The Women of Brewster Place (11 page)

From the window of her sixth-floor studio apartment, Kiswana could see over the wall at the end of the street to the busy avenue that lay just north of Brewster Place. The late-afternoon shoppers looked like brightly clad marionettes as they moved between the congested traffic, clutching their packages against their bodies to guard them from sudden bursts of the cold autumn wind. A portly mailman had abandoned his cart and was bumping into indignant window-shoppers as he puffed behind the cap that the wind had snatched from his head. Kiswana leaned over to see if he was going to be successful, but the edge of the building cut him off from her view.

A pigeon swept across her window, and she marveled at its liquid movements in the air waves. She placed her dreams on the back of the bird and fantasized that it would glide forever in transparent silver circles until it ascended to the center of the universe and was swallowed up. But the wind died down, and she watched with a sigh as the bird beat its wings in awkward, frantic movements to land on the corroded top of a fire escape on the opposite building. This brought her back to earth.

Humph, it’s probably sitting over there crapping on those folks’ fire escape, she thought. Now, that’s a safety hazard…. And her mind was busy again, creating flames and smoke and frustrated tenants whose escape was being hindered because they were slipping and sliding in pigeon shit. She watched their cussing, haphazard descent on the fire
escapes until they had all reached the bottom. They were milling around, oblivious to their burning apartments, angrily planning to march on the mayor’s office about the pigeons. She materialized placards and banners for them, and they had just reached the corner, boldly sidestepping fire hoses and broken glass, when they all vanished.

A tall copper-skinned woman had met this phantom parade at the corner, and they had dissolved in front of her long, confident strides. She plowed through the remains of their faded mists, unconscious of the lingering wisps of their presence on her leather bag and black fur-trimmed coat. It took a few seconds for this transfer from one realm to another to reach Kiswana, but then suddenly she recognized the woman.

“Oh, God, it’s Mama!” She looked down guiltily at the forgotten newspaper in her lap and hurriedly circled random job advertisements.

By this time Mrs. Browne had reached the front of Kiswana’s building and was checking the house number against a piece of paper in her hand. Before she went into the building she stood at the bottom of the stoop and carefully inspected the condition of the street and the adjoining property. Kiswana watched this meticulous inventory with growing annoyance but she involunarily followed her mother’s slowly rotating head, forcing herself to see her new neighborhood through the older woman’s eyes. The brightness of the unclouded sky seemed to join forces with her mother as it highlighted every broken stoop railing and missing brick. The afternoon sun glittered and cascaded across even the tiniest fragments of broken bottle, and at that very moment the wind chose to rise up again, sending unswept grime flying into the air, as a stray tin can left by careless garbage collectors went rolling noisily down the center of the street.

Kiswana noticed with relief that at least Ben wasn’t sitting in his usual place on the old garbage can pushed against the far wall. He was just a harmless old wino, but Kiswana knew her mother only needed one wino or one teenager with a reefer within a twenty-block radius to decide that her daughter
was living in a building seething with dope factories and hang-outs for derelicts. If she had seen Ben, nothing would have made her believe that practically every apartment contained a family, a Bible, and a dream that one day enough could be scraped from those meager Friday night paychecks to make Brewster Place a distant memory.

As she watched her mother’s head disappear into the building, Kiswana gave silent thanks that the elevator was broken. That would give her at least five minutes’ grace to straighten up the apartment. She rushed to the sofa bed and hastily closed it without smoothing the rumpled sheets and blanket or removing her nightgown. She felt that somehow the tangled bedcovers would give away the fact that she had not slept alone last night. She silently apologized to Abshu’s memory as she heartlessly crushed his spirit between the steel springs of the couch. Lord, that man was sweet. Her toes curled involuntarily at the passing thought of his full lips moving slowly over her instep. Abshu was a foot man, and he always started his lovemaking from the bottom up. For that reason Kiswana changed the color of the polish on her toenails every week. During the course of their relationship she had gone from shades of red to brown and was now into the purples. I’m gonna have to start mixing them soon, she thought aloud as she turned from the couch and raced into the bathroom to remove any traces of Abshu from there. She took up his shaving cream and razor and threw them into the bottom drawer of her dresser beside her diaphragm. Mama wouldn’t dare pry into my drawers right in front of me, she thought as she slammed the drawer shut. Well, at least not the
bottom
drawer. She may come up with some sham excuse for opening the top drawer, but never the bottom one.

When she heard the first two short raps on the door, her eyes took a final flight over the small apartment, desperately seeking out any slight misdemeanor that might have to be defended. Well, there was nothing she could do about the crack in the wall over that table. She had been after the
landlord to fix it for two months now. And there had been no time to sweep the rug, and everyone knew that off-gray always looked dirtier than it really was. And it was just too damn bad about the kitchen. How was she expected to be out job-hunting every day and still have time to keep a kitched that looked like her mother’s, who didn’t even work and still had someone come in twice a month for general cleaning. And besides…

Her imaginary argument was abruptly interrupted by a second series of knocks, accompanied by a penetrating, “Melanie, Melanie, are you there?”

Kiswana strode toward the door. She’s starting before she even gets in here. She knows that’s not my name anymore.

She swung the door open to face her slightly flushed mother. “Oh, hi, Mama. You know, I thought I heard a knock, but I figured it was for the people next door, since no one hardly ever calls me Melanie.” Score one for me, she thought.

“Well, it’s awfully strange you can forget a name you answered to for twenty-three years,” Mrs. Browne said, as she moved past Kiswana into the apartment. “My, that was a long climb. How long has your elevator been out? Honey, how do you manage with your laundry and groceries up all those steps? But I guess you’re young, and it wouldn’t bother you as much as it does me.” This long string of questions told Kiswana that her mother had no intentions of beginning her visit with another argument about her new African name.

“You know I would have called before I came, but you don’t have a phone yet. I didn’t want you to feel that I was snooping. As a matter of fact, I didn’t expect to find you home at all. I thought you’d be out looking for a job.” Mrs. Browne had mentally covered the entire apartment while she was talking and taking off her coat.

“Well, I got up late this morning. I thought I’d buy the afternoon paper and start early tomorrow.”

“That sounds like a good idea.” Her mother moved toward the window and picked up the discarded paper and glanced
over the hurriedly circled ads. “Since when do you have experience as a fork-lift operator?”

Kiswana caught her breath and silently cursed herself for her stupidity. “Oh, my hand slipped—I meant to circle file clerk.” She quickly took the paper before her mother could see that she had also marked cutlery salesman and chauffeur.

“You’re sure you weren’t sitting here moping and day-dreaming again?” Amber specks of laughter flashed in the corner of Mrs. Browne’s eyes.

Kiswana threw her shoulders back and unsuccessfully tried to disguise her embarrassment with indignation.

“Oh, God, Mama! I haven’t done that in years—it’s for kids. When are you going to realize that I’m a woman now?” She sought desperately for some womanly thing to do and settled for throwing herself on the couch and crossing her legs in what she hoped looked like a nonchalant arc.

“Please, have a seat,” she said, attempting the same tones and gestures she’d seen Bette Davis use on the late movies.

Mrs. Browne, lowering her eyes to hide her amusement, accepted the invitation and sat at the window, also crossing her legs. Kiswana saw immediately how it should have been done. Her celluloid poise clashed loudly against her mother’s quiet dignity, and she quickly uncrossed her legs. Mrs. Browne turned her head toward the window and pretended not to notice.

“At least you have a halfway decent view from here. I was wondering what lay beyond that dreadful wall—it’s the boulevard. Honey, did you know that you can see the trees in Linden Hills from here?”

Kiswana knew that very well, because there were many lonely days that she would sit in her gray apartment and stare at those trees and think of home, but she would rather have choked than admit that to her mother.

“Oh, really, I never noticed. So how is Daddy and things at home?”

“Just fine. We’re thinking of redoing one of the extra bedrooms since you children have moved out, but Wilson insists
that he can manage all that work alone. I told him that he doesn’t really have the proper time or energy for all that. As it is, when he gets home from the office, he’s so tired he can hardly move. But you know you can’t tell your father anything. Whenever he starts complaining about how stubborn you are, I tell him the child came by it honestly. Oh, and your brother was by yesterday,” she added, as if it had just occurred to her.

So that’s it, thought Kiswana. That’s why she’s here.

Kiswana’s brother, Wilson, had been to visit her two days ago, and she had borrowed twenty dollars from him to get her winter coat out of layaway. That son-of-a-bitch probably ran straight to Mama—and after he swore he wouldn’t say anything. I should have known, he was always a snotty-nosed sneak, she thought.

“Was he?” she said aloud. “He came by to see me, too, earlier this week. And I borrowed some money from him because my unemployment checks hadn’t cleared in the bank, but now they have and everything’s just fine.” There, I’ll beat you to that one.

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Mrs. Browne lied. “He never mentioned you. He had just heard that Beverly was expecting again, and he rushed over to tell us.”

Damn. Kiswana could have strangled herself.

“So she’s knocked up again, huh?” she said irritably.

Her mother started. “Why do you always have to be so crude?”

“Personally, I don’t see how she can sleep with Willie. He’s such a dishrag.”

Kiswana still resented the stance her brother had taken in college. When everyone at school was discovering their blackness and protesting on campus, Wilson never took part; he had even refused to wear an Afro. This had outraged Kiswana because, unlike her, he was dark-skinned and had the type of hair that was thick and kinky enough for a good “Fro.” Kiswana had still insisted on cutting her own hair, but it was
so thin and fine-textured, it refused to thicken even after she washed it. So she had to brush it up and spray it with lacquer to keep it from lying flat. She never forgave Wilson for telling her that she didn’t look African, she looked like an electrocuted chicken.

“Now that’s some way to talk. I don’t know why you have an attitude against your brother. He never gave me a restless night’s sleep, and now he’s settled with a family and a good job.”

“He’s an assistant to an assistant junior partner in a law firm. What’s the big deal about that?”

“The job has a future, Melanie. And at least he finished school and went on for his law degree.”

“In other words, not like me, huh?”

“Don’t put words into my mouth, young lady. I’m perfectly capable of saying what I mean.”

Amen, thought Kiswana.

“And I don’t know why you’ve been trying to start up with me from the moment I walked in. I didn’t come here to fight with you. This is your first place away from home, and I just wanted to see how you were living and if you’re doing all right. And I must say, you’ve fixed this apartment up very nicely.”

“Really, Mama?” She found herself softening in the light of her mother’s approval.

“Well, considering what you had to work with.” This time she scanned the apartment openly.

“Look, I know it’s not Linden Hills, but a lot can be done with it. As soon as they come and paint, I’m going to hang my Ashanti print over the couch. And I thought a big Boston Fern would go well in that corner, what do you think?”

“That would be fine, baby. You always had a good eye for balance.”

Kiswana was beginning to relax. There was little she did that attracted her mother’s approval. It was like a rare bird, and she had to tread carefully around it lest it fly away.

“Are you going to leave that statue out like that?”

“Why, what’s wrong with it? Would it look better somewhere else?”

There was a small wooden reproduction of a Yoruba goddess with large protruding breasts on the coffee table.

“Well,” Mrs. Browne was beginning to blush, “it’s just that it’s a bit suggestive, don’t you think? Since you live alone now, and I know you’ll be having male friends stop by, you wouldn’t want to be giving them any ideas. I mean, uh, you know, there’s no point in putting yourself in any unpleasant situations because they may get the wrong impressions and uh, you know, I mean, well…” Mrs. Browne stammered on miserably.

Kiswana loved it when her mother tried to talk about sex. It was the only time she was at a loss for words.

“Don’t worry, Mama.” Kiswana smiled. “That wouldn’t bother the type of men I date. Now maybe if it had big feet…” And she got hysterical, thinking of Abshu.

Her mother looked at her sharply. “What sort of gibberish is that about feet? I’m being serious, Melanie.”

“I’m sorry, Mama.” She sobered up. “I’ll put it away in the closet,” she said, knowing that she wouldn’t.