Hide.
What if he did it? The ground dips. It’s a barely perceptible pulse; a movement too minor to fret over now that the stoop has begun to shake. The sidewalk burps and rumbles, the street lurches, houses pitch. The unfamiliar faces of the crowd fade into those of my dear friends Sable and Lillian, Watson, Watson Junior, Edward Senior, both my mamas: Agnes and Ella, Meredith, Myrtle. All the faces of the past stand before me. One face doesn’t belong. It’s a shadow but I’d recognize him anywhere: Edward. Twentieth Street vomits fragments of the past, spewing bile and memories of Sweetwater, Maryland. Thick green trees, always weeping, leaves interlocking like hands, trunks thick like men you can rely on. Over there the river, rising and falling without mercy, as unfaithful as hymns. There the ramble shacks, makeshift boxes of sticks and gum, leaves, and paper. There the graves, a rock to mark this one from that. All around, straight, long rows of fat-bodied blueberries, thin-skinned and bleeding.
In the center of it all, rapidly taking shape, is Walker Farm. It rises like a bruised, bloated, hissing thing. Smoke pushes through the massive windows and curls around the huge frame, clutching at the wood that’s dry like skin. The cherrywood door opens. Tempe, a dark, slender shadow, stares. Behind her, flames beg, Wait, wait. Crackling, buckling, smoldering, popping, screaming.
Silence.
A siren on the other side of town.
Get going.
“Tempe?” I whisper. I don’t trust my voice.
Hush, they hear you. I done told you a hundred times. When you talking to me, use your inside voice.
Don’t leave me.
I’ll be here till it’s done.
I should get word to Lil. She’ll be at her day job, washing and ironing for that family just outside of the city. Gideon might be between shifts at the factory. Those two got more jobs between them than other young folk I know. Might be nightfall before they get word. I hope it’s sooner. I’d hate for Edward to die alone.
“Buddy, go find Lil. Franklin, fetch Gideon.” Buddy opens his mouth to tell me something I already know. The news will get there before he does. “Ain’t right for them to hear it from nobody but family,” I say.
I make my way off Twentieth Street. I don’t bother to turn around to see if the crowd is following. They march, arms laden with posters, fish-fry fliers and cake-sale donation buckets, the other way.
“We need to gather more soldiers,” the reverend explains. “It’s 1910. It’s high time they stop killing our people. If we don’t stop them now, it won’t ever stop. This here is war.”
It is war. Tempe and I march headfirst into it.
Chapter 2
7:00 a.m.
Don’t seem like nobody doing nothing but yelling and slowing me down. Their voices take my breath away. Their words run together like one long curse: “One of them Negroes stole a trolley. Damned fool crashed right into the store window. Wasn’t no accident, they trying to kill us. Knew this would happen one day. Only a matter of time. Send them back to Africa. Fixed him good; none of them will try that again.”
Back to Africa? My boy was born in Maryland just like his mama and papa. And my mama from round here somewhere right in Pennsylvania. How many of them can say they was born right here?
Just eight blocks to go and I want to run. I want to push through these angry red faces, kick my shoes off, and run barefoot down the middle of the street. Fixed him? Lord help us. I march down Beacon, on to Pleasant, and finally to Autumn Lane. Rows of people stacked up on both sides of the street. Union workers in dark-blue uniforms gather on one side. Company men in dark suits on the other. Police guard the middle. Bottles and words hurl from one side to the other. I put my head down, lean forward, and head to the colored entrance of Autumn Asylum Home for the Poor; hospital of the damned.
My feet stop me at the door. I try real hard but I can’t remember the face of anyone that’s crossed this threshold twice. How many people come with a toothache and come out dead? Headache? Dead. Broke leg? Dead.
Go in.
There’s not as many people inside as there are out. I don’t blame them. No matter how busted up I was, if I could walk in here on my own, I’d walk to another hospital.
There’s worse things than being dead.
You would say that.
Don’t worry about that now.
Seems like now’s just the right time to worry about it. Doctors have no business experimenting on my boy. Ain’t the time to be trying nothing new. Now’s the time for something old, something respected. He should be home where I can take care of him. A little honey, onion, lemon, and river grass will do it. Where can I get river grass? Not Schuylkill grass. Lush, down-home grass. If Mama was here she’d know what to do. I look into each face I pass. Are these the victims? Some stare. Others, angry, watch me. Do they know who I am? Do they think my boy’s some kind of killer? He ain’t. What they think don’t change a damned thing. Their pain oozes from bruised eyes, broken arms, busted heads.
Keep walking.
“He can’t have visitors,” the nurse announces to someone behind me. We’ve been standing in front of her for five minutes while she flips through charts, adjusts papers, waters a dying plant. She hasn’t looked at me yet.
“I’m not a visitor.” Her face is twisted up like she don’t understand the words coming out of my mouth. “I’m his mama,” I say, slow like she ain’t from around here.
The nurse looks at the top of my head. Her look could wilt the flower stuck in my cap. Without looking into my eyes, she looks from my dress down to my double-soled shoes and back to the top of my head. She frowns, glances at the chart, flips a few pages, skims a few notes. “It doesn’t say except for mothers. It says no visitors.” Smug little heifer.
The only thing standing between me and my boy is this little bit of a thing, can’t be no more than twenty if she’s that. What does she know about dying alone? About a whole heap of people wanting you dead? About ending up in a run-down hospital getting run-down supplies and secondhand care because you colored and been accused of doing something don’t nobody care if you done or not? I can push past her and make it to my boy. Just her between me and—
Go ’head then.
“What?” Tempe’s always interrupting.
Push past her. She ain’t but a little thing, go ahead. What’s stopping you?
“What about all these people?”
Couldn’t nobody keep me from my boy, ’cept maybe you.
“I ain’t keep him from you. You left him. Who’d you think was gonna raise him, if not me?” Tears fill my eyes, spill down my cheeks and splatter on the nurse’s station counter. I can’t stop them. My shoulders stoop, my body shakes.
“She always like this?” the nurse asks the room.
No one answers.
“This seem normal to you people?”
“Is everything alright? Is she having a fit?” a red-haired nurse asks.
“I just want to see my boy,” I say.
“I think she’s mad.” The nurse nods her head toward me.
“I ain’t mad. I ain’t. I’m disappointed, hurt, angry too, if I’m honest. But I really just want to see my boy.”
“She’s not mad,” the older nurse diagnoses, “perhaps she’s had a fit.”
“Does she take medication?” they ask one another.
I shake my head.
“I wouldn’t reckon so; they don’t usually go to the doctor until they’re dying.”
“Let’s sit this one down. Keep an eye on her. See if she has another fit while I look for a bed.”
A bed? First they killing my son now they planning on killing me?
“I don’t need no bed. Just my boy. I come for my boy.”
The nurses whisper to one another. One points at a chart, flips pages, jabs a pen in the air. “I’ll send someone to take you up,” she says.
For a second she meets my eyes. “Wait in there.”
The young nurse turns back to piles of paperwork. The other one marches down the corridor. One step from the desk and Tempe and I are in the waiting room. Wooden benches squeezed into a small space. It would be called a water closet if it was somewhere else.
“I saw the whole thing,” a young woman in a heavily creased domestic’s uniform, clean except for the blood splatters dried across its front, tells an old man whose arm twists at a peculiar angle. Nothing a little roseroot wouldn’t cure.
“Me too,” he answers.
“That fool drove right in the store, aimed for it. Didn’t swerve or nothing. He aimed.” Her bobbing head punctuates each word.
“That ain’t what I saw,” the man says. “Looked like that boy was propped up, peculiar like, like someone done stuck him there.”
“Woulda run me clear over if I hadn’t jumped out the way.”
“You mean if he hadn’t hit a bunch of other people before you,” he says.
“Thank God for small miracles,” the woman says. The words coming out of her mouth make her whole face look ugly. Shame, too. She almost looks like the kind of gal that woulda been good for Edward. Good job. Home training, maybe not good home training. No sense in her head. Says the first thing that pops into it. Her voice makes my head hurt. I can’t stop staring at her mouth.
8:15 a.m.
Just look at the floor.
Every so often my heart stops. The pew-shaped benches, the cold, gray floor, even the thick pamphlets filled with dark-faced patients and white-faced doctors bear worn edges. The room has whittled Autumn’s hurt down to patches, splinters, and grooves. My eyes water as bloodred flowers drip onto the concrete floor. I concentrate on my shoes instead. The arch fit special to my wide feet, the thick soles for hours of standing, the tiny holes so my feet can breathe. Something else Edward thought I needed. Eyes stinging, I study the tops of people’s heads, walls, the one window, until everything peels into layers. I rock back and forth to keep my eyes open. The bench groans each time I lean back, creaks when I lean forward. Groan, creak, groan, creak.
Stay still!
If I close them quick I can keep my eyes open longer. I try it. I blink. Edward in his work dungarees. Blink. Edward in his army uniform. Blink. Edward in boxing gloves. Blink. Edward at his first colored dance. Blink. Edward’s life flashes backward. If I close them too long, he’ll be gone. I stare at the wall in front of me. Straight lines turn into squiggles, flecks of paint into people, colors swirl. If it hurts enough, maybe Edward will live. That’s silly. I’ll hold my breath. My breath for his. Lord, if I surrender, will you spare my boy?
Don’t be foolish.
A body slides into the seat next to mine. It smells like fresh earth, sweat, and death. Two long, slender feet, bare. A man-child rubs them together. The shhh, shhh of dry feet ignites the room. Small clumps of dirt drop to the floor. People whisper, shuffle. Bodies lean toward the door. No one gets up to leave but they all look like they want to.
“Now look here,” a nurse says loudly while rushing from behind useless stacks of paper. “I told you we don’t have any more room. We aren’t seeing any more patients today. This is the waiting room.”
“I am waitin’, ma’am,” the man replies. I know that voice. He leans into the bench, shifts his weight to one side, then the other, rubs his back against the pine, and finally leans forward, his hands on bony knees.
“He with y’all?” she asks the pamphlets, the stained walls, the dim light and bare floor. Soon she will have to look someone in the eye, to acknowledge the waiting.
Slender feet, bony knees, thick fingers, long arms, and broad chest. He looks older here than he did when he was trying to take over my stoop. What’s he doing here now? I wouldn’t be surprised if someone had bopped him straight in the mouth. Talking ’bout things he don’t know nothing about. Would serve him right.
“I said, is he,” she pinches her lips together so the words barely whistle through, “with one of you all?”
Right hand on gun, a police officer, young enough to be excited by the promise of conflict, saunters toward us.
“He’s with us,” I say. Don’t need no more lives on my hands.
The nurse hurries to the sanctuary of her paperwork, the officer fumbles with the button on his holster, the young man settles back into the pine, fidgets.
“You ought to be more careful,” I say. “You were about to end up dead.”
“I’m in the right place for it,” he laughs. “Ma’am, I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself properly. I’m Jacob. Jacob Wood. I’m here as a friend of Edward’s.”
Mint breath tickles my nose; a lie with a hint of sweet. “You ain’t sound like a friend when you was on my steps preaching he tried to kill folks,” I say. The words and spittle hit his face. Jacob doesn’t flinch.
“The truth don’t mean he ain’t my friend,” he says. “I know he done it and meant to do it too, Ma Spring.” He leans into me, too close. “It’s gonna take more than praying to get Edward outta here alive.”
The sweet, salty taste of blood fills my mouth. I turn, slip a handkerchief from my bag, spit, and fold it into little pink blotted squares. “You some sort of doctor?”
“Ma’am, we—my associates and I—have been thinking a lot about Edward’s situation.”
I can’t stand to look at him. All that youth wasted. How is he sitting here, plotting and lying, while my boy, my good, kind boy, is somewhere broke up? Everything about him, from the words coming out of his mouth to his ashy feet, irritates me. I study his feet, thick and naked. Dry as two pickled hams. Toes as plump as figs. Dripping dirt. Dirt. In a hospital. Dirt that black is rich, hearty. Plant a seed in that and anything’s liable to sprout up. “You say you can help Edward?”
“My associates and me think we can help you help Edward. All you got to do is remember right. Maybe it was him that come up with the plan to steal the trolley. Maybe he talked about it over supper. Maybe he was working for the Company trying to rile people up by hiring a Negro operator. Had him plow the train into Clyde’s to make a point. Maybe it wasn’t no accident.”
“My boy wouldn’t do that.”
“You know, Edward ain’t no boy no more.”
This drumming in my head won’t quit. I can’t catch my breath. Can’t swallow. That boy’s mouth is still moving and thank the Lord, I can’t hear nothing but this high-pitched train whistle getting louder and louder. Rattling the room, shaking the pews, scattering pamphlets. The only thing it can’t do is wipe that grin off Jacob’s face. I close my eyes. Blink. Edward leaving for work yesterday. Starched uniform. Glistening smile. A wave goodbye.
Chapter 3
9:37 a.m.
Soft, warm fingers wind around my wrist.
“This way, Ms. Spring. It’s just a little piece further.” The lie tumbles from the nurse’s clenched lips. “I’m sorry. I wish there was a faster way,” she whispers.
The colored ward is separated from the waiting area by the women’s ward, the men’s ward, and the operating room. When it’s not serving as a mental health unit, the ward’s beds serve West Philadelphia’s homeless. When it’s not serving them, it serves West Philadelphia’s diseased, broken, and dying. The treatment remains the same: colored patients and visitors are ushered the long way round, down the concrete stairs, through the maintenance closet and up again, under the main wing, so as not to disturb the other patients.
“It’s just …” she continues.
“How is my boy?” I ask. Ammonia-scented mops and bleach-stained buckets tighten my lungs.
“Careful, that stuff will kill a man. Sorry.” The nurse has apologized for the narrow stairs, the concrete floors, the stains that won’t fade despite weekly scrubbing with bleach, ammonia, or lye; the patches of bright light filtered in through cracked windows; the stretches of d
ark not yet granted funding for electricity; and the walk—the need to walk beneath the hospital instead of through it. I’m sorry when it’s not your fault. I’m sorry when there’s nothing you can do. I’m sorry when you’re close to giving up. I’m fed up with I’m sorrys.
The nurse’s shoes click against the concrete. My stomach knots and untangles. My mouth sours with thick phlegm. Just a little bit longer. Below the busy main hospital, it’s almost easy to pretend nothing else matters.
“He’s pretty beat up,” she says.
My heart’s been racing all morning so I know it when it stops. Where was I when they was dragging him from the trolley? When they threw him to the street? When he cried out for me? When he curled into a ball and they kicked and kicked and kicked? Tempe come to tell me. Did she know before it or not till after? If she’d have known before she would have told me, if she could. Even if there was some sort of rule that she couldn’t tell the living, she would have told me. She’d have done it for the boy. Unless there wasn’t nothing I could do about it. She would have stopped it, if she could. If she could have reached down and protected him, she would have. Can’t tell nothing till it’s too late. Can’t do nothing about it no how. What’s the use in hanging around if she can’t do no more than I can to keep him safe?
“We almost there?”
The nurse stops walking. She clasps my hands tight like we’re schoolgirls. She bows her head. With no windows it’s near pitch black. The grating of air squeezes through a crack and the cadence of her prayer matches my breathing. I time it: one, two, silence. One, two, silence.
“Amen,” she says. “You okay? You wheezing pretty bad.”
She leans closer.
“It’s just my heart.”
I feel her fumbling with her stethoscope.
“It’s breaking. I just need to get to my boy.”
“Has your boy been acting different this past week?” the officer asks. He ain’t looking at me.
Remembered Page 2
