by Kia Corthron
“Let him out?”
“His bail was jus posted, open the cell.”
“He was resistin arrest!”
“That’s for the judge to decide, now unlock the goddamn door, Jesse.”
In a huff, Jesse does as he has been commanded and, with difficulty, Mr. Yancey steps out, aided by Eliot.
“This is not the way we usually do things here,” says Jesse.
And Eliot, staring at Mr. Yancey’s injuries, no longer able to fully restrain himself, mutters, “I bet some of it is.”
“What did you say?” Jesse snaps.
“Hey, I ain’t seen my lawyer!” chimes in the white prisoner. “I ain’t made no damn phone call!”
“Yes you did,” the sheriff says. “You jus don’t remember,” and the inmate seems utterly confused. Eliot sees now that he has no shoes, his socks torn and filthy.
“I ain’t no indigent! That damn sheriff tryin to make like I am, I ain’t drunk! You know what kinda day I had? My sister beat to bits by her bastard husband an the cops do nothin, I had to find her on the floor lookin like put through the shredder! I’m the one taken her to the hospital the cops do nothin, then I get fired for my trouble! I threw those goddamn shoes at Martin’s head, I’d do it again! Come back here! You listened to him, I got a story to tell! I got a story to tell!”
The next morning Eliot wakes early, before his hosts, before dawn, and walks outside to gaze at the twinkling remaining stars. In a few hours he would be leaving, heading back north to home. The whistle of a lonely train in the distance, and then the birds chirping, something he hasn’t heard since sunrises in Humble. As day breaks, he gets into the borrowed local Plymouth station wagon.
When he walks in, the jailhouse guard is talking to the sheriff. Eliot is surprised to see them both still here, then remembers the latter’s remark yesterday evening about a double shift. They turn to Eliot, confused and vaguely alarmed. He sets the shoebox on the desk, opening it so they can see its contents.
“I brought these in case some Negro needed them, but then—” and at that moment Eliot spies in the wastebasket a lady’s handkerchief, a delicate light fabric and intricate handmade needlepoint design, apparently something Mrs. Yancey dropped and the officers scrapped, and he remembers his mother making things like that once, she had wanted doilies to adorn the couch end tables in the living room and couldn’t afford the store-bought laces, and suddenly the events of the past nineteen days—the agony of losing his mother and the drama of the funeral arrangements and the complications of romance and the bittersweetness of Mr. Daughtery’s trial and the horror of out-of-hospital abortion and the vexation of another bout with Deep Southern hospitality—all seem to well up in Eliot at once. He tilts his head toward the cells, then turns and leaves quickly.
As he packs up the car at the Coatses’, the couple stands with him to bid their adieus before heading off to work. Martha is a laundress, Jeremiah a janitor at the bus station. He shakes Eliot’s hand, and asks when he’ll be back this way again. Eliot says he isn’t sure.
“Well you know you can always stay with us,” says Martha, giving him a few sandwiches to share with Beau on the road.
Truthfully, Eliot imagines he won’t be returning. He had asked the NAACP men if he should stay for today, the last day of voter registration, to try again. They said they would be there, but they imagined most of the Negroes would not be able to spare another day off work, presuming a repeat fiasco. And yet the activists did not seem defeated, preparing to continue their drive, if not for this election, then the next. In a couple of weeks it will be President Kennedy or President Nixon with or without the Southern black vote. (Of course with both pledging their support of civil rights, many segregationists are still holding out for independent President Harry F. Byrd and running mate Strom Thurmond.) Winston Douglas and Associates would certainly continue to support and defend the struggle in the Deep South, but they would not be back to Prayer Ridge, Alabama, for a while, if ever.
Leona, dressed for school, dashes out of the house to offer Eliot a farewell riddle. “What kinda coffee they serve on the Titanic?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maxwell House!” She runs back in, giggling her head off.
“I’ma pray for you an your daddy an your brother,” says Martha. “You know your mama’s always lookin down on you,” and she gives Eliot a warm hug and a kiss. Eliot gets in the car. He puts on his glasses and turns on the ignition, then Leona comes racing out in a panic. “I mean SANKA! SANKA!”
As he pulls off Eliot starts laughing and finds he can’t stop. He is reminded of how his mother could never get a joke right, and for the first time since her death he is able to enjoy her memory without the simultaneous undertow of pain. He is still chortling fifteen miles up the road as he pulls into Rosie’s yard and sees Beau waving at the window, and Eliot wonders if he’ll laugh the whole way to Indianapolis.
1970s
1
Shit, piss, puke, blood. If you can modify your perceptions so that bodily excretions are no longer repulsive but rather merely parts of a riddle to solve, then you have prepped yourself for significant remuneration: a free apartment.
Mrs. Garcia opens her door. A rotund woman in her sixties, she speaks quickly, then suddenly puts her hand over her mouth embarrassed, as if it were an insult to me that she has uttered words when I cannot hear them, or perhaps it’s just that she feels foolish. I smile politely, and she points me in the direction, too ashamed to accompany me on my first glimpse of the foulness in her backed-up toilet. Her mortification, common among my clients, is beneficial for me as I enjoy working alone, being left with my thoughts. I start with my plunger (though I presume this ultimately will be a job for the snake), and as I work I marvel on today’s milestone: the tenth anniversary of my arrival, this rural Alabama boy’s entry into New York City.
When I left Prayer Ridge on a Tuesday afternoon, I wanted to get as far away as possible, geographically and otherwise, and Manhattan seemed to be the place. The bus pulled into the Port Authority depot at 2:30 Thursday morning, November 24th, 1960, and I found a corner and there I set my suitcase, the container of all my worldly possessions, laying it flat and laying my torso on top of it, and I slept. I woke a few hours later, washed in the public restroom and, carrying my valise, started walking south down Eighth Avenue looking for work. I was stunned to see so many institutions closed in the city I had thought of as always awake, and then I remembered that it was Thanksgiving. In the 30s I strolled toward Seventh Avenue and Macy’s, captivated by the parade balloons. From there I had a clear view of the towering Empire State Building, conclusively bringing home to me where I was.
When the show was over, I ambled through the hordes, and on the window of a diner in the 20s spotted a sign: DISHWASHER WANTED. Being handicapped has its advantages. Employers believe that I’m lucky to get any job and therefore feel they are in their rights to pay me less than other workers, and underpaid work comes easily. I began immediately, breaking at seven for my Thanksgiving dinner, a toasted fried egg sandwich with pickle. The restaurant was open twenty-four hours but I was let go at eleven, and the cook pointed me to a nearby flophouse where I made my home the next several weeks.
One mid-afternoon while the waitress was on break, a customer walked in and I was asked to serve him. I touched my ear to indicate my deafness, handed the man a menu, and asked him to indicate what he wanted. Thereafter the man began coming regularly, weekdays at 3:10, and every day I served him. On a January Friday, two months after my arrival into the city, he handed me a note.
Window washing: More $!
I didn’t even know this man’s name and yet he offered me this kindness. Of course I know it now, Sheldon Wise, because we worked together for two years, high in the sky. His boss was at first reluctant to hire a deaf man but finally could think of no good reason why my disability would be a hindrance
and, again, he realized he could compensate off the books below the standard rate, which was still exponentially more than I earned dishwashing. The raise allowed me to move out of the flophouse and into a basement apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. One room and no windows, but I had my own private half-bath: sink and toilet. The work was good, perfect solitude fifty storeys above Fifth or Lex, seldom noticed by the office dwellers any more than had I been some decorative plant. This invisibility I much preferred over my conspicuous presence in the diner, where I was periodically subject to a sudden hostile jab in the back from a customer frustrated by my insolence to have ignored his party after he called me three times.
One day I was going through my mail, which had never been anything but the electric bill or advertisements, and discovered a hand-delivered note.
Not only is the living room of Apartment 3B easily twice as large as the entire space of my subterranean studio, but the bedroom and small kitchen are separate, and three rooms is an enormous upgrade. And a full bathroom with tub, and two large windows! Not much sunlight on the third of a six-floor walk-up, but if I’m awake early enough on bright mornings, for fifteen minutes the room is bathed in nature’s warmth.
At some point the window-washing became slow, and I was asked to start coming in only for the afternoons. The Metropolitan Museum is admission by donation so, at fifty cents a pop, I began spending my mornings gazing at masterpieces. I am perpetually enraptured by Mr. Miró, and for a period of time Le Carnaval d’Arlequin was on loan to the institution. On a Friday in January of ’63, as I soaked in its magnificence for the fourth consecutive day, I happened to glance at the security guard, a slight dark woman I had seen often, and who was now strangely smiling at me. And then she signed: Would you like a job?
I’m a private person. I am in no way ashamed of my deafness, but the fact that she had deduced it left me feeling exposed. A job?
Before I could respond she continued. You come here often, seem to appreciate the work. There are deaf groups who visit. You could lead the tour. Mary’s been doing it but she’s about to go away to graduate school.
I looked at her, then at the roomful of treasures, my thoughts racing: I have never studied art. I have never been to school. I’m ignorant.
During my first year in the city, I had taken the subway to visit a museum in Queens. In the borough streets, perplexing to even seasoned Manhattanites, I became lost, and by chance happened upon a group of deaf people. I asked for directions and they politely gave them, arguing about the best route. With the exception of a brief course years ago in Selma, until this point I had never signed with anyone but my hearing brother, and I found myself confused, not knowing which signer to look at, not understanding many of the signs nor the syntax, and I could see them frowning at my own manual information. Finally a woman asked if I were deaf or hearing. Though I don’t believe she intended to insult me, but rather to be more helpful by this clarification, I was nevertheless humiliated. I didn’t sign with another person until two months later when I came across an advertisement for adult education instruction in the sign language. I followed up my first class with more advanced courses, finally eliminating the thick hearing accent in my language, so that now I signed deaf rather than deaf-taught-by-his-self-taught-hearing-kid-brother, or so I was assured. (Years later I came to realize that the hearing also use the term “accent” with regard to variation in spoken language.) Still, the mortification of the Queens episode stayed with me, and I’ve since mostly avoided conversations with the deaf.
This, however, was more explanation than the museum guard needed so I kept it simple: I have never studied art.
You’re in here studying the work quite often, I’m going to make a guess you know enough. They need someone fast and available. It’s too late in the season now to recruit some college art student intern, which would be in line with the pay scale. Also free admission to the museum.
I hesitate.
You’ll meet Mary. She’ll help you, she won’t hire you unless she feels you can handle it. Are you interested?
I nod.
Be at the main entrance Wednesday at eleven for the tour. I’ll tell her to expect you. What’s your name?
Benjamin Evans.
I’ll tell Mary to expect you, Benjamin Evans. If there’s any confusion, just mention Perpétue sent you.
And then in reply to my unvoiced question: It’s Haitian.
And then in reply to my other unvoiced question: My sister’s deaf.
Why don’t you want the job?
She laughed. Museum tour guiding doesn’t pay enough for me.
I spent the next five days in anxiety, deciding whether I should go, but before I’d made a final decision, it was Wednesday. I bathed and dressed in my only suit, arriving at 10:40. I noticed a group of sign-speakers beginning to form, and at quarter till a young Oriental woman appeared. Over the next hour Mary Kim gave an overview—European paintings, Greek and Roman sculpture, ancient pieces from sub-Saharan Africa, China—followed by a Q&A. The tour was over at noon, and Mary told everyone they were free to continue exploring the museum on their own. Because the guide had in no way acknowledged me, I began to wonder if Perpétue may have forgotten to tell her, or if Mary was less inclined to hire someone with no art education. I was just turning away to leave when I was tapped on the shoulder.
Benjamin?
Yes. I wondered how she picked me out of the assemblage. Then she laughed: You are tall.
We began retracing our steps, her asking me to lead the tour. I was worried now that she would find me out to be an impostor, a home-schooled deafie, but to my great relief we chatted easily, and I felt at that moment, whether I was hired or not, I had passed: crossed over into the conversational deaf community. In celebrating this grand accomplishment secretly, I was not even aware at how impressed Mary was that I’d retained so much of her earlier lecture.
What draws you to that Rembrandt? She had noticed me glancing at a painting she hadn’t mentioned on the tour.
The chiaroscuro.
Chiaroscuro! And I remembered she had talked about light and dark but had not evoked the technical term in her whirlwind lecture. I felt embarrassed, as if I had been showing off.
I think I’m recalling something from an art book I read. I looked down a moment. I don’t have any formal art education.
If you did, you would have gotten an A-plus.
I was quite nervous at first, but the more I conversed with other deaf, the more agile I became in the language, and as for the content of my lectures, my tour groups seemed universally pleased. I learned that it’s customary for the educated deaf to ask where one was from, and when I would answer “Alabama,” they assumed that I was referring to the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind. They also seemed to take for granted that I had studied at Gallaudet College. I couldn’t lie, nor did I want them to feel they were being cheated in having a layperson for a guide, so to avoid awkwardness I did my best to keep the discussion on the art.
During one of these sessions a woman walked up to me. She was a hearing person, smiling. This was not unusual, as there are museum patrons who seem oddly moved by an open display of deaf art enthusiasts, some of these patrons walking up to congratulate me on my charitable work, only to become flustered and embarrassed to realize the tour guide is also deaf.
But this woman was not confused, and handed me a note.
I smile and write a reply, admitting that I hold no academic degrees.
I love my students! Younger children in the noon group, the teens at one. I use flash cards and mimeographs, but mostly hands-on handspeak, insofar as possible keeping vocalizations out of the classroom. Many people would regard my decision to quit my comparably lucrative window-washing job in order to teach a few classes as foolish. But my free rent allows me the luxury of part-time work (I still spend Saturdays dishwashing as a pecuniary supplement), and I am s
tunned and honored to be a fine arts museum guide and a language teacher. I, who never had any formal education!
Among the many features of my adopted city that were not available in Prayer Ridge: foreign films. I’m not a snob about Hollywood releases. On the contrary, I see the marquees and long to be in the cinematic know of my fellow citizens: Midnight Cowboy and Easy Rider and Hello, Dolly! and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? But a movie sans subtitles is utterly frustrating. Lip reading is not so easy a task as the hearing seem to presume. For the hard of hearing it is sometimes a useful auxiliary tool, but the most expert deaf lip-reader gleans thirty percent of the language at best, and with films there is the additional matter of voiceovers and off-camera dialogue. So I satisfy myself with either American films of a bygone era (I’m a huge Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton fan) or screenings from abroad: Battle of Algiers, Persona, The Bicycle Thief.
And once I happened upon a retrospective of the Moving Picture Committee of the National Association of the Deaf. At the advent of motion pictures, these silent shorts were shot completely in the sign language, no translations into English, by the deaf and for the deaf. I sat in an audience who fluttered their hands in applause. The pieces varied widely—the serious and the humorous. Significant was the advocacy for manual communication, threatened by the then-current movement for oralism: forcing the deaf to renounce hand-speaking and talk, something that could never be perfected without hearing and thus would always leave the deaf at a disadvantage. Especially striking was the 1913 “Preservation of the Sign Language” by George Veditz, a former NAD president and multilingual deaf man who was also an award-winning horticulturalist and newspaper editor, who launched a campaign against the Civil Service forcing Teddy Roosevelt to allow for the hiring of deaf in government jobs, and who once played the world chess champion. (It was a draw.)
Monday mornings, with most museums closed, I sit in the reading room of the main public library, the entrance guarded by the noble stone lions. If Abigail the librarian is on shift, she always smiles and often holds out a book she thinks may be of interest to me. One afternoon in 1967, my seventh year in New York and fifth as a night super, she handed me a slim hardback—Helen Keller: Her Socialist Years.
