Linda opened the door in sweats. After noting the hour and our recklessness, she let us in and insisted we go to bed. She went upstairs and returned with blankets and pillows. She would sleep on the recliner in the study, she said, while I would get the couch; Tim and Karen would take her room. Linda and I watched them stumble up the stairs before she let me have it. “Don’t you have any more sense,” she scolded me, “than to drive around with your drunk brother in the middle of the night? What were you thinking?”
At that moment I was thinking I wanted to sleep. So I remained quiet, even as the tone of her lecture softened and she urged me to get myself together. I sat on the couch, fixed my face with a look of deep remorse, and drifted off to the sound of her voice.
Another voice woke me. “You don’t have to sleep on the couch,” it whispered. It was too dark to see, and for a second I thought I was dreaming. “Come upstairs in ten minutes,” the voice said again, and I knew it had to be my sister’s roommate. “It’s the room on the right,” she continued, a little closer to me now, her breath warm on my ear. My heart raced as I listened to the squeak of the hardwood floor, the fading shuffle of slippers.
Ten minutes is a long time when you’re about to lose your virginity. What do you do, except think stupid thoughts? Like how maybe I didn’t really want to go upstairs. Maybe I was only considering it because Tim had teased me. Maybe I was a sissy. Ten minutes is a short time when you’re trying to figure out who you are.
I went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face, and looked in the mirror. The person looking back had bloodshot eyes, disheveled hair, and bushy eyebrows sticking up in places. He seemed like he might be wasted. But what did any of that tell me? I leaned closer to him. “Who are you?” I asked. “Who are you?” He didn’t answer. I went upstairs.
A yellow streetlight outside the window cast the room in an eerie hue. After my eyes adjusted, I looked around but there wasn’t much to see: a desk, dresser, stereo, two lamps, and a pile of clothes heaped in a corner. A bed was against the far wall, and on it my sister’s roommate lay with her back toward me, covered in a puffy black quilt. I thought to say her name but I didn’t know it, so I walked to the side of her bed. “I’m here,” I said. She didn’t reply. “I’m here,” I said again, a little louder this time. “You told me to come up in ten minutes.” She still didn’t answer. I was about to leave when she rolled onto her back and raised the quilt off her nude body, like a vampire lifting its cape.
She was huge. Easily over three hundred pounds. Her face was swollen with fat, making her eyes two little raisins, sunken in a mound of fudge. Crusts of something white lined her upper lip. I hesitated, but I didn’t have the nerve to leave. I sat on the side of the bed and removed my shirt. I slid my pants and underwear down my legs and onto the floor before lying next to her. The sheets smelled of sweat; her body was faintly sticky.
“Promise me you won’t tell anyone,” she whispered.
I promised.
COMMUNION
We’d searched the Web and this was what we knew: Bridgewater, Massa chusetts, incorporated in 1656; twenty-five miles south of Boston; population, 25,185. Only 4 percent of these residents were black, which was significantly below the national average. But we weren’t looking for blacks per se. We were looking for open-mindedness. That’s what we’d found in Iowa City, a college town with similar demographics, and what we were hoping for in the college town we’d be moving to.
However, Brenda’s interview for a teaching position at Bridge-water State College revealed that this was not a college town, but rather a town with a college, and that the relationship between the two was uneasy. Sixty-five percent of the students were commuters, intellectual transients in a land of incomes earned largely through service and manual labor. There were no quaint bakeries. There was a tattoo parlor and a bikers’ café. There were no Starbucks or expansive used-book stores. There was a state prison. “If you do get the position,” Brenda was warned by a member of the faculty during her interview, “do not move to Bridgewater.” And then, when she got the position, she received urgent phone calls from the same person reminding her not to settle there. “Trust me,” her new colleague said. “It’s crawling with rednecks and bigots.”
Brenda had found this hard to believe. I, however, felt we were in no position to dispute these claims. I called a real estate company based south of Boston and scheduled a visit to see area listings. “Excluding,” I stressed, “Bridgewater.”
“Didn’t you say your wife will be teaching at Bridgewater State College?” the agent asked.
“Yes.”
“And yet you don’t want to live in Bridgewater?”
“Under no circumstances.”
“Any particular reason?”
“None that I am prepared to say.”
“But it’s such a beautiful city.”
Bull Durham, I thought to myself, must have said the same of Birmingham.
Our visit took place in June. It went poorly, for the most part because we were poor. After a week of house hunting, we flew back to Iowa City, stunned by New England housing prices and convinced we’d never qualify for a mortgage. Our house in Iowa had cost forty-six thousand dollars. There was nothing suitable south of Boston and outside of Bridgewater for under a quarter million.
We went back on the Web, this time to search for rentals. They were overpriced, too. We ended up choosing a vast apartment complex located three blocks from the college in a gated community. A two-bedroom unit was twelve hundred a month, a ridiculous sum that was about four times the size of our mortgage payment. I felt pretty good about the gate, though.
We arrived at dusk. An elderly man in the gatehouse watched us approach. He did not return my smile when I pulled the truck up to his side window. In fact, he looked angry. A closed-circuit monitor sat on his desk flashing images from around this small, exclusive city. Next to the monitor was a television; a baseball game was on. I gestured toward it and asked, “Who’s winning?” He faced me but gave no reply. I looked at Brenda; she shrugged. I looked back at the elderly man. He was concentrating on the game now, as if our business there was done.
The pitcher threw a curveball that caught the outside corner. The next pitch was high and inside. I cleared my throat. “We’re moving in,” I said. “There are supposed to be keys here for me, Jerald Walker.” The batter popped out and the elderly man swore. He opened a file cabinet and thumbed through a stack of manila folders, pulling one from the back and handing it to me. After racing through an incomprehensible set of directions and something about the rental office and our lease, he pressed a red button on the wall. The gate in front of us rose. I heard the old man swear again as I put the truck in gear. I concentrated, then, on the scene before us.
“This is so nice,” Brenda said.
And it was. Lush and immaculately maintained lawns. Flower beds. A swimming pool, tennis and basketball courts. Children riding bicycles. There were a couple of joggers and people seemingly out for an evening stroll. A NATURE TRAIL sign pointed toward sprawling woods a few hundred yards away. We rounded a tight corner just as a young woman emerged from building sixty-eight. She noticed us rolling by and waved. Brenda and I returned the gesture, but Adrian, wisely holding his cards close to the vest, stared at her blankly. And then I saw it: a minivan cruising toward us with a black family inside. My hands relaxed on the steering wheel. “Thank God,” I said, “we’re not the only Negroes here.”
We lapped the complex twice, then at last found our building and disembarked. When we entered the hall, I noticed that the maroon carpet looked new and the air carried a pleasant hint of lemon. Our unit was on the ground floor, conveniently located across from the laundry room. I unlocked our door and led us inside.
All but one of the windows faced north. We basically would receive no direct sun, which was fine for now, but I knew its midwinter absence would sink me into a full-scale depression. The kitchen had no windows at all, so it wasn’t until we tu
rned on the light that we saw the roaches. The bathroom’s exhaust vent was a tunnel to a cigarette smoker. The walls were thin, the carpet was mysteriously crunchy, and the ceiling was low enough that a man of average height, say, me, for instance, could reach up and poke a water spot with his finger. This was what I was doing when Brenda said, “I’m not staying here.”
I lowered my arm. “We don’t have a choice.”
“We have to buy a house. You have to get a teaching position.”
“I don’t want a teaching position.”
She put Adrian down. He staggered a few steps and then lowered himself to crawl. “As soon as we get settled, I’ll stop by the English office and introduce myself to the chair.”
“But even if,” I said, trying a different approach, “even if I could land a teaching position, we still won’t be able to afford a house.”
“In Bridgewater we can.”
I did a double take. “With the rednecks and bigots?”
“Well, we’re not staying here.”
I put my arm around her shoulders. “I’m afraid we are.”
A few weeks later I was in the faculty dining room having lunch with the English Department chair, a blind date arranged by Brenda. They might have a position soon, the chair told me, for someone to teach African American literature and creative writing. She straddled her salad with her elbows and interlocked her fingers beneath her chin. Her manicure reflected the overhead lights. “And what are you completing your doctorate in?”
“African American literature,” I said, “and creative writing.”
“How perfect!”
I explained that I was not in the market for a job, that I was a stay-at-home dad, enjoying my days with my son and evenings with my work. “I’m a writer,” I said.
She winked. “Aren’t we all?”
The rednecks and bigots were very coy. After six weeks we had been neither insulted nor injured. At worst, the locals had greeted us with indifference, which, someone explained, was simply the New England way. That was taking some getting used to, as well as the way they talked. We were considering homeschooling Adrian.
“It’s not the accent you have to worry about,” a colleague of Brenda’s told us over lunch. “It’s the racists.” She was the person who had repeatedly warned us not to move there.
“So far everyone’s been really nice,” Brenda said.
The colleague snickered. “They’re just feeling you out. Give them time. Just don’t lower your guard.”
I assured her that on no occasion would I let that happen. She smiled at me and took a sip of her Singha. We were in a Thai restaurant, one of the few places to dine in Bridgewater that served international cuisine. It was our favorite local place to eat, and it was also a favorite of the college. Usually half of the thirty or so tables were occupied by faculty, students, and staff, pretty much the way certain businesses in Iowa City were occupied by the University of Iowa’s family. Each time we went there, I was reminded of what we had left behind: international food; friends; a sense of community; racial tolerance; affordable housing; the Queen’s English. More and more our decision to leave felt wrong.
Late October. The twin towers were gone, three thousand were dead, and Brenda was pregnant. In our grief, we’d decided to have another baby, procreation as therapy. Communion as therapy, too; we felt a desperate need to feel a part of our new town. And so there we were, a few days before Halloween, on an unseasonably warm afternoon, standing in front of the house in Bridgewater we hoped to buy.
It was a four-bedroom Greek Revival, built in 1920. The listing price was one hundred thousand less than any decent-looking property we’d seen in the region. And it was only half a block from the campus, which was a definite plus, since we owned just one car. Brenda and I had spent the night crunching numbers. With her grandmother’s assistance for the down payment, we thought we could make ends meet without me needing to teach. We’d have to make a number of sacrifices, all of which would be worth it to have a yard, to not listen to our neighbors beat on the walls when Adrian cried, and to shake the cabin fever that already had me in its hold.
A silver SUV rocked across the crumbling driveway. It parked behind our car. A moment later a robust, middle-aged woman emerged and waved. “I’m Ingrid,” she said. “And you must be Jerald.” I shook her hand before introducing Brenda and Adrian. Then there was an awkward silence during which we all faced the house, as if it would speak. “Well, well, well,” Ingrid said. She moved toward the stairs leading to the back door. We followed her.
There was a lockbox on the handle, which Ingrid battled for a moment before at last removing the key and thrusting it upward. “Success!” she said. We entered and began the tour.
I beelined for the picture window. “This is east, isn’t it?”
Ingrid thought for a moment. “Yes.”
I imagined lying right there on the floor, the morning sun irradiating my winter blues like cancer cells. I’d seen all I needed to see. Brenda hadn’t, though, and she combed every inch of the house, concluding her survey on the second floor, deep in the master closet, its door squeaking closed behind her. She popped out a second later, beaming, a hopeless fish on Ingrid’s line. “There’s a lot of space in there!” she announced.
Ingrid smiled sweetly. “So, would you like to make an offer?”
Just then a loud horn startled us. We drifted toward a window and watched a locomotive chug our way, where in seconds it passed not far on our right, sounding its deafening blast. Ingrid cupped Adrian’s ears. Brenda and I cupped ours. The house seemed to shake and rumble. Somewhere nearby, I imagined, a Richter scale flashed a two.
“That was fun!” Adrian squealed. “Do it again, do it again!”
Ingrid smiled and pinched his cheek. “Not for another thirty minutes, sweetie.”
Brenda looked at me and asked, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I shook my head. “No, not at all.”
We agreed to meet Ingrid at her office to do the paperwork.
Outside, as we approached our cars, we saw a man standing in the backyard near a splintered oak tree. A bad feeling suddenly descended on me. “Who’s that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Ingrid responded.
The man moved toward the house. Ingrid said hello. He smiled and waved at us as he mounted the stairs. He removed a key from his pocket and let himself inside.
Ingrid said, “Must be the owner.”
“Must be,” Brenda agreed.
At Ingrid’s office, respecting our desperation and the fast seller’s market, we offered full price. Ingrid was friends with the listing Realtor and promised to call him right away. She congratulated and hugged us before we left.
We decided to celebrate. We stopped at an ice cream stand for three scoops of Oreo Crunch. Adrian had baptized himself in his by the time we reached the apartment, but we were too happy to care. Laughing, we took him inside to give him a bath. Brenda started filling the tub, but after looking beneath the vanity saw that there was no Mr. Bubble. I headed to the kitchen cupboard in search of more.
When I turned on the light, a few tiny roaches ran for cover. One dodged behind the phone, I noticed, as I reached for the receiver to check for messages. There were two. The first one was from my mother, who wanted to know if we’d put an offer on the house, and the other was from Ingrid, who said that our offer had been rejected. “The owner,” she said, “received a higher offer.”
Two weeks passed before I managed to convince myself that this was true. Soon afterward, I decided to confess to Brenda’s colleague that, despite her numerous warnings, we’d attempted to buy a house in Bridgewater. I explained that after the walkthrough we encountered the owner in the backyard, where he refused to acknowledge our greeting. Once he went inside, I added, he scowled at us from his kitchen window. I also told her that he gestured for us to leave with a flick of his hand. “Needless to say,” I concluded, “we did not get the house.” Brenda’s colleague was o
utraged. She was hysterical. She did not sleep well, I suspected, for quite some time. I considered us even.
TRASH
They’d assumed we’d come for trouble but we only wanted trash. There wasn’t much of it, not like there would have been if we were assigned to clean one of the parks or abandoned lots near our homes, but we were far from there, and the boys planning to harm us were not people we knew.
This was the fault of City Hall. Paul and I had applied for summer jobs like the rest of our teenage friends, but instead of sending us to work in South Shore, they’d sent us to work in South Chicago, across the color line. All of our co-workers were white. The supervisor was too. None of the teens had spoken to us, but they’d spoken about us, complaining loudly to one another that we had no right to be in their part of the city. Paul and I kept quiet. We remained a few feet from the group as it methodically moved through an open field, looking for garbage to harpoon; each of us carried a stick with a nail protruding from the tip. It had already occurred to me that these could be deadly weapons. I suspected it had occurred to the white boys too.
Their tempers seemed to rise with the late-June sun; mild complaints we’d heard at nine were vile epithets by noon. It must have been a hundred degrees by then, which couldn’t have helped their dispositions, nor had they been helped by the consumption of beer. Thirty minutes earlier the supervisor had brought a case of Budweiser to the area of the park where we were to have our lunch break and sat it in the shade of a maple tree. The boys gathered around and started drinking. Paul and I sat nearby in the grass, roasting in the sun with our wilted bologna and cheese sandwiches. Our sticks were at our sides. We’d already agreed that if the name-calling threatened to give way to physical abuse, we’d hurl the weapons at them and run.
They hurled something first, an empty beer can. It landed a few feet from Paul. “There you go, niggers,” yelled one of the boys. “Clean that shit up like you’re supposed to.” The other boys laughed, doubling over in stitches that made my blood boil. Another can flew our way, and then another, followed by more laughter that was cut short when my harpoon sailed through the air. It drifted wide left, just as Paul’s did a second later. The white boys looked back and forth between our weapons and us, as if trying to comprehend what had happened. “Get them!” someone ordered, and in an instant we were all running at full speed, two hares and a pack of hounds.
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