Everyday People (32 page)

The next one, he thinks. He's still got to figure this one out.

The song finishes and everyone sits down and folds their hands. They're ready to hear some speeches, some bigtime testifying. They've heard one sermon today, most of them, so whoever gets up there had better flow like Brother Ike, blow heavy or sit their tired ass down. Except the mayor, of course, he doesn't count, being a white boy.

Crest doesn't even listen to them, doesn't have to to know what they're saying. Their voices echo off the concrete. It's what they're
not
saying, who they're
not
talking about that he's thinking of. He's already putting together
that second piece, peeking around the crowd at the little kids bouncing on their chairs, making paper airplanes of their programs, the mothers and fathers who came straight from church, who've got to wake up early for work tomorrow. Looks around, doesn't see anyone famous here, no Julian Bonds or Shirley Chisholms, no Paul Robesons, just folks, everyday people.

But that's next. First the dead, then the living. Got to know what you lost to know what you got.

They sing another song, and then Senator Armstrong's the last one up. He takes the longest, and he's weak, reading his speech off a bunch of index cards, zero flow, standing stiff between the flags. The other ones have said everything already, and no one murmurs and nods when he tells anything close to the truth, no church ladies call out, “A-men!” or “Yes, Jesus!” or “Praise God!”

It needs the firehouse, Crest thinks. The old city swimming pool they called the Inkwell.

Sister Payne's little dog.

His own legs.

Someone's balloon flies off to the sky, but he doesn't hear anyone crying. In a minute it's just a dot, then gone.

It's all about Bean—still. Always will be.

“And so it is with great pride,” Senator Armstrong says, “that I ask you to join me in dedicating the Martin Robinson Memorial Express Busway.”

He lifts his arm as the curtain behind him pulls up on wires, and the choir breaks into “O Happy Day.”

Everyone rises except Crest. Everyone cheers. For a second he can't see, only Vanessa beside him with Rashaan,
her mother, Pops, U still with Nene's Granmoms. And then he can.

The wall beneath the curtain isn't his piece, a song for everyone they've lost, so true and brilliant that people weep, but bare concrete gray as tablet paper, a shit-ass little brass plaque about halfway up. Pretty much what he expected. He's not disappointed, Crest says to himself. No, it's only now, with the blank wall in front of him, with the crowd around him, that he sees how it's all going to fit.

THE BUSWAY'S DOING
East Liberty just the way everyone said it would, keeping people out, keeping business from coming in. Oh, we've got the Home Depot but none of the real money from it. Put an apron on you so you can make change, lift the heavy shit, sweep up before going home. And you know Nabisco's closed down now. Still no new community center, no plans for it either. Congressman Armstrong's turning conservative on you. Lives in Harrisburg, worries about the financial crisis in Thailand. Traffic's nice and light though.

The young people go the way they've been going, most of them. The old people keep off the streets, think they're all gone crazy on drugs. Get a shooting or two every month, fires in the winter, slow emergency-response times. Go to all the open meetings and protest, but the city says it doesn't have enough money to tear down the empty buildings.

They didn't have money for Chris's masterpiece either, but they spend enough trying to make it go away. Sandblasting, steamcleaning. They're down there all the time, and then
the next week it's back up, courtesy of the MDP. Even tried this special Teflon concrete from L.A. The thing grows. People call it The Wall. It's turned into a kind of tourist attraction. Last week there was a TV crew from Germany shooting it. People are hoping all the attention will keep the city from painting it over. Whitewash is the only thing that works. It's turned into a big censorship thing, letters in the
Post-Gazette.

But that's the whole thing: It's the city against East Liberty, against the people. It's old-style redlining, divide and conquer, nothing new. They'd like you to just shut up, go away, and The Wall says that's not gonna happen. It's a flag waving in their face. You like seeing it, like we're getting over somehow.

Sometimes The Wall glows in the dark. When it rains the colors shine brighter. People say you can see Martin Robinson crying, and at night they say Malcolm bleeds. Folks go down and touch it, leave things, notes and such, pictures of loved ones. It's not enough but it's something. You're never going to get a square deal, not in this city.

The buses come through every morning, full of people with good jobs, homes in the suburbs, country clubs, health insurance—some of them brothers and sisters afraid to look back, thinking how they'll get dragged down. From the busway they can't see the streets, only the walls rising on both sides, just the tip of a steeple. They're blind all the way in, like a lab rat stuck in a maze, glass skyscrapers downtown their big piece of cheese. When they hit East Liberty and see The Wall, you think they even notice?

Maybe, but what do they see? To them it's a curiosity, a little bit of homespun culture. Seen it written up in
the paper. Or maybe it's a landmark, a number on a clock, a way to count how much longer to downtown. Better drink up that cup.

But more likely, that time of day they don't see anything, too busy following the stock market. They're thinking about what's on TV, what kind of car they want, how they didn't get enough sleep last night. Pushing sixty, the bus blasts past a blur of color, a jumble of faces they don't know, the letters illegible, different, hieroglyphic, the whole thing in code. And even if they could make out the names and faces, they'd be missing the history behind them, the meaning each of them carries, the price they paid.

None of them waits for it every day, not one out of a thousand turns sideways in their seat to pick out the few celebrities among the dead: Alex Haley—and there, lookit, it's Charlie Parker. None of them can read the names of the other ones, not as famous, in fact almost totally unknown, yet still remembered, honored like the rest. They don't know East Liberty, so the best they could come up with, even if they cared, would be ill-informed stories, pat tragedies in blackface. Maybe some of them—riding in, going home in the rain—see the flash of color flying by outside the window and marvel at the artwork, wonder what's being celebrated here. Maybe for a split second they see what you see, the dreams of a people that will not be denied, the sacrifices made in the name of progress, but that's just easy public-TV jive. No one wants to go beyond their own feel-good bullshit. No one wants to know what it really means. No one sees the three new faces one day and asks: Who is Fats? Who is Smooth? Who is Eugene?