If I Should Die (16 page)

The carpet in the foyer felt like a cloud under my feet and I lingered there as Dad went into the kitchen.

“Coffee?”

“No thanks, I’m too tired.” What I really needed was solitude.

Upstairs, I sat near the window with my feet in a basin of water and watched the dawn slip over gray-brown branches of the linden trees, turning them red-gold in the new light. The birds came next, with their morning sounds.

And somewhere beyond the trees and the birds, it was midnight again and I was alone in the street as a black Cadillac pulled up beside me. The tinted window rolled down to reveal a clay mask floating in the dark interior, floating like a balloon.

I tried to run but clawlike hands reached out, growing larger as I struggled to move across a street pockmarked with craters. Then I stumbled and fell soundlessly into a gaping manhole, falling deeper and faster and unable to grasp the slippery walls. The clay mask zigzagged down behind me, and the deeper I fell, the nearer the voice behind the mask seemed. “…  Let it alone … let it alone …”

The voice sounded familiar and I tried to call out but fractures appeared in the clay and the mask began to fly apart in sharp, cutting pieces. I turned away screaming, afraid to look at the face behind it.

When I opened my eyes, Dad was shaking me by the shoulders.

“See what walking barefoot will get you? Nightmare had you hollerin’ so loud you scared poor Alvin out of a year’s growth.”

I looked down at the basin which had been knocked over, saw the water seeping into the carpet. The metallic taste of alcohol in my mouth was enough to curl my tongue but I managed to apologize.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize … Is … is Alvin okay?”

“Yeah. Go take a shower and get yourself together. Coffee’s ready. I’m gonna walk Miss Laura down the block.”

I hurried to the bathroom, avoided the mirror, jumped into the shower, and remained under the icy spray long enough to come to my senses. I knotted a terry robe around me and hurried to Alvin’s room.

The door was ajar and I tapped lightly before poking my head in. He was sitting in the window seat with his knees drawn up under his chin.

“Alvin, how’re you feeling?”

He lowered his legs to make room for me to sit beside him. On the walls on either side of the window he had taped life-size posters of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, and directly over his bed, the face of Patrick Ewing with the ball held chest-high glowered into the room. Magic and Michael were smiling, Patrick looked grim, all were sweaty with determination.

I wondered if they ever had to cope with the crushing anger of abandonment or the guilt that survivors sometimes endured. I turned away and gazed out of the window.

“I’m sorry about waking you,” I said, not knowing where to begin.

He raised his shoulders slightly and said nothing. The small chorus of bird chatter just outside the window did little to fill the silence.

“It was a dream,” I whispered, “something I can’t even remember now that I’m awake.”

“I remember all my dreams,” he said, turning from the window to look at me. His eyes in the slanting sun took on the light brown cast of his mother’s eyes. “I remember my dreams ’cause they don’t wanna go away.” He bent his leg to examine a small scratch on his knee, then began to pick at it absently. “They come two and three times a night. I wake up tired most of the time.”

“What do you dream about?”

He hesitated, trying to decide if he wanted to talk about it. Finally, he said, “Mom. Dad. I see them at the airport.”

I put my arms around his shoulders and pressed him to me. He was nine years old when that overseas call had come in. He was supposed to stay with me and Dad for two weeks, long enough for his parents to take a quick trip to celebrate the end of William’s internship. A trip that had been planned for a long time. And they were supposed to come back. Instead, the phone call had come in the middle of a rainy night.

At times I feel we, Dad and Alvin and I, are still waiting for them to come back. Even though the bodies had been recovered and brought home. Even though Dad and I had scattered that final wet handful of earth on the caskets and listened to the slow squeal of the winch lowering them into the ground, we seem to be waiting. Even though I can still feel the wind, the chill that had settled in me that day and never left, we wait and listen.

We seem to be in a state of suspension, anticipating a tap on the door, imagining that rush of air as Benin and William stroll in, laughing and breathless from the flight, complaining of the cab ride, dropping suitcases and shopping bags heavy with perfume and Paris labels to prove there had been a mistake.

Two years later and we are still waiting.

I catch myself speaking in the present tense. “Your mother wants you to … Your father wants …” as if they will one day return to say what a wonderful job we did with their son in their absence.

Early on, I had gone back to Dr. Thomas for crisis sessions. There must be a sense of closure, he said. And it would have been better if Alvin had attended the funeral, gone to the burial, as young as he was. It would have helped him most.

But it’s too late to change that. Too late. So we must work all the harder toward this closure. But how does one give up the past without giving up memory?

The sun was up now and the shadows had gone. Alvin moved away from the window, gathered some sheet music, and stuffed it in his backpack. He moved with the awkward grace of a child disinterested in a task and going through the motions to please everyone but himself.

“We’re doing six songs today,” he said.

Breakfast was quiet but I was glad to see that Alvin’s appetite had returned. He devoured six pancakes and bacon and eggs while I hugged a lukewarm cup of coffee.

“I’ll walk Alvin to rehearsals, if you want,” Dad said, looking at me and probably noticing the circles under my eyes.

“No. I need the exercise. I’ll go with him.”

The truth was I didn’t want to fall asleep again and have to fight another nightmare. Fifteen minutes later I left the house and called Tad from a public phone. His voice was as deep as ever.

“I was beginning to give up on you, Mali.”

“Don’t do that,” I said, surprised that he was home to answer the phone. I had expected to leave a message but here was his voice, alive and fresh and concerned.
Listening to him helped push the nightmare, hangover, and aching feet into an unused corner of my mind.

“I have a late tour today. How about lunch?”

“Fine,” I said, realizing how suddenly beautiful the day seemed.

“Meet you at Emily’s about one o’clock.”

Alvin and I took the long way to the rehearsal hall and passed by the ball court. Clarence was there alone, sitting on the bench near the fence, and there was no ball in sight.

He came over when we waved. He looked thinner and he needed a haircut but he smiled as he approached.

“How’s it going, Clarence?”

“Could be better, Miss Mali, but I’m not complainin’ … How you doin’, Striver?”

“Okay,” Alvin said, smiling. I could see that he was now even less interested in going to rehearsal and wanted to remain right here on the court, but I wasn’t having any of that.

“Where’s your ball?” he asked.

Clarence shrugged. “Rolled out into the street and car run over it. So I’m just hangin’ till some a my boys breeze by. Maybe pick up a game with them …”

“How’s Morris?” I asked.

“He all right. Seen ’im last night.”

Which meant that Mrs. Johnson was still inviting him in for dinner. I did not ask how his mother was.

“Well, I’m glad to see you, glad you’re out …”

“Me too,” he said. He was suddenly very talkative, as if he wanted the world to know what he’d gone through but couldn’t find the words to describe it.

“Man, ain’t no way to say what it’s like in the joint. Got to be down with the program or ready to throw down. Brothers got to go in badder than Tyson if they spect to survive. Some of ’em don’t. Wind up swallowin’ glass to git to the infirmary. That don’t work, they hang
theyselves. It ain’t like in no movies. In there’s the real deal.”

I looked at his face, at his dark, young, unlined skin, and knew what he had seen but would never really talk about. The “blanket parties”—gang rapes—drug deals, beatings, blackmail, and thievery that went on under the very noses of some of the guards.

“Who bailed you?” I asked, knowing it was none of my business.

He shrugged again. “I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is I’m out and I ain’t goin’ back. Ever. No, I mean it ain’t that I don’t care who did it. I do. But nobody never told me. I mean, one minute, I’m in hell, and the next minute, the door open and I’m breathin’ real air again.

“Besides, the Legal Aid sister said they ain’t even got a case on me as far as this second rap is concerned. I ain’t killed nobody. And the other charge is gonna be downgraded to simple assault and they might even drop that once they get a look at—”

He glanced at Alvin and said no more.

Just then, three young men entered the court from the other end and called out to him. They had a ball and bounced it a few times off the rim.

“Be cool!” Clarence smiled, and I watched him lope easily down to the basket and slap five. The ball went up. He tapped it against the rim and the game was on.

I dropped Alvin off at the hall and was glad that more parents had shown up.

“Dad will pick you up,” I reminded him, giving him a hug even though he didn’t like this show of affection in front of the other kids. Then I headed downtown on Powell Boulevard to Emily’s.

On the way, I browsed through the African market
on Lenox and 116th Street where the spring weather had brought out the bargain hunters and a busload of tourists. The pavement shook beneath car-size boom boxes that put out enough juice to power a rock concert. Hot dog and lemonade stands were crowded. The tops of the patterned tents riffled in the breeze, and inside, the tables were piled with fabric, sandals, incense, and hats. I was caught in the festival sounds and found myself stopping at several tables.

“Ah, madam,” a vendor called, holding out a wide-brimmed pale yellow straw hat, “this hat is you. It was just waiting to frame your face. No one else would do it justice.”

His accent was deep and his English was soft and precise as he held a postage-stamp-size mirror up to me. I smiled and ignored the pile of identical straw hats on the table.

Last year when Deborah had returned from Senegal, she had advised, “You better learn how to bargain if you expect to visit the motherland. That’s all they do.”

So I practiced. Smiling wider, speaking softer, finally bargaining harder, and ten minutes later the hat was on my head at a price I could live with.

I tilted the hat, glad that the vendors had found this location, but in the shifting political currents, who knows how long they would be here? The city administration had forced them from their original location on 125th Street, and without the festival sounds and tourists and occasional public speakers, Harlem’s main thoroughfare now seemed drained of life.

Emily’s has large windows which look out on Fifth Avenue and 111th Street and though smaller than Sylvia’s, caters to loyal soul food aficionados. It has a fancy bar and a cool, subdued atmosphere. I slipped into the seat opposite
Tad and he leaned over, pushed my hat back, and kissed me.

“I haven’t tasted your lipstick in a long while,” he whispered, holding my hands against his face. He looked great, as if he had come out of his depression and was ready to talk about important things. Like making love all night long.

“The lipstick’s only the appetizer,” I whispered.

“I know,” he smiled, rubbing my fingertips against his chin. “When can I start on the main dish?”

“Depends. When can you get a day off? I could cut a class. We could take the phone off the hook, and do all those good things we—”

“Miss another class? At this rate, you won’t see your diploma before you’re fifty.”

I sighed and said nothing. He was right, of course. Dad was also beginning to make noise about my sudden slowdown. But with all that had happened—to Erskin, and Deborah, and worrying about Clarence and Alvin—it was hard to concentrate.

“School is one thing. I’m not in class today.”

Tad took my hands again. “Sounds nice but I have to make a hospital visit in a few hours.”

I gazed at him and knew I’d better change the subject while my temperature was still somewhere near normal.

“Well, okay, some other time—”

“Come on, baby. You know how I feel. Don’t—”

I concentrated on his hands. As long as I didn’t gaze into his eyes, everything would probably be all right.

A minute passed before I said, “I was at the Club Harlem last night. Dad played the opening. I saw something interesting …”

“I know. You saw Harding. You saw Danny. And you were walking around in your stockings. Must’ve been quite a night.”

I stared at him. He said nothing more. “Did Danny tell you?” I whispered.

“No. Matter of fact, I haven’t spoken to him in a few days, but as the old folks say, ‘All shut-eye ain’t sleep and all good-bye ain’t gone.’ ”

I looked away and smiled in spite of myself. That meant he was still on the case, in his own way, and had his eyes and ears working the street even when he wasn’t.

He winked and settled back in his chair. “Anything else happening?”

“Well, I was in the Pink Fingernail Friday and—”

“The Pink Fingernail. On Amsterdam?”

“Yes, I—”

“Mali, of all the beauty shops in Harlem, you had to pick that one. What happened to Bertha’s place? I thought that was your cool-down spot?”

“It is. It still is. Bertha mentioned the Pink Fingernail and I wanted to check it out. When I got there, I decided I needed a facial …”

He stared at me, as if he were examining my pores. I expected at any minute to see him whip out a Sherlock Holmes—style magnifying glass.

“Mali, your skin is beautiful. You needed a facial?”

“Well, thanks for the compliment. Anyway, I heard some talk.”

“Such as?”