The Corner (34 page)

DeAndre hikes his too-large denims back up over his rump and squares off against his father at the key. Gary lowers one shoulder, guarding the ball with his body, then dribbles awkwardly toward the baseline, struggling in a pair of worn dress shoes, unable to negotiate the ball against DeAndre’s manic defense. In obvious desperation, he lets go with an off-balance hook that goes harmlessly off the back of the rim.

“Can’t bring no old-school shot to me,” says DeAndre proudly. “Ball up.”

R.C. tosses the ball to DeAndre, who can’t wait to give his father a lesson. But Gary is gazing across the blacktop and the vacant lot to Mount Street. Not Tony this time, but the Gaunt One, has his attention. Ronnie is waving her arm, giving him the come-right-now. DeAndre melts into the scenery.

“I’ll be back ’round,” says Gary, pulling up his hood.

He catches up to Ronnie in front of the carryout.

“Charlene been put out,” she tells him. “Her shit is just sittin’ on the street.”

“Huh,” says Gary.

“Best money is the sofa,” says Ronnie. “Cushions don’t match, but the wood is like new. Still, you got to get it down Baltimore Street.”

No problem with that. Gary looks around for Tony, but his partner is long gone, bounding off on another adventure. He walks up Fayette toward Monroe, where he finds Scalio lounging on the sofa in question, sitting out there like Fayette Street is the den of his summer cottage, a lit Newport burning down between his fingers. The sofa is halfway into the street.

Scalio sees Ronnie coming and lifts the cigarette to his lips. He leans his head back to expel the smoke upward as traffic in the slow lane struggles to move around him.

“I gave him two smokes to guard the couch for me,” Ronnie explains.

Scalio crosses his legs at the ankles and stretches his arms upward. “Only in the ghetto,” he says dryly. “Only in America, in the ghetto, can life be so fine.”

A Federal Express truck blares its horn directly behind him, but the old fiend remains theatrically indifferent. Gary has to smile at the performance.

“See here,” says Scalio, waxing philosophical. “This … this is why they hate us …”

Gary laughs and Ronnie smirks. Scalio takes one last, luxurious drag off the Newport as the cars back up behind him. Gary can see the tortured faces of the motorists as they squeeze past the unlikely obstacle. White faces, black faces—all of them with that working-folk impatience, all of them wanting to ram their cars into this absurd tableau and none of them with heart enough to do it.

“Goddam niggers lazin’ ’round in the street,” says Scalio, getting up slowly. “Yes, Lawd, this is why they hate us.”

The sofa brings twenty-five down on Baltimore Street. Gary and Ronnie adjourn to Pops’ shooting gallery on Fulton, a third-floor walk-up where the ancient, rasping pincushion that is Pops welcomes all visitors for twenty on the hype. Gary is generally unwilling to use Annie’s, it being next to his parents’ house.

“You feelin’ it?” Gary asks after they leave.

“Hmmm,” says Ronnie, nodding.

“Mine’s doo-doo,” he tells her.

Maybe the Spider Bag package is weak today, or maybe Ronnie watered him. He tried to pay close attention when she was cooking; he didn’t see her make any kind of switch. But Pops kept making conversation, and Ronnie is so damn quick.

“Man,” says Gary, frustrated. “I don’t feel too much.”

He leaves Ronnie and heads back up the hill, hoping for a loan from his mother, something to get him out of the gate until he can hook back up with Tony. He finds her in the basement at St. James, working in the kitchen with the other ladies, mixing up potato salad for some church outing.

“Ma …”

But she’s shaking her head before he can get the words out. Maybe when Cardy gets paid down at the crabhouse, she tells him. She might be able to spare something then.

Gary nods and from somewhere deep down, the snake gives a quiet little hiss. He’s drifting out of the kitchen, into the adjacent meeting room and toward the side door of the church, nodding politely to one of the elderly church deacons, who at that moment is talking to some other folks and pulling papers out of his back pants pocket. Gary watches as two bills—a five and a one—come up after the papers and float silently to the linoleum floor. The deacon is oblivious.

Gary doesn’t hesitate.

“Ho,” he says, reaching down, “you dropped your money.”

“Oh … I … goodness,” says the old man. “I … thanks, son, thank you for it.”

Gary goes out the church door onto Monroe Street, wondering where Tony might be hiding himself.

The choir is fine and full on this April afternoon, the layered voices soaring up from the altar and rattling through the old stone sanctuary on Baltimore Street. One soloist, then another, takes a turn at the hymns, their voices breaking to perfection on the blue notes, those flatted thirds and sevenths that eluded the colder construct of the European mind. It’s the choir director herself who takes the microphone and struggles to the spiraled peak of the last crescendo, her voice trembling, her body racked by the drama of it all. She breaks completely after three wild choruses, her eyes fixed and glazed, her hand gripping the corner of the piano as she is helped slowly to a seat by the nearest singers. Her immediate reward is a church full of rapture, a fevered jumble of foot-stomping,
hand-clapping, arm-waving humanity. The choir director’s collapse is every bit an act of timed stagecraft that succeeds in bringing the congregation to full boil. The other singers, sensate to the moment, wail harder at the chorus, carrying it through.

“…
something about King Jesus
…”

Ella Thompson jumps to her feet.

“…
makes me feel
…”

Arms above her head.

“…
so
…
so good
…”

From the twelfth pew back, Ella smiles broadly, applauding, her own voice sharing the last chorus with the whole of the congregation. This is her church, her choir, her spring concert, with every last grace note played to perfection.

She leaves the church with some reluctance, chatting with fellow parishioners on the steps and edging slowly into the sunlight on Baltimore Street. There were only a smattering of men in the pews for today’s concert; women, most of them older than Ella, constituted the greater share of those gathered for the good news. And, Ella knew, much of the flock was now driving into the city from suburban enclaves, from Woodlawn and Woodmoor and Catonsville, where the black middleclass had established itself. Loyalty still lured them downtown to the city churches, but for how much longer was anyone’s guess. There were some strong black congregations out in the county now, and even the leaders of black Baltimore’s bedrock institutions had to worry that Sunday morning commuters comprised more and more of the faithful.

Still, the church as an ideal had endured for Ella. She counted it as one of the certainties in her world, a place of sanctuary in which she could risk a little physical and emotional release. More and more, her life was lived in transit between her church, her apartment, her rec center—these were Ella Thompson’s safehouses, outposts where the spirit could be restored and core values affirmed. In the space between these places, there was precious little to inspire a woman’s hope. She didn’t walk the four blocks to her church, she drove the Oldsmobile; not so much out of any physical fear, but because driving would at least spare her the sadness of Monroe and Fayette.

So now, leaving the church concert, she walks down the hill to find her Cutlass where she left it on Smallwood Street, hard against the curb, where a tout from one of the Hollins Street crews raises his brow and
extends the usual invitation. She’s a few blocks away from Fayette Street; the crews on this side of Monroe haven’t yet marked her as an unlikely sale. Ella ignores him, averting her eyes.

The tout holds his ground, waiting, as Ella fumbles with her car keys at the door of the Olds.

“Wassup?”

She gives a small shake of her head. She’s wearing church clothes, for God’s sake, but the tout is blank-faced and patient. She closes the door, turns over the engine, signals, and edges away, turning east on Baltimore and rolling back onto streets where she is known.

Moment by moment, the city is becoming a machine of small insults and petty failures that can wear down even the strongest soul. Here and now, it’s the Smallwood Street tout stealing a little of her church-bought strength. The following day, it’s the sight of R.C. and Manny Man, pummeling some younger boy on Fulton Avenue. Ella’s in her car again, coming back from the market on Pratt Street, driving up Fulton at just the right moment to catch a glimpse of Manny grabbing the smaller kid from behind, clamping down on his arms, holding him tight for R.C.’ s assault.

“R.C!” Ella shouts, rolling down the passenger window.

“Yes’m,” says R.C., looking up after landing a gut punch.

“R.C., you let him be!”

R.C. smiles broadly and raises both arms in a gesture of surrender. He walks toward Ella’s car and Manny Man follows behind. Free and clear, the younger kid begins scuttling sideways down the sidewalk, slowly at first, then into a full, loping gait.

“R.C., why are you hittin’ that boy?”

“He my cousin,” he assures her, leaning into the passenger door window.

“But why …”

“We just playing, Miss Ella.”

Ella frowns, thinking to herself that the cousin in question is not hanging around for more fun. For his part, R.C. is on to new business and so, after a moment or two more, is Ella.

Parking on Mount Street, she once again does battle with the rec center’s security grate, unlocks the doors, hits the lights, and walks directly to her office in the rear. She unfastens a third padlock on the door, slips inside, pushes aside a stack of boxes, and turns yet another key to deactivate the night alarm. She drops her purse on the desk, pulls off her jacket, and
then, with the silence of the empty center weighing on her, she turns on the television.

It’s a soap opera. No matter which one.

She listens only for the comfort of the noise, for the sound of other human voices filling the void. With the television on, Ella can work. She begins with the chore of emptying two tall columns of stacked food cartons, restocking the office cupboards. Lorna Doones on the middle shelf, along with the miniature cinnamon rolls; salted pretzels on the bottom, with the copying paper, and the small bags of barbecue potato chips wherever there’s room. Ella pulls all of it from the cartons, crowding the shelves with a fresh bounty of small bribes, tossing the emptied boxes out into the hallway. Children who manage a full day without doing damage to the rec center, each other, or themselves are rewarded for their restraint. They hover around the front desk, arms outstretched, the thank-you-Miss-Ellas echoing in waves as they grab their prizes and race away.

Having shelved the groceries, she turns her attention to the paper pile on her desk. There is a written reminder that she’ll need to collect birth certificates for the basketball players if her team is to compete in a summer league. Then there are plans for a Boy Scout troop, as well as an aerobics class in the evenings to bring some of the neighborhood women down to the center. And she needs to talk with the Franklin Square board members about that rehab project underway on Lexington Street. Is there a chance—any chance at all—that some of her older kids can get summer jobs with the project?

In Ella Thompson’s mind it’s all connected. Not just the plans and potential of the rec center, but everything in the neighborhood. She is an inveterate joiner whose name never fails to appear on the legal-pad sign-up sheets passed around at every Tuesday night gathering. It begins with the Franklin Square board meetings, of course; the community association pays her $16,000 salary and governs her center. But it continues with church-group meetings, Jobs for Peace planning sessions, the neighborhood SHARE network, the Bon Secours home hospice program, and the Western police district’s citizen’s police academy. Ella doesn’t speak a political language, nor does she measure her involvement by tactics and strategy. The inner politics of the organizations, the group dynamics and interpersonal agendas—all of that means little to her. She goes to the board meetings, listens carefully and agrees with anything said on the community’s behalf. And if anyone asks for her
help, she grants it without regard to the fact that she has already volunteered for a half-dozen other neighborhood initiatives. There is no priority or method to her across-the-board commitment, just the idea that there is a critical mass, that if she joins and serves and works hard enough, Fayette Street will surely get better.

In the face of all evidence, she is still compelled to commit herself to the idea of a community that no longer exists, that hasn’t existed since she was a little girl. Ella isn’t foolish; she knows the corner well enough. But to calculate the odds as they ought to be calculated is to entertain a judgment that cannot be tolerated.

Pooh made it so.

Five years ago, when the homicide detectives stood at her door with their softest look, Ella had, in one sense, been ready for the news. She’d seen the television. She knew what all those police cars and television cameras were doing in the alley behind Baltimore Street. The whole neighborhood knew.

But in the larger sense, she wasn’t at all ready, just as no mother is ever ready to let go of a child. Fatty Pooh was thirteen; Ella had worried for her no less than anyone would worry about a daughter at the near edge of adolescence, and by November 1988, life on Fayette Street had already become a struggle. Mount Street was quiet back then, but Fulton and Lexington was an open-air market. So was Monroe Street. But to Ella, the drug trafficking and the corners and the mayhem had seemed a solvable problem, something for the community, police, and city officials to grapple with. Nothing in the streets seemed so sinister that it could reach out beyond those willingly on the corners; nothing out there seemed lethal enough to reach into Ella’s home and claim one of her own.

She was wrong. Four days after the police came to her door, she buried Pooh. Weeks later she went to the arraignment, and months later, the court trial. And months after that, she went back for the sentencing hearing. Then, with nothing left to be said or done, Ella gave herself over to grief, until she found that she could not be alone in a quiet room. A friend, a radio, a television—anything. The memory of her daughter Andrea makes silence lethal; it demands that a soap opera be heard, if not seen, or that a radio stay cranked to a dance station. It is Fatty Pooh, thirteen forever, who requires Ella’s almost manic involvement in new groups and causes, just as it was Pooh who brought Ella to this tiny building three years ago. Sitting now at her desk and looking around at
the wonderful, comforting clutter of the office, Ella can see the image and ideal of her daughter in every last bit of it, in everything that she had managed to gather or acquire or accomplish here. To her, this safehouse matters more than all the others.