Got me a father, she thought. Find him and lose him in one day, too.
That didn’t matter. Only one thing mattered to her. He alive!
Chapter 12
THINGS HAPPENED FAST. First, M’Vy talking about Tree’s father and baseball. And before that, talking to Silversmith, talking about Tree’s father, talking about ghost to this man Tree never had seen, not until this day.
Talking about baseball and how her father loved it. Tree didn’t know for certain one thing about him or what had become of him. Just that he was gone but not dead. She had let so much get by her.
How’d that happen? she wondered.
She didn’t know a whole lot about other families. On TV, families talked together. They told things at the supper table or the breakfast table. They knew about all kinds of things going on in town, in the family—Grandpaw this and Grandmaw that. Roots.
How come I never think to ask anything? She answered her own question.
If you never told there’s some answers, how you gone know the questions?
She never knew to ask about some father for the simple reason she had no idea there was one. Just a mention of him dead. And not even a picture, nor M’Vy ever mentioning him again.
All these years! They seemed suddenly to well up in Tree, like water rising to drown her.
Musta thought we some disgrace, me and Dab. If I thought. If someone won’t be there and nobody says, then you must think the worst about it. Is it? You don’t think much on disgrace, either, she thought.
Within the confines of never having a father and no mother present for most of the time, she had carved out a narrow life for the two of them. Her and Dab. Them, in the rooms with Warren Miller. She, taking care of Dab and doing homework. Going to bed tired, with some amount of emptiness she allowed herself to realize. Getting by. She, knowing quiet for years, the way other children knew noise and lots of laughter. If she was ever terribly unhappy in the quiet, if she had missed something, she had known it only as absence. M’Vy. Until now.
Brother Rush be come, show me, she thought. A great swell of sadness came over her. Seeing some of Rush’s world, she knew how empty was her own. Knowing she had a father like she had dreamed him made the loss of him all the more heartbreaking.
Why M’Vy keep him hidden. Why Rush, hidden. My dad! My dad! He and Brother love the Cincinnati Reds. Just like anybody, just good men. Why!
She didn’t have time to find out. Silversmith had helped her off the couch. She didn’t need help. But he was a gentleman; he gave a hand to ladies.
Like somebody I know for a long time. He do seem. Big, just like a father.
M’Vy, suddenly hurrying them. And Tree just then becoming aware of moaning that must have been going on for some time.
How I forget Dab? Talking to Silversmith like he somebody. First thing comes Dab, she thought firmly, then the rest. But maybe sometime, sometime, first one comes be me. Huh!
The next moment Silversmith and M’Vy and she were standing over Dab in his bedroom. Surrounding his bed.
Tree glanced at M’Vy to be sure the man, big Silversmith, ought to be there.
M’Vy saying to Silversmith, “Give the boy something to ease him and it will mask the sickness. I’m gone have a time gettin it over. Why I waited. I dint wanta face the truth, no. I dint know, I wasn’t sure, and that’s the truth. I truly did not know until I get back way-time this morning.
“If it bad, you better to call Emergency,” said Silversmith. “They most able to handle something bad. Is it bad, Vy?”
She scrutinized Dab. Dab trembled, holding his stomach. Moaning, he looked like an old man.
M’Vy shook her head. “First thing, Emergency might give him something to handle him. Maybe anything could be the wrong thing.”
“They don’t give nothing lest a doctor tell them,” Silversmith said.
“First thing they think they see a druggie and they call it in but they don’t know what they callin. They thinkin withdrawal, but that not it, only. Oh, Lord. Lord.”
M’Vy was speaking low, swiftly, to Silversmith. Silversmith, nodding and asking questions.
Tree leaned down to her brother. “Dab. Dab,” she said. “It me, Tree. Teresa. Sweet. Dab. Dab.”
His eyelashes fluttered opened. He didn’t turn his head toward her. He had no strength for even small moves. “Huh,” he grunted.
“It me,” Tree told him. “I’m gone stay with you, bro. Everythang gone be all right.”
This last brought a spark of strength to Dab. “Is it? Is it?” he murmured. He had a tiny, clear voice. It had country air to it, the way M’Vy’s did, Tree thought. He turned his head slightly, grimacing. He managed a wan smile.
Tree leaned very close and kissed him tenderly on the cheek. Never had she done that, that she could remember. His cheek felt on fire. His breath shook at her touch.
“It still hurt you?” she said.
“Uhhhhm,” he moaned.
Tree didn’t touch him again. M’Vy motioned to her and whispered to her. Tree leaned close to Dab’s ear again. She told him, “There a man here, M’Vy’s friend, Silversmith. Everybody call him that. He helpin us take you to—where we goin?” Tree asked M’Vy.
“Hospital,” Vy said, hardly moving her lips.
Dab’s eyes went wild. He had heard. Feverish strength seemed to fill his eyes. They swung back and forth from Vy to Tree. He vomited on himself. Down his bedclothes. M’Vy left the room and came right back with her coat and heels on, stuffing a folder of typed papers into her pocketbook. Then she ordered them.
“Tree, you standing here. You got three minutes. Get dressed. We gone.”
She rushed to the bathroom and back with wet cloths and dry towels. She and Silversmith cleaned Dab up and changed his sleeping clothes.
“Nothin to it,” Vy said, wiping Dab’s face with a cool, damp cloth. She cleaned his neck where the vomit had run down. What Dab had brought up was mostly liquid. It had an odor, sweet and sour.
“Now you got but two and a half minutes,” Vy told Tree.
“Oh!” Tree said. She left, and she was no more than two minutes getting dressed in her room. Long practice from being nearly late for school so often. She could take a quick shower in sixty seconds. Comb her hair, get in her clothes in another minute; and her shoes, in less than a half-minute. On her way back to Dab, she heard M’Vy call.
“Comin!” she called back. She took her purse from the table in the hall. Grabbed her raincoat from the closet. Carefully she avoided looking at the closed door of the little room farther down the hall. Then she couldn’t help herself. She went to the door, listened. “Brother?” she whispered. She felt close to him now, closer than before. She wanted to open the door, to see if he had come to take her out again. But she thought of the distance between life and death, that she was in the distance, and she did not open the door.
It was time to go.
She went back to Dab, and they had him fixed up and ready to wrap him in a big old quilt Vy had produced. The quilt was yellow with flowers. Carefully Vy and Silversmith rolled Dab in it. And tenderly Silversmith lifted him in his arms.
Still, Dab cried out. He was weak; he couldn’t yell too loud as they left the apartment house. The other tenants, some of them, must have heard the moaning passing their doors.
They went down dim halls and down three flights of stairs, avoiding the elevator. It was a safe building, with locked double doors, and only the tenants had keys. Tree always worried about being trapped with some stranger between the double doors. She knew that someday it would happen, with the outside door closed, locked behind her, and someone breathing down her neck while she unlocked the inside door.
This early evening the halls were empty. Tree could hear televisions. Laughter on the tube and news updates. Folks were home, finishing out the Sunday. Tree knew tenants to say hello but she did not get friendly. She did not want help, or people spying. She never had time for anybody else but Dab, anyway. She was gl
ad she and M’Vy and Silversmith didn’t encounter anyone on the stairs. Silversmith carried Dab like he was light as a feather. Dab’s head was against his chest.
Like a baby, Tree thought.
Dab’s eyes were closed. He would gasp in a sharp intake of breath. M’Vy eyed him anxiously, one hand now on Silversmith’s shoulder.
“Dint know what you walking into,” she said to Silversmith. “Bring you all this trouble.”
“Don’t mind some trouble,” he said quietly. “Trouble is human. We bound to have it one time.”
“Thank you much,” softly, Vy spoke with feeling.
“Nothing to it,” he said. “We gone get it done right.”
They were outside the building, going down the steps.
Outside was night and dark clouds, wet and misty. This was Waltham Avenue, known for its complex of low-income housing, like the building Tree lived in.
“It not a bad place,” M’Vy had once said about the city.
“Got a good medical facility. I get jobs. Other medical centers all around. I get work. But you remember, Tree, when you grow up, don’t take no half-measure. Get all the education you can think of.”
Funny how you remember something when you not expecting any such thing, Tree thought. She had been filled with worry over Dab for so long, and suddenly there came M’Vy’s voice about the city and about what Tree would have to do.
Don’t think they give me a chance to grow up, she thought. Be this kid taking care of Dab all my life.
They stopped in front of a car parked at the curb. Tree knew at once that this was M’Vy’s car. In the light of the street, it looked two-toned, black and darker.
“What color?” she said. “What color is it?”
“Black and gray,” Vy told her, unlocking the door. “It got this line of maroon between the black and gray. You’ll see when it’s daylight. It real pretty.
“Put him down in the back,” Vy said. “I’ll ride with him. Lay him out,” she told Silversmith. “Easy now.” She moved the seat up so there would be more room for Silversmith to maneuver.
Silversmith was strong. Tree watched as he crouched with Dab in his arms and moved into the back and laid Dab out on the seat.
“Now come on out,” Vy said. “You and Tree in the front. Me and the boy in back.”
Tree felt the distance between M’Vy and Dab by M’Vy not calling him by name.
Wonder why she do that? Tree thought. Never like that with me. But I already know. She can’t take it the way I do, like it be just Dab and the way he is. Telling you, when this over, we gone talk about some things, Tree thought.
M’Vy got in the back. She settled herself on the floor next to Dab’s seat. Before, she had directed Silversmith to place a pillow back there under Dab’s head. Tree knew that M’Vy hadn’t touched Dab, her own son, herself.
Tree was also beside herself with excitement.
In a car!
It belonged to M’Vy, too, which meant it was almost Tree’s car. Tree’s family car. Her brother was sick, but she couldn’t help being happy and excited about riding through the night for the very first time. Right next to Silversmith. He turned on the motor and the lights and some heat, for the air was chill and wet. He reached across and locked Tree’s door. Adjusted the mirror and his seat so he was comfortable. Then they left. M’Vy guided the way.
“You know where Community is?” Vy asked him.
“Not sure how to get there from here,” he said over his shoulder.
“Well, go on north and go on to Lane Avenue no more than six miles,” Vy told him.
“Is that the way?” he said. “I know from Lane. That’s the back way.”
“Back way quickest,” Vy said. “Called and say I’m bringing my son for admittance. They say, who is the doctor. I tell them it’s the clinic, any doctor we can get.” She laughed. “Tell them I’m a practical nurse and I got Blue Cross. They say they can give him a room if he need it.”
Tree heard Dab gasp and moan. Then she heard sounds as if he were shivering. She didn’t dare turn to look back there. She knew his eyes would be wide and scared. Dab was hurting and getting worse.
What can it be? she wondered.
Despite his hurting and also her fear of hospitals and what happened to people who went to hospitals, she couldn’t keep her mind from the beauty of M’Vy’s sleek new car. But the fear came back.
Say, you go in a hospital, you maybe not come out. Who say that? Tree thought.
She couldn’t remember. Did Rush say that? Did I hear it through Rush’s place?
She wasn’t sure.
Old folks say, you go to hospital, you bound to die. Only take once.
She couldn’t keep her mind on it. She felt the fear of it touch her heart and turn it to ice. It melted away, drying up like rainwater on a sunny porch.
When I grow up and have my own things, she thought.
The car smelled new all around her. Clean and new, like no other smell in the world. No other power was like this power motor in a good car. Good Chevy. Had to cost some money. Maybe Silversmith did help buy it.
“This part your car?” softly she said, for Silversmith alone to hear. She knew he was a nice man. He wouldn’t be angry at her asking. A girl her age might not have all her manners. He wouldn’t get upset.
“I help your muh when I can,” he told her. His voice, mixed in with sounds of driving, of gas surging. “We get this car for her,” he said. “She got the title to it. This is Vy’s own car.”
“Huh!” Tree said with pleasure, and was silent again.
She let her hand glide on the cushion seat.
Feel like velvet! Tree felt as if she were in the safest place in the world.
When I’m sixteen. Driver’s Ed. Get me the permit like all the kids do. M’Vy go driving wit me. Every evening fore it dark. Things be different by way then. It got to be different.
The thought of taking driving lessons was for Tree like discovering a sunken treasure. Right there inside her were things she’d never thought of, never knew she wanted. Slowly, now, she began uncovering them.
I buy the gas. I buy the gas for this car, for the times M’Vy let me take it over on weekends. Have me this job. Working waiting on people at places like … like … McDonald’s! Or you work at the checkout in the supermarket. Well, you go get something pays more. More like, you go study. Work in a hospital. Never been to one. So I don’t know what jobs they are. But I can find out. I can do it!
Silversmith drove fast down dark roads. Tree recognized Rinks, where they could get clothes at discount. That was where she got her raincoat. Then all was dark and country. She wondered how a hospital got to be way out in nowhere. There were fields and traffic lights at crossroads. They passed a large vocational training center.
Guess the country full of all kind of things, Tree thought.
They had been on Lane Avenue. They came to a traffic light and there was a blue-and-white sign with an H and an arrow pointing left. Silversmith turned the car left and they were on a four-lane, divided street. They went for a long time and there were houses, and more houses and lights.
Tree could see by the streetlights. Dots of rain covered the windshield. Silversmith turned a knob, and wind-shield wipers cleaned off the rain. When the wipers were turned off, the little dots appeared again.
It was so funny, all those little dots. Tree stifled a laugh. Through the window, she saw something looming out of pink mist of sky up ahead of them. Higher and higher it went up, like an enormous, layered wedding cake Tree had seen in a magazine.
“Hospital,” Silversmith told her, pointing at the cake through the windshield of tiny dots.
“Is it?” Tree said.
“Yeah, a big medical center. Called Community. Real good, too. Vy will get on there one day.”
“What you do for a living, Silversmith?” Tree said. But he was concentrating hard, trying to see over the slick black roads that washed out the car headlights.
“You got to go pass it,” Vy was saying in back of them. “Round the corner past the emergency entrance.”
“You sure you don’t want to take him to Emergency first?” Silversmith asked.
“That won’t be quicker,” Vy said. “They back up sometimes for two, three hours.”
“Okay,” he said.
“See where it say General Admittance—Parking,” she said.
“There it is,” Tree said. “Right here. Here on my side.”
“See it,” he said and slowed, easing the car into the parking area. “Carry him from here. Be just as quick. He don’t weigh nothin.”
“Hurry,” said Vy. She was getting out of the car, as Silversmith parked it.
Tree could hear Dab. It sounded like he had some mess from a bad cold in his throat.
Hurry, get it over, she thought. Dead or alive, poor him. She felt tears coming. “Tired of cryin,” she told herself, and held herself tight within.
Chapter 13
SILVERSMITH CARRIED DAB high in his arms. Like Dab be some chocolate candy, Tree thought, and the slightest heat gone melt him.
M’Vy came in the lobby of the hospital at Silversmith’s side. She looked too tall, too wide, Tree thought, in this unfamiliar place. Vy clutched her black suede pocketbook to her chest. It was as large as an overnight bag, it looked to Tree.
Swiftly Vy headed for a long counter with a sign suspended above it: Admittance.
They were some parade, Tree thought uneasily, coming on in order of importance. She was last, slouched low in her raincoat.
Wish I had me a scarf to cover my head, she thought. Her hair had started to frizz from the damp night outside.
I rode in a car, first time. Now I’m here, all in one same night. What come up next? Takin care of Dab is it.
Tree was scared, and tight as a drum inside.
Come in some double doors, nobody have to touch em to slide em open in front of you. They do that for everybody, she thought. And added up what had happened so far. You enter a large place where they’re seats and people sittin, talkin and lookin like they waiting.
She put these observations in a safe place so she could tell Dab everything when he got well.
Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush Page 12
