Hard Luck And Trouble

by Gammy L. Singer

  Dust angels rose up to heaven as Doris Cawley attacked the nave and aisles of the Temple of God sanctuary with broom and dust rag. Sister Cawley was no slacker. She was pissed at the interruption, but she told me that, oh yes, indeed, she was acquainted with the McKinley sisters. Grew up with them. And oh yes, Lord, that was one wild child. She obviously regretted the last remark, because God-loving Christian that she was, she fluttered one hand in the air and tried to erase it.

  I eased her embarrassment and told her it was okay—what she thought of my mother was none of my business.

  She looked at me as if I had lost a quarter’s worth of sense and said, “I liked your mother.”

  Now I was confused, but when I asked for an explanation she jabbered at me about how sisters certainly were a cross to bear, and she went on and on and on about hers. She blamed Hock’s downfall on men and liquor. Her sister’s name was Dorothea. Can you believe it? Hocks? A Dorothea?

  Then Cawley’s eyes brimmed over with tears and in a sudden move, she grabbed both my hands and dropped like a lead shot to the floor. Well, shit, when she went, I went too—the woman was no Tootsie Pop. Both of us landed on our knees. She commenced to pray long and loud for two sisters who were, in her words, “lost to the world.”

  Since it didn’t make any sense to get on the bad side of God, I stayed down for a respectful amount of time, but wouldn’t you know, Sister Cawley went into overdrive and shouts of Praise God, Hallelujah, and Lawd, Lawd, Lawd rang around the church walls. It didn’t take no Western Union telegram for me to get the message. I knew it was getting dangerous, so I pried myself loose from Sister Ton of Fun and split, stepping fast.

  At the door I turned to see her still on her knees, praying. I intoned in response to her pleas, “God bless us, everyone.”

  I read that somewhere.

  A note hung from the door of my office as I entered my building. What now? I backed up a few steps and ripped the note from the door. Wilbur. Good news—he wrote that Josie was coming home and he and Patty were on their way to Harlem Hospital to pick her up.

  Just time enough. I checked my watch against the time on the note, charged out of the brownstone, and rocketed off to the hospital. When I banged through the lobby entrance, the group had just exited the elevator.

  Josie looked beat, poor kid, but giggles erupted from her heart-shaped face when she saw me, and I smiled back. A week ago Patty had informed me about Josie’s diagnosis. It was serious, sickle-cell anemia—a disease that afflicted black people and you can bet on it being a life sentence. The kid was going to have it rough.

  I reached forward to lighten their load, and grabbed flowers, a small suitcase, a teddy bear, and the doll I had given Josie.

  The selling point for the doll was that it wet itself. Would you believe it? No sooner did I have it in my arms than the doll trickled water. I scooted backward, but it was too late—a stream of liquid trailed down my leg.

  Well, good to see I got my money’s worth. Oh yeah, and the thing giggled too. It was doing that now. Yeah, the doll, Josie, Patty, and Wilbur doubled over—a regular laugh-fest, at my expense. Tell you the truth, I laughed some too.

  Then I knelt by Josie’s wheelchair and told her I was glad she was coming home. She grabbed my finger, and I waggled her hand back and forth.

  Outside, the four of us piled into Stepchild, and for a moment, my own pain took a back seat and I let joy ride up front with me. We headed in the direction of Herb’s Sweet Shop on 135th Street. Ice cream cones all around.

  Chapter 21

  Patty and Josie settled in, and I left Wilbur banging pots in Patty’s kitchen. Smells of meat sizzling with garlic and onions wound down the stairs behind me as I descended the steps. My stomach talked to me, but I chose not to answer. At the bottom step, the smell of frying fish tangoed up from the basement apartment and past my nose. I ignored the hunger pangs and entered the office.

  Behind the tenants’ closed doors the living went on. A television blared suddenly, then quieted. Restless, I paced the floor of my office. When the front door slammed and the staircase creaked, I knew Winnie was home. A tap-thump, tap-thump coming down the staircase meant Zeke was leaving. I met him in the hallway, anger in check.

  “Two days until the first,” I reminded him. “You working on the rent?”

  Zeke waved his cane in front of my face. “Call yourself lucky if you’re alive by the first.”

  He tried to pass me, but I blocked his way. “You don’t get it. You ain’t on my 1040, Zeke. Understand? You ain’t my dependent. If you don’t pay the rent, I’m gonna have to put your butt out. And I really don’t want to have to do that. Where’s those papers you’ve been talking about?”

  Zeke shot me a look that would have melted steel. I stepped away from him, the heat of his hatred too hot to handle. “Montcrieff, him promise me—” he said.

  “Look, man, if there was something between you and my old man, I ain’t had nothing to do with it. Whatever’s rubbing you the wrong way, you better get over it, that’s all I got to say.”

  “What you do in this life to deserve this house, eh? What back you break? That’s all you got to say? Out of my way.” Zeke swatted his cane at me. I jumped back, and Zeke hotfooted it to the door. In two steps I caught up to him and held his arm. Zeke’s body shook with emotion. “Your father—a viper,” he said. His lips trembled, his eyes grew hard, and he snarled, “And you, you just like him. How you like that?”

  That shocked me and I froze. To be compared to Montcrieff? I released my hold on the old man and stepped back. Something moved behind Zeke’s eyes, then, in a flash, he was out the door. Zeke was one spooky dude.

  Was he trying to say what I had thought all along? That Montcrieff was responsible for my mother’s death? It was clear he hated Montcrieff. What was incredible was how much the man hated me. Was he expecting me to be the same poison as my father?

  I entered the office and poured myself a drink. Maybe I was going at this the wrong way. Each encounter with Zeke rocked me off my socks—and fueled tough questions. I sat unmoving for a while, unable to come up with answers. For the good it did, I could have spent the time picking lint out of my navel.

  Friends forever, hmph. When did their friendship disintegrate and why? I needed to ask Zeke straight out about my father—and my mother, too. Which reminded me ... I pulled my mother’s wedding photo from my shirt pocket and pushed aside Zeke’s voodoo bag. Zeke’s bag—the man never denied it was his. A perverseness stopped me from getting rid of it. For me it had become a symbol of that something you wrestle with every day, the part of you that’s ready to take you down, destroy you. If you let it....

  I propped the wedding photo next to the one of the woman with the upswept hairdo. My mother reminded me of Patty. In fact, she and Patty bore an outward resemblance to each other—wisps of women with small faces and troubled eyes, my mother, Elizabeth, only a year older when she died than Patty was now. But Patty was a young eighteen. Looking now, I thought my mother appeared much older. It was in the eyes. My mother’s eyes looked older in the picture—harder. A knot twisted inside me.

  Old at nineteen. What made her that way? Well, the answer was clear. Somebody knocks on you long enough you begin to look old before your time—man or woman. Or was the look on her face the result of a life spent fast and loose? Huh. Patty and my mother had that same fragility.

  Hell, a summer breeze could knock Patty on her ass and swoop her the hell away. One thing was for sure—being mother to a sick child guaranteed that Patty was going to grow up fast from here on out. Too bad it had to be that way. The girl was overwhelmed, I could tell.

  I leaned forward and peered into my mother’s eyes. Who murdered you? No answer. Unfaithful or not, what kind of sick wimp does it take to kill a small woman like that? Like a summons to the devil, Montcrieff’s image flashed in front of me. Fire ignited behind my eyes, a match struck suddenly. And what kind of man was I, content to stay in the house owned by the anim
al that murdered my mother? Was that what Zeke saw when he looked at me? I was stuck for an answer.

  And then I wondered, maybe for the tenth time in my life, how someone like me managed to make it this far. Some of my youthful escapades had been narrow misses. Why did my mother die young, and I hadn’t? I had trouble with a God who let the young die. Josie ... if she lived to be twenty, she’d be lucky. Sickle-cell anemia takes you out early. Wasn’t fair—why an innocent like her and not a hardhead like me?

  Hell, I knew why. Alive today by grit and meanness. Knocked down, I’d get right back up and mess with you. Getting back up—the key to life, and what I did best. And damn it, no voodoo was getting the best of me. I slammed my hand down on the desk, and the sting of it propelled me into action. I stood up. The vibrations in this room were getting to me. I needed to do something.

  My mother’s picture looked naked. Didn’t seem right that the stranger’s photo should have an ornate frame while Elizabeth Brown went without, so I charged over to the file cabinet and rooted around until I came up with a small frame that fit the picture perfectly.

  I set the frame on the desk, and restless, walked over to the window blinds. Light, needed some more light in here. I tugged at the cord and the blinds clattered skyward. I looked out at the familiar view, the afternoon sun so bright it singed, and I shaded my eyes from the glare.

  Dirt layered the windowpane and distorted the panorama. I made a pass with my sleeve over the dirt. When the grime didn’t lift, I rubbed harder with the heel of my hand. The dirt on the window smudged my hand and turned it black. Well ... blacker. In that moment, my life seemed to be all about dirt, and there it was, encrusted on my windowpane.

  Angry, I went to the closet, lifted a small bucket from the shelf, filled it with water from the bathroom sink, slopped in some detergent, swished a cloth rag in the water, and scrubbed the window. When I was well into it I discovered belatedly, the windows looked worse instead of better. The filth had streaked, not disappeared. Disgusted, I threw the rag back in the bucket.

  Ammonia ... I needed ammonia. Huh. Didn’t have any.

  Behind me, the two women on the desk had watched the disaster unfold with disapproving eyes—I caught their stares when I turned back.

  I scrounged around in the cabinet and found a bottle of vinegar, so I ditched the bucket of soap, refilled it with clear water, and added the vinegar. My head ached now, but I worked through the pain until the windows sparkled. A penance, I think, and part answer to Zeke’s question, “What did I do in my life to deserve this?”

  Afterward, I popped two aspirins. Without water, the pills went down hard. A bitter taste caught at the roof of my mouth and eased its way down my throat. I was okay with that. I savored the bitterness, but it wasn’t enough punishment.

  I crossed to the file cabinet and jerked open the bottom drawer. Pictures scattered everywhere. I dropped to my knees and rummaged through the chaos for a picture of Montcrieff. What I stumbled upon was a picture of him, Elizabeth, and Zeke. The trio beamed up at me, smiles wide. One day in their lives they all had been happy—at least it looked that way. I combed their faces, hoping for some revelation.

  If my mama was a slut and my daddy a killer, what the hell did that make me? Nothing. Nothing and nobody.

  Shit. What was going on? The headache kicked my ass, and I doubled over, pressing my fingers against my temples to keep my head from exploding. I staggered to my chair and stumbled against the desk. The movement sent the bag flying to the floor. I retrieved it, and head throbbing, I stuffed the spilled stones and feathers back into the bag.

  Then I slumped into the chair and waited for the aspirin to do its stuff. To divert myself, I focused on the bag and passed it back and forth between my fingers. The Elmira chant—a mantra from my long-ago prison stretch—came to me, unbidden, from deep within, and ran laps around my head.

  “I’m a person, not a number. I came from somebody, I’m not a nobody.”

  The irony choked me. Slivers of tears danced at the edge of my eyes. I wrapped myself up in a cocoon of silence—and I was back in the joint at Elmira, in solitary lockup.

  Chicken wire angled down from the ceiling and kept me stooped over, unable to stand. Bread. Water. And a pot to piss in. My third day in a strip cell, dressed in socks and underwear. With my fingernails I could scrape filth off the walls, it was that thick. And the smell of urine burned my nostrils and made my eyes water.

  The odors of a hundred men were locked into the fibers of a funky blanket wrapped around my body—my only protection against the dankness and slime of the cell. That’s when the chant began, back in those days, those first days in solitary.

  My heart tattooed rhythms against my chest, breath rasping like death inside my throat. Back then I clung to the words, tuned out everything else. The cries and moans of men in pain inside the prison walls, they faded into nothing. Quiet. Time stopped, days passed, and I survived.

  Nothing and nobody could touch me. Not that time or the times after—they couldn’t break me. And to think, I wasn’t as old as Patty. My lids grew heavy and I dozed in my chair, the chant on my lips.

  Spirits floated in the air around and through me. I shuddered at each pass through my body. Son of a bitch Montcrieff wanted to hurt me, but I ran a shiv up his gut. My mother, Elizabeth, young and desirable, body pulsing red-hot under a winking neon light, trolled for tricks as I watched, horrified. I reached out, tried to save her, but instead my arms wrapped around Deaconess Cawley. She and Big Butt hovered above me, suspended in the air by the flapping of their angel wings. Cawley screamed, and the sound pierced my soul. I let go, and she shot straight up to heaven.

  Me and Dorothea—Big-Butt Hocks—settled on the ground amidst the dirt and filth. Hocks cackled and passed me a bottle of T-Bird. It went down my throat like Drano, and liquid fire exploded in my gut—turned to blood and gushed like a geyser out of my nose and mouth. I lay, unable to help myself, slowly bleeding to death ... surrounded by stench and filth.

  The ring of a doorbell jolted me and snapped me upright. I looked out the window at Catherine, toe tapping, standing on the doorstep.

  The last person I wanted to see. I wiped the sweat from my face and waited—maybe she’d go away. When she didn’t, and rang the bell again, I went to the front door, cracked it open, and stuck my head through.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  She responded with a questioning look and said, “It’s been a while.”

  I didn’t offer up an apology. What would be the point? I lamely shrugged my shoulders and hoped that would suffice.

  “I heard about your mother, Amos.” She studied her feet for a moment, and then she looked back up at me. “From someone else.”

  She had on sandals and hot pink toenails peeked out of them. I couldn’t look her in the face, so I too, looked at her feet. I didn’t say anything. She gave me the once-over and said, “Let’s take a walk, okay? To the duck pond?”

  “Uh, no, thanks.”

  “C’mon, Amos ... it’ll do you good.”

  Her toes fascinated me. “Another time,” I said.

  So soft I almost didn’t hear, she said, “Amos, if you hold your pain, it festers.” When she got no response she touched my sleeve lightly, turned, and walked down the steps.

  Electricity shot through my body at her touch. The effect made me wake up to what was happening, but I was a loner who needed to be alone. And though I felt guilt, I couldn’t handle the moment and Catherine too.

  I shouted after her, “I’ll call you,” which sounded like a lie, even to my ears.

  She acted like she didn’t hear me. She hailed a gypsy cab. It stopped. She got in and the cab drove away.

  Sometimes I could smack myself. This was one of those times.

  Chapter 22

  In the amber light of early evening, I walked to the duck pond at the tip end of Central Park at 110th Street. The sultry heat of summer drew toxins from my body, and my headache diminished. Dripping with swe
at, I entered the park.

  At the entrance on 110th Street, junkies nodded and sat with backs braced against trees, their odor ripening in the heat of the sun. Other junkies sprawled comatose on the rich green of grass. In a game of catch, juvenile delinquents threw softballs across the inert forms, gang hats pulled low on their foreheads. In times past, this end of the park used to be a pleasant place to visit. Graffitti was everywhere. Obvious to me Catherine hadn’t been here in a long while.

  Banners hung slap-dash around the park, advertising the bicentennial activities. A parade of baby carriages rattled past. Young mothers guided buggies along the path encircling the pond, and steered their young ones past an obvious drunk, bottle in hand, who staggered in between them.

  People strolled past in both directions. I joined the strollers, turned left, and headed for the boathouse. Seniors sat on benches, solo or in pairs, bodies hunched, expectantly waiting for a word, a look, or a smile—from anyone. Or waiting, maybe, for the sun to set, or death to come—whatever came first.

  I nodded at one old geezer. He touched his cap with a “Hi, partner” and gifted me with a smile that lit up the park. My mood improved; my head no longer ached. Maybe the walk had done some good.

  Past the boathouse on the east side of the pond, near Fifth Avenue, I chose a spot, climbed down some steps, and sat at the pond’s edge. Trees hugged the pond’s perimeter and lent some shade. I opened my shirt and wiped the sweat from my chest. Ebony children, roasted by the sun, carried the musk of hard play and summertime. Small bodies streaked past and squealed with delight.

  I settled into place and sat for a long time. My eyes took in a mother duck and her brood trailing serenely over placid waters. Behind the pond, on the other side and rising from the ground, was the knoll I used to climb as a kid. Played cowboys and Indians on that hill—while Aunt Reba waited well past the dinner hour, strap in hand, for me to return home.