Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns (15 page)

Wait a Minute, World!

I was a quiet little girl. I had a little rocking chair and was always rocking and watching those around me through my eight-year-old eyes. Wasn’t looking for anything special because I didn’t know anything special to watch for. I didn’t know anything much about life, but I knew there must be something to it, or in it, because people were so busy doing something all the time.

People were still new to me, almost everything they did seemed to be interesting if only for a short while.

I had a brother so I played a lot of boy games with him. He played hard, so I knew how to fight and wrestle a little. I could also throw a football, not real good but I could hold and throw it right. But my favorite thing was dreaming, reading, and watching people.

My daddy didn’t like to work for other people, white people. He was from the South. He had worked on a car lot there, and one day his boss asked him to take and park a car. He drove to California where he had a married sister who had been urging him to come there. That’s how I came to be born in California.

He repaired cars in our huge backyard. He separated metals making piles, one from the other, and took them to a metal junk-yard to sell. I never do remember him being broke.

We always had plenty food to eat, because he loved food. My mama did too, and she could really cook. We had a big ole round wood table in the kitchen and everybody sat at every meal. You had to eat when everybody else did just to be sure you got some food.

Anyway, that was a piece of how I grew up.

We had two neighbors I watched. In Berkeley, a long time ago, you could live anywhere you had the money to buy. We didn’t live in the best neighborhood and we didn’t live in any poor neighborhood. I don’t remember any ghettos of poor people. Everybody was kind’a poor because a depression was going on or going out. I don’t remember which one, cause we had enough. But I know we got vaccinations and shots free from the city at a clinic on University Avenue. Everybody went, I guess.

But what I was telling you was about our neighbors. On one side was an old, old (it seemed to me) Spanish man who lived in a great big two-story house, all alone. He must’a had some money because he took care of that house, but he drank a lot. He was quiet and kept to hisself.

He was friends with my father, but everybody liked my father because he was friendly and generous to everybody. He even brought people home to feed them. They didn’t know it at first, but he was going to put them to work cleaning his garage or separating metal or something, But they were going to have to work; no laying around at our house, cause my daddy worked all the time.

One man, Dave (I don’t remember his last name, if I ever knew it), was a good worker and stayed with us kind’a a long time. My mama said he could even have dinner at our round table if he was sober. My daddy paid him a little money and gave him the small room off the garage. Dave made it neat. Dave had a drinking problem too.

Our neighbor on the other side was white. I don’t know what kind of “white” they were, Irish, English, German, or what. I just knew they were white and nice. A real nice pretty redheaded young woman with a husband and two children. A nice family. They were friendly, but were busy so kept to themselves and their business. Both grown-ups worked. Nobody partied together. In a depression there ain’t nothing to party about.

I just lived, grew, watched, and learned about life and people. Didn’t know what I was learning all the time, but it was life and I was very interested in life. I still am.

My best friend was my yellow dog, Lady, and a tree. They were who I talked to and played with. And my mama, of course. I could talk to and ask my mother anything, and I did. She always had an answer.

I didn’t play with other kids very much. They had a messy way of living: fighting, arguing, doing little nasty things to each other. Their noses running, mine too. Clothes poor and most times dirty, mine too. But I liked being alone watching them make each other happy at play for a while, then watching them fight for a while. Seemed silly to me, so I would go off with my dog or go sit by my tree. I’d be alone and think, or play secretary all by myself. In peace.

Then . . . this day came along that I’m going to tell you about.

The white lady next door asked my mother if my father could take her across town to pick up her sister; she had had a call that her sister was ill and needed someplace to get well. She wanted to go get her sister, pick her up, and bring her home. My mama said yes, so my daddy said yes too.

I rode with my father and our neighbor. It was night and I remember sitting in the car waiting. A bright light was shining on the porch of the house. Daddy helped our neighbor bring her sister out to the car.

I remember the sister was slender, very pretty, and redheaded. Beautiful golden red hair. I wished my hair was golden red like that. I’ve always been in awe of shining beauty; nature or people.

I stared at the pretty lady. I had thought she would be sick, but she was drunk. I was glad because I rather her be drunk than really sick because you can get sober. And she was not ugly, nasty drunk. She was sad drunk.

When we got home my daddy helped our neighbor take her sister into her house. In the darkness of the car, I watched to the very end of their door closing. I cried for her sadness even though I didn’t know what real sadness was, I could feel what it was. Then my father parked in our driveway and we went in our house.

Now there was more I didn’t understand about life. I couldn’t understand why such a pretty woman would be so sad and would want to be so drunk. I didn’t know what alcoholism was or what poverty could do. There was always some liquor at our house, but nobody drank it much. My mama did sometimes. Then she would dance if somebody played our piano or a record. That sounds like we had something, but we didn’t really.

Anyway, I heard our neighbor tell my daddy she had gotten her sister and they were going to keep her away from liquor and sober until she could get on her feet.

Then I forgot about it because something else probably took over my mind. I read a lot of books. My mother was always reading every chance she got between whatever housework, whippings, and cooking she did. Sometimes she put on her overalls and went out to help Daddy separate the metals. But, mostly, we would sit up on the bed and both be reading. I learned to love books. Thank God!

I don’t know how much time passed; maybe a week, maybe a day, maybe a month, but it wasn’t a year. But one day when I was out playing in the backyard I looked up and saw the next-door sister come walking down our driveway toward my father. She had long pretty legs with the wind whipping her dress around her knees, and that golden hair was shining in the sun, and blowing in the wind.

She asked my father to take her back, while her sister was at work, to the house where he had picked her up. She was home alone. Daddy’s eyes got big and round as he stared at her, seriously. I saw that and I remember because Daddy was usually playing funny things with us kids. I thought he was playing with her. I knew my daddy knew what our neighbor wanted for her sister. Anyway he laughed as he told her he couldn’t do it right then, he had a few other things he had to do.

My father weighed about two hundred pounds and loved to laugh, so she didn’t get mad at him. He was pleasant in his refusal. She stayed around talking to him and Dave. I guess she was lonely. I stayed around because I was looking at life.

Pretty soon my daddy did have to go off to pick up something for his garage. He went in the truck. He told the lady she should go home. But he left Dave and the lady alone. I think about that sometimes, now that I am older. Because I love my dad, but I thought something was wrong. Dave was sober while he worked, but Dave was a drunk.

After my dad drove off, Dave laughed and talked with the lady a little while. Then he went into our house and came back out with a bottle of wine. I was just a child, but I knew he shouldn’t drink in front of that lady.

I was leaning on a car set up on blocks with no tires on it. I watched him when he took his bottle into his little room off the garage, and he was laughing. I was looking at her as she thought for only a quick minute; then she followed him into the room. His room. His door was open. I didn’t move a muscle. I suspected something. I felt something in life was about to happen, but I didn’t know exactly what.

Dave stuck his head around the door, I guess to see if I was still there; I was. He pushed that door shut. He closed my eyes, out.

I still don’t think I was nosy. I was curious. No, I needed to know what life was going on in that room. The drama in my mind was almost unbearable. I tried every way I could to find a hole in those walls. I didn’t try to sneak; I was serious. But I never did find one. I heard low laughter from both of them. Then, after a while, I didn’t hear a thing. Nothing.

Then, my daddy was back. He drove down the driveway, parked and asked me where Dave was. I pointed to Dave’s room without saying a word. That’s when my daddy sent me into the house. I wasn’t mad, but I felt cheated or something.

I don’t know what happened with Dave and the lady, but I still felt sorry for her. I felt sorry for her sister who was trying to help her. I didn’t feel the same exact way about Dave. I still felt sorry for Dave sometimes, but I had stopped liking him, didn’t enjoy his little play jokes. I didn’t like him to touch me, even playfully, anymore. Didn’t thoroughly understand why. He was less to me. Maybe grown people do things like he did, but there was something cheap and crooked about it to me. He took advantage of her pain. She let him, but he kicked her when she was down. I was seven or eight years old and I knew it, why didn’t he?

I didn’t know exactly what happened till some years later when I was old enough to figure it all out. I know her sister was real hurt when she came home to find her sister drunk again. I know the lady was soon gone from her sister’s house.

There is a sad failure between everybody. I’m a feeler kind of person. I feel most everything, even things from across the city or the world. Especially if they are sad or hurting someone. Don’t know why but sometimes the whole damn world looked sad to me and I would cry for no reason I knew at all. Then and now, even since I’m grown.

As I think back and know what I know now, about the depression, poverty, hunger, sickness, homelessness, and hope, and all the things people have to deal with. Alcoholism was prevalent then and it’s prevalent now. We’ve had plenty government, plenty more taxes, and they ain’t fixed but a very few things for the people, and every time they get, or might get, a good government they lie him off the map. And the people let the liars keep lying.

Anyway, back to that day I was telling you about. I don’t know the difference between Mexican and Spanish, so the neighbor on the other side of our house could have been either one. Like I told you, he took care of his house and was a quiet, older man. Grey hair and all.

The kids in our neighborhood never took notice of him until he came out to tell them to get off his garage or out of his yard or something. But there were days they were sure to notice his doings.

I believe his name was Gonzalez. He used to have a prostitute come to his house once a week or once a month, I can’t remember. I don’t know how we all knew that was what she was, but we knew. She was delivered or drove there in a pretty car every once in a while. She was always different, I think, and always dressed, looking really pretty as she tripped lightly over the cobblestones in his yard on the way to his front door.

The kids would stare at her, some of them would say “hello” as she passed by. We thought she must be a movie star. Well, kids can think two or three things about the same thing as they figure it out.

I watched, as usual, for a couple of times when those horrible kids waited for her to get inside and him to close the door. They gave him a few minutes to get in bed (they thought), then they would throw big rocks at his house. The rocks hit the wood with a big thud! Ten or fifteen rocks at a time. There were some horrible kids on our block! Then they would hurry around trying to find bigger rocks for bigger noises.

I waited for a window to break, but they aimed pretty good. It looked like they were having such fun that I finally rushed out to join them. Rocks were thrown until the lady came out, hastily, rushing to her car.

Mr. Gonzalez would come rushing behind her, drunk, waving his arms and cursing us. We had destroyed his moment of peace or joy.

It was fun, for a minute. It was fun until my feelings (I told you I’m a feeler) made me think about what we were doing to Mr. Gonzalez. I thought of that old tired-looking man that was friends with my father. He was trying to have company, a romantic moment maybe, in peace, his once a month, or once a week time for a little pleasure with a lady. And there we were out there ruining what little he had left of his life. What’s the fun in that? I felt sorry for him and I stopped throwing rocks at his house.

It must have been the worst of times for everybody, like that writer Dickens said.