It was past nine now, and the dark November cold had set in. Freight, Curse, Nat the stick boy, and Solomon were playing dice against the liquor-store wall on the Cranston side. A yellow streetlight off San Pablo just barely lit their game.
“What up?” Love greeted them.
“My dick,” said Curse. The crew laughed, though they all knew Curse’s dick had been permanently flaccid since he’d been shot. Love went into the liquor store and bought a Snickers, then came back to the game. Freight laid a five on the ground and the others followed, then Freight picked up all the money and held it as he rolled.
Curse turned to Love. “Want a piece of this action? Easier than pussy from a ho.”
“Shit, dog,” Love said. “You losin that bad?” The other three cracked up.
“Put your cash where your flash is, nigga. Come on, roll them dice. See how hard you laughin when I take your money.”
“I don’t give my money away.”
“Like I always say,” said Curse. “If you don’t got the dicks, keep out the mix.” He laughed and held his fist out for the others to tap, which they all did, except for Freight, who just said quietly:
“If I have to hold on to this money any longer, blood, I might just put it in my pocket.” They all shut up.
“What up, niggas?” Li’l Pit yelled. He crossed the street toward them, his hand waving in the air. Love darted out, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him back to the other side.
“Let go of me. What you doin?”
“You suppose to be in bed,” Love said.
“I don’t have to,” Li’l Pit said.
“Come on.” Love pulled on his arm and tried to drag him back home.
“Let go of me. Let me go,” Li’l Pit yelled. A light went on in the house behind them.
“Shut that boy up!” Freight yelled from across the street. Love stopped pulling his brother.
“You ain’t suppose to be out here,” Love whispered.
“Look at that,” Li’l Pit said. Love turned to see Tanya, one of Freight’s women, dressed in a gold lame bodysuit, come around the corner by the liquor store. Freight walked with her down the block, had a brief conversation with her, and then took some money. Love watched Tanya’s body, the suit tight around her butt.
“That your girlfriend?” Li’l Pit asked his brother.
“That ho? I don’t pay for mine, dog.”
“Me neither.”
Love shook his head. He bent down on one knee in front of Li’l Pit and zipped up his brother’s Dallas Cowboys jacket.
“You have to keep quiet and out of the way if you’re going to hang with us again.”
“I don’t have to do nothin I don’t want to.”
“Whatever.” Love stood up, turned away, and walked back to the group. Li’l Pit followed and ran past him, yelling to the crew.
“What up? What up? Hey, hey.”
“What up, Li’l Poet,” said Curse.
“The moon and the stars.” He tapped everyone’s fists and then put his hand out in front of the snake’s mouth to feel the tongue against his skin.
“Give up a rap,” said Freight. Li’l Pit smiled. He looked around the street and began pumping his head and neck to an internal beat.
It was a dark, cold night
By the liquor store
My homies were kickin it
Dicin it, slicin it, smokin it, and mixin it
The crew laughed and nodded their heads as they played.
The sky was purple
And the clouds were gray
My brother said kiss me
I said: hell no I ain’t gay.
Your daddy beat your mommy
And your mommy is a ho.
I told you to be better
Or I’ll give you to five-oh.
Now you roll a seven
And you get yourself some money
Someone isn’t happy
And they say that you are funny.
My name is Li’l Pit
And I rap like Mr. Clinton
I’ll check you on the flip
But for now,
I’m fit for quittin.
He stood still and raised two fingers in the air: “Peace-out, niggas.”
They all applauded. Li’l Pit wiped his mouth with his fist, squinting his eyes like a boxer
who’d just delivered his knockout punch.
“Who got the smokes?” he asked.
“Right here,” said Curse. He reached under his leg and pulled out a box and gave Li’l Pit a cigarette. Love grabbed his brother’s wrist and ripped the cigarette out of his hand.
“Hey, motherfucker, that was my cigarette,” said Curse. He turned on one wheel and faced Love. Love looked down at him in his chair.
“Don’t get my little brother smoking.”
“Oh, so now you gonna tell me what I can and can’t do, punk? Freight, let me kick his skinny little ass down the block.”
“Go ahead,” said Freight.
“You sure? ’Cause I’m gonna do some damage.”
Love tightened his fists.
“Go ahead,” Freight said, without watching. Curse considered the focused eyes and the small, unpredictable rigidity of Love’s body. He reached under the blanket on his lap and pulled out a small 9-mm pistol.
Love looked over at Freight, who still didn’t bother watching. He knew he shouldn’t run; he’d seen Nat make that mistake. But this was not the same situation, and Curse was not Freight. Love closed his eyes. He forced his mind to accept it, to embrace it and get it over with. What did it matter? If not now, it’d be later. Cars whizzed by on San Pablo, alternating with the faint singing of En Vogue floating out of the store. He heard the grinding buzz of the fluorescent streetlight above and imagined the swarm of brown moths beating their wings against the encasement of the burning light. If it happened, fast and clean, this wasn’t a terrible way to go. He even felt himself drawn to move closer to Curse.
“I didn’t want the smoke anyway,” Li’l Pit said.
“You sure now, li’l brother? ’Cause you don’t got to do nothin nobody tells you.”
“I’m sure.”
“Well, if it didn’t mean nothin to you, then I just as soon let it go. But I don’t want no one pushin you around. I’m on the lookout for you.”
“It’s all good.”
“In that case, we all right.” He put the gun back under his blanket. “I’ll let it go, then.” He wheeled around, back into the circle of the game.
Love looked at Li’l Pit, who flashed him a big smile.
