His Own Where (5 page)

a couple weeks go by.
Buddy father slipping into worse condition. Doctors tell him, anyday. Buddy go to school and blank out in the classroom chair. Thinking and feeling about Angela. Think about her face. Think about how small she seem. Think about her breasts. Think about her room.

 

In Phys. Ed. Buddy organize his friends. They make it plain they don’t want no phony one-two exercising. They want real live physical education: sex education. Want straight films on sex. Want to learn anatomy. Buddy want to know what Angela look like inside. That where the giggle come from. They want contraceptives. They want sex free and healthy like they feel it. Buddy want his Angela.

The principal say no. So Buddy organize his friends. His friends organize their friends. They organize some more. All come together in the gym. Confront the principal.

“What do we want?”

“Sex!”

“When do we want it?”

“Now!”

“What do we want?”

“Sex!”

“When do we want it?”

“Now!”

Principal be very annoy. Principal, a balding son of somebody, send for the A. V. teacher. Ask him bring a tape recorder and a microphone. Buddy and his friends raise the chant:

“What do we want?”

“What do we need?”

“When do we need it?”

“When do we want it?”

The A. V. man arrive carrying a tape recorder and a microphone. The principal trying to bring the gym to order. Fifteen hundred boys calling out:

“Now!”

“Sex!”

“Now!”

“Sex!”

Principal say, “Boys! Boys!”

They lower the chant into a growling consultation among themselves. Come up with a new cry:

“Girls! Girls!”

“Two-four-six-eight-why don’t you coeducate?”

“Girls! Girls!”

“Two-four -six-eight-why don’t you coeducate?”

“When do we want it?”

“Now!”

“Wow! Now! Girls! Girls!”

 

The principal call out: “I am willing to negotiate, send me your leader.”

Tremendous roar of laughter break loose from the boys.

They rush forward as one man, Buddy at the front. Present the principal with their demands. Talk back and forth. The principal agree to order films immediately. But he want to negotiate the contraceptives.

The boys appoint a committee who will meet with the principal, settle the details, settle the details. Design a contraceptive clinic. Buddy shove a clipboard underneath the principal nose. Tell him he will write down the particulars of the agreement. Sign it on the spot.

The principal capitulate. Anyways, what can he argue? Do he want more unwed mothers? Tense unhappy students in the classroom? Rape around the corner? Streets too dangerous for his wife to walk down them alone? Mr. Hickey sign the paper.

Buddy handspring somersault high hysterical and happy flying down the lunchroom. Want to eat some food.

He reach the lunchroom. Smell the starchy cheese smell. Slide by the dry steam succotash. The superpeel potato. Stale whole wheat bread. The jerkoff corny butter squares.

Buddy say “God-damn!”

His friend ask, “What you mean?”

Buddy say, “Today. From now. No more. No more eating garbage. And no more this rig-the-lunchroom garbage meaning that we have to squeeze uptight against the walls.”

Buddy look around. Tell his lieutenant, “Get the biggest baddest phonograph and get it down here quick.” Tell his right-hand man, “Go find some sides. Don’t care where you get them. Get them. And bring them here.”

Spot the lunchroom supervisor. Give out the word. The boys fall in behind him, close and ready. Buddy move slow to the supervisor Mr. Jenkins. Loudly put his question.

“Mr. Jenkins, why you scrunch up all the tables one side of the lunchroom?”

“Listen here, Rivers. What you trying to do?”

“No, man, answer me. Why we got to sit in all these tables jam up to the side like that?”

Mr. Jenkins reach out to hold on Buddy arm.

“Don’t you touch me, Brother Jenkins.”

“Rivers, I can explain this to you privately.”

“I don’t wanna hear no privately.”

“You can understand, it’s a lot easier.”

“Don’t you tell me what I understand. You tell me what you have to say, then I’ll tell you what I understand.”

“Only two of us patrol the lunchroom, Rivers. You know that.” Jenkins talking quickly, nervous now about the boys surrounding him. “Make it easier to control the situation.”

“Control!” Buddy mimicking. “Control. You pack us in like animals, and then you say, they act like nothing more than animals. To hell with your control.” Buddy start to snap his fingers, rhythmic. Snap. Snap.

Get it together!

Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.

Get it together.

Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.

Other students pick it up. Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.

Get it together.

Buddy say, “Shit. Must be some women in this lunchroom. Find the women!”

Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.

Buddy dash. Buddy dash over to the counter. Jump the counter. Run over, hold a woman.

“Hey, sweetheart, I know you
got
to be somebody’s mother! Am I right or wrong?”

 

The woman try to be angry with him, but she laugh.

Buddy say, “Come on, big Momma, dance with me!”

Buddy urge the woman out. The other boys be imitating what he do. Find all them women in the lunchroom. Bring them out, and proud. Buddy yell, “Some music, jim, some music!”

First lieutenant plug the phonograph and wail the volume to the limit. The music start. The boys push drag and shove the tables out the way. Furore in the lunchroom. Big Mommas in the middle, like church sisters taking care a ceremony. Dignified, and happy. Rocking to the beat.

The boys be jumping on the tables. Snatch some silverware. Beat the furniture to drums. Beat and stamp and clap and dance, and listen to the music. Moving to the music. Making up the music. In the middle, all the Mommas jiggle and they wiggle, dip and strut, break and shake. Take the handkerchief from out the pocket of they uniform. Wipe they forehead. Rock around the floor. Rock. Rock. Rock. Snap, snap. Stamp, stamp. Turn the lunchroom on.

 

Seven hundred young Black men and four big Mommas doing a dance, in the Boys’ High lunchroom.

They having so much fun, they hardly hear the sirens racing to the school. The police rush in at the four doors to the lunchroom. Stand there stupefied. Try to figure out what’s happening.

Some of the students leap right over, friendly style, ask, “Any women with you?”

Police uncertain what to do. Suddenly the music stop. Mr. Hickey cross the lunchroom, hurriedly on the diagonal. “Arrest him! Arrest him! Where is Rivers? Arrest him!”

 

The dancing stop.

Buddy come right over to Hickey. Ask him, “Are you looking for me?”

“There he is. Book the troublemaker. Get him out of my school.”

Sergeant look around, see all the boys friendly and relax. He see the big Mommas smiling hope to dance some more.

“What’s the charge?”

“Disorderly conduct, idiot!”

“Who are you calling ‘idiot’? Mr.—--?”

“Hickey. I’m the principal here.”

Sergeant look at the floor and say, “Disorderly conduct. You got a printed rule prohibit dancing in the lunchroom, Mr. Hickey?”

“Printed?! You know the rules, Sergeant. You can see for yourself what has happened here!” Exasperated, he shouts, “Jenkins! Where are you?”

 

Jenkins stroll slowly over to the principal. Jenkins looking at the four big Mommas. Think about his own. He say, “Mr. Hickey, we—”

Hickey interrupt him. “We!?”

“Well, I—I mean—the fellas—you know—and I—just have some music going on. You know, break the monotony, change from the routine.”

So the talk goes. The sergeant shake his head and leave the lunchroom, laughing. Ask the Mommas, “How you doing? How’s everything?”

They tell him everything be fine.

But Buddy be suspended.

And beside the principal tell Buddy that he can’t come back to school unless he bring a parent with him. Buddy think about how dumb the idea is: his parents. Would have to mean a uncle or a aunt come up explaining and polite. Buddy rather wait until his father maybe leave the hospital and come to school: his father be right there to deal with the principal. So Buddy have to stay suspended.

time and time and day and night
Buddy be alone. At the hospital, he watch his father, hanging on, unconscious. Live on sugar, flow down from a bottle through a tube into a vein of his muscular and idle arm.

Buddy try for small talk with Mrs. Figueroa. But she give him the glaring of her ugly eye. Angela be transfer from the shelter to a Catholic Home for Girls, outside the city, call St. Margaret.

Buddy is practicing to drive his father’s car the long way up to Angela in Middlebrook. He have been around the local corners some before but never no long practice drive to get him ready for the big trip.

Tuesday he decide to practice right around the city where the traffic bars the river from the people. Buddy off into a territory takes it thirty-five miles per at midday in-between what folks call heavy. Thirty-five miles per.

The car run like two tons of filthy thick and deeply spotted oil down Halsey Street between the Blackwood Keep-Your-Neighborhood-Clean placards tilted up strict in the flowerless front yards of
redandyellow grayandbrown brownstones. Then the street merge into Fulton Street and subway stops. The workclothes clothingstores. Novelty shops. Goodwill centers. Secondhand refrigerators icebox bedspring coffeepercolator shoes and dresses trouserpants and earmuffs. Fish and barbecue and Jesus Saves Me tabernacles. Drug and beautybarbershops. A stonewhite Virgin Mary statue and a place where Flats Be Fixed and Records Sold at Bargain Prices. Fulton Street.

One time Buddy want to buy a present for Angela so he walk Reid Avenue past all the short thin younger kids who live half in the hallway half on the avenue. Go walk on up to Fulton Street and bop into one shop after another. Find nothing but the smell of old cheese and old fat men with dirty smiles. Or else the smell of old yellow cheese and heavy dust covered crap nobody ever want under Easter egg sloppycolor cellophane.

Nothing good enough for Angela. And you know the price be twice as high as downtown.

Buddy drive down Fulton Street and on to Flatbush Avenue between the blank big office buildings mostly vacant on each side. And then he reach the bridge go over it and cross Canal Street. Make a right turn. Take the West Side Highway north.

 

The highway like a Funny House. You don’t know when something will open at you let you off
or what. Drive north past the storybook apartment houses. People dress up for the movies. Dress down to walk the dog. Drive by below the marble bullshit memory of Prez Grant.

Drive by these Bronxlike Mountainside apartments. Look like highrise outhouse and no door. No tree. Drive across the narrow northern edge of the Manhattan secret-island (people use it like the island part’s a secret part). Under a tunnel under eight different intersecting streets under skyscraping (more) apartments on top of George Washington Bridge and curve onto the East Side Drive. The really river drive by Harlem. Brick projects. Brick new private terracing apartments glovelights and concrete colored intermix construction bricks. Drive quiet by the river. Harlem bridges start to sway out the windshield.

Drive toward the crowded power down the East Side Drive. And Buddy just be Buddy practicing for the long trip up to Angela.

About the level of 123d Street the Drive spread wider than it was and Buddy tense a bit like a pilot in a mission cockpit.

Check the gauges. Check the rearview mir—ror. Check the sideview mirror. Watch them cars ahead. The radio be playing loud and nice.

Static. Buddy snap to. The drive be under a stone shed tunnel now. Radio song turn to static. Buddy feel a shivering. He see in the rearview mirror a large black car. A hearse and yellow headlights follow him. And snakestyle behind the hearse more of them. Largedarkcars and yellow lights.

Buddy feel fear.

Not able to switch lanes because there be no room for him. Broad daylight and they in this tunnel and this largedarkcar with yellowlights and other largedarkcars with yellowhearseheadlights be following right after Buddy.