Holding Up the World

by Shirley Hailstock

  Eric relaxed. He looked around the room, up at the ceiling as if he could view all the rooms on the second floor. “It is a big house. Aren’t you going to be lonely when I go off to school?”

  “That was part of what I was thinking.”

  “Why don’t you ask Mrs. Pointer out? She’s your age.”

  “I’m not ancient,” Rhys said. Mavis Pointer was the last person he wanted to spend time with. He’d just spoken to Lisa Russell and Mavis Pointer paled in comparison and he didn’t just mean the pun of the words.

  “I know,” Eric said. “I thought it might give you someone to talk to after work.”

  “Thank you, but I’ll find my own entertainment.

  “Well,” Eric said, about to return things back to his own personal needs. “I just came in to change my clothes. Some of the guys are going to play basketball over in the park.”

  Rhys nodded. Eric left the room and Rhys heard his son’s heavy footfalls on the steps that led up to his bedroom.

  The phone number peaked out from under the blotter. There was no name on the piece of paper, yet he knew whose number it was. He slipped it totally under the pad.

  What was her story, he wondered.

  ***

  Julianna opened her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. She was alone in the bed. Walt wasn’t there. For three mornings in a row she’d been glad to find his side of the bed empty. But there was no food in the house and he hadn’t left her any money.

  Pushing the dingy blanket aside, she got up and went to the bathroom. The mirror was dark, the glass holding tiny lines like cracked gold. Her image, as she brushed her teeth, was distorted. Like the rest of the apartment, everything was dark, dingy and warped. Finishing, she headed for the kitchen to check the refrigerator, although she knew that unless some misguided fairy godmother had come in during the night and stocked it, it would be as empty as it had been when she went to sleep the night before. Fairy godmothers weren’t part of her life, misguided or otherwise. She knew reality. She saw it everyday. Lived it.

  And hated it.

  Julianna has only taken a few steps when she stopped short, jumping back and stifling a cry of surprise. Walt sat at the kitchen table. He wore at least a three-day growth of facial hair, jeans that needed washing, a shirt unbuttoned all the way, and no shoes on his grungy feet.

  “It’s about time you decided to get up.”

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Yeah? Who says?”

  Julianna quickly calculated the distance between herself and the door. Walt was in one of his moods and that was always bad for her.

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Ain’t got no coffee. You ain’t got no job either. How you gonna offer me coffee.”

  “Walt, I’ve been looking for a job, but no one will hire me without papers.”

  “Then you calls your mama and you go get the papers, but you ain’t staying here no more without paying some rent and some food.”

  “I’ve tried to call, but–”

  “But what, you can’t speak to the bitch?”

  “My mother is not a bitch,” she emphasized in a voice stronger than she knew she should use with him. The problems Julianna had with her mother had nothing to do with him. The two of them didn’t live in the same world.

  “Who you think you’re talking to?” Walt jumped up. She forgot her train of thought as she jumped back from the force of his anger.

  “Walt, don’t get angry. You’re hungry. I’ll go down to Frieda’s and get some coffee and eggs. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “I don’t need you to go get me anything. You need to find a damn job.”

  She knew shy he wanted her to work so badly. For the drugs. Her paycheck would be his ability to buy more of the white powder he used for his fifteen minutes in heaven. Then he plunged back to earth where everything was the same. He’d come out of the Matrix, his own virtual world of beauty and wonder, and into the post-apocalyptic reality of the depressing present. The high made him a zombie, but the low made him angry.

  And evil.

  “All right, Walt. I’ll find a job. I’ll go out right now and start searching.” She grabbed at any excuse to get away from him in this mood. She’d run into him right after being fired from the diner. He’d taken one look at her face and told her that Rich was an animal. When she told him she had no place to go and that she’d just lost her job, he’d offered her place to sleep, no strings attached.

  There might not have been strings, but there was money.

  And sex.

  He’d taken the bills Clarence had given her and without so much as showing her the bedroom, he’d torn her clothes off the moment they were inside the door and fucked her on the floor. And that became the routine. Whenever he came through the door, it was sex he wanted. Regardless of her feelings, he’d push her down wherever they were and spread her legs. Julianna took it. After what she’d gone through for the past three years, sex was nothing. But she wasn’t an addict. One of the things her mother had instilled in her, and which she believed, was that drugs and smoking were bad for you. Julianna had evidence of the truth of this.

  She had Walt.

  “Oh, you gonna go find a job now.” He took a step toward her and she cringed backward. He’d hit her before as had Rich and several other guys. “Now that I’m here, you feel it’s time to go find gainful employment.

  “You don’t have a job either. Since you got fired from that last one, have you been looking for job?”

  The fist that came toward her moved so fast she didn’t even see it.

  Chapter 4

  Julianna couldn’t cry. The salt in her tears hurt her face. She’d applied ice to her face when Walt got tired of beating her and slammed the door loud enough for the reverberating sound to hurt her bruises. Her nose and lip bled and one eye was black and blue.

  Despite this, she packed her merger belongings in a new garbage bag and slipped out of the dirty room. She didn’t look back. There was nothing to look back at, nothing to regret except that she’d spent part of her life with Walter Ely.

  Julianna’s life on the streets had taught her survival, but it came at a price. A high price. She couldn’t keep this kind of life going if she wanted her life to keep going. And that is another thing she’d learned. She did want to live.

  How she wanted to live was her decision. She’d made this one when she walked out of her mother’s house. Going back there was not an option. No matter that the rooms were always clean, the sheets smelled of sunshine in the summer and she had more food to eat than she ever thought she wanted.

  The words she’d lanced at her mother were strong, ugly words. They’d come out of teenagers mouth, but they were nonetheless irreversible. But words weren’t the only legacy she’d left behind. Going home was not an option.

  Julianna walked and walked, carrying the bag over her arm until it became numb. She sat down in a park, a place for homeless people to rest during the day. At night they slithered into crevices, hiding under train platforms or in the bowels of the city, places regular people didn’t want to know about. They turned away from her in the streets, assuming she was a prostitute, whore, or worse. Julianna wasn’t afraid of those words. She had prostituted herself to survive. That wasn’t an excuse. Being a whore wasn’t a term she’d ever thought would be attributed to her, but she’d done many things that the young, naive teenager never thought she’d do.

  And no doubt she’d do them again. But somehow she was going to find a way out of this kind of life.

  Only not today.

  Julianna looked up. The day was bright, heading toward hot. Across the street was a large complex of apartments. Omar Stevens lived in one of them. He was Brittany’s father. He’d help her. At least he’d never beat her.

  She knocked for the third time. This time harder than the first two. No one answered. She called his name, but had the sinking feeling the apartment was empty of anyone’s presence. The apartment com
plex was a housing project, eight high-rise building set close to each other. America’s answer to low-income or welfare recipients’ living needs. The complex of salmon colored structures stood ten stories high. In summer they held the heat and in winter expelled it as if it were a foreign body that needed eradicating.

  The apartments on the north side had impressive views of New York City. But in this world, it only defined the boundaries of hopelessness. Julianna knocked again. And again she called his name. A door down the hall opened and a woman poked her head out.

  “Who you looking for?” she asked.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell the woman it was none of her business. Those were the rules of the street. You kept to yourself, told no one your business and stayed clear of the law. At the last minute she bit off the retort and answered the question.

  “I’m looking for Omar Stevens.”

  “He’s not there,” the woman said.

  Julianna hadn’t expected this. Her heart sank. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “He ain’t coming back. Least not anytime soon. He moved.”

  “When? Where?”

  The woman leaned on the edge of the door. She looked Julianna up and down as if deciding whether to answer the question. She must have weighted three hundred pounds. Julianna, at ninety-five pounds, was no match for her. And she was between Julianna and the exit. “Three maybe four weeks ago. Don’t know where it went.”

  Julianna’s shoulders dropped. The garbage bag of clothes thudded to the floor. Tears sprang to her eyes. What was she going to do now? She was tired and hungry and Omar had been her last hope. She’d have to find a shelter for the night. If they let her sleep in one. They knew her at the one closest to her.

  “Wait a minute.” The woman stared at her, nearly closing one eye as she scrutinized Julianna in the low light of the hallway. “Didn’t you used to live there?”

  She nodded.

  “And you don’t know where he went?”

  “We broke up, but I needed a place to stay and I thought I could ask him to let me stay here for a few days.”

  Julianna reached down and hefted the bag up to her shoulder. She may as well leave. The shelter was a long walk away and she may as well get started. The woman was still standing in her doorway, expectantly.

  “Thank you,” Julianna said and started toward her.

  The woman’s hand came out and stopped her. She lifted her head and her mouth turned down as she spied Julianna’s eye.

  “I won’t ask what happened to you. I can tell.” She sighed dropping her shoulders. The gesture told Julianna that she knew this kind of thing was all too normal. “Come on in and let me put something on it?”

  ***

  Jade slept silently in her baby seat. Susan skirted back and forth around the kitchen putting food on the table and talking.

  “What do you mean you told him no.” Susan stopped and stared at Lisa.

  “I couldn’t go out with him.”

  “Why not? What’s stopping you? You said when twins went off to college you’d date again. So–?” Susan left the sentence hanging.

  Lisa looked at Jade. “Things have changed. I have other responsibilities now.”

  “You can’t mean Jade.”

  “Why not?”

  Susan took a seat at the table. “Lisa, you know Bill and I will babysit if you want to go out.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She shrugged unable to define her reluctance.

  “You said he was good looking and wore no wedding ring.”

  Lisa hasn’t told her that Rhys Baldwin was white. It should make no difference between them. Susan was white and it didn’t affect their friendship. They’d been best friends for ages.

  Lisa had never dated a Caucasian. It even sounded funny when she thought of the word. But Rhys was handsome. She liked his smile and the way his eyes were fringed by long lashes. But there was Jade. And Lisa was a grandmother. Who wanted to go out with a grandmother?

  “I’ll tell you your problem,” Susan interrupted her thoughts. “You’re afraid.”

  “I’ll admit that. I was afraid of Graham too, but we got to know each other.”

  “And you’ll get to know Rhys too.”

  “This isn’t the right time.”

  “When do you think that will be?” Susan asked. “I hate to fall back on a cliché, but you’re not getting any younger. You’ve put your life on hold for your girls and now that they are out of the house, it’s truly your turn.”

  “What about her?” They both looked at Jade, who slept through the discussion. She was taking longer naps these days.

  “You can’t use her as an excuse to wait another eighteen years.”

  “There’s also the upheaval at work. I’m not even sure I’m going to have a job by the end of the year.”

  “Those rumors have been going around for years.”

  “Yeah, but this time I believe they’re true.”

  “Listen to me, Lisa,” Susan said emphatically.

  “This is your life. Oh, God, another cliché.”

  “Could we change the subject?” Susan asked.

  “Sure,” Susan shrugged. “That doesn’t make the subject go away.” Susan took a long breath and put food on her plate. “Just answer me one more question.”

  “What is it?”

  “If Jade hadn’t entered your life and Graham wasn’t in the picture, what would you have answered the man in the courtyard?”

  Lisa didn’t know what she would have answered. Graham had shown her she was still attractive to men. If he hadn’t been in the picture and had never been in the picture, would she have rejected Rhys because of his color? Or would her loneliness have prompted her to accept his invitation? She didn’t know.

  There were the twins to consider. They’d had her to themselves practically all their lives. Any man she began seeing they would want to meet and she would want them to approve. She had no doubt they would have liked Graham. But what would they say to Rhys?

  The three girls had grown up in a primarily white neighborhood. Their high school of nearly 2,000 students had only 100 African Americans. Yet none of the girls had dated a white guy. They’d had pool parties and gone on ski trips with their friends. Lisa knew the families of all of her girls’ friends, yet the prom, movies, bowling and dates had always been within their own color line. What would they think of their mother going outside of it?

  “Lisa?” Susan called for an answer.

  “It’s not that easy to answer, Susan.”

  “Why not? He’s a man. You’re a woman. What more is there?”

  “I don’t want to begin anything I can’t finish.”

  “It’s dinner, Lisa. You’re not giving him a kidney.”

  “If it were only a kidney,” she muttered more to herself than as a reply to Susan, but Susan heard it.

  “Elizabeth Russell!”

  “What?”

  “Is Rhys Baldwin African American?”

  Slowly Lisa shook her head.

  “And that’s the reason. Why should that make a difference?”

  “If it didn’t why is it that everyone you’ve ever tried to fix me up with has been African American?”

  Over the years and the many travels that Susan had logged, she’d met many people and she’d tried religiously to get Lisa to date. But Lisa had always used the excuse that she was content with her children and her job. But slowly the idea of having someone hold her in the night, share her joy and sorry and accompany her to plays and parties or just to smile at across the dinner table had seeped into her need for companionship.

  Susan was forever telling her about some great single man she’d met who would be perfect for Lisa. They were always tall and athletic-looking, with dark skin and beautiful eyes. And they were always African American.

  “That’s true,” Susan admitted. “But that’s no reason to refuse someone you
’re attracted to.”

  “I never said I was attracted to him.”

  “You wouldn’t have told me about him if you weren’t.”

  Lisa could have rationalized, made up an excuse to tell Susan, but she really was attracted to Rhys. Yet she knew nothing could come of it. Accepting his invitation ranked right up there with starting something she couldn’t finish.

  ***

  Elizabeth Russell had been born in the wake of the turbulent ‘60's. She didn’t remember the riots and burned out buildings. Her parents had provided her with a college education and she’d attended graduate school at night while working and starting a family.

  She’d never been on welfare, never lived in subsidized housing. Her parents hadn’t been poor and the life she was providing for her girls was a cut above that of her parents.

  Lisa never thought that she’d find one of her children living in the dangerous squalor of the West Cedar section of the city. Or that she’d be prowling the streets, her car moving at a slow crawl, looking at every face to see if she recognized one of them.

  She didn’t.

  This wasn’t her first trip here. Since Jade had come and she had a sense of where Julianna could be, she’d come regularly, sometimes even parking and pushing the stroller up and down the streets, going in and out of stores. She didn’t show Julianna’s photo to anyone. She knew no one would admit to knowing her. Despite Lisa having Jade with her, they might think she was a bill collector or a cop. So she looked, walked, searched for her child.

  Her efforts were fruitless and she only have a small amount of time before Jade needed feeding or changing or some duty called her back to her car and her suburban home.

  Where was she? How could she choose to live like this? Was life at home with her and the twins so unbearable? The twins had told her it wasn’t, but Lisa believed somewhere along the road she’d failed her daughter and she wanted the chance to make up for it.

  Fifteen was a terrible age. Hormones ran wild in a teenager. They thought everything their parents said was old fashion and that they were out of touch with reality. When the real person out of touch was the teenager.