Minding Ben (11 page)

I
n my last year of high school, I had entered the carnival queen show. I didn't really care to, but my friend Rhonda had dared me, and, since my mother said the pageant was the work of the devil, how could I not? I didn't think I would win. The girls chosen queen year after year looked like Kathy, with light skin and long hair. And if your eyes were any color other than brown, well, the joke was that the crown was ordered in your size.

The auditorium was packed. Everyone turned out for any special event to numb the drudgery of washing clothes and minding goats and washing and minding children. The local boys too cool to sit with the students and old women were in the back, some of them on chairs and some in the rafters. I waited in the dressing room, Rhonda fussing and adding more rouge than I thought necessary. Wave after wave of roars greeted each girl as she stepped out of the wings and paraded down the path. And then my turn. “Miss Grace Caton.” Rhonda shooed me out, doing her last adjustments to my hair and dress. When I stepped into the auditorium, the thousand-watt spotlight blinded me, and for a second I couldn't see. I could hear, though, and I heard nothing. No roaring. No clapping. No wolf whistling. Nothing. I wanted to run, to hide behind the curtain, to jump up into the rafters, and most of all to kill Rhonda. But then the boys in the back went mad, people jumped up from their iron folding chairs and clapped, and the judges started scribbling in their notebooks. That quiet, which had seemed to last so long, had been mere moments.

Something like that stillness, which afterward Rhonda had assured me I'd imagined, greeted me when I walked into the playground. From the streets surrounding the park, I could hear the sounds of traffic, but as I pushed Ben through the open gates, the chattering women stared from me to Ben to each other and back to me again. Elbows nudged sides, chins and eyebrows lifted, and mouths twisted. I gripped the curved carriage handles, ridged like horns, and wheeled Ben over to the sandbox. A tight knot of skinny white women stood off by themselves sipping coffee. I undid Ben's safety belt, and a woman let out a piercing bacchanal laugh like they did back home when news spread that someone's unmarried daughter was pregnant. Then as clear as the ruckus after the silence in the auditorium, a Barbadian voice said, “Is not the white people, you know, is nigger people self does take the bread from other nigger people mouth.”

Half an hour later Kathy, her chubby cheeks bright red, came into the park. “Me can't believe your call. Me can't believe I get to see you every day now. Too too exciting.” The rhinestones in the diamond angles of her jacket threw off lances of sunlight. Stuck above her ponytail was a large pair of white-framed, jeweled sunglasses.

“Diamante, Kath, that's the word for you today.” I stood from the edge of the sandbox. “You actually wear those glasses?”

“Here”—she pulled off the shades—“try them.”

“What do you think?” I asked Ben. “Should Grace put on the funky glasses?” I was so glad Kathy was here. The glares and murmurs and occasional bursts of laughter of the other women unnerved me. I wondered at their cruelty.

“Put them on, Grace.” He shielded his eyes from the sun and maybe Kathy's shooting rays.

The world was deep green through the lenses, and the sight took me back to late afternoons at home, to that time of day when burning heat gave way to cooler evening and the sun began its speedy fall into the hills. “Cool, Grace,” Ben said.

“Grace”—Kathy stepped back and took me in with the silly glasses—“you are the only person I know who could look stunning minding a child in jeans and sneakers.”

I handed them back to her. “Just don't tell me I should be a model, okay.”

Kathy exaggerated the jut of her full hip. “So this is the likkle man.” She raised her chin at Ben. “Redhead tock-tock.”

I pinched Ben's freckled nose. “Yup, my bread and butter. Kath, the strangest thing though,” I whispered. “Look at the women. God!” I hit her arm. “Not so obvious. You had to see how they watched Ben and me coming in the park. I said morning to those two over there—Jesus Christ, don't watch so bold—and they didn't answer. What the fuck?”

“That's a bad word, Grace,” Ben said without looking up.

“This little one going to be trouble.” Kathy wagged her finger at Ben. “As for them bitches . . .” She swiveled her head to take in the women.

“Kathy, shush.”

“Don't shush me, Grace.” Her arms were akimbo again. “Is jealous the old bitches and them jealous. Watch you and watch them.” She took in the group and in a low voice said to me, “You need to learn playground politics. I bet you half of them had somebody for your job.”

To look at the women rolling carriages back and forth, or pushing swings, or lined up on either side of the monkey bars, you couldn't tell that they were marking us unless you knew what to listen for. I heard “
maga
bitch,” “cat-eye bitch,” “that big backside,” and, over and over, “poor poor Carmen.”

Kathy and I sat on the lip of the sandbox watching Ben, who knew several of the kids playing in the cold dirt, especially two children with round heads and wide-spaced eyes, who moved a little unsteadily and kept their hands in front of their bodies.

“This is frigging great, Kath, my first day on the job and I have enemies.”

Ben came over and said, “Juice, Grace.”

“Juice, please.” It really was quite warm outside, and I sipped some of the juice before passing him the small yellow carton.

“You have time to worry about them, Grace?”

I wasn't worried, but I wondered why Miriam had called me after 9:00 
P.M.

“Kath, why you think Miriam asked me to come in so late last night?”

Kathy steadied herself on the sandbox. “You have the job. That is all you should care about. Maybe that other woman couldn't read or maybe she was a thief, or maybe she was too old. Who know how white people mind does operate—”

A child screamed, and we whipped around. The round-headed girl had fallen over and couldn't quite brace herself to get up. The other one, her brother I presumed, cried out, “Evie, Sammy fell!” A short woman separated herself from the group and half jogged over.

Ben ran over to me. “Grace, Sammy fell.”

“But she's okay, see? Someone's helping her.” I stared at the woman while she dusted Sammy off. She looked right back at me and smiled. Not a friendly smile.

I turned to Kathy. “Anyway, you're right, forget them. Tell me about Monday. You excited yet?”

She shrugged. “Not really. Business or not, is still marriage, right? My father will die when he hears this; this is not how he imagined his baby daughter getting married.”

I knew what she was talking about. City Hall on a Monday morning was not the place for a blessed union. Kathy brushed the side of her face with her ponytail. “And what about you? They mention anything about the sponsorship?”

They had not.

“The only thing I'll tell you is that you shouldn't wait too long before they begin,” she went on. “I've heard that sponsorship through a job takes donkey years.”

I'd heard that too. I thought of telling Kathy about Sylvia's proposal, that Bo would marry me for free if I worked for her, but I was confused enough. I didn't want another opinion just yet. Instead I told her about my mother's letter.

“She still trying to get you to come back?”

In the sand, Ben had linked arms with the twins and a little Asian boy in an unsteady ring around the rosy. “You don't know my mother. She'll try to get me to come back until the day I walk off the plane at Piarco. This is all about my hymen, you know. She wants to keep an eye on it.”

Kathy laughed out loud. “Is it still there?”

“Actually, it is. I haven't had a serious contender since I came to America. I'll give it to a weak contender, Kath.” I crossed myself quickly. “I can't believe I said that in the same conversation about my mother.”

“What about Brent?”

“He's a contender.”

“You're a whore, Grace.”

“Only for him.” I laughed. “How are your party plans coming along?”

“Donovan's taking care of everything. You know how it's going to be, right?”

“Apart from outrageous?” The first bash I went to with Kathy I left after an hour. Back then I didn't know that you had to be in costume to party. Kathy had worn a skintight, gold short pantsuit and her over-the-knee, come-fuck-me boots. I'd met her outside the club on Empire Boulevard amid a swirl of neon and flesh. She'd taken one look at me in my jeans and T-shirt and shaken her head. “Oh, Grace,” she'd said, “I should have warned you.”

Now she shaded her eyes. “What you doing for your birthday? Which day is it on again?”

“Nothing. Friday.” My eighteenth birthday, and Kathy was the only person in America who knew.

“Okay, we'll go to Fourteenth Street and see what we can't find for you to wear.”

It was nearing noon, and the sitters were making moves to leave. The group of white women at the fence end of the playground walked toward the exit. As they neared, one of them stopped and looked down at us. Her lips were a thin, brilliantly reddened slash. “
Where
did you get that jacket?” she asked Kathy. “It's fantastic.”

Kathy grinned and slipped on her sunglasses. “Saks. Fourth floor.”

“Fantastic,” the woman repeated and stalked off to meet her friends.

Kathy turned to me. “Saks my ass. Try Janice on Fulton and half hour with the BeDazzler.”

M
y hours were a sham. Like yesterday, Miriam called me into the kitchen at seven-thirty. She showed me how Sol liked his coffee: mix grounds from two separate blends, use cold water from the filtered pitcher, and microwave a mug of water for a full minute to have hot and ready for when he came out. He took it black. I also had to make Miriam toast and jam and pack her a bag lunch. While Ben had his breakfast, I started the cleaning: their room, his room, the bathrooms. Then out for morning play. Back in for lunch. During Ben's afternoon nap I hung laundry, cleaned the living room, cooked dinner, and kept up with what Miriam referred to as “miscellany”: figurine dusting or refrigerator organizing or closet sorting. After Ben's nap, we had errands. Miriam came in, and I served her and Ben dinner and made a plate for Sol. Folded and put away laundry. Packed up leftovers. By the time I put Ben to bed, it was already eight-thirty and I still had to load the dishwasher.

Today, when I put the coffee into the machine, Miriam covered her nose and ran to the bathroom, her high heels tacking on the floor. When she came out of the bathroom, lipstick gone and red spots bright in the corners of her mouth, I smiled and asked, “So how far along are you?”

Miriam looked at me with a blank face. Her eyes were red too. “Far along with what, Grace?”

“Aren't you . . . ?” I left the question hanging.

“Aren't I what?” she asked, steadying herself on the counter.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing?” she repeated. “It couldn't be less, could it?”

I wasn't sure what that meant, but it wasn't an invitation to chat. “I rode the elevator with Evie yesterday,” I told her instead. “Ben plays with Sammy and”—I didn't know the other one's name—“on Fridays?”

Ben walked into the kitchen and stuck his head between his mother's legs. Back home, whenever children looked between their mothers' legs the women asked if they were looking for a brother or a sister. I chose not to share this with Miriam.

“Sammy and Caleb,” she said.

Ben, hearing his friends' names, said, “Sammy fell in the sand yesterday and Evie picked her up, Mommy.”

“Evie introduced herself?” Miriam asked.

“Not exactly. She said Ben and the twins play together?” I wondered if Miriam would tell me about Carmen now.

“That's all she said?” And for a few seconds she looked at me, expecting to hear more.

“That's it.”

“Evie's the queen bee of the playground,” Miriam said. “She's been with the Zollers since the twins were born. They hired her away from the hospital, actually.” While she spoke, Ben danced the maypole through her legs.

Sol came out, dressed, and I passed him his coffee. “And what did the Lady Miss Evie have to say?”

I shrugged. “Just about the Friday playdate.”

The silence hung for a few seconds. “Okay,” Miriam said. “Grace, there's a list on the dining table. Big ironing day today! If you have questions, call me.”

BEN AND RABBIT WERE
settled with
The Little Mermaid
, so I took advantage of the quiet to call Sylvia. A groggy Bo picked up.

“Hi, Bo, is Grace. How you going?”

“Grace, what the ass you doing calling here so early in the morning? You know what time it is?”

It was exactly 10:00
A.M.
, and if Bo answered the phone, it meant that Sylvia had gone to work. “Bo, where Dame?”

“Me don't know,” he said, and I could picture him scratching his hairy chest.

“He probably still in the crib, Bo. You have to make a bottle for him and then give him something to eat and bathe him.” I knew Sylvia must have told him to do all this. “Bo, let me ask you something.”

“Talk fast.”

“Why you don't tell Sylvia the paint in the apartment making Dame sick?” I didn't understand how Bo and them operated, if he knew that something might be wrong with Dame, why would he not tell Sylvia?

“And when I tell Sylvia, what she could do about it?”

“Bo, don't be stupid. What you mean ‘what she could do?' She could take him to the doctor or pressure Jacob.”

He belched hard in my ear. “You don't know how them Jew and them does operate,” he said almost to himself, and then louder, as if coming to, “Grace, why you calling me this hour of the morning to hurt my head? If you so concern about Sylvia children, why you leave to go and work for them white people? I find you could of stay here and help she out if you so concern.”

He was right, of course, partially. “And where I would get money to pay you?”

That snapped his attention to. “So how much money them people paying you? Is a good little change you making?”

Normally, I wouldn't tell anyone how much I made, but the amount of money was so small, I wanted Bo's reaction. “Two hundred.”

He whistled. “Girl, you selling yourself cheap. You better look around and see how to get a little lagniappe.” Bo laughed. “Maybe from the husband on the side.”

“Why I wasting my time talking to you? Sylvia gone to work?”

He ignored me, liking the slack talk he had brought up. “No, Grace, in truth. Them white man and them like black pussy—”

I hung up.

WE WERE PICKING OUT
Ben's lunch plate when the front door opened.

Ben ran to the living room. “Daddy's home. Daddy's home, Grace.”

Sol came into the kitchen carrying Ben on his shoulders.

“Hi, Sol. You forget something?”

“No, Grace, I came to have lunch with my boy.”

“Okay,” I said, and then added, “nice to see you,” even though it wasn't. I held up one plate with Pooh and Piglet strolling through the Hundred Acre Wood and another with Mickey holding a blushing Minnie's white-gloved hand. “Which one, Ben?”

“Winnie-the-Pooh plate, Grace.”

“Hey, buddy,” Sol said to Ben, “do you want to say the blessing with me?” Together they singsonged, “
Baruch ata adonai, eloheinu melech ha-olam, Ha-motzi lechem min ha-aretz.
” “Did you go to the playground today?” Sol asked him when they were done.

Ben reached for his cup. “I played in the sand and the tire swing, and Grace put me on the monkey bars.”

“Sounds like you had a great time.” He took a carrot stick off Ben's plate. “So how's it going for you, Grace? Are you comfortable, do you have everything you need?”

He had asked me this just last night when I was loading the dishwasher. “Everything is fine,” I told him.

He rapped his long fingers on the tabletop, and I saw that the hair on his knuckles was red too. “So, how about some lunch?”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I'm not hungry yet.”

One orange eyebrow raised. “I meant for me, Grace. How about some lunch for me?”

My face burned as I recognized my mistake. “Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Bruckner, um, Sol.” Ben had taken his sandwich apart and was pinking the edge of the cheese with his front teeth. “What would you like?” It hadn't occured to me to make him something.

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “Maybe tuna on rye with lettuce and tomatoes. Do we have rye?”

I got up from the table to check. There was tuna and rye, and I put together a plate for him. When I brought his sandwich, he was sitting sideways, with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. He didn't move, and I had to step over him to rest the plate on the table. “Thanks, Grace. Can I also have a glass of water with ice?”

I went back to the kitchen and poured the water, remembering Jane's production with Miriam's orange juice. As I placed the glass next to his plate, Sol held on to my wrist. I looked over at him. “Yes?”

He swallowed before letting me go. Tapping the corner of his mouth, he asked, “How's your lip from yesterday morning?” Ben watched us.

I touched the spot with the tip of my tongue. It wasn't even sore anymore. “It's fine,” I said. “It was better by the time we got outside.”

“Good.” He picked up his sandwich, but before he bit into the bread he winked at Ben. “Hey, buddy, look,” he said. “Mine is bigger than yours.”

MIRIAM CALLED IN THE
middle of the afternoon. I was up to my waist in ironing. “Hi, Grace.” I could hear her drafty breathing through the phone. “How's Ben? What're you doing?”

“He's still napping. Because Sol was here, he went down a little later. I'm ironing.”

There was a pause. “Sol was home?”

“He came around lunchtime, and I made him a sandwich. He and Ben played for a bit, and then he left.” Miriam was silent for a while. So maybe he didn't come home all that often for lunch.

“Okay, Grace, listen. I have a meeting after school and then an appointment. Take Ben to the park around five for about an hour.”

“No problem. I'm about to start dinner now, so as soon as I'm done.”

“Good,” she said. “I'll see you later.”

AT FIVE DANNY WAS
at the front desk. He jumped off the elevated platform and landed next to us. Ben put up his hand for a high five, and Danny slapped him one. He still wore the leprechaun lapel pin.

“Hello again, Grace,” he said. “So you
are
the Bruckners' new nanny.” He nodded. “I like their choice.”

“Just do me a favor, okay? Don't ask Ben if I'm his new Y-A-Y-A.”

Danny dropped into a crouch next to the carriage. I could see his hair thinning in the middle like a sprouting yarmulke. “Ben here,” he said, “is my main man.”

Ben reached for the leprechaun pin on his lapel. “Why you still wearing that? St. Patrick's is over.”

“Hey”—Danny pointed at me—“for the true Irish every day is St. Paddy's.” He moved closer to me at the back of the carriage and lifted his eyebrows a few times. “So, Grace, what's the word upstairs? Why'd they get rid of her? She steal money? I hear they had you come in in the middle of the night. What was that all about?”

How I wish I knew. Danny reminded me of the
comess
women on the island, the ones who lived for gossip and who, when they couldn't find any news, made up stories themselves.

The doorman held open the front door for a woman. Danny touched his red hat. “Good evening, Ms. Eastman.” She cocked her head and gave him a smile that was more of a grimace. Even though I stood closer to the desk than the middle of the lobby, she made right for Ben and me. “Excuse me,” she said and shook her head as she passed.

I looked at Danny. “Was I supposed to move? We weren't in her way even.”

The elevator closed, and the numbers lit her ascent. “No, man,” Danny said, “I don't think you were wrong at all.” He dropped his voice. “All the same, though, you shouldn't stand around in the lobby, especially at this time of day. It gets busy, and not everyone's a breeder. You know what I mean?”

A FEW MOTHERS LINGERED
in the park with their children. They looked out of place squatting near the sandbox in their wool coats and business clothes and pumps. I unbuckled Ben and asked him what he wanted to do.

“The sandbox, Grace.”

I wasn't surprised. It was where he spent most of his time. The tire swing, the loopy plastic slide, the monkey bars, everything else in the playground was a distraction between trips to the sand. “Hey, Ben”—I dug into the netted pouch for his shovel—“how come you're such a sandman?”

He liked that. “I'm a sandman, Grace. A sandman.”

I passed him the shovel, and he scooped up his first mound. “Grace, this is like the beach.”

Kneeling next to him, I picked up a handful of the damp brown earth—nothing at all like the pinky white sand on the beach back home—and let it fall in dismal clumps through my fingers. My father's little parcel of dirt was still in my purse, but the boxed-in sand in Union Square, sat in and spat in, played in and maybe peed in sand, was not the mix I needed to settle my stomach.

“Hello, Benjamin.” We both looked up. I recognized the woman from the group of sitters on the benches yesterday and this morning. She was older, in about her mid-fifties, and had a small-island accent. Ben, I had noticed, never answered when any of the sitters said hello.

“Ben,” I said, “this nice lady just said hello. You're supposed to say hello back.”

He didn't look again at her, but he did say hello. She bent over her carriage and took out a small baby wrapped in a thick layer of blankets.

“How old is that baby?” I asked her.

“Not more than four weeks.”

“It's late to have a small baby outside, isn't it?” I didn't mean to criticize.

She lit up when I said that, boy. “Exactly,” she crowed, “is the same thing me try and tell the mother, but she don't want listen. I tell her dew falling already and America dew is colder than in the West Indies. A likkle child so should be inside. But nobady listen. She want me to bring the child outside for air, so me bring him outside for air. As long as when you see he catch pneumonia and drap dead them nah say is my fault.”

I didn't think she was right about the dew. My mother had been the same way, and Helen and I had a long list of things to not do to avoid catching cold. We couldn't iron and then bathe, or step out of bed in the morning and put our feet directly on the ground. We couldn't even think about opening the refrigerator if we came in during the heat of the day.

I got up to see the baby's face. She peeled back the blanket, and he looked like every other white baby, bald, wrinkly, and vaguely alien. “He's very cute,” I said.

“You crazy, child? Cute? No sah, you must take anadder look. This is the ugliest likkle wretch me ever did see.”

I touched the child's cheek. “Well, you don't want to say that about a baby.”

“You must always speak you mind, child. Even if the truf does offend.”