Minding Ben

by Victoria Brown

  “Okay.” I grabbed for the towel.

  “Quickly, please.” She sounded annoyed, and I hurried, happy I had brought clothes into the bathroom to change.

  “Here—” She stood over an ironing board, face pale and spots bright, her blond hair hanging loose and wet. “Sol needs this shirt. Try not to leave creases on the sleeves.”

  “Okay.” On the sunflower clock it was 7:30. I wasn’t supposed to start until eight, but because of the hurry of last night, I figured this morning was special.

  Sol’s shirttail went past my knees. I read the tag: “Warm iron on reverse while slightly damp.” This shirt was bone dry. I checked the tag again. “100% cotton.” I hung the shirt over the ironing board and got a glass of water from the kitchen, then I turned the sleeves inside out and selected Cotton on the iron. But I couldn’t find an outlet. The sunflower clock said 7:37.

  “Morning, Grace. Done with that shirt?”

  “Morning, Sol. No, um, not yet. I couldn’t see an outlet so—”

  “Here.” Sol hitched his pants at the knees and stooped down next to the wall. “See here, on the baseboard. There’s a foot-long outlet.”

  I knelt next to where he squatted between the table and the wall. He didn’t wear cologne, and his body smelled like soap and deodorant and his breath like minty toothpaste. My arm brushed against the hairs on his forearm.

  “Oh. I’ve never seen an outlet like that.”

  “Yeah,” he said, standing up and shaking his legs so his pants would fall straight. “They’re hard to spot if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

  I set to ironing the shirt. It was 7:45. Miriam came out of the bedroom. Her hair was dry now and her face caked with that heavy makeup she pasted on like putty.

  “Are you done with that shirt, Grace?”

  Sol answered for me. “She couldn’t find the outlet.”

  “She found the glasses, I see.”

  “Not to drink,” I said. “The shirt needs to be damp.”

  Sol and Miriam looked at each other.

  “It’s not a problem, Mir,” he said. “I’ll see what Carmen left in the closet.”

  “Okay, Grace,” Miriam said, “I know this is your first morning. Sol and I appreciate you coming in last night. But you’ve got to be quick.” She snapped her fingers three times. “You were here on Saturday, so you kinda know where things are, right? For today, I made a list. Did you see it on the dining table?”

  I had not.

  She clicked over to the table and wagged a sheet of paper. “Here’s what needs to get done today. Follow me.”

  We walked into the kitchen, and Sol came in wearing a white shirt, identical to the one I was supposed to have ironed. “Mir, while you’re at it, show Grace how to make the coffee. There’s none this morning.”

  Miriam turned, and I was caught between them. “Maybe you can brew a pot, Sol? It’s not exactly a regular morning, is it?”

  “Whoa.” Sol raised his palms. “Don’t take it out on me, Mir. All I’m saying is that you should show her how to use the coffeemaker.”

  “You were showing her the wiring just now, why didn’t you show her how to percolate your coffee the way you like it?”

  They faced off, Miriam’s breathing audible through her skinny nose. In her heels, she came to Sol’s chest. From the back bedroom, Ben called out, “Ya-ya.”

  “Shit,” Miriam said.

  “I got him,” Sol said. “Finish showing Grace the washer.”

  “Stay here,” Miriam said to me as she wheeled the washer into the kitchen. “You have to do a few loads of laundry today.” She removed an armload of sponge from the dryer. “If you don’t do this”—she rammed the strips between the machine and the cupboards—“the washing machine will take a walk during the spin cycle, and you’ll have a lot more work to do. Next, connect the water.” She unhooked a hose from the machine. “Watch carefully.” She pressed a piece of rubber at the mouth of the hose and slipped the nozzle onto the faucet. “You have to listen for that snap. If it doesn’t snap, the water pressure forces the hose off and the machine doesn’t fill up. None of our clothes go in the dryer.”

  “They get hung in the small bathroom, right?”

  “Right. Sort whites, darks, and colors. And, oh, no bleach. Any questions?”

  I wanted her to show me how to attach the hose again, but I didn’t want to ask. Plus it was still in, so all I had to do was turn on the water. “No.”

  “Good.” Miriam reached over and disconnected the hose. “Now I’ll show you how to make the coffee.”

  Sol brought in a still sleepy Ben. “Mir, it’s after eight, you should get going.”

  “Should I get going or should I show Grace how you like your coffee?”

  Ben looked around. “Where Ya-ya, Daddy?”

  “Guess what, buddy? Grace is going to be your ya-ya today.”

  This was not the news Ben wanted to hear. He kicked his legs like a little boy on a stubborn donkey. “I want my ya-ya.” I reached over to help settle him, but he kicked again and got me in the corner of my mouth. I tasted blood. “Ow.”

  “Sol, I really have to go,” Miriam said.

  “Get going. I’ll pick up coffee from McDonald’s.”

  “I want to go to McDonald’s. I have a toy and french fries,” Ben said.

  Miriam tickled him, then she pinched Sol’s waist. “Daddy likes french fries too.” She turned to me. “Okay, Grace, I have to run. My work number is on the fridge. Call if there’s an emergency. Remember the list.”

  She left and Sol moved closer. “Let me see.” He reached over and gently peeled back the corner of my lower lip. “Just suck on it and the bleeding should stop. Are you going to be a good boy today?” he asked Ben.

  Ben nodded, but when I reached for him he still clung to his father.

  —MIRIAM’S LIST—

  1. Feed Ben breakfast: one whole-grain waffle with pure maple syrup, sliced bananas, and juice. (If you have waffles or pancakes, use the syrup in the plastic bottle in the fridge door.)

  2. Give Ben bath or shower, whichever he prefers this morning.

  3. Pick up our bedroom, Ben’s room, living room (vacuum rugs), clean both bathrooms.

  4. Laundry. Three loads, no bleach. HANG DRY EVERYTHING!!

  5. Go to Union Square playground. Ben may take one toy but NEVER Rabbit.

  6. Go to supermarket (money in money cup, RECEIPTS!!). See sublist, over.

  7. Feed Ben lunch: Grilled cheese sandwich (Ben likes to choose his plate), steamed carrots (in microwave for 1.5 mins.), juice.

  8. Put Ben down for nap.

  9. Cook dinner. Please see cookbooks in 3rd cupboard, The Joy of Cooking, p. 597, “chicken cacciatore.” Make Rice-A-Roni to go with.

  10. While dinner is on and Ben is napping, look around for chores: Is the kitchen floor as clean as it could be? Do we have fresh towels in the bathroom? Did Ben’s bath leave a ring around the tub? There’s always LOTS of miscellany.

  Cook chicken what?

  First I screwed up the wash. I tried for half an hour to get that stupid piece of rubber to fit over the tap. Ben stood outside the kitchen, still in his Onesie, watching me. “What you doing, Grace?”

  “I’m trying to do your laundry, but I can’t. It’s stuck.” He seemed to like those words. “It’s stuck, it’s stuck,” he repeated a few times. I thought I heard the rubber go click and turned on the tap. The water pressure flung the hose into the sink and splashed water over me, the floor, the machine.

  “Jesus H. Christ!”

  Ben laughed. “Grace, you’re all wet.”

  “And you know what?” I faced him, dripping, and so glad I had made him laugh.

  “What, Grace?”

  “You’re going to be all wet too.” I ran to him. Sensing a chase, Ben squealed and pedaled his little legs out to the living room. I let him dodge me around the furniture but ultimately cornered him in his room.

  “You’re fast, Grace,” he said
, grinning.

  I hammed it up, breathing hard. “Yeah, but you’re a speedy guy too.”

  “I know,” he said. “My daddy can’t even catch me, and he’s big.”

  I decided to forget about the laundry and let Ben show me around his room. After Sol left, Ben had howled for his ya-ya and brushed several of his mother’s figurines off the shelves in a fit of tiny fist-clenching rage. I sat down on the floor and told him I was sad too. While I waited him out, I wondered if Sylvia had to go to her agency this morning, and if she’d explained to Micky and Derek that I had gone to work but that I would see them on Friday night, and who braided Micky’s hair, and who tied Derek’s tie, and who was watching Dame. The answer to the last two questions was probably Bo, who surely did not have the patience to sit with Dame and sound out words for him to pronounce.

  Chapter 11

  In my last year of high school, I had entered the carnival queen show. I didn’t really care to, but my friend Rhonda had dared me, and, since my mother said the pageant was the work of the devil, how could I not? I didn’t think I would win. The girls chosen queen year after year looked like Kathy, with light skin and long hair. And if your eyes were any color other than brown, well, the joke was that the crown was ordered in your size.

  The auditorium was packed. Everyone turned out for any special event to numb the drudgery of washing clothes and minding goats and washing and minding children. The local boys too cool to sit with the students and old women were in the back, some of them on chairs and some in the rafters. I waited in the dressing room, Rhonda fussing and adding more rouge than I thought necessary. Wave after wave of roars greeted each girl as she stepped out of the wings and paraded down the path. And then my turn. “Miss Grace Caton.” Rhonda shooed me out, doing her last adjustments to my hair and dress. When I stepped into the auditorium, the thousand-watt spotlight blinded me, and for a second I couldn’t see. I could hear, though, and I heard nothing. No roaring. No clapping. No wolf whistling. Nothing. I wanted to run, to hide behind the curtain, to jump up into the rafters, and most of all to kill Rhonda. But then the boys in the back went mad, people jumped up from their iron folding chairs and clapped, and the judges started scribbling in their notebooks. That quiet, which had seemed to last so long, had been mere moments.

  Something like that stillness, which afterward Rhonda had assured me I’d imagined, greeted me when I walked into the playground. From the streets surrounding the park, I could hear the sounds of traffic, but as I pushed Ben through the open gates, the chattering women stared from me to Ben to each other and back to me again. Elbows nudged sides, chins and eyebrows lifted, and mouths twisted. I gripped the curved carriage handles, ridged like horns, and wheeled Ben over to the sandbox. A tight knot of skinny white women stood off by themselves sipping coffee. I undid Ben’s safety belt, and a woman let out a piercing bacchanal laugh like they did back home when news spread that someone’s unmarried daughter was pregnant. Then as clear as the ruckus after the silence in the auditorium, a Barbadian voice said, “Is not the white people, you know, is nigger people self does take the bread from other nigger people mouth.”

  Half an hour later Kathy, her chubby cheeks bright red, came into the park. “Me can’t believe your call. Me can’t believe I get to see you every day now. Too too exciting.” The rhinestones in the diamond angles of her jacket threw off lances of sunlight. Stuck above her ponytail was a large pair of white-framed, jeweled sunglasses.

  “Diamante, Kath, that’s the word for you today.” I stood from the edge of the sandbox. “You actually wear those glasses?”

  “Here”—she pulled off the shades—“try them.”

  “What do you think?” I asked Ben. “Should Grace put on the funky glasses?” I was so glad Kathy was here. The glares and murmurs and occasional bursts of laughter of the other women unnerved me. I wondered at their cruelty.

  “Put them on, Grace.” He shielded his eyes from the sun and maybe Kathy’s shooting rays.

  The world was deep green through the lenses, and the sight took me back to late afternoons at home, to that time of day when burning heat gave way to cooler evening and the sun began its speedy fall into the hills. “Cool, Grace,” Ben said.

  “Grace”—Kathy stepped back and took me in with the silly glasses—“you are the only person I know who could look stunning minding a child in jeans and sneakers.”

  I handed them back to her. “Just don’t tell me I should be a model, okay.”

  Kathy exaggerated the jut of her full hip. “So this is the likkle man.” She raised her chin at Ben. “Redhead tock-tock.”

  I pinched Ben’s freckled nose. “Yup, my bread and butter. Kath, the strangest thing though,” I whispered. “Look at the women. God!” I hit her arm. “Not so obvious. You had to see how they watched Ben and me coming in the park. I said morning to those two over there—Jesus Christ, don’t watch so bold—and they didn’t answer. What the fuck?”

  “That’s a bad word, Grace,” Ben said without looking up.

  “This little one going to be trouble.” Kathy wagged her finger at Ben. “As for them bitches . . .” She swiveled her head to take in the women.

  “Kathy, shush.”

  “Don’t shush me, Grace.” Her arms were akimbo again. “Is jealous the old bitches and them jealous. Watch you and watch them.” She took in the group and in a low voice said to me, “You need to learn playground politics. I bet you half of them had somebody for your job.”

  To look at the women rolling carriages back and forth, or pushing swings, or lined up on either side of the monkey bars, you couldn’t tell that they were marking us unless you knew what to listen for. I heard “maga bitch,” “cat-eye bitch,” “that big backside,” and, over and over, “poor poor Carmen.”

  Kathy and I sat on the lip of the sandbox watching Ben, who knew several of the kids playing in the cold dirt, especially two children with round heads and wide-spaced eyes, who moved a little unsteadily and kept their hands in front of their bodies.

  “This is frigging great, Kath, my first day on the job and I have enemies.”

  Ben came over and said, “Juice, Grace.”

  “Juice, please.” It really was quite warm outside, and I sipped some of the juice before passing him the small yellow carton.

  “You have time to worry about them, Grace?”

  I wasn’t worried, but I wondered why Miriam had called me after 9:00 P.M.

  “Kath, why you think Miriam asked me to come in so late last night?”

  Kathy steadied herself on the sandbox. “You have the job. That is all you should care about. Maybe that other woman couldn’t read or maybe she was a thief, or maybe she was too old. Who know how white people mind does operate—”

  A child screamed, and we whipped around. The round-headed girl had fallen over and couldn’t quite brace herself to get up. The other one, her brother I presumed, cried out, “Evie, Sammy fell!” A short woman separated herself from the group and half jogged over.

  Ben ran over to me. “Grace, Sammy fell.”

  “But she’s okay, see? Someone’s helping her.” I stared at the woman while she dusted Sammy off. She looked right back at me and smiled. Not a friendly smile.

  I turned to Kathy. “Anyway, you’re right, forget them. Tell me about Monday. You excited yet?”

  She shrugged. “Not really. Business or not, is still marriage, right? My father will die when he hears this; this is not how he imagined his baby daughter getting married.”

  I knew what she was talking about. City Hall on a Monday morning was not the place for a blessed union. Kathy brushed the side of her face with her ponytail. “And what about you? They mention anything about the sponsorship?”

  They had not.

  “The only thing I’ll tell you is that you shouldn’t wait too long before they begin,” she went on. “I’ve heard that sponsorship through a job takes donkey years.”

  I’d heard that too. I thought of telling Kathy about Sylvia�
�s proposal, that Bo would marry me for free if I worked for her, but I was confused enough. I didn’t want another opinion just yet. Instead I told her about my mother’s letter.

  “She still trying to get you to come back?”

  In the sand, Ben had linked arms with the twins and a little Asian boy in an unsteady ring around the rosy. “You don’t know my mother. She’ll try to get me to come back until the day I walk off the plane at Piarco. This is all about my hymen, you know. She wants to keep an eye on it.”

  Kathy laughed out loud. “Is it still there?”

  “Actually, it is. I haven’t had a serious contender since I came to America. I’ll give it to a weak contender, Kath.” I crossed myself quickly. “I can’t believe I said that in the same conversation about my mother.”

  “What about Brent?”

  “He’s a contender.”

  “You’re a whore, Grace.”

  “Only for him.” I laughed. “How are your party plans coming along?”

  “Donovan’s taking care of everything. You know how it’s going to be, right?”

  “Apart from outrageous?” The first bash I went to with Kathy I left after an hour. Back then I didn’t know that you had to be in costume to party. Kathy had worn a skintight, gold short pantsuit and her over-the-knee, come-fuck-me boots. I’d met her outside the club on Empire Boulevard amid a swirl of neon and flesh. She’d taken one look at me in my jeans and T-shirt and shaken her head. “Oh, Grace,” she’d said, “I should have warned you.”

  Now she shaded her eyes. “What you doing for your birthday? Which day is it on again?”

  “Nothing. Friday.” My eighteenth birthday, and Kathy was the only person in America who knew.

  “Okay, we’ll go to Fourteenth Street and see what we can’t find for you to wear.”

  It was nearing noon, and the sitters were making moves to leave. The group of white women at the fence end of the playground walked toward the exit. As they neared, one of them stopped and looked down at us. Her lips were a thin, brilliantly reddened slash. “Where did you get that jacket?” she asked Kathy. “It’s fantastic.”