Leaving: A Novel (17 page)

… Besides legal restrictions in voting rights and the courts, there were other forms of oppression. In Northern cities the most extreme of these was mob violence. During the 1830’s and 1840’s riots occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and other places. More continuous and pervasive were the patterns of segregation and employment discrimination.

The Jim Crow or segregation laws were largely a product of the late nineteenth century. Segregation by custom, however, and even occasionally by statute, was already common during the ante-bellum period. In the South segregation developed as one of the devices to control the urban free Negroes and the slave population. Separation in jails and hospitals was universal. Negroes were widely excluded from the public parks and burial grounds. They were relegated to the balconies of the theatres and opera houses and barred from hotels and restaurants. The New Orleans street railway maintained separate cars for the two races. Sometimes these practices were codified in law: as early as 1816 New Orleans passed an ordinance segregating Negroes in places of public accommodation. The Legal codes of Savannah and Charleston excluded free Negroes from public parks. Charleston, Baltimore, and New Orleans were among the cities legalizing segregated jails and poorhouses.

In the North, Negroes were not legally segregated in places of public accommodation, nor, except for schools, in publicly owned institutions. Custom, however, barred them from hotels and restaurants, and they were segregated, if not entirely excluded, from theatres, public lyceums, hospitals, and cemeteries. Even in abolitionist Boston, the Negro was considered a pariah in most circles.…

Traveling by public conveyance was difficult for Negroes. In Boston there were signs: “colored people not allowed to ride in this omnibus.” In New York City Negroes were refused streetcar seats except on a segregated basis. Philadelphia Negroes were restricted to the front platform of these vehicles. Long-distance travel was even more of a problem. On stagecoaches Negroes usually rode on an outside seat, and on the early railroads they often occupied filthy accommodations in a separate car. Steamboats offered the worst conditions, since Negroes were almost invariably excluded from cabins and required to remain on deck even in cold weather. On the all-night trip from New York City to Newport, Rhode Island, they usually had the choice of pacing the deck or sleeping among the cotton bales, horses, sheep, and pigs.…

Negroes continued to face discrimination on the streetcars. In 1856 when a minister was removed from a vehicle, the judge upheld the transportation company on the ground that its business would suffer if Negroes could sit anywhere they pleased. This decision was interpreted to apply to omnibuses, hotels, and other public facilities. Five years later a Philadelphia court also ruled in favor of a transportation company’s right to bar Negroes by force if necessary.

Recent scholarship has found residential segregation and the origins of the modern ghetto in the ante-bellum city. Actually, before the Civil War urban Negroes generally resided in racially mixed neighborhoods. The homes of the more prosperous free Negro artisans and businessmen were often scattered throughout various parts of the city, singly or in small clusters. There was a tendency, however, for Negroes to be concentrated in certain neighborhoods or wards, but within close proximity to whites. In the Southern towns the slaves who “lived out” tended to move to the edges of the city, where they formed neighborhoods predominantly, though not exclusively, Negro. In Baltimore and Philadelphia there were Negroes living in the alleys between the main streets on which fashionable whites resided. The most impoverished Negroes were the most segregated, often in vice districts controlled by white overlords. New York Negroes were heavily concentrated in a few wards, where poor whites also resided. In Philadelphia the worst slum consisted of a few densely populated unheated rooms, garrets, and tiny wooden shanties lacking even the most modest comforts. In Boston, Providence, New Haven, Cincinnati, and other seacoast and river cities, Negro slum neighborhoods, with names like “New Guinea,” developed first along the wharves. Later the Negroes tended to shift to outlying sections known by such names as “Nigger Hill.” As discrimination increased all over the North, even the more prosperous colored men were often drawn to predominantly Negro neighborhoods.

CHAPTER 9

JANUARY 1977   •   LIDA 16, MARCUS 17

LIDA LIVED BY
herself while Marcus was locked up. He’d been awaiting trial for forty-two days. But when Lida had visited him the previous Saturday, he said that he could be set free anytime if he’d agree to write a report about the shooting. All he needed to say was that Easton had a gun, or that he might have had a gun, or that Marcus didn’t see anything. If he didn’t write the statement, they told him that even though he was still a minor, he would get fifteen years for selling heroin and possession of a stolen weapon. Lida told him about the eviction notice, how the landlord came by and said the police informed him about the dealing and wanted them out. She told Marcus to write the statement, and he said he would only do it if they gave him his dope back because he might as well go to jail if he couldn’t give Jim the goods.

So she stayed at home and waited. One afternoon she sat on the yellow couch in Marcus’s apartment as sweat beaded on her head in the cold room. The low, warm hum of the fish tank drew her attention. She had not cleaned it while Marcus was away, and the algae pushed the lid off the filter. She sat for an hour watching the bubbles form and release from the tube. One bubble stuck to the opening. It grew and wavered in the water, then detached and floated up through the algae. She’d gotten the cap of heroin from Jim, when he’d dropped by to check in on the situation.

At first the ringing was very far away, underwater, in the fish tank; and she smiled as the bubble shook and rang, then floated to the top. Then she remembered the phone, the outside, Marcus, the killing. She stood up and wiped her mouth. The phone was on the bookshelf by the fish tank. She picked up the receiver.

“Yeah.”

“Are you sick?” It was Lori, her friend from Lucky’s.

“No.”

“You’re supposed to be on now, you know?”

“Shit. Don’t—I’ll be there soon. Just don’t do anything.” She hung up and walked to the closet, sat on the carpet, and slid her red sneakers onto her feet. She grabbed the door handle to pull herself up and then walked directly out of the house into the bright winter day, wearing her blue nylon sweatsuit with gold stripes and matching jacket.

Walking was easy, just one foot in front of the other and no one would know the difference: use the lines in the sidewalk to stay straight. The cracks didn’t matter anymore, none of that mattered when she was high. Just one foot in front of the other. Red sneaker toe, red sneaker toe. Curb and stop. Look up. Green light: go. Cross next to the straight white line, and curb, step up, and red sneaker toe, red sneaker toe.

Across East 14th was the big parking lot and Lucky’s. She zipped up her jacket to the neck. A woman walked by her with a shopping bag.

“How do I look?” she asked the stranger. The lady didn’t answer. Lida crossed the street and walked along the curb of the lot to the front entrance. A man held the door open for her and she thought about smiling at him but just walked straight in.

“Number seven, Lida,” Lori yelled.

She went to register seven and put in her key. Already two people raced into her line.

“I had the same flu last week,” said the man at the front of the line. “You should stay home and drink chicken soup.” Lida nodded and picked up his can of peaches. She pressed in the numbers and it came to thirty-nine dollars.

“I’d go home and sleep it off if I were you,” he said.

“Have a nice day,” she said. She punched up the soap from the next customer, punched up dog food, soda, candles, punched in the numbers, took the money, nodded to the next customer about whatever she was saying, something about you shouldn’t sell grapes because farmworkers’ babies were dying.

“Okay. Have a nice day.”

It went by mercifully, like the hour staring at the fish tank, not fast or slow, just gone.

*   *   *

THE POLICE LET
Marcus out of jail for signing the affidavit. Since he’d been back, the apartment manager hadn’t left them alone. He knocked at the door every morning. Lida looked up from the bed at Marcus, who stood at the sink in the kitchen peeling a potato. He froze with the peeler in his hand and waited. The knock came again. Lida slowly lifted the blanket up over her head.

Her breath made a cocoon of warmth under the covers, where she stayed all day when she was home because the heat had gone out. Marcus put down the peeler and brought the potato over to the bed. He jumped in under the covers and rubbed his feet together.

“Oooo. Oooo, you’re cold,” she whispered.

“Here. Eat this.”

“What happened to all the macaroni salad I brought home?”

“I ate it last night before it went bad. Just get some more. Nothing keeps without the refrigerator.”

“This whole house is a refrigerator.”

He laughed, but only a little, and then took a bite of the hard potato.

“We got to move in with your mama.”

Lida didn’t say anything and kept her eyes closed. He put his hand out and touched her right breast through her sweater.

“What are you doing?” She jerked away and turned over.

“I was just trying to get things warmed up in here.”

“Don’t just be grabbing me like that.”

“I didn’t grab you. I just thought we could have some loving.”

“With a potato in your mouth?”

“I was in the coop for over a month, baby.”

“I don’t feel like being touched.” She lay on her stomach but with her face toward him. “I’m sorry. I just don’t feel like it.”

“You ever gonna feel like it?”

She took a deep breath and buried her arms under her body, lying like a beached sea lion.

“Don’t you think we could move in with your mama?” he asked her again.

“Far as she know, you got Love E killed. Far as I know too.”

Marcus took another bite of the potato. “You’re the one who told me to go out and kill him.”

Lida curled her knees up to her chest. Now she was in a position that resembled someone kneeling down and listening to the ground. She didn’t speak.

“But I didn’t.” Marcus added. “I didn’t do nothing, and neither did you.” He put his hand on her back and rubbed.

“I know.”

There was another knock on the door. Lida opened her eyes, and Marcus stopped moving his hand.

“Did you tell Jim I’m back?” he whispered.

Lida shook her head. They waited a moment and heard footsteps move off.

“I met some dudes in the coop who might hook me up with a gig.”

“From jail?”

“Listen, baby, I was in jail too, you know. But I’m still me. In fact, I’m a better me because I’m not going back there. They wouldn’t let me have my fucking guitar. They thought I might use the strings to kill someone. They don’t know the difference between a dealer and a murderer. There is no way I’m going back. I don’t have to. If you’re good at something, eventually it all falls into place.” He nuzzled his body closer to hers. “Don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly.

“What about you?” he asked. “Isn’t there something you dream of being?”

“I’ve never given it much thought.”

“But deep inside, didn’t you think you’d like to do something or be something?”

She took a deep breath and the words came to her lips.

“I guess I thought about being a travel agent.”

“A travel agent?” Marcus laughed. “That’s not a dream. That’s a job.”

“Never mind.”

“No, no, tell me. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed. Come on. Tell me, Lida. Tell me why you want to be a travel agent.”

“I don’t know. I guess I like the idea of knowing about all those different places to go in the world, and then maybe getting to go for free every once in a while. You know, flying to all those beautiful beaches with the sunsets and the coconut trees.” She closed her eyes and rolled away from him. “I don’t like playing these games.”

“It’s not a game, baby. Trust me. We can do whatever we put our minds to. Anyone who doesn’t make it is just lazy or stupid. You’ve got to make your dreams come true. That’s the way it happened for my father. He just worked hard every day and kept at it and bought that shop. That’s the way it happens. If you want something, you got to give it one hundred percent. That’s the difference between me and them other niggers in the coop. I know what it takes, and I’ve got the will to do it. You’ve got to push yourself.”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“I believe you.”

“I know you do.” He put his arm around her and placed his hand on her heart. “I know you do. Don’t be scared, baby, it’s all going to be good.”

Lida shivered and closed her eyes.

*   *   *

THE NEXT WEEKEND
Lida went to see Ruby. She sat on the couch in the living room, her black purse on her lap. This was her first visit to her mother’s since the funeral, and out of respect, she wore the black dress Ruby had made for her.

They sat in silence and looked around the room like they’d never seen it before. Lida looked for some item to reminisce about to end the awkward distance between them, while Ruby looked for someplace to set her mind and escape altogether. Her mind settled on the picture of Corbet in uniform, and she thought how strange it was that there must have been a last time they had all been together and happy—she, Lida, Love E, and Corbet—but you never know then that it will be the last time, and she couldn’t remember it now.

“It’s cold still, Mama. Why don’t you put the heat on?”

“I’m fine the way I am.” Ruby pulled the blanket up higher on her stomach and rocked in the chair.

“How’s the quilt coming along?” Lida asked.

“Coming along.”

“Almost done?”

“Almost.”

They still didn’t look at each other. Lida flipped the brass lock on her purse open and shut. Just before she had come over, Marcus was saying all sorts of things to encourage her. They were in MacArthur Park with David, a bass player he’d met in jail, and David’s wife, Gina, who’d just had a son. Gina breast-fed the baby as they sat on the bench, her sweater unbuttoned and the baby’s head inside against the red knitting. Marcus didn’t say anything directly to Lida; he just talked to Gina.