“Ben, we need to find a taxi,” I said. “Want to help me hail?” I wriggled my hand in the air to show him how.
“Here he comes, Grace.” Ben clutched Rabbit and shot his other hand in the air.
“Good. But we need one with the light on. See the light on the top?”
“Okay, Grace.” He tried to hail the next one, but it was full as well.
“Okay. How ’bout I try to get the cab and you keep a lookout for Mommy and Daddy?”
C’mon, cab, I pleaded into the night. And c’mon, Sol and Miriam. Please. Please. Please.
A cab stopped to let someone off, and I tumbled Ben into the backseat before the driver even knew we were there.
I slammed the door shut, relieved. “Eastern Parkway, please. Between Nostrand and New York.”
The driver shook his head. “I don’t go Brooklyn.”
“What?”
“No go Brooklyn.”
“You have to go Brooklyn. I’m not getting out of this car.” He switched off the ignition. “Are you for fucking real?” I demanded. I didn’t have the time for this. “Oh, for fuck’s sakes.”
“That’s a bad word, Grace.”
“Get out my cab.”
I grabbed Ben, wanting to curse the driver more. Instead, I left his back door wide open. We’d already walked away when he got out and flung Rabbit the distance between us. “Grace,” Ben screamed and hugged his buddy tight.
Without really thinking, I ran down the station steps and into the subway. It was screeching loud and especially hot, but the train we wanted was already on the track. Finally something working out my way. No one noticed or cared that Ben was in his shortie pj’s and barefoot. He sat facing me, with his legs splayed and Rabbit held to his chest.
“Wow, Grace, this train is loud,” he said.
“It sure is. Do this.” I showed him how to clamp his hands over his ears.
He wedged Rabbit between us and covered his ears. I hugged him to me. I knew that Sol and Miriam were going to be furious. In fact, they were going to fire me as soon as I got back to the apartment. I nuzzled Ben’s red hair as the train sped through the tunnels. The conductor made an announcement just past Franklin: “Due to police activity, this number three train will be bypassing Nostrand Avenue, Kingston Avenue. The next station stop on this local train will be Utica.”
People fretted, and I said, “Oh, for fuck’s sakes.”
“You said a very bad word, Grace,” Ben told me.
The woman sitting next to me laughed. “Aye, so ’im feisty with ’im fire hair.”
At Utica the trains were doing the express route in reverse. “Okay, Ben,” I said—he was heavy to haul up the stairs—“we have to walk. This is an adventure.”
“A venture!” he repeated. “Let’s go, Grace.”
After one block we got in a livery cab, and the driver said eight dollars for the six-block ride.
“You mad or you crazy?” I asked him. “Between New York and Nostrand I say. Just down the road.”
“You see what going on down there.” He pointed toward New York Avenue. “Is real bacchanal out here tonight. Seven dollars, come.” I cut my eyes to let him know I knew he was ripping me off, but I had to get to Sylvia’s. Our four-minute ride took twenty.
Brooklyn was on fire.
“What’s going on?”
The cabbie had rolled up all the windows, locked the doors, and turned on the air-conditioning. Something was happening. Everyone was angry and shouting and running toward Union. People were crossing Eastern Parkway against the lights, cutting through the mostly stalled traffic, forcing the moving cars to stop. The Hasidim were out in full force too.
“Look, Grace.” Ben pointed to the groups of Hasidic men in their black suits and white shirts. “They look like penguins.”
And they did kind of. Agitated penguins. Then about twelve black boys charged one penguin colony, and the whole crowd went down. I covered Ben’s eyes. “Jesus Christ, what is going on?” It looked like the end of the world, as if the messiah had come and was very very angry.
A police car was parked in front of Sylvia’s building. The elevator was out of order. I ran up all five flights carrying Ben and saw two of Sylvia’s neighbors and an officer outside her door.
“Somebody, please, tell me what is going on.”
“Uh, uh, uh”—the Jamaican lady who watched Dame sometimes held her housecoat closed—“is a damn shame.”
“And who are you?” the officer asked.
For a second I didn’t know exactly who I was. “I’m a cousin. Where’s Sylvia?”
Micky ran out into the hallway. “Grace.” Her hair was wild, she was wild. “My brother dead, Grace.” The officer let me in, but there was no in to go. The front closet had come tumbling down along with everything else in the apartment. Another officer stood by the opened window. A Chinese man with a pen behind his ear and a camera around his neck was also in the living room. His latex gloves were almost the same color as his skin. Micky and Derek now stood next to me, a little shy of Ben, who was watching everything with wide eyes.
“Aunty Dodo and Bo not here yet?”
“And you are?” the second officer wanted to know.
“A cousin. Can somebody please tell me what happened?”
“Dame fell out the window, Grace,” Derek whispered. I had never seen him this calm. “My brother dead.”
“The baby’s dead?” I asked both the officer and the Chinese man. Neither answered. Micky started to cry.
“And whose baby is this?” the officer wanted to know. Ben had been quiet the whole time, clinging to me like a monkey.
“I mind him. I’m his babysitter.” With the three kids on me, I needed to sit. I picked up a pile of clothes to clear a place. There was so much stuff on the couch.
“Please, no touching anything, ma’am,” the Chinese man said.
“Look”—I let the pile fall away from my hand—“is just clothes. The landlord been fixing the lead paint.”
He took a spiral notebook from his jeans and the pen from behind his ear. “And who is the landlord?”
“Jacob something or other. You have to ask my cousin.”
The policeman’s radio squawked, and the one in the hallway echoed its call. That officer came in. “Sounds like it’s heating up bad down there. We’re gonna have to go soon. You almost done, Ting?”
Ting started snapping again. Their radios didn’t stop, and I made out “All units respond, all units respond, all units in nonemergency situations respond.”
Loud knocking startled us all. “This is my sister’s house,” Dodo shouted. “Let me come in, do you hear me?” She ran down the hall ahead of Bo, took in the wrecked space, the officer, the Chinese man, the opened window, and started screaming. Micky started to cry, and then Ben began to whimper.
The officer came over to Dodo, his blue eyes warm. “Ma’am. Ma’am, please. You’re upsetting the children. Please, ma’am.”
“Oh, God, you mean the baby dead, in truth. Bo? Bo?”
Bo lit a cigarette, and the orange flare reflected on his sweaty face. “I done tell you what happen, Dodo. That mother-ass Jacob have plenty blood on he hand.” He leaned against the entryway in a dirty undershirt, three-quarter jeans, and sneakers without laces. “Grace, who child is that?”
“The little boy. But I have to go back. Bo, what happen?”
Barely, he raised his chin at the officer. Dodo calmed and asked if the children needed to stay for any reason.
The officer looked over at Ting, who shrugged. “No, they can go.”
“Come, Micky and Derek. Come, let’s go. This place is hell.”
“Grace, we could come with you?”
Dodo wrenched Micky’s arm. “I say come on. Grace have to go.”
We tried to hustle out, impossible in the madhouse the apartment had become. The space in the corridor was tight. You had to turn sideways and rub the roach-streaked wall to get by. Micky stopped, and the parade halte
d behind her. She bent and tugged at something from deep under the pile.
“Micky, move it. Let’s go,” Dodo ordered.
She ignored her aunt and kept pulling. She tugged some more, freeing what remained of Hannah Speiser’s wings.
“I could keep this, Grace?”
I hugged Ben and nodded.
THE WARM AND SMOKY summer’s night was sparking. Dodo took Micky and Derek away. I needed to get back with Ben and too late realized that I should have called Sol and Miriam from upstairs. Crowds were moving deeper into Crown Heights, and I wondered for the third time what was going on. The late light was starting to fade, but in front of all the solemn buildings on Eastern Parkway, groups were gathered and restless. Bo pulled me aside from the others on Sylvia’s stoop.
“Hear what go on. Me and Nello come to help Sylvia, scene? Girl, we move so much box and it was so hot up in that place, jackass Nello open the damn window. I didn’t see and Sylvia didn’t see. The place didn’t even feel no different. After about fifteen minutes, Sylvia say, ‘But where Dame?’ Me didn’t pay she no mind, until maybe about five minutes later she say, ‘Bo, but where Dame gone in truth?’ Then we start to look around, and, girl, is me first who notice the blasted window open and you know how Dame like to sit down on that windowsill and when I look out I see him bend up on all the rubbish outside. I bawl.”
I wiped my tears, and, for the first time since we got to Sylvia’s, Ben spoke. “Don’t cry, Grace.”
I rubbed his slim back. “And where Nello?”
Bo lifted his chin to Miss Florence’s dark stoop. “He there.” He dropped his voice even lower. “But don’t worry. We going down the road. Jacob not getting away so easy with this.”
“And Sylvia, Bo?”
“Grace, I thought that girl was going to dead here tonight. If you see how she fly down them steps, bawling. She bawl so until the ambulance come, and she was still bawling when they drive away.”
“Oh, God.” I had to ask him because I still wasn’t sure. “And Dame dead, Bo? Really and truly dead?”
He ground the cigarette butt out. “Dead dead.”
I DIDN’T KNOW HOW long it took to get a livery cab back into the city.
Ben fell asleep in my arms, and I realized that we didn’t have Rabbit. I felt around, and once I was certain he wasn’t there, I was sure he was gone forever.
The cabbie, who looked exactly like Ali at the newsstand, watched me through the rearview. “You helping them out, eh. Getting him out of Brooklyn for your friends?”
I didn’t answer. We were driving over the bridge, I didn’t know which one, and there again was the nighttime city before me. It was still beautiful. Still dazzling and alive. But crazy. Real crazy.
Danny picked up the intercom before the door had even closed behind us. “They’re coming up now, Mr. Bruckner.” He hung up and said, “Princess Grace is in trouble tonight.”
Sol was standing outside the elevator. A police officer stood beside him. He snatched Ben out of my arms, waking him. “How dare you, Grace? How fucking dare you?”
The officer said, “Sir, please,” and Sol loped down the hall with his son. The officer followed. Everyone was inside: Big Ben and Ettie, Nancy, Susannah and Michael, Dave, and Duke. Miriam was laid out on the couch while Evie massaged her bare feet. The television was tuned to Channel Five, and the caption under the live reporter read, “Riots in Crown Heights.”
“You see, Miriam.” Evie used her thumbs to apply pressure to Miriam’s instep. “What me tell you? He here all safe and sound.”
“Oh, my baby,” Miriam sobbed. “Come, come to Mommy.”
Ben was now fully awake. “Big Ben,” he said, “Grace took me on the choo-choo train! And, Big Ben, we saw all the people. And the fire and the penguin people.”
“You saw penguin people?” Big Ben asked.
“Uh-huh, and the baby fell out the window, and she put on the wings, and Grace said a bad word.”
I was fucked.
“Wow.” Big Ben worked his old hands into Ben’s curls. Everyone watched. “You had quite an adventure.”
“That’s what Grace said.”
In the pause, the officer’s radio squawked, and I jumped.
“Is everything okay, Grace?” It was Dave.
Miriam sat up, and Evie, moving as quickly as she did at the park sometimes, slid to the floor and kept massaging. “Is Grace all right? Dave, you fuckin’ kidding me?”
“That’s a bad word, Mommy,” Ben said.
“Okay,” the officer said, “so what do we want to do here? Do you want us to take her down?” And I realized he meant me.
“Yes, take her down,” Miriam said. “She kidnapped my son.”
“Miriam, stay calm,” Ettie said.
“Grace, what were you thinking?” Nancy asked.
“And on this night of all nights,” Susannah said. “I have never understood anyone from Brooklyn.”
“What happened, Grace?” Dave asked.
“There was an accident in Brooklyn, and I had to go. Sol and Miriam, I’m so sorry.”
“And she stole our money,” Miriam said.
“I borrowed the money. I used it—” I started to explain how I had sent all my money home for my father, and that I had every intention of giving them back their twenty when they paid me, but I was so tired and little Dame was dead. Dead dead. I started to cry.
“Watch the crocodile tears,” Evie said.
“Okay, Grace,” Sol said, “just leave. Tonight, okay. We trusted you with our son.”
I looked at him, and he stopped.
“So you pressing charges?” The officer wanted to be sure.
“Thank you so much for coming,” Ettie said. “The family will handle this.”
The cops left, and so did Susannah and Michael. I went to my small space, and Miriam came in with me.
“Do you mind if I look in your bag?”
I watched her dump my jeans and shirts, my halter, onto the bed, as she fingered the secret pockets and netted pouches. “Fine.” She dropped the empty bag on the bed. “We’ll keep the twenty dollars you made today—right? Forty minus the twenty you borrowed—until the phone bill comes. If there’s anything we owe you, I’ll send you a check.”
“I don’t have a checking account.”
“Then take it to a check-cashing place, Grace.”
Ettie, Big Ben, and Nancy were gone when I came out. I didn’t see Sol and Ben. Duke and Evie sat together on the floral couch, and Dave sat under the sunflower clock. It was just after eleven.
I walked past Miriam’s menagerie for the final time. Dave came out with me. “Grace, I am so sorry. Sol came upstairs frantic and I came down with him. Is everything okay? Are you okay?”
I shook my head.
“Look, do you have somewhere to go? You know what . . . Fuck it.” He grabbed Sylvia’s bag out of my hand and held my elbow. “I’m abducting you. You’re staying upstairs tonight.”
I didn’t argue. How could I? I had no fight left in me. I just followed him to the penthouse where I spent a sad, fitful night. I rose early—I didn’t exactly wake up because I didn’t exactly sleep. Neither Brutus nor Cesar barked when I left. Dave was still asleep.
“Ahhhh,” Danny said as I walked by. “Ladies and gentlemen, Princess Grace has left the building.”
Afterward
AUGUST 1991
The headlines were filled with news of the West Indian boy who had been accidentally killed in Crown Heights, about the neighborhood that burned bright for three days as angry black people attacked angry Jews who attacked them right back. But not a word about Dame. Sweet Dame.
I needed to get another job, put another ad in the Irish Echo, find another little boy to mind, or maybe a little girl. But I couldn’t bear to think about all that, about money and papers and school.
Not yet.
Instead, I lived off Kath. After she’d gone I found that she’d left me $200 under the BeDazzler. Plus she had already
paid the rent for a month. Thank you, Kath. Brent had tried to give me money but there was just no way I could take cash from him. Not after what we were doing. He came over often, sometimes in the middle of the day and sometimes late at night, and although I never turned him away, I knew there wasn’t ever going to be anything more between us. I didn’t ask about his life and we didn’t talk about the future, and when he wrote down his beeper number, I threw the piece of paper outside Kath’s window.
I went often to the botanic gardens, in the opposite direction on the parkway from Sylvia and the unrest. During the hot hot days there was hardly ever anyone there, and I read under the willows and watched the guys pack compost into the soil around plants my mother grew at home and Dave grew in the sky. When I was homesick for both I went into the humid tropical greenhouse to marvel at the tall papayas and the sugary sapodillas and mangoes fruiting in the middle of Brooklyn.
One evening after I’d left the gardens and was walking toward Kath’s room, I thought I heard a bell like the one Leader Elson used to call his Sunday flock at my mother’s church. I looked across the street and saw under the yellow and blue bodega awning a lone woman in a long white dress and a tall white head tie, walking in circles and ringing her bell. No one paid her any mind except to avoid her. “The end coming for all of them,” she said. “All of them going to burn and who don’t burn gone turn into a pillar of salt to salt the coming seas.” It was Petal. I looked around for someone to share this with, but of course there was no one. “This America is a wicked, nasty place,” Petal continued. “Remember thy father’s land and keep thyself pure.”
Someone from a window above shouted, “Then shut the fuck up and go back to yo father’s land.”
Something about Petal scared me. She had worked in the towers and limed with us in the playground and in the Zollers’ apartment, and now here she was resurrected as mad as mad can be taking her crazy message to the highways and byways. It was time to make a plan.
Two weeks after the riots, and the Sunday before the big West Indian Labor Day parade—the deadline I had given myself to start getting it together—Kathy’s buzzer rang. I didn’t answer it because I wasn’t expecting Brent, but it rang again and I heard Shivani’s footsteps tripping down the hall. A minute later I opened my door to see not only Dave, but Brutus and Cesar.
Minding Ben Page 36
