Original Sins (77 page)

Besides, a few white people had been pretty good to him. Like Dog Fur, who'd asked him to start calling her Deirdre and stop saying “ma'am.” Like Mr. Prince at the mill. Like The Five in the Castle Tree.

After that, when Leon invited him to go down to the office, he usually had reasons why he couldn't. If that was what he had to put up with to be with Leon, he'd rather be alone. Leon started calling him Mr. Junior Church Usher again.

One night walking back to his mother's from the subway, he passed an alley. An old blind wino he'd seen stumbling around the streets with his white cane was sprawled in it. When Donny was halfway down the block, he looked back and saw a patrol car pull up. Two cops hopped out and walked into the alley. He heard some grunts and thumps. Crossing the street, Donny walked back toward the alley. Those laws had that wino on his feet and was throwing hands at him like he was a punching bag.

Donny wondered what that old guy had done. Looked to him like he'd been out cold, but he must not of been to provoke them like that. He felt bad for the old man, but it wasn't his business. The cops dropped him against the wall, kicked him a few times, and walked out of the alley and down the street, twirling their nightsticks.

When Donny wasn't working, he didn't have a lot to do, what with Leon playing army and Arthur wanting him out of the house. He'd shoot some pool, or go to Clyde's for a drink, and a few cats Leon had introduced him to might nod and say, “What's happening, farmer?” But he realized right away they didn't really want to hear. He had to admit he was lonely. He wasn't used to passing somebody on the street and not knowing them, not stopping to talk. In Pine Woods he was Donny Tatro, star forward class of '63, grandson of Ruby Tatro, first colored man on at Benson Mill, youngest deacon at Mount Zion, husband of Rochelle and father of Isaac and Nicole. Up here he wasn't nobody.

Seemed like Arthur and his mother took pity on him, for once: One Saturday night they invited him to go with them to a Ray Charles concert at the Apollo. Big shiny cars pulled up out front, and out stepped people dressed like he'd never seen colored people dressed before—except maybe the Supremes on television or something. Furs and jewels and slithery gowns, tuxedos and lacy shirts. Just like Chubby and Dog Fur. His own mother wore a fox stole with tiny shining eyes and paws. When he got on at the Ford plant, him and Rochelle would dress up like this and come in from New Jersey every now and then.

Ray was led to his piano in his tuxedo. His backup band in their glittering gold tuxes stood up as sections, threw back their heads, and blared out their parts. The Rayettes in long sequined gowns and straight-hair wigs danced complicated but perfectly coordinated routines, while singing the backup in close harmony.

As Ray began singing “Georgia on My mind,” the huge room became quiet. “…
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind
…”

“Yeah, sing it!” a man called.

Several people moaned as though in pain;

Donny started thinking about Pine Woods—the sun in the willows down by the river, bare feet slapping on sticky red clay. Donny felt like moaning himself, but managed not to. For Arthur's sake. Arthur wouldn't want no funky nigger of a stepson moaning in public.

But he hadn't been able to earn a living down there. A white doctor had stitched his cheek up all wrong. Jed Tatro and his friends drove through Pine Woods throwing bottles. Why was everybody moaning with homesickness, or wanting to? Damned if he could figure out why he felt tonight like a Hebrew in Egypt, driving cars around that pyramid downtown.

“Shit, how come we left, Mama?” he asked as they drove home.

“Pine Woods?”

“Yeah. Big old ugly place up here, full of hateful strangers.”

“Honey, I know why I left. And I reckon you got your reasons, too. You just a little homesick right now. But you'll get over it.”

The next morning he wandered around the streets trying to think what to do with himself. In Pine Woods Sunday had never been a problem—church in the morning, a big dinner, an afternoon of visiting, church in the evening. As he watched his alligator shoes moving along the grey pavement, he thought about how many hundreds of miles of sidewalk he'd covered up here, rarely the same section more than a few times. That sidewalk down the middle of Pine Woods, his feet knew it as well as his hands knew Rochelle's body—each dip and bump and crack. Every point at which your roller skate wheels switched from a humming ramble to a clatter. The new sections, decade after decade, which contained the initials of almost every child in town—many now middle-aged, like his own mother. You had to tame a sidewalk like a bronco, make it your own. Up here the only spot he really knew was the one in front of his chair at the parking garage, and he didn't know that very well. But it wasn't something you could just up and do. Took years of traveling down it and lounging around it, in every season, on every conveyance you could think of.

He passed a Baptist church. Arthur and his mother said they didn't want nothing to do with no church, that it'd been used to keep colored people—“black” people, they said—down for 300 years. But they weren't him, man, and he thought maybe he'd just go in, sing a few hymns, maybe not feel so bad.

A nice-looking man standing out front in a dark suit handed him a handbill that invited all “black Christians” to some temple that afternoon to hear about a “program for the Black Man which does not require you to love those who do not love you.” Well, this got him curious to find out who this was. He went into the church and sang “I'll Fly Away” and felt better thinking about his grandmaw and everybody probably singing the same thing right then in Mount Zion back home, fanning themselves with their programs.

From there he went to this temple, which was actually just an old empty store. In the vestibule these two huge cats in suits with little red buttons on their lapels frisked him, turned his pockets inside out. He wondered if he had the right place. Seemed more like jail than church. One ushered him into the packed room, which was ringed with more big men in dark suits.

A little old man with grey hair and glasses walked in, and the congregation whispered and shifted in their seats. He said something foreign-sounding, and they said something foreign back. Then he started in to preaching. Sometimes somebody yelled, “That's right!” But there wasn't any clapping or foot-stomping or singing or testifying. Every now and then dudes in dark suits marched up front and traded places with the ones already there. And these big brown grocery bags kept passing up and down the rows, getting fuller and fuller of money.

The preacher was scribbling on this blackboard and kept pointing to the mess he'd made like it was a sentence or something. But Donny couldn't read his writing. Maybe he was some kind of foreigner or something who didn't know how to write in English. The actual truth was, Donny couldn't figure out what was coming down here at this store they called a temple.

“Black princes were wearing silk robes and plotting the stars in Asia and Africa while white men, huddled in caves in Europe in animal skins, were ripping apart raw meat with their bare hands. You people know none of this because the white man has censored what you've been taught. You need to relearn history.”

History was history, and the less Donny had to do with that shit, the better he liked it. The only C he ever got in high school was in World History.

“The slavemaster controls the economy and sees to it that the Black Man has difficulty finding a job. And when he finds one, it usually pays less than his wife can earn. The wife is lured into despising her husband and admiring the slavemaster, who sends her back home to her humiliated husband with blue-eyed babies.”

Naw. Naw, he couldn't see it. Blaming your problems on someone else. If you worked hard and lived right, you'd get your reward. At least,
he
aimed to. He walked out while the women on one side and the men on the other embraced each other, exchanging greetings. Slavemaster. These people up here was crazy.

One evening in the Chicken Coop, he ran into Leon, sitting reading a newspaper over a plate of bones picked clean. Donny wouldn't of thought Leon could read, but up here in New York City surprises never ceased.

Leon stood up and tried to Patty Cake Donny. “Hey, farmer. What's happening, baby?”

Donny ordered him some chicken. Leon pointed to a picture on the front of the paper. “Man, that is one bad black beautiful nigger.”

The cat was behind some bars. There was a chain around his waist, attached to handcuffs. He was glaring into the camera with one clenched fist raised as high as the chain would allow.

Leon sighed. “That dude is ten motherfuckers.”

Donny chewed his chicken. “I don't see what's so beautiful about being in prison.”

“That cat had the courage to put himself on the line, man.”

“My daddy died in prison.”

“All our fathers and brothers are dying in prisons all over this country.”

“No other kin of
mine
, just my daddy.”

Leon looked at him, irritated.

“Yall up here all the time talking slavery. Ain't provoking people into tossing you into jail just like selling yourself down the river?”

“You ain't got to provoke nobody, farmer. You got you a dark skin, they as soon toss you in jail as look at you. Rather would.”

“If you live right and treats people good, they going to treat you good.”

“Oh Jesus Christ, farmer, you just pathetic, is all.” Leon stood up, shrugged on his black leather jacket, and walked out.

Donny ate his chicken wing, but felt like crying. To be up tight with Leon, seemed like he'd have to buy him a costume and learn a new bunch of words and talk a lot of junk. He wished there was somebody around could like him just the way he was.

He decided he'd go to bed early, maybe jerk off. But when he walked in the door, his mother shoved the want ads from the newspaper in his face.

“But I got me a job, Mama.”

“It's a dead-end job, Donny. You got to get moving, child, if you gon make something of yourself up here.”

“Mama,” he said menacingly, “I'm waiting to hear on that Ford job.”

She sat down, looking upset. “Honey, maybe you ought to start looking around for a place of your own, think about bringing up Rochelle and the children?”

First she runs off and leaves me, he thought. Now she runs me out. How bout that for a mother? It was that motherfucking Arthur.

The phone rang. It was Rochelle. She said her and the kids missed him, all like that. “When you gon send me some more money, sugar?”

“I'm sending you all I can, Rochelle.”

“Honey, we supporting four children. Got us loans to pay off. I just ain't making it on my maiding money, Donny. Thought with you up there things might ease up some.”

“Doing the best I can,” he mumbled. “Still waiting on that Ford job.”

“You reckon you'll get it?”

“Let you know. Who you seen lately?”

“Well, saw Charlene at the laundromat today. She's having her another baby. Uh, Tadpole's home on leave.”

Donny's stomach clenched. “He all right?”

“He just fine.” A long pause.

“Well, it's nice hearing your voice.”

“Yeah, you too, honey.”

As Donny stood at Deirdre's door handing her the Mercedes keys, she studied the scar down his cheek with concern. “Were you in a knife fight, Donny?”

Donny realized he didn't
have
to tell her he had a wife who'd cut him with a can opener. He could tell her anything and she'd never know the difference. Besides, seemed like she
wanted
him to have been in a knife fight

“Tangled with some thugs on the block. Bunch of mean motherfuckers.”

As she winced, he glanced past her into the carpeted living room. She handed him a twenty-dollar bill, which he looked at with surprise. “Use it for something special for yourself,” she said in a husky voice.

As he walked back to the garage, he whistled. Deirdre didn't give a damn what his take-home was. Looked like she just liked him for himself. For a moment, he tried to imagine what it would be like to take her on her thick wall-to-wall carpet, hard fast jabs with her heaving like a bucking horse and clawing at his back with her long red nails. Then he felt bad. The woman was just being friendly, and here he was having evil ideas.

The next night, Chubby left off the Mercedes, flipping him a half dollar. Donny watched it arch in the air and fall on the concrete with a clunk. He let it lie there while Chubby glanced at him, surprised. He didn't need no half dollar from Chubby when Chubby's wife was slipping him twenty.

As Chubby walked up the driveway, Donny wondered if his rod stuck out far enough under that big belly to get it into Deirdre. She sure didn't seem like no hunk of ice. Then he was seized with remorse. It was sinful to think like that about her. More important, he was wronging Rochelle. Whether or not she was running around on him with Tadpole. But there couldn't be nothing wrong with being Deirdre's friend, stopping by to see her when he felt lonely, like she'd started urging him to do. He liked the idea of her as his friend, like Emily was when he was a kid.

The Ford plant called to say they weren't hiring at the moment. His mother got all hysterical and started telling him to do this, do that and the other.

“Just shut up, woman!”

Both were surprised when she did.

“All the time bossing me around. This is
my
life and I'll live it like I want.”

“Not in my place that Arthur and I pay the rent on, you won't.”

“You know what you can do with your place.”

Her eyes opened wide. Was this her baby boy?

“I'm moving out quick as I can. Like living in a motherfucking prison.”