Minding Ben (27 page)

The crowd roared at him, not liking that one at all. And Kath, liking it less than the rest, shot Donovan a murderous look. With black lights turned on and her white leather outfit glowing, Kath held her hands in the air and pirouetted slow, grinding her hips in a serious challenge to even the most lithe yardbird on the floor. The crowd went crazy, and the DJ, feeding off the energy on the floor, chanted, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” in time with every shift of Kath's waist.

Hours later, after I had danced to every song except the ones calling for bullets, hellfire, and acid baths for gay men, Brent asked if I wanted to go outside. We slipped out along the edges of the dance floor, skirting the den of male and female bodies that had finally come together in a bacchanalian orgy.

Even pressed tight to Brent, I was freezing by the time we got to his car, parked two blocks away. He turned on the engine, and a loud dub blasted from the speakers.

“Sorry,” he said and turned it down low, then reached over and switched the heat way up. “It soon get warm; meanwhile, let me see what me can do for you.”

It was awkward over the gearshift, but we kissed for long time. I liked the way he did it, letting go my tongue to gently pull on my lower lip. My bodysuit, too flimsy for outside, was just right for the heat of his hands to penetrate. He warmed my shoulders, my ribs, my breasts, my belly. My head knocked his Kangol off, and we banged foreheads reaching for it. Then he checked his watch.

“You have to be somewhere else?” I asked.

“Not now, but me 'ave work seven in the morning.”

“Is Sunday tomorrow, though. I thought we liming tonight.” I heard myself and cringed. I sounded like a child. “But if you have to work you have to go, so no problems.”

“You want me go or you want me stay?”

“I want you to do what you have to do. What time is it anyway?”

“You got to be someplace?” And even though the windows had fogged up, I could see him smile.

“Nope. My only plan is to be with you tonight.”

“You want to sit in the backseat?”

In the back we could just about manage to lie halfway. He kissed my neck, and I felt him slide open my zipper. He peeled the bodysuit down and buried his face between my breasts, his breath warm against my skin. He reached his arms around me and asked, “I could do this?”

I nodded, unable to say anything as he unhooked the clasp and, with just thumbs, lifted my brassiere away. He groaned and swirled his tongue around my right nipple and then the left. I couldn't breathe—I mean I could not get breath—and gulped out loud.

He stopped and looked up. “You all right?”

I nodded quickly.

“You want me to stop?”

I found breath and voice. “No, no.”

“You sure?”

I pressed his face back to my breasts and slid down farther in the seat, reaching up to cup his backside and pull him onto me. The windows were completely sealed, and the amber streetlight filtered in all soft and fuzzy. Brent kissed his way down my belly, stopping where I still had my bodysuit on.

“You have rubbers?” I asked.

He stretched past me. “In ah the glove.”

I unbuttoned his shirt, wanting to make him feel good too. I straddled him on the backseat, our bare chests rubbing together. His hard nipples tasted salty, and I could feel him huge and hard beneath me.

“This is the first time I'm doing this, you know.”

He stopped. “Ah what you ah say?”

“This is my first time.”

“You serious, darkie?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ras, and why you didn't say so?”

“I'm saying it now.”

He held me away from him by my bare shoulders. “You telling me you never been with no man before?”

“I'm telling you. I kissed boys at home—a boy—but I've never done this.”

Brent said “Ras” again, and then he started pulling up my clothes.

“No, no. What you doing?” I protested. “I want to do this.” He was dressing me now the way I dressed Ben in his onesies for bed, bending my arms at the elbow to get my sleeves on. “Brent, what you doing?”

“This nah right, darkie. You not suppose to have your first time in the backseat ah no man car. First you nah tell me about your birthday, and now you wait until nearly too late to tell me this.”

“Well, let's go to your apartment then.”

He inhaled for a long time. “You know we can't do that.”

Actually, I didn't know shit. Brent buttoned up his shirt. “Ah, little girl. Me wish me did meet up with you sooner.”

“Don't do that, okay. Don't call me little girl. You don't know the first thing about me.”

“Now you gone all stush on me again.”

For some reason, him saying that made me really mad. “Ah, fuck you, Brent.”

He laughed. “You cussing me? Me didn't know you even know how to use them kinda words. Don't cuss me, darkie. Is 'cause me like you so much me don't want take advantage of you, you know. You gone remember this all you life, and you don't want remember that you first time was in the backseat of a car park up on the corner of President and Rogers. Trust me, yeah.”

“You telling me to trust you, and I don't know anything about you. I don't even know your last name.”

“Nettleford.”

I laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Winston Brently Nettleford. Junior.”

“Jesus Christ. And what do you do for a living?”

“Nothing illegal. You have to take me word on that one. Donovan ah me friend from we grow up together in St. Catherine, but me not running the same racket as 'im.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“What?”

“A gun. Do you have a gun?”

“Yes, darkie, me have a gun.”

“Is it here?”

“Next question.”

“And you live with a woman?”

“Yes, darkie, me live with a woman.”

There, he had said it. I had known all along, but hearing him admit it still distressed me. This was to be nothing then. I wanted to feel relieved now that I knew for sure, but instead I was crushed. My nose pinched, and I felt the stupid tears prick my eyes. I moved off him and slumped in the seat. “Can you take me home?”

“You don't want go back to Kathy party?”

I shook my head. The night was over for me. Brent nodded, and we moved back to the front. He drove in silence down past the club, where some of the yardbirds had come out for fresh air. They looked cold and ridiculous in their fantastic outfits and mops of fake hair.

In front of Sylvia's building, I reached to open the car door, and Brent said, “Wait.” He fumbled around under his seat and took out a small, unwrapped box. “Here.”

“What's this?”

“Open it and see.”

Inside was an inky blue glass flowerpot, just the right size to plant one bulb. “Kathy tell me you like flowers, but me didn't know which kind, so me just get you the pot. Happy birthday, darkie.”

My nose pinched again, and I knew that if I tried to speak, to say thank you, I would cry. He seemed to understand. At the elevator, I kissed him. I held his body and tried to draw life out of him. In my ear, Brent said, “Plant something nice to remember me, hear?”

SUNDAY AFTERNOON I MET
Kath downtown. For the first time in months she was sparkle free. “I can't believe this,” I said, sizing her up as we trolled the aisles at Conway, “not a rhinestone in sight. Kath, you feeling okay?”

She turned and made a face at me. She looked tired, and her eyes pulled down even more at the corners. “I dazzled enough last night to last for days.”

It was she who had called at Sylvia's this morning and asked if I wanted to meet for something to eat and to talk about her party. So far, though, she hadn't said much. I didn't want to push her.

Conway sold everything. The clothing department was upstairs, but the basement housed linens, pots, toiletries, toilet seats, toilets, cosmetics, cribs. Everything cheap and ready to fall apart after two uses. I had picked up a small red penknife. “I'm not even asking why you're getting a weapon, Grace,” Kath said.

“It's not a weapon, idiot. Dave's always complaining he needs a Swiss Army knife in his pocket, so there, Conway army knife.”

Kath smiled, but she was restless. She walked up and down the aisles, taking up bottles and jars, putting them back down, opening them to sniff, chattering on about nothing and especially not about the party. Finally we paid and stepped out into the warm, bright sunshine. Spring, at least during the daytime, was in full season.

We sat down on one of the benches lining Fulton Street. “So how everything wind up last night?”

“Well, nobody get shot.”

“Was that a real possibility?”

“Oh, Grace, you know how them Jamaican have no behavior. But no, everything went good. What about you? Don't think I didn't see you and Brent leave and not come back.”

“You were spying on me?”

“Of course.” She grinned.

“Well, nothing happened.”

“Bullshit, Grace, I can't believe that. Not after how I do you up. Talk truth, man.”

Fulton was busy this afternoon, guys on the street selling watches and tapes, women getting their shopping done. “I am talking truth. We went to his car, started to fool around, I told him I was a virgin, and he stopped.”

“Ras,” Kath exclaimed, “you shitting me? For real?”

“For real. He said I wouldn't want to remember that I lost my virginity in the back of a car. Not that anything seemed wrong to me. And then he brought me home and gave me an empty flowerpot.”

Kath said “Ras” again. I didn't tell her the bit about Brent confessing he lived with a woman. I supposed she knew that already. She turned from me, and I heard her say, “Donovan wouldn't have cared one fuck.”

“That's not true, Kath. Please, I saw the way he was with you last night.”

She turned back to me. “Oh yeah, then why does that fucker want me to have an abortion?”

I stared at her and stared, and she looked right back at me without blinking. “Oh, my God. Kath, you're pregnant? How far? What are we going to do?”

“See, Grace, see how much you better than Donovan? First thing you ask: what we going to do?
We.
You could think about people other than yourself. Not that”—she kicked the Conway bag so hard the pink plastic split—“motherfucker.” The word was a hiss.

“He told me he was going to leave her, you know. I wasn't going on empty promises. He told me that they were having serious problems and that he was as good as gone from that house. Then talk change. God, Grace”—Kath was crying openly now—“I so fucking stupid. God, I'm stupid.”

I edged closer, and she sobbed on my shoulder. She mumbled something into my shirt.

“What?”

“I have to throw it away.”

“Don't think about that now, Kath.”

“Is almost nine weeks already, Grace. When else am I going to think about it? You will come with me?”

Oh, I didn't want to do this, to have any part of this at all. “Of course I will come with you, Kath.”

We sat holding hands, watching the people walk by. “Oh, my God, Kathy, look who it is.” I hadn't expected to see Brent this soon after last night. He was across the road from us, wearing a bright green uniform under a vest with orange hazard bars. He was pushing a broom in the crevice between the sidewalk and the road. Behind him was a huge rubbish bin on wheels. “Let me go and say hi.”

Kathy squeezed my hand hard. “No, Grace.”

“You mad or what. Why?”

“Grace, trust me, okay? Leave him alone.”

“I just saw Brent last night, Kath. You must be crazy if you think I going to see him across the road from me and not go and say hi.” I made to get up again, but Kath yanked me back.

“Why you always so harden?” She reminded me of my mother. “How long you know Brent? He ever tell you what he do for work?”

She had a point.

Kath was looking at me. “If you go over there now, you will shame him.”

“What? That is so ridiculous, Kath. I don't care what Brent does.” I almost added “as long as he doesn't deal drugs.”

“Yes, but he care. You have to let them be men, Grace. If he never tell you where he working, then is because he didn't want you to know. If you go over there now, the two of you will feel shame.”

I looked at Brent again. After every few strokes of the broom, he scooped up a big pile of Brooklyn rubbish and dumped it in his bin. No one paid any attention to him. I kind of understood what Kathy was saying, but I didn't understand being ashamed of making an honest living. Brent kept his eyes on the ground while he swept, seeing no one. Still Kath said, “Let's go before he sees us, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let's go.”

I
t was still too early for the park, so I dressed Ben to go down to Ule's floor to ask if she would mind him for a few hours on Thursday morning.

“Okay.” I lifted Ben to the bell. “But only one ring. We like Ule.”

He pushed the black button once and I kissed his neck before setting him down. The woman from the newsstand answered the door.

“Is Ule here?”

“Ule does not work here anymore. I am the new babysitter for this family.”

“Since when?”

“Since today on a full-time basis.” She looked me up and down. “I am Margaret.”

Oh, I didn't like her at all. The way she spoke in that phony accent, putting a full stop at the end of every word like the bitchy girl behind the bulletproof glass at the Chinese restaurant on Nostrand. I couldn't believe that Ule would leave without saying good-bye to me.

“Is there something perchance I can help you with?”

Perchance? Who talked like that? “No. I was just looking for Ule.”

At the Zollers', Ben rang the bell for ten seconds until Evie opened the door.

“Jesus Christ, me don't know why you always have to put on such a racket. Come quick, me getting ready for the park.”

Ben ran ahead, and I followed Evie. She was in her housecoat and slippers with her bangs still rolled in her greasy sponge curler. As usual, the apartment was a mess. Sammy was dressed and waiting, and Evie crouched in front of the half-naked Caleb. “So what it is you want this hour of the morning?” she asked me.

“I need to ask you a favor.”

“Fa-vah”—she bent the word into its two syllables—“what favor you come say you want from me, mama?”

I told her, watching how gently she coaxed Caleb's stiff arm into his sweater, and how she kissed his forehead when it peeked through. Done, she pivoted to me. “And why it is you don't go ask your best friend Ule to watch him?”

So she didn't know Ule had left either. I gave her the news. “Ule's gone, Evie. The Bloomberg lady has a new sitter.”

Evie smiled. “You don't say. Ule did tell you she was leaving?”

I shook my head. “She said that the time for her to move on was near, but she didn't say last week was to be her last.”

Evie rose and put her hand on my folded arms. “Is so black people stop, me child. You think you can trust somebody, and then them turn round and ram one knife straight in the middle of your back. Bring the likkle bad boy on Thursday. Me will watch him for free.” She turned her back to me and fiddled with her curler. “What it is you have to do so important?”

“Something in Brooklyn” was all I said, and she shrugged her shoulders as if she couldn't care less.

IT WAS THE WRONG
kind of morning for an abortion, too bright and too warm.

Kath learned against the dirty red brick of the family planning center. She wore a black tracksuit that made her look bigger than she was, and she cradled an enormous handbag in the crook of her elbow. She waved, and as I walked over I saw that she had been crying. “Hey, Kath,” I said. “Are you okay?”

“Not even close, but my mind is made up. No drama, Grace. Let's just go and get this over with.”

As I took Kath's hand, a woman trotted up holding a placard over one shoulder and two brochures veeing out like tickets. She blocked our path and whispered, “Please don't kill your baby.”

We both stopped. The picture on her placard looked like chunks of pork, fresh and bloody from the abattoir.

I blinked at her. “What did you say?”

“Jesus loves your baby.”

Kath started to cry.

The woman smiled.

“Get the fuck away from us,” I said.

She didn't move and started singing, “
In the name of Jesus, In the name of Jesus, we shall have a victory.
” I heard Kath's snotty inhale, and the woman tilted her head, pretending to understand everything. People on the street walked by, minding their own business.

“You need to back the fuck up,” I told her. Seeing that woman in front of us, having no idea who we were or what we were about, made me want to hit her so hard. I reached back and grabbed Kath's hand, dragging her straight into the building and the empty elevator.

“Okay, now you're really upset. Shit,” I said to her.

“Grace.” Kath used the heel of her fist to wipe her nose and laughed-cried. “I never hear you cuss so much.”

“That woman made me so vex.” I was looking at the numbers light up over the elevator door, no unlucky thirteen. “But what do you want to do?”

Kath found a fresh white tissue from deep within her bag and blew her stuffed-up nose. “I said no drama, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, no drama. Let's just go and get this over with already.”

Then I knew I was a hypocrite, because what I wanted was for the scene with the little woman to have upset Kath enough to make her change her mind.

In the waiting room, under a hard, bright white, fluorescent light, sat a middle-aged woman with big breasts and a black girl who looked to be our age. There were three faded, gold-framed posters on the walls. One was of a white woman in a graduation cap and gown brandishing a diploma in victory; one of a unibrowed Hispanic woman in a business suit with huge shoulder pads gesturing from behind a desk; and the third of a black woman in overalls and a hard hat grinning and giving a thumbs-up from inside a manhole. A plastic ficus tree with dusty leaves and fake mulch sat in a planter next to the only window, which looked out on a brick wall. Kath went up to the counter, and I sat down in the one empty folding chair next to the girl. Her arms, extended like bars of steel, ended in fists clenched on her knees, and all her veins stood out. I had an unkind thought about her knees pressed together so tightly now and smiled at her to make up for my silent rudeness. She smiled back with nostrils flared, and I could see that she was terrified.

As Kath filled out her forms, a side door opened and a child walked out. I mean she couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen. A nurse held her elbow and guided her unsteady step over to the middle-aged woman. She stood and hugged the child, who, dazed, did not hug back. She stroked the child's long black hair.
“Pobrecita.”

I tried not to stare.

The woman held the child. “Is finish?” she asked the nurse. “Gone?”

“Yes,” the nurse replied. “Gone.” And then, “You need us to call you a cab?”

“No, no. Bus.”

They left, and the black girl said, “Puerto Rican.”

Kath sat down and reached for a magazine on a low center table. “It shouldn't be too long, Grace. You will probably reach back to work by”—she looked at her watch—“eleven-forty-five, twelve.”

“Kath I'm not even thinking about leaving. Evie taking him to the park, she'll feed him if I'm not back.”

“I cannot stand that
comess
woman. God, she common.”

“I can't stand her either, but look how Ule is the one who upped and disappeared.” I couldn't believe that we were having this conversation.

The nurse came out again and glanced at her clipboard. “Jacqui Fentson.”

The black girl didn't move.

“Come with me, please.”

Jacqui Fentson still didn't move, and both Kath and I looked at her. She turned to Kath. “If you're in a hurry, you can go before me, you know.”

The nurse turned to Kath, and she looked at me and shrugged.

“I told you I'm not in any rush, Kath.”

She picked her bag up off the floor. “Ah shit, Grace, this chair uncomfortable as hell. Let me just get it over with.”

“You sure?” I asked. But Kath had already got up and was walking toward the nurse. Jacqui Fentson nodded her approval.

The nurse said, “Why don't you leave your bag with your friend?” And Kath turned back and dumped the big red mess on my lap. “See you in half hour,” she said.

I leafed through one of the college catalogs mixed in with the fashion magazines. The office was warm and still. No music played. Nobody came in. It was just Jacqui Fentson and me. She sat there in her robot pose, looking down at the floor. Outside the single window, the wind rose with a hollow
whoop
, and she grabbed my wrist in a vise hold. “Oh, my God, is that it . . . are they doing it?”

“What?” Her hand was freezing cold.

“That noise! Is that . . . the machine? The one they use to—? Oh, my God. What am I doing here?” And Jacqui Fentson released my wrist, picked up her backpack, and ran.

In the end, Kath insisted that I not come home with her, just put her in a car. “You tell me I'm stubborn,” I said to her as we both held on to the cab door, I trying to open it and Kath pulling it shut from inside, “but you're the stubborn one. Look, you barely have enough energy to hold on to the door.”

“Grace, just let me go alone, okay. Thanks for coming, but I need to go home and sleep. I'll call you when I come back to work.”

I let go of the door, and she closed it with so little strength I needed to reopen and slam it again. Kath didn't wave, only slumped against the upholstery and hugged her red bag close as the cabbie drove off.

OF COURSE SUMMER WAS
my favorite season. I loved the heat, the humidity, and the hot afternoon sun that was more brutal than anything I had ever felt at home. Ben had traded the sandbox for the sprinklers, and I often took him out again after lunch, when the sun was hottest and the other sitters had retreated to Evie's for cards and soaps and naps. In the days after Kath's abortion, I didn't want to see any of them. I didn't want to deal with Petal's righteousness or Meena's repeated awe that I was pretty even though I was black black, or Marva's silent bruises. I wanted to be home reading in my gallery with my mother washing clothes outside, my father gone to work, and Helen taking a nap. I wanted normal.

Ben looked me in the eyes one morning when I bent to buckle him into his stroller. “Why you so sad, Grace?” he asked.

I almost lied to him, but then I said, “I miss my mommy.”

He understood. “Don't worry, Grace. You'll see her when you go home.”

And I wondered when that was going to be.

Downstairs in front of Duke's podium, I ran into Evie. “You going park?” she asked.

As if there was anyplace else.

“Wait then,” she said, “me will walk over with you.”

Duke ignored me and saluted Ben. “Good morning, Mr. Benjamin, sir.”

Evie angled the twins' massive double stroller through the single doorway. I loved the wave of warm air after the cold air-conditioning. I followed Evie out to the pavement.

“So me hear your lady not going back to work after she make baby?”

“Maternity leave, Evie.”

“Not that me talking about. I hear she not going back at all, at all.”

“Where'd you hear that?”

“Oh.” Evie pushed the twins back and forth as if she still comforted babies. “Is news I giving you, then?”

They hadn't told me a thing. “Who told you that, Evie?”

She turned and looked at me full-on. Through the grease-clumped hair of her bangs, I saw peaks of ripened pimples on her forehead. “Oh, I not telling no tales on nobody, mama. When you see name call later, nobody can say Evie was involved in so-and-so. I learn my lesson with nigger people long before you was born. Anyhow, long time now me no see the thick, brown-skin girl with one piece of hair like donkey tail you lime with. She get fired for looking too nice?”

“No, Evie.” I laughed in spite of how bitchy she was. “Kath's sick.”

“And who take she work? The people looking for somebody to mind the baby? She coming back?”

I stared at her for three seconds and pushed on, furious that she didn't ask about Kath. She trotted to keep up with my stride. “Eh, like you want to leave Miriam to go and take that work instead?”

I escaped with Ben to the sprinklers. None of the other sitters ever came into the water, and I didn't mind getting wet with him. I grabbed Ben under the arms and ran him squealing through the spitting whales, and when I saw Bruce looking at us just outside the water's reach, I grabbed him and ran him through too. Petal was nowhere to be seen, but through the rainbow spray I thought I saw Ule's familiar profile. I couldn't believe it. There she was sitting on a bench in the park, pushing a new carriage with her foot and holding a folded newspaper less than an inch away from her eyes. Evie's double-wide was parked in front of the bench, and she and Margaret sat next to Ule, chatting.

I ran over to her and jumped up and down like an idiot, getting water on them all. “Ule!” I squealed as loud as Ben had in the sprinklers. “What you doing here?”

The paper snapped her forehead, and she kicked away the carriage. “But look my crosses. Child, is heart attack you want me to get heart attack and drap dead right here in the people park? Look how you make me heart beat fast. Is where you want me to be?”

“I thought you were gone, Ule.”

“Gone where, child?”

“Just gone.” I looked over to the two of them sitting on the bench. “Margaret's working for Linda Bloomberg, and Evie said—”

Evie scrambled from the bench and looked at me. “What me say, missy? Come, let me hear what me tell you.” The twins looked up at her from their shaded seats.

And then, come to think of it, I realized that Evie hadn't said anything specific. She'd never actually said that Ule had gone. She tapped her foot. “Well, is wait I waiting to hear. You know why you have nothing to say? Is because is lie you lying. Not one thing me tell you. Always playing you so quiet.”

Margaret rose too, nylon fabric rustling, and put her hand on Evie's heaving shoulder. “Mind your blood pressure, now.” And to me she said, “Grace, is perhaps best if you said no more.” She bent to unbuckle Sammy and Caleb. “I cannot abide this heat. It is worse than in Bimshire, not true?”