Minding Ben (13 page)

All the people were looking on, and a tall old man with a fedora and a basket of yellow Haitian mangoes said, “How dem dam Chinee people and dem so stupid. If de chile tief someting yesterday, she a dam ass to come back today to buy something. If she tief yesterday, why she wouldn't tief today? Me thought dem say Chinee smart.”

The woman standing next to him measuring fillets of black smoked herrings said, “Maybe today is payday.”

I stood at the counter still looking up at the woman. “I didn't take anything in your store. I wasn't here yesterday.”

A voice behind me said, “If was me, mama, I never spend anadder penny in they damn store, plus they too tief. Look how much they charging for salt beef. They forget what happen to they partner and them down Flatbush side last year.”

She was right, of course, but I wasn't leaving. I didn't want to go empty-handed to Sylvia's.

The Korean woman shouted something in her language, and a younger girl came out from the stockroom. Only when she had climbed up behind the register did she look down at me. Her face was expressionless, but she shook her head. The older one folded her skinny arms and moved to the side for her to ring up my groceries. No apology. Nothing.

“Fifteen dollar.”

“So that's it,” I said. “You're not going to say sorry?”

The woman with the smoked herrings had joined the line behind me and was impatient. “Look, you done get your grocery, just leave the people store and go.”

I walked out to Nostrand. There was nothing I could do. If I didn't go back to the store, Sylvia would still go or Dodo would still go. It was all the same. At the newsstand, I bought a pack of More menthols for Sylvia and a pack of Marlboro reds for Bo. The Arab behind the counter, coffee cup in hand, said, “Long time no see, eh,” and even though I had come by just three days ago for an
Echo
, it did feel like a long time. “You have new boyfriend?” he asked. I took my change, almost grateful he'd recognized me.

SYLVIA'S APARTMENT WAS A
mess. In the three days I had been gone, more junk had been squeezed into the hall closet—no doubt as a result of Bo's housecleaning efforts—and now the door wouldn't close more than halfway. Dirty clothes and toys and what looked like crushed Frosted Flakes were scattered over the carpet. The breakfront looked more dilapidated than usual, and I swear the floorboards had listed, threatening to slide the whole busted-up wreck into the wall. Someone had torn off the maiden lamp's lace trim, and now she looked truly wretched, the little match girl at the very end. Even the mother duck and her mismatched brood were out of order; the last duckling lay wounded on its side.

“Evening, everybody,” I said.

“Jesus H. Christ man, Derek!” Sylvia bellowed. “What time them people and them finish with you, Grace?”

“Seven,” I said, putting the grocery bag on the carpet. Micky sat still on the floor, and she neither looked at nor spoke to me. “Hi, Mick, did you miss me?”

Before she could answer, Sylvia gargled, “So seven o'clock them people let you off and is now you reach home?” She looked at the clock, a Trinidad-shaped wooden plaque with Jesus's clasped hands and “Footprints.” Its time was 3:10. She leaned forward and peered at the VCR. “Now is nine-thirty-five. You want to tell me it take you three hours and thirty-five minutes to reach here from Fourteenth Street?”

I didn't want to tell her that, but I didn't want to tell her that I had been out with Kathy either. “I pass by the market first, Sylvia.”

Bo came out of the bedroom, dressed in jeans and a bulky gray fisherman's sweater. “Aye-aye, look the millionaire reach home, boy. Eh, Grace, let me hold a little change, nah?”

I rolled my eyes at him and looked again at Micky, who just stared at the TV. I went over to the radiator, moved Dame to the carpet, and gave him the water pistol. He stuck the tail end into his mouth. “Dame, no,” I said, trying to take it back to rinse it first.

“Leave him,” Sylvia said. “American children need germs in they system.”

I gave the cereal and the caps to Derek. “Hey, Mick, look. Your favorite.” She turned to look at me, and I could see she was upset. Her mouth was set in a frown and she crossed her arms over her still flat chest. “You don't want the sour sweets?” I asked her. She nodded but didn't get off the floor to take them, so I walked over, handed them to her, and barely heard her say thanks.

I gave Sylvia and Bo their cigarettes and said, “I buy some groceries from the market too.”

Sylvia undid the plastic wrapper over the pack of Mores. She took one out, and I marveled at the incongruity of big brown Sylvia and the skinny brown cigarette.

“What you buy?” she asked.

“A block of cheese, some plantain and sweet potato, oh, and I get the stuff for you to make callaloo too. Them Korean and them—” I started to tell her about the woman accusing me of stealing soap yesterday, but she cut me off.

“Please, Grace. Self for you to bring some cook food for people to eat, you bring food for me to cook? Is just more work you making for me. You mean to say you couldn't pass by the Chinee man restaurant and pick up some ribs or some wing and fry rice for people to snack on, man? Is not just because you don't eat Chinee food to say nobody else does eat it.”

“Is after nine, Sylvia.” In truth, I hadn't thought to bring home food at all. If I had, that stupid Korean woman would not have accused me of stealing her soap.

“Of course is after nine.” She trumped me. “If you had come home straight from them people place instead of galvanizing with God know who, you would of been here early enough to bring food.”

I slid down the wall next to the breakfront to the carpet. Of course she wouldn't be happy with whatever I brought home. This I knew had nothing to do with the groceries. She was pissed at me for leaving her during the middle of the week, and I couldn't blame her. “Well, you want me to go back and pick up some food?”

“No. Is too late already.”

Rescue of a sort came from where I least expected it. Bo, leaning against the entryway and smoking one of the Marlboros I'd bought him, said, “Sylvia, I find you wrong, you know. The girl come with good intentions, man. She bring cigarette and thing for them children. I don't think you should boof she up so. Grace girl, thanks for the cigarette. I didn't even have a zoot left.”

Sylvia heaved off the couch and went to the kitchen. She came back a minute later and said, “Thanks for the plantains, Grace.” To Micky and Derek she said, “Okay, everybody was waiting for Grace to come to see what Grace bringing. Time for bed.”

Micky got up, and as she walked by me on the floor, I reached for her skinny wrist where she had twined the candy necklace in a multistrand bracelet. “Hey, Mick, you not talking to me?”

She jerked her hand out of mine. “Leave me alone, Grace.”

Sylvia sprang to action and grabbed her other arm. “Grace is a big woman compare to you, Madam Micky. Not because you hear me talking to Grace so mean you could talk to she so. Mind your manners.” Micky mumbled an apology and shuffled out of the room.

“She upset because I wasn't here. She'll talk to me tomorrow,” I said to Sylvia.

Sylvia shook her head. “Children nowadays don't know how to act like children. You think when I was small I coulda do that in front my mother?”

She started to follow her children out of the living room and then stopped and turned around. “Grace, how much money you say them people and them paying you?”

I couldn't remember if I had told her before or not, but I knew I had told Bo a couple days ago. “Two hundred a week. Why?”

“You have to start giving something for your keep.” She closed her eyes and raised her head to the ceiling, thinking. “So, two hundred,” she said. “Okay, every Friday you will have to give me fifty dollars. That is for food, to sleep, and because you things here during the week. You good with that?”

Of course I wasn't good with that, but what could I say? The Bruckners hadn't given me the option of living in with them for seven days, and, in truth, I didn't think I wanted to. Two hundred dollars a week wasn't enough to get an apartment, and if I got a room it would cost more than fifty and I wouldn't be able to save any kind of money to send my father.

She looked set for me to argue. “Okay, Sylvia, no problems. But this mean my wings have permanent residency in the closet, right.”

“Grace, you too stupid. I will throw them when you gone.” But there was jest in her throaty voice. “Since this is your first pay,” she said, “and you done spend some money already, only give me twenty. From next week give me the whole fifty.”

I WAS UP EARLIER
than anyone. I straightened the ducks, swept the carpet, and tried clearing out some debris from the breakfront. On the second shelf up, where Sylvia kept a crimson-edged set of ceramic plates out of Derek's reach, and under a beer can probably left from Tuesday night, I saw an unopened red-and-blue-trimmed envelope. A letter for me from my mother. I didn't wait to open it.

My mother's familiar handwriting on the envelope made me homesick. This early on a Saturday, Helen would still be asleep in the room we had shared. Mammy would be “up in the back,” where she grew quick herbs and easy vegetables for home. And Daddy, always an early riser, would probably have eased himself down the front steps on his crutches to sit on the wooden bench in the yard. He liked to catch some morning sun before it got too hot and to wave hello to the neighbors going to Penal market.

Dear Gracie
,

Hoping this letter reach you in health and strength by the Grace of God. I didn't hear back from you since I send the last letter, but I all right. I know you must be busy looking for a work still. Have faith in God and something will come your way. This is just a quick little note to let you know that Daddy gone back in Sando hospital. Now don't get upset. Is nothing big. He went to the Penal clinic and Dr. Beard find the pressure reading a little too high so he send him in for some test. Like I say, is nothing too serious. At least not yet, but we keeping we fingers cross and praying. What we going to do? Everything in the hands of the Lord. Me and Helen go and see him everyday, I go one day, she go the next. But is hard on her, you know, seeing how she studying for exams in June. You was lucky when you was here. Daddy was home already and you didn't have nothing to distract your mind. But you know is as they say, “Gopaul luck is not Seepaul luck.” Okay, so don't worry yourself too much you hear. If you want any reassurance, give a little short call by the lady on the hill with the phone and she will get us a message. Na doing fine and send her love.

All right that is all for now.

May the good Lord bless and keep you and don't forget to pray.

Your Mother
,

Grace

Back in the hospital. I couldn't believe it. I felt so selfish for how angry I had been at my mother's last letter, so sure she was just trying to get me to come home. I squeezed the paper in my hand, paper probably torn from Helen's notebook. Helen couldn't take the time to go to hospital every other day. My mother was right. During my exams I hadn't had time for anything else. There was night after night of sitting up to study, drinking the sludgy black coffee that my mother grew, roasted, and ground herself, and staggering to school drugged in the mornings. I could still draw perfect cross sections of the human heart, the alimentary canal, and the inner ear, with its intricate hammer, anvil, and stirrup. Someone was pounding an anvil in my head right now. My mother I knew would rise to this new challenge, getting to be the Christian Soldier marching off to her duty in life's war. I could hear her praying now, girding herself with righteousness to bear her burdens. Jesus does never give you more than you back could bear, she liked to say. My daddy in the hospital again and his girl all the way in Brooklyn. I didn't know if I could bear this. How did I get to be such a selfish selfish girl?

Sylvia came out to go to the toilet. “Grace, what you doing up this hour of the morning?” For all her faults, she had no malice; she forgot last night as soon as it happened and moved on to another day. She saw the folded letter in my fist. “Shit, I forget to give you that last night. It come Thursday. From your mother?”

“Yeah, is from Mammy.” My voice caught, and I blinked a few times to hold back the tears.

Sylvia wasn't stupid. “Everything okay with them? How your father?”

I didn't think I could say out loud that Daddy was back in the hospital. “Yeah, yeah,” I said, “they doing all right. Daddy pressure a little high, but is only because of the rum.”

Sylvia looked at me still. Her red nightie was cut for a much smaller woman, but the rich crimson color looked fantastic against her black skin. “Sylvia, that red looks good on you.”

“You talking shit,” she said, pleased. She looked around the living room, at the piles I had made and the cleared-out breakfront. “Grace, what time it is?” She looked at the wall clock again and then the VCR. “Come back and sleep. Straighten up later.” Instead, I catapulted over the couch and sat in the small triangular space. Here, the carpet was still piled and bright red and the couch, through the plastic covers, was a clean cream. I didn't have enough room to stretch out my legs, but I could curl up comfortably. I fell asleep and didn't get up until Derek came in to watch Saturday cartoons with the mixing bowl filled with his sugar cereal and cold milk.

I
rang the lady on the hill to get a message to my mother. I told her to say come for three, but knowing my mother, if I called any time after two, she'd be waiting. I hadn't spoken to my mother since I'd called to make sure she got the money I sent for Christmas. I was glad no one was around for that call, because we fought. Or rather she was judgmental about me sitting down in a stranger's house and I yelled into the phone that it was better than planting pigeon peas. Now Daddy was back in the hospital and I needed to find out what was going on.

At two Sylvia decided to go to the Korean market for the rest of goods she needed for Sunday lunch and then to spend the evening with Dodo.

“Grace,” she asked, “you coming by Dodo with we?”

“I don't think Dodo want me in her house, Sylvia.” I had cleaned the apartment all morning listening to WLIB alternate between calypso and reggae and the occasional Haitian zouk, and with home on my mind. For the first time since Tuesday, I felt as though I was resting, with nothing else to do but lie on Sylvia's couch. Bo had stayed out last night, and if she and the children went to Dodo's, I could have the apartment to myself for a few hours.

“Oh, Grace”—Sylvia was searching in the breakfront—“don't be stupid. You know how Dodo is. Come on, we making curry crab and dumpling. I stopping by the Chinee man store to pick up seasoning.” Sylvia made no distinction between the Chinese man and the Korean man.

“Nah, I tired. Anyway, I have to call my mother today.” I got off the couch and went to get my black and white purse. I gave Sylvia $30. Twenty for my keep and $10 in advance for the call. After the $15 I'd spent last night and the $10 Bo had managed to get from me before he left, I had $145 left. Still, it was more money than I'd had in a long time.

“What time you tell your mother to come?” Sylvia asked. She'd found her brassiere.

“Three. Why?”

“Okay, come as far as the Chinee man store and you could bring back what I buy. The salt butter need to keep cold.”

I didn't want to go back to the Korean market after that woman last night. “Sylvia,” I said, “why you don't just send Micky up the road with the stuff for me?”

“Grace”—her voice went up—“you mad or you stupid? You want me to make my child cross Eastern Parkway alone? Stop being lazy, man. And I did well want to bomb this place, you know. Them roach and them too terrible.”

I carried Dame, and Micky, friendlier today, walked alongside me. Earlier, I had given her the Bruckners' phone number so she could call me up to talk. I put barrettes in her hair, and her plaits hung like flowers bent by the weight of their blooms. The weather was beautiful, and to my eyes the tiny buds on the trees were getting fatter, branches crossed like fingers promising spring. Knotted ribbons of white clouds were strung across the pale blue sky, and the light breeze was more refreshing than cold. As we walked the cobblestone path toward Nostrand, Hasidim walked in the opposite direction, deeper into Crown Heights, where they lived. Sylvia marched ahead, holding Derek's hand. She never buttoned her enormous red coat over her belly, and now both sides flapped open in the wind like oversize moth wings. She didn't move from the middle of the path, and Hasidim and anyone else coming toward her parted and flowed on by her sides. Without turning to look at me, she said, “Them Jew and them don't move for nobody and they don't say good morning or good evening, dog.”

No one in New York greeted anyone else ever as far as I had seen.

Nostrand on a Saturday looked like High Street, Penal, on market day. Ken with the keloided chop scar the length of his face was out selling sugarcane and green coconuts from the back of his truck. Don, his dwarf sidekick, whose locks were as long as he was tall, sold bootleg cassettes and never-last, made-in-China batteries. Miss Norma sold tamarind balls and sugar cakes and, if you knew to ask, pig-foot souse and spicy blood pudding hidden on a warmer under her table. Rastamen with bloodshot eyes, dreads piled mile-high under red, gold, and green knit caps, listened to dub and fist-bounced each other with the greeting “morning, brethren.”

When we reached the store, I waited outside, still vexed at the Korean woman for calling me a thief. But when Sylvia got to the register she called me. “Grace, come and bring some change for me. I don't want to break a next twenty.”

I walked down the rows of waxy yellow and green plantains, white plastic buckets of salt beef and pig tails floating in brine and peppercorns, cans of ackee and pigeon peas, and ripe
zabocas
, bigger than anything our trees at home ever bore but inedible without salt. My stomach foamed, ready for the woman's accusations. I knew Sylvia would defend me loudly, but I wanted to avoid another confrontation. I wore my same coat with the hood down. As I reached into the pocket to grab a handful of change, the woman at the register, today with a polka-dotted bow clipping back her thinning hair, said, “Ohhhh, Sivia, that your big daughter? She so pretty.”

I turned to face her full-on. “Looka that skin, Sivia. She look pretty just like you. I remember you long time. Long time you look just like this your daughter.” She looked at me again and wagged that bony finger from last night. “Don't get fat like Mother, you hear. You eat good and do exercise”—she pumped her arms—“stay skinny like model.”

Sylvia laughed and, taking the change, played along with the lie. “Yes, Sue,” she rasped, “this one is my firstborn. I make she in my youthful days. She was living with my mother back home until I send for she.”

Neither of them seemed to mind that the line had lengthened. Micky showed Dame the little dried herrings, and Derek tried to juggle mangoes. Sylvia paid and passed me the bags she wanted me to bring home. As I turned to walk out of the store, the woman picked up a pack of preserved cherries. “Here,” she said, giving me the bag. “You eat this. Salty, not sweet. You not get fat you eat salty. Make sure you go to school, huh. Come doctor.” I took the cherries and didn't thank her, figuring that, if she knew I was Sylvia's daughter, she would think I was boldface just like my fat mother.

AT EXACTLY THREE I
rang the lady on the hill. My mother answered the phone. “Hello, good afternoon.” The similarity of our voices always startled me a little; talking with my mother was like talking to myself.

“Hello, Mammy?”

“Gracie, is you? How you going, girl?”

“I good. Things going good.” I told her right away, “I get a work this week.”

“All praises due to Jesus. What I tell you in the last letter? Not to leave everything in Jesus hand?” She paused and sang,
“He never failed me yet, he never failed me yet, my Jesus never failed me yet.”

“Well,” I countered, “Jesus and the ad I put in the paper.”

“But if it wasn't for Jesus . . .”

“Okay, Mammy. So what going on? I get your letter when I come last night. How you? How Daddy? Helen? She come with you?”

“No.” Her voice filled with sorrow, and my stomach tightened. “Poor thing. She had to run San Fernando to take some clean towels for Daddy. You know they never have anything in that half-pital.”

“So tell me about Daddy, then. When he gone back in? Tell me everything, okay, from the beginning.” I had to tell my mother to tell me everything or else she would spend the entire call telling me about the will of the Lord and punctuating the sermon with snatches of hymns.

“What I tell you in the letter? I tell you not to worry. Dr. Beard say the sugar a touch too high, just a touch, and he send him for some tests.”

“In the letter you say the pressure high, not the sugar, Mammy.”

“What is the difference? Pressure, sugar, groceries, everything high.” This is what she did to torture me, to make me want to knock the telephone against my front teeth.

“Mammy”—I tried for some of the patience Sylvia always requested of the Lord—“just answer what I ask, okay. Since Daddy gone to the hospital, what the doctor in San Fernando say?”

“You don't have to talk to me so, Gracie.”

I tried to unhinge my locked jaw. “You right, is just that I so far and I don't know what going on, Ma.” I knew she was biting her tongue, dying to tell me come home then.

“I wish you was here,” she said. “You remember Dr. Silverton from ward six? The cut-foot ward?”

“Yes. Why he in six if is just the pressure and the sugar? He should be in four.” One for mad people; two, a.k.a. slip and slide, for green papaya abortions gone wrong and other woman troubles; three for cancer; four for pressure; five for children; six to cut; seven before the morgue. I was scared, and my left eye felt as though its icy blue humor was leaking into my skull.

“Give me a chance to talk,” my mother said. “He not in six. Dr. Silverton went and look for him down in four. He self take the pressure and test the urine and say everything looking good. Your father just too harden, Gracie. All he have to do is to eat what I give him and stop drinking that
babash
and everything will maintain. But he too harden. No matter how I pray and ask Jesus to give him understanding, he not open to the will of the Lord. You really take on he side, in truth.”

I chose to ignore that, wishing for one mouthful of Hamil's
babash.
“So when he coming home?”

“We not sure, but when I went yesterday the nurse say they could discharge him Monday coming.”

At least that sounded promising. “How you doing for money?” I asked her.

“We managing. I sell a little ground provision from the big garden, and the government disability does help. But every time we take him clinic or hospital we have to hire a direct car. He can't travel from taxi to taxi, and forget about bus.”

I knew passage back and forth would be hard on them, plus Helen traveling to school. The fares had been high when I was home and were probably higher now. “Okay, Mammy, before you go back home, go by the Western Union and collect some money. I get pay yesterday.”

“Gracie, you don't have to do that. By the grace of God we will manage.” I knew she would say that.

“Well, Ma, maybe Jesus working through me. Maybe I get this job just in time to send you a little change. The Lord works in mysterious ways, right?” She ate this stuff like
coo-coo
from a calabash, and I expected her to start singing
“I am delivered, praise the Lord.”
Instead she thanked me and asked if Sylvia was there. “No, she and the children went by she sister. I here alone.” I checked the time on the VCR; we'd been talking for fifteen minutes already. “So how Helen and Na going? Anybody in the village dead?”

“Everybody home doing just fine. When was the last time we talk? December?”

“Early January.”

“You did hear Jango drown?” I hadn't. “Yes, he and Badis oldest son, the crazy one with the wild wild hair and he shirt always open—you know which one I talking about?” I did. “Well, the two of them went out overnight and a tanker or a cruise ship or something pass and mash up the pirogue. Jango wash up in Quinam, but Badis boy didn't come in. A few days later Rolly crew see the body far far out, near Venezuela, but they didn't want to put that in they boat. People would stop buying fish from them.”

I knew she was right about that, but I started to think about Jango and Crazy Horse out in the middle of the sea holding on to splintered pieces of blue board, trying to stay afloat. Drifting apart from each other in the waves made rougher in the tanker's wake and then sinking. “Jesus Christ, Mammy. How Jango wife?”

“How she going to be?” My mother did not chide me for using the Lord's name in vain. “She holding on. She could only hold on.” She changed the topic. “So how the new people and them you working for?”

I didn't need to give her any details about the Bruckners that would cause her to worry. “They okay so far. Is just the man, Solomon, and his wife, Miriam, and one son, Benjamin. I making thirty-five dollars more, though.”

She didn't let me get away so easy. “Watch out for yourself and do what the lady tell you to do. Don't wear no short short pants and tight jersey, you hear.”

I pressed my warm fingertips to my aching eye. I had never in my life worn hot pants or tight jerseys. “Is still cold outside, Mammy. Everybody wearing plenty clothes.”

She paused, then said, “Huh, all of them have name from the Bible, what religion they is?” I'd wondered how long it would take her to ask.

“Jews, just like Mora them.” When I'd first started working for Mora and I told my mother they were Jewish, she hadn't understood. She'd kept asking again and again if they were real Jews. She couldn't define what exactly she meant by “real Jews,” but I think she, we really, had sort of understood Jews to be people in the Bible, not a family of six living in a four-bedroom colonial with an aboveground pool in Highland Park, New Jersey. She had been full of questions about what they wore—not robes and sandals—and what they ate—not manna and dates. I had told her that the Speisers looked like regular white people, except they didn't eat meat with milk or cheese, and they went to service on Saturdays. My mother had asked, almost afraid to hear the answer, if they really and truly did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Lord and Savior and no man went to the Father but through him. Nope, I had told her. They didn't believe a word of it. Mora told me the best they made of Christ was that he was a rogue Jew with a God complex.

“Why is it,” Mammy asked me now, “that you have to end up working for these people? This set look willing to hear the Gospel?”

I tried to picture telling Sol and Miriam the good news about Jesus and his love. “Okay, Ma, time to come off Sylvia phone. I going to send the money now, so go straight Penal and pick it up. Give Hel twenty. You have a pen?”