Minding Ben (4 page)

“Ten is fine.”

She gave me directions and said, “Please be on time. We have a few interviews already set up, and if everyone comes when they're supposed to, we can move along.”

“Of course. Thank you for calling.”

Sylvia was upright on the couch when I walked back into the living room. “Who was on the phone?”

“A lady from the city,” I said with a big grin. “I have an interview Thursday morning.”

“Which Thursday? This Thursday here coming?”

“Yeah, day after tomorrow. Ten o'clock.”

She pivoted in the seat and pinned me against the breakfront. “So who watching Damien on Thursday morning, Grace? And these children don't have no school on Thursday, to boot. You should of come and ask me if I have anything for you to do on Thursday before you make your interview. That is the proper way to do things.” Sylvia looked around the living room and told her furniture, “You see how nigger people ungrateful? That is why the good Lord say you not suppose to take strangers in your house.” Turning back to me, she asked, “And what time you think you coming home after this interview?”

I'd only ever been to Manhattan once before. I wanted to take the rest of the day to walk around and see that place. Eastern Parkway from Nostrand to Brooklyn Avenue had become my new world. Sometimes a bus ride with Sylvia and the children to Pitkin Avenue, and, even more rarely, the subway to Conway downtown on Fulton. Whenever I told Sylvia I wanted to see the city, she started muttering about young girls and men, and wanted to know what in the city was calling my name.

I stepped away from the breakfront. “Late,” I told her. “The lady living near where Kathy working, and I thought I'd go and see her.”

She didn't give in. “So you have to go and see Kathy Thursday?”

The relief from Mrs. Bruckner's call made me bold. “I don't have to, but I'd like to go say hello. We did A-levels together.”

“And watch where you is now,” Sylvia said, sneering, “going to wipe white people children ass. I bet you didn't think that is what you was going to end up doing when you was writing A-levels. Go ahead and see your friend, Miss Grace. Just make sure and come back in my house before dark for me please. I don't like people going in and out of my house at all hours. I have a girl child to set example for.”

“All right,” I said. “Leave Dame by Dodo for me to pick up.”

“And what about Monday?”

“What about Monday?”

“You don't have nothing plan for Monday?”

Not unless I got a job. “No, I'm here. Somebody coming?” Apart from Bo and Dodo, hardly anyone ever came to the apartment.

“Yeah, the landlord. I finally get him to give me a paint job. Make sure if he ask to tell him you is my cousin from Flatbush come to watch Dame and let him in, you hear?”

“Okay. What is his name?”

“Jacob. One of them Jew man and them with the hat and suit from down the road.”

Sylvia—one, two, three—heaved off the couch to take Dame to bed. I sat on the couch, but rose again immediately as a rancid smell steamed up from the upholstery and through the sweaty plastic. I sat on the tatty red carpet with the radiator warm behind my back and my legs stretched out, and tried to think of the better days ahead.

S
ylvia was up early, watching me get ready.

“So what time you say you coming home today, Grace?”

I hadn't said.

“I don't know. I'm meeting Kathy for lunch after the interview.”

“So why you can't come home and eat lunch? Look how much turkey wing I cook last night still in the fridge. You have too much money to waste to go and buy them white people food.”

I just shrugged.

“Grace, before you start to dress, make a quick bottle for Dame. Look it on the floor.”

“You want anything else from the kitchen?” I asked, knowing that, as soon as I returned with the formula, she would think of some reason to send me back. Dame was cuddling in his mother's lap. Derek lay on the top bunk in a restless sleep. Micky was awake, propped up on her pillow watching everything. I brought the bottle in and started to get dressed.

I didn't exactly have interview clothes, just jeans and sweaters and sneakers. Clothes easy to take care of children in. The night before I had laid out a black turtleneck and a pair of nice black pants I'd bought at Conway and never had a chance to wear.

“Makeup?” I asked Sylvia. Cosmetics were a vanity forbidden in my mother's house, but I had come to love the way my eyes looked when I lined them with black pencil.

“Nah, them white people and them funny. They don't like you to wear too much makeup when you taking care of they children. How much years this child have?”

“The mother say three—nearly four.”

“Well, maybe you could get away with some eye makeup, but you don't want to go in the people house looking too pretty pretty. Especially you. White woman funny with they husband, yes.”

I walked over to my drawer. “Grace, what stupidness you doing?”

“What?” I stopped. “Going for the pencil.”

Sylvia laughed. “I could really see you come from the bush, girl. Put on your jersey first, then do your face.”

That made sense. Sylvia could be so normal when she wanted to. I pulled the turtleneck over my head and lifted my hair out from behind.

“If is one thing you have, Grace, is nice hair.”

“All hair is nice hair, Sylvia.”

She pressed her fingertips to her chest to help release a burp. “How all hair is nice hair? You want to tell me picky head is the same thing as long, straight hair?”

“Is not the same thing, but that don't mean straight hair better.” Micky lay on the bed listening to every word. She passed her hand over the rumpled cane rows I'd done for her day before yesterday. I looked sideways in the mirror, frowning at the absence of breasts in my profile.

“You is a real ass,” Sylvia said. “Before these children spoil my figure, I used to look just like you. I see you want to laugh, but is truth. I was tall and slim, not thin thin like you, but slim-thick with nice big breasts. Now look at me.”

I didn't need to look. Sylvia was soft and mushy. She spread out over the mattress like hot lava.

“I'm sure after I have children I'll flesh out too.” I didn't want to spoil the good mood Sylvia was in this morning.

When I reached for my pants, she said, “Outside cold, Grace. Put some tights on under them pants.”

“Nah, this is wool. I'll be all right.”

“Every once in a while I know what I talking about. Is fifteen years now I living in this America. These people apartment could be far from the subway. Then too, today is a holiday. You know how long you might have to wait for a train?” Dame finished his bottle and grinned up at his mother. “Morning, Guy Smiley,” she said.

I slipped my pants on when Sylvia turned to Dame. The truth was, I didn't have tights. I finished up with my hair and eyeliner and pulled on my boots.

“I look all right? Businessy enough?”

Sylvia turned down the corners of her mouth in approval.

“You look nice, Grace,” Micky said from the bed. “I could come with you, Grace? We don't have no school today.”

Sylvia started before I had a chance to explain. “What the ass is this I hearing? Grace is your mother? You always stick up under Grace ass like is Grace what skin-up to make you.”

I knew where this was going, but I had to leave. I picked up my things and walked the long corridor to the door. I felt bad leaving Micky to Sylvia, but this time I couldn't stay.

I GRINNED UP AT
the blue sky. No one knew I was on my way to a nanny interview. I was like everyone else, wearing my good pants and my boots, walking to the station to take my train to work in the city. The grin must have been wide on my face because the clerk looked up at me and smiled. “Here you go, honey,” he said, as he slid two small brassy tokens through the slot.

The ride was fast. Usually on the short trips down to Fulton I liked standing on the crowded train with my eyes closed, both hands holding the overhead bar, my body swaying as the driver gunned between stations. Zip past Brooklyn Museum. Zip past Grand Army Plaza and Bergen Street. Then a determined stop at Atlantic. Another at Nevins. This morning I was embarrassed to stand because so many seats were empty. I looked at the people sitting around me, even though you weren't supposed to.

I changed trains and this time couldn't find a seat. I stood over a woman in a camel coat opened to show her navy blue suit and pink blouse unbuttoned at the neck. She wore very little makeup, no earrings, and a diamond on a thread-thin necklace rested in the hollow of her throat. When she glanced at her newspaper, her superlong eyelashes seemed to dust her powdered cheekbones. She looked only a few years older than me, sitting with her briefcase at her feet and her legs crossed reading her paper. She wasn't wearing tights either, but her shaved legs stretching up from her high-heeled pumps didn't look cold. I felt shabby next to her, almost ashamed, so I concentrated on reading the advertisements for straight teeth and beautiful skin:
ALL PATIENTS SEEN BY DR. ZIZMOR PERSONALLY
. The train took a bend, and her paper lightly brushed against my coat.

“Oh, I'm sorry,” she said, her gray eyes looking up through those beautiful, long lashes.

I didn't smile back. In fact, I glared. I glared down at all of her, at her coat and her suit and her blouse and her diamond necklace. I felt my nostrils flare, my whole face set with disgust. She looked down quickly, and I felt ashamed again.

The number 6 pulled into Union Square. I thought I'd exited where Mrs. Bruckner had told me, but instead of the towers she assured me I could not miss, I was in a park facing an appliance store. Within the larger park was a fenced-off playground. As cold as it was, the sandbox was already filled with children, most of them minded by black women. They pushed small babies in bucket swings or stood by the monkey bars as bigger children lurched from rung to rung. Some sat barely visible under their muffling scarves and fluffy coats, talking to each other and keeping one eye trained on the children running around. I decided to ask for directions and then stopped. There, through the bare winter trees, was a tower.

Actually there were four towers, and they stood at attention like sentries in a storybook. I laughed. Maybe only someone from the Caribbean still thought about storybook sentries. More like police marking the corners of Nostrand Avenue. Dull brown bricks and tall windows looked down on a semicircular driveway with dead flowers and evergreen bushes planted in the middle. A decorated doorman guarded the door. Another sentry.

“Good morning. I'm here to see the Bruckners, twenty-two B. My name is Grace,” I said in a rushed breath.

The concierge, black, shiny, and uniformed like Idi Amin, looked down at me. Slow and staring, he picked up the phone and jolly as ever said, “There is a Grace here, Mr. Bruckner.” He roiled his words together in a small-island accent I couldn't place.

Pause.

Laugh.

“All right, sir, you just call down when you ready.”

To me in a much sterner voice he said, “Go in there and sit down. Me call you when them ready. Grace you did say?”

I nodded.

“You can't talk now?”

My mother's child almost answered him politely, but I stopped her in time. “What did you say to me?”

He laughed. “This one here talk fancy. Just go have a seat through there and wait.”

The lobby was grand. Giants could have played checkers on the tiled floor, could have rested on the plump velvet chairs and waltzed to the wordless music padding the still air. Chandeliers, beaded like jewelry, twinkled high above, while mirrored walls reflected everything, even the concierge looking back at me. I watched him watching me, and then the walls opened. I started because I hadn't realized I was standing in front of an elevator. A man stepped out leading a lion of a dog. No, not one . . . two. And the man wore shorts! I was cold in my new pants ($5.99, and they were not wool), but he was in shorts. I must have stared, because he smiled at me. I smiled back.

“What kind of dogs are they?” I asked.

“Chows. This is Brutus, and this bad boy is Cesar. Come on, boys, say hi to the lady with the nice eyes.” He pull their lead around. “They're friendly.”

I smiled again and, rubbing the springy fur on Cesar or Brutus, glanced back to see if the concierge was looking.

The dog man looked too. “Morning, Duke.”

“Morning, sir. You taking them for a morning walk, I see?”

“Yeah, I'm gonna go get a paper.”

Duke grinned. “Front desk provide that service, sir.”

“Yeah”—he patted his trim waist—“but we need the exercise.”

To me he said, “See you around,” and left through doors held open by the braided doorman.

A crowd of women waited inside the back room. “Anadder one?” the woman closest to me said. “But 'ow much people so them call for this two-hundred-dollar work?” She was short and fat with a raisin mole under her eye sure to scare small children.

The women talked to each other, their voices bouncing off the walls like the sounds of a village market turned down low. The one at the entrance was Jamaican. The two younger girls in the corner were from home, and the women huddled together at the far end of the room sounded like Sylvia's Haitian super.

One woman I recognized. She wasn't in the nylon tracksuit she wore to get her
Irish Echo
, but I had no doubt who she was. She had dressed for the interview like a bank teller, in a navy suit not unlike that of the woman on the train, and sat reading a newspaper. I stared at her for a long time, but she never lifted her eyes to meet mine.

The woman on my left leaned in and whispered, “Me don't really want this job, you know.” She looked hot, still zippered in her puffy coat, still wearing her hat, scarf, and gloves. “Child, you mustn't come outside so in this New York, you know.” She inclined her head to the woman on our right, who was in a lightweight summer dress, and not wearing tights either. She raised her eyebrows. “People does catch cold and drap dead from pneumonia in this country, quick quick. Me”—she choked her neck with one hand—“I don't ever take off my things until you see I reach inside.”

I didn't mention that she was inside.

“Me don't really want this job,” she repeated. “I like baby-nurse job. To mind the little one and them just born. Them can't give you no lip. These white children talk to you like them is man, and the parents don't tell them no better. Calling you by your first name like them is you company. I does want to wring they lips good.”

I was wondering how long I'd have to wait until my turn when the doltish concierge came to the door. “Mabel?” He looked over his half glasses. “Who Mabel?”

Mole woman followed him. Another woman came to the door and beckoned, “Allay, allay,” and both Haitian women left. Feeling relieved not everyone had come for the interview, I walked to where several dog-eared magazines sat fanned out on a corner table and picked up an old issue of
Mademoiselle
with a torn-off address label. The room fell quiet.

“Them didn't put that for we to touch, you know.” It was the woman who didn't really want the job.

I looked at her. “Is just to read.” The remaining Jamaican laughed, and I put the unopened magazine on my lap. The woman to my left nodded in a satisfied way that reminded me of my mother.

In about seven minutes mole woman was back.

“What”—her friend looked at her watch—“is finish you finish already?”

She looked around, dusted her hands together, and said for all to hear, “She no want no babysitter, sah. Me din leave Jamaica fih be nobody slave in New York.” She snorted, and her mole moved. “She coulda pay two thousan' dollar and me still don't want she work.”

The concierge came to the door. “Grace?”

Surprised, I looked to see who else was named Grace. No one moved. He looked at me. “Grace?” And realizing he meant me, I got up, leaving the magazine on the couch.

“Is there where you find that?” He pointed to the seat.

“Oh.” I turned and quickly moved to put the magazine back on the table. The young girls cackled.

“But they were here first,” I said to him once we were out in the lobby. “You sure is my turn?”

He drew himself up. Shoulder to shoulder I was taller, but the top hat gave him an advantage. “What time your interview?”

“Ten.”

“And what time it is now?”

I looked at my watch. “Just past ten.”

“So what kind of stupid question you ask me?”

Then I got his accent. He sounded like the cabbie who drove me from the airport on my first day in America. Bajan.