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Authors: June Jordan

His Own Where (6 page)

BOOK: His Own Where
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They leave the tunnel to the broad daylight again but still the funeral procession following close right after him and Buddy feel panic.
Why they following after him? Where they going on the Drive? No cemeteries in this direction
anywhere. This direction take you to the midtown city center of the power. Where’s the cemetery for the funeral behind him? Buddy switch lane. The largedark car behind him switch lane behind him and the other yellow headhearse-lit large dark cars switch into line following after Buddy.
Him Buddy start to sweat. Another stoneshed tunnel upahead and under it the first hearse pull next to Buddy make Buddy feel like a midget. Look up and see the gargoyle gladioli flowers of the funeral like watercolor swords ready to ram another any corpse around.
Buddy frantic want to separate himself from this funeral procession. Find the next exit and leave the Drive entirely. On the midtown Manhattan sidestreet from the highway Buddy wheel the car to the curb and halt the engine underneath a No Parking Anytime sign. Scared sitting in a small sweat. Buddy don’t want to drive no more. Get out and stretch his legs. (Illegal because the sign means on your seat and off your feet.)
From the East River walking west across Forty-ninth Street. Buddy want to cross Second Avenue. He look up north and see the midtown city see the carhorizon taxicolored truckcolored carcolored steel flowers for the funeral. He see the midtown city cemetery and the cold flowers the carsteel flowers filling up the land of stone.
Buddy turn to snatch his car and move it home.
ten
angela send him a letter:
 
Dear Buddy,
 
How are you?
I am fine. I am staying at St. Margaret’s in Middlebrook, New York. It’s this home for girls again.
How is your father? I hope he is feeling better.
If you want to, you can write me here. They let me get my mail if the letters are all right.
The sisters are very nice and they read my mail before I can read it.
We eat, sleep, and go to school and everything all in the same one building.
If I don’t get in trouble, I can have a visitor at the end of the month. Do you think you can come and see me?
 
Love,
Angela
eleven
buddy read the letter
again and again. Figure the sisters must be censoring the mail, or else Angela be brain damage from when her father hit her in the head. Buddy not sure what to think, but he have hope that it be censorship. End of the month leave him one week to wait until he see her.
He start a garden. Shovel clear some walkway for the garden. Buy cement and mix it with a strong rose coloring for Angela. She will walk around the earth the color of a rose. He pour the cement mix into a S shape in the yard and around it be planting roses and chrysanthemums, a pear tree and some marigold.
 
Buddy like working in the dirt. He like the feel of soil under the fingernails and mud changing shape in the palm of a hand or the slight chill shiver of a slow moving earthworm.
His relatives, and even sometimes his mother far away in Barbados, they all send him, send Buddy, food money and money for clothes. Treat him like a little man. He take all the clothes money
and spend it ordering seeds from a garden catalog his father always use to use, with color photographs of fruit trees and things like that.
The backyard seem like a flower island in the middle of the block. Buddy stare at the fencing separate the people keep every yard too small. Keep every yard a secret angry under the windows. The alley cats the only living action yard to yard.
Then Buddy get himself a plan and go around to make it happen. Buddy want to tear the separating fences down. At first the people tell him when he talk to them they worry that the junkies will rob and steal out stuff from the new back openspace. But Buddy argue how the back be just as hard to enter as the front of houses. So everybody try it.
Pretty soon the neighbors break the backyard open. Pull the fencing down. Stretch the yard into a park they all will share. Have a great big smoky BarBcue to celebrate. Working the ground with neighbors. Planning the backyard park so there be different things that you can use it for. Buddy be less alone and busy. They have a huge dump of sand somebody bring in and even the older kids spread into it. Have a ball. The men plan how to share the hose they have for waterplay when summer start.
Things looking up. People on the block say hello and talk awhile.
Buddy spend all the money he hold on work stuff, seed, tools, paint. He be losing weight.
He write to Angela:
Last night it rain, and I go walking out. I notice how the sidewalk looks blue when it rain. So I buy some strong blue paint to paint the sidewalk strong blue all the time. Then a taxi fly by and I been thinking about your father and I look at the steps lead to the parlor. They probably look better black and yellow. Done that today. Then I buy some slick gray paint to trim the windows. I would like to paint the street a bloody red where cars go through.
But the people on the block don’t really dig all this painting that I do. They come around complaining.
Yak. Yak.
Tell me what they feed you. Good cooking is hard to come by. Do you know how? To cook?
 
See you soon.
Buddy
Dear Angela:
I be the first one there on Saturday, see for myself what’s happening to you.
Yesterday I make this table. Be like the
Japanese. The table seem like a triangle. One point be the food and the other points be for you and me. It stand 15 inches high, from off the floor. Like I said, you can call me Slim. I hope you slim the same. Otherwise, it be uncomfortable.
Stain it what they call a rosewood coloring. I got this thing for roses, and for you. When the table be finish, I put it next to the big floor pillows where
you
can lie down and listen to the phonograph, which I still ain’t finish put together, but I have in mind because of you.
 
Love,
Buddy
twelve
saturday arrive.
Buddy driving up to Angela. Drive by houses, drive by parkside, drive by gasoline station, drive by the state police, drive by highway over the highway, drive by byways by the highway, drive by other people, other cars, traveling in the same, the opposite direction. Cross across them. Drive by boats. Drive by pond and river. Drive by train and railroad track.
 
Take a long time getting there.
Angela see Buddy and her heart beat hard.
She say, “You looking skinny.”
He say, “You watch out. You be like a heavyweight.”
“Sister Frances, this is Buddy Rivers.”
“How you, Sister?”
Buddy see the sister trying to hide her face from the light. Seem like she shave her face.
“Sister Mary this is my friend, Buddy Rivers.”
“How you, Sister Mary?”
Buddy notice Sister Mary look like a football fullback off the field.
“Sister Margaret, this be Buddy Rivers. He my friend from Brooklyn.”
Buddy think she look all right and wonder why the Sister Margaret be a nun.
Angela introduce Buddy to every single sister this and that. Buddy think the bunch of them be like some fallen angels. Fallen out of life.
“Ain no priests up here, Angela?”
“Why you asking me?”
“The sisters need some boyfriends. Something make them act alive. I come up and be a altar boy! Get this heavy incense. Throw it all around the chapel. Everybody be high.”
“Buddy, stop that.”
“Stop what? How you like it up here, nothing but the sisters and the girls?”
“Let’s go where we can really talk.”
“Where’s that?”
“You have to go outside. No place inside where you can be alone. Even for a minute. Even in my room I have four other girls in there with me. Everybody have the same deal. Five to a room.”
 
They go outside. Buddy feel like a fool to ask in case they have a rule against his holding her hand. But he don’t want to get his Angela in trouble. So they move out separated stiff.
Angela continue. Almost whisper in a hurry.
“Last week one of them attack me.”
“One of who? The sisters?”
“No, not yet. But I hear about a sister on the third floor try to kiss another sister.”
Buddy say, “Try to kiss her?” He start to laughing. “Angela you better be serious.”
“I am serious,” she say, laughing. “Half the girls be going with the other half. They don’t let you do nothing else.”
“Jesus K. Christ, what you be doing?”
“Well, I write my letters to you, you know. But they be no boys up here and we can’t see none except once a month, if we be good. One of my friends, she ask the sister can they pray for all the people who in love. The sister say that’s no kind of prayer for anybody in a chapel.”
“Dig that.”
“And another friend of mine. She suppose to get out when her birthday come. But the sister tell her she have to stay here unless she write her boyfriend and break up with him.”
“Why?”
“The sister say they be too serious.”
“Damn. What they think Jesus was into?”
“Well I don’t know what they think. Except it seem like they want us to turn into nuns like them. Buddy, I don’t want to be no nun.”
“Why you even have to say that Angela.”
Angela don’t answer right away. Buddy waiting for the answer. Look at her face and feel himself not strong enough to help.
Angela go on. “They have this system. Points.
More times you go to Mass the more points you be collecting. Points mean you get privileges. Like boys once a month. Or going home for a weekend. So you try for points. Next thing you know you start feeling like already you a nun. I’m fourteen and I think about what be happening when I grow up. Do I want to be like my mother. Do I want to be a nun. And I don’t know between my mother and a nun. I don’t know no more.”
Angela sound funny. Hoarse. Buddy feel scare that she will cry.
“Angela! I break you outa here!”
“What you mean? What you saying?”
“Listen baby, I mean liberation. Here and now! All you gotta do is follow me!”
Tears come from Angela.
 
And Buddy feel himself whirl around and run back to the building.
Angela running after him.
Buddy bolting room by room trying to find a signal.
Find the dining room bell. And ring the bell and ring the bell and ring the bell. All the sisters run to the parlor look like overheated penguins.
All the girls run to the parlor, look like children.
Buddy ring the bell like bells be going outa style.
Bell, bell, bell.
He make a speech: “In the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, in the name of the Mother who got together with the Father and got that Son, I liberate my Angela, here and now. This is Eastertime in Middlebrook. Love is rising up. Love is rising up. I tell you, Jesus was a one hundred percent, hip to the living, female-loving dude. A loving dude.”
BOOK: His Own Where
6.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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