Street Shadows

by Jerald Walker

  “You look like a cat burglar in orthopedic shoes.”

  “No, seriously.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Yeah, well, all the other nurses like it.”

  She grinned. “Name one nurse who likes it.”

  Down the hall I saw Erica come out of a patient’s room holding a jug of urine. “Erica,” I said.

  “Erica? That cute new blonde?”

  I nodded. Rita looked unconvinced, so I added, “She told me I was hot in all-black.”

  Rita was laughing now, pausing to say, “She pities you.” Her teasing was upsetting, but I played it cool, as my new look demanded. “She only said that,” Rita continued, “because she’s trying to make you feel better about being such a tool.”

  “If she thinks I’m such a tool,” I said, “then … then … why did she ask me out for beer?” This was untrue, but it had the desired effect; all sound from Rita ceased. I closed the patient’s chart I’d just taken a doctor’s order from and walked away from the nurses’ station.

  A moment later, as I stood by the medicine cart transcribing the doctor’s order, Erica came out of one of the patients’ rooms and stood next to me. “What’s up, Walker?” she asked.

  “Not much,” I said. “What’s up with you?”

  “Oh, God, don’t ask,” she responded, shaking her head. She was frazzled, as she always seemed to be. A very intense person, this Erica. “This day has been freaking crazy.” She opened one of the medicine drawers, moved the contents around, then slammed it. She did this with three more drawers. “I hate it when the pharmacists don’t deliver the meds to the right place.” She huffed, blowing a long stream of air out of her mouth. I suspected she smoked, like me.

  “Sounds like you could use a cigarette,” I said.

  “I’m dying for one.”

  “And a drink.”

  “Definitely.”

  I glanced toward the nurses’ station. Rita was now leaning against the counter, looking my way with a mocking grin, having concluded, no doubt, that the bomb I’d dropped was filled not with napalm but with air. At first chance she’d confirm that with Erica. I decided to head her off at the pass. “So, Rita and I were talking, and, well, I told her that you and I were going out for a beer tonight. So if she asks, could you just tell her we are?”

  I wasn’t sure she heard me; she did not respond or look up from her pockets, which she was now riffling through. She found what she’d been searching for, a felt-tipped pen that she used to write on her left hand. Her left hand, I noticed, was covered in scribble. “Okay,” she said. “A beer sounds great.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She looked up. “A beer sounds great,” she repeated. “I’d love to go.”

  So there, Rita, was my first thought. My second thought was, Holy shit.

  It was a July night, and the air was thick with humidity and mosquitoes. I paced in front of the hospital smoking a cigarette, waiting for Erica to pick me up. I’d asked her if she wouldn’t mind driving because my car was currently out of commission, which was to say rusting in some junkyard across town. No problem, she’d said. And then she suggested she pick me up at an exit used not by employees but for outpatients and visitors. No problem, I’d said.

  I was more nervous than I could ever remember being. I tried to calm myself by thinking about how much Erica had laughed in the nurses’ lounge when I’d made my sex joke, louder and longer, it seemed, than anyone else. But thinking about that only made me more nervous. Dale may have provided me with the secret to attract white women, but he had said nothing about what to do once they had arrived. There was also the matter of this being the first actual date of my life. I didn’t even know where we should go.

  The issue of where to go was put to rest, however, the moment I got in her Pinto. “I’m really not up for going to a bar,” she said. And then she nonchalantly added, “Want to just hang out at your place?”

  The fruit, it seemed, wasn’t on a tree; it was lying on the ground at my feet. Which suggested some degree of overripeness. Overripeness was not what I was looking for. Not long-term anyway. But I supposed I could manage it for a night.

  We first stopped at a liquor store for a six-pack of Heineken. Once at my apartment, we sat on my sofa talking, smoking, and drinking, the sexual tension between us vying for attention, it seemed to me, like a dog holding its leash. I kept looking for an opening in the conversation that would lead to a risqué comment, and perhaps from there to a kiss, but I could find no logical segue to my Zulu warrior from the topics at hand, her brother’s meth addiction, for example, or her father’s abandonment and alcoholism. The most I could contribute to the conversation were the dysfunctions of my family, topping those off, just to bring the conversation back to me, with a few of my own.

  “I just can’t believe that,” she said. I’d just told her I used to be a dope fiend. “When did you stop?”

  “About a year ago.”

  “Wow. I never would have guessed that. You just seem so together.”

  Well, I thought, you know what they say about black men. “I’m hardly together,” I said. I chuckled. “I don’t even own a car, really. I mean I do, technically, since the title’s still in my dresser drawer, but …” My voice trailed off.

  “Yeah, but you’re taking college classes. And that’s something.” She leaned forward and patted my leg. “It’s really impressive, the way you’ve turned your life around.”

  I winked. “Well, you know what they say?”

  “What they say about what?”

  “You know. Black men.”

  Her face dropped. She looked at her watch. “I need to get going. My roommate’s probably wondering where I am.” She rose and aggressively brushed off her white slacks, as if they were covered with cat hair, or biting ants. I offered to walk her to her car, a part of me waiting for her to say she was kidding, that she really wanted to remain with me, right there in the jungle, but by the time we’d gotten downstairs to where she’d parked, I accepted the fact she had actually come to talk. I resolved to attempt no more than a good-bye hug. And that, in an oddly satisfying way, was all we did. Afterward, I asked if she’d like to come back tomorrow. “Only,” she said, “if you agree to spare me another black-man joke.”

  Dating a white woman was much different from what I expected, in that the dates consisted of staying in my apartment. For the first six weeks of our courtship, we never went anywhere, or did anything, that required us to be together outdoors. By the time I realized she didn’t want to be seen in public with me, we’d been together for two months. I realized at the same time that I was completely okay with that, since I didn’t want to be seen in public with her either.

  And yet, despite how secretive we were—so secretive that we never acknowledged to each other that we were a couple—we somehow became fodder for the rumor mill at work. “Three people today alone asked me if Erica and I were seeing each other,” I said to Dale. “I mean, how could anyone possibly know?”

  “Easy,” he said. “I told them.”

  “What?”

  “Absolutely.” He drank a sip of his Pepsi. We were having lunch in the cafeteria. “What’s the point of dating a white woman if nobody knows?”

  “The point,” I said, “is to be with someone you like.”

  He snickered. “Oh, as if you like Erica.”

  “I do like her.”

  “And she likes you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you shouldn’t mind that I’ve told people you’re a couple.”

  But I did mind, very much. Erica did too. She actually minded even more than me, which I found troubling. When I broke the news of our outing, she cursed and shook her head, and then sat on my couch and held her head between her hands, muttering to herself.

  “So, um,” I began, “is it really that awful for people to know you’re dating me?”

  “It’s not that,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  Silence
.

  “The fact that you’re white and I’m black?” I asked.

  More silence.

  “I can’t believe you would let race be an issue,” I said.

  “Oh, right,” she responded as her head swung up. “Like it’s not an issue with you.”

  “Well, it’s not,” I told her. “Not one bit. The question here is, why is it an issue for you.” Her chin began to quiver; I had struck a sensitive chord. So I pressed on. “Maybe it’s time for you to take a good hard look at yourself, Erica. Maybe it’s time for you to confront whatever demons you have about race. Because if you’re not ready to do that, then I think it’s time for us to end this, right here, right now.” I folded my arms over my chest, hoping she’d say, Yes, let’s end this, right here, right now, because, after my conversation with Dale, I had already confronted my demons, and my demons had won.

  I had not lied when I said I liked Erica very much. I already knew she was one of the best things that had happened to me in a long time. But I just could not handle the thought of walking down the street with her, arm in arm, fielding the disapproving stares of passersby. I couldn’t deal with the thought of black men like Dale grinning my way before casting a sly, congratulatory wink, or black women shaking their heads in disgust and mouthing the word traitor. And then there were my relatives, especially my aunt Bernice, whose opinion of white people was less than favorable. No, better to break it off right now, I decided. Better to end it before we were in too deep.

  But the fact that we were both crying suggested we already were.

  We had our first heart-to-heart that night, confessing our apprehensions about being an interracial couple. Chicago had a well-earned reputation as the most segregated big city in the country, which meant there would be many places we could not comfortably go, and some places we couldn’t go at all. It was complicated enough for her to visit me in my all-black neighborhood, though it was true that my lease would be ending soon and I could move. There was also the matter that certain members of her family would not be thrilled at our union, and neither would some of my family, like Aunt Bernice, or some of our colleagues and friends. But it was equally true that a number of people from each of these groups would be happy for us and supportive.

  Then the conversation turned to race in more general terms. We talked about how racism had harmed so much in this country, how it had wrecked and even ended countless lives. And we spoke of how it wasn’t long ago that a black man’s real or imagined interest in a white woman was an occasion for a lynching, and that led us to conclude that we, in a very personal way, were faced with the opportunity to make a grand stand against bigotry.

  It was all quite idealistic, in retrospect, the way we convinced ourselves that our union was a form of social activism, the civil rights movement on a miniature scale. Even four years later, when we walked down the street hand in hand, or sat hugging in the bleachers of Wrigley Field, or when we went to museums, or to the theater, or attended open-air concerts along the shore, I sometimes still imagined that the people frowning at us were ready to toss a brick our way in the name of intolerance and hate. And then I would ease Erica a little closer and fix my gaze on something in the distance, something high above their heads.

  And I wonder, sometimes, if I would be still doing that now, had Erica and I not said our tearful good-byes as I left for Iowa City.

  DISOBEDIENCE

  For nearly six months after she was born, my mother’s left eye was sealed tight with thick, yellow mucus. It was probably a severe case of conjunctivitis, treated in 1936 with a warm compress and boric acid, unless you were uneducated, rural, black, and southern, like my grandparents. They tried pee. Four drops, to be exact, from the first urine of the day. When that did not work, they tried blowing a stream of cigar smoke on the pupil, and when that failed they covered it with ash from the hearth, and then a few drops of gasoline, and then saliva, and then flour—all of this over the course of six months until at last the tide of mucus receded and left a small, gray stone.

  That was the first half of my mother’s eyesight-losing story; she reminded me of the second half after asking me if Tim and Jimmy were smoking pot.

  “They would never smoke pot,” I lied.

  “Are you sure, Jerry?”

  “No. I mean, yes.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “If you find out they’re smoking it, I want you to tell me.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Will you tell me, Jerry?”

  “Okay.”

  “Always obey your mother,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Never forget that. Always obey your mother.” And then, as proof of why this obedience must be so, she took me back to Arkansas, the spring of 1945. She is nine and standing in the parlor with her hands on her hips, scowling across the room at her mother, who is on her knees scrubbing the pinewood floor. My mother wants to go outside, but there are chores for her to perform, such as picking up after her eight older siblings and caring for her eight younger ones. My mother makes her plea once again. When it too is denied she runs out the door, jumps off the porch, and heads toward an open field where children are playing among the grazing cattle. She looks over her shoulder and doesn’t dwell on her mother’s face because she doesn’t know it is the last time she will see it. Instead, the look is quick and general, just long enough to confirm that her mother has chased her no farther than the porch, and for the horse-drawn wagon passing in front of the house to stop.

  June Bug is driving, the two-by-four plank he’s sitting on jutting far off the right side. He feels it jolt beneath him, but when he looks to his right it’s too late to see his little sister’s head snap back and her wide bare feet swoop toward the sky.

  My mother’s hands fill with blood and what’s left of her vision. She tries to put it all back inside, but there is no use, so she screams instead, just as her screaming mother reaches her.

  “Always obey your mother,” my mother said once more.

  “I will.”

  She rose from where she’d sat next to me on the bed and walked toward the door, pausing just short of it to face me. “Have you cleaned your room like I asked you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I suggest you do so.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  When I finished cleaning my room, I went downstairs for a glass of lemonade. Tommy and Linda were at the kitchen table playing Scrabble. I watched the game for a second before I took a glass from the cupboard, nearly dropping it at the sound of a tremendous crash. All three of us rushed to the hall, where our father had fallen and now lay convulsing. Our mother arrived a second later, guided by the sound of his choking. Tommy ran to call an ambulance while Linda ran back into the kitchen for a spoon. She was already crying as she returned to hand it to our mother, who used it to pry open my father’s clenched teeth before forcing in a pill. All the while I’d stood hovering over them both, wanting to help but knowing there was nothing I could do. At last my mother rose up from my father, her job completed. This was the part of his seizures when we waited to see if he would live or die.

  The back door suddenly swung open. Tim and Jimmy bounded up the stairs, halting their uproarious laugher at the sight of the mayhem. Their eyes were watery and bloodshot, as if they, like Linda, like me, had been crying.

  ORIENTATION

  The rock music was troubling but not as much as the beer. It was warm, flat, musty, and seemed to have left a white residue in the bottom of my cup. My roommate Lenny tried to allay my concerns. “It’s just spoiled milk!” he yelled over an electric guitar, which screeched from the eight speakers in the ten-by-ten room. Lenny aimed his thumb to our left at the five students huddled before a video game. “These guys aren’t known for washing their dishes!” He hoisted his plastic cup in the air and added, “That’s why I brought my own! Next time you’ll be wanting to do the same!” A cheer went up and we looked at the television, where a combatant fired a heroic
final shot from his bazooka before his body toppled over, next to his head. It seemed a good time to leave. I sat my cup on the floor near the keg and quietly slipped into the hall, wondering, as I headed for my room, what I’d gotten myself into.

  Two years earlier, when I began making preparations to transfer to The University of Iowa, I was convinced it was the best decision I’d ever made. And it was, right up until the moment I arrived, when it was trumped by the worst decision I’d ever made—not finding off-campus housing. Even if my dorm had not been crawling with white males almost ten years my junior, I was not a people person. I disliked crowds, parties, male bonding, large social gatherings of any kind, which seemed to be the sole purpose of dormitory life. Toss in some incessant Led Zeppelin and barrels of Milwaukee Lite, and this was not an ideal situation.

  Because Lenny had flinched at the sight of me entering our room, I knew I wouldn’t have to worry about him wanting us to hang out together. But he had felt compelled to introduce me to some of his friends, who had also flinched when I entered their room before handing me a cup of beer and resuming their obliteration of mankind. I’d been in town just a few hours and already I was miserable. It would have helped if I could have reached the outside world, but I hadn’t been provided with the access code necessary to make long-distance calls from my room. I wasn’t sure where to get one of these codes, and Lenny could not remember where he’d gotten his. I went to bed that night in a state of high anxiety and doubt, ripe conditions for a nightmare.

  I dreamed I was trapped in the medical center where I’d once worked, running from ward to ward, searching for and unable to find an exit. The building wasn’t on fire, as it often was in this recurrent dream, but gang-bangers were again chasing me with weapons. Normally the weapons were knives and guns; this time they were bazookas. My head was blown off at exactly 5:17 AM, the moment my eyes opened to see the glowing digits of the alarm clock on my desk. The sky had not yet begun to brighten, but the low-wattage light seeping in from the hall allowed me to see the person standing in the center of the room, peeing on the recliner.