Minding Ben (5 page)

I
counted the lit numbers up to twenty-two, checking to make sure there truly was no thirteenth floor. I still hadn't got accustomed to the idea of living in an apartment. How could you live without a yard to step out in any time you wanted? Without trees and dirt? At 22B, I took a breath and rang the bell.

A tall man opened the door. Tall and lean with green eyes, curly orangy brown hair, and a nice smile.

“You're Grace?” One orange eyebrow arched to an upside-down vee. His voice sounded like a Muppet's, coming from the very back of his throat.

Willing myself calm, I smiled back. “Yes.”

“I'm Mr. Bruckner . . . Solomon.” He stuck out his hand. “Come on in, Grace.”

I stepped in and, dazzled by sunlight from the wall of windows, tripped into him.

“Are you all right?” He put a hand on my back.

“Fine, I'm fine. The light made me blind.”

“Yeah, it's bright in here. Stand for a sec.” He was still holding me.

I stepped out of his touch. “No, no, I'm good.” My eyes adjusted, and I did a quick look around. A rug ran the length of the corridor, leading into a sunlit living room. It was a neat and cheery space, but the cushions on the couch were messy, as if someone had slept there. A dining table with four chairs was pushed against the wall under a sunflower clock, and a television, much bigger than Sylvia's, sat in an open cupboard with a VCR, a stereo system, and a cable box. Next to the TV was a set of shelves filled with glass and ceramic barnyard animals: scratching hens and puffed-up cocks cast midcrow, fat sows with suckling piglets, grazing cows and sheep, a horse with a cart. Someone had arranged clusters—still life on a busy farm. Take away the horse, jumble the livestock, and this could be my yard back home.

“Can I get you a drink?” Mr. Bruckner asked. “Some coffee?”

Coffee was the last thing I needed, but still I asked for a cup. It seemed like something I should do. “Yeah?” He seemed surprised. “How do you take it?”

“Milk and no sugar, please.” He went off, and I looked around some more. I expected chandeliers like in the lobby, but the ceiling was bare and nubby, a texture that made my forearms itch.

“Grace, you're still standing?” Mr. Bruckner had returned with a big mug that said
HUSBAND
#1. “Take off your coat. Please, sit. Anywhere.” He gestured around the room with the mug.

I sat in an easy chair and sank like Goldilocks into Mama Bear's soft cushions. “Whoops!” I said, struggling out of the folds and feeling like an idiot. “Anywhere but that one, right?” Mr. Bruckner laughed, and when he handed me the mug, I realized that I'd got the caption wrong and it actually read #1
HUSBAND
.

“Miriam's coming out with Ben. In the middle of all this, we're getting ready for shul. Coffee okay?”

“It's fine, thanks.” Somewhere between asking and telling I said, “You're interviewing a lot of women.”

Mr. Bruckner sighed. “Tell me about it. Miriam wanted a range. Duke's rung up every fifteen minutes since eight-forty-five. I think we have more coming on Saturday.”

That didn't please me at all, and I held the warm mug close to my lips without sipping. Down the hall I heard voices, a woman and a giggling child.

Mr. Bruckner crossed his legs and flashed his patterned socks. “Dreidels,” I said, trying to flaunt what I had learned at Mora's. I didn't mention that dreidel season was long past. He twisted his ankle to look, but, before he answered, his wife and child came in. Wrapped and tied tight in a fluffy white robe, Mrs. Bruckner's body waged war between thick and slender. Blond with shoulder-length hair and eyelash-grazing bangs, she had the narrowest nose I had ever seen, dark brown eyes, and her face glistened. She was short, but the high heels of her pointy red shoes threw her forward and up. Hel and I called those kick-and-stab, and they were forbidden in our house.

I stood, but Mrs. Bruckner waved me down. “You can sit.” In person she sounded even more stuffed up. She turned to her husband. “Sol, finish Ben up in a bit?” To me she said, “It's Purim, so we're going to shul.”

Mr. Bruckner reached for the boy. He had freckles dotting his nose and his father's ginger hair. “Hey, buddy, this is Grace. Say hi to Grace.”

“Hi to Grace.” He hid his face but peeked at me from between spread fingers.

“So you're Grace,” Mrs. Bruckner said. “You're not at all what I was expecting.”

I wondered what she'd expected that I wasn't. “Yes, Mrs. Bruckner,” I answered. “I'm Grace.” I smiled, as if my name could give me an advantage.

“Okay,” Mrs. Bruckner said, “so I'm Mrs. Bruckner, this is Ben, and you've already met Mr. Bruckner.” Her thin lips parted only slightly when she spoke. “Before we start, I should tell you again we're paying two hundred dollars. After a year there's a twenty-five-dollar raise. You're okay with that?”

“Yes.”

She leaned in, and I saw that she had applied a cosmetic masque to her face. It had begun to dry into tiny gills at the corners of her mouth. I wanted to ask her if she was comfortable, but instead I sat with my hands folded in my lap, waiting to hear her out. Ben knelt, squeezing his father's cheeks between his chubby fingers and kissing the pouty lips he made.

“This is a very demanding job,” Mrs. Bruckner went on, and the masque around her lips whitened on
demanding.
“I'll go over what we're looking for.” She read the list of duties from two handwritten sheets and included some she'd left out before. “Anything I'm forgetting, Sol?”

“I think you covered it, Mir.”

“It's a lot of work, but you've got to factor in what free room and board in this city is worth.” She lifted one shoulder and turned her head to the side. “On the phone you said you could read?”

“Yes, I can read.”

“Hold on.” She clicked off down the corridor.

“Hey, Ben”—I faced him and his father—“how old are you?”

“Three years old.” He held up four fingers and slid down his father's legs. He reached for my hand, bent my thumb and forefinger, and said, “Three.”

“You're good with numbers. Do you go to school?”

“When I'm four years old I get to go on the school bus.”

Solomon started singing “The Wheels on the Bus.” Ben balled his fists and made rollover motions. “Sing, Grace, sing.”

Surprised he remembered my name, and knowing my rendition of “The Wheels on the Bus” could get me the job, I sang along, feeling foolish. Mrs. Bruckner came in on “All over the town.”

“The last nanny said she could read”—she shook her head—“so don't think this has anything to do with you personally.” She passed me a children's storybook. “This is one of Ben's favorites. Start from the title.”

“
Pish, Posh, Said Hieronymus Bosch
, by Nancy Willard.”

Ben laughed and said, “Pish, posh,” in an English accent. I smiled and, trembling slightly, read, “Once upon a time there was an artist named Hieronymus Bosch who loved odd creatures. Not a day passed that the good woman who looked after his house didn't find a new creature lurking in a corner or sleeping in a cupboard. To her fell the job of feeding them”—Ben recited along with me—“weeding them, walking them, stalking them, calming them, combing them, scrubbing and tucking in all of them—until one day—”

“Uh-oh, she's gonna get mad,” said Ben.

Mrs. Bruckner was nodding, Mr. Bruckner smiling, and Ben, bless his heart, said, “More, more. Read more, Grace.”

I read on until Mrs. Bruckner turned to her husband. “Time to finish dressing him, Sol.” He scooped Ben in his arms, and the two of them disappeared down the hall, Ben saying, “Pish, posh, pish, posh.”

“You're an excellent reader”—she emphasized
excellent
—“but reading is only a small part of this job.”

She looked at the sunflower clock. “Hold on,” she said and went into the kitchen, where I overheard “Duke? Duke, it's Mrs. Bruckner. How many are still there?

“It's ten-fifteen now,” she continued, “if anyone else comes, say the position's been filled.”
Yes!
Mrs. Bruckner paused. “Yes, filled.” She sounded annoyed, but then she said, “Okay, take the names and phone numbers. Tell the ten-fifteen a few minutes more. Actually, don't tell her anything.” There was a click, and she came back into the living room. Her masque had turned opaque white, like the hardened flesh inside a dry coconut. “Here”—she passed me a pen and notebook—“write your name and address.”

Mora had done this too, and later confessed it had been to see if I could write. Mrs. Bruckner looked at the page and said, “So, Grace, tell me what you think I need to know about you.”

“I'm from Trinidad—”

“Amazing,” she interrupted. “You read and speak so well for someone . . . from the islands.” Mrs. Bruckner laughed and shook her head. “You know, the last nanny, Carmen, Jamaican, she said she could read, so I never bothered to test her. I just took it for granted she had some kind of education. Well, Sol and I figured something was wrong after we told her to keep a list of, you know, things we needed. Cheese.” Mrs. Bruckner snorted. “Ben likes yellow American grilled cheese sandwiches. C-h-i-e-s, that's it. That's how she spelled
cheese
. Can you believe it? Now, everyone reads at the interview.”

I half smiled and thought about the older woman downstairs, the one muttering about not really wanting this job. In spite of needing the job myself, I hoped Mrs. Bruckner would give her something other than
Hieronymus Bosch
. “I've been in New York for a year, and I live in Brooklyn—”

“With family?”

It was easier just to agree.

“I called Mora last night, and she gave you a very good reference.”

I smiled. “I liked working for Mora.”

“I also spoke to the oldest boy.” Mrs. Bruckner said, “He's a Ben too.”

“You talked to Ben?”

She nodded. “He answered the phone. You learn more talking to children than to parents. But not to worry, Ben gave you a laudatory recommendation. Talkative kid. And they're Jews?”

“Uh-huh, they kept kosher.”

She leaned in. “So you know how to keep a kosher house?”

“I know you can't mix meat and dairy, and the silverware. Are you kosher?”

“No, no.” She tucked her chin and shook her head briskly. “But Ben's grandparents will like that you know that stuff.”

I smiled.
Thank you, Mora
.

Her next question surprised me. “Do you have a boyfriend in Brooklyn?”

“No.”

“So there won't be any men coming to visit you during the day?”

“No, Mrs. Bruckner. There's no one to bring.”

“Good. Sol!” she called down the hall, “come see if you have anything to tell Grace. I have to wash my face.”

Ben ran down the hall. She bent to kiss him, and he reached up both hands to grab her face. She pulled away, shaking her head. “Mama's face is icky.”

Mr. Bruckner came and leaned against the side of the couch. “So you want to work for us, Grace?”

More than anything. I wanted to say, Yes, please hire me, please. But the thing to do now was sit calmly and make a good impression, and so I said, “Yes, I'd very much like to work for you.”

He gave me the same look as when I'd asked for coffee and asked what Mrs. Bruckner had not. “Any questions you have for us?”

I wanted to know about the illiterate babysitter who couldn't spell
cheese
, and about sponsorship. “Mrs. Bruckner said the last sitter couldn't read. Is that why she doesn't work for you anymore?” My question seemed to surprise him. “One of the reasons,” he said more to himself than to me. He leaned his lanky torso toward me. “She took Ben on the subway. We warned her to never take him on the subway, and she did. To run her own errands.”

“Ya-ya took me on the choo-choo train, Grace. Choo choo!”

“Mr. Bruckner—”

“Sol.”

“Sol, do you know how soon you and Mrs. Bruckner will hire someone?”

“I think very soon.”

“And when would work start?”

“Either this coming Monday or the Monday after.”

“How many other women are you considering?”

He smiled at me then and jostled Ben a little more. “That, I'm not too sure of, but I get the feeling you're going to be very high on our list. You know, Grace, you remind me a lot of someone I used to know.”

He was going to say more, but Mrs. Bruckner came out, still packaged in her robe, though now the masque was gone. Her face was pockmarked on the cheeks and reddish on the sides of her mouth. Crow's-feet fanned out from the corners of her eyes and disappeared under her blond hair.

I held out my hand. “Thank you both very much.” She shook my hand, tighter now than before.

I turned to Ben. “Bye-bye, Mr. Pish-posh.”

He held a fistful of his father's orange hair and with his other hand waved. “Bye-bye, Miss Pish-posh.”

K
athy laughed when she opened the door. “Are you crazy? You must think you still living on an island. Grace, you not cold?”

“I'm frigging freezing.”

“I'll lend you a scarf when you leave.” Then, with a grin that showed her wide-spaced, pointed teeth, she asked if I'd come to lime for the rest of the day.

“That was the plan, but Sylvia wants me to pick up Dame from by Dodo.”

Kathy shook her head. She was one of those Trinidadians of indeterminate race, a real callaloo. Her
chabine
hair came almost to her waist and in a ponytail looked just like a real pony's tail. She was red-skinned, short, and plump—or as she liked to call herself, slim-thick—and her brown eyes drooped down. Once we'd tried to figure her out. Her father's parents were East Indian and black, making him a
dougla
. Her maternal grandfather had been pure indentured Chinese, and her long dead grandmother was said to be mulatto, half black woman and half Scottish priest. When I first saw a picture of Kathy and her two sisters, I told her that for sure her mother kept secrets from her dad.

Kathy had taken to Jamaicans. She left Trinidad exactly three months before I did and dropped her
h
's as frequently as she remembered to pronounce them. Not only had she picked up the accent but she had picked up the style. Now she sported a purple sweater and tight blue jeans. Simple enough, but Kathy had only last Saturday gone to the Empire Boulevard post office to pick up her very own BeDazzler. Brooklyn Jamaicans were crazy about the potential for transformation locked away in every bite of the BeDazzler. Three bracelets of rhinestones sparkled on Kath's cuffs, and a line of jewels dotted up each arm. From the shoulders the stones ringed the neck of her sweater in three rows to mimic the cuff effect. Kathy had repeated the triple pattern on the hem of her jeans and had studded up its outer side seams to the front pockets. This dazzling effect was completed with purple, spiny stars on both back pockets and one final oversize rhinestone centered on her back loop. All in all, I estimated about two and a half pounds of gems.

“You look nice,” I told her.

“Fuck off.”

“No, for real, Kath. You're all a-glitter.” We were not in sync about the beauty of the night sky imitated on clothes.

“Why you don't let me BeDazzle your turtleneck?”

“And go home naked?”

“No, stupid. The machine 'ere.”

“You brought your BeDazzler to work?”

“It's portable.” Kathy got serious. “Grace, why you take all this rubbish from Sylvia. She's not your mother, she's not your aunt, she's not even your frigging cousin. She work
obeah
on you, or what?”

“After everything when I first came here”—I shrugged—“if it wasn't for her, I could be floating in a river or living on the subway. Who knows?”

“
I
know,” Kathy said. “I know if not her, you'd 'ave found somewhere else and you wouldn't be so miserable.”

“Who says I'm miserable?” I faced her. “I feel sorry for Sylvia—”

“Sorry for she,” Kathy interrupted, and the venom in her voice forced her Trinidadian vernacular. “Tell me again why you sorry for she. So much trouble this miserable woman make you see in New York.”

I shrugged. “I just do, Kath. Sometimes she sits on that busted kitchen chair—don't laugh—not talking to anyone and, you know, she just looks pitiful. Plus,” I went on, “her husband's crazy and locked up in the G Building.” Sylvia had run out of dreams. She had her children, cheap rent, and bought groceries with special checks she got every month. “But come on”—I looked around—“I don't want to waste time talking about Sylvia. Check out this place.”

This was by far the largest apartment I had ever been in. From the outside, the building looked like a warehouse. Inside, polished wooden planks stretched out like in a dance hall. Rough, bare beams crisscrossed the ceiling, and white columns, thicker than a full-grown teak, broke up the space. Large paintings of nothing I could identify hung on the unfinished brick walls. They looked strangely right in the vast emptiness of the place.

“What do they do, Kathy? How much money do you have to have to get a place like this?”

She pointed to the rough red bricks. “For all the money they have, can't they afford some cement?” Kath put her hands on her waist. “Money don't mean taste, Grace.”

“I guess.” But I loved this open space. “I'd grow trees in here if this was mine.”

“And I'd hire a mason.”

Someone was missing. “Where the baby, Kath?”

“Sleeping.”

I looked around for a crib or a bassinet. Nothing in this space indicated a child. “Where?”

“Come.” I followed her but stopped to stare through a glass wall broken up into big old-fashioned panes. The view was stunning. Off in the cold, clear distance, a river moved slowly. Barges floated motionless on its calm surface. “You coming or what?”

I followed Kathy through a door and into the nursery.

“The father build the crib and that rocking chair,” she whispered.

“Really?” The crib was something. Dark slats of smooth-planed wood fitted together without a single nail. “He make that too?” I pointed to the mobile from which hung a T-square, a hammer, and carved miniatures of the same buildings that were on the posters in the Bruckners' lobby.

Kathy nodded, and I said, “Amazing.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, “but he could've at least painted it blue or something. Look how bare this room is. When I have a baby, I want an all pink nursery. Or all blue. Everything to match. The curtains. The carpets. Everything pink or blue.”

I liked the natural wood, and the sheep's wool on the floor, but I didn't disagree out loud.

We went back out and sat on the leather sofa. “Wait,” Kath said, “before we start to talk. I'm hungry. You want to order some food?”

I was hungry too, but dead broke. “What do they have here?”

“Yogurt, Grace. That's not food. Let's get Chinese.”

I made a face. “I've told you Chinese poisons me.” Ever since my first full day in America, even the smell of Chinese made my stomach upset.

“Pure mind over matter.”

“Give me yogurt now and order when I'm gone.”

She got us yogurt and licked clean the underside of her foil top. “Okay, so the interview. You think you get it?”

“I have no way of knowing.” The yogurt tasted like ice cream. “The little boy liked me.”

She twirled her tongue around her spoon. “The father good-looking?”

“Kath.”

“What? It have more than one way to skin a cat, Grace. You have to consider all the possibilities.”

“Whore,” I said and changed the topic. “How Donovan?”

She didn't answer, and I hoped I hadn't pissed her off. Her Donovan was married and conducted most of his work out of a silver Maxima. She got up from the sofa, where her jeweled pockets had left two starry prints deep in the cushion. The leather was so soft I could see the fine lines pressed out from her ponytail in the broad indent her back had made. Kathy refused to go Jamaican on her hair. The stylists in Brooklyn tried to get her to spray-paint her hair gold, offered gun and star stencils, glitter, and tubs of gel, but Kathy was firm.

“Grace”—her top half was deep in the refrigerator—“your birthday soon come, right?”

“Next week Friday. And yours is April twenty-first.”

She came back with two more containers of yogurt and passed me one. Strawberry.

“No thanks, Kath. No more yogurt for me.”

She shrugged. “You still so young.”

This was precious. “I beg your pardon?”

“You still so young.”

I threw a cushion at her head. “I always knew you were crazy. You're a year older than me.”

She carefully peeled the foil and went for the underside. “Donovan's throwing a bashment, and you have to come.”

I hated the Brooklyn parties. The dark caverns with one exit and hundreds of people sweating to the loud music made me claustrophobic. I did not want to die in a basement in Brooklyn.

“Four words, Kath: Happy Land Social Club. How many dead?”

She ignored me. “It's at International.”

“
If
I do come, I'm warning you from now, I'm not dressing up.”

“Oh, Grace, you have to.” She bounced on the sofa and sounded just like the rich girl she had been in high school. “It's my birthday, and all them Jamaican yardbirds going to be decked out. You have to dress up. Represent.”

“I can't believe you buy into that rubbish. Represent my ass, Kath. Representation costs money.”

“I'll pay”—Kathy smiled to herself—“I'll give you an outfit for your birthday. Don't think about it, just promise me you'll come. Promise please, Grace?” She sounded like my little sister. I softened.

“Okay, I'll come.”

“You know who else coming?” She couldn't wait for my guess. “Brent.”

Brent was a friend of Donovan's who was not a dealer. He swore he had a real job, but, the two short times I'd limed with him before, he wouldn't tell me what he did. “He asked Donovan about you, you know.”

“Stop lying, Kath.”

“I'm not lying. He told Donovan to make sure and bring the sexy darkie, the tall one with the cat-eye.”

“Did he say that?” I eyed her. “Don't play games with a big woman.”

Kath loved this. “Will you dress up?”

“Maybe.” I felt warm. No one had called me darkie since I left Trinidad, and I had come to understand that in America the word had a completely different meaning from what the Rastas back home whispered.

“You really like him, don't you?” Kathy looked surprised.

“Oh yeah, but don't say anything. He has a woman.” I stopped short, not wanting to hurt her feelings.

“No, you're right. You shouldn't get involved with him. I'm in with Donovan already.” She brushed the tip of her ponytail against her cheek. “God, Grace, what are we doing here? This is what we come New York for?”

“Is only for a time, Kath. Once we get our papers, it won't be like this forever, right? A little bit of catch-ass and then we can work it out. Besides, you forgetting home?” But Kathy had not. Neither had I. Life back home was over and had been over even before we left. There was simply nothing to decide. Live at home, go to school, graduate. Still live at home while teaching primary school, be courted by and marry either Clint or Carl, build a concrete house with a flower garden in the front, have some babies, and go to the beach on Sundays after church. It was all planned out.

Kath's life was planned out too, but in a slightly different direction from mine. Her family was well known and rich. Her East Indian grandfather had been disowned for taking up with a Negro woman. He and his wife had worked hard, starting off with a vegetable stall in front of their mud shack. The stall turned into a little parlor, then into a shop on the first floor of their two-story concrete house, and then into a chain of supermarkets. Their one son had attended the island's best school, married the green-eyed daughter of a Chinese shopkeeper, and gone into politics. Long past dirt under their fingernails, Kath's parents had raised her to be a princess.

“You know something, Kath?”

“Umm?” She was studying her bare toes.

“I've been planning to leave home since I was ten. My neighbor spent six months in New York. She came back talking about the skyscrapers and the lights and the snow and the subway and people always in a hurry and the big park in the middle of the city and two juicy apples for twenty-five cents, a quarter she said. I remember watching her daughter massage her legs from this big bottle of Palmer's lotion. A whole bottle of lotion for ninety-nine cents. Man, I was so jealous. Right then I made up my mind I was going to New York.”

“So, if I getting this right”—Kath looked up from her toes—“you come America for lotion? Your neighbor didn't tell you how cold it was and how hard it would be to get a job and you needed to have papers for everything.”

I knew Kath was right, but she couldn't get me down. I'd left. I'd said I was going to leave and I did it. That had to count for something. I held her gaze. “Yeah, but guess what? The hardest part is over. We're here. What time is it?”

“Half past one.”

I jumped up. “I've got to go. I'm supposed to pick Dame up at two.”

“You didn't tell me about the interview.”

“I don't know. They interviewed about ten women, and they're not done. The most important thing, though, Mrs. Bruckner told me they would consider sponsorship.”

“Really?” We were walking to the door. “Grace, be careful with these people though, once they have that to hold over your head, they'll make you see hell before they sign anything. Who would
want
someone without papers? That's just asking for trouble. Here.” She handed me a floaty yellow scarf.

“Mmm.” The fabric felt like a cloud against my cheek. “You sure I can use this?”

“She has about ten. If she misses it, she'll think the cleaning lady took it.”

I wrapped the scarf around my neck, and something fell. Kath tried to close the door on my hand as I bent to pick it up.

“Hey, what the? You almost broke . . . Kath, what is this?” Two twenties tightly folded together.

“Take it.” She adjusted the scarf around my neck. “You can pay me back when you get the job.”

“I want to say no, but I need it. Thanks so much.”

“Just come to the fete. And promise me you'll dress up.”

“Blackmail. This is dirty money.”

She held out her palm. “Give it back, then.”

I curled my lip at her. “I'll dress up.”