And All Our Wounds Forgiven

by Julius Lester

  Card looked guiltily at the mass of blond hair spilling over the top of the sheet. “Anything else on your mind?” he asked Kathy.

  “Well, since you asked, shall I tell Adisa that her father said hello and that he loves her?”

  “Tell her whatever the fuck you want to!” He slammed down the receiver and fell back onto the bed, fists clenched.

  “Sounded like bad news,” a voice said sympathetically from the other side of the mattress.

  “Goddammit!” Card spluttered, leaping from the mattress and rushing across the room to turn on the light switch next to the door. “Who the fuck are you?” he screamed at the pudgy face of the girl clutching the sheet in front of her pale naked body. “Who the fuck asked you anything, and what the fuck are you doing here anyway?” Card hurried over and tore the sheet from her hands, flinging it toward the foot of the mattress.

  The girl, her blue eyes wide with fear, didn’t look to be more than sixteen. She cringed at the head of the mattress, her back against the wall, arms crossed over her breasts as her eyes filled with tears.

  Card laughed harshly as he stared down at her. “You oughta cover ‘em up! Don’t understand why somebody as young as you should have tits drooping like an old lady’s. Get the fuck outta here! Go on back to Brooklyn or Queens or Teaneck and tell your girl friends that you fucked a nigger and it’s going to be the highlight of your sorry ass life.” He drew back his arm as if to strike her, then let it drop. “Didn’t you hear me? Get the fuck OUT!”

  The girl leaped from the mattress, picking up her clothes from the floor. Card shoved her across the room, grabbed her shorts, underpants and tanktop and threw them at her. “Put ‘em on in the goddam hall! Just get out of my sight!”

  The girl scooped up her garments and, clutching them to her breasts, ran from the apartment, sobbing. Card slammed the door behind her, then, leaning against it, trembled. In the hallway he heard the rustle of clothes being put on hastily, the gasps of inhaled sobs and sniffling, then the sound of running steps down the hallway and the stairs. He went to the window, raised the shade and looked down in time to see her running west on Twelfth Street toward Avenue A. “Bitch,” he said softly.

  He fell down on the mattress and stared at the blank wall across the small room, a mad glint in his eyes, jaw rigid and fists balled, the nails digging into the palms of his hands.

  “Fuck you, muthafucka! Fuck you!”

  Once Bobby Card had been thin and lean as winter. Now his stomach was flabby and soft, and where there had been tempered muscles in his shoulders, arms and legs, there was only flesh. He stared at the wall from dark eyes sunk deeply between a protruding forehead and high cheekbones. His shaven head completed the impression of someone whose face was more skeletal than human.

  Though his tiny eyes stared at the wall, they were not seeing it. Nor were they seeing some inner landscape or replaying a drama from his 32 years. They saw nothing and as long as they did, he could remain still; the rage would pass and he wouldn’t have to go back to the hospital. He had pills somewhere, but even in the hospital he hadn’t liked to take them. White people had a pill for everything. If you were angry, they had a pill that left you floating somewhere. If they thought you had floated too far away, they had a pill to make you feel like green grass in the summer time. Hon-keys could cut off your balls and leave you thinking you were the biggest stud east of the Mississippi.

  “Fuck you, muthafucka!” He said it less loudly and less vehemently this time. “Fuck you,” he repeated, his voice barely a whisper.

  He heard the noise of a car horn from the street.

  “Fuck you, too,” he said and gave a high-pitched cackle.

  He noticed the light coming through the window and got up and raised the shade on the other. By ten o’clock the heat in the one-room apartment on the fourth floor would be unbearable and he would go downstairs and sit on the stoop with the winos and drink Coca-Cola. (It was funny how the winos admired him for going to AA while they unscrewed the cap of another bottle of Thunderbird.) Or, maybe he’d go over to Washington Square and jive some little white girl looking for summer adventure.

  He shook his head, remembering the girl he’d found in his bed an hour ago. Card assumed he’d picked her up from the bookstore in the Village where he worked from six until midnight. There were always bitches coming in who assumed anybody black sitting behind the cash register at a bookstore in Greenwich Village had to be a poet. Some white bitches were funny like that. They’d give pussy in a minute to somebody they thought was a writer or a poet and wouldn’t give shit to a football player.

  “I write poetry with my dick,” he liked to tell them, and the bitches would blush and he could smell their panties getting wet, and see it if they were wearing tight shorts.

  He must have brought the bitch home from the bookstore, or maybe he found her sitting on a bench in the park smoking a reefer. But he couldn’t remember and that wasn’t like him. He never asked their names. Bitch was good enough. But this was the first time he had woken up surprised to find a bitch in bed. His memory had been better than that when he had stayed drunk all the time.

  Without bothering to put on anything, Card walked out of the room and down the hallway to the john. A couple of years ago some old Puerto Rican broad with a mole the size of a marble in the crease next to her right nostril and hair growing out of her ears who went around with rosary beads in her hands all the time had complained to the landlord about Card’s habit of walking naked down the hallway to the bathroom. What the fuck did it matter to her? It didn’t make sense to put on pants to go to the bathroom because he would just have to pull them down when he got there. Landlord had told her to call the police, and the bitch had done it. He had sweet-talked them, and they were scarcely out of the building before he was banging on the bitch’s door. He smiled at the memory of her opening it to see his .22 pointing at one of her watery eyes. And before she could scream he had pulled the trigger. CLICK! The gun was empty, but she hadn’t known that. He chuckled. Bitch shit in her panties because he smelled it. She had moved out the next day. Probably went back to Puerto Rico where she belonged. If you weren’t ready for anything and everything, keep your ass out of New York.

  He returned to the apartment, slamming the door behind him. “Wake up, muthafuckas!” he yelled and then laughed.

  He went to the kitchen sink and stood for a moment trying to decide whether to wash his face or brush his teeth first. Every morning It was the same damn decision. After all these years he should’ve decided one way or the other. But, dammit, every day was different. Some days he woke up and was ready to take on the world. On days like that he brushed his teeth first. Other days he wanted to glide along the streets unnoticed, as much as a bald-headed nigger could who looked like death. Those days he washed his face first. Then there were the days he didn’t give a shit one way or the other. That was most of them. He needed two or three cans of Coke and half a pack of cigarettes just to wake up. Those used to be the days he would do something crazy. He hadn’t had one of those in a while.

  He took the bar of soap from the piece of plywood covering the bathtub. George had never accustomed himself to how seriously Card took face washing.

  “Nigger, it don’t matter how much you rub. You ain’t gon’ be white when you get through. The dirt comes off but the nigger just gets rubbed in deeper.” Card had never responded or hurried, especially back in those days.

  He soaped his hands until the lather dripped from them, then applied it slowly, working it with his fingertips around his nostrils, his ears, over and around the cheekbones, beneath his chin. Then, taking the washcloth from where it hung off the side of the plywood, he wet it, squeezed out the water, and wiped the lather from his face. He repeated the process several times before patting his face dry with paper towels.

  There was a lot of shit George never understood; waking up was one. “Black folks could be free, Card, and you still washing your goddam face.”

  �
�Niggers ain’t never gon’ be free, George, so I might as well be clean.”

  Card frowned. “And I’m still here, muthafucka, and you ain’t.”

  He brushed his teeth, then walked across the room and picked up his underwear, jeans and T-shirt from the floor. As he slipped them on, he was vaguely aware that they might be dirty and smelly. So what?

  He made the bed neatly. Even if it was only a mattress on the floor, it had to be impeccably made each morning. He might look like his clothes came from the Salvation Army, and sometimes they did, but women didn’t care about shit like that. However nothing turned a bitch off more than a man’s unmade bed. It got her to thinking about who might have been there the night before, and every bitch needed the illusion that she was Miss One and Only and Forever, even if she didn’t want to be.

  When he finished, he picked up the crumpled, half-filled pack of cigarettes off the floor, lit one and sat down on the mattress, the only piece of furniture in the room. He looked around as if searching for something to look at. There was nothing. The walls were painted a shade of green nature would have rejected. The green was peeling to reveal a layer of white paint beneath and who knew how many layers and what colors beneath that. His few clothes were on hangers on a nail on the back of the door. Next to the door was the sink, bathtub, a tiny refrigerator on top of which was a two-burner gas stove he never used.

  He looked as if seeing the room for the first time. He tried to remember how long he had lived there. At least two years, he thought. Maybe more. He had moved in after his last hospital stay and that had been more than two years ago. Right, he remembered. Four years ago because that was the last time he had seen or talked to Kathy until that morning.

  Card got up, went to the window, raised it and flicked the cigarette out. He turned back into the room, looked down at himself, at the wrinkled T-shirt and rumpled pants. After a moment’s hesitation, he stripped, went across the room and took the plywood board from the bathtub and turned on the faucets. While the tub was filling with a slow and tepid trickle of water, he turned on the radio in time to hear the five-thirty newscast.

  He knew there would be nothing about George on it, but a man who had been the second-best organizer in the civil rights movement wasn’t supposed to be just another dead nigger.

  Card chuckled, and it was as if he could hear George saying, “What do you mean, ‘second-best organizer?’ “It had been a joke between them, because Card had been the best and George knew it. But the two of them together had been something to see, Card recalled with pride.

  He turned off the water, climbed into the tub and bathed quickly. He found a half-dirty towel in a cabinet beneath the sink and dried himself. He shaved and then took a pair of lightweight brown slacks and a pink shirt from the hangers on the back of the door and dressed. Shoving his feet into his sandals, he took his wallet and keys from the jeans lying on the floor, took a look around the room and left.

  The street was quiet. The only person out was the old Italian man sitting on a folding chair in front of the mortuary. He looked like a corpse waiting for the casket to come.

  “Buon giorno, Signor Ghiraldi,” Card called, waving.

  The old man looked up, smiled and waved. “Whadda you say, Card?” he answered in a voice stronger than his frail body should’ve been able to hold.

  Card held out his arms and shrugged. “It’s going to be another hot one.”

  “Whadda you ‘spect? It’s summer.”

  Card laughed, waved and continued down the block. He smiled. He still did automatically the things a good organizer was supposed to do. He doubted if there was a person on the block he didn’t know, at least to speak to. Ten years ago he could’ve gone to any town in the South and by sundown been able to tell you who held the power, how they used it and what he would have to do to get them to use it to get Negroes some freedom.

  He crossed Avenue A and continued on to First Avenue where the uptown traffic was beginning to build toward the morning rush hour. He continued a block up First Avenue to a nondescript diner in the middle of the block.

  “What’s happening, Maureen?” he said to the dark-haired woman behind the counter.

  “You sick?” she smiled. “Haven’t seen you in here this early in a while, Card.”

  “Thought I’d come in early and make your day,” he laughed, strolling to the back of the diner and sliding into the last booth where he could look out on to the avenue. It was a typical New York diner, with a counter and stools running the length of the room and booths along the windows. He felt more at home there than in his apartment. He ate there everyday. The food was adequate, if plain, and the servings were almost more than he could eat, and his appetite was not small.

  “Coffee?”

  “Who made it? You or Patrick?”

  A husky man with dirty gray hair and a white apron covering the lower part of his body stepped out of the kitchen behind Card. “You don’t like my coffee?” he asked. “That’s what’s wrong with you coloreds. You got no taste.”

  “If I had taste, honky, I wouldn’t eat here. What I want to know, Pat, is when are you going to die and let Maureen put some class in this roach trap.”

  “I can’t do that, Card. If I die you’ll marry her and I couldn’t rest easy in my grave knowing my own sister was married to a colored.”

  They laughed.

  “You having the usual?”

  Card nodded. He settled back in the booth and smiled. It was good having a place where nobody wanted anything from you except that you be well. There’d been weeks when Pat had carried him on a tab, and Card had always paid him back — and with a little extra. Sometimes when Card came in the afternoon, he’d help out in the kitchen to give Pat a half hour or so to sit down and smoke a cigarette.

  Maureen brought two cups of coffee to the booth and slid in opposite Card. She took a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her beige uniform, shook two out, lit them and handed one to Card.

  “It’s going to be hotter ‘n hell today,” she said.

  “Least you’ll be in here with the air conditioning.”

  She shrugged. “Another hour and this place will fill up and from then until three or so, I’ll be running back and forth. The sweat’ll be coming off me like I was outside.”

  Card took a sip of coffee and nodded. It was a conversation they’d had last summer, the one before that, and the one before that. The familiarity of routine and habit were probably the most security one could ask for in this world.

  He looked at her as he dragged deeply on the cigarette. She was his age, maybe a little older. She had probably been pretty once, pretty in that way of open innocence which seemed peculiar to Irish Catholic girls in their plaid school uniforms. Now she was just plain, with tiny wrinkles beginning to spread out from her blue eyes. Her short dark hair was not styled but simply lay on her head as if resigned to the superiority of an unknown foe.

  “How you been?” he wanted to know.

  She shrugged. “What can I tell you?”

  He nodded. Her life wouldn’t change and they both knew it. She got up at three-thirty every morning, drove across the Queensboro Bridge with Pat, helped him set up in the kitchen, unlocked the door at six, closed up at seven in the evening, back across the bridge and in bed by nine. Card knew her husband had been killed in ‘Nam, that her mother had died a few months later and she had moved back home to help Pat for a few months and the months had become years and the years a life.

  “You?”

  “Same ol same ol’.”

  They sat quietly, smoking and drinking coffee. Maureen left for a few moments to talk to the two waitresses when they reported for work and then returned. Pat came out of the kitchen, put a plate of two eggs over easy, toast and hash browns in front of Card.

  “Looks good, Pat,” Card said.

  Pat shook his head. “You getting old, Card. You said something nice.”

  They laughed.

  Pat slapped him on the shoulder and re
turned to the kitchen. “You OK?” Maureen asked, after a moment. “You’re quiet this morning.”

  He shrugged, chewing slowly.

  “I’m not prying or anything, but, are you OK?”

  “Hell, how should I know?”

  Maureen smiled wistfully. “Yeah. You know, sometimes I’m glad I don’t have time to think. If I did, who knows what I might find? You know?”

  He nodded.

  “I mean, if I’d thought when I was a kid going to St. Joseph’s every morning that this is what my life was going to be like, I don’t know what I would’ve done. You know?”

  He nodded again. “What did you want to be when you were a kid?”

  “You mean after I got over wanting to be a nun?” she laughed. “I don’t know. It was all kind of vague. Secretary, I guess. The one thing I was sure of was that I’d have a house and kids and who knows? Maybe even a white picket fence.” She frowned. “Pat has been after me to get the hell out. It has been eight years now since Michael was killed. I suppose I might have taken what the army gave me and the survivor’s benefits and moved somewhere, started over. But then, mother died three months after Michael. Between Christmas and Easter I became a widow and an orphan. I never knew my dad. He was killed in the Second World War. By the time I came out of shock after Michael and mother, I had already moved back into the house to help Pat and that was that. But, to tell the truth, it never occurred to me to move anywhere. Isn’t that sad, Card? Never crossed my mind. Where the hell would I have gone? And to do what? I didn’t have any skills and I’m nobody’s pinup girl.” She shrugged. “What the hell? At least here, I got friends. People like you. I got a place. Something to do. But you’ve heard all that more than once.”

  Carl nodded. “Maybe a friend is somebody who listens as many times as you need to say it.”

  Maureen smiled. “So, what about you? What did you want to be when you grew up?”

  He ate quietly, as if he hadn’t heard, but he had and she knew. He thought about the dusty roads that went through the colored section of Willert, Mississippi, and the little boy who had played baseball with tin cans and sticks on those silent roads and the white men who came in the night looking for their lives on the bodies of black women and the threat to his if he saw what he was not supposed to see, heard what he was not supposed to hear and said what no one would listen to, and he looked up at Maureen and said simply, “Alive.”