His Own Where (7 page)

Buddy make his speech, the nuns come flying at him. Gray robes, black and shapeless clouds of cloth material.

Buddy dodge among the nuns, and cry out,

“Peace, peace, sister. Find yourself a priest.”

Everything be all confuse, the sisters grabbing at each other, wide sleeves flapping furious, headpiece falling off.

The girls thrash to the doorway. Sisters like obstacles to impede and block their passage. The girls in sweaters, sisters in robes. Buddy yelling, “Peace, find yourself a priest.”

Buddy grab Angela and tackle through three sisters, their weight bewildering their movements. Buddy say, “Sing, Angela, you be singing. This is liberation!” Angela not say nothing, stay close behind Buddy. Reach the doorsill. Start they running out to the car. Get inside, discover other girls be hiding in the car. Waiting for the lift, waiting for liberation.

Buddy start the car, the car take off, they on they way. And speeding.

Tears continue from her eyes and Buddy standing still in front of Angela. Hands at his side.

Angela say, “Buddy, next weekend they let me go home. Visit my family for the weekend. Buddy. You want me to come to you then?”

Buddy answer her yes. His head feel hot. His eyes feel hot. His body cold. They plan together what will happen. When she leave her parents Sunday for the trip back up to Middlebrook. Then instead she will come to the house of Buddy and his father. Then they will then they will then they will do what they have to do. For liberation.

buddy believing that alive mean go.
He do it. He go there. Do this. Do that. Not so much the speed, but the pattern. Do it. Go there. Make a pattern. Break a pattern. Back and forward, round and round. Curve and drift. Stop to start. Start to stop. Blur and solid:

Buddy trying to prepare for love inside the house of his father. He nail together and he sand things smooth. Clean and clear. Write down write up long list of things he wish that he could spread around for Angela to see. Then he sit down quiet thinking songs and thinking of his father. Think-how they Angela and Buddy have to find a way to stay together.

Angela come back to Brooklyn with a paper bag. When she reach the building where her family live she feel a freezing terror. But she go inside. Her brothers and her sister have been sent away and so the house seem hopeless ugly.

Angela sit down in the parlor on the couch. She waiting for her mother or her father when he will get off from working.

She check the refrigerator. Find no food. No stuff for snacking. One piece of meat be frozen rocky. Bread seem rocky. Milk smell sour. Only thing available is beer. A couple six-packs and a saucer holding gray beans leftover.

On the stove, a big pot bubbling steady full of peas and hambone.

“Angela! What you doing here?”

Her mother shut the front door and immediately call out.

“Hello, Ma.” Angela leave the kitchen and walk into the parlor where her mother have snap on one of the big lamps no one hardly use.

“They kick you out, or what?”

“I’m just visiting for the weekend.”

“Visiting! Hah. Freeloading be closer to the truth. They give you money? or do you expect that we will feed you for free?”

Angela want to sit down and be deaf. Be dumb. Be blind. She have no heart to argue with her mother. She miss her brothers and sister. Now she realize she have no home. Her family be
parents beat you in the head or hate you. She mean the father mother family. Her sister and her brothers make another family where she love and care. Angela trying to think how she can come around the hatred of her mother. How she can have a home that be a happy place be better than the upstate “home” for girls.

“Well, Miss Angela, you have in mind to sit on your behind and watch me slave a little bit?”

“Oh, Ma. Look, if you want me to do something tell me straight.”

“Now you criticize the way I talk?”

“I only mean why we have to fight? Tell me what you want me to be doing. Period. I’ll do it.”

“If you so smart about the way I should be talking you don’t need me to tell you nothing at all. For all I care you can go on and sit there, or stand upside down. I’m going out.”

“Ma, you want me to go back upstate?”

“You got yourself into that mess.”

“Ma, Daddy put me in the hospital. He beat me.”

“I don’t care what you do but do it out my sight. Don’t let me hear you say no words about your father.”

“Ma, I be going back upstate tonight. Right now.”

“Well, what you waiting for? You see anybody stop you?”

Angela look at her mother long. She look
around the room. Small room. Big empty dust feeling to the furniture. Dust.

Angela pick up the paper bag. Finally she take the housekey from her pocket. Put it on the television. “Okay, Ma, I’m going now,” she say. And Angela go. She leave for good.

angela hope buddy be home.
They have plan for Sunday. But the day is now. Friday.

She walk the avenue toward the subway and his house. Somebody come up from behind and hug around her close and large.

“Hey, where you going Angela?”

“See you.” She turn around and into Buddy arms. Repeat. “See you.”

They quick discuss the scene. They figure that tonight be safe enough. The nuns think Angela be visiting her parents and her parents think that Angela be traveling back to Middlebrook. Things seem temporary cool. Both Buddy and Angela feel excited trembling almost almost ready for the liberation they have scheme together.

“You have any money?”

Buddy nod his head.

“Maybe we should pick some food up.”

“Okay. Let’s go buy some bananas, some potato chips, some ice cream, and some soda. What you want?”

“I like a hamburger, some tissues and some soap.”

“You need any of them—ah, what you may call female things?”

“If I do, I get them on my own time, Mr. Rivers!”

“Don’t say I didn’t ask you!”

“Angela, what you think about this store?”

Got burglar gates and great big locks. You can’t hardly go inside the place. Place be halfway burn. Ashes on the floor.

“Look like a jail where food be taken out on bail.”

Angela answer nothing.

Inside the store, they nudge each other when they see a roach slip by. Buy what they want. Buddy crumple up his dollar bills before he turn them over to the man.

“Don’t be right to give them something green and pretty.”

They run back to Buddy block.

“Come on, come on, let’s get inside! We got one night.”

 

Angela start laughing when she see the steps. Black and yellow just like Buddy wrote. They take them two at a time, two at a time.

First thing Angela notice when she step in the door, she smell sawdust, airplane glue and paint. Angela just standing by the door, make her eyes roam around the house.

Her eyes be roaming around the house.

The house very surprising. From the street it look like a three-floor brownstone. The outside stone steps take you to the front door, and that front door take you inside. And then, the big surprising part of the house begin because you see no hallway. No hallway. There be indoor stairs lead to a third floor. The indoor stairs be part of the living room on the second floor where you be standing inside the house.

The third floor be like a balcony, tore back from the downstairs living room and overlook that living room.

Most of the living room reach from the second floor, where you standing, to the roof. And, in a funny place, not really in the center of the ceiling of the roof, there be a stain-glass skylight, blue and red and purple and plain light, high up in the ceiling/roof of the living room.

So the house seem huge inside it. Huge and high. With the stairways zigzag on the side. Some of the steps unstained, unpainted. Maybe two piece of furniture in the living room. A easy chair. A portable TV.

Plants of lumber lean against the walls, and one window almost floor to ceiling, with a brandnew sticker on the corner of it. The other window be broken brick by brick. And temporary cardboard block the air until the wall will hold a longer pane of glass.

The wall be plaster rough. Some paper stripping curl toward the floor, and other parts be painted blue already.

Angela feel like she walking in a magazine before the final photograph be taken of the house. Before everything be finish.

No hallway. Angela stare hard to see a house where people live without a hallway. That mean every part of the house is real. It belong to somebody, and be part of how you live, not how you get to where you live, and be.

Buddy calling “Come on, Sister Angela.” Buddy pound down the stairs, drop the package, and pound back up. “See how much weight you gain.”

Buddy lift her to his shoulder, tell her, “Hold on.”

Buddy walking tiptoe tremble, make believe the weight will kill him. Start to groaning. Groan all the way down the stairs, out to the garden, where he stand her up.

 

“Let me watch you walking on the concrete. How you like it?”

Angela see flowers not yet blooming any color. See the narrow pretty strip of path. A strong rose concrete way among the growing flowers. See the mud, the warm right earth, a natural brown.

“Walk with me, Buddy.”

“Not enough room, Angela.”

“How can you make something so narrow, there be no room for two of us?”

“I guess I didn’t think you come here, really.”

“Dance with me, Buddy, then we can fit it.”

Buddy move to Angela move to Buddy, like one person, moving on the concrete running red through the brown earth.

“They be some hard buttons on your coat.”

“Well, I’m allergic to the wool you wearing. How you like it?”

“Here is really nice. I really like it.”

“You want a soda?”

“I like a soda, but I like to wash my hands and wash my face, and then I like to come back out here.”

“It be dark soon, Angela, we can come back out here, maybe later.”

Buddy think about tomorrow. But don’t even want to say tomorrow.

“Buddy, where the bathroom? I never see a house like this.”

 

Buddy bend down to the floor, hold a knob there. When he come up, part of the wall come up with him. “There you go.”

“Why you have a door like that?”

“Be good exercise, bend down, pull up, bend down, open it up. You get use to it. Everything in this house be like this.”

She go in the bathroom. Whole room like the
doorway to it. Seem like wood venetian blinds. Dark wood strips look like they comb down smooth, or almost smooth together, like venetian blinds. The soap, the shower curtain, bathtub mat, the towel and the washcloth, the toothbrush and the box of baby powder, everything except the mirror and the walls, be crazy orange. Angela uneasy. Real quick wash her hands and face with orange soap, and dry her hands and face on orange towels, smelling clean and good.

“Buddy, something happen to me! You better come on in, and see!”

Buddy calling, “what you doin?”

“My face turn orange in the bathroom. That be some really sneaky soap.”

Buddy lift up the door, go inside look at Angela. Her face seem orange in the mirror. She look at him.

“You have the same disease.”

Buddy step behind her, bring his face down to her face. They see each other in the mirror, orange.

“You better let me see how bad it is. It may be spreading.”

“You always try to be so smart.”

Buddy say, “Square business. It look serious to me. Better check it out.”