Minding Ben (19 page)

Dave slid off his stool and walked over to the wall. “Come, let's test your knowledge. See how many you can name.”

Standing in front of the wall with my nearly empty beer bottle, I reeled off first all the herbs and then the larger bunches suspended above. When I got to the benne, Dave said, “What?”

“Benne. Every year my mother hangs some to dry, and then she makes benne balls with them. It's benne for sure.”

“What on earth is a benne ball, Grace?”

“It's a kind of sweetie, a candy, with benne and sugar, and it's crunchy.” My mother was a pro at gauging the right temperature to roll the sticky mixture. Too hot scalded your palms and the balls softly collapsed. Too cool and it all hardened into a shapeless, inedible mess. “They're so good.”

“You know what we call benne in America?” He drained his beer. “Sesame seeds.”

“Are you serious? Is this what a sesame seed is? So why is
Sesame Street
called
Sesame Street
?” I snapped off a pod and, shaking it close to my ear, heard the dry seeds rattle around like mini maracas. I was happy I had come upstairs, and happy too to know that Miriam and Sol didn't seem to mind me leaving the apartment. We finished going through the plants, and then I thought it was time to go downstairs.

“You sure you don't want a quick cup of coffee before you head down, Grace?”

Caffeine was the last thing I needed when I had to be up by seven. I could easily hear Miriam telling me that my nights upstairs were wearing me out. Then I smiled because I had already thought about coming back to visit with Dave. “No, I should just go down, but I'll come and see you again. Maybe I can help you pot plants or something.”

“You bet,” Dave said. “You have to come back up again, and soon.”

“I will, and thanks for the beer.” I ran down the short flight of stairs to the elevator, then waited for its long ascent to the thirtieth floor. As it neared, I tried to time the door's opening and said, “Open sesame,” at just the right moment.

T
he market was in session. The white lady market, Ule called it. Once when she and I had taken a walk through its tented stalls, she had screwed up her face and put down a bunch of something called ramps. “But what is this? Ramp? Not food for goat and cattle this is? Tell me when you ever see them selling yam and cassava, food for black people to eat. No, mama, me say this is one market for white lady.”

A lot of old white people were out taking the sun, some alone and some with their minders. A tall, seriously underweight woman with long platinum hair stalked by in five-inch heels, a tight jersey, and a short black skirt.

We all stared. Meena, the Indian sitter from Guyana whose wrong shade of foundation was an ill-applied death mask, and who always mentioned that her mother was a half-white woman, said to no one in particular: “Please. You think she looking good? When you see my lady dress to go out, nobady can't touch she, you know. Is head-to-toe name brand. I'm telling you. Is not me self who take the clothes to the cleaners? Is only Calvin Klein and Danna Karan and all kind of fancy thing, mama. I tell you, I never see that woman in anything but the very best. Down to she panty and all have name. Hanes Her Way.”

I remembered Miriam's balled-up panties in her bed. Last week I'd told her it was hard to make the bed when she left clothes tucked into the sheets, expecting her to take some shame and drop her dirty underwear in the hamper. But all she said was “Don't just tug the duvet. Make sure to strip and shake the sheets before you make the bed, Grace.”

Marva, whose dark skin was often covered with bruises, said, “My lady, she not cheap at all, at all like some of them other white woman and them. Is nine years now I working for Sally and not a Friday come and she didn't give me my pay envelope eight o'clock sharp. And every year is five days holidays I does get when you see summer come. With pay, to boot. That is why you see I not in no hurry to leave them and go to work for anybody else. You know what you have, my dear, but you don't know what you getting.” She touched the swollen spot on the side of her eye and lowered her voice. “Is a lot of nasty and low-down white people out there. Trust me. Is thirteen years now I living in America, and I meet my share. And how, I does make my little extra change on the side too. Yes, you have to know how to profit yourself. When you see she leave the change for laundry, well, I take my little dollar here and there. Or the grocery money? Well, you not stupid enough to take the money, but is who self going to the grocery? Not Marva? I buy for she house and I buy for my house. Not big things, but little things like soap or peas and carrots in the tin. Things you could stick easy easy in your pocketbook. You have to know how to make your profit, yes.”

“Well,” Evie joined in, “I don't have to thief nothing from nobody. Not that I calling you a thief, Marva. Everybody have to do what it is they have to do. But my lady does give me plenty things. When you see she go away for two, three days and she stay in them big fancy hotel and them, well, she does bring back all them little soap and little shampoo. One time she went away for the whole weekend and I stay over with Caleb and Sammy, and to show she appreciation she bring me back a white towel set. Was two bath towel, two hand towel, and a washrag. I pack that in a barrel to send to my house in Barbados. No sah. Me don't need to take nothing from nobody. Again, Marva, I not calling you a thief, I just saying—”

Evie made a dash for the sandbox. Every once in a while she surprised us with a youthful burst of speed, usually in the direction of one of the twins. She grabbed Caleb, who had just opened a fistful of sand over the yellow hair of a little girl with a stay-at-home, spy-on-us mother. She brought him over to the bench. I swear she said to him:

“Whoy ooh dooah ting loike dat?”

“I'm sorry, Evie.”

“Buh whuh dis likkle goil do ooh, Caleb?”

“Nothing. I said I was sorry.”

“Oi shuh gi ooh ah pinch on ooh buhfum fuh dat. Goiver dere an tell ar ooh sorry.”

He walked over to where the girl's mother exaggeratedly shook out her daughter's hair and, presumably, said he was sorry. Evie turned back to us. “That little wretch. You see what I have to deal with? You see how he bad? Caleb is one of the name for the devil self.” Then she turned to me. “And you, Miss Prim and Proper, sitting down playing quiet quiet. How come you didn't tell we your lady making baby?”

How on earth did she know that?

“I can't tell anybody Miriam pregnant if she didn't tell me.”

Evie looked at me through upraised arms as she tightened her curler. “But I right, though? Even though she didn't tell you. Come, child, you only working for these white people two weeks now and you keeping they secrets from you own people? Is who you trust more, them or we?”

I didn't trust her for sure.

“Ule could well do with the little baby nurse job,” she said. “You know how to mind baby?”

Ule said, “Evie, I don't need you to be no solicitor for me, thank you very much.”

A woman who I thought was one of the mothers came into the park and walked toward us on the bench. After Miriam's surprise visit last week, I wondered whose lady she was. Then Evie saw her. “Look who it is, my dear, the one and only Bridget.”

Bridget was grinning as she came up to the bench, and the women scooched around to make space for her. “How are you bunch of slackers doing?” she asked. “Still minding the little buggers I see and having your lemons. Hiya, Evie, Ule, Marva, Petal. Guys, don't let me have to say hi to everyone. How's the craic?”

Her hoarse accent was Irish and heavy. As soon as she sat down, she took out a pack of cigarettes, offered them around to no takers, and lit up. She inhaled deeply and then blew out the smoke in a steam-kettle rush. When she did that, her top lip pruned and she looked older.

“Hello, Miss Bridget,” Evie said. “A lime, we liming. We say since you gone you don't come to look for the old-timers no more.”

Bridget laughed, her voice husky. “Not at all, me darlings. I've been to Ireland for over a month. Me ma was well sick over there, but she's doing better now, bless.”

Petal raised both palms skyward. “Thanks to Jesus. The husband went with you?”

Bridget screwed up her face. She was pretty, in a way. Her hair was shiny black and cut with long bangs, setting off her freckled, white skin and wide, startled eyes. “He came for a week and then had to come back to New York, or so he said. What's been going on around here?” She leaned forward. “Hey, Ule, how are you doing? Got a new one, I see.”

Ule gently jostled the baby. “Yes, my love. You remember the Bloomberg lady on the twentieth floor? She make another one, and she give me the work.”

Bridget sucked her cigarette again. “That old cow still giving milk? Let me see him.” Ule peeled back the blanket, and Bridget looked. “Bless, ugly as sin, in't he? But good for you. Don't take any shite from her now. You know how bossy these bitches can be.”

I wondered who this woman was. The sitters were usually restrained, speaking good English and giving one-word answers and nods whenever one of the mothers came by and tried to pal around. They simply didn't trust these women, and I was fast realizing that the relationship I had had with Mora was very different from how most of the women in the towers got on with their help.

“Oi.” Bridget reached into her really nice pocketbook and pulled out an envelope. “I almost forget, yeah. I brought yous something from Ireland.” In it were several green, clover-shaped key chains, which she passed around. “That's so every time you open you doors, you can think about me sneaking in to take your menfolk.”

All the women laughed, and Marva said, “Bridget, you done take one man already. You not going to leave we with what we have?”

“You can have yours,” she said. “And what the fuck is that on the side of your face, Marva? That drunk's still coming at ya? I've already told you to pour some hot oil in that bastard's ear when he's asleep.”

Marva pressed her finger to her lips, and Bridget wagged one of her own at her. “You have to stop taking his shite, Marv.”

Ule passed me the envelope, but I didn't take a key chain. “Oi.” Bridget turned to Evie. “You've done replaced me in the crew, then?” And to me, “Hello, luv, I'm Bridget, who are you?”

Evie said, “Who you see who missing?”

Bridget surveyed the group and called out names. “Petal, Marva, Meena, Ule, you, them lot whose names I never knew.” Then she got it. “Bloody hell, where the fuck, gosh, excuse me, kids around, I know. Where's sourpuss Carmen?” And she looked at me through her bangs with her chin drawn down.

Before Evie could fill her in, Ule said, “That woman, nah, what you expect? You know she is a nastiness. She fire Carmen on Tuesday night and Grace was with Benjamin on Wednesday morning. None of we didn't know what happen.”

I looked from Ule to Evie and to all the other women. No wonder then. No wonder they had all hated me and Duke had stared, and even Dave must have known. How stupid had I been? I remembered Ben crying for his ya-ya that first morning. I had thought . . . What had I thought? Over and over Sylvia had said to me she could tell I was from the bush. I guessed she was right.

Bridget put her hands on her hips. Evie stared at Ule, pissed and pouting. No doubt she would have delivered the news differently.

“What a dirty, low-down thing to do to a hardworking woman,” Bridget said. “I always told you guys that Miriam is the worst kind of Catholic ever. A Jewish one. Grace they say you are?”

She held the women enthralled as she drew hard on her cigarette and pushed a lock of hair repeatedly behind her ear.

“That's me,” I replied.

“Well, Grace, just you watch yourself with that Miriam,” she said and then smiled in a way that my mother would have said was wicked. “You need to pull a Bridget on that bitch. That'd teach her. Her Solomon's a looker, in't he?”

“Uh-uh, Miss Bridget,” Ule said, “stop right there with your stupidness. What you telling this child?”

“Child? Oh, Ule, come on. Are you still blind? She's my age, practically.” She turned back to me. “Have they told you about me?”

I liked her too. “No.”

“Shame on you, ladies, letting me lore fade away. Grace, I used to be a nanny—”

“Another word, Bridget, use another word,” Petal said.

Bridget laughed, her voice low and raspy from the cigarettes. “Oi, I forget it means pussy where you come from, Petal. But in my case it's not far off the mark, is it?” she said, still laughing. “Grace, I used to be a child minder, and then I fucked my lady's husband a couple of times, and the next thing you know, he's divorced her and I'm living on Fifth Avenue. Not shacked up either, 'cause I'm Catholic, you see, got the ring and all.” She held out her left hand, and I saw the real BeDazzler, larger and throwing more light than anything Kathy ever tacked on to her clothes. “Not bad for a girl from County Kildare, innit?”

“Lord,” Ule said, “deliver us from this lass,” but she and the other women were laughing.

“Seriously though, Grace,” Bridget went on, “you could come out of this on top. Ha-ha.” She laughed at her own joke. “Serve Miriam right too. You, luv”—she snapped her fingers—“can get a husband like that.”

I could see why the sitters loved her. Bridget said exactly what came to her mind and had the actions to back up her chat. She had crossed over from the park to Fifth but had not forgotten the women still pushing carriages in the playground. Bridget was living the American dream the rest of us had found ourselves on the other side of. And there in Union Square, with one eye watching Bridget tuck her hair behind her ear and the other on Ben in the sandbox, I had to wonder if I too wanted what this Irish girl had slept her way to.