Being Clem

by Lesa Cline-Ransome

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I waited again for Langston after school, but when he didn’t show, I raced over to the library, thinking I could catch him before he had to go in and show Miss Cook the ripped-up poetry book. I didn’t know much about Langston, but I guessed he was what my momma would call “upstanding,” and would confess everything to Miss Cook like he was being tortured by the enemy in a prison camp, so I thought I’d save him the trouble. Just when I thought I’d missed him again, I saw him coming down Michigan Avenue, walking slower than ever, his hands tucked in his jacket, his head down and looking at his feet like he had to remind himself how to walk. He just about knocked me over in the doorway of the library.

  “Watch where you going,” I told him.

  He looked up at me like he’d seen a ghost. But when I pulled all the pages torn out of his book that I collected from my satchel, I thought he was going to faint dead away.

  He snatched them from my hand. “Thanks for this,” he said. “I was thinking Miss Cook was gonna take back my library card.”

  Just when I started thinking that Langston was smart as me, he went and said something as crazy as that. It goes to show you, there’s school smart and then there’s common-sense smart. Not everybody has both kinds of smarts.

  “Take back your library card?” I laughed out loud but quieted down when I saw the hurt in his face.

  “They don’t do that. They mark the book damaged, maybe make you pay. Now that you got the pages”—I pointed to all the pages in his hands—“they can fix it.”

  I told him I’d come with him to tell Miss Cook what happened to his book. At Miss Cook’s desk, I listened as long as I could to him, stumbling and stuttering out his words, until finally I had to help out.

  “Wasn’t his fault, Miss Cook, honest,” I told her.

  But for the first time ever, Miss Cook didn’t want to hear from me. I think she wanted Langston to take responsibility, which is what it means when adults want you to feel more sorry about something you just said you’re sorry for. And then when she finally thought Langston felt bad enough, she told him what I just told him outside, that no, she was not going to take back his library card and that because all the pages were there, the book could most likely be repaired. He couldn’t stop smiling then.

  I’m not sure Langston believed me when I told him I wasn’t friends with Lymon anymore. And I could see Langston still wasn’t sure why I collected all those pages for him. If he came out and asked me, I just might start stuttering and stumbling the way he did with Miss Cook at her desk. I’m not sure I could have told Langston that I was done with being the kind of man that I was in the school yard. I wished Lymon and Errol could have been here with us today. That they could have seen me and Langston with each and every page of that book standing in front of Miss Cook, telling her the truth. Both of us like upstanding men. I’d want them to see up close that it’s not always fists that win a fight.

  After I gave him the pages to his Langston Hughes poetry book, I started seeing Langston just about every Thursday at the library. And I don’t exactly know how it happened but first we’d be talking about one thing or the other, and I’d walk with him one block. Then it was two. Next thing I knew, one of us, I’m not sure who, started waiting for the other after school to walk over to the library. And now, here we were, every Thursday, at the library like we were long-lost friends. After the fight that wasn’t really a fight in the school yard between Lymon and Langston, I couldn’t pretend anymore. I saw Lymon watching us leave school and walk toward Michigan. Errol looked like he didn’t care one way or the other and he probably didn’t. But it was Lymon who looked like he’d lost something. But just like my daddy, I made a choice, and I was going to stick with it even if it was hard. And I made the choice to leave the Three Musketeers behind. I decided to stop fighting and laughing when I didn’t feel like laughing, and to stop teasing and pushing and being who I didn’t want to be. And I chose a friend who knew what it was like to lose someone you loved, because Langston told me he lost his momma too. I chose someone who liked to read and didn’t mind me talking about maps and traveling. And I chose Langston.

  One Thursday, when we were walking back home from the library, I asked him something I’d never ask Lymon or Errol.

  “You ever do any swimming back in Alabama?” I don’t know if I was hoping he’d say yes or hoping he’d say no, but I had to know either way.

  “Me, swim? Big as I am, I’d sink to the bottom like a rock I try to get out there and swim.” Langston laughed. “You the one joining the navy. You must know how to swim.”

  I didn’t say a thing and neither did he.

  That was the thing about Langston. He was quiet at just the right times, not all the time like Errol.

  “I’d like to learn,” I said finally.

  “What’s stopping you?” he asked. “Seems to me, you know just about everything else.”

  I laughed. “Being smart in class doesn’t mean I can swim.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, but it don’t mean you can’t learn neither.”

  Now it was my turn to be quiet. I couldn’t tell Langston that learning to swim was a lot more than teaching someone how to breathe and move their arms and legs the right way.

  “There’s a lot more to swimming than learning to swim.”

  “See there, even that’s too smart for me to understand.” He smiled at me. “Later, Clem,” he said, heading off toward Wabash.

  I waited at the corner watching Langston walk off. He had to pass DuSable High School to get to his apartment, and it made me wonder if the swim team was practicing now.

  I’d just about reached Prairie Avenue when I saw Errol up ahead. He was walking slow, by himself, his knapsack hanging low off his back. We still nodded at each other at school, but that’s about all we did. Errol and Lymon sat on one side of the lunchroom, I sat with Langston on the other. If the four of us were on a map, me and Langston would be on one island with Errol and Lymon on another, with mountains and an ocean dividing us.

  THIRTY-SIX

  One thing I never wanted was my momma and Miss Watkins to stop being friends because of me and Errol, and so far, nothing much had changed. Mrs. Watkins still came up most nights, especially those times when she and Errol’s daddy were fighting. I got used to the sounds of the whispering and sniffing in the kitchen and Momma telling her to leave or to stay; to fight or to stay quiet. I never knew what my momma would say to her. All I knew was whatever she told her, none of it worked, because Mrs. Watkins would be back up in our apartment the very next week, crying again.

  In between the crying and the advice, they still laughed just the same. Far as I could tell, the one thing they didn’t talk about was me and Errol.

  I told my momma about me and Errol one Saturday at breakfast. I came in early as she was getting ready for work.

  “Morning, Momma,” I said.

  “Oh, morning, Clem,” she said, looking up from her coffee and window-watching.

  “I’m gonna go to the library today,” I told her.

  “Okay, honey. But right there and back,” she said.

  “Well, I’m going with a friend,” I told her.

  My momma looked up. “Errol?”

  “No. Langston,” I told her.

  “I never heard you mention a Langston.”

  “He’s new. From Alabama,” I told her, starting in on my breakfast.

  “Is he a nice boy? Nice family?” she asked. I could hear the worry starting in her voice.

  “Yeah, very nice. He’s kind of country, though, but nice. His momma died a couple of years back, so he’s here with just his daddy. But the two of us like going to the library.”

  “Mmmhmmm,” Momma said, which meant she was thinking things over. “Does Errol like Langston too?” she asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Speak up, Clem. I don’t know what this means.” Momma shrugged her shoulders the way I did.

  “Momma… Something ain�
�t right with Errol. We had this new friend at school and the two of them started pushing people around, especially Langston. I don’t hang out with Errol anymore. Or walk to school together either.”

  Momma looked at me hard.

  “Did Errol hurt you?” she asked.

  “No… not me… but…”

  “But what?” Momma said, sharp.

  I didn’t answer her.

  “Well, let me talk to Beulah about it, and we’ll get this figured out.”

  “Why do you have to talk to Mrs. Watkins about something between me and Errol?” I asked her.

  Momma looked at me.

  “Are you saying I don’t have a right to find out what’s going on?”

  “I’m saying that just because you’re my mother doesn’t mean you can fix everything. Some things I can fix for myself.”

  Momma stood up, spilling her coffee. She looked at me like I was a stranger she just met. I know she was waiting for me to say I was sorry. To smile and get up and hug her. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t give in again to what Momma wanted. The coffee dripped off the table and onto the floor and Momma pretended she didn’t see it and walked out of the room. I got a washrag from the sink and cleaned it up.

  I don’t know if she was still going to talk to Mrs. Watkins or not or if she was mad and wasn’t going to speak to me. Or both. But whatever happened, I knew that I was done with Lymon, and I was definitely done with Errol.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  On Saturdays, when me and Langston left the library, I walked with him to Wabash and then headed back to Prairie. Langston always had to go home first because his daddy didn’t let him take off a whole day from his chores.

  “You straight up got a whole day of chores?” I asked. I was ashamed to say all I had to do was clean up my room and sometimes empty out the trash and my momma and sisters did the rest.

  “It ain’t so bad,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. “Me and my daddy get them done pretty quick. Back in Alabama, I had to help my daddy chop firewood, feed the hogs, clean out the barn, keep up the garden. On washday, I used to draw water for my momma to—”

  Langston stopped. “You know your mouth is wide open?” he said, looking at me, laughing.

  “Did your momma and daddy know slavery ended in 1865?”

  Langston laughed again. “Whatever thy hand findeth to do… ,” he started.

  “… do it with thy might!” we said together.

  “Ecclesiastes 9:10,” Langston finished. “My daddy does not play when it comes to Scripture or chores.”

  “Is your daddy named Langston too?” I asked him before I could stop myself.

  “My daddy? Nope. Henry.” Langston laughed. “He wishes I was Henry Junior, but I am sure glad my momma chose Langston.”

  “I think saw your daddy once when he came to the school,” I said. “Big dude, looks like your twin?”

  “Yup, that’s my daddy all right. We look alike, but beyond that, there ain’t much else we got in common,” Langston said, looking straight ahead. “Me and my momma, though…” He didn’t finish.

  I know my momma says I ask too many questions. And I know I should be more like Annette and do more listening, but sometimes my mouth moves faster than my brain.

  “Why not?” I asked him. “Why don’t you have anything in common with your daddy?”

  Langston looked at me long and waited a minute before he answered. He breathed heavy. “My daddy…” Langston stopped. “My daddy thinks life is work, God, and family and that’s about it. When my momma died, he lost God and almost gave up on his family.”

  “But you think different?” I asked him.

  “I believe in those things too, but I think what makes life good is all that’s in between.”

  “In between?” I asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Like the library.”

  “And Lena Horne?” I added.

  “Nah, Miss Nina Mae McKinney.” Langston put his hand over his heart.

  “And B-Fifty-Two bombers,” I added.

  “And the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis.”

  “And the Bud Billiken Parade,” I said.

  “Warm corn bread dipped in buttermilk,” said Langston.

  “Now, why do you have to go all Alabama on me?” I hit his arm.

  We were both laughing now.

  “Like I said, there’s a lot in between,” Langston said.

  I nodded.

  “Can I ask you something about your daddy?” he said, looking nervous.

  “Yup.”

  “How old were you when… when… when the accident…” Langston looked away. I could tell he was wishing he never started asking.

  “I was nine,” I told him. “But even before the accident I didn’t see him much because he went into the navy when I was five.”

  “Mmmmhmmm,” Langston said, quiet as could be.

  We walked another block. “I don’t even remember what his voice sounded like,” I said. Langston looked over at me.

  “Some days, I forget what my momma looked like,” Langston said. I could hear his voice change when he talked about his momma. “But I always remember her voice. The way she used to call my name. Langston,” he said in a woman’s voice with a country accent. “I hope I never forget that.”

  I could feel the lump in my throat getting bigger and bigger, so I started thinking about anything other than my daddy and Langston’s momma.

  Langston stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Before my grandma passed, she told me my momma was up in heaven, and she was my guardian angel. Said she’d always be looking down on me, watching over me. Then when my grandma passed, I thought it’d be the two of them together making sure I was okay. Now…”

  “Now what?” I asked him. I could hear the crying sound in my voice even though my eyes were dry.

  “Maybe your daddy and my momma are looking down on the two of us. Maybe they’re gonna help us get through. Together,” Langston said.

  Hard as I tried, I couldn’t think of one mad thing to stop the tears from coming.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  One week when me and Langston walked home, I noticed a big school bus standing in front of the high school that said LANE TECH.

  “They making kids go to school on Saturdays too?” I laughed.

  “Must be a game,” Langston said. “Sometimes they’re so loud, sounds like they’re right outside my window.”

  But I knew there wasn’t a basketball game today because Clarisse and Annette went to just about every one. Annette to see her friends, and Clarisse went, I knew, to see Ralph play. I was betting she sat right up front too, like she was his personal cheerleader. Momma told me I’d have to wait to go. “They’re just too rowdy, Clem,” she said, and that was that. I didn’t ask again.

  When we got out front, we slowed down.

  “Let’s go see,” I told Langston. I wasn’t ready to go back to the house and my room. I knew Langston wasn’t ready to start his chores.

  He smiled. “Real quick, though. My daddy’ll be waiting.”

  Hearing him say that hurt my stomach, but I smiled through it.

  We ran up the front steps of DuSable.

  I walked down the hall to where I knew the lockers were and where I saw the pool. The big wooden double doors were open and all around the pool the stands were filled with people. A swim meet.

  I nearly slipped on the black-and-white-tiled floors around the pool heading to the seats, but Langston caught my arm.

  “You trying to end up in the pool, and you ain’t even swimming.” He laughed.

  We squeezed in two seats near the front.

  Swimmers from both teams were at either ends of the pool. The DuSable swimmers had on shiny blue swim trunks, so tight I’d be ashamed to be seen in them, I don’t care if I was on a swim team or not. But they didn’t look ashamed. They looked proud, with their broad chests, full of muscles, some with hair like grown men. The DuSable team sat on one side of the pool, the other school
sat on the other. Men in white shirts holding whistles and little clocks around their necks stood on the sides. And sitting up high were the lifeguards like I see at Lake Michigan, just waiting for someone to start drowning. I made myself stop thinking about drowning and the bleachy smell and turned to Langston.

  He looked like he was thinking the same thing I was about those swim trunks.

  “They look like underwear,” he whispered.

  I nodded.

  A whistle blew and boys started lining up behind stands. The whistle blew a second time and they each took a step up and stood still like they were statues. The whistle blew again, and they dived in like rockets. They stayed underwater so long I was sure they weren’t coming up again, and then all of a sudden their arms rose up and lifted their bodies out of the water. There was so much splashing I could barely see who was winning, but the boy in the middle lane started pulling away. The cheers around me were getting louder and the coaches and the men in white shirts were walking fast up and down the pool alongside the swimmers, looking at their watches and at their papers. Boys on either end were screaming but I don’t think there was any way the swimmers could hear them.

  The boy leading was from DuSable. His arms were long and brown and came straight out of the water, made a circle, went up over his head, and went back in again. He looked like an acrobat. When he got to one end, he’d spin forward, flip over, push off with his feet, and swim underwater until he exploded out of the water again. By the time he finished in first place I was cheering just as loud as everyone else.

  Langston was tapping me on my shoulder.

  “Clem, I gotta go,” he said through the noise.

  “Now?” I asked him.

  “Yup. My daddy—”

  “All right,” I said, getting up to go.

  “You ain’t got to leave,” he said.

  I looked to make sure he was serious. “You sure?”