by Pearl Cleage
He hesitated long enough for me to want to take back the question, but I didn’t.
“Go ahead.” He said it almost like a challenge.
“What do you do in real life?” I said.
He ran his hands over his face, brushed a piece of imaginary lint off his blue lapel, and looked back at me. “In real life, I used to be a lawyer. I had a wife and a daughter and a house and an SUV. Then I started smoking crack and in two years, I smoked it all away. Every bit of it.”
Abbie was walking Joyce Ann through the garden, pointing out the slim green shoots that were going to grow up to be seven-foot-tall sunflowers.
“My wife left me and took my daughter and when my mother put me out, I started staying up here with the other crackheads. I knew they were breaking into people’s houses because they always had stuff to sell, but I wasn’t doing that yet. I was doing day labor work, hanging with the Mexicans because I could speak a little Spanish, but then, one night, I heard them talking about how they were going to rob this old lady’s house on Sunday while she was at church, and I realized they were talking about my mother. That’s when I knew I had gone down as far as I needed to go.”
Betty and her friends were talking to Zora and laughing into her camera like they weren’t even aware of it. Victor looked over at them and then back to me.
“So I told them if anything happened to my mother’s house I would slit their throats.” He took a deep breath as if waiting for my permission to continue.
“Go on.”
“They must have believed me because they stopped coming up here and everybody else did, too. I stayed around here to make sure and I got myself off that shit one day at a time. I would cross off every day that passed and then the next one and the next one. After a while, I didn’t want it anymore, but my old life was gone and I knew it wasn’t coming back, even if I wanted it to. So I just kept working with the Mexicans and waited to see what would happen next. That’s when you got here.”
He smiled at me then and I smiled back. That story is the reason terms like “the homeless” don’t mean anything. All the stuff that ends up with somebody on the street happens one person at a time.
“You weren’t much of a welcoming committee.”
“At first I thought you weren’t serious,” he said. “I thought it was probably just a bunch of bullshit.”
Zora’s almost-a-beau had just arrived, also dressed in white and carrying a single yellow rose. She smiled and turned the camera in his direction. He waved and the old ladies rolled their eyes at Zora and nodded their approval.
“What do you think now?”
He looked at me and grinned. “Well, working with you got my mom to give me one of my old suits back, so I’d say, so far, so good.”
“Good enough,” I said, laughing and turning to ask Abbie when we were going to get this show on the road. Victor’s story made me want to hug him, but I knew better. We weren’t quite there yet, but so far, so good.
SIXTY-FOUR
The ceremony was nothing like I had been afraid it would be. It was more like what Abbie did at the peace demonstration. She gave a little informative statement and then she invited everybody to do the same. It was just our usual crew, plus Betty and company and Peachy, who wasn’t going to miss it even if he did have to close the restaurant for two days, and Zora’s friend, who seemed like a genuinely nice guy.
Abbie didn’t need a mike in such a small space so we all sort of gathered around the edges of the garden and grinned at one another, suddenly shy in the face of our accomplishments and our hopes.
“Good morning,” Abbie said, and we all answered her like good little children.
“Good morning.”
“Great morning,” said Peachy, grinning at Abbie.
“Yes,” Abbie said. “It is a great morning because we are here to dedicate a garden for peace, right here on the corner of Martin Luther King Drive and Wiley Street.”
“Amen,” said Betty Causey, and her friends nodded their heads. “Amen.”
“We also dedicate this first effort to the mother of Josephine Evans, Doris Evans, who first looked at this yard, imagined a garden, and then made one.”
“Amen,” said Peachy, with a wink and a nod in my direction.
“Amen,” said Victor, obviously feeling ministerial in his blue suit.
“Now I’m not here to make a speech,” Abbie said, like she had at the park. “I just want to thank Josephine for what she’s doing on this corner.”
“What we’re doing,” I said.
Abbie smiled. “That’s right. Because this isn’t just a little piece of garden, or a little patch of dirt that doesn’t mean anything to anybody. This garden is part of a street and this street is part of a community where Miss Betty can take an evening stroll with Victor and Miss Thelma can braid her grandbaby’s hair on the front porch and me and Peachy can sit on Jo’s back steps and eat some watermelon he brought from the island while Zora tells us what the rest of the century’s going to look like and Joyce Ann puts her handprint on every door she can find.”
Hearing her name, Joyce Ann grinned at Abbie. “For good luck,” she whispered loudly in case Abbie had forgotten.
“Yes, baby, for good luck and good friends and the blessings of home,” Abbie said. “Because this garden is only the first one. There should be gardens like this on every street and boulevard and byway in this country that carries the name of Martin Luther King, Jr., because we owe him that much.”
She stopped and looked at all of us. I could see that she was getting a little emotional.
“Take your time, baby,” Peachy said. “Tell the truth to the people.”
Abbie took a deep breath. “Every time somebody puts in a garden, it casts a vote for peace. It reaffirms a faith in a future where things can grow and bloom and remind us of who we really are and who we can be.” She paused again and then grinned at Zora’s camera. “Okay. That’s enough talking. This is garden number one. Where is number two?”
SIXTY-FIVE
Driving home later, Zora seemed a little distracted.
“I thought that went well,” I said. “Didn’t you?”
“I thought it went great. I just hope whoever buys this place knows how to take care of a garden.”
“Me too.”
“Maybe they’ll hire Victor to do it.”
“Maybe.”
She turned off MLK onto Ashby Street and headed toward West End. There was a narrow, trash-strewn vacant lot across from the McDonald’s Express. I wondered how long it would take Abbie to start making inquiries about its ownership. She was the one who had told me Blue Hamilton wasn’t interested in expanding his operation, but if he wasn’t careful, by the time he got back from Trinidad, Abbie would have strung together an archipelago of new gardens, connecting West End to the newly forming Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Garden District.
“Couldn’t we put that in the contract?” Zora said. “That they have to keep him on as the gardener?”
“I don’t think you can require that kind of stuff unless you’re selling one of those English country manors where the whole staff of loyal servants comes with it.”
Victor wasn’t exactly like those everything-by-the-book butlers that Anthony Hopkins can play better than any actor alive, but I knew what she was getting at. I think that was the first time we realized we were going to miss this place once we cashed in and headed back out into the world. Neither one of us said it out loud, but we both knew it. We just didn’t know what to do about it. Not yet, anyway.
“I guess you’re right,” she said. “It’s just pretty amazing to watch it grow, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“People love the scenes where you and Abbie are in the garden with Louie talking about the herbs.”
That startled me. I didn’t remember Zora videotaping any of that extended conversation about whether we should grow basil and sage or add some rosemary and maybe a half a row of hot peppers. Mostly they t
alked and I listened and wandered up and down the rows where Victor and Abbie had already planted the sunflowers and the roses and a variety of tomatoes whose names sometimes sounded a little like porn star monikers to me: Juicy Jumbos, Sweet Reds, Big Beefy.
Of course, I didn’t say that to Abbie in front of Louie. If you’re not looking for any sexual involvement, it’s usually better not to introduce the topic of pornography into the proceedings. Good thing I didn’t. Zora, and her stealth camera would have captured it for all the world to see and while my Amsterdam audience is pretty much unshockable, I didn’t want to offend any potential peace gardeners.
“Louie said as soon as there’s enough of anything to cook it or add it to something, he will make a big pot of something to celebrate,” she said.
I laughed. “Those plants aren’t hardly out of the ground yet. It’s going to be a while.”
“Worth the wait,” she said, turning onto our quiet street.
The thing was we both knew there was no chance we were leaving until those sunflowers came up. We needed what the Juicy Jumbo crowd calls “the money shot.” The one that makes your investment of time and feeling worth the wait. Once the flowers were in bloom, our tomatoes were big enough to eat, and Louie’s herbs and peppers were ready to grace his gumbo, then we’d get the footage we needed to generate the sale we were looking for. Until then, Victor wasn’t going anywhere, and neither were we.
SIXTY-SIX
The next day at the grocery store, a woman looked up from the seafood counter and asked me if I didn’t have a house on Martin Luther King. When I said I did, she hugged me like we were long-lost pals.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “I watch your videos all the time.” As if to prove it, she stepped back and adopted a more serious tone. “Rescue on MLK: One Woman’s Story. That’s it, right?”
“That’s it,” I said. “I’m glad you like it.”
“Like it? We love it! We look at it every day before we do a lick of work. My boss tried to get mad, now we got her watching it, too.”
I laughed with her. Zora kept trying to tell me how popular the story was with people, and I was beginning to think she was right. I gave the woman four autographs: one for her, one for each of her friends, and one for the boss.
“This should get me a raise,” she said, posing beside me for a shot on her cellphone before she hugged me again and moved off down the produce aisle.
The other people in the store were giving me sidelong glances, trying to figure out who I was that I had provoked such a reaction. I smiled at them, but offered no explanation. Now this was more like it. This was what I was used to. Recognition and approval. I could learn to live with this. The funny thing was, even though I was still counting on Howard to pave the way back to Amsterdam, it was becoming less and less urgent that things work out there. I was feeling more at home here every day. Maybe Abbie was right about everybody being rooted somewhere.
When I got home and told Zora what had happened, she grinned at me. “I told you, didn’t I? You’re a star, Mafeenie. I wish you’d let me show you the footage.”
“Wait until we’re done,” I said. “Once we’ve sold the house and signed off the airwaves, you can show me everything.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Mafeenie?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t say ‘airwaves.’”
SIXTY-SEVEN
Louie had been gone almost a week and a part of my brain was spending lots of time trying to imagine where he was and what he was doing. Abbie said Peachy hadn’t heard from him either, but she wasn’t worried.
“I think he went to say his goodbyes,” she said when I asked her why. “That always takes more time than you think it will.”
Peachy was here for the weekend and Abbie was coming by to pick me up for dinner at a new place they wanted to try. I had just zipped up my dress and chosen a pair of turquoise earrings a poet friend of mine made for me as part of his second career as a jewelry designer when the doorbell rang. I glanced at the clock and smiled to myself. Twenty minutes early. They must be starved. I grabbed my blue shawl and headed downstairs. Black was still my mainstay, but hanging around Abbie sometimes made black seem so unnecessary.
When I opened the door, I was ready to start signifying about island Negroes who can’t tell time without a tide clock, but it was Louie. He had on a white shirt, as always, but no tie, brown pants, and a sport coat. He was carrying a small plastic leftover container and looking apologetic.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “This is kind of spur of the moment, I guess. I should have called you, but I don’t have the number with me and I haven’t called it enough to remember it, so…here I am.”
“Welcome back,” I said, relieved that he didn’t look any the worse for wear. His eyes didn’t look as sad as I remembered, or was that wishful thinking?
“Come in, come in,” I said. “When did you get back?”
“Just this minute,” he said. “I was on my way back to my place, but I wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me for what?” I said, surprised.
“For helping me say goodbye.”
He didn’t know he was quoting Abbie exactly, but I did. I sat down on the couch. He took a chair and gently put the plastic container down on the coffee table. I didn’t ask him what it was. When the story required it, he would tell me.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “Is that what you were doing?”
He nodded. “Not just to Catfish, he was ready to go, but to all the stuff I had down there that made it home. To all the stuff I kept thinking in the back of my mind that I didn’t have to let go because it was all coming back, sooner or later, just like it was before.” His hands gently squared up the container like it hadn’t been placed perfectly before him the first time. “My whole family living on the same street or just around the corner from each other. Living upstairs from my place and watching people start lining up every night before we even open because they know whatever I’m cooking is the best they ever had. Mardi Gras…”
He looked at me and sort of shook his head and smiled a little. “We had some good times, me and Catfish and Eddie and Arno. Now all of them are gone but me, and I don’t care what anybody says, they’d be alive today if everything had stayed the way it was before the water wiped it all away one time for good.”
He shrugged and sat back. “But it didn’t stay that way. All that stuff that used to mean home to me isn’t even there anymore. I went over to where my house used to be, my restaurant, my neighbors, the house I was born in, and I got out of that rented Chevrolet, and I stood there trying to see it like it used to be, but I couldn’t. It was what it was, and it is what it is, and that’s when I started thinking about your place.”
That wasn’t what I was expecting. He picked up the plastic container again and balanced it on his knee. “The duplex?”
He nodded. “I started thinking about the garden we’re putting in over there and about how nice it’s going to be once you get it all fixed up the way you want it. About how much I’m looking forward to picking those herbs and making us all a pot of something we can eat together.”
For Louie, all the significant passages are marked by the cooking and eating of favorite dishes in the company of people you love. “We’re already looking forward to it,” I said.
“Me too,” he said. “That’s how I realized I wasn’t thinking about what was anymore. I was thinking about what was next. I was looking at my past, but I was thinking about my future.”
He stopped and looked down, a little embarrassed at having his feelings so close to the surface where I might be able to see them. “I’m not saying it right.”
“You’re saying it just fine.”
He looked up to see if I meant it. Of course I did.
“What I mean is, I’m never gonna let New Orleans go, it’s in me. In here.” He tapped his heart like Abbie had done to show me where she lived. “But I can’t keep
one foot there and one foot wherever I happen to be standing.”
What he was saying made perfect sense to me. I’d been straddling my old life and this new one ever since I got here.
“No,” I said, “you can’t. That never works.”
“You got that right,” he said. “So now I need to ask you a favor.”
“Of course.”
That’s when he popped the top on the plastic container and extended it lovingly like a forkful of key lime pie to share with a dining partner who ordered the flan.
“Dirt?” I said, not so much disappointed as intrigued.
He nodded. “I took it up from where my garden used to be.” He reached in and sifted a handful like cornmeal before you put the eggs and the buttermilk in and stir gently. “It was a good-size plot, too, but I don’t see myself growing there again anytime soon, so…”
He picked up another handful of dirt and let it fall through his fingers. I was surprised at how black and rich it looked. He didn’t have to say any more. I knew exactly what he wanted. I was big on rituals and this was a perfect opportunity for one.
“Do you want me to scatter the dirt in our new garden?”
When he looked up at me, his eyes were still sad, but they were peaceful. “If it’s okay with you, and with Abbie, I surely would.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
“And you don’t have to worry,” he said quickly. “I had it tested, you know, because of all the bad water standing around, but it’s clean. They even irradiated it just to be sure.”
“I think that would be wonderful,” I said. “It sort of ties everything together.”
“Good,” he said, popping the cover back into place and sliding the New Orleans dirt over to me. “That’s real good. Will you hold on to this until I have a chance to talk to Abbie about it?”
As soon as he said her name, the bell rang and I could hear laughter on the porch.
“Here’s your chance,” I said. “That’s her and Peachy right now.”
