Minding Ben

by Victoria Brown

  I closed the closet door. “Brent called?”

  “Yeah.” Kath nodded, and her newly short hair snapped like shutting blinds in front of her face. “I didn’t tell you he driving me to the airport? He’ll bring you back too.”

  I hadn’t seen Brent since the night of Kath’s birthday. And now, as we drove closer to the airport, with the planes flying low and gigantic, he and I didn’t talk to each other much. Kath jumped out when we arrived at the terminal, and I got out with her.

  Brent leaned over. “Me soon come, yeah. Make me find a park.”

  Kath tucked her bob behind her ear. “No, B, just wait a minute.”

  She turned to me. “Grace, don’t bother to come in with me. Is not like home anyhow. Once I check in, I gone.”

  “So what, you want us to leave you here on the curb?”

  “Look how you turn American already, saying curb.”

  She was stalling. “Come on, Kath, I’m not letting you go in alone.”

  She hoisted her bag and looked more like a flight attendant than like a passenger. “You’ve never let me go alone, Grace. Is just, I have to do this.” I kind of understood what she was saying, but still. “Go, Grace. Go back to the room and have some fun, finally.” She winked and smiled at me, showing her wide-spaced teeth. “I’ll see your dad soon.”

  We hugged, everything we’d been through pressed tight between us. Kath turned and walked through the revolving doors. They swept her in, and I didn’t see her again.

  IT WAS STILL MORNING when we got back to Kathy’s block. It still looked the same. Children squealed as they ran in and out of the spray from the fire hydrant. Teenage boys in baggy shorts and white undershirts hung around waiting for the day to pass. West Indian women carried grocery bags from Bravo or vegetables from the Korean market. Brent stopped in front of Kathy’s building. I didn’t hesitate. “Coming up?” I asked him.

  We climbed the four flights, and once inside, Brent was so big in that small space.

  “Go ahead, sit on the bed,” I told him.

  The sounds of Brooklyn’s summer came up, kids, cars, water, all accompanied by the nonstop Puerto Rican anthem, Nen-neh-neh, nen-neh-neh. The room was warm.

  Brent patted the quilt. “Come sit with me.”

  Somewhere in this world my daddy was dying, and all I had left of him was some spilled dirt in the bottom of my bag. I knew what was about to happen between Brent and me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about my father. I closed my eyes, and the tears landed on my bare legs. Brent wiped away the drops with his thumb, searing me.

  “Darkie, watch me,” he said.

  He held my chin with his fingertips and guided my head to face him. I wouldn’t open my eyes.

  “Watch me,” he said again, and I took a deep breath and looked at his beautiful face so close to mine. He lifted his eyebrows and I smiled and then he laughed and said, “Good. Things gone be all right, you know. You can’t believe it now, but mark what me say, yeah. You especially gone be all right. Come.” He leaned over and, instead of my lips, kissed the corner of my eye. “You want feel likkle better?”

  I nodded.

  “All right then.” He kissed me on the mouth, and my body flared hot and liquid. Heat rose up from my chest and flushed my face, and I was sure he could feel the warmth coming off me. I tried to pull back, but instead he crushed me to him and murmured, “Uh-uh.”

  “Wait, Brent,” I said, and he stopped kissing me at once. “Wait.”

  I slid off his lap and stood between his opened legs. I unbuttoned my shirt and then kicked off my slippers and stepped out of my shorts. I undid the banana clip holding my hair off my neck. I unhooked my brassiere, then stepped out of my panties and straightened up. I wanted him to see all of me.

  Brent made a noise. He knelt in front of me, burying his face just under my navel. He kissed me lower, and to steady myself I held on to the back of his head. His breath was hot on my legs. His hands clasped low around my waist, holding me.

  “Come,” he said.

  I sat on the bed’s edge and watched him take off his shirt and lower his jeans; then he came back to me and we lay down together. His hands were cool and hot. Cool on my breasts and hot on my hips and scorching between my legs. I liked that he could fold me up in his bear body, that he could almost consume me. I liked his full weight pressing me into the bed, that he kept whispering “Darkie” in my ear, and how slick his back felt when I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him into me. I liked the pain, and when he tried to pull away after I winced, I wrapped my legs around him too.

  We slept for a long time afterward, and I smiled, drowsy, and thought what a roundabout way to finally experience the luxury of lying in on a summer’s weekday. Later, I watched him get dressed, and when he was ready to go, he came back to the bed and kissed me. “So, me can stop by tomorrow after work?”

  Tomorrow was Saturday. “And Sunday, too.”

  After he left, I stayed in the bed. Lying on my stomach, I could feel my heartbeat thudding into the quilt and blood pulsing through my neck and elbows. I was truly alone in America, and I didn’t mind at all. In fact, I was thirsty. I went to grab a glass from Kath’s cupboard to go to the house’s communal kitchen. I opened the door and laughed when I saw her BeDazzler. Right next to it, bulging like pirate’s booty, were two bags of recovered gems waiting for their rightful owner.

  WHEN I’D LEFT WORK Thursday, no one had said anything about the next week. So here it was Sunday night, and I was back at the towers.

  “It’s Princess Grace and her pretty face,” Danny said. I made up my mind then and there to ignore him. Either he’d stop being a pest or he wouldn’t, but I couldn’t be bothered.

  Sol opened the door. His thick brown bandage had been replaced with a much smaller white one. Last week’s fat gundy was now a pair of pincers. There was no hug tonight. “Mir had a rough weekend,” he said. “Sit down for a second.”

  I sat on the edge of the armchair, the one that had sucked me in on the day of my interview, the day he had told me that I reminded him of someone.

  “How’s your hand?”

  Sol sat too. “So much better. I can even move my thumb a little bit now. How’s your father?”

  I bit my lower lip. “He’s in a different hospital, but it looks like they’re going to have to amputate his other leg anyhow. This is the island, you know.” I was sure he didn’t know.

  “Again, if there’s anything we can do, you just let us know,” he said.

  I wondered if Sol even understood what his words meant, that they were an offer of help. What they could have done was filed my immigration papers, or told me they were moving, or not paid me forty dollars less for taking last Friday off. I was so tempted to tell him these little things that they could have done, or to ask him what specifically he was offering to do, but all I said was “Thanks, Mr. Bruckner.”

  “Anyhow, Mir and I talked, and she’s fine. She’s sorry, you know. She had no idea that it was your sister on the phone. We didn’t even know that your father was an amputee, Grace.” He exercised the thumb a little and reached for the remote control to unmute the baseball. “You gonna go see Dave tonight?”

  There was no awkwardness on his part. Sol acted like nothing had happened, and, after the weekend with Brent, I realized that nothing had. His game was already on. “I’m tired from this weekend too,” I told him. “I’m going to bed.”

  MIRIAM CAME OUT OF her room looking ready to deliver. Her hair was unwashed, her bare feet red and swollen. Her pregnant belly was huge. She held a tall glass of iced water in one hand and massaged under her robe with the other.

  “Morning, Miriam. How are you feeling?” I said.

  She gestured with the glass and grimaced. I grabbed Ben before he could dash to her.

  “Grace and I going playground, Mommy.”

  “You are?” She had no oomph in her voice. “Good. Give me Rabbit, and I’ll snuggle up with him until you get back.” I set Ben down, and he handed
his mother the toy. I was waiting, waiting to hear if she would ask how I’d known about the unfiled forms, or that the money had still been there, tucked away with their important papers. But she didn’t say a word.

  On our way to the park, Ben twisted in his carriage. “Grace, your daddy only has one foot?”

  I wondered who he’d heard that from. “He does.”

  He nodded. “Wow, that’s a big cut. Your daddy strong, Grace?”

  I made bodybuilder arms. “Very strong.”

  “How does he walk around?”

  “He hops like a bunny rabbit, or a froggy.” I bit my lip hard, remembering my father coming to the living room without his crutches on the night I left home, and how hard he had breathed after going the short distance.

  “Really, Grace? Can he hop for a long time?”

  “Uh-huh, for hours.”

  Ben hopped over the sprinklers. Soon, Sammy and Caleb and Bruce and all the other kids were hopping in and out of the sunlit spray. I sat on the bench next to Ule and Meena. Evie stood by the swings talking with Margaret and Marva. After that morning in the park, we had spoken to each other only when the children played together. She and Ule were through. Now she came over. “So how everything go?” She had watched Benjamin on Friday, and my forty dollars had gone to her.

  “Good, Evie. Thanks for asking.”

  But this was Evie. “So they cut the other foot?”

  “Chut, man,” Ule chided without saying her name.

  “What? Is only ask me asking.”

  “Not yet. They still waiting to see how things go.”

  Marva shook her head, the bruise on her temple barely visible. “Me, mama? Me don’t trust West Indian doctor to come cut my toenail, far less come for cut foot. When you see I go Montserrat, is nearly the whole pharmacy I does take, oui.”

  “Is the same thing I was thinking,” Evie said, “and Bimshire ain’t no backwater island like where you come from, Marva.”

  I laughed and Ule and the rest too, like we used to before. Marva wasn’t too sure what we were cracking up about, and she looked around at us. Gradually, as the morning temperature rose and the humidity started to smother, they left, but I stayed on the bench with Ule. When it was just the two of us sitting there, Ule said, “Skin teef. She and that one waistband Duke, the two of them aiming to dominate domestic work. That woman is a mapepire.” She opened her bag and pulled out a few pieces of paper. One by one she brought them very close to her eyes.

  “You want me to see something for you, Ule?” I asked her.

  “Why? Something wrong with my eye?”

  “Not at all, I just offering.”

  “Good”—she handed me a piece of paper—“what that say?”

  I laughed and took it. Her full name, her address in Brooklyn, and her telephone number were written in a very neat penmanship. “Me didn’t want talk me business in front all Tom, Nancy, and Harry. Tomorrow is the last day I on this work, and then I gone Kennedycut for six weeks.”

  “Tomorrow? Connecticut? I thought you only worked in the city, Ule.”

  “And is who tell you that?”

  No one had. I’d just assumed.

  “With baby nurse work, you go where it have babies, my child. In truf, I did think Miriam was going to hire me for this one coming, but maybe Miss Evie already get one friend for her.”

  “I think they’ll be gone by the time the baby born.”

  “Miriam tell you they moving?”

  For sure Ule’d disapprove if I told her that I went digging through their papers. “I saw their apartment listed for sale,” I said.

  “Well, but you never know. They could be getting another place maybe right in this same building. They gone need more space, you know.”

  “No, they’re buying Dave’s house upstate.”

  “Aha. And what it is you going to do? You going with them?”

  My shoulders felt too heavy to shrug. Over the weekend, whenever Brent hadn’t been in my bed, it was all I had thought about. Maybe up until a week ago I might have considered going with them. But now I could not go. “No.”

  Ule squeezed my shoulders. “Good. You have to try your own luck. You can’t take nobody else life and make it your own. Petal used to talk all that God and prayers talk, but you have to have plenty common sense too. Good good.”

  I didn’t want to ask Ule if she thought I had common sense, because seriously, sometimes I really thought I didn’t have a drop. Kathy was sharp. Bridget, razor. And me, I was just floating by on a breeze, pure luck and chance.

  Chapter 37

  We were winding down the day. Ben had just chosen his perennial favorite book, Pish Posh, and the newer Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. “Bed or lap?” I asked him.

  “Lap please, Grace.”

  “How about I sit on your lap for a change?”

  He laughed. “Grace, I’m a little boy. You would break me.”

  “Okay,” I said and gathered him onto me.

  “Wait, Grace.” He scooted off for Rabbit.

  “Ready?”

  He climbed up, smelling deliciously of baby shampoo. “Pish Posh first, please.”

  “Since you asked so nicely.”

  Sol and Miriam were at the movies. Now in the final stretch of her pregnancy and despite her discomfort, she was determined to go out as often as possible before she was saddled with two. Her words. I liked them being gone. I had Ben to myself and could relax.

  The phone rang.

  “One minute, mister.” I passed him Pish Posh. “Show Rabbit the pictures.”

  “Hello?”

  “Grace? Is that you, Grace? Grace . . . is you, Grace?”

  “Micky?”

  “Yes, Grace. Is me. Grace . . .” She sounded spitty and garbled.

  “Micky, slow down. Take the fingers out your mouth.”

  “Grace . . . my brother. My bro-bro-ther,” she stammered.

  “Okay, Micky. Did Derek do something? You want to put Derek on the phone?”

  “No, Grace. My b-r-oth-er . . .” She was hysterical. “Grace, is Dame.”

  “My brother what? Micky, breathe. Slow, slow.” She took great sobbing gulps of air and then cried hard again. “Micky? Can you hear me? Tell me what happen. Where Mammy? Where Sylvia?”

  “She, she, she went to the hospital, Grace.”

  “Hospital?” This wasn’t good. Had something happened at the G Building?

  “Grace, can you come? Can you come now, Grace?”

  “Micky, I can come in a little while, okay? But first you have to tell me what happened. Take your time.”

  “Grace”—the word twisted—“is Dame . . .” She began wailing again. “Dame fell.”

  “Okay. Dame fell off the couch, off the crib? What?” I didn’t want to lose my patience with her, but I needed to know what was going on. “Micky,” I said a little too sharply, but I couldn’t help it. She was scaring me. “Stop. Tell me what is going on.”

  I heard her snotty inhale and then, “Grace, Dame fell out the window.”

  And that feeling again, all the blood in my body pooling in my stomach and leaving the rest of me cold.

  “Who home with you and Derek? Where Auntie Dodo?”

  “Uncle Bo. And Nello. We moving. Auntie Dodo in church. The police.” She wasn’t making much sense. “Grace, I’m scared.”

  “Okay. Hang up. I’m coming.”

  Sweet Ben was showing Rabbit the kooky pictures. “Come on, buddy,” I told him, “we have to go.”

  “Go where, Grace? Can I bring my book?”

  I took Pish Posh away. “It’s just for a little while, Ben. Leave your book.”

  “Can I bring Rabbit?”

  I was only taking him down to Evie’s. “Okay, Rabbit can come.” I scooped him up. “Let’s go.”

  I had fifteen dollars and change, about enough to take a cab one way. I took the week’s twenty from the money cup and started to write a note—Ben with Evie—but I heard
the elevator ding and ran out of the apartment.

  Evie came to the door in housecoat and slippers, tightening her curler. “What you want this hour of the night?”

  “Evie, I have to run Brooklyn now. Sol and Miriam not home. Watch Ben for me please till they come?”

  She sized me up. “What big emergency you have so?”

  “Evie, it is an emergency . . .” But I couldn’t get the words out, I couldn’t explain. “I’m in a hurry, please?” I held Ben over to her, but she turned down her lips and shook her head.

  “No, my hands full right now. Caleb and Sammy have cold and fever.”

  “Come on, Evie. This is an emergency. Just put him on the couch, please. I have to go now.”

  Evie smiled. “Now you upset, me could hear the Trinidadian in your voice.”

  “What?”

  Ben craned out of my arms to catch a glimpse of the twins. “Can I have a sleepover with Caleb and Sammy, Grace?” he asked.

  Evie reached out and touched his hair. “Not tonight, bad boy.” She smiled a little. “Why you don’t run go ask your best friend Ule?” This was bullshit. “Or maybe the friend she give the work can watch him for you?”

  We rode up to Dave’s. No answer. “Oh, come on,” I said as I slapped my palm against the door until it hurt, and Ben too banged and called to the dogs. “I don’t think Zio home, Grace.”

  “I think you’re right, buddy.” I thought about the numbers on the refrigerator. I could go back and call Ettie or Nancy. But then I’d have to wait around for one of them to show up, or ride all the way uptown. I had to get to Brooklyn now.

  “Hey, Ben, want to ride a taxi at night?”

  Duke was hanging up the intercom. He tipped his hat. “You in a hurry, Miss Trinidad.”

  “Duke,” I said. “Do me a favor?”

  He looked up from his bifocals. “Yes?”

  “It’s so so important. I have to go to—”

  “You want me to do you a favor?”

  “Duke, please, this is serious. Tell Mr. and Mrs. Bruckner I have a family emergency. Ben is with me, and we’ll be back soon, okay, Duke?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. I couldn’t. I just ran out the door.