JEWEL (36 page)

And there’d been the beach as often as possible for Burton and Wilman, and a section of Venice Beach up almost to Ocean Park everybody called Muscle Beach, where one Saturday Brenda Kay and Leston and I’d gone down to see exactly what all the fuss was, why Burton and Wilman insisted on spending every free minute they had there.

We parked right smack at the end of Venice Boulevard, lucky enough, I figured, to get a spot in one of the slots in front of the row of shops there, the sand starting only a block of storefronts down. The sidewalk was jammed with young people and older folks and all in between, all of them hurrying to whatever it was one did at a beach.

We walked past a Woolworth’s, next a little shop that sold only bathing suits, mannequins in the window wearing next to nothing, two-piece suits that showed your midriff out there for anybody to take a look at, and I wondered how soon it’d be before Annie was asking for one of those. Next to that was a fish and tackle shop, and a lawyer’s office and then a store that sold liquor right off the shelves, right here at the beach. California, I thought, California and California and California. Two-piece swimsuits and liquor and lawyers.

Then the shops ended, and we came to a strip of concrete like a narrow road that ran parallel to the ocean, still what looked a good quarter mile away across the sand. A short brick wall stood across the strip, separating the sand and the street, these houses behind us, the shops and cars and all of Venice and Los Angeles and the rest of the world.

This was where land stopped, where the beach started.

I looked to the left, wondered when we might find this Muscle Beach Wilman’d given us the loosest directions to, “Just on down to the end of Venice, Momma, ” he’d said that morning, pushing the front screen door open with one hand, his towel in the other. Burton honked his horn again, him out there in the ten-or twelve-year-old green pickup he’d bought for fifty dollars from somebody at the shop. “You’ll see us, ” he’d said, and left. He hadn’t even had any breakfast.

I looked down the beach to the right, squinted, saw what looked like steel pipes set up like a swing set way down there, people all standing around, all of them Wilman’s age, it looked like, girls with those two-piece suits on, boys in black swimming trunks. Beyond them I could see a pier out into the ocean, on it a roller coaster and buildings and flags and the like, Ocean Park, the place Wilman and Burton went, I’d heard enough times from Annie, every time they left at night.

“Down there, ” I’d said, and swallowed, closed my eyes a moment at the idea of walking through all these people with Brenda Kay in tow. It wasn’t shame, I knew, that made me feel this way, it was the looks we all got, the looks we’d gotten all our lives, and how people didn’t even know how to look at us. I held Brenda Kay’s hand tighter in mine, started off on that thin road, Leston right beside us.

Of course we got the looks from everyone, everything from the shocked, mouth-drop-open look at Brenda Kay most of the kids gave as we moved along, to the look that was no look, eyes darting away from Brenda Kay.

And, too, there were the smilers, people who purposefully met our eyes and smiled a smile full of pity, eyebrows knotted in the smallest way, lips never parting. All looks we’d lived with every time we ever left the house, and it occurred to me for the first time since we’d been in California that, in fact, these people weren’t so different, weren’t so strange and new. We’d gotten the same looks in Purvis. Always.

We came to the knots of people I’d seen, only to find there. were two or three wooden platforms set up on this side of the steel bar structure, platforms covered with canvas, dumbbells and bars and round heavy weights laid out on them. Boys and men I hadn’t been able to see from back where we’d started from were standing in the sun and lifting the bars, holding them up above their heads. Girls all ages and some boys, too, stood round and watched, sometimes clapping when the bar had a bigger number of round weights on them. They were all tan and grimacing, tough boys, I thought, waiting for the girls to see them.

On another platform a few feet up the beach was a man and woman. They were holding hands, and then the man picked up the girl, and the girl arched her body up there in the air while the man lifted her above his head, him grimacing and tan, too, the girl with a smile that looked painted on, pretend. She had on one of those two-piece bathing suits, her midriff all tan, tan as her legs and arms and face. He held her up in the air a few seconds, and then he gave her a toss straight up, and she twisted, turned, and fell back into his waiting arms, her own arm out into the air all poised and graceful, her still with that smile.

Then he lifted her again, and this time she put her hands on his shoulders, and pushed herself off his stomach, swung herself up somehow until she was doing a handstand on his shoulders, and the grimacing tan man put his hands on his hips, stared out into the crowd. Every one clapped at this, too.

California, I thought.

The bars I’d seen were at the far end of all this goings on, and we stopped ourselves at the edge of the sand, the pipes about twenty yards out.

There, each swinging from two metal rings they held tight in their hands, rings that hung on chains attached to the steel crossbar, swinging like monkeys there up above us all, only a handful of boys and girls standing and watching them, were Wilman and Burton, my sons’ muscles taut across their chests and stomachs, their skin already a deep and shining tan, so that at first I didn’t recognize them as we came up, and I thought for a moment these were just two strangers putting on a show like everybody else. They just weren’t drawing the crowds.

Burton pulled himself up until his hands in those rings were at his hips, and he held himself there, Wilman next to him, just hanging.

They both had on black swim trunks, their chests just sprinkled with the beginnings of dark hair. Burton’s face jittered with the strain of holding himself above the sand, his eyes closed. Wilman was smiling, arms above him as he hung there, in his face some strain, but nothing like in his brother’s.

Someone in the crowd hollered out, “You do it, Bill! Don’t be a weenie!

” and everybody laughed, started up chanting Wee-nee, wee-nee! , , Wilman smiled even more, started laughing himself, and it was only then I figured it out, this was his new name, just as Burton’d been cut down to Burt. Bill, I thought. Bill.

I turned to Leston, Brenda Kay between the two of us, her just watching, taking in all that lay before us, the sand, beyond it the green smudge of sea, her brothers here and hanging on the rings.

But it was Leston I wanted to see, his reaction I wanted.

I’d thought he’d turn, want us to leave at this newest attack on him and who he was, yet another of his children rechristened in the land of plenty.

He was only watching them, in his eyes almost the same blank look as Brenda Kay. Then he glanced at me, and smiled.

“Them boys, ” he said, and shook his head. He had a cigarette at his lips, took it out, let go the smoke, the wind out here making it disappear as soon as he gave it up. “Burt and Bill, ” he said, and he nodded at them. “Already charming the girls.”

I only looked at him, the surprise of his words like cool water, or like the warm breeze that blew in off the ocean at us right then, right there, a breeze sharp with the salt of it, strange and wonderful.

Welcome.

I turned, saw Wilman Bill was pulling himself up, the cries of Wee-nee, wee-nee! rising round him, the words, it seemed, lifting him up, making him move. Then his hands, too, were even with his hips, his face as shaking as Burton’s had. He was up, and most everybody their friends, I saw, their friends gave out a big groan. Some girls clapped and hollered out for him, and Wilman just smiled and smiled, at the same time his face filled with the hurt of holding himself there.

Burton “Burt, ” I whispered to myself still held his hands tight on those rings, pressing down to hold himself up.

“Let’s go, ” Leston said, and I felt his hand at my elbow, turned and saw him with Brenda Kay holding his other hand, the two of them already headed for where we’d parked.

He smiled, the cigarette at his lips burned down near to nothing. He said, “They don’t need us here, ” and he winked. “Burt and Bill, ” he said. He took hold my hand, and we started back.

Now, today, the day I was to finally call to order our lives with simply showing up to a place on Adams off Western, here came my husband, the front door to our home in California closed behind him, his furniture store uniform on, somebody else’s name on his chest, and I was filled with dread and fear and joy at once. This was the day.

He came to the car, opened his door, and I said, “Morning, Frank, ” to which he’d only stared at me a moment. I reached over, touched a finger to the name on his shirt pocket, said, “Don’t you know anything?

In California, Burton turns to Burt, Wilman to Bill, Leston to Frank.”

I smiled again, and hoped he hadn’t seen how my finger’d shaken as I’d pointed.

“Fank? ” Brenda Kay shouted in the back seat, and leaned forward both hands on top of the seat between us.

“You’re nervous, ” he said to me. He smiled, started the engine, put a hand on the top of the seat, backed us out. He said to Brenda Kay “Miss Jewel Hilburn’s moved us all the way out here to Los Angeles to meet with them folks at the Association of Retarded People, and now she’s afraid of why she did it.”

“You are just too perceptive, ” I said, and felt my hands holding too tight to my purse once again. “Just too, Mr. Leston Hilburn.” I paused.

“And it’s the National Association for Retarded Children.” I still hadn’t told him of the Umbrella Group, hadn’t told him I was headed somewhere else this morning, a place I knew nothing of.

He smiled again, fished in his shirt pocket for a cigarette he’d already rolled, his fingers digging under Frank. He pulled one out, put it to his lips. He looked at me, his eyes all squinted up as if it were already lit. He said, “You don’t think I know the name of this outfit? ” We were out on the street now, and he put the car into gear, but didn’t give it any gas. We sat in the middle of the street a moment and I said, “Shouldn’t we get a move on? ” “Just don’t you worry now, ” he said. “You don’t. About today.”

“Remember who you’re talking to, ” I said, and tried to give him a smile might convince him just to drive us to Pico Furniture. I just wanted to get him out the car, leave me to find out what we’d come here for.

CHAPTER 26.

I HAD NO PROBLEMS FINDING THE PLACE, JUST AS THE OFFICE GIRL AT N. A.

R.

C. had told me, it was off Western, which I’d taken down from Pico and just followed light to light to light until I hit Adams, then turned right.

They were nice homes set back farther on the lots than most houses I’d seen since we’d moved here, houses with green lawns and flowerbeds and bushes, honeysuckle and climbing roses and palm trees. The houses were older, you could tell by the gingerbread and touches they had, and’d seen a better time than right now, some were clapboard with a little chip here and there where the paint was bubbling up, some had that white stucco, but with the faintest tinge of green to it where moss’d started in, and some were brick, now and again the mortar loose and crumbling.

But most all of them were in fine shape, positively better than the house we lived in. I wondered as I crawled the car along, looking for 2151, how pleasant it’d be to live here.

Then I spotted it, a gray house with white trim, a big porch out front almost like what you might find back in one of the finer homes in Purvis. The second story had dormers poking out, and in the front yard stood a magnolia.

A magnolia.

The first space I could find to park was four or five houses down, where, I saw, I’d have to parallel park this monster of a car, and I could just imagine what any passerby might think when he saw what was going on, a woman with Mississippi tags on her car, a retarded girl in the front seat, the woman trying to maneuver this car too big for her into that tiny spot. But it was the only spot I could see for the next block or so, the street jammed with cars all sparkling and clean and new.

I pulled up even with the car in front of my spot, then turned in the seat, put my arm on top of it like I’d seen Leston do a million times before, and I started backing up.

A little nigger boy stood on the sidewalk back there. He was looking at me, and waved a hand at me, motioned me to back up.

I smiled at him through the rear window, started back as he waved and waved. Then he put up his hand to stop me, made a whirling move with his hand, what I took to mean Cut the wheel the other way, which I did.

We went like this a minute or two, him motioning, me following, until I’d finally got the car nestled into place, snug between two cars I climbed out, came round to give him my proper thank you, but he was already gone, moving up the sidewalk. Though his back was to me, I could see for the first time how well he was dressed, navy blue pants with a sharp crease, a white shortsleeve dress shirt, shiny black shoes. Hung from his shoulder was a leather strap cinched round a pile of books that bounced on his back as he walked away.

I called out, “Thank you! ” He turned, walked backwards a moment. He had on a thin, black tie, and he gave the smallest of nods, his chin jutting up in the air only a moment. He turned back, headed off.

I didn’t know what to think, though he’d been the one to help me, done me that favor, nigger children in Mississippi never just jutted their chin when you spoke to them, but always gave answer. And they didn’t couldn’t dress like that, except on Sunday mornings. But, as with everything I’d discovered so far, this was a new world, one I had no way to figure how it worked.

I turned back to the car, opened the door for Brenda Kay. She stared out the windshield a moment longer, as though she, too, were watching the boy.

I said, “Let’s come on now, Brenda Kay. There’s people to meet.” I reached down, touched her hair. I had it back in pretty red barrettes today, had her dressed in pink slacks and a pink and white striped blouse, her shoes all shined up pretty and white. I reached to her lap, took her hand. “Come on now, Brenda Kay, ” I said, and then, for no other reason than that I’d never heard the words from me before, I said, “There’s a new world here and waiting for us.”