Minding Ben (30 page)

“At noon I call my mother, and she sounds so genuinely happy to hear my voice, I will myself not to cry. I tell her that my cousin won't keep me, and we end up arguing on the phone. My mother of course wants me to get on the next plane and come back. Change my flight and come home. I tell her let me at least stay out the duration of my ticket. Let me at least spend a little holiday. I'm sure Colette's mother will keep me for three weeks. My mother is hysterical, and I hang up the phone. I stay inside all day, find Channel Two and watch
The Young and the Restless
, eat nasty cold Chinese for lunch because I don't know how to operate the microwave, then the food upsets my belly and I break the flush toilet. When she comes in that evening with her son, my cousin hasn't changed her mind.

“I call Hyacinth again, take a cab over to their house, where the first thing she tells me is that I can't stay there for long, which is obvious because their place is a rabbit hole already filled with people, but I may stay for the three-week duration of my ticket if I'm going home when my time is up. So I lied and said of course I'll go home, at least I got to see America and snow. The second thing she says is that taxi ride from the airport shouldn't have been more than twenty dollars. When Colette offers to make drawer space, Hyacinth says it'll be easier if I just take things out of my suitcase as I need them.

“Still, they were all so nice to me. I did all the housework during the days, and on Christmas morning I even had a gift under their tree, a white cardigan two sizes too big. Then the Indian woman next door, Seema, she's from the island too, said she needed someone to hold her job in Jersey the week between Christmas and New Year's while she tried out something new. Everyone agreed that I should do it because I'd make one hundred and fifty dollars. That, together with my traveler's checks, should give me enough money to go shopping before I go back home. So I went to Highland Park, New Jersey, with Seema, who on the bus told me she'd say I was eighteen, but if her boss lady Mora ever found out my real age, she'd say I lied to her too.

“As I was fixing my suitcase to leave, Colette asked me to plait her hair like I used to back in the village. While I'm plaiting she says to me that I shouldn't worry. I had come to America before Jesus was ready for me to come, and that, for as long as she'd known me, I had always been in a hurry to do things before Jesus was ready for me to do them. Look how long it had taken for her to come and stay with her mother. Just go back home and wait, and Jesus would let me know when the time was right.”

Telling everything took a long time, and Dave didn't interrupt. Finally, I tightened up the last plait, liking the way the thin black braids contrasted against his pale scalp. Ben had long before fallen asleep on Dave's lap, and I tapped Dave with the comb. “Hey, rasta, you awake?”

He turned to stare at me, his mouth open, and I laughed when I saw his hair from the front. He was dead serious though. “Grace, my God. I had no idea—”

But I cut him off. “Of course you didn't. I don't tell people as soon as I meet them: Hello. I was abandoned at the airport and then my cousin kicked me out.” I laughed again. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. Sometimes I think it was all for the better that she told me to leave, you know?”

Dave gave me a crazy look. “No. I don't know that at all. But how did you manage? What did you do? How old were you? Sixteen? And all alone in New York. That cabbie could have decided— Let me not even think that. But do you know how many people, especially young girls, just disappear in New York City?” He made a face and repeated my cousin's line the morning she'd told me I needed to leave. “And you looking like that. Grace, do you know how lucky you are?”

I had yet to feel lucky.

“You know something, Grace? You remind me of Vincent.”

This came as a surprise. “How?”

“He wasn't scared of anything. Not his father or the thugs he grew up around. And such an optimist. To hear him tell it, everything was always going to be all right.” Dave paused. “It's good to not know fear,” he said, almost to himself. “So, Grace Jones. Now you're in America, but what are your plans? I mean your long-term plans.”

The time had come to leave Eden, and I thought over Dave's words as I put Ben's bag together, wondering if maybe I shouldn't be scared. “Sol and Miriam are sponsoring me. I'll go to school. Live, I guess.” I didn't know how else to put it.

He stopped on the path. “No going back home?”

I kept walking. “Nothing to go back home for.”

“And this sponsorship business with Sol and Miriam, how long will that take?”

“Donkey years. I've heard eight, ten. A long time.”

He lay Ben in the back of the truck without a seat belt and didn't answer until he sat behind the wheel. “But, Grace, this means that you have to stay with Sol and Miriam for all this time. What if they move, if Miriam starts, hah, starts acting crazy? What will you do then?”

“Dave, it's not like I have a choice.”

“Come on, Grace, there's always a choice. How old are you now, seventeen?”

“I'm eighteen.”

“Eighteen. Look at that. You're young, pretty, and one of the smartest people I know. Think about what you're saying. Do you really want to work for Sol and Miriam until you're almost thirty?”

Did I really want to work for Sol and Miriam until I was almost thirty?
It was a stupid question, and it made me furious. Dave didn't understand. But then, he lived at the top of the world. I didn't expect him to.

“Now you're mad at me,” he said. “Don't be, I'm just trying to help you think of options. Grace, who knows where Sol and Miriam will be in ten years? In even one year?”

He pulled into the tower's driveway, and I jumped out and got Ben. Dave came and stood next to me. “Grace, please listen.”

But I didn't want to listen. To him or to anyone else. Duke was doing his best to see us through the glass. “I'll see you later, okay, Dave? Give the purple anthuriums a little water tomorrow.” He left the car in the driveway and walked behind me to the front door, but I wouldn't turn around. In the elevator I found that I didn't want to cry. I was just mad and had the bitter taste of pretzels and grape soda choking my throat.

I
stayed mad at Dave, but in truth I was more annoyed at myself. I felt like I was a spinning top in mud. I didn't know what I was doing or what I wanted or where anything was leading. And to make matters worse, Kath, who was all I had ever had in America, was talking about going home.

Fridays before I went to Sylvia's, I stopped at Kath's room. She'd quit her job and was spending her time lying on her unmade bed undoing the rhinestone patterns she had dazzled into almost every piece of clothing she owned. At first she had wanted me to take her job. But I wouldn't.

“Grace, don't be stupid. It's twice the money you make. Leave them.” Her hair, uncombed for weeks, was almost dreaded down around her shoulders.

“Yeah, Kath, but it's live out. I'd have to come home to Sylvia's every evening. When was the last time you saw her apartment? Place is a madhouse with all the construction. Where are your combs?”

She waved a lock of her hair at me. “Dumb-dumb, you wouldn't have to stay at Sylvia's anymore because you'd be able to afford your own place. It's three seventy-five a week they pay; you could probably get four hundred.”

The big money I could earn at Kath's job made me pause. In two months, I could have enough saved to send for my father. I could get a room like the one Kath had for less than a hundred dollars a week, and I'd never have to see Sol and Miriam again. I'd miss Ben, but I'd probably see him in the park every day. And, if I felt like it ever again, I'd be able to visit Dave in the evenings after work. But I couldn't leave.

“I can't do it, Kath.”

“Grace, why?”

Had she really forgotten? I couldn't tell anymore with Kath. The weight she'd lost after the abortion hadn't come back. Her skin was gray and her lips cracked, as if now, in July, a winter wind blew just for her.

“My papers, Kath. You know they're doing the sponsorship. I can't leave now. Hey”—I rushed on before she could answer—“what about you? When are you and that guy getting married?”

“Please”—Kath's voice was scornful—“I'm not doing that anymore.”

She hadn't told me this. “You're not?”

She shook her head slowly. “Nope. The license expired after thirty days, anyhow. I forget all about that, Grace.”

“But, Kath, so what are you going to do?”

And that was the first time I'd heard her say it. “I'm ready to go home, Grace.”

“Home?”

“Ow, Grace, don't pull.”

“Sorry. But what are you talking about? You can't go back to the island.”

“Give me one good reason why not.”

Because if you left I'd be alone in the world.

“What would Donovan say?”

“Come on, Grace. I said a good reason. And besides, he'd be relieved if I left here. He's only still around because he feels guilty for what happened.” Kath twisted to look at me, and her hardened face made me miss my old friend. “Well, don't you want to know why he feels guilty?”

“Why?”

“Because he ruined my fucking life, that's why.” And then she hung her head and cried, her whole body shaking as she sobbed for everything lost.

Later we ordered from Gloria's. As I inhaled a plate of rice and oxtails, I watched Kath take apart a chicken roti without actually eating more than a few curried
channa.
She fussed with the food as if she intended to eat, but in the end she had three piles on her place, roti scraps, shredded chicken, and potato and
channa.

“So how long you been thinking about this, Kath?” I couldn't believe she was serious.

She shrugged. “Oh, I don't know. It was always in the back of my mind.”

“From before Court Street?” Neither of us ever spoke of the abortion by name.

Kath picked up a piece of chicken. “My father has been trying to get me to come home for a year now, Grace.”

“Oh, Lord, he thinking about running again?” The big man in South Trinidad had twice run for mayor of our borough.

“And, we're opening up a new store.”

“But, Kath, how long now you're here?” I knew exactly, remembered Mora handing me the phone and, expecting my mother on the line, hearing Kath instead, telling me she was in Brooklyn. “You know if you go home you won't be able to come back for ages, right?”

She ate the tiniest triangle of roti. “Not necessarily.”

“Oh, yeah, once you've overstayed, that's it. You'll get stamped ‘undesirable' on your way out. We're in the same boat, sister.”

I expected her to laugh, but she didn't. “Grace, my visa never expired.”

“Now who's the dummy? B-twos are only valid for six months, Kath.”

“Who said I had a B-two?” She studied a chunk of curried potato. “Daddy got me a student's visa, Grace. You know he knows Tom, Dick, and Harry.” She shrugged and set down the potato. “Nope, I won't get stamped, and, when I get home, I'll tell them not to date my passport and everything'll be fine.”

I stared up at Kath with my mouth open. “So you can go home and come back when you like?”

“If I want. Daddy, you know.”

But I hadn't known; we weren't in the same boat at all. “So you really going to do this? You're going back for real?”

She started folding up the sides of her paper plate, imprisoning the remains of her meal. “Well, we'll see, Grace.” She smiled her old smile for the first time in a long time. “I gave someone an ultimatum, and if they want me to stay, then everything will be fine and my poor daddy might never get to be mayor.”

A
s much as I waited all week for Fridays to come to get paid and to leave Sol and Miriam's apartment, the reality was that coming home to Brooklyn offered me no respite. Sylvia's apartment was wrecked. Before, I could come in and, after a few cosmetic changes, a quick sweep of the meat rug, the breakfront straightened, and everything else crammed into the hallway closet, I'd be able to relax. Now, relaxation was impossible. Jacob's Russians had torn the apartment apart. What had started out as a cover-up job had turned into a full redo after the city inspector's report decreed Sylvia's dwelling a lead trap.

A toxic confetti of chipped paint blanketed everything. Micky and Derek spent as much time as possible outside. During the long summer days, they played on the parkway's sidewalk from when camp ended, at five, until their exhausted bodies demanded bedtime at ten. Sometimes they took Dame out with them, but more often Sylvia left him with the old Jamaican woman next door. Still, when he was home, he had unfettered access to the paint he so loved to eat.

When I told this to Sylvia, she got mad at me. “So what it is you want me to do, Grace? Look at this place. Watch how we living like bums. You get to live like a lord with them white people in the city. You don't spend the week here with we.”

The apartment was a hot den. Because the grates had been removed, the windows were supposed to remain closed, and the trapped heat only swirled thickly when disturbed by the standing fan. The weathermen had been predicting a summer storm to come and wash it all away, but rain clouds showed no sign of gathering. Sylvia reclined on the couch in a thin red negligee with Dame in only a diaper flopped against her sweaty bosom. I lifted a piece of paint from the side of his mouth. “So call the city and complain, Sylvia.”

“Grace, you don't know how this city does operate. Is not when I want them to come”—she settled herself, and her belly shifted, sliding Dame a few inches forward—“they does show up without even telling you they coming.”

I had nothing else to say.

Sylvia burped from deep within. “At least the work getting done. This is only for a time. By the time they finish, them boy father will be home and things will go back to normal around here.”

It had been weeks since I last saw Bo, and I had, of course, never got back the twenty dollars I'd lent to him. “Sylvia, when last you see Bo?”

“Ages now, mama. He wouldn't stay around here so to see them Russian and them doing work he should be doing.”

“He by Dodo?”

“Nah. Now you see it warm warm outside, he and Nello and them does camp in the park.”

So Bo hadn't been given the gutting job Jacob had promised him back in the spring. At least camping out in the park sounded like a fun thing to do. I had this picture of Bo and Nello and the other men he hung out with living in tents with a roaring campfire, singing songs and swapping jokes under the stars as they drank bottles of rum and played all fours until early dawn.

Sylvia fanned the still air in front of her with her palm. “Lord, but this heat is killing me. I have half a mind to open them damn window, you know. Take Dame, Grace.”

I leaned over and peeled him away from Sylvia's belly, damp with her or his sweat. He was three now and still couldn't form any words. The city had assigned a speech therapist to come to the apartment, but Sylvia said not until the workmen were done. She didn't want strangers to see her house like this. She had so many plans for after the renovations were finished. Her husband would be well enough to come home; she would lose the weight; finally, Dame would start his therapy. Everything would be just fine once the work was done and she could get her life in order.

“You doing anything in the morning, Grace?” she asked.

I didn't have any plans besides calling my mother at two. “No, why?” Usually her agency didn't send her out on Saturday jobs.

“Stay here with them children for me. I want to run down Pitkin before the big rain come for some curtain I put on layaway for when you see this place done.”

“SO HOW'S THE BABY
doing?” Cassandra Neil glanced at quiet Dame. “He started speech therapy?”

Sylvia was right. Those city people didn't give you any warning.

“Um, you're going to have to ask my cousin when she's back. Did she know you were coming?” I was sure she didn't.

“Okay, okay. I was just asking.”

She was very professional in her assessment. I sat on the couch with Micky and Derek on either side and Dame on my lap while she went from room to room, placing her meter against the walls and the radiators and the window grates propped against the baseboards. The children were very quiet, and I gave them each a candy. She finished and stood in front of us. “When's your cousin coming back?”

I looked past her to see the time on the VCR clock. “She should be back any minute now.”

“Good, I need to wait for her.”

There was no place to offer her to sit, even the box over the radiator by the window was gone. I got off the couch and perched Dame on my hip. “Sit down,” I offered. She said thanks and sat, and both Micky and Derek got up and disappeared into the bedroom.

“So”—Cassandra pulled one leg up under her—“you register for fall yet? Hunter you said, right?”

“Not yet.” Dame was liquid in my arms.

“Well, I brought something for you.” She leaned forward and dug into her back pocket.

“For me?”

She handed me a card with two phone numbers written on it. “The top one is for the main admission office, and the second one is for Hunter's direct admission. You should give them a call.”

“Thanks.” I slid the card into my back pocket. “How did you know I'd be here?”

“Oh, I just had a feeling.”

Then we heard a key in the front door, and Sylvia came in. Micky and Derek flew out of the bedroom and down the corridor, and I heard her say, “Where? In my living room? Now?” She walked in carrying two shopping bags, her hairline beaded with sweat. “Miss Neil, I too too shame for you to come and see my place looking like this.”

Cassandra got up. “Oh, Mrs. John, don't mind. It's not you, it's the landlord. Come in and sit down. Hah, I'm telling you to sit in your own house. But sit, sit.”

Sylvia sat next to me and reached for Dame. “Grace, but you didn't even offer the lady a glass of water self to drink. Where your manners, man?”

“No, no,” Cassandra said. “Grace did. I didn't want anything. I was just waiting for you to come home.”

“Get up, Grace, let the lady sit down.”

I moved to the windowsill, but Cassandra did not sit down.

“Mrs. John,” she said, “you can't stay in this apartment with your children while this work is going on.” Sylvia started to speak, and Cassandra put up her hand. “No, you can't. Your landlord has to find you other accommodations or pay for you and your family to stay in a hotel. He has thirty days to do that, and there can be no more construction in the apartment until you and your children are resettled.”

That word made me think of Haitian refugees.

“But what is this I hearing? Miss Lady”—Sylvia had forgot Cassandra Neil's name—“I can't leave my house.”

Micky started to cry, and Derek said, “We moving, Mammy? But how my daddy will find us when he come home?”

Sylvia looked around her house, and if she saw what I saw, she must have known that Cassandra Neil was right. “Well, they say what don't meet you does pass you. But look how trouble come in my house today, nah.”

“Don't think of it as trouble, Mrs. John.” Cassandra sat down next to Sylvia. “If you're out of the apartment, the workers can get the job done much faster than if you're here with the children.”

Sylvia shook her head. “You don't know Jacob.”

“I do know Mr. Kaplan, very well in fact. He'll get to work.”

I was listening and thinking only about myself. If Sylvia and the children had to move, I might not be able to go with them. Where would I go on the weekends? I couldn't bear the thought of living with Sol and Miriam full-time.

The thunderclap was so loud it stirred Dame from his deep, quiet place, and he howled. Micky and Derek ran to their mother, and Cassandra Neil said, “Wow.” Lightning flashed silver bright, and another boom of thunder made Micky fling her arms around her mother's neck.

“Stop behaving so stupid,” Sylvia said, but she rubbed Micky's arm with one hand and patted Dame with the other. “Is just some rain to finally cool down this heat. Weatherman say this morning rain going to come.”

Cassandra Neil got up to leave. “Wait until the rain pass, Miss Neil. This kind of weather could give you ammonia, yes,” Sylvia told her.

Cassandra smiled. “You sound just like my mother, Mrs. John.”

“Then your mother is a smart woman.”

“PLENTY RAIN FALLING HERE
too,” my mother said when the lady on the hill passed her the phone, “but is rainy season, so what else to expect?”

“You leave Helen and Daddy sleeping?”

“How you know?”

I knew because, back home, the sound of a hard rain drumming on the galvanized roof was a country lullaby to the sweetest sleep.

“So how everybody doing, Mammy?” I wanted to hear her voice. My carpeted nook was now storage space for Jacob's workers, and I curled in a corner of the couch in the warm glow from the tatty maiden lamp. Sylvia and the children had gone to nap away the summer storm, and I had the living room to myself.

“Everybody good, you know. Same thing as usual.” I didn't expect her to say more than this. “How you going?”

“Ah, I good,” I answered, but she knew me too well.

“What happen, Gracie? Something wrong? You and Sylvia quarrel?”

“No, no, is not that.”

“So what it is, then?”

Sylvia will have to move just now, and I can't go with them. And the money I work for is not enough to rent a place and continue saving for Daddy's foot, not to mention start saving to pay for school. And, I can't leave Sol and Miriam because they're doing my sponsorship. And, Kathy's talking about coming home. And, I miss you and Daddy and Helen. And, I don't like the rain in America.

“Oh, Mammy, is nothing. Rain here just different from home is all.”

She was quiet for a while, then said, “Huh, rain might be different, but you is still the same, Gracie.”

“I suppose,” I mumbled, more for me than for her.

“What you mean you suppose? You're still the same Gracie who start to read when she was four, who always come out first in class, who tell Mr. Parris you not calling him Mister unless he call you Madam—”

I laughed. “I did that? How much years I had?”

My mother laughed too. “You playing you can't remember? Not even five. From then on he called you Madam whenever he pass. You know they say when he was traveling on he sickbed, he laugh and say, ‘The child tell me to call she madam,
oui
,' right before he give up the spirit?”

I hadn't even known he had died.

“And is not you who pick up and decide to go America?”

“Well, you had to let me go. Is not like I just walk out the house.”

“You think I could have stop you, Gracie?”

This was new to me, because although my mother and I had always clashed, she had also almost always won our battles. Even in the ones she did lose, she still triumphed by virtue of being the mother whose word and will had dominion over mine. Our house had not been a one man, one vote kind of place, and Helen and I were forever plotting bloodless coups to get our way.

“Nothing I could have say or do was making you stay on this island, Gracie. I know that for sure.”

So long I'd had to wait to hear this from my mother, and all I wanted to do was go home to her and take a long sleep to the sound of the falling rain. I couldn't even begin to acknowledge what she was actually saying to me, so instead I asked again after my father.

“Daddy good, I tell you. The sugar okay and the blood pressure not too high. The other day he even went alone to clinic for a checkup and everything looking good.”

“He traveled alone? Why you or Helen didn't go with him?”

“That is what I trying to tell you,” my mother said, “everything over here going good. You just take care of yourself and not to worry about us.”

She convinced me, but I still wouldn't let her get off the phone. Not until she had answered my questions about my na, and Rhonda, and our dogs and the plants and trees growing around our house and in the big garden. Finally, when I was filled with the sound of her and home, I told her I would talk to her next time.

After, I got out the card with the numbers Cassandra Neil had given me. Of course the admissions office at the college was closed on Saturday, but the main office in the city was open, and I requested a catalog and all the information they could send to me. I didn't know what was going to happen at Sylvia's apartment, so I gave the encouraging woman on the phone Miriam's address in the city.

SUNDAY NIGHT WHEN I
got in, Danny jumped off his little pedestal and landed in my path with a sharp
clap
from the taps on his repaired shoes.

“Hey, Gracie Mansion, I've got a question for you.” His pointed fingertip touched my chest.

“What, Danny?” I didn't want to talk to him or to anyone else. I had too much on my mind.

“What are you doing after you get off from work this Friday?”

“What?”

“What you doing Friday? You wanna go get something to eat or go to the park or something?”

I looked more closely at Danny, hearing that he was asking me out. Skinny, with the stupid captain's hat on his too small head, his plucked-chicken neck stretching up from the wrinkled collar of his unpressed shirt, narrow, sloping shoulders, bad-fitting uniform, unpolished shoes, back up to the nasty teeth. I looked at him and willed Brent instead, sexy, sad eyes and goatee, that body I wanted to hold me, that smell I wanted to inhale. I shook my head. “I can't, Danny.”