Brothers and Keepers

by John Edgar Wideman

  Daddy could still shake him up. Edgar Wideman was six foot tall and weighed around two hundred hard pounds. Robby knew Daddy could tear up his behind and knew that if he pushed the wrong way at the wrong time, Edgar would punch him out. My father’s rage, his fists were the atom bomb, the nuclear deterrent. Robby feared him so he gauged his misconduct with a diplomat’s finely honed sensitivity to consequence and repercussion. Yet Robby understood that he had launched himself on a collision course. His determination to become an independent power setting his own rules would bring on a confrontation with Daddy. The shit had to hit the fan sooner or later, so it became a question of biding his time, of marshaling his forces, and convincing himself that he’d survive the holocaust generally intact.

  One of the worst parts of being grounded was losing phone privileges. With a stable of young girls to keep happy, a phone was an indispensable tool, especially since Robby’s ladies were scattered all over the city and he had neither time nor money to make his rounds in person. When he was stuck in the house the phone was the only pipeline to his world, so when Mom said no calls in or out, Robby was in exile, a monarch languishing while enemies nibbled away at his undefended turf. Predictably, the last great battle between Robby and my father was fought about the phone.

  In the house on Marchand Street the phone sat on a three-legged stand just inside the front door. The phone cord would stretch halfway up the front hall steps so you could climb them and stake out a sanctuary, lean your back against the wall or banister, and escape the confines of the house, talk yourself and the one listening into a dreamlike place where you could be whoever you wanted to be. Mom was exactly right when she said, That boy lives on the phone. Like his music, his dancing, the dark basements and street corners, the phone allowed Rob to practice the magic powers he knew he possessed, those powers the world outside his skin denied or threatened.

  For a series of trespasses Robby had been absolutely, positively prohibited from using the phone. He observed the ban for most of one day, then the walls started closing in. A particularly sweet thing in Penn Hills had beaucoup hard legs hitting on her day and night. Robby’d laid a mean rap on her and was just starting to get over. But a day without a call might undo his work. He waited till Mom went grocery shopping, then dialed Penn Hills. Everything was beautiful. He was rapping hard and heavy; the lady was coming on strong. In just a few minutes she’d squeeze through the telephone wire. He’d have that fine thing curled lovey-dovey on his lap. The conversation got so good to him he missed the clatter of Mom returning through the front door.

  What do you think you’re doing? Hang up and get down off those steps. You know you’re not supposed to touch the phone.

  She stomped straight to the kitchen with her armload of Giant Eagle bags, but the fire in her voice, her eyes said she’d be right back.

  Sure enough as soon as the grocery bags hit the kitchen table she was hotfooting it back into the hall. Robby scooted up two more stairs and blocked the stairwell with his leg.

  Just a minute, Mom. I’m almost through now. She’d have to knock down the barrier of his outstretched leg and fight through his body before she got to the phone.

  Come down off the stairs, boy. Hang up that phone and come down this instant.

  He hunched over, cradling, protecting his love. It was difficult to keep his voice soft, insinuating, cool, and still drown out his mother’s screeching. He cupped the receiver with his palm. Shielded his love in a corner of the steps, his chest, his heart almost touching the dial.

  Mom was screaming and starting up the steps, and Robby stiffened his leg. She’d hit there first, knock his leg down and fight him for the phone. He needed just a little more time. He had this sweet thing’s nose wide open. Just a minute now. If Mom could just be cool a minute, he’d finish his business and she could snatch the phone if she wanted it. Beat him over the head with it if she wanted. So he got his leg up and his arm too, a second line of defense to buy another few seconds—time for the three or four good-byes he needed to sew up the fine lady on the other end of the line.

  Yeah, baby, I miss you, too. Yeah, it’s just somebody, just my mama wants to use the phone, babe, but that’s alright. I ain’t gon give it up while I got something sweet as you on the wire.

  No way he’d kick his mother, but he’d wave that leg and keep it in her path long’s he could. He had five or six things going at once. Leg and arm stiffened for protection and heavy breathing and heavy rapping through his fingers so his hand could smother the racket coming up the steps after him. He’s so busy he doesn’t notice right away the front door swing open again.

  He knows something’s up when he hears the thump, thumple, thump of his ass hitting the steps one by one as he’s dragged by the leg from his perch. Bram, bram, bram. Then the phone disappears, flies through the air and strikes the floor ringing once, louder than he’s ever heard it. His father bends over to recover the phone, picks it up off the hall floor, sets it on the stand, slams the receiver back on the base. That big nigger had snatched the phone out his hand. That was my baby he flattened like a pancake when he bashed the two pieces of black phone together. Robby thinks this while he scrambles to his feet and leaps up the stairs. This is it, he thinks, and for a millisecond he considers jumping on his father’s broad back, pummeling, kicking, settling once and for all the matter of who’s boss. But that was a lot of hard nigger in the hall. And though his hands ached with fury, with sudden emptiness where a moment before he’d been holding his baby, he grabbed banister instead of his father’s tough meat and scatted up the steps three at a time to the room he shared with brother David. He needed an equalizer. Something hard or heavy or sharp in his hand when that herd of elephants pursuing him got to the top of the steps.

  Leave him alone. Don’t go up there now. His mother’s voice, then the steps bending, creaking, sighing, as slowly, in no hurry or rush or nothing, Edgar Wideman mounted them.

  Robby slammed the door of his room. To buy time, to muffle the footsteps he hears anyway louder and louder pounding in his ears as he flings open a drawer and pulls out the scissors he knew were there. Long scissors. Black loops and thick, mismatched blades, the longer, wider one rounding to a point, the other tapering like a dagger. How should he hold them? Should he put his fingers through the holes or clutch both round eyes together like the handle of a knife? Cold steel in hand he faces the closed door waiting for it to burst open. How long had the scissors been lying in the drawer? Did he know he was after them when he bounced off his butt in the hall and catapulted up the stairs? Did he know then what he was after? Where he was headed? Had he been the one who had cached the weapon in the top bureau drawer? Did he know when he did it that he’d need them today? Did he know when he dialed Valery Jackson that he’d need the scissors to avenge her honor, his dignity? Was getting in her drawers tied to what he knew he could lay his hands on in the top drawer of the tall, slew-foot bureau?

  Somebody was sobbing. The door flies open and it’s not his Daddy in tears. It’s not his mother either, because he can hear her running up the steps shouting for his father to stop, to let him alone, to come back downstairs. The sobbing has something to do with the rhythm of the scissors, the beat shaking his hand so the weapon is a blur of black and silver through his tears. The tears are messing up everything and they go with the sobs, like the trembling goes with somebody sobbing so it’s him backed up against the wall, sobbing like a baby, facing the big man who looms in the space where the door used to be.

  I’ll kill you if you come in here. Swear to God I’ll kill you.

  And it’s him talking, screaming at Edgar Wideman and talking to the scissors, calmly, coolly like he tried to get to Valery Jackson under his mother’s shouts. Steady. Steady. Rise up like a weapon. Don’t act like something pointed at me. Don’t act like I’m the one should be scared of these blades.

  I hate you. I hate your guts. You come over here and I’ll kill you. Swear I’ll kill you if you touch me. You ain’t go
n whip me no more. It’s his voice shaky with sobs. He’s spitting tears from his lips. His eyes are rolling down his cheeks. But he’s got his hand up and it stabs the air with the points of the scissors.

  You ain’t gon touch me. You ain’t never whipping me again.

  Edgar doesn’t. He never smacks his son in anger again. He stands in the doorway, a puzzled look on his face. It’s like he keeps putting two and two together and it comes out four, but four’s wrong so he adds two and two again and gets four but four’s wrong again, so he patiently does the sum again, two plus two equals . . . He doesn’t hurry, concentrates as hard as he can on getting the answer right even though he knows it’s a simple problem, the easiest kind of problem, and he’s produced the answer a million times before, everybody in their right mind, everybody with good sense or less knows the answer but he stands in the door staring at his son, staring at the scared kid with the load of scissors in his hand and the snot and tears and trembling lips and thinks, yes, I brought you into the world and, yes, I could take you out, thinks that thought facing his son, watches the pointy scissors bob and thinks, yes, I’ve faced cold steel before, killed before, and unclenches his fist and feels the air go out of his chest, the cold stinging air that had risen to block his nostrils so they flared for breath, and a sigh goes out of him and memories drain until he’s back to the problem, back to the only solution he knows and knows it will be wrong again.

  Why are you doing this? Why don’t you listen to what anybody tells you? You’re just a rebel. A damned rebel. You don’t listen to anybody.

  He can hear his mother saying his father’s name. Softly, rising in the stairwell, filtering into the room, little soft bubbles of his father’s name. Edgar, Edgar, then, Oh, God. Please stop this, bursting against his father’s rage, his father’s shouts as he hesitates at the threshold of his son’s room. The puzzled, hurt look doesn’t leave his father’s eyes even though his mouth twists and his lips curl, and his words explode like shots in the little bedroom.

  A rebel. A damned rebel.

  Then the space is empty. The stairs bend under two people descending.

  * * *

  I was scared. Scared as I ever been in my life. He could have took those scissors and made me eat them. I didn’t know what Ida done if he called my bluff. He must of taked pity on me. He seen I got myself in too far to back away. Had those scissors in my hand but I was wishing I didn’t. Wished I’d never hid them in the drawer. Wished I never been born.

  Edgar didn’t do a thing. He was as mad as I ever seen him but he just stood there yelling at me and didn’t take a step until he turned around and went back downstairs. Called me a rebel. Said I wouldn’t listen. I guess he decided it wasn’t worth it. I guess he told me what he thought of me and didn’t have no more to say.

  Anyway that’s part of the beginning. I can look back now and see it must have been funny in a way. I can laugh at how I must have looked. My scrawny ass quivering and crying so much I must have looked like a drowned rat to Daddy. But he never hit me again. He told me what he thought and let me slide that day. Never mentioned the phone or the scissors or nothing about that day ever.

  * * *

  At about the time I was beginning to teach Afro-American literature at the University of Pennsylvania, back home on the streets of Pittsburgh Robby was living through the changes in black culture and consciousness I was reading about and discussing with my students in the quiet of the classroom. Not until we began talking together in prison did I learn about that side of his rebelliousness. Black Fire was a book I used in my course. It was full of black rage and black dreams and black love. In the sixties when the book was published, young black men were walking the streets with, as one of the Black Fire writers put it, dynamite growing out of their skulls. I’d never associated Robby with the fires in Homewood and in cities across the land, never envisioned him bobbing in and out of the flames, a constant danger to himself, to everyone around him because “dynamite was growing out of his skull.” His plaited naps hadn’t looked like fuses to me. I was teaching, I was trying to discover words to explain what was happening to black people. That my brother might have something to say about these matters never occurred to me. The sad joke was, I never even spoke to Robby. Never knew until years later that he was the one who could have told me much of what I needed to hear.

  * * *

  It was a crazy summer. The summer of ’68. We fought the cops in the streets. I mean sure nuff punch-out fighting like in them Wild West movies and do. Shit. Everybody in Homewood up on Homewood Avenue duking with the cops. Even the little weeny kids was there, standing back throwing rocks. We fought that whole summer. Cop cars all over the place and they’d come jumping out with night sticks and fists balled up. They wore leather jackets and gloves and sometimes they be wearing them football helmets so you couldn’t go upside they heads without hurting your hand. We was rolling. Steady fighting. All you need to be doing was walking down the avenue and here they come. Screeching the brakes. Pull up behind you and three or four cops come busting out the squad car ready to rumble. Me and some the fellas just minding our business walking down Homewood and this squad car pulls up. Hey, you. Hold it. Stop where you are, like he’s talking to some silly kids or something. All up in my face. What you doing here, like I ain’t got no right to be on Homewood Avenue, and I been walking on Homewood Avenue all my life an ain’t no jive police gon get on my case just cause I’m walking down the avenue. Fuck you, pig. Ain’t none your goddamn business, pig. Well, you know it’s on then. Cop come running at Henry and Henry ducks down on one knee and jacks the motherfucker up. Throw him clean through that big window of Murphy’s five-and-dime. You know where I mean. Where Murphy’s used to be. Had that cop snatched up in the air and through that window before he knew what hit him. Then it’s on for sure. We rolling right there in the middle of Homewood Avenue.

  That’s the way it was. Seem like we was fighting cops every day. Funny thing was, it was just fighting. Wasn’t no shooting or nothing like that. Somebody musta put word out from Downtown. You can whip the niggers’ heads but don’t be shooting none of em. Yeah. Cause the cops would get out there and fight but they never used no guns. Might bust your skull with a nightstick but they wasn’t gon shoot you. So the word must have been out. Cause you know if it was left to the cops they would have blowed us all away. Somebody said don’t shoot and we figured that out so it was stone rock ’n’ roll and punch-up time.

  Sometimes I think the cops dug it too. You know like it was exercise or something. Two or three carloads roll up and it’s time to get it on. They was looking for trouble. You could tell. You didn’t have to yell pig or nothing. Just be minding your business and here they come piling out the car ready to go ten rounds. I got tired of fighting cops. And getting whipped on. We had some guys go up on the rooves. Brothers was gon waste the motherfuckers from up there when they go riding down the street but shit, wasn’t no sense bringing guns into it long as they wasn’t shooting at us. Brothers didn’t play in those days. We was organized. Cops jump somebody and in two minutes half of Homewood out there on them cops’ ass. We was organized and had our own weapons and shit. Rooftops and them old boarded-up houses was perfect for snipers. Dudes had pistols and rifles and shotguns. You name it. Wouldna believed what the brothers be firing if it come to that but it didn’t come to that. Woulda been stone war in the streets. But the shit didn’t come down that way. Maybe it woulda been better if it did. Get it all out in the open. Get the killing done wit. But the shit didn’t hit the fan that summer. Least not that way.

  Lemme see. I woulda been in eleventh grade. One more year of Westinghouse left after the summer of ’68. We was the ones started the strike. Right in the halls of good old Westinghouse High School. Like I said, we had this organization. There was lots of organizations and clubs and stuff like that back then but we had us a mean group. Like, if you was serious business you was wit us. Them other people was into a little bit of this and that, but we
was in it all the way. We was gon change things or die trying. We was known as bad. Serious business, you know. If something was coming down they always wanted us wit them. See, if we was in it, it was some mean shit. Had to be. Cause we didn’t play. What it was called was Together. Our group. We was so bad we was having a meeting once and one the brothers bust in. Hey youall. Did youall hear on the radio Martin Luther King got killed? One the older guys running the meeting look up and say, We don’t care nothing bout that ass-kissing nigger, we got important business to take care of. See, we just knew we was into something. Together was where it was at. Didn’t nobody dig what King putting down. We wasn’t about begging whitey for nothing and we sure wasn’t taking no knots without giving a whole bunch back. After the dude come in hollering and breaking up the meeting we figured we better go on out in the street anyway cause we didn’t want no bullshit. You know. Niggers running wild and tearing up behind Martin Luther King getting wasted. We was into planning. Into organization. When the shit went down we was gon be ready. No point in just flying around like chickens with they heads cut off. I mean like it ain’t news that whitey is offing niggers. So we go out the meeting to cool things down. No sense nobody getting killed on no humbug.

  Soon as we got outside you could see the smoke rising off Homewood Avenue. Wasn’t that many people out and Homewood burning already, so we didn’t really know what to do. Walked down to Hamilton and checked it out around in there and went up past the A & P. Say to anybody we see. Cool it. Cool it, brother. Our time will come. It ain’t today, brother. Cool it. But we ain’t really got no plan. Didn’t know what to do, so me and Henry torched the Fruit Market and went on home.