Everyday People (7 page)

It would be easier if he was straight shiftless, she thought. She knew him better. He was so proud of his art—his writing, he called it. You could see it in everything he put up, in the colors and all the details, the way it jumped off a wall. He was the one who should be going to college. So what if it was his own fault, it didn't make it any easier on him, stuck in that chair.

You're afraid of him, she thought. Of the chair.

Maybe.

The same way he's afraid of you and Rashaan.

No, it's different.

How?

Because he didn't want us to start with. It's only now, after everything.

It's only now that you
don't
want him.

That's not true.

You're still afraid of him.

“Maybe,” she said, and Rashaan stirred. When she looked, the curtains seemed to move, just like in one of Chris's movies.

Then she
was
afraid of him.

In the morning she didn't remember how she'd figured it out, or exactly what it meant. She took Rashaan over to Miss Fisk, holding on to that one thought, and at work it made her forget her orders. As usual, the Pancake House
was crowded with students. The entire breakfast rush she threaded her way through the tables, apologizing, the coffeepot heavy as a bowling ball. She always wondered where these kids got their money from; was it all their parents or did they have jobs? Some of the other girls were students, but they never lasted; Vanessa didn't consider what they did real work. They had a choice. She didn't.

She didn't recognize any of her new classmates, which was good. The orders kept pouring in; Lainie was keeping her tables full. Her top was spotted with drips of syrup, and every few minutes her hand caught on one and she had to dab at her shirt with a wet napkin. She was supposed to be thinking about Du Bois, she'd even brought the book to look at during break, but instead she found a chair back in the little dead end by the coat rack and sat there with her feet up and her eyes closed, listening to the other servers push through the swinging doors, the jingle of the silver in their bus boxes. If college would get her out of here, then it was worth it.

And how long would that take, one course at a time? It was stupid; her mother had to know that.

Her mother had a double shift, and Chris was on the answering machine, saying he'd try later. Miss Fisk said Rashaan wouldn't eat his strained peas. “He was just fussing all day long,” she said. “Could be he's coming down with something.”

“He's not allowed,” Vanessa joked, and when they got home, took his temperature. It was over a hundred, but there was no way she could take tomorrow off. She found some children's Tylenol in the bathroom; it was only a month past
the expiration date. She figured that meant when you bought it.

She was cleaning up from dinner when the phone rang.

It was her mother, checking in. “We've got a head-on coming in from the Parkway,” she said. “I wouldn't expect me before midnight.”

“You be careful,” Vanessa said, thinking of the dark parking lot behind West Penn. When she hung up she realized she'd forgotten to ask her to pick up some more Tylenol. She was relieved when the phone rang again, thinking it was her mother.

“Nessie,” Chris said, all happy. “I finally caught you.”

She crossed her arms, cocked a hip—instant attitude, and she knew it. “Why do you keep calling like this?”

“Because I miss you. You know that.”

“Why now?” she said. “Why didn't you miss me before?”

“Before.”

“Yeah, Chris—before. Remember?”

There was silence, and she let it ride, shaking her head. Outside, Tony the candyman's truck jingled by, enticing some Colemans. Sometimes she wondered if Chris would ever grow up. Rashaan held on to her leg so she couldn't pace.

“I remember,” he finally said.

“So?”

“So I'm sorry, all right? What do you want me to do, take it all back, make everything the way it used to be?”

No, she thought, that's what
you
want.

“Look,” he said, “I just want to see you and Rashaan, all right?”

“Why?”

“Because I miss you—I already said that.”

“Wouldn't be because you're feeling sorry for yourself.”

“A little, maybe. I don't know. I'd just like to see you.”

“How's U doing? I saw him in church the other day.”

“Oh yeah, he's saved now. He's okay though. I don't know, there's a lot of things that don't make sense lately.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“So like, you think we can get together or what?”

“I'm working all week. I've got night class now too.”

“Miss Fisk told my Moms. She said it was like nursing school.”

“It's one class at Pitt.”

“How you like it?”

“It's okay. It's only one class.”

“But shit, you're in college. That's all right.”

“Yeah,” she said, almost believing it, and she found she wasn't angry with him. She jiggled her leg to give Rashaan a ride.

“So maybe Saturday, you know. We could do whatever, doesn't matter. Take Rashaan to the park or something.”

“Will you stop calling all the time?”

“'f I can see you.”

“Promise,” she said, and laughed, but then after she hung up she was sure it was a mistake.

She didn't touch the Du Bois until she got Rashaan down, giving him the last of the medicine. She had to finish the first six sections by tomorrow night. A lot of it was about education. He sounded like she imagined Professor Shelby
did.
The function of the university is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.
She had her notebook open to a clean page, her pen lying across it. When she woke up it was still there, her mother just closing the door.

She tried to skim it at work and then on the way in to class, finding a bench on the lawn outside the Cathedral of Learning. It was a huge Gothic tower, fifty stories straight up, a black stone rocket. Inside were rooms dedicated to all the nationalities that made up Pittsburgh, even a new African room. She bent her face to the page, learning about the education of the race, the early teachers in the South and the rise from enforced illiteracy, then Tuskegee and Atlanta. It had to do with her being here, at Pitt, as if all those years of history ended with her sitting on this bench, reading this book, and it was her job to carry on the tradition. For a minute it all made sense, it all seemed possible. For a minute she understood why her mother made her go.

Professor Muller was there again. This time Sinbad sat in the front row, getting in his comments on Du Bois. Vanessa sat near the back, afraid of being called on. The discussion was good. The professor and Sinbad had a lot to say that Vanessa hadn't even seen in the reading. And the professor seemed to agree with him: Du Bois was
in
this country, he only wanted to be
of
it, something the Africanist movement would later criticize him for. For most of the class they talked about the reconstruction of the South and the role of state governments in denying the freedmen their
voting rights. She should have taken more notes, she thought. She should have read it slower.

“Okay,” Professor Muller said, “your assignment for next time is,” and wrote
ORAL HISTORY
on the board. She wanted them to interview someone about their experience as an African American. Tape-record it, then edit it down.

Someone raised a hand. “What if they don't consider themself African American? What if they consider themself Black?”

“That's fine,” the professor said. “The whole idea of oral history is self-definition.”

It was past time, and people started getting up, the room filling with the noise of chairs.

“One more thing,” the professor hollered, so everyone stopped. “
Who
you interview. This is important. I want you to interview the oldest person you know.” She scrawled it across the board, part of the chalk breaking off and falling to the floor. “Again—the oldest person you know. Any questions?”

Immediately Vanessa thought of Miss Fisk. It was a good assignment. It was way easier than reading.

In the elevator Sinbad had nothing to say, and she realized she hadn't thought of Chris in hours, or even Rashaan, his fever.

Miss Fisk said it would be fine. She didn't have any plans tomorrow afternoon, if that was all right. She promised she'd try to remember. It was hard when you got to be her age, but she'd try. Some days were better than others,
she said, and Vanessa didn't have to say she wouldn't ask anything about Bean.

“How was class?” her mother asked.

“Good,” she said, and told her about the assignment.

“What are you going to ask her?”

“I don't know,” Vanessa said.

“I'd ask about her family, the people she came from.”

“That's good.”

“And maybe how they made it through the Depression.”

“Let me get a piece of paper,” Vanessa said.

Rashaan's fever was gone; he was eating again. After dinner she was working on the list when she heard the electric bells of Tony's truck. She thought it was almost fall and that she wouldn't have many more chances to see him, and she patted her pocket for some money and scooped Rashaan up and ran down the stairs and outside.

Tony's old truck was parked across the street, Tony around back of it, hunched and reaching into the freezer. The truck was from the thirties, its fenders curved, its grille a fence of chrome. The visor above the front window was red, white and blue, the rest of the truck white, with faded stickers of all the different treats. When she was a little girl, the Bomb-pops were just a quarter, and you couldn't finish one before the juice melted down your arm; now they were eighty-five and half the size.

There wasn't much of a crowd, just some Colemans. Tony had a white shirt and pants on, his white apron over top of it, white gloves. His eyebrows were bushy and gray, his ears furry nests of hair, and his lips always looked wet, as if he licked them. Vanessa was surprised to find she was
taller than he was, his hunch more pronounced now, painful to look at. He seemed to have gotten old while his truck had stayed the same. He dipped his arm in and pulled out an ice-cream sandwich for the Coleman in front of her.

“Vanessa Bopessa,” he said, “and Rashaan Manon. What can old Tony get for you today? Bomb-pop? Cap'n Crunch bar? Strawberry, your favorite.”

“They still make those?” she asked.

“No, I'm just kidding.”

She ordered a Creamsicle and a Tootsie push-pop for Rashaan, then stood on the sidewalk with a hip cocked, helping him eat it. The Colemans sat on the steps of their building, ranking on each other, dripping sticky dots on the stone. She remembered those summers when every day ended like this—her and Taniquah and Bean and Chris hanging around on parked cars while the locusts droned. Tony would run a Dove bar over to Miss Fisk sitting on her porch. When it got dark they played flashlight tag and Terminator. It wasn't that long ago, she thought. Where had it all gone?

Tony served everyone, making change from his apron, then came over to socialize. Was everything all right? Everyone all set? He was like a bad magician, someone's nutty grandfather, so goofy you had to like him.

“How's Renée?” Vanessa asked.

“Good, good. She's at the William Penn now. She likes it. You?”

“Still at the Pancake House. And going to Pitt part-time.”

“Good school. I took a lifesaving class there, long time ago.”

“Oh yeah?” Vanessa said, and he started telling her about it—the pool and the other students and the smell of chlorine, and suddenly Vanessa wondered if he was older than Miss Fisk. He was white, so it didn't matter, but she wondered. She couldn't imagine him swimming, leaving the gym in winter with his hair still wet. He had this whole life behind him she knew nothing about. A family, a history. She would never know it, she thought, and now she wanted to. He was sharper than Miss Fisk, who sometimes forgot what she was saying. Vanessa would have to ask her just the right questions.

“Well,” Tony said, “I got a lot more stops,” and waved good-bye to Rashaan. “Study hard.”

“I will,” Vanessa said.

She did that night, staying up with the news to cut down her list of questions. At work she added some of the old ones in again, and came up with some new ones, so that when she sat down with Miss Fisk late that afternoon she had more than when she started.

Miss Fisk was ready for her, a leather-bound photo album laid out on the coffee table. She'd made a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of gingersnaps. The lemonade was fine, but when Vanessa bit into one of the cookies she realized that some ingredient was missing. She covered her surprise by taking a big sip.

“Let me make sure this is working,” she said, and turned on the recorder. “All right, the first question I'd like to ask you is about your family.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Your mother, what was she like?”

Miss Fisk rocked back like she was thinking. She closed her eyes and then opened them again, smiling as if proud that she'd remembered the answer. “My mother was from Carolina. Columbia, South Carolina. Her grandmother on her mother's side was a slave and her grandfather was a sharecropper. After the Surrender they set up their own place outside Decatur, Georgia. That's where one of the big slave markets was, in Decatur. That's where they met.”

Vanessa checked to make sure the tape was running. Once Miss Fisk got going, she tried not to interrupt. Miss Fisk was saying exactly what they'd been talking about in class—how her great-grandparents had been burned out by the Klan and headed north, chopping cotton for traveling money, how her grandfather was the first man in the family who could read. Everything they did seemed heroic, an endless struggle, and Vanessa thought of how exhausted she was, how she counted on the fact that there was just one more day till the weekend. In a way it didn't seem real to Vanessa, all this history. It was strange what you didn't know about a person, like last night with Tony—all the things behind them.