Minding Ben (29 page)

“Are you for real?” He grinned. “I'm from Maryland. This is summer work. I'm a senior at Cornell.”

I laughed. “So you're not the farmer's son?”

“Hell no. My dad's a D.C. lawyer. I either had to go caddy at Burning Tree or do this shit this summer. . . . I prefer to not carry other people's loads.”

“That makes sense to me.”

“So what's your story?” he asked. “Where you from?”

“Caribbean.”

“And what, you and your girlfriend drove up to the farm for the day? You missing the old country?”

“She's my boss. I take care of her son.”

He looked at me. “For real? So you're the mammy?” He pronounced it different from me.

“No, I'm the babysitter.”

He shook his head. “You island people keep setting us back, man. What you doing minding white people's kids? You need to be reading some books, girl.”

I took a step back from him, and then another, and then I turned around and walked away fast, crossing over the rows, putting space and strawberries between the two of us as quickly as I could. When I was good and far away, I stooped down again and finished filling up the sack.

On the drive back down, Miriam wanted to know what he'd said to me. “I saw you talking to him.”

“He was talking to everyone. I think it's part of his job.”

“So, what did he say to you?”

“Nothing, just were we enjoying the farm and were the strawberries sweet.”

“He didn't want your number?” She glanced away from the Taconic to me.

“No.”

MIRIAM DROVE UP THE
rutted road while Ben, tuckered out from his afternoon in the sun, slept peacefully. His red-stained face matched his red hair, and he looked like a boy clown at the end of a party. The car turned in to a dirt driveway with an old wooden sign shaped like a duck, its gray and white feathers weathered and faded. I could make out some letters on its raised wing:
DUCK HOLLOW
.

Miriam got out. “Stay by the car with Ben,” she told me.

She unlocked the side gate and went around the back. The house was big, with windows stretching away from both sides of the entrance for two stories, up to the attic. A dried wreath hung from the front door. The land off to the right was terraced and banked like the farm in miniature, except the squares held no crops. And the flowers all around—marigolds, dahlias, sunflowers, roses—needed to be pruned and weeded.

I walked off a bit, still close to the car. Some oaks on the property I recognized, but none of the immortelles and poui I knew from the forests back home. But there was a willow. I'd never seen one before, but I knew that's what the tree had to be. Long branches hung down to the ground like uncombed hair obscuring a crazy face. Hair that needed to be lovingly brushed back and plaited the way my mother did for Helen and me before we were too old to resist. Under the leaves the air was green, the color of the dark walk to my mother's farm. No matter how hot the day, the forest roof shaded the track and kept you cool until the dry brightness of our fields.

I liked the way the leaves on the willow curled into scrolls, and the way the branches shushed together as the wind blew through. This spot was magic. And then I realized that Dave and Vincent must have thought so too. At the base of the tree's trunk was a small marble heart with the initials VF. “Oh,” I said out loud and stepped away from this hallowed ground.

I went back and sat in the car. Ben sighed in his sleep. The leaves of the willow writhed like something alive. Miriam came around the way she had gone, walking slowly, and I could see old Mrs. Forgione stamped on her. She got into the car, took a tissue from her purse, and blew her slender nose hard. She'd been crying.

She hesitated before putting the key in the ignition. I hesitated too. I wanted to reach out to her, to ask if she was all right.

“Miriam, are you—”

“Huh, Grace. Your nice top got stained with strawberry juice. That'll never come out.”

I'd seen the drops dotting the front of my halter, plus Ben's small red handprint. Maybe the cleaners downstairs could make the fabric clean again. And even if he couldn't I realized that I wasn't upset. It had been a beautiful day. As Miriam drove away from Duck Hollow I pulled the paperback out of her handbag.

“What page are you on, Miriam?”

Her eyes were red. “It's bent in. Why?”

“I'll read out loud while you drive?” She could only say no.

She looked at me again and shrugged. Then she laughed a little. And I started to read.

N
ot two weeks later Dave rang the Bruckners' doorbell. It was early, nine o'clock in the morning. “Hey, Maria full of Grace,” he said in an exaggerated Brooklyn accent. “How ya doin'?”

“I'm doin' good,” she Brooklyned back. Dave had his arm around her neck as they walked to where I sat on the floor with Ben. He obviously hadn't combed his hair yet, and Miriam tried to fluff the flattened side with her fingers. “What are you doing here this early?”

Ben ran over to Dave. “Hi,
zio
, Grace and I are going to the playground. Want to come with the doggies?”

Dave flipped him onto his back. Miriam covered her eyes. “No, I do not want to go to your baby playground,” he told his nephew, “but that's why I'm here.” He kept Ben upside down. “Mir, I'm going to Brooklyn to the gardens, and I wanted to see if you wouldn't let Ben and Grace Jones come along.”

Dave winked at me, and my heart did a jump. I needed a break from the summertime routine. Lately, I'd been doing what my mother called taking stock and had realized that I was tremendously bored. Being in the towers was far better than being at Sylvia's, but still, day in and out, I minded Ben. This was my job, and the luster of going to Union Square almost every day was beginning to dull. I waited to hear what Miriam would say.

“Do you have a car seat in that truck?” she asked.

“Oh, come on, Miriam. What's going to happen? Grace can sit in the back and hold him if you're scared. Plus”—he looked at his bare wrist—“we'll be there in fifteen minutes. Or have you forgotten the way to Brooklyn? And, got ya, he doesn't use car seats in cabs.”

She made a face. “I don't know. I've been trying to keep him out of Brooklyn as much as possible.”

“Oh, Sister Maria Forgione”—Dave sounded scandalized—“you are such a hypocrite.”

Miriam shook her blond and black hair. “The opposite of a hypocrite, actually. But okay, they can go.”

Dave grinned. “How long till you're ready, Grace?”

I was ready now. “Whenever you are. I just need to pack Ben's bag.”

He checked the time on the sunflower clock. “Okay, let's meet up in the lobby in fifteen.” Twenty minutes later, as we headed downtown in Dave's truck that was meant for hauling garden supplies, he looked over at me. “So, Ms. Jones, how are you going to thank me for making your day?”

I rooted around in Ben's bag for the comb and hairbrush. “I'm going to work on your hedge.”

When we got out, Dave said, “Do you know where you are?”

I laughed and opened the back door to get Ben. “Dave, I stay right down the road on weekends.”

“You do? Down by the Lubavitchers? Then you go to the garden all the time. And here I was thinking I was giving you a treat.”

We crossed the parkway. “You know what,” I said as I held Ben on my hip, “I've never been to the gardens.”

“Well, good,” Dave said. “Or maybe not good that you haven't gone, but good still. I get to take you to one of the most beautiful places in Brooklyn.”

The gates revealed a secret world hidden in plain sight, and it was just blocks from Sylvia's apartment. Noisy Eastern Parkway fell away, and suddenly we were in paradise. Ben ran along the paths ahead of us, and I stopped and turned to Dave. “You must be kidding me.”

He put both hands on his waist and laughed. “What?”

“How come I didn't know this place existed? Dave, look.”

We'd come to the lookout. Spread below us were rows of trees set on trim lawns and a rambling rose garden in full bloom, all bordered with forest trees that kept the Brooklyn I had come to know at bay. Ben ran to us and back, checking out the water fountains and doing cartwheels on the grass—trying to, anyway. Dave, happy to be showing me around, watched and waited patiently as I gaped at every leaf and flower.

“How long has this been here, Dave?”

He shrugged. “A hundred years? From the early nineteen hundreds, at least. Vincent would have known exactly.”

“He liked coming here?”

“He used to be a gardener here.”

“Oh.”

“Okay”—Dave started walking downhill—“let's go down to the back. I need to order magic muck.”

The muck turned out to be compost, and since the guys were still turning the heap, Dave ordered some bags to be delivered when the rot was at its peak.

“Want to go sit in the cherry orchard before it gets too hot?” he asked.

While Ben wove in and out of the shady trees with twin boys he had met, I got my comb and brush and knelt behind Dave.

“Okay, I'm going to plait your hair.”

He leaned his head back. “I'm game. How are you going to do it?”

“Cane rows.”

“You mean cornrows?”

“That's what they call it in America, but I guess on the island slaves planted rows of cane, so we ended up with a different name.”

“Huh.” Dave looked at me. “That's so very, very plausible, Grace.”

“Thank you. Now stop turning around.” His curls were not easy to part. “Dave, you need to use conditioner.”

He tried to look around again, and I tapped him with the comb. “Ow, Grace. You know, since Vincent died, I don't think I've bought a single grooming product not meant for a dog or a plant.”

I decided to go ahead and ask him. “How long ago did he die, Dave? If you don't mind me asking.”

“No, no, it's okay. It'll be two years now come December.”

December would also make it two years since I had come to America. I thought that, exactly when I had been at the airport and afterward, Dave had been dealing with Vincent dying. “And he was sick?”

Dave took a big inhale. He waited until Ben and the twins ran past and said, “Leukemia.”

“Oh, I thought—” I shushed myself before I said it.

“What? Did you think he died of AIDS?”

I nodded because I had thought so, and I had wondered if Dave wasn't also sick.

“Don't worry. Everyone thinks he died of AIDS, but it was cancer. As if it should make a difference. Gone is gone.”

“So how come the Forgiones didn't come to see him, then?”

“Because, Grace, it had nothing to do with him being sick. They cut him off because he was gay. They just couldn't deal with that in that family. The only reason they deal with Miriam's conversion is because the old bastard of a father can't stand to lose two children.”

He stopped when Ben ran up for a drink, and I had a chance to think about what he'd said. Ben stared at the plaits I'd made in his
zio
's head as he drank the juice and then wandered off again. Dave said, “I am forever making you depressed, Grace Jones.”

He made me think. “It's sad, though,” I told him.

“So, okay, my turn. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” He tried to turn, and I swatted him again with the comb.

“Ow. Okay, you don't have to answer it if you don't want to, but I'm curious.”

“Now I'm curious too.”

“Seriously. How'd you end up in America working for Sol and Miriam? Your folks are still back on the island, right? What, you just got on a plane and came to Brooklyn?”

Funny how simple truth can be. “You know, that's about right.” I told him about my aunt and my mother and Daddy and Helen; about leaving home; about the scary flight; and about my cousin not picking me up at JFK.

He turned again. “Wait, no one picked you up?”

I didn't spank him. “Nope.”

“And you were how old?”

“Sixteen.”

“Jesus, Grace. So what did you do?”

“I took a cab to Brooklyn to a friend's house.”

“What do you mean you took a cab? To which friend? What happened?”

“Dave”—I pushed his head forward and started plaiting again—“you sure you want to hear this?”

“Yes, Grace. I do. . . . Tell me the whole story.”

The whole story. Kathy knew pieces—Sylvia and Mora too—but I'd never told the entire tale from beginning to end. How could I? It was still a story without an end. I took a breath, made a fresh part the length of Dave's head, and thought back to waiting for my cousin.

“Well, once upon a time . . .”

“Cut it out, Grace. Be straight with me.”

I decided not to point out the joke in what he had just said. “Well, okay. I waited for almost three hours, and then a man in a trench coat came up and asked if everything was all right. He had the bluest eyes, and I knew enough to know that men in those kinds of coats are usually trouble, so I told him everything's fine, thank you. Then a taxi driver who turned out to be from Trinidad asked me if I was all right. I told him I was waiting for my cousin, but for hours. He asked me if I didn't have her phone number. You know, the country mook that I was I didn't even think to call. Without me even asking, he gave me a handful of unfamiliar change and showed me where the phones were. Man, I called and called, and the coins kept falling into the return slot. The taxi driver was gone and the trench coat man came back and then I noticed he was wearing a badge. I told him my call wasn't going through, and he said I didn't need to dial the area code. Next try went through, and I got my cousin's answering machine. I left her a message. I left her about five messages. And then I remembered some other telephone numbers I had. My friend Colette had come to America just before me with her family. Her youngest sister, the one who's a little touched in the head, answered, and she yelled to Colette that Gracie was on the phone. I heard Colette say, ‘Gracie better not be calling collect, you know.' At first she didn't believe I was at JFK. Then she said hang up let her call her mother at work and to call her back in ten minutes. I called back in seven. Her mother said to take a taxi and come to their house immediately. Don't talk to anyone.

“I went up to a taxi driver and told him I need to go to Rockaway Parkway, please, but I only have this money, and I showed him the traveler's checks my mother had got from the bank in Penal. He put my suitcase in his trunk, locked his car, and took me to a counter in the airport to cash the checks. Then we drove into Brooklyn, the two of us alone in this black car as big as the prime minister's limo. The driver asked me if this was my first time in America. When I told him yes, he looked at his watch and at me in the rearview. ‘Make some Bajan friends,' he said. ‘Bajans won't steer you wrong. Trinis like to party too much.' I said ‘yes,' but nothing else because I didn't want to talk. I wanted to see America.

“He charged me fifty dollars but took only forty-five saying that the five dollars off was a welcome-to–New York discount. Colette opened the door before I could ring the bell, and the first thing she did was pick a wild licorice leaf out of my hair and say, ‘You bring the bush with you, girl.'

“Dave?”

“Uh-huh?”

“You're very quiet. You still listening?”

“Go on, Grace Jones. I'm listening.”

“Upstairs, I kept calling my cousin, and finally at around four-thirty she answered. Turns out she couldn't get the time off from the bank to pick me up and another sister was supposed to meet me—unfortunately, she is something called a crackhead. I was to take another taxi, a cab she called it, and come over to her house. I was so relieved. I finally looked around Colette's tiny apartment. She lived with her mother, her mother's boyfriend, two sisters, and a child aunt. The second bedroom had two double-decker beds and not much space for anything else. Fat chairs covered with plastic stuffed the living room to the walls, and the whole place seemed like a dolly house. My suitcase had to stay out in the hallway.

“So, finally, finally I got to my cousin's apartment, which you know is just down here on Bedford. It's early evening of a long day. I'm in a daze. This morning I was in the village and now I have no idea where I am. She has a nice two-bedroom apartment, but it's just my cousin and her son and now me. We can all fit here nicely, I thought. He was playing Nintendo Duck Hunt, and together we shot and killed ducks flying on-screen. She went out to get Chinese for dinner. Delicious pork-fried rice and sweet and sour chicken, food you only ate back home if you went to some fancy function. I gave her the presents my mother sent and took a few things out of my suitcase. We talked, and then I started falling asleep on the couch, so she showed me where I am to stay, the top bunk in her son's room.

“The next morning my cousin came into the room and asked what my plans were. Well—and I was a little shy in front of this, after all, stranger—show me what you usually make your son for lunch, maybe the shop you use, and, oh, where his school is of course. The things I need to know to help you mind him, right? And maybe tomorrow take me to register for high school. She made this face I recognize, and I think we really are cousins in truth, but then she says, ‘I told my mother not to get me mixed up in her business. You can't stay here with me. I need my privacy, and my son needs his space. I did my part. I got you off the island, but I can't have no sixteen-year-old girl living in my house, and you looking like that.'

“I wanted to say, ‘Can we call your mother, my aunt, and see what she says? And how do I look?' Also I want to tell her, ‘This wasn't the plan,' but I don't say anything. She told me I could stay for a couple of days, but no more than that. Then she made her son a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and took him to school herself.”

“Grace,” Ben piped up. “I could have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

“Only if you give me the magic word!”

“Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!” Sandwich in hand, Ben ran off. Dave turned to me and smiled.

“At least I ran up her phone bill,” I said, laughing.

“First I rang the woman on the hill and told her to get my mother. That involved waiting for a taxi to pass, sending a message up the Quarry Road, and then waiting for my mother to come back. I told her I would call back at noon. Then I rang Colette, who was gone to school, but her mother, Hyacinth, was home, so I thanked her for yesterday and told her my today problem. ‘Talk to your cousin again tonight,' she says, ‘then call back.'