Minding Ben (35 page)

I hugged Ben and nodded.

THE WARM AND SMOKY
summer's night was sparking. Dodo took Micky and Derek away. I needed to get back with Ben and too late realized that I should have called Sol and Miriam from upstairs. Crowds were moving deeper into Crown Heights, and I wondered for the third time what was going on. The late light was starting to fade, but in front of all the solemn buildings on Eastern Parkway, groups were gathered and restless. Bo pulled me aside from the others on Sylvia's stoop.

“Hear what go on. Me and Nello come to help Sylvia, scene? Girl, we move so much box and it was so hot up in that place, jackass Nello open the damn window. I didn't see and Sylvia didn't see. The place didn't even feel no different. After about fifteen minutes, Sylvia say, ‘But where Dame?' Me didn't pay she no mind, until maybe about five minutes later she say, ‘Bo, but where Dame gone in truth?' Then we start to look around, and, girl, is me first who notice the blasted window open and you know how Dame like to sit down on that windowsill and when I look out I see him bend up on all the rubbish outside. I bawl.”

I wiped my tears, and, for the first time since we got to Sylvia's, Ben spoke. “Don't cry, Grace.”

I rubbed his slim back. “And where Nello?”

Bo lifted his chin to Miss Florence's dark stoop. “He there.” He dropped his voice even lower. “But don't worry. We going down the road. Jacob not getting away so easy with this.”

“And Sylvia, Bo?”

“Grace, I thought that girl was going to dead here tonight. If you see how she fly down them steps, bawling. She bawl so until the ambulance come, and she was still bawling when they drive away.”

“Oh, God.” I had to ask him because I still wasn't sure. “And Dame dead, Bo? Really and truly dead?”

He ground the cigarette butt out. “Dead dead.”

I DIDN'T KNOW HOW
long it took to get a livery cab back into the city.

Ben fell asleep in my arms, and I realized that we didn't have Rabbit. I felt around, and once I was certain he wasn't there, I was sure he was gone forever.

The cabbie, who looked exactly like Ali at the newsstand, watched me through the rearview. “You helping them out, eh. Getting him out of Brooklyn for your friends?”

I didn't answer. We were driving over the bridge, I didn't know which one, and there again was the nighttime city before me. It was still beautiful. Still dazzling and alive. But crazy. Real crazy.

Danny picked up the intercom before the door had even closed behind us. “They're coming up now, Mr. Bruckner.” He hung up and said, “Princess Grace is in trouble tonight.”

Sol was standing outside the elevator. A police officer stood beside him. He snatched Ben out of my arms, waking him. “How dare you, Grace? How fucking dare you?”

The officer said, “Sir, please,” and Sol loped down the hall with his son. The officer followed. Everyone was inside: Big Ben and Ettie, Nancy, Susannah and Michael, Dave, and Duke. Miriam was laid out on the couch while Evie massaged her bare feet. The television was tuned to Channel Five, and the caption under the live reporter read, “Riots in Crown Heights.”

“You see, Miriam.” Evie used her thumbs to apply pressure to Miriam's instep. “What me tell you? He here all safe and sound.”

“Oh, my baby,” Miriam sobbed. “Come, come to Mommy.”

Ben was now fully awake. “Big Ben,” he said, “Grace took me on the choo-choo train! And, Big Ben, we saw all the people. And the fire and the penguin people.”

“You saw penguin people?” Big Ben asked.

“Uh-huh, and the baby fell out the window, and she put on the wings, and Grace said a bad word.”

I was fucked.

“Wow.” Big Ben worked his old hands into Ben's curls. Everyone watched. “You had quite an adventure.”

“That's what Grace said.”

In the pause, the officer's radio squawked, and I jumped.

“Is everything okay, Grace?” It was Dave.

Miriam sat up, and Evie, moving as quickly as she did at the park sometimes, slid to the floor and kept massaging. “Is
Grace
all right? Dave, you fuckin' kidding me?”

“That's a bad word, Mommy,” Ben said.

“Okay,” the officer said, “so what do we want to do here? Do you want us to take her down?” And I realized he meant me.

“Yes, take her down,” Miriam said. “She kidnapped my son.”

“Miriam, stay calm,” Ettie said.

“Grace, what were you thinking?” Nancy asked.

“And on this night of all nights,” Susannah said. “I have never understood anyone from Brooklyn.”

“What happened, Grace?” Dave asked.

“There was an accident in Brooklyn, and I had to go. Sol and Miriam, I'm so sorry.”

“And she stole our money,” Miriam said.

“I borrowed the money. I used it—” I started to explain how I had sent all my money home for my father, and that I had every intention of giving them back their twenty when they paid me, but I was so tired and little Dame was dead. Dead dead. I started to cry.

“Watch the crocodile tears,” Evie said.

“Okay, Grace,” Sol said, “just leave. Tonight, okay. We trusted you with our son.”

I looked at him, and he stopped.

“So you pressing charges?” The officer wanted to be sure.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Ettie said. “The family will handle this.”

The cops left, and so did Susannah and Michael. I went to my small space, and Miriam came in with me.

“Do you mind if I look in your bag?”

I watched her dump my jeans and shirts, my halter, onto the bed, as she fingered the secret pockets and netted pouches. “Fine.” She dropped the empty bag on the bed. “We'll keep the twenty dollars you made today—right? Forty minus the twenty you
borrowed
—until the phone bill comes. If there's anything we owe you, I'll send you a check.”

“I don't have a checking account.”

“Then take it to a check-cashing place, Grace.”

Ettie, Big Ben, and Nancy were gone when I came out. I didn't see Sol and Ben. Duke and Evie sat together on the floral couch, and Dave sat under the sunflower clock. It was just after eleven.

I walked past Miriam's menagerie for the final time. Dave came out with me. “Grace, I am so sorry. Sol came upstairs frantic and I came down with him. Is everything okay? Are you okay?”

I shook my head.

“Look, do you have somewhere to go? You know what . . . Fuck it.” He grabbed Sylvia's bag out of my hand and held my elbow. “I'm abducting you. You're staying upstairs tonight.”

I didn't argue. How could I? I had no fight left in me. I just followed him to the penthouse where I spent a sad, fitful night. I rose early—I didn't exactly wake up because I didn't exactly sleep. Neither Brutus nor Cesar barked when I left. Dave was still asleep.

“Ahhhh,” Danny said as I walked by. “Ladies and gentlemen, Princess Grace has left the building.”

AUGUST 1991

T
he headlines were filled with news of the West Indian boy who had been accidentally killed in Crown Heights, about the neighborhood that burned bright for three days as angry black people attacked angry Jews who attacked them right back. But not a word about Dame. Sweet Dame.

I needed to get another job, put another ad in the
Irish Echo
, find another little boy to mind, or maybe a little girl. But I couldn't bear to think about all that, about money and papers and school.

Not yet.

Instead, I lived off Kath. After she'd gone I found that she'd left me $200 under the BeDazzler. Plus she had already paid the rent for a month. Thank you, Kath. Brent had tried to give me money but there was just no way I could take cash from him. Not after what we were doing. He came over often, sometimes in the middle of the day and sometimes late at night, and although I never turned him away, I knew there wasn't ever going to be anything more between us. I didn't ask about his life and we didn't talk about the future, and when he wrote down his beeper number, I threw the piece of paper outside Kath's window.

I went often to the botanic gardens, in the opposite direction on the parkway from Sylvia and the unrest. During the hot hot days there was hardly ever anyone there, and I read under the willows and watched the guys pack compost into the soil around plants my mother grew at home and Dave grew in the sky. When I was homesick for both I went into the humid tropical greenhouse to marvel at the tall papayas and the sugary sapodillas and mangoes fruiting in the middle of Brooklyn.

One evening after I'd left the gardens and was walking toward Kath's room, I thought I heard a bell like the one Leader Elson used to call his Sunday flock at my mother's church. I looked across the street and saw under the yellow and blue bodega awning a lone woman in a long white dress and a tall white head tie, walking in circles and ringing her bell. No one paid her any mind except to avoid her. “The end coming for all of them,” she said. “All of them going to burn and who don't burn gone turn into a pillar of salt to salt the coming seas.” It was Petal. I looked around for someone to share this with, but of course there was no one. “This America is a wicked, nasty place,” Petal continued. “Remember thy father's land and keep thyself pure.”

Someone from a window above shouted, “Then shut the fuck up and go back to yo father's land.”

Something about Petal scared me. She had worked in the towers and limed with us in the playground and in the Zollers' apartment, and now here she was resurrected as mad as mad can be taking her crazy message to the highways and byways. It was time to make a plan.

Two weeks after the riots, and the Sunday before the big West Indian Labor Day parade—the deadline I had given myself to start getting it together—Kathy's buzzer rang. I didn't answer it because I wasn't expecting Brent, but it rang again and I heard Shivani's footsteps tripping down the hall. A minute later I opened my door to see not only Dave, but Brutus and Cesar.

“Dave! What you doing here? How did you find me? Shivani, this is my friend Dave.”

Shivani said, “He hair nice, eh? Thick and curly curly.”

I laughed and we hugged. “Come on in, but you're gonna have to leave the boys in the hall. There's no room for them in here.”

He looped their leashes around the cold pipe and came in. “Hey, Grace, let me ask you something?”

I pointed for him to sit on Kathy's pouf and got two beers out of the fridge that I always had to walk all the way to Ali's to buy without Id. “What?”

He grabbed a fistful of his fro. “Do I have fucked-up hair?”

I laughed. “What? Your hair is fine, Dave.”

“I don't know. The kids downstairs all ran over to pet the dogs and one little girl with these tiny braids asked me how'd my hair get to be like theirs. The
dogs'
hair, Grace.”

I knew exactly which little girl had asked him that. “Okay, your hair is a bit high. But how did you find me here? What are you doing here?”

We knocked cheers like old times and Dave took a drink. “Solid detective work. I got a phone bill from Sol and Miriam and called the number you called on the island. A woman answered the phone and said she had to get a message to your mom. Then your sister, who sounds exactly like you, answered when I called back the next day and she gave me your friend Kathy's number. I called Kathy and she told me you were staying in her place in Brooklyn. And voilà, here you are!”

“You're crazy, Dave,” I said. But I was so happy to see him. “And Ben's fine, right?”

“Of course he's fine. Riding the subway never killed anyone, except, you know, if they fell on the tracks or got shot or something. Miriam's from Carroll Gardens, for chrissakes.”

“Still though, he's their baby.”

Dave looked at me. “Grace, you know I couldn't tell you they were buying the house, right? I gave them my word and I couldn't go back on that. But I am sorry.”

“Dave, it's okay. It doesn't make a difference now anyhow. How's the garden? Is the frangipani still flowering?”

“Better than that.” He pulled something out of his pocket. “Check this out.”

“Hey.” I looked at the big green emerald nestled in his palm. “Is that a baby papaya? Dave, yay, but why did you pick it?”

“ 'Course I didn't pick it, it fell off. But yeah, the two new branches are loaded with fruit. You did it, Grace. But that's why I'm here.”

“To show me the fruit?”

“To offer you a job. I'm going back to Key West and I need someone to keep the place going. You interested?”

Of course I was interested. “But what about Sol and Miriam? I couldn't live in the towers and—”

“Don't worry about that,” Dave said. “They've closed on the house. You won't be running into them unless you take a detour to Duck Hollow.”

I couldn't believe my luck. “Really, Dave?” I asked. “Minding plants instead of . . . you know. Oh my God, yes!”

“Good, I was hoping you'd say that. You get to live in the guest quarters and take care of the plants, but you'll have the run of the apartment. You can practice your plantology as you go along.”

“When do you want me to start?”

“How soon can you?”

There was nothing keeping me in Brooklyn. Sylvia was lost to me. Micky, Derek, Bo—they were gone and I didn't know where.

“Let me call Shivani and pack up a few things.”

I was ready in less than an hour. Shivani kept asking if I didn't want this or that, but it was all stuff left over from Kath and of no value to me. She opened up a cupboard and saw Kath's BeDazzler. “Here, this you have to take. This is a spensive thing.”

“You take it,” I told her. “Use it to decorate your saris.”

“Huh, you wouldn't catch me dead in one of them thing.”

“Be good, okay?”

“Okay. Don't forget me, you hear?” I hugged her and we left.

CROWN HEIGHTS LOOKED EXACTLY
the same in spite of the recent ugliness. I felt sorry for the big old trees on Eastern Parkway that their job was to divide north/south traffic, and not to be majestic in a forest someplace.

“Dave, stop.”

He braked too suddenly and the driver behind us pounded his horn.

“Some more warning, please, Grace.”

But I wasn't listening to him. We were about to go past Sylvia's building, and next door at Miss Florence's house I saw the old Russian workman on a ladder and Mutt or Jeff carrying a pigtail bucket of something to throw in a Dumpster parked out front. Jacob was standing in the yard with his hands on his waist under his black jacket looking up at his man Mikhail. Next to him, dressed identically, a boy about Dame's age stacked a red brick tower.

“You want to say bye to someone?”

I looked for a little while longer, but didn't see anyone I really knew.