What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day...

by Pearl Cleage

  “I need to talk to Joyce before you do anything,” I said. “This should be the three of us deciding, okay?”

  He made me wait a minute, but then he smiled and shook his head. “Black women are the only women in the world who make you wait until they decide whether or not they’re worth protecting.”

  “It’s a new experience for us,” I said. “We need time to get used to it.”

  “You want time,” he said. “I want solutions.”

  “People in hell want vodka and tonic,” I said.

  That made him laugh. “I thought they wanted ice water.”

  “Shows how behind the times you are,” I said, loving his smile. “I missed you.”

  He kissed my eyelids and put his hand on my cheek. I leaned into his warm palm and closed my eyes.

  “You okay?” he said softly.

  “Can you hold both of us at the same time?” I said, and he picked me and Imani up and sat there on the porch steps with us cradled in his arms like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do on a Tuesday morning in the middle of the Great North Woods. I could hear the steady rhythm of his heart and I don’t think I’ve ever felt safer in my life.

  • 10

  when joyce pulled up, she saw the window and freaked out so bad she almost drove through it. While I told her what happened, she just kept holding Imani real tight and shaking her head and saying, “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”

  When I finished, she hugged me and said: “I’m so glad you didn’t have to use that gun.”

  I didn’t say anything. There was no point in letting Joyce in on my realization of how much I had wanted to waste Frank. Especially in light of the discussion Eddie wanted to have about what he thought was an appropriate response. She’d think she left us a bunch of meditating wanna-be Buddhists and returned to find Murder, Incorporated.

  I appreciated the immediacy of Eddie’s offer, but I didn’t think I was ready to order an execution because the kid was a crack-smoking, woman-hating asshole who threw a bottle through our front window. I wasn’t sure the danger he represented was best met by becoming even more violent than he was. I hoped it wasn’t, anyway.

  Eddie kept asking me what I thought was going to be the thing that turned Frank’s life around. The thing that transformed him from predator to productive citizen, and I couldn’t think of anything. I tried to trot out the same old tired answers, but Eddie wasn’t having it.

  Graduating from high school? That was a joke. They were barely learning how to read and write. Going to college? Not a chance. No grades. No money. No motivation. A good job? Doing what? Where? There weren’t any jobs for miles.

  “He could join the army,” I said, knowing how lame it sounded even to me.

  Eddie grinned. “And see the world?”

  I hated to admit it, even to myself, especially to myself, but he was right. Frank was gone. Destroyed. Tyrone probably was, too, in spite of his grandmother’s grip on him. There was no place for them and they knew it at some deep level where all the bullshit messages about how bright their futures could be if they just applied themselves were filed away. They knew the real deal was about drugs and jail and mean, unsafe sex and more death in the neighborhoods than there had been in Vietnam. And they were pissed. Across-the-board pissed. But they’re still our kids, so what the hell are we supposed to do?

  When Eddie made his proposition to Joyce, she looked at him like he was losing his mind. He had repaired the window and we were sitting in the living room admiring his handiwork when Joyce said she guessed we better go fill out the report with the sheriff. That’s when Eddie repeated his delicately phrased offer to take care of it.

  “It’s not fair,” she said after giving him a minute to take it back. “He didn’t kill anybody.”

  They looked at each other for a long minute and then Joyce reached out and took his hand. “Nobody even got hurt.”

  “Do we have to wait for that?” Eddie said quietly.

  “We have to wait for more than a broken window.”

  “Okay,” he said. He leaned over and hugged Joyce. “But say the word and youngblood is history.”

  “He might be history around here anyway,” Joyce said. “He’s still on probation. If he gets in any trouble, he has to go back to Detroit and serve his time in juvenile.”

  “Buys time, but it doesn’t solve the problem,” Eddie said, volunteering to drive us in to the sheriff’s office.

  Joyce rode in the back with Imani in her car seat. I rode up front with Eddie and we held hands like teenagers used to do. When I turned on the radio, they were playing “Get Ready.” Eddie cranked it up as loud as it would go, and in light of all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I thought the Temptations would forgive us for adding three very off-key lead singers to their sublime quintet. I knew they would. If anybody ever understood the power of a love song better than those five fine brothers, you can’t prove it by me. And the truth of the matter is, if we can’t love each other, none of it makes any sense anyway.

  • 11

  i gave a complete statement and swore out a complaint. The sheriff, a weary-looking brother whose mind was obviously already enjoying his first year of retirement, looked at the three of us standing there full of righteous indignation, sighed, and said since they didn’t actually try to get inside the house, the most serious charge he could probably bring was malicious mischief. He also said since they were only sixteen and nobody got hurt, they’d probably only get a fine and a reprimand when a judge finally heard the case.

  When Joyce asked about the possibility of Frank being sent back to Detroit, the sheriff dug an official-looking letter out of the stack on his desk and handed it to her. It was a notice from the juvenile court that Frank had successfully completed the terms of his probation. It was dated a week ago.

  “Bad timing,” I said.

  We all felt it. If Frank had been rehabilitated during his time up here, we had truly missed the transformation. Joyce handed the sheriff back Frank’s freedom papers and asked him for a suggestion as to how we should proceed. She wasn’t looking anywhere near Eddie, who had on his I-told-you-I-can-take-care-of-it face. The sheriff said if we wanted to have a conference with the boys (the way he said it made them sound like the kind of wayward scamps with hearts of gold that used to populate Hollywood movies like Boys Town), he could call all the principals together in his office in a couple of days and make it clear that if anything like this happened again, there would be serious consequences.

  Eddie’s plan was sounding better and better, but Joyce agreed to the meeting and they scheduled it for Friday.

  “What’s the point?” I said as we headed home.

  “I want to look at them,” she said quietly. “I want to know if I can see it in their faces.”

  Eddie didn’t say anything and neither did I. We didn’t have to ask her what it was. Joyce was still hoping to appeal to their consciences, but the only way that’s possible is if the person doing the bad shit has some guilt, or some remorse, or even some vague feeling that the stuff they’re doing may be wrong. But Frank and Tyrone didn’t give a damn, about us, about themselves, about anything. So it doesn’t matter how hard Joyce looks in their faces. All she’s going to see is one big blank.

  • 12

  eddie has been working on Mack’s place. Joyce wants to get it ready for a grand opening in September, so he’s only got six weeks. When I went over there this afternoon on my walk, he was standing in the middle of what had been the living room. There was plaster dust all over the place and it had settled on his hair and his eyebrows so that they were almost all white. I had a flash of what he would look like once his dreads went gray and I hoped I’d be around long enough to see it.

  He had a mask on over his nose and mouth, but the way his eyes crinkled up when he saw me, I could tell he was smiling. He stepped out of the pile, pulled the mask down, and kissed me. I liked that about Eddie. He always kissed me when
we first saw each other and he always kissed me when we said good-bye. He was affectionate without being possessive, a rare and wonderful combination.

  “What do you think?” he said, indicating the ruined room behind him.

  “I think it’s going to be great,” I said, surprised at how much bigger the space inside the house looked with most of the interior walls down. “How’d you know which ones you could take down without all of it falling?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t. I just knock them down, cover my head, and hope for the best.”

  I was shocked until I realized he was teasing me. “Right,” I said. “That sounds like how you usually do things. A regular fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants kind of guy.”

  He grabbed a broom and started sweeping the debris into a neat pile. “Let me get this up and we can have some tea, if you’ve got time.”

  “How’re you going to make tea in here?” I said, looking at the empty space where he’d already taken out the stove and refrigerator.

  He finished sweeping, put the broom down, and walked over to his truck. He reached in and when I saw what he brought out, I had to smile and admit it to myself: I liked his whole act.

  “You always bring your tea to work in a tea cozy?” I said.

  “Only when I’m expecting company.”

  “And what made you expect company?”

  “I got a lady friend who is crazy about my . . . tea,” he said, with just enough pause and implication to make me blush. He spread out an old, green army blanket on the grass and poured for both of us. It was almost sunset and the sky was turning pearl gray above the lake. We just sipped our tea and watched the water, listened to the birds and the waves lapping against the dock.

  Eddie and I still spent a lot of time together without saying much, but it felt like we were talking the whole time. At first it made me nervous. I was so used to hiding behind words that the silence made me feel more exposed than being naked. I was always trying to figure out what he was thinking and worrying about what to say next, but the more we are together, the more I don’t even think about that stuff. I know whatever I feel is what I feel. Whatever I say is what I say. Everything else is just a game I don’t have time to play anymore.

  “I’m thinking maybe I’ll teach a karate class once things get going,” Eddie said.

  “At the Circus?”

  He nodded. “These hardheads are out of control. It might be a way to get to some of them before they’re too far out to haul them back in.”

  I knew Joyce had been trying to figure out how she could do some activities for boys. Mitch used to coach a youth basketball team, but without him, she had really concentrated on the girls.

  “You know what I said the other day?”

  “About taking care of it?” I said.

  “I figure if I’m prepared to take these young brothers out for acting a fool, I should have tried everything else first, and I haven’t. Nobody learns how to be a man by watching TV and listening to their homeboys.”

  “Can you make them all act just like you?”

  He grinned at me. “I don’t know if everybody would find that idea as appealing as you do.”

  “That’s because everybody isn’t as smart as I am.”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “They’ve never made love with you, so their information is incomplete,” I said. “And you know what else?”

  “What?” he said, leaning back on his elbows.

  “It’s going to stay that way.” And I kissed him.

  “How come I had to wait so long for you?” he said, reaching up to pull me across his chest.

  “I had to grow up first.”

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “So are we grown now?” I whispered into his hair.

  “We’re getting there,” he said. “And you know what they say.”

  “What do they say?” I pulled back to look into his face and he rubbed his hands across my head the way I like to do to Imani.

  “Getting there is half the fun.”

  I laughed and leaned into his hands like cats do when you scratch between their ears.

  “Well,” I said. “They sure got that right.”

  • 13

  “how much do you want to bet Frank and Mattie don’t show?” Joyce said as we arrived at Sheriff Gates’ office and were directed to a mediation room down the hall. A bored-looking woman sitting in front of a dusty computer said the sheriff was on the phone and would join us in a minute.

  “The Reverend probably won’t be here either,” I said. “If the Holy Spirit calls, he has to answer.”

  “Maybe it’ll call Gerry this time,” Joyce said.

  No chance. When we opened the door to the dingy little room, Gerry and Tyrone were already there. Gerry was sitting stiffly on a battered yellow plastic couch that would probably take the skin off the backs of your bare legs if you sat on it on a hot day, and Tyrone, dressed in his Sunday suit and tie, was wandering around looking for a way to disappear.

  “Hello, Gerry,” Joyce said as we sat down on an identical and equally battered couch against the far wall. “Tyrone.”

  Tyrone looked at his grandmother, and when she didn’t make a sound, he didn’t either. Joyce sighed.

  “Look, Gerry, I think we need to put our differences aside and think about what’s best for Tyrone, don’t you?”

  “Tyrone cannot be blamed for falling victim to your schemes.” Even Gerry’s hairdo was trembling with righteous indignation.

  What was she so mad about? Last time I checked, we were the victims. I was sorry now that Eddie hadn’t come with us. There was no way I was going to be able to describe to him how truly weird this whole scene was getting.

  “What schemes?” Joyce said. “If you’re talking about the Sewing Circus—”

  “You brought it up,” Gerry interrupted. “I didn’t.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with that,” Joyce said. “And you know it.”

  Gerry sniffed and turned away. “I don’t know anything of the sort. Tyrone! Come and sit down.”

  He slouched over and slumped down in the far corner of the couch as far away from his grandmother as he could get.

  “Sit up, son!”

  The harshness of her voice seemed to pull him up like a puppet with a string at the back of his neck.

  “Fine,” Joyce said. “Let’s wait for the sheriff and you can tell him all about it.”

  “That is exactly what I intend to do.”

  What I intended to do was go to a pay phone, call Eddie, and ask him if his offer was still good for Frank and could I please add one crazy-ass old lady to the mix, but that would be wrong and certainly less than sisterly. I tried to meditate, but I’m not that good yet, so we all just sat there looking at each other until Sheriff Gates finally came in, trying to look official and concerned. He took a seat in the only chair between our two camps and frowned at all of us like we were bad kids who had been sent to the principal’s office. He reached into his pocket and took out a well-creased piece of notebook paper, which he unfolded laboriously, read over carefully, and then looked up at us again.

  “Where are Frank Richards and his guardian?”

  We all just looked at him. Nobody was prepared to speculate. The sheriff refolded his paper and sighed.

  “Well, we’ll just go on without them for right now. Do all of you know each other?”

  We had to admit that we did.

  “Good,” the sheriff said. “And we all know why we’re here?”

  I think he assumed we all agreed we were there to talk about Frank and Tyrone coming to the house drunk and tossing a beer bottle through the front window. The question mark was just his way of being polite, but Gerry took him at his word.

  “I would like to have that clarified,” she said.

  The sheriff was confused. “Have what clarified?”

  “The purpose of th
is hearing.”

  “It’s not really a hearing,” the sheriff started to explain, but Gerry interrupted him.

  “Then what is it?”

  The sheriff sighed and looked at Joyce like it was her fault for taking him up on his suggestion that we all meet in the first place.

  “Mrs. Anderson, I appreciate you coming here this afternoon.”

  Joyce looked at him and raised her eyebrows.

  “And you too, Mrs. Mitchell, and . . .” He looked at me and decided the effort to remember my name was just too great. “All of you.” He clasped his large, soft hands over his even larger, softer belly, sighed again, and rocked forward in his chair trying to look stern.

  “I think we can all agree that what we’re trying to figure out is what is best for these young men.”

  Joyce cleared her throat. “Before we do that, what I am trying to do is find out why they threw a beer bottle through my front window and what they and their guardians intend to do about it.”

  “That about sums it up, I guess,” Sheriff Gates said. “I told Mrs. Mitchell that since they’re still juveniles, the court would probably slap a fine on them for malicious mischief and assess the cost of the damages.”

  “I’m prepared to pay for the damages to the window today to clear my grandson’s record,” Gerry said. “Although under the circumstances, I think a fine is out of the question.”

  Joyce’s voice was calm but cold. “And what circumstances are those?”

  Gerry whirled suddenly and looked Joyce in the face for the first time. “Ask your sister,” she hissed, pointing a trembling finger in my direction.