Minding Ben

by Victoria Brown

  After the first round of drinks, Brent excused himself. Donovan leaned back in his seat and looked over the table at me from under his Kangol. “If wasn’t for me friend,” he said, “tonight coulda be me lucky night, scene.”

  Kathy turned to look at him with weary eyes.

  “How so?” I asked.

  Donovan laughed. “One tall cat-eye darkie, one sexy-body browning, and one Donovan ina the middle. Wha’ you think ’bout that arrangement?”

  I wasn’t sure if Donovan was joking or not, so I laughed. I wondered if I was meant to answer this proposition. If it was a proposition.

  He snapped his fingers. “Darkie, don’t take me for serious, you know. Is a likkle joke talk me ah talk. B-man ah me best friend from say we born out we mother belly.”

  “Yeah, Grace,” Kath said, “he just full of shit.”

  Donovan’s beeper tweeted, and he went over to Barrington, who led him to the back room. “Was he serious just now?”

  “He’s a man, right?” Kathy sounded surly. “If opportunity presents itself, I’m sure he would take full advantage.”

  “Well,” I said, “my name is not opportunity.” I changed the subject. “You come here with him before?”

  I was surprised by the challenge in her voice. “We don’t just fuck, you know. We go out to eat, we go for drives. One time we even went to the Bronx Zoo. This is a real relationship, Grace.”

  I hadn’t thought otherwise. “I know that, Kath. I can tell that just from how Donovan looks at you.”

  This brightened her. “Really?” she asked. “How does he look at me?”

  “Like he really likes you,” I told her, emphasizing the you. Then, fortunately, Brent came back to the table.

  Later, after we’d eaten, Kathy molded herself to Donovan and brushed the side of his face with the tip of her ponytail. I turned to face Brent, wondering if he would try to kiss me. “So,” he said, “Katty tell me you working in the middle of Babylon. You like it?”

  “Is only babysitting, you know. Not a real job.” I didn’t think now was the time to discuss the housework I did for a living. “It’s just a way to make some money.” I still didn’t know for sure what Brent did to make his money. About Donovan, Kathy had told me, but when I asked her what Brent did, she told me I needed to ask him that myself.

  “Just don’t waste up you youth on them white people and them. Them so will eat out your belly and then fire you when they done.”

  His words upset me, and I pulled away. What option did I have? The people in the restaurant were eating and talking and laughing and kissing and leaving and arriving. Having fun. I wanted to have fun too, and I turned to Brent full-on. His palm, hot and moist, cupped the inside of my thigh. The warmth burned, and, surprised at his touch, I slapped my legs together, trapping his hand. I slid closer to him, and he stroked my bare skin with his thumb. Streaks of heat radiated up my leg. I got a little scared and tried to slide away.

  “You ’ave some real puss eye, you know.” I could smell him, the cigarettes and the weed and his body. I wanted him to kiss me. His thumb continued to brush the inside of my leg, damp now. I leaned closer. His lips were so full, the bottom one pinker than the top, and his eyes were heavy looking at me.

  Then stupid Donovan said, “B-man, time to take that darkie ’ome, man.”

  Brent gave my thigh one more squeeze and let go, making me cold where I had felt so hot. “Man, Donovan, you no see the time. Time to go, man, me ’ave to work early ina the morning.” Suddenly we were bustling to leave. And, just like Kathy had said, Donovan paid with a fistful of cash. He waved away the yardbird waitress when she came back with change. “Buy yourself something sexy with that,” he said, and Kathy frowned.

  Chapter 16

  Someone was shaking my shoulder. “Come on, get up. You have to go.”

  “What?” I was still more asleep than awake.

  The voice came again, and I realized that I was on Sylvia’s couch. “What time it is, Sylvia?” Last night, when I had lain on the couch, I could feel Brent’s phantom touch, his thumb brushing the inside of my thigh. Sleep had not come for hours.

  Sylvia pulled open the curtain, and early spring sunshine flooded into the living room. “Eh, you gone out last night, but you can’t get up this morning. Tell me what kind of house I running here, Jesus. And my girl child to raise. Enough with you and Bo stupidness, coming in and out my house all hours. You have to go, Grace.”

  My head hurt from the movement and the light. This was it, I realized. She wanted me to leave her apartment. Payback for choosing to work for the Bruckners rather than staying in Brooklyn for fifty dollars a week.

  “But, Sylvia, where I supposed to go this hour of the morning?”

  “I really don’t care, Grace,” she said and started to walk away. “Is just for two hours. Jacob coming with some Russian this morning. He can’t see you here.”

  Relief flooded through me.

  While I waited for the elevator, Sylvia opened her front door. “Grace, you still there?”

  “What?”

  “Bring a pack of More for me when you come back. The Chinee man store does open early on Sunday.”

  BACK ON THE ISLAND, and only on very early January and February mornings, Helen and I would exhale the gentlest puffs of air through our mouths and see fragile white clouds. It was just a fraction of a second before the tropical heat consumed the cool air. Now, my own breath shrouded me as I decided to walk in the opposite direction on Eastern Parkway, deeper into Crown Heights, where the Hasidim went.

  Toward New York Avenue, sitting between Sylvia’s building and an unbroken row of brownstones, was a real mansion. The house was the most dilapidated on the block. Dead winter vines varicosed the windows, and squares of black plastic hung in place of glass. Missing tiles made the once proud turrets gap-toothed, and pigeons nested under the eaves. About a month ago, I had seen the old African-American woman who lived there—Miss Florence. Sylvia told me she had been a famous model, but the woman I saw was crazy. While I was bundled into a coat, Miss Florence wore a see-through duster over a gauzy nightgown. A lit cigarette between her lips, she tried fruitlessly to shoo away some pigeons. When she saw me watching her, Miss Florence leaned her broom against the wall and, gesticulating with her cigarette, asked, “Now what the fuck you looking at, coconut?” When I told Sylvia, she said black Americans were crazy.

  Down Eastern Parkway, thick crowds of Hasidim gathered behind police barricades, and I wondered if there had been a shooting. On the other side of the parkway, police directed a flowing stream of pedestrians toward a church flying Caribbean flags. The made-up women were decked out in broad, bright hats. The men wore sharp suits and shiny shoes. This wasn’t my mother’s group, for sure.

  I stopped on the corner of Kingston, where two men had set up what looked like old-fashioned typewriters without keys. Three police cars were parked nearby, and more officers sat watchful, staticky chatter from their radios occasionally rising above the low buzz of the crowd. Everyone seemed to be waiting, and I wanted to see what for.

  The church bell tolled nine times. The men shifted their stools closer to their machines, and more police came out of the cars. The Hasidim on the path rolled toward an entrance on Eastern Parkway. A wave of people, happy and chatting, poured out of the building’s side door. The men collected dollars, which they fed into the machines, and I looked on, amazed, as they came out encased in shiny, clear plastic. Washington’s head was gone, and in his place was the face of the old “Moshiach is on the Way” man.

  A dreadlocked man rocked up to me on crutches.

  “Today is one of their holidays?” I asked him.

  He hawked and spat on the pavement. “ ’Oliday, sistah?” His heavy accent was just like Brent’s and his voice a shout. “Every Sunday mornin’ is the same shit them ah do on Eastern Parkway. Come and block up the rahtid street, and Babylon dey out in force for them protection. You think them do this for we when Labor Day ah come?
” He spat again. “Them Jew them ah just like a brain tumor benign. Suck up energy and ah give nothing back to anyone but them own. Scene?”

  I walked away from him fast, crossing Eastern Parkway even though I was on Sylvia’s side. The last few people waiting to enter the church were making their way up the broad steps, and I heard someone call my name. Surprised, I turned and saw Dodo standing with a thick, redskin woman, the two of them dressed up and sucking down cigarettes. Big sweaty patches stained Dodo’s armpits.

  “Mornin’, Dodo.”

  “You come to go to church?” she asked and turned to the woman. “This is the one without family I was telling you my sister take in. Grace, you here already, why you don’t come for the nine o’clock service?”

  Apparently she was serious. I had no desire to go to church and spread my arms wide. “I’m not dressed for church, Dodo.”

  The red woman dropped her cigarette on the pavement and ground it out with the pointy toe of her shoe. “The Lord say to render your heart and not your garments, child. Come and make a joyful noise.”

  Clearly she had never heard me sing. “Some other time, Dodo. Sylvia waiting for me.”

  She twisted up her face and took a last drag. “Suit yourself. Tell Sylvia I will pass for lunch.” She and her friend sprang up the few steps to join the rest of the congregation.

  JACOB AND HIS RUSSIAN were walking out of Sylvia’s when I got back. “Ah. Look who it is. Cousin Grace from Flatbush. But how come you are coming from this way when Flatbush is in the other direction?”

  He had me, but he was smiling. “Morning, Yacob,” I said, ignoring his question. “Today is the Sabbath. I’m taking Sylvia’s children to Sunday school.”

  “Come, Grace you are almost a Jew. You know that true Shabbos ended yesterday. Today is just another workday, no?”

  “If it’s a workday, then how come all those Jews on the parkway by Kingston? Today special for some reason?”

  “These people, Grace. I’ll tell you why they stand on the street in the freezing cold on a Sunday morning. To see the messiah.” Jacob laughed.

  “What, the messiah down in the basement? But how come they didn’t leave money at the shrine?” I asked Jacob. What I knew about religion was that you usually had to pay God for favors.

  “Grace,” Jacob said. “The messiah is in the basement handing out dollars.”

  “Who are you talking about, the man on the van?”

  “The very one. Our messiah lives on Eastern Parkway, not too far from your cousin Sylvia. You didn’t know how close you were to Hashem, eh?” He opened his wallet and passed me a laminated dollar bill.

  “Moshiach is on the way?”

  “Moshiach.” Jacob gargled the word in the back of his throat.

  “So Moshiach is not a first name? I thought somebody was coming from Israel.”

  “That’s sacrilege. He’s never even been to Israel.”

  Jacob talked about all of this in jest. Plus he was at Sylvia’s on Sunday morning instead of waiting to see the messiah. “So what about you, then?” I asked. “Do you believe the old man is the messiah? Does he do miracles?”

  “Is that what your messiah has to do, Grace, miracles?”

  “Miracles I can see now,” I said. “Not when I’m dead.”

  Jacob got serious. “Some Jews believe that the old man can do that and more. Me, I’m not so sure anymore.” He stroked his beard. “But it’s hard to stop believing in something you were brought up to believe. Don’t you agree?”

  I didn’t know.

  “Okay, Grace from Flatbush, go and take your cousins to church.”

  I handed him back the plastic bill. “No, keep it,” he said. “You’re my mitzvah today. I have to go visit this lady who lives next door, and I need some goodwill on my side.”

  Jacob walked over to Miss Florence’s house. She was not happy to see him. “Jew, what the fuck are you doing on my motherfucking stoop? I done told you all to stop coming to my fucking front door. You and the fucking Witnesses.”

  Jacob laughed. “When are you going to sell me this house, Miss Florence? This house is too big for only you. I have eight children and a wife. We need your house.”

  Miss Florence was not laughing. “I don’t care if you have eighteen fucking children. None of y’all is getting my house. I own this sucker free and clear.”

  Jacob looked over at me. “I will give you one hundred thousand dollars cash for this house, Miss Florence. Cash money. And a top-floor apartment rent-free right next door. Look at this place,” he said, but Miss Florence only looked at him. “One day a brick will fall on your head and you will get hurt. You know how much you could do with that kind of money, Miss Florence? Cash.”

  “I got more money than that under my mattress. Have a nice fucking day.”

  SYLVIA STOOD IN FRONT of the shelf with her duck family. “How I looking, Grace?” she asked me.

  It wasn’t hard to answer her truthfully. “Nice,” I said. She had loosened her plaits, and her hair curled naturally. Her swipe of rouge was a touch too bright on her dark skin, but the color matched her lipstick. “Blend in your blush a little more.” She delicately stroked her face upward with her peace fingers and rubbed her lips together.

  “Better?” she asked.

  “Much.”

  She straightened the smallest duckling, and Bo, lying on the carpet, asked, “How you dress up so, girl? Like you planning on giving the man a piece in the hospital, or what?”

  “You is a real ass, yes,” she told him, but she was laughing. “Anyway, is not a congujal visit. Time for me to go. Grace, if I don’t come back before you leave, do me a favor and cane-row Micky hair, wash up the few dishes, and just make this place decent, please. Oh, and bathe Dame too. What time you say you leaving by?”

  “Seven-thirty.”

  “Okay. Bo, stay with them children if Grace have to go.”

  As she was leaving, Sylvia did one of those rare things that reminded me she was the woman who gave me a place to live without knowing anything about me. She asked Micky, a sprite in my wings, and sulky Derek for a kiss to take to their stepfather and father. And from Dame, who could not execute her command, she carefully bent over and took one.

  “Why you don’t try to get a work with Jacob to fix up this place?” I asked Bo when Sylvia had left. He ignored me, and I pressed. “You and Nello could fix up the place however you want.” I kicked his bare back with my heel. “Bo?”

  Without turning to look at me, he said, “Jacob tell you he hiring any nigger people to work for him? Please.”

  In the two months I had lived here, I’d seen Bo soften. He hadn’t had more than a few days’ work since late December, and he and Nello spent all their time drinking and smoking. I didn’t know where he got money. The spread of his once muscular back reminded me of how Daddy’s tree-trunk leg had gradually softened to bog after his amputation and the useless exercises Dr. Silverton had told him to do.

  “Well, anything better than nothing.”

  He rolled over then, his body sloshing like Mora’s water bed. “You really think so, Grace? You think a man should have to work like a jackass for little little money and be content?” Bo didn’t wait for me to answer. “Not me, sistren. You just come America, so maybe you, but I living in this country for too long to take that kinda shit from anyone, and especially not from a Jew who younger than me.”

  Micky, still wearing my wings, had come to lean by the entryway and listened to her uncle.

  “Mick, get the grease and the comb from the breakfront, please,” I told her.

  She grimaced and dragged her shoulder against the molding, snapping the frame of the left wing. “Shoot, Grace, it broke,” she complained.

  I had to laugh. I didn’t break it, it broke.

  Bo shook his head. “Sylvia children could break air, yes.”

  Micky reached her hand behind her to try to straighten the crooked wing.

  “Don’t bother, Mick,” I told her. �
��The other one still good, right? Fairies can fly with only one wing, you know.”

  She didn’t look like she believed me, and Bo said, “I don’t know why you fulling up them children head with all that nansi-story shit.” He attempted an otter roll, made it halfway, and said, “Me and you need to talk. I might be able to do this thing for you on a installment plan.”

  It was the first time he had brought up our pending deal all weekend, and I nodded to him, not wanting to discuss a marriage like this in front of Micky. “I’ll call you from work during the week,” I said.

  He flopped back to the TV. “Just don’t wait too long to call, you hear. I is a hot commodity on the market.”

  Chapter 17

  When I got to the towers that night, Dave stood in the lobby talking to Danny. Brutus and Cesar were sprawled across the floor.

  “Hey, Grace,” Dave said. “How’s it going? You in for the week?”

  “Yep, my first full week. Do you know the time?” I asked them.

  “You’re in trouble,” Danny said. “It’s nine-fifteen.”

  I felt a heavy stone in the pit of my stomach. “Really? Okay, good night, let me—”

  “Danny, you know that’s not the time,” Dave said. “Grace, it’s not even nine yet. Danny’s just being a potato bug.”

  Up on the platform, Danny laughed, throwing his head back so I could see his discolored teeth from the underside. “Don’t sweat it, Gracie Mansion, it’s only eight-thirty-five. You can stay with me for twenty-five minutes.”

  “You think that was funny?” I asked him, wondering how they both knew what time I had to be in.

  “Well, it cracked me up.”

  “So,” Dave asked. “Did you have a good weekend? Where do you go when you’re not tending Ben?”