Buddy

by M. H. Herlong

  Then it’s raining. It ain’t like rain in New Orleans. In New Orleans when it rains, it pours—just like it says on the salt box. It fills up the street sometimes, it rains so much. But it don’t hardly ever rain all day long. Mostly it rains in the afternoon. It pours for a while, then it clears up, and before you know it, the sun comes out again. In Mississippi, it rains all day long just a little bit. I’m sitting there in that teeny tiny apartment, can’t go outside but long enough to let Rover do his business, and I’m thinking how come it can’t just come down all at once and get it over with.

  Then it’s cold. It gets cold in New Orleans, too, but it’s only cold for, say, one day. Then it warms up again. Here it’s cold for days and days. When school starts up again, Mama says we’ve got to have coats and gloves. She gets Tanya a coat with what looks like a fur collar. She gets her some gloves with three little balls like a flower stuck on the back of the hand part. Tanya wears that coat and those gloves every day like she’s a princess. Mama says what kind of coat do I want and I say I don’t want a coat. What am I doing living in a place where I need a coat? Mama says I’m acting like a fool. She says I better straighten up. I say make me, and she purses up her mouth like she’s sucking a lemon.

  I lay on the sofa and look at the rain and close my eyes. I try my flying trick again but there ain’t nowhere to go. Everything I go looking for is gone. Our house. My bicycle. My friends. My dog. I can’t pretend I’m sitting at the table drawing pictures with Jamilla or sitting in the shed feeding dog biscuits to Buddy. I can’t pretend Buddy’s slobbering over his biscuits and his whole body’s jerking he’s so excited and Granpa T is saying, “Why do you love that ugly, old dog so much?” and Mama’s calling me into the house to bag pralines and it’s warm outside and the sky is blue and down the street kids are playing and there’s music.

  I can’t pretend because it ain’t there no more. Ain’t none of it there no more. When I try my flying trick, I can’t even get off the ground.

  Then it gets to be Valentine’s Day. Tanya and Mama make pralines for everybody in Tanya’s class. They spend all day Saturday. They ain’t got the little bags anymore but Mama wraps each one in cellophane and ties it with a red ribbon. Tanya’s cutting hearts out of paper and writing names on them with a red marker. She can’t make her S’s worth anything. They’re mostly backward and that’s bad because it looks like almost everybody in her class has an S in their name—Sally, Samantha, Sarah, Susan. Mama says do I want some for my class and I just say, “Hmph.”

  “Well, then take that dog outside,” Mama says, “before he drives me crazy.”

  I tell Rover to drop his doll and he must think I’m telling him to hide it. I finally catch him up under the bed and get a leash on him and out we go.

  There ain’t nowhere to walk except up and down that six-lane highway but Rover thinks that’s the best place in the world. He’s snuffling along with his nose glued to the ground and then all a sudden he’s heading off toward somebody’s patch of grass to dig a little hole. I yank him off that and then he starts trotting down the sidewalk pulling me one way and then the other, barking at birds and barking at cars. I’m thinking it’s a good thing he ain’t no bigger than a puppy because if he was any bigger, he’d drag me right into the street. When I’ve had all I can take, we head on back to the apartment and there’s Mama with a whole extra box of pralines and a big old grin on her face saying, “We made you some anyway,” and I’m supposed to be happy about it.

  The next day at school, Mrs. Watson gives everybody in the class a teensy little box of Valentine candy. Some of the girls give her a box back but I leave those pralines in my book bag. Mrs. Watson does a speech on who St. Valentine is and why we’ve got this day and how it’s all about love. Then she leaves off teaching for a little while so we can eat the candy. The boys are all rolling their eyes. They’re saying to each other that’s the stupidest thing they’ve ever heard. One brother says, “If I’m going to give a girl something it ain’t going to be candy,” and everybody laughs. Even me.

  After our party Mrs. Watson says we’re going to learn to write letters. She goes on and on about what to write where. Then she says we’re going to practice. She says to think of somebody we ain’t talked to in a long time. We can write a letter to that person and Mrs. Watson will put in the mail for us.

  I know exactly who I’m going to write. I pick up my pencil and I get going. “Dear Jamilla,” I write, “Why haven’t you answered my letters?” Then I tell her all about everything. It takes me three pages of writing front and back. I don’t even stop to look up. At the end I do just like Mrs. Watson says and I write, “Sincerely, Li’l T.” That looks stupid, though, so I erase it and change it to “Love, Li’l T.” But that ain’t right neither. So I erase it one more time and just write “Li’l T.” That seems like it ought to be enough. I write all the address I can remember on the envelope and hand it in to Mrs. Watson. Then I give Mrs. Watson the whole box of pralines to take home for herself.

  Two weeks after that Mrs. Watson calls me up to her desk at lunch. She’s holding that letter in her hand. She gives it back to me.

  It has two words stamped on the front. “Insufficient Address.”

  “Chicago is a big city,” she’s saying. “You need more than just the street. You need the house number, too.”

  “I don’t know it,” I say.

  “Do you have it written down at home?”

  “All that stuff’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  I shrug. “Washed away.”

  “Don’t you know her phone number?”

  I shake my head.

  “Does she know yours?”

  “She don’t know where we’re living now.”

  Mrs. Watson and I just stare at the letter. It looks all dirty now, not clean and white like when I sent it off.

  “I guess—” I stop talking and shrug. “I guess there ain’t no way to send it then.”

  She shakes her head. “But keep it,” she says.

  “I don’t want it,” I say, and start tearing it in half.

  “Don’t do that, Tyrone. It’s a beautiful letter.”

  “She’s gone,” I say. “Granpa T says comes a time—”

  I rip that letter into so many pieces it looks like a pile of confetti laying in the bottom of the trash can. Mrs. Watson’s watching me the whole time. Then I walk outside and stand in the cold and rain all by myself. Right before the bell rings, that boy Jerome comes up to me and looks me over.

  “What’re you doing standing here all by yourself?” he says.

  “Thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Stuff.”

  He hikes up his pants a little and looks me over again. “Some of us are getting together after school. There’s a place behind the Winn-Dixie. We’ve got some weed. You want to come?”

  I don’t turn my head to look at him. I keep my eyes on the jungle gym. There’s a girl hanging upside down and laughing.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “How come?”

  “Got work.”

  He nods. “Next time maybe.”

  I nod back and he walks away.

  27

  The next time Mrs. Watson calls me up to her desk it ain’t about a letter. This time, she asks real quiet why I ain’t done my homework. I shrug my shoulders and look out the window. She says I was doing so good at the first of the year and now I ain’t. She says is anything troubling me, and I say, “No, ma’am.” She says, “Well, go finish this homework now. You’ll need this study sheet for the test. I’ll look over it after lunch.”

  I sit back down at my desk. “What is the capital of Peru?” the question says. “Who was the first explorer to cross the Andes?” “List the three main exports of Brazil.” I put my head down on my desk. I fall asleep. When I
wake up, there’s a wet spot on the paper and I’ve missed my lunch.

  The day before Mardi Gras, Mama leaves out to buy a King Cake the minute I come home from school.

  “You watch Tanya and Terrell,” she says, “and I’ll go find us a King Cake. We might as well get whatever Mardi Gras we can get.”

  Tanya says she wants chocolate cream, and I say I want plain, and Mama says we don’t get to choose. She says she’ll just get what she can get, and we better be happy.

  But ain’t nobody in that town sells King Cake. She’s gone a long time, and when she comes back empty-handed, we can’t believe it.

  We’re sitting at the table that night and Daddy’s saying what made Mama think they’ve got King Cake in a place like this, and Mama says she hasn’t ever been anywhere in her life where they don’t have King Cake.

  And Daddy says, “That’s because you ain’t never been out of New Orleans.”

  And Mama says, “Well, where all have you been, Mr. World Traveler?”

  And Daddy says, “You forgot I was in the service. I’ve been all kinds of places.”

  And Mama says, “So I guess you’re smarter than everybody else sitting at this table?”

  And Daddy starts to say something back, and then he stops.

  Everybody at the table gets real quiet.

  I look at Daddy and I see he’s looking at Mama.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he says to her. “We’re going to make it.”

  Mama nods her head a little bit and pinches up her lips, and then she says, “It’s not about the cake.” She turns her head and looks at me. “It’s about Li’l T.”

  All the eyes swivel around to look at me.

  “What about Li’l T?” Daddy says, and I know he’s thinking he ain’t got a stick in this apartment.

  “I was going to wait until after we ate,” Mama says, “but I might as well go ahead now.” She looks toward the window for a second then starts up again. “I didn’t go out just to buy King Cake. I went by Li’l T’s school, too.”

  She looks back at me. “They called me this afternoon,” she says. She ain’t taking her eyes off me. Ain’t none of them taking their eyes off me. “They say he hasn’t been at school today. They say he’s getting Fs.”

  I feel like I’m sitting in a fire. I feel like the end of the world has come.

  “Is that true, son?” Daddy says.

  I look down at my hands resting on top of my napkin. My fingers are all twisted in a knot. I can’t hardly move but I’m just barely able to nod my head.

  “Look at me,” Daddy says.

  I manage to raise up my head and look at his shirt.

  “Look me in the eye.”

  I lift up my eyes and there’s his face. There are his eyes looking straight at me.

  “Where did you go?” he says.

  “The mall,” I say.

  “What did you do at the mall?”

  “Walk. Sit.”

  “Who were you with?”

  “Nobody.”

  He’s looking at me hard. His eyes are all squinched up. Tanya’s eyes are big as saucers. Baby Terrell picks up his spoon and throws it on the floor. Mama bends down and picks it up and wipes it off.

  “Is that the truth?” Daddy says.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go to your room. The rest of us are going to finish eating.”

  I stand up. My chair makes a noise. I start to push it back to the table and then I give up. I go in my room and I shut my door. I lay down on my bed, and I can’t believe it. I start to cry. I cry and cry and cry and cry. I stop for a while and then I start up again. I cry with my pillow on my head and without it. I curl up in a ball and then I flop around like one of Tanya’s cloth dolls. I cry quiet and I cry loud.

  And all that time, nobody comes in the room. Not even Tanya. When I’m finally done, it’s way past bedtime and I need to go to the bathroom. The whole apartment is quiet. I open my door and it don’t squeak a bit. I do my business and when I’m back in the living room again, I nearly jump out of my skin. There’s Granpa T, stretched out on the sofa and looking straight at me. My heart stops.

  He sits up, and then my heart starts beating again because I see it ain’t Granpa T at all. It’s Daddy.

  “Son,” he says. “Sit down.”

  That dog Rover ain’t in his wire cage. He’s all curled up at Daddy’s feet. When I sit down, he lifts up his head and his tail goes whap, whap.

  “What do you want in life, son?” Daddy says.

  I don’t answer.

  “Whatever it is, skipping school ain’t the way to get it.”

  I still don’t say nothing.

  “Tomorrow I’m taking you to school. I’m going to walk with you to see the principal. I’m going to walk with you to see your teacher. But I ain’t always going to be around to take those hard walks with you. This is just practice for when you have to do it by yourself.”

  He waits for me to say something but I ain’t got nothing to say.

  “I’m going to miss some work and it’s going to cost us some money. So you’ve got to pay us back.”

  I raise up my head and look at him.

  “I’m going to New Orleans this weekend. I’ve decided I’m going to start mucking out the house. Mama don’t like it, but I’ve decided I’m going to do it. And you’re going to help me. All day Saturday. On Sunday, you’re going to sit in this apartment and you’re going to study. You can’t make up those tests but you can learn what was on them.

  “Every time I go to New Orleans from now on, you’re coming and you’re working. You’re working hard and you’re working for free. Every Sunday from now on, you’re studying and you’re studying hard.

  “Ain’t no F going to come through the door of my house. Ain’t no ‘skipping school’ going to sit at my table.”

  I’m shivering in the cool, but I don’t move.

  “You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You got anything you need to tell me, son?”

  I’m quiet for a little while. Then I find my voice. “Some of the brothers are smoking weed behind the Winn-Dixie after school. They asked me to come. But I ain’t done that, Daddy. And I won’t. I promise.”

  I can tell Daddy’s looking hard at me in the dark. “Can I trust you, son?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nods. “Anything else?”

  “When I saw you laying on the sofa, I thought you were Granpa T.” I can’t believe it. My voice gets all bumpy when I say that.

  Daddy don’t say nothing for a while. Then he sucks in a deep breath. “Go on to bed,” he says. “It’s cold.”

  I stand up. Rover hops off the sofa, too.

  Daddy watches me walk to the door of the bedroom. When I push it open, Rover zips inside and jumps up on my bed. I don’t push him off. I lay down beside him. I hear Daddy’s voice talking to Mama in the other room. I hear Rover snuffling his nose once or twice.

  I put my hand on his back and I go to sleep.

  28

  That first day we go back to New Orleans, Daddy works me so hard I think he’s going to kill me. We’re dragging all the wet, black stuff out of the house and piling it up by the street. We can’t hardly carry the sofa between us, but somehow we manage. We stand in Granpa T’s room for about an hour staring at the refrigerator laying facedown on the floor and trying to figure out how to move it. Daddy’s afraid to lift it up because whatever is in it will fall out. But we can’t just leave it laying there forever. Finally we give up and go back to work in the living room on the stuff we know how to do—the tables and chairs and dishes and clothes and pictures and curtains and books. By the end of the day, there’s a heap of stuff as tall as me stretching all the wa
y across the sidewalk in front of our house.

  We’re standing on the street looking at that pile. We’re filthy from our heads to our feet. Daddy’s grinning about as big as I’ve seen since August. “We started,” he says. “I guess we can finish.”

  I ain’t so sure but I don’t say nothing. When we get home, I just open my book bag and start studying.

  The next Saturday, we clean out Granpa T’s room except for the refrigerator. I’m worrying it’s going to be sad to do, but it ain’t. We can’t even tell all that stuff was ever his. I collect up what pictures are still hanging on the wall, except they ain’t pictures anymore. They’re just frames with glass in them and streaky, colored paper behind. The hanging rod in his closet broke and all his shirts and suits are wadded together in a heap on the floor on top of his old shoes. That old mattress weighs a ton, being full of water. The drawers in the bureau are stuck shut so we just haul the whole thing out at once.

  We go back inside and stand in Granpa T’s room just looking. It’s so quiet in New Orleans now that when we ain’t making noise ourselves my ears feel like they fill up with silence, like there ain’t no such thing as sound.

  Then Daddy sucks in a deep breath. “Well,” he says, “at least we still got some pictures of your grandmama.”

  I don’t say nothing because there really ain’t nothing to say.

  The next weekend we have a bunch of helpers. We wrap the refrigerator around and around with duct tape and set it on the street. One of the helpers thinks he’s so funny. He gets a marker out of his truck and writes all over the refrigerator, FREE KATRINA GUMBO INSIDE! SPECIAL RECIPE! Everybody stands around and laughs for a little bit. Then we go inside and drag out the washer and dryer, still sloshing with water inside them.

  I’m carrying a load of rotten towels to the street when along comes this big old truck. It’s got a claw arm attached behind the cab. It pulls up in front of our house and that claw arm reaches out and latches on to the refrigerator. It lifts it up like it’s a toy, turns it a little this way and a little that way, and sets it down in the back of that truck with about fifteen other refrigerators all lined up like they’re on sale, except they’re not. And then off it goes, looking for another dead refrigerator.