What They Found (18 page)

“Oh.” I hoped the flashing neon lights from Mable’s Bar-B-Que covered up my flushing.

We said goodbye at my stoop and I took the poem and went in. Mama was sitting at the kitchen table playing solitaire in her slip. I kissed her as I pulled down the blind.

In my room I unfolded Kyle’s poem and read it.

I read the poem again and again until I had it memorized. What was he saying to me? Was he saying it to me? He had asked to walk me home. He had asked me to read his poem and said it had come of him thinking about me.

In bed I tried to read the day’s paper, but my mind kept wandering back to the poem. I began to think of him. Foolishly. Like some schoolgirl wanting to have a crush on her hero. I tried to think of what I would say when I saw him in a week. Phrases came about the use of free verse and how the use of easy symbols, such as the moon, was very much overdone in poetry. Would I talk to Kyle like that? As if I didn’t know the poem was about me?

I imagined us having a conversation. First it was at the coffee shop, and then it quickly changed to Central Park with the two of us sitting on a park bench. He was the shy one and I the one speaking boldly about the poems I had read and how I would have improved them. Kyle, handsome and reserved, nodding in quiet admiration at the wisdom of my remarks. Then, just as quickly, the imagined Kyle changed to Burn.

Burn would have turned away, would have ignored my carefully constructed sentences. I moved away from my imagination and into the safer realm of ordinary thought. It was still Burn I was thinking about. Perhaps he would have looked at me with those narrowed eyes. Perhaps his face would have hardened, scaring me somewhat. Perhaps he would have put his hand on my leg.

I thought of Kyle again. He had given me the poem. He had reached out to me. And I was afraid. There weren’t that many eligible men in Harlem. Many of the ones my age were dropouts, not only from school but from life as well. The street corners were full of young guys who should have been working somewhere. Some of them already had police records. I didn’t know what I was looking for, a black Prince Charming perhaps. Abeni said that I needed to figure out who I was first.

“If you want Prince Charming it means you’re looking at yourself as some kind of secret princess,” she said.

Was I looking at myself as a princess? I just knew I couldn’t handle the easy-sex scene and I was a million miles away from Happily Ever After.

I wondered what my father would have said. “There’s this boy,” I would have said to him.

“Do you like him?” he would have asked.

“Yes,” I would have said. “Yes.”

The class was on Wednesday and I got there late after having to do two rinses in a row. Kyle wasn’t there and I
was grateful. I hadn’t decided what I was going to say to him and thought of simply returning his poem without comment. Mrs. Baraf, the instructor, was reading from Chaucer in Old English to show us the poet’s rhythm when the door opened and Kyle came in.

The chat in the coffee shop was about how one of the ladies had had a critique of her story from a magazine and was asked to resubmit it after a rewrite.

“To me that’s as good as an acceptance,” another lady said.

“It would be if they sent along a check with it,” the rapper added.

We laughed about that and toasted the near success while I carefully avoided looking at Kyle. When the meeting was finally over and the group headed toward the 135th Street subway, I could feel Kyle’s presence as he neared me.

“Was the poem interesting enough to merit another walk uptown?” he asked.

I mumbled. I’m good at mumbling. Sometimes I manage to shrug as I mumble. It must look stunning.

We started uptown again. The air was heavy, and cool. Occasionally there would be a few drops of rain in the warm wind, big splashy summer drops that warned of more rain to come. We walked three blocks in silence before he asked me what I thought of the poem.

“It’s kind of romantic.”

“That’s what I had hoped for.”

“Perhaps a little obvious, though,” I added.

“Is that bad?”

I didn’t know what he meant by that. I never knew what guys meant when they talked to me unless it was just about sex. A hundred men had leaned in my direction on the neighborhood street corners and mentioned what they would like to do to me in bed. I didn’t like that, of course, and had learned to look the other way when I passed a man I didn’t know. But now I couldn’t tell if Kyle was talking about the poem or what he meant by the poem.

“The syllables are even,” I said, numbly. “I don’t mean that they have to be or anything.”

We walked in a familiar silence. I had been quiet with boys before. Looking down, listening as my brain made Right Decisions. Outside of Ralph’s barbershop there were two chess games going on and a small crowd of young people looking on. I liked that.

“Noee, can we go out sometime?”

“I’m very busy,” I said. “This is my senior year and all. Plus I have to work in the shop. It’s a family business.”

“Did you know I was a good cook?” he asked.

“Cook?” I looked to see if he was kidding me.

“I was going to make a dinner for two this Saturday,” he went on. “Something obviously romantic, most likely. I promise to write another poem for the occasion. Would you like to attend?”

“Come to your house for dinner?” My stupid heart was beating faster.

“For dinner and the poem,” he said, taking my hand in his.

Somehow, against all my instincts, I got out a “yes.” He lived downtown on 116th Street in one of those newly renovated places. At my stoop we exchanged phone numbers and he said he looked forward to seeing me on the weekend. Then he lifted my hand and kissed the ends of my fingertips.

It was so corny. I looked away as he released my hand and when I glanced up he was already backing away, headed back east toward the subway.

Thursday and Friday flew by. On Friday night I burned the back of a girl’s neck. It wasn’t anything serious but Mama was surprised. I thought that was the only thing that had gone wrong, but after we had closed Mama asked me if I was okay.

“You definitely had your mind someplace else tonight, girl,” she said.

“I’m going to have dinner with this guy tomorrow and I’m thinking about calling it off,” I said.

“Why, do you have to pay for it?” Abeni asked.

I told them about Kyle, how corny he was. “He gives me these poems and walks me home. He’s just so … transparent,” I said.

“All men are transparent,” Mama said, “men like women. Do you like this guy?”

“Yeah, in a way,” I said.

“Where’s he taking you?” Abeni asked.

“He wants to cook for me.”

Mama and Abeni asked a hundred questions. What did he look like? How did he dress? Did he have a job? They seemed almost more interested in him than I did.

Abeni loaned me a pink silk blouse to go with my burgundy slacks. She wanted me to wear her amethyst brooch but I didn’t.

“This is not a first communion party.” I was beginning to resent the attention.

“Chill, Noee, making people look good is our business,” Abeni reminded me. “Have you forgotten?”

I hadn’t forgotten. I just wanted to keep the date with Kyle in perspective. It wasn’t a big thing, even if the only other date I had been on all year had been the day working with Burn on the cruise.

The buildings in Harlem were being renovated at a great rate. Places that had been abandoned were now being rehabbed and sold for outrageous amounts of money as both whites and blacks were moving into the area. Kyle’s place had a security desk in the lobby with a round little man sitting behind it. He called Kyle to announce me. As the elevator went up to the seventh floor I felt my stomach tighten. When the elevator door opened Kyle was standing there with a big grin on his face. There was a middle-aged couple waiting for the elevator and
they watched as Kyle kissed my hand. They smiled but I was embarrassed.

We made small talk with me sitting in Kyle’s living room; he went in and out while he finished cooking. There were colored candles on the end tables and I imagined him seeing them in a magazine. Everything was nice, the apartment was spotless, but nothing exactly matched. I did like the framed prints on the wall.

“Elizabeth Catlett,” he said. “They’re knockoff prints but I like them.”

Kyle served an avocado, tomato, and mozzarella salad that was very good. Then dinner consisted of chicken with sliced almonds, green beans, and baked potatoes. It wasn’t fancy but it was good and I was relieved that he wasn’t the world’s greatest cook. Afterward I sat in an overstuffed chair. He sat on the couch.

As we talked I wondered if I should have sat on the couch with him. Would that have given him the wrong signal? Was I giving him the wrong signal by sitting in the single chair? I felt so awkward. There I was, glad to be sitting in his apartment, but not having a clue as to what to say or what to do. I could sense that he was trying to figure me out. He was trying to express his interest, and I was sitting there like a bump on a log.

“Do you think you could tolerate another poem?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He had put the poem on the mantelpiece. He took it down, and asked me if he could read it to me. I said yes. He took a breath and started to read.

I didn’t understand a word. The words jumped into my head and out before I could catch their meaning and all I was left with was the sound of his voice filling the silent spaces of the room.

“It’s quite lovely,” I said. And then, searching for more to say, “Do you ever use rhyme in your poems?”

He was sitting again. We were stringing words carefully. Minutes passed. An hour. I thought I saw him glance at the clock.

“Do you want to do the dishes?” I asked.

“No, well, all right,” he said.

Kyle ran some water in the sink. When the water didn’t go down he turned off the tap.

“It’s stopped up again,” he said. “I’ll call the super on Monday.”

“Again?”

“It’s always a little stopped up—no matter,” he said, turning away from the sink.

“Let’s fix it,” I said. “Do you have any tools?”

“I do, but …”

Kyle straightened up, trying to figure out what to say. Finally, he smiled and shook his head, saying something under his breath about it being the building’s responsibility. I leaned against the sink—sinks were something I could do—knowing he would turn back.

“You actually think we can unstop the sink?” he asked. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen, his large frame filling most of it.

“Yeah, I actually think that.”

Kyle shrugged and went to a cabinet and pulled out a gray toolbox. He looked under the sink and got on his knees.

“You need something to catch the trapped water,” I said.

He looked up at me. “You do plumbing on the side?”

“Only around the house,” I answered. “We own our place so we don’t have a super to call. Can I try it?”

He started to raise an objection and I put a finger to his lips. He moved to one side and leaned against the refrigerator, watching me.

I put some newspaper on the floor to kneel on, then found a shallow basin and slipped it under the U trap. The wrench in Kyle’s toolbox still had the original tag from the store. The nut on the bottom of the trap was tight, but I was able to wrestle it off and watched the water trickle into the basin. From the slowness of the water I figured it was either decayed food or a rag blocking the drain. It smelled terrible. The blockage turned out to be a dishrag, some food, and a fork.

All the while Kyle sat quietly watching me. Now it was he who felt awkward and me who had the confidence. I liked being close to him on the floor.

He didn’t have a plumber’s snake so I wasn’t able to clean the pipe as thoroughly as I wanted to, but once I had replaced the nut and tightened it the sink drained properly.

“You’re a wonder,” he said, “and a mess.”

I looked down at Abeni’s blouse and saw an ugly dark mark. “Where’s your bathroom?”

I went in, trying not to touch my filthy hands to the blouse again. There were the usual guest towel set and a roll of paper towels. I looked in the mirror and saw smudges on my cheek. I washed my hands and arms and dried them before taking off the blouse and wiping the grime and gook from my face and neck. My hand stung where I had scraped my knuckle.

It would have been a mistake to try to clean the blouse so I just slipped it back on. I used Kyle’s pick to fix my hair. He was on the couch and I sat next to him.

“You’re more impressive every minute,” he said.

“Unstopping sinks is not very glamorous.”

“I have a new CD I thought you might like to hear,” he said, “Cesaria Evora with a band from Mali. Do you know her singing?”

I didn’t know who he was talking about. For a moment I felt the same panic returning, the same self-consciousness that I always had with men. I decided to go with it. Kyle had left the poem on the mantel and I got up and got it. I brought it back to the couch and sat close to him.

“Read it again.”

As he read, slower this time, I followed it on the page, moving his hands so I could see it as I leaned against him. The sound of his voice was warm, soothing in the stillness of the room, a stillness we had put together, like found art.