by Odie Hawkins
Byron shrugged, “People say he was too drunk.”
Nathan grumbled, flexed his newspaper out and stuck his face back into the sports page.
“Well, all I can say is, it’s a shame that people would let a person lay up in a pile o’ garbage all day and not try to give him some kind of help. Byron, come on back here ’n help me get some o’ this stuff off the shelf in the back closet. Lawd ha’ mercy, I didn’t know we had so much junk. Nathan, don’t press your heels down on that box ’n break my dishes.” Mother Holt scurried through the short hallway leading to the rear of the apartment, her youngest son plodding along obediently behind her.
Nathan scowled in the direction of their exit, looked around at the shadowed places where pictures had been removed, at the boxes of mysteriously wrapped up bits of family history, piled up odds and ends of a ten-year occupancy, and scowled again. Moving shit! Buyin’ a damned house. What if I lost my job? The way things is these days, ain’t no tellin’ what’s gon’ happen.
He lowered his newspaper onto his lap, leaned his head back onto the headrest of the chair and dozed off, thinking negative thoughts, a secure island in the middle of a sea of packed household goods, ready for relocation.
Perry opened the door quietly, peeked around at his father and motioned for his true blue ladyfriend to come in.
Nathan opened his eyes slowly, felt for a second that he was looking at a very young version of Pearl Bailey.
“Hi, Mr. Holt, did we wake you up?”
“Oo, ahhemmm, naw! I was just uhhh checkin’ my eyelids for holes, come on in. I would ask you to sit down but, as you can see, Diane got the whole place boxed up.”
“Where is Momma, Daddy?”
Diane sang out over the distance, “I’m back here, whose voice is that I hear?”
“It’s Rochelle’s, Momma!” Perry called back, a smile in his voice.
“Rochelle?! Rochelle, come on back here, honey … I got some baby pictures of Perry and Byron to show you.”
Father and son surreptitiously checked out Rochelle’s well-designed figure from the rear, as she darted away gleefully to see photos of her roommate to be.
“They sho’ as hell wasn’t makin’ ’em like that when I was comin’ ’long,” Daddy Holt obliquely congratulated his son on his choice, impressed once again.
Perry slapped his father’s outstretched left hand lightly, affirmatively.
They exchanged brief, soulful looks.
“Looks about like everything is ready to go, huh?”
“Yep, just about but you know your mother, she keeps findin’ somethin’ else that needs to be boxed up.”
Perry smiled at his old man’s mock weary complaint and the cackling noises coming from the women, coupled to the heavier sound of Byron’s polite laughter.
“Byron back there?”
“Yeah, he’s helpin’ pack.” Nathan dug into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, offered Perry one.
“Nawww, not me. I’m gon’ be dyin’ from too many other things as it is.”
“Right on, son! Right on! If I had just turned twenny-two, I wouldn’t be suckin’ on these ol’ coffin nails myself, but I ain’t got a thing to lose, not at my age coff off!”
Perry leaned his weight from foot to foot, feeling strangely awkward. “Daddy?”
“Huh?”
“I uhhh
The two men exchanged evasive expressions for a few seconds.
“Go ’head, boy … spit it out, you know you can say anything you got a mind to, to me.”
“Uhhh, well.…”
A fresh series of cackles and tenor chuckles cut him off.
“Ain’t like you to be tie-tongued, Perry,” his father teased him, blowing smoke rings.
Perry took the bait. “Well, what I wanted to say to you was uhhh, I won’t be makin’ this move with the family.”
Nathan Holt’s shoulders shook as he coughed and laughed. “Shit! I thought you was gon’ tell me somethin’ spectacular. You ain’t been doin’ nothin’ but talkin’ about gettin’ married for the last six months. Naturally we took it for granted that you’d either do one or two things either you ’n Rochelle live with us ’til y’all found a place of your own that you like or just live with us period, there’s room a’plenty in that big ol’ hairy place.”
Perry chewed on his bottom lip. “That’s a beautiful idea, Daddy it sho’ ’nuff is, but
“No buts! We’ll be puttin’ all this junk on a truck Saturday mornin’, hightailin’ it to the land of saddidy niggers.”
Perry flashed a large grin in his father’s direction, in appreciation of the joke, and looked down at his shoes.
“Well? what’s the matter? Ain’t this what everybody in the family wanted?”
“Momma did anyway hahhhahhhah,” Perry replied, knowing exactly what had gone down between his mother and father on the house deal.
Nathan released a long smile and waited, feeling vaguely uneasy with his favorite son’s ambivalence about, about? What the hell was it about?
They were suddenly silent, the chatter from beyond filling up the dead space.
“Daddy, me and Rochelle have decided to live to set up housekeepin’ together,” Perry blurted out.
Nathan Holt’s first impulse reaction was to ask, “And not get married at all?” But he cooled it out and said instead, “Is that a fact?”
“Yeah!” Perry rushed on, bending over to place his palms on his knees in his excitement. “See, the way we’ve figured it out, with my stuff packed ’n everything, what sense would it make to be movin’ all of my stuff out to the house? When all I’d be doin’ is movin’ it a lil’ later on anyway.”
Father Holt sucked hard on the back end of his coffin nail, inwardly disappointed at the idea of not having his favorite son with him awhile longer. “Shack job, huh?” he asked, not really intending to be as crude as the question sounded.
Perry unintentionally made a perfect imitation of his father’s scowl. “Well, if you wanna call it that, the thing is, Daddy Rochelle has an apartment, she’s workin’, I’m workin’ ’n goin’ to school ’n everything, so I mean, like, in a way, we felt it would be easier to get off into our own thang just that much sooner.”
Nathan looked around for an ashtray, couldn’t find one, stubbed his cigarette out on a crate marked “water glasses.” And lit up immediately thereafter. He took a few drags, getting himself together before saying anything. “What do her folks think?”
“Oh, it’s cool with them.”
He took a couple more drags. “You told your Momma about this?”
Perry shook his head, negative-negative.
Nathan nodded his head a few times, picturing the scene that would go down, knowing something of his wife’s conservative ways. Perry, also in on the know, opened his mouth, prepared to give an oration in favor of shackin’, if necessary, but found himself cut off by the sound of approaching feet.
“Perry!” his mother burst into the room. “Rochelle tells me that you all are plannin’ to live together ’til March and then get married, sort of a trial marriage, is that right?”
Perry nodded up and down primly, feeling almost timid.
Diane Holt circled her prospective daughter-in-law’s waist protectively and announced in her sternest voice. “Awright now, I don’t want no jive outta you! Come March I want to be standin’ up in church watchin’ my oldest son and his beautiful woman tie the knot.”
The three men exchanged looks in fugal fashion. Momma? Momma!? Diane!!?
“Nathan!” Mrs. Holt continued, adding one amazement to the next, “why don’t you put on your shoes ’n run down to the liquor store and get us a lil’ somethin’? I’ve got some homemade egg nog in the box.”
Byron strolled over to shake his brother’s hand for no particular reason, as Father Holt slowly aroused himself, like someone being shaken from a deep dream.
Diane surreptitiously winked to Rochelle and pulled her back through the hallway to unleash more wom
en’s wiles on her receptive young brain.
“Keep ’em stumblin’ over each other, honey,” she mumbled out of the corner of her mouth, con style, “and make ’em think they’ve got everything understood before you whip your truth on ’em. The more you do that, the less able they’ll be to figurin’ you out then, they’ll begin to respect you as a mature woman.”
Rochelle nodded coolly, understanding it all, and turned to smile at the picture framed through the hallway of the three men looking slightly bewildered.
Ed and Charlotte Franklin snuggled down under their electric blanket, smoking a last, before-we-go-off-to-sleep cigarette. The cigarette tips glowed in the chilled darkness as they discussed all of the matters that happened to run across their minds. Tuesday spinning out.
“Now you know somebody must’ve known the po’ man was dead, layin’ up on a pile o’ garbage like that all day.”
“Who could tell? Hell, I’ve seen ’im sprawled out in the alley a dozen times.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the muffled sounds of Lubertha coming in, trying not to disturb her parents. They both listened intently, sensitive to any sound that might indicate problems. From their bedroom, following her movements, they could tell that she was o.k., walking heavily, a little more tired that unual, that she had gotten a piece of cold chicken from the ’fridge and a glass of milk or maybe a brew, and that she was off to bed. Neither one spoke for a minute, and then both at once.
“Did she?”—“You know?”
“Go ’head, what were you gon’ say?” Ed Franklin conceded.
“I was just goin’ to ask you if she had told you about what happened with her Club thing?”
“Yeahhh,” he answered and took a deep breath, “really hurt ’er too. We had a lil’ talk about it the other night She called it a perfect case of ‘in-ternal dissension.’”
“I call it plain ol’ arguin’ ’n squabblin’.”
“Yeahhh, that’s about what it was too.”
“So what’s happenin’ now? From what I can see all she does is mope around with a long face.”
“Well, from what she tells me,” Ed Franklin started in, swelling with pride at the fact that he and his daughter communicated, “she plans to just stick with her writin’, doin’ her own thang for the people as she puts it.”
“That’s really too bad she had to drop out of that thing, ’specially since her and Kweino”
“Kwendi,” he corrected her abruptly.
“Kwendi Lawwwd, will I ever get that boy’s name right? Anyway it’s really too bad, after all the time ’n effort and everything else they’ve been through because of that thing.”
“I don’t think it’s too bad,” Ed responded, viciously crushing his cigarette out in the bedside ashtray. “She was too damned good for ’em in the first place.”
Charlotte smiled in the darkness, rolled over on her side, lapped her arm across her man’s chest and gave him a light squeeze. “You’re really proud of her, ain’t you?”
“Damned right I am, you don’t find daughters like Lubertha growin’ on trees.”
“Too bad we didn’t have that boy you wanted, to go ’long with her.”
He kissed the bridge of her nose tenderly, “We can make another stab at it if you want to?”
She moved away slightly, digging him in the ribs. “Ed, behave yourself!” she cautioned him humorously. “If I came up pregnant now, at my age, they’d have to take both of us to the hospital.”
They shared a quiet little sniggle-giggle session and settled down on their respective sides of the bed, glad that the week was at its midway point and that Lubertha was their daughter.
Chapter 7
Making the Sheets Work
Chili tried to ignore the sunlight streaming in on him, the brightness making his eyelids flutter. He changed his position in bed, hoping to evade it in that way but had no luck 11:48 a.m., Wednesday goddamnit!
Finally pissed off at not being able to evade the gleaming rays, he popped out of bed muttering, “Goddamnit! It’s ’sposed to be wintertime, why in the fuck don’t it snow some more, or rain or something’?” and closed the blinds.
He stood at the window with the drawstring in one hand, scratching his crotch with the other hand, feeling disgusted, fuzzy headed, dopey. He looked back at the rumpled bed and realized that he was up, finally.
Oh well, what the hell, guess I had to get up sometime.
He pulled his bathrobe on, yawning, and shuffled through the front room, blinking past the wide slit in the drapes, into the kitchen, his mind slowly beginning to function again. Making coffee and toast, he began to think seriously about the scene he had been a part of the night before
Running into Jake the Fake down in the ’hood, smoking good ’erb at Taco and Rina’s place with Leo Terry and Harry Mathews … Jake the Fake taking them all off into this grand scheme he had. Could it work? Chili asked himself as he wandered into the front room, drinking his second cup.
Yeahhh, I wonder, could it work?
He stood in the wide slit of the drapes, the sun a little less menacing now, delicately sipping his coffee and raking Jake the Fake’s game back and forth in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more enthusiastic he became, especially about certain sections of the scheme.
He ladled it out again, reviewing the major points Jake had made. “Awright y’all, here it is, listen close ’cause I may not be able to say this as well the second time around.”
Chili, a regular from way back when, was allowed the privilege of hearing the scheme with an option to be in. He had listened very closely.
The premises behind the scheme were simple. Most white folks think they’re crazy, or that niggers are; so what Jake proposed to do using Taco and Rina as supersisters and Leo and Harry as superbrothers, was to start an encounter group. Chili had almost laughed at the suggestion, at first … ’til Jake got really heavy into it.
“Now dig it, we’ve all done enough time, or been involved in enough ‘git yo’ soul!’ rap sessions to know how to carry off a group therapy thing, right? Awright, so that’s what we be doin’, for awhile. The most important thing … I repeat, sisters ’n brothers, the most important thing about this whole project is the proposal that has to be written.
“What we do is this; we go to the nearest anti-poverty office, and I’m certain everybody here knows where that is, the place placed in our community to make sure we all remain po’. What we do, let’s say uhh, Taco and Harry go in as concerned members of the community, use hook ’n crook to get to the white boy in charge.”
“How you know it’s gon’ be a white boy, Jake?” Leo had asked. “They got a lotta brothers sittin’ in them high priced chairs these days.”
“If the motherfucker is black as my momma’s telephone, he’s still gon’ be white. You know goddamned well whitey wouldn’t dare trust an authentic nigger with no white power, meaning money no sirreee. At any rate, after these two ignunt actin”, crazy behavin’ motherfuckers have laid the groundwork, me and Leo follow them up with briefcases in hand, taikin’ supersuave shit out of both corners of our mouths assurin’ this dude that we have a solution for what ails him.
“Now dig it! Put your hand down, Rina! You ain’t in no classroom. Dig it! One of the things we definitely know is this, any kind of proposition you can come up with, to reassure the white boy that you know how to cool niggers out, will get you a hearin’ what did you wanna say, Rina?”
“I just wanted to ask why it had to be Taco ’n Harry …?”
“Don’t make no fuckin’ difference, any of us could go in and mau-mau the fuck outta the dude The important thing is that he be convinced that the situation can only be handled by people like ourselves. We can even make our sheets work for us, you know, use your record as a resume sort of.”
“Hey Jake?” Leo had leaned on him, frowning. “You wouldn’t be tryin’ to run a game on us, would you?”
“Looka’here, brother, I got bigger, fatte
r and better chickens to pluck. Don’t insult me like that. Any other questions, pertinent ones, that is?”
“Yeahhh,” Chili had asked, intrigued by the implications of the proposed play on the white psyche. “How you gonna convince this pootbutt that havin’ a group thang would be beneficial to anybody?”
“Good question. The answer is, it’s gonna be interracial, which means that it’ll offer a few token liberal white broads a chance to give up a lil’ stank, in addition to offerin’ their sons, husbands, boyfriends, fathers, or whoever, a chance to git shat on, which is what a whole lot of ’em dig. They haven’t been havin’ too much good nigger shit thrown in their faces since the ’60s. But see, look, all of this shit is besides the point ’cause what we need to get it all the way off the ground is a proposal.
“The proposal is like, it’s like, well, you know how it is whenever some important white boy gets assassinated, they appoint a committee to investigate it, right? Right! Awright, the same kind of scene operates in another way If you wanna get some anti-poverty money in this country, or damned near anything else from the government, you have to come up with a Pro-posal.
“Now we know and they probably do too, that there ain’t a circle in the world that’s ever gonna solve any of our racial problems, but that’s besides the point, the government likes to help people bullshit themselves, it keeps the heat off the White House. All they have to do is point the finger and say ‘See, see what we did, we gave them niggers down there in the ghitto fifty g’s to git they shit straight and lookit at what happened?’ But in order to shake some of that mad money loose, we need a proposal.”
“I can get that proposal together,” Chili recalled himself saying, and almost regretted it the second the words popped out of his mouth. Almost. Like, what if …?
He looked up from his coffee cup into her merciless blue eyes, staring at him from across the street, and then down to the pink nipples and finally, down to a lush growth of blond bush.
Well, well, I’ll be goddamned!
Playing his role to the bus-stop, he squatted and sat his cup and saucer on the floor, stood up slowly, untied his robe, placed his hands on his hips underneath the robe and swayed back and forth, dangling an invitation.
