Heft (7 page)

“Oooh,” I said, but I still couldn’t follow.

After a moment I asked, “What are you finding upstairs?”

She shrugged, her eyes glued to the television. “Not too bad,” she said. “Lotta dust.”

Yolanda saw the picture of Kel Keller today and asked who he was and for just a moment I was tempted to say he was my son but then I realized the preposterousness of that, how she would know in an instant that nobody who looked like him could have come from anyone who looked like me.

“My nephew,” I said.

“Cute. How old?” she said, and I have to admit that I was proud, absurd as that is.

“Seventeen,” I said, but really I was guessing because his mother did not tell me his age.

“Too young for me,” said Yolanda. “I got two years on him.”

I saw she had finished her glass of milk completely so I asked if she would like another.

“I’ll get it,” she said, & hopped off the couch to go into the kitchen. After that she went back upstairs. & that was the end of our conversation for the day, except that on her way out she came to me with a book she’d found upstairs and asked to borrow it.

I was delighted until I saw what it was: some awful romance novel from the 1960s that was not mine & that I had never seen in my life. & I felt as if Yolanda had found out a sad secret about my mother that I was not prepared to confront.

“You can keep it,” I told her, wanting it out of my sight, & she put it into her little purse.

I did not see Junior Baby Love waiting for her outside this time. & I realized I don’t even know where Yolanda lives, nor anything else about her.

• • •

I
wrote out a transcript. It went, “Charlene, this is Arthur. I
know it’s you, Charlene, and I’m worried. I want to help you. Can I help you?” I waited a week & called Charlene again & there was no answer. Then I waited another week & called Charlene & there was no answer.

• • •

F
or a month Yolanda has been coming regularly & the two of
us have gotten to be friends. One day she came trotting down the stairs with some photograph albums she had found in a particular room (I knew right where they were—in a bookshelf in a guest room on the third floor) & she was smiling, & she told me, “Look what I found!”

From the look on her face I could tell she had been through them already.

All my bones were frozen tight & I could not even speak to tell her I did not want to see them.

She sat down next to me and opened the first one contentedly.

“Is that you?” she asked me, pointing to a baby, & I nodded.

“Is that your mother & father?” she asked me. & again I nodded.

“Wowwwww,” she said, as she turned the pages. “Look at you!”

When I couldn’t bear it anymore I stood up as abruptly as I could and excused myself, & then I went into the bathroom & held myself up by the sink. In the other room I could picture her, little Yolanda, seeing my memories one after another. Laid out on the page.

When I came out again she had returned upstairs, and with her went the albums. She’s very kind you see. She can read me.

I have begun to teach her things & to encourage her as if she were my child. She is a receptive learner, but she also teaches
me
things: she does every time she is here, whether or not she realizes it. She tells me what she is watching and reading. She loves to watch reruns of the late-night comedy program
Mad TV
& she often describes or reenacts sketches from that show with great vigor, laughing at her own recollection of it, ending each retelling with,
It was so funny.
I don’t know what her ambitions in life are, though I have asked her. She dodges these questions with a shrug and a smile. I don’t know if she finished high school but I have to assume she did not. This is a shame because she is very smart, with a knowledge of trivia that is well beyond her years. When we watch
Cash Cab
she shouts out many answers very loudly.

Over the past few weeks I have grown to look forward to her visits. Mainly she does not seem embarrassed by me, which allows me to relax. There is an easiness about her that I hold dear. She is not overly concerned with whether or not she is being polite. She asks and says what she wants & she does what she wants. & thrillingly she judges people who need judging—on television, in the stories she recounts from her life outside my home.

All of this is to say that I have grown quite fond of her & so it was with great sadness that I watched the events of today unfold.

First of all Yolanda called me this morning. This alone was strange, for today is Sunday which is a day she does not work. On the telephone she asked if she could come today instead of tomorrow—for tomorrow she had some things to attend to. “All right with me,” I said, because it did not matter in the least, & in fact mostly I cannot tell the days apart except by her visits.

But when she came in she was upset. She would not look at me, which was also strange because normally she smiles a lot and says
Hey Mr Arthur.
(She came in calling me
Mr Opp,
& tho I encouraged her to use my given name, she seems to have reached a compromise in her own mind by combining the two.)

So this morning she said nothing to me, just opened the door—I gave her a key last week—and walked past where I was sitting in the living room and headed directly into the kitchen. Then she returned to the living room and walked past me again on her way up the stairs, her bucket in hand.

When she was halfway up the stairs I said her name once very softly but I do not think she heard, or else she chose to ignore me.

I was confused because I thought we had been getting along so well this whole time, & I had been looking forward to showing her a couple of things I had found in the newspaper that I thought she might like (one was an article about a comedian she has told me about, & one was an article about fun things to do in the city for people who are not yet 21). I sat on the couch with both neatly clipped articles on the table before me & I wondered what to do.

Yolanda was banging around loudly upstairs. Normally when she’s up there I cannot hear her but for a whisper or an occasional footstep or a song or the creak of my old old house. Today I heard clearly everything that she was picking up and putting down. Once she even slammed a door.

I was wondering if perhaps she was annoyed with me about something, & I racked my brain for what it could be. Perhaps the money I was giving to Home-Maid was not enough & I was supposed to pay her directly or tip her & this was etiquette that I did not know about. I could fix this.

I worked my way up off the couch and walked to the base of the stairs.

“
Yolanda?
” I said again, but she did not respond. To be fair I could not get myself to really shout to her, & I said her name in a fairly normal voice, so she probably didn’t hear me.

Tentatively I put a foot onto the bottom step and then I heaved my other foot onto it, pulling myself up by the banister.

& then I did this again & again. Seven times I did this.

Now I was breathing quite heavily and I felt several trickles of sweat find their way down the back of my neck and under my collar.

“
Yolanda?
” I said again. Nothing. Just her banging away. It sounded as if she were moving furniture.

I looked back over my shoulder & realized that I had gotten myself into a precarious position. However far up I went, I had to get back down. I was halfway up the first flight & suddenly I had a vision of losing my balance and tumbling backward & I started to get very dizzy and nauseated. I wanted to sit down but the steps were too small to accommodate me.

& that is when there came a vigorous knocking at my front door. It was accompanied by the sound of my doorbell buzzing several times in a row.

The banging upstairs stopped. I heard Yolanda emerge from whatever room she was in & walk down the second-floor corridor, & then I saw her face pop over the railing up there.

She seemed unfazed by the sight of me on the stairs.

Look at me
, I wanted to tell her—
I’ve climbed these for you
.

“
Who is it?
” she whispered.

“
I don’t know,
” I whispered back.

“
Can you get it?
” she asked.

It took me a couple of minutes to get to the door & during this time the knocking got more and more vigorous.

I opened an inner door just a very small crack. There was a young man on the other side of the glass outer door, standing with his feet planted squarely on my stoop. I recognized him instantly: it was Junior Baby Love. He was wearing a neat blue bandanna tied around his forehead and on top of that a spotless Yankees cap with a gold sticker on it. He was wearing jeans that fitted him tightly to his skinny ankles and a sort of large aviator’s jacket. He was a handsome boy but looked rough & his tattoos were not well done in my opinion. The one on his neck, I now saw, said a lady’s name, and it was not Yolanda.

His mouth fell open a little bit stupidly.

I opened the door wider to let him have a really good look at me.

“May I help you?” I said finally, and he said he was looking for Yolanda.

I looked back inside and saw that Yolanda was still peering over the second-floor railing. She shook her head no.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “she’s not here right now.”

But then JBL noticed her and said “I SEE YOU! COME OUT HERE! JUST LEMME TALK TO YOU!”

He was pointing at her and he moved as if he might pull open the glass door.

So at this point I positioned myself so that I blocked the entire doorway.

“Apparently Yolanda doesn’t feel inclined to come outside,” I said. “May I take a message?”

But Junior Baby Love would not be swayed. He was still shouting at Yolanda, & he was not saying nice things, so gently I shut the door on him, at which point he resumed his pounding, so hard that I was afraid for the glass.

After I shut the door I turned around and saw that Yolanda was sitting on the topmost step with her knees drawn up & her arms about them & her head lowered. & the poor thing was shaking with sobs.

I walked to the bottom of the stairs & I looked up at her. In this moment I wished more than I ever have to be mobile & to be able to take the stairs fleet as a deer.

Instead I stood at the bottom of them and said to her “O Yolanda! Don’t cry . . .”

It had been a long time since I had seen any woman cry. Most recently it was probably Marty. & before that, Charlene. Before Charlene, my mother, constantly, unstoppably.

“O come down here,” I said uselessly, and she shook her head against her knees.

“Can I get you anything?” I asked. “A glass of milk?”

The pounding stopped and outside we heard JBL start his Vespa and zoom away up Fifth Street.

Finally she hiccupped & lifted her head. “I’ll take milk,” she said.

“Well you have to come down here, then,” I said coaxingly (tho I very much would have liked to bring it up to her, bring her a tray of milk and cookies as someone once did for me).

She didn’t move.

“When I come back you’ll be sitting on that couch,” I said, more as a question than a command.

I went into the kitchen and tried to ask myself what would make a girl like Yolanda feel better. I decided that besides milk she would enjoy Pop’ems. To make them look nicer I put a few on a floral plate & then I put a few into my mouth as well.

What else, I thought.

I made her a PB&J & put it all onto a tray. & then, feeling the tray looked lackluster & perhaps that everything on it was too similar in consistency, I opened my refrigerator and put an apple onto the tray as well.

Then I backed out of the kitchen through the swinging door, carrying the tray as carefully as I could, its contents rattling frighteningly as I lumbered along.

Surprisingly, Yolanda had followed my instructions and was sitting on the sofa in the living room. She looked very tiny. For a moment we were silent & it afforded me the opportunity to observe her openly as I never have. Her back is straight & her hair is neat, parted on the side and pulled back so tightly that on anyone else it would seem severe. But nothing is severe about Yolanda. She looks proper. Her face is square, her lips are full & almost completely lacking a dip in the topmost part of them. She wears little makeup. She has one small mole high on her right cheekbone, which makes her look glamorous and starry eyed, as if it were a jewel she applied for dramatic effect. Her eyelashes are long & full. Her earrings are plain small silver hoops that cling to her tiny ears.

She lifted the glass of milk & drained it completely.

She looked at me plaintively & I did not know what to say to her to comfort her.

“Now,” I said, “now—”

“You don’t have to say anything,” said Yolanda.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Are you quite certain you’re all right?”

This made her cry again, and she shook her head and said “No, no, no.” She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her cardigan & if I had not been so drained I would have certainly gotten her tissues.

I wanted to get up and sit next to her on the couch & put a gentle hand on her back as someone once did when I was young, but she seemed to me like a small frightened animal and I did not want to frighten her further. I stayed where I was.

“Now Yolanda,” I said, “what is the matter.”

“I have his baby,” she said.

“I’m sorry? I don’t understand,” I said, and Yolanda made a
tsk
noise and threw her hands into the air.

“
His baby
,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

“
Junior’s?
” I asked, incredulously.

“How do you know his name?” she said.

To dodge this I asked her how far along she was.

“Almost five months,” she said.

I do not know much about pregnancies but I would have thought the girl would be larger. It is true that her stiff oversized uniform hides her, for the most part, and her cardigans do as well, but even when I looked at her belly I could barely see anything at all.