Minding Ben (17 page)

S
ylvia wasn't expecting me. I had called from the Bruckners' and told her Miriam needed me to work extra, that I might be in as late as midnight and she shouldn't wait up. As long as I didn't make too much noise when I came in, she said, I was to please my mind. For once I was going to do just that. The night was cold and fresh, and I felt full of energy and ready for anything.

I met Brent outside the Nostrand Avenue stop. He was sitting on a bench with his legs squared open and his arms spread wide across the back, watching traffic go by on the parkway. He had on jeans, work boots, and an enormous black coat that looked like a shiny quilt. “ 'Ello, darkie,” he whispered as he kissed me. I closed my eyes and leaned all my weight into him, inhaling great gulps of his cigarette and cinnamon smell.

“Aye,” he said, “you gone to sleep, or what?”

I rubbed my forehead against his chest, unwilling to move, then finally pulled away. And then I felt shy. He took my hand. “Come on.”

We walked over to a small green car. “I didn't know you drove,” I said. He held open the passenger door for me before getting in, then he leaned over the gears and kissed me properly.

“So where you want go?”

I wanted him to kiss me again. “Can we just drive around for while? You can drive and talk at the same time, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, laughing, and I loved the deep sound, “me think me can manage that.”

But we drove in silence, coasting down Eastern Parkway, down by the big museum and past the library and looping around the great arch at Grand Army Plaza, landmarks I knew only from underground. Brent hadn't turned on the music, but the silence in the car was comfortable. “So, what you want talk about?” he asked.

I wanted to talk about him. I wanted to ask what he did for work and if he had a girlfriend or any children and brothers and sisters and if his parents lived in America or if they were still back in Jamaica, and how had he and Donovan met, but instead I asked, “So, how was your week?”

“ 'Ard work, you know? But Friday come and me dey here with you, so things good, right? Wha' 'bout you? You work 'ard for them white people them too?”

On Thursday morning before Miriam had left for work, she had pulled a stepladder from the hall closet and shown me some yellowish spots on the ceilings of both bathrooms she wanted me scrub out. I also had to move all the figurines off their shelves, wipe them with a soft cloth, and line them back up in order as best as I could remember. And just before I left, she had asked me to use the brush under the toilet rim, where bits of vomit had caked from her morning sickness.

“Not too hard,” I said to Brent. “It's just work, you know.”

“Trust me, me know. You want get something to eat?”

“Yes, please. I'm starving. Did you hear my belly just now?”

“You a funny woman. Nah, me didn't hear you belly. You want pick up some Chinee food?”

“I hate Chinese food.”

“What? You the first person in America me ever hear what hate Chinee food. You want go Yardies?”

“No, not there. I'm not dressed up enough for Yardies.”

“Ah, what you chat 'bout? Me bet say you look better than any woman what sit down in there right now.”

I loved the way he talked, jutting his chin forward for emphasis. “Okay, so Yardies then.”

Barrington greeted Brent just as warmly as he had Donovan. I willed myself not to worry about what he did for a living.

“You see,” he said, “no woman in 'ere can touch you.”

“Except that waitress,” I muttered as the same gorgeous server from Saturday wended her way through the tables to give us menus. I understood only one word of the deep patois she spoke to Brent: “Donovan.”

“Tell me what kind of work do you do,” I asked.

“Mule work.”

“What?”

“No, no”—he laughed—“not that kind of mule. All me mean is that me work 'ard. 'Ard work to break man back. Scene.”

“Construction?”

“Nah, not no construction.” He didn't say what but asked, “So where Mammy and Daddy?”

I thought this funny, a grown man asking about my mammy and daddy. “Trinidad. I have a younger sister too.”

The waitress slunk over with our drinks, a frothy golden ginger beer for me and a Red Stripe for Brent.

“You know, me never ask you how much years you have.”

I looked at my watch before answering, thinking Kathy must have forgot to tell him. “Today is my birthday. Eighteen.”

“Whoa! For real? Today self is your birthday? 'Ow come you never did tell me, man? We'da gone and do something well special.”

“This is special.”

He flicked his wrist. “Now me 'ave to make this up to you. Don't worry.”

I wasn't worried. My telling Brent about my birthday made him forget he'd asked about my family, and I was glad. How had I ended up in Babylon? Stubbornness, my mother would say. But even this, just being able to go out with a friend and have a meal on my eighteenth birthday, would have been unthinkable back under her roof in that village. I shook my head, ashamed. Had I come to America for a plate of oxtails and rice, for a glass of ginger beer?

“What happen?” Brent asked. “What you shake your head for?”

“I just can't believe I'm eighteen already, is all. I'm getting old.”

“Wait till thirty.”

I pounced on that. “Is that how old you are, then?”

He squinted at me. “Sometime you talk real stush, you know.”

“Thanks, but answer the question.”

“Thirty-one come August. That too old for you?”

“And no children?”

“Two daughters and a likkle man,” he said without pause.

I reached for my drink. “Here or in Jamaica?”

“My big girl, she eleven already, she with her granny back Jamaica. The younger two—”

I didn't want to hear anymore. “Okay, okay. I don't want to know all your business.” And I didn't. I just wanted to have my meal, to listen the music, and to talk about anything. How Kathy did it, I didn't know. If Brent had children, then he had a woman. Even if they were broken up, he was still tied to his children's mother, and I would always come after that. The ginger beer burned my throat going down, and I told myself that the wetness in my eyes came from its sharp sting.

“You coming to Kathy birthday bash next month?” I asked him.

“For sure, yeah.”

“Are you coming alone?”

“You want me to come alone?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

I smiled too, in spite of myself. The hussy waitress came over with our food, the stewed oxtails hot and curling steam. “Yes,” I said, “I want you to come alone.”

It was after midnight by the time Brent dropped me off. I hoped Sylvia would be in the bedroom, not wanting her to see my lips swollen from kissing Brent for half an hour in the car on the parkway. She was snoring hard on the couch but woke up as soon as I opened the front door.

“What time it is, Grace?”

The apartment was wrecked worse than usual. I could barely see carpet on the floor for all the clothes and toys scattered about.

“Just past twelve.”

“Them white people and them give you cab fare, though?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You take a cab, or you keep the money and take the train?”

“Cab. Miriam tell the doorman to hail a cab, so I had to take it.” I hoped I didn't smell like Brent's cologne.

“You is a ass.” Sylvia struggled up from the couch. “You should have tell the driver, Mister, take me right around the corner to the number four train.”

“How come you still up?” I sat in the armchair, across from her.

“Is you I was waiting for,” she told me. “You mother call.”

The oxtails rose sour to my throat. “Oh, God, what happen? Daddy? Oh, God.”

“Grace, stop playing the ass before you give yourself a heart attack and dead in my house. You mother call to tell you happy birthday. I didn't even know today was your birthday, self. And them white people them make you work. You tell them was your birthday?”

I was so relieved.

“Better to not tell them nothing, anyway. So yes, she call to say happy birthday and she say your father say happy birthday too. You mother sound like a nice nice lady.”

The night's joy drained out of me. “Anything else about Daddy?”

“No. All she say is that she was coming home from hospital and she decide to stop and give you a little call. Oh, and she ask if you giving me any trouble.”

But the news was there. Last week she had told me that my father was to be discharged on Monday. Five days later he was still in San Fernando General. I counted out two twenties and a ten for Sylvia, wondering again if a little bit of money and a restaurant meal was worth being away from home.

“What you have plan for tomorrow?” Sylvia asked.

“Nothing special. Why?”

“You see all this clothes on the ground here. I have to put all of this in garbage bags. The city sending somebody tomorrow to do some tesses—”

“What kind of tests?”

“Me don't know, mama. I carry Dame by HIP Wednesday, and Thursday they call to say the city coming to run some tesses and to take the clothes out the closets. I tell Bo clear the hall closet, but I still waiting. Tomorrow-please-God help me to bag up all this stuff, nah?”

“No problem.”

“Anyhow,” she said, bracing herself against the armrest, raising the other end of the couch off the floor, “is a good thing all this rubbish move. Jacob Russian and them coming from next week to start the paint job.”

I stayed up to bag the clothes, and after about an hour Bo came in.

“So, was only a last week thing. You didn't bring no cigarettes this time?”

“I work late tonight. And anyhow, Bo, I not supporting you. I look like your wife?”

He dropped onto the springless couch behind me. “Speaking of which, we doing this thing or what?”

The fur edging Bo's parka was matted and dirty, like wet hair on a mangy pothound. “Don't you need to have a job before you could sponsor a wife? You need to show income, Bo.”

“You don't worry about that,” he said, reaching for the remote. “Just tell me when you have the money save and you ready to go downtown.”

“And what if I tell you I have the money save now?”

He kept the TV on mute and leaned toward me on the floor. “You talking seriousness, Grace? You have it already? How much?”

In all, I had about $170. “I have five hundred to start.”

“We could work with that. Remember Jacob?”

“Yes?”

“Well, the other day he promise me a few days' work. All I have to do is get a letter from him saying I is one of he regular guys and them and that good enough to put in the paper. Scene? You ready to do this thing?”

Slowly, I folded a purple winter coat of Micky's for the bag. She wouldn't need it again for nine months. In nine months, if I married Bo, I could have a green card. “Month end,” I said. “Let's wait until the end of April, so I don't have to spend all my money. We'll get the license, and then we could have a June wedding. It'll be more convincing.”

Bo leaned in closer. “Sylvia tell you what happen?”

I didn't know what he was talking about. “About the city coming tomorrow?”

He brushed imaginary flies from in front his face. “With she husband last week in the G Building.”

She had not.

“She and he was sitting down in the visiting hall talking cool cool, when all of a sudden he grab she in a headlock and start to choke she.” Bo was talking so softly I could barely hear him. “The guard and them had to rush to separate them and lock him up fast fast. Me don't think they letting him out of that madhouse anytime soon, mama.”

Sylvia hadn't said a word, but then I hadn't called all week to find out what was going on either.

“Bo, what send him mad, so? Sylvia say he was good good, and then he start to go off. Something happen?”

He settled in the couch and aimed the remote. TV laughter filled the room. “Is this place, girl. Babylon does send man mad mad when you see they can't take care of they family. Back home he used to teach, you know, but here he papers didn't count. He not build for construction and sit down inside all day minding child like a woman. Is why you think I does go and walk about when you see morning come? Sitting down waiting for what break up he mind. Scene.”

I continued to fold clothes and fill bags. The mound was almost cleared, and the dull carpet so matched the faded red of my Conway jeans that my legs and the floor seemed melded to one.

I WAS NOT EXPECTING
a woman.

“I'm Cassandra Neil. Are you Mrs. John?” she asked, standing in the hallway.

“No, I'm Grace. Sylvia's not here. You're from the city, right? To do the tests?”

“Are you over eighteen and have permission to let me on the premises?”

“As of yesterday.”

She said happy birthday and walked in. I was embarrassed. You could brush a pig only so much. The apartment was clean on the surface, but the decayed carpet, the smudged walls, and the listing breakfront could not be camouflaged. Micky sat curled in a corner of the couch watching TV with her thumb in her mouth.

“So, do you live here too?” she asked. She had taken a small meter from her bag and now unhooked an attachment from her belt. The pieces made a nice
click
as they fitted together.

“No,” I said, “I'm only here to let you in. My cousin had to run some errands this morning.”

She placed her meter flush against a wall where the peeled paint hung in tongues. “Man,” she said, “this is bad.”

“What?”

“The lead levels. This place is a death trap. Do you feel tired and sluggish when you wake up in the morning?”