I’m sitting in the storefront with this gray lady, Miss Ruby, who came all the way out here to Brooklyn to straighten us folks out and get the rats taken care of and get us jobs and stuff like that, when here comes Jackson. Now this is several months later, and most of the block is sitting with Miss Ruby, helping her put her program on the street just by keeping the little kids off her car and bricks off her head and windows in her panes, and there comes Jackson. Everything’s cool—the girl and all. But the day of reckoning is due, and like I say, Punjab don’t play. Here comes Jackson in his Sunday suit with an arm swung around this Puerto Rican dude. What he’s telling him is this: “Look, amigo my man, I got this boss place with furniture and windows and everything and a tub in the kitchen, so you don’t even have to travel around for that morning bath. And the kitchen’s painted the kind of yellow you’d dig on account of the super’s one of you people. So for four beans you can move right in, and everything’s yours. Don’t have to mess with no boarding rooms and other shit. Send for your family in the morning. Square business.”
Well, I said to Miss Ruby that I couldn’t see the point of all that gumming and wearing out the teeth smiling and all. If the spic had four beans on him, walk him down toward the brewery and be done with it. But according to Newspaper (that’s Gwen Southern, who’s like the three monkeys reversed and inside out) Jackson didn’t roll the guy. He set him up in the place just like he was saying. Need I say that the place went up in smoke that morning. And when Punjab got the word that Jackson had already split, he was bitter. Like I said, Jackson got in the wind. You’d get in the wind too if your ass was in hock to Punjab. We got the word that Jackson went into the army. For the third time, you understand. That’s how untogether Jackson is: he needs to hide out that often that drastically. So if he knew anything at all about himself from the get-go, he never would’ve borrowed. And if he didn’t know anything about his ownself, he should’ve asked somebody. So he went into the army. Didn’t do no good. Got iced the same day he got out. And Jackson’s mother wound up hocking damn near everything she had ever bought on time or no. But that’s another story.
The story I wants to tell is about the block, I guess, and about how Miss Ruby found out that Punjab don’t play. I say Miss Ruby because I myself already knew, cause my mother knew a whole lotta Punjabs in her day and passed this onto me along with the vitamins and the dextrose and all them other nutrients that comes tubing in when you’re huddled up there in the dark waiting to get born. It was hopping time. And when it’s hopping time in Brooklyn, I usually hauls my ashes over to one of them centers where there’s a lot of scary workers with an open line to the cops. Any other time I’m all for working with the realer type people who get right out there in the street with all the jitterbugs and take your side against the landlords and the cops. That’s fine for wintertime when there ain’t so much wine-drinking and stoop-sitting and head-whipping. But in summer that can be dangerous, the streets. So after the Field Day tryouts I put it to Miss Ruby like this: “Look here, Miss Ruby, I gots to get my typing up and get one of them jobs in the center around the way cause summer’s coming on and the block’s going to be holy hell.”
She looked me dead in the eye and said: “I need you right here with me to translate, Violet, cause you know I don’t speak negro too tough.” I thought that was pretty cute, but I went right ahead with my typing practice, reading the dictionary, and getting my suit together for one of them interviews they always put you through even if you’re only asking to swing the stupid stick and wash windows.
But it turned out to be a cool summer. Hot in all the usual ways, but no jitterbugging. Even in the air-conditioned diner where we ate at, everything was hot and muggy. You could smell sour milk and mushy watermelon all day long. Your coffee was always full of cinders, and everybody looked grim and grimy, and all the dogs looked like they had rabies or something. And one of the piers caught on fire for no reason I know of except everything was burning up including me. But everything was law and orderly. Even the little kids were straight and legal about not opening up the johnny pumps. The only people up to their old tricks was Punjab and Punjab’s grandfather, who sat on the trash can giving advice on single action.
How she worked it I’m not sure. I can guess, but ain’t no use telling everything I know. I’ve seen her do some unbelievable things with landlords and with cops and with truant officers and storekeepers with weird scales, even with the old West Indian lady, Miss Bunch, who never let anybody get into her place, not even the meter reader, much less some fay chick. Well, I actually saw Miss Ruby lead that lady out of 575 into the light of day, over to the center to speak into the tape recorder, down to the church basement to pick up on the senior citizens club, and back. But how she actually worked her thing on Punjab is anybody’s guess unless you happen to have some theories about men, about Black men particularly, and especially about Southern Black men and their thing about white women. My theory is the Black man got jammed up by the White man’s nightmare. But anyway, it must’ve been Punjab what called cool cause there ain’t nobody else big enough on the block to do it.
She opened his nose is how she did it. Like I’d be at the phone, contacting all these lames she was trying to set a fire under so they’d build a clinic and be civil to the junkies round our way, and here comes Punjab. Not with the flashy car and his even flashier henchmen, but walking up the block alone like any normal, everyday-type person. And he’s peeping through the window grinning up a storm. Not like him at all who can be viewed at any hour of day or night slapping some chick upside the head or collecting coins from this barfly or that. And let Miss Ruby ask him to do something. Like a centipede stumbling fast over every single one of them legs. Or I’m cranking the mimeo cause she was a bug about keeping the block informed as to the latest thing we was getting swindled out of because we wouldn’t organize, and here he comes again with beer or cigarettes or something. I’ll say this for Punjab: I’ve seen a whole lot of piercing scenes go down in his name, but he was never close with the money. Like the time he brung this great pot of ribs and potato salad, followed up by a pan of hopping john and a gallon of Gallo. Embarrassing, cause I was off the clock already and had no real reason to hang around except that I likes to grit and am partial to that loving spoonful. I grit back, I won’t lie.
What happened was this, to make a long story short. Not only had he called cool, but he’d also put up bail a couple of times for some of the star pupils Miss Ruby called herself rehabilitating. One of these stars split, but Punjab didn’t go after him. Not only that, Punjab had also stomped a few heads by the subway garage on account of them staring too hard at Miss Ruby’s hips and saying things. All in all, Miss Ruby was making puppy tracks in Punjab’s books. So that fall when she was knocking everybody out to set up an election to pick community leaders to represent us on the poverty council and all over the place, we figured Punjab for a natural. We figured he was going to get paid off finally. Hell, let’s face it, anybody in position to be calling themself doing good is always doing well, if you know what I mean. And there was a whole lotta long bread coming into our area. So we figured Punjab was going to get his cut, him being the only kind of leader we could even think of. Matter of fact, most people didn’t even bother to come down and cram that yellow card into the milk box. But at the rally, she actually counted all those cards and came up with this cornball preacher who used to double as Santa Claus during the holidays, and Ann Silver’s grandmother, stone nose. These were our delegates. Needless to say, we acted up. Then Miss Ruby got warm. First time I ever heard her curse.
“If you didn’t exercise your right as a voter, shut the hell up. That’s what the cards say. That’s it.”
Miss Elaine from 579 got up, patting her throat and fleshy bosom and came right out with what everybody was sitting there sweating and thinking. “Now you knows as well as I, Miss Ruby darling, that Mr. Punjab should be one of them peoples what go to places and talk with the Man. So I don’t
even see no sense whatever to these cards.”
“Well, why didn’t you all vote for Mr. Punjab?” Miss Ruby’s hair was getting wild.
Then sister Taylor got up to say that she wasn’t for Rebum Smothers representing her block since he was so busy aping the white churches that he had lost his gospel choir. “And not only that,” she said, jabbing a finger in the air, “he don’t talk good enough to be no delegate. Cain’t nobody hardly understand him lessen you came from wherever he be from.” She also had a few things to say to Miss Ruby about all this “grass roots” and “poor folks” and other phrases she didn’t like coming out of no white mouth, but everybody kept signaling her and whispering and whatnot till she finally reached back and pulled her dress away from her sticky thighs. Didn’t do no good. Soon as she got started again the dress would ride up, and she was too embarrassed to put her hand where it needed to get to pull that dress straight, so she sat down.
“Reverend Smothers and Mrs. Silver are our representatives,” said Miss Ruby. “All block captains will meet with them to discuss what you feel should be said in the way of demands at the meeting. Adjourned.”
I wasn’t around when Punjab came to collect, so to speak. All I can tell you is what Newspaper ran down to me; and I can, of course, describe to you how the office looked. But, then, anybody could’ve bust in and messed up the place. Me and some of the other girls hung around there for days waiting for Miss Ruby to show up. Only person what came was some guy in an official-looking gray car with a clipboard. He asked some questions and wrote on this clipboard. But you know how dumb Black people can be when they want to. But Sneaker shot off his mouth about how he should’ve been paid for all his leg work regardless of Punjab’s debt. He went on to say that Miss Ruby was full of shit with all her foolishness about power and equality and responsibility and sacrifice, and then cop right out when the chips were down. He said a few choice things more about ass standin in the way of progress, but then Sneaker always did have a crude-type mouth. The cat in the gray car went on about his business, and we went on about ours. And that was that.
“Come on and walk me,” Sneaker was saying, pulling on my girl friend. “Gots to go see Punjab about a job. Least he don’t play around with your money.”
We walked Sneaker up to the poolroom to wait for Punjab to come around that corner on two white walls. He always did on the third and the eighteenth.
Talkin Bout Sonny
“SOMETHING CAME OVER ME.” That was all we could report when we got back to the block. That was all we heard. Very likely all he had said.
“Hell of a thing to say,” said Lee, shaking his head.
“Well, what you supposed to say when you just got through putting a knife in your wife’s neck? After a gesture like that you want eloquence too?”
“Well, I don’t understand it myself,” said Lee. “Just to stand there with blood all over your shirt, stand there and look the Man in the face and say that something came over you, like that was some kind of explanation.”
“Oh, man, you irritate my ass,” said Delauney, screwing up his face. “The cat’s just another angry dude that iced his wife. A Southern orator you want. You stand there in that damn fool apron making all kind of off-the-wall demands on the guy and—” Delauney turned to me. “You understand it, don’t you, baby? I mean ‘Something came over me’ comes through to you, don’t it?” I nodded and he swung around to the bartender again. “You see. You’re the only insensitive and stupid bastard around here. Nothing up here,” he tapped his head. “Didn’t nothing ever come over you? No, I guess not. You too damned dead, that’s what. A bottle-tipping vegetable mother.”
Lee didn’t say anything. He wiped his hands slowly across the apron doubled over his belly. And then, very deliberately, he gave me a refill on the house as if to say he knew what I had on my hands. Or maybe he just dug where Delauney was at and was sympathetic, knowing he had to scream on someone. And what better mark than a big, fat, sloppy bartender that never did anybody any harm?
“Now, what happens to me sometimes is like that.” He swiveled around to me again. “I can wake up, not thinking anything in particular, and all of a sudden it’s on me. A cloud of evil. A fit of nastiness takes over. Next thing you know I’m doing dirty to everybody and giving out with the malevolent looks, as you know I can. Like sometimes, I just hate all people, that’s all. And I pass ’em in the streets and cut ’em dead. Or I can spy that fire axe in the glass cage and get to thinking how I’d just love to take the thing to work with me and really work out. And maybe this thing’ll go on all day. So you figure that for some people these dark days just kind of build up and then that … that …” He stopped, searching for the definitive gesture. “That cloud of evil like zooms in on you … like a capsule moment, you dig? Fifty-some-odd days of pure shit jammed into one mad moment and boom—you plant a razor in your wife’s throat.” He nodded to himself in the bar mirror, satisfied that he had got the thing out and wishing, I guess, that he could’ve been telling it to someone who mattered, who could make a difference in his friend’s fate now. “Yeah,” he nodded again, picking up his drink, “that’s how it must’ve been with Sonny. One of them things.”
I don’t know about this particular thing that came over Sonny last Saturday afternoon, when the rest of the guys were out in the park hustling and I was sweating away in the kitchen like a damn fool, knowing Delauney has never been on time for Sunday dinner anyhow, but I’d seen a thing or two come on Sonny before. Like the day the girls led me by the hand to meet their daddy. And there they all were, Buddy from the projects who grew up with me; Teddy who used to hang out with my brother’s crowd; a tall, bowlegged stud named Richie the Goof; and the leader of the group, the girl’s father (who turned out to be Delauney); and, of course, Sonny. Sonny was charging down the court and everybody on the side was chanting, “Drive, Sonny, drive.” And all of a sudden—nobody near him to block or fluster, all alone with his eyes riveted on the rim and his wrist about to stop that ball loose and send it gliding up towards the tips of the fingers for that last sure push—all of a sudden he just froze and his face tightened up like the skin had become bones, and this tremor came up out of his socks and caterpillared up the calves to the thighs. You could see the shivering in the ass before it wriggled up then down the spine. Just then, everybody came down the court, just becoming aware that something was up and very much the matter.
“Shoot, baby, shoot.” And staring in disbelief and puzzlement and a little disgust and impatience too. And then Sonny just doubled over on top of the ball, clutching it to him. They had to carry him and the ball off the court in tandem, like a piece of sculpture. (The girls thought he was playing ‘statues’ like we do at the center.)
“Oh hell, ain’t nothing wrong with Sonny,” said Delauney that Monday when he invited me over for breakfast with him and the girls. “He’s just getting a little too old for park ball, that’s all.”
“But aren’t you worried?” I persisted late into the afternoon. “I mean if he has these fits all the time—”
“Not all the time … look, forget about it. I’m sure he has already.”
“Well, he really ought to see a doctor about those seizures.”
“Seizures?” Delauney tilted back his chair to laugh. “Leave it to a chick to blow a nothing into a big deal. Ain’t no big deal. Sonny’s just tired. Your muscles buckle on you like that sometimes. He’ll get over it; he always does. Ain’t no sense making a big thing about it.”
Beverly was stretched out on the couch waiting for Delauney to fix her skates. I just sat, listening to some spiritual station that was slipping off into static. Delauney just sat there, too, biting on his mustache and moving his coffee cup around in the saucer like he was thinking it over. Beverly was doing her best to wait patiently, fidgeting just a little, cracking the plastic slipcovers that kept sticking to her damp legs.
It was probably my concern for Beverly and Arlene more than for Sonny that made me wonder a
bout Delauney’s unconcern. Suppose fever was no big deal either, or a bad cough, or mysterious spots in the mouth just nothing? Arlene came and sat in my lap, also waiting for her father to make a move. Absent-mindedly, she began poking her fingers through the holes in the oilcloth tablecloth. Next thing I knew, I was digging a finger into the holes in the upholstered chair, the raggedy touch of the plastic and the wooly insides sort of soothing me out of worry that was not mine anyway. They weren’t my kids, for crying out loud. He wasn’t my father. And I wasn’t Florence Nightingale. And maybe, I thought, maybe Delauney’s shrugging-off attitude only applies to his basketball buddies. What the hell, I’m sure he’s a good father.
“What are you doing, monkeyface?” he said suddenly, slapping Arlene’s hand away from the oilskin. “Why don’t you two go on out and play so me and Miss Butler can talk.”
“You were going to fix the skates, Daddy.” He chewed on his mustache some more, then got up. I guess I got to be a drag about it, not because I’d taken a sudden interest in neurology, Sonny’s nervous system in particular, but because I was very fond of the girls. And I really wasn’t up to any fantasizing—I in white robes and with bleeding heart rescue the innocents from the step-ugly ogre. Occupational hazard of social workers. I needed to be convinced that Delauney was neither an ogre or a disinterested person. I guess I got sickening about it.
Gorilla, My Love Page 6
