145th Street (10 page)
Part III The Roof
“So where were you?” his mother had asked. “If you weren’t in school all last week just where were you?”
He walked out. Didn’t she know there weren’t any answers? What was he going to say? That he had been searching and that he didn’t know what he was searching for? That he was afraid and looking for a place to be safe. That he didn’t know what made him afraid?
That he was tired?
There were no answers and the questions ate at him. He walked out and started down the stairs, her voice still ringing in his ears. He stopped. Where to go? Leaning against the wall he closed his eyes and listened for the feelings that rumbled though his silence. Nausea? So soon? No, just fatigue.
He thought about the warehouse roof and started downstairs again. Sometimes, when it rained, the leftover garbage would mix with water and begin to stink Big Time squinted into the darkness. It was growing cold but he still didn’t want to go home and listen to his mother’s recital of his failings. Not tonight.
Across the street and into the alley that led to the fire escape. Carefully climb the first ladder, bracing his feet on the window ledge, and then onto the iron stairway that led to the roof. There was a light coming from one window. The building was abandoned by everyone who could make a dollar on it. A few homeless people used it now, sometimes a crackhead down on his luck. Big Time slipped by the window with the light without looking in. Respect.
Too cold. He hadn’t noticed how cold it had grown. If he could stand it an hour, maybe two, his mother would be asleep. He wondered what she dreamt about. Grass? Distant white clouds against a shock of blue sky? What did Miss Pat dream about? She was old enough to have a head full of movies.
He thought the boy was a dog, that is, when the boy came out of the shadow Big Time imagined that it was a small dog that had been lying in the shadows.
“Who you?” he asked, his heart calming, his breathing headed back to normal.
“Benny,” the boy said.
“Penny?” Big Time asked. “Your name is Penny?”
“Benny,” the boy repeated. “With a
B
.”
“What you doing up here?”
“Nothing,” Benny said. He stepped forward into the dim moonlight.
He was eight, maybe nine, Big Time thought. He could have been eleven if the thin arms coming from the short-sleeved and collarless shirt were from hunger. The jeans he wore were worn and dirty.
“What you mean by ‘nothing’?” Big Time asked.
The boy shrugged and looked away.
Beyond the roof of the warehouse the ’hood lay in smoldering darkness, the amber lights of the sleepless glaring, forming odd patterns of bothered art. Even farther below, the streetlights marked off sullen pathways that squared back into themselves.
“You should be home,” Big Time said.
“Should be.”
“Where you live?”
“Malcolm X,” Benny said, referring to the avenue.
“I haven’t seen you around.” Big Time pulled his jacket close.
“I seen you,” Benny replied. “You hang on 145th.”
“What you do—go around watching people?”
“Sometimes.” The boy let the word dangle in the cool air.
Silence. Big Time didn’t know what to say, or if he really wanted to say anything. He was sleepy, that was good. But he didn’t want to sleep on the roof if the boy was there. He wondered if the boy, if Benny, felt the same way.
Music came in snatches as if the wind only carried what it chose to bring to them, brief moments of rhythm, a piece of song, a distant hint of melody. The silence fit in well.
BLOOF!
Benny jumped and Big Time whirled toward the door to the stairway.
“What was that?” Benny asked.
“Nothing,” Big Time said. And then, “Probably those junkies down below.”
“You come up the fire escape?” Benny asked, his voice high and still filled with tension.
“Yeah.”
Benny went to the back of the building and looked down.
“There’s a fire,” he called back.
Big Time went to the roof edge and looked. Flames were shooting out of the window onto the fire escape on the floor below. Now there was shouting.
“Damned crackheads must have been freebasing,” Big Time said. “They started a fire.”
“What we going to do?”
“Shut up, man!” Big Time felt the anger surge in him. “What you here for, anyway?”
“We gonna die?”
“I said shut up!”
Big Time went to the door leading to the stairs and tried it. It was locked. He pulled it harder. Nothing. He knew it would be nailed shut.
“You can’t open the door?” Benny asked.
“Look, I don’t care if we burn up or not,” Big Time said. “It don’t make me no never mind.”
Big Time sat down on a box and crossed his legs at the ankle. He watched Benny go to the door and pull on it, his small body looking even smaller as it became more desperate. Behind him the light from the flames flickered.
It don’t make me no never mind, he thought. Lie. Panic inside, like the panic of feeling sick and not having any money. A growing anxiety that already had filled him, and now threatened to overflow.
“Why don’t you do something?” Benny said. “You grown!”
“That don’t mean nothing when the door’s locked,” Big Time said.
“Yeah, it do!” There was a trace of snot under Benny’s nose. “Yeah, it do.”
The kid was wrong, Big Time said. Being grown didn’t mean nothing. Being grown just meant you were around for a while. All he had to do was to take a chill pill. Relax until the set was over.
The boy went to the edge of the roof and looked over again. He backed off quickly. Then he went to the front of the roof. There was no fire escape there, no way to get down. He put one leg over, as if he were going to try to climb down the front of the building, then pulled it back.
“Man, sit down,” Big Time called to Benny.
The building was on the corner and one side went straight down. Big Time remembered looking at the faded sign painted on the bricks. It read
SINCLAIR INKS
. Big Time watched the boy look down and wondered if he would jump.
BLOOF!
The flames shot past the roof briefly and went down. They were followed by belching, choking smoke. Big Time went to the edge and looked over. The fire was coming out of two windows now.
“Help!” the boy was calling over the side.
Big Time waited. He watched Benny run from side to side. For a while the boy’s panic was more interesting than the fire. What would he do? How did he feel? Did he feel alone even though he, Big Time, was still there? Could somebody be alone with another person so close?
Benny was crying as the flames burned the edge of the roof. There was a small wall, less than three feet high, on the sides of the building. Benny went to the other side of the roof and looked over. Then he ran back to the center and ran toward the edge, stopping when he reached the wall. He had lost his nerve.
You grown, he had said.
What could he do? Doors locked. Fire coming. He wished he had a hit. What he needed was a hit.
“You got any weed?” he asked Benny.
“I don’t smoke,” Benny said.
Big Time had to pee. He went to a side of the roof and started peeing. Behind him Benny was shouting off the edge of the roof. He was calling out “Help!” into the darkness.
He was scared but it wasn’t a big thing. He had been there before. Only thing that could happen was him and the boy going down. It wouldn’t even make the news. Two dudes from the ’hood found dead. That wasn’t even news.
“I’m going to try to jump to the other building,” Benny said, his eyes searching Big Time’s face.
Big Time walked slowly to the edge of the roof. He looked over. It was a good eight feet across to the next building and maybe a yard down. It was too far to jump if he tried going over the wall. And there was no way the kid could make it.
“We’re trapped, man.” Benny’s face was tear-streaked as he sided closer against Big Time.
“I’m not trapped,” Big Time said.
“You going to jump?” Benny asked.
Why don’t you do something? You grown!
“What you so scared for?” Big Time asked. “Being scared’s not going to help you get off the roof.”
“What you going to do?” Benny insisted.
A hit would have mellowed things out, Big Time knew, but he also knew that mellowing out would kill him. He had always known that.
The smoke was getting thicker and flames were rising above the edge of the roof. Nausea. His eyes were stinging, his hands were shaking. He wanted to sit down and go to sleep.
“What you going to do, man?” Benny asked again.
“Take it easy,” Big Time said. He looked over the small wall. There were a few bricks protruding from the wall. He stood and put one leg over, found a brick that stuck out an inch from the wall and tested his weight on it.
“You going to jump?” Benny’s face was full of fear.
“I don’t know,” Big Time said. He swung his other leg over until he was sitting on the small wall with his legs dangling. “Sit up here with me, Benny.”
“I can’t, I’m scared.”
“Yo, man, I’m scared, too. Hey, ain’t that something. I’m sitting up here on the wall and I’m scared out my damned mind.”
“Why you laughing if you scared?” Benny asked. “Why you laughing?”
“ ’Cause I didn’t know how scared I was before,” Big Time said. “Now I do. Now I know just how I feel. C’mon, the fire’s getting closer.”
“I’m too scared.” Benny took a step back.
“Hey, I’m grown, Benny,” Big Time said. “I know what I’m doing. Take my hand. It’s okay. Really.”
Flames, like yellow demons, streaked through the thick smoke that poured from the fire. Benny started to choke, his chest heaving up and down with his coughing. They heard the sound of fire engines and Big Time looked down to see a fire truck go up Amsterdam Avenue.
“They don’t know about this fire yet,” Big Time said. “We’ve got to bust a move. Come on, take my hand. We’ll jump to the next roof.”
“We can’t make it,” Benny answered. “It’s too far.”
“It’s not the best way to get down,” Big Time said. “But it’s what we got.”
The fire crackled and a shower of cinders came from one corner. Benny, his teeth clenched, climbed onto the small wall.
“We can’t make it,” he whispered.
We can’t make it, Big Time thought. He could fling the kid, though. If the kid wouldn’t hold on to him he could fling the kid onto the roof.
“Get ready,” Big Time said quietly.
Benny held Big Time’s arm and Big Time pushed him roughly away. “Don’t punk out on me,” he said. “Don’t be grabbing me, just jump when I tell you.”
“I can’t.” Benny looked back toward the burning roof. “I just . . .”
“
Jump!
” Big Time leaned forward into the dark space, felt his feet against the wall and pushed as hard as he could, flinging Benny into the blackness in front of him.
For an eternity they hung in space, screaming and straining and reaching for something to catch on to. Big Time felt his chest hit the edge of the other roof and his legs go over the side. He was sliding over, he grabbed something, a bottle, it moved and he grabbed the edge of a vent.
“Benny!”
“I’m okay,” came the reply.
“I’m hanging over the edge,” Big Time said.
“I’ll go get some help,” Benny said.
No, don’t go. Please, don’t go. How long could he hang on? His chest was hurting, and his knees. He tried pulling himself up and felt a sharp pain in his wrist. He was scared and hurting and desperate and it felt good. He thought he was going to laugh again. He imagined himself falling off the roof, falling backward to a sure dying and laughing all the way. He hung on and lifted his leg. The knee throbbed, the leg hurt, but he got his foot up on the roof. He pulled as slowly as he could. He didn’t want to die. He pulled himself until he got his shoulders up and was able to roll his body to safety.
The smell of tar was sweet. He could see his wrist. It was bleeding. Everything was sore. His body shook with hurt and fatigue. He stood up just as the door opened and Benny came running through.
“You made it!”
“Yeah.”
“You were hanging off the roof?” A heavyset woman stood in the doorway behind Benny. “That’s what the boy said.”
“Yeah,” Big Time said. “I’m okay now.”
“Lord, look at that building burning,” the woman said. “Must be those junkies that hang out over there.”
“Yeah,” Big Time said.
Benny was talking about the fire as they went down the stairs. It had already passed over into adventure for the boy. By the time they reached the first floor there were fire engines out front and a small knot of people, only half-interested in the fire, watched the firemen work
“I’ll see you around the block,” Big Time said. “And the next time you see me you better say hello or something.”
“Yeah, I will,” Benny said.
By the time he got home he was getting stiff from the bruises. He knew it would be worse in the morning. He thought about Benny again. The next time he saw him maybe he would even hang out with him a taste, rap to him about staying away from the roof, getting home early, and other good-doing stuff. Maybe.
“H
e said
what
?” Peaches looked up from the math book we were studying from.
I’ve known Peaches all my life, which means for fifteen years, and I hated to see her sad. Peaches is not the kind of girl to get messed around easy but I was there when her mama told her about Big Joe.
“He asked me to set a date to marry him,” Sadie Jones said, standing at the sink.
“He’s got some nerve,” Peaches said. She took a deep breath and shook her head.
“And I told him I would,” her mama said. “Honey, it’s time I got married. I’m not getting any younger and you know Joe’s really sweet.”
Peaches didn’t say another word but in a minute I could see the tears running down her face. When her mama came over and put her arm around her shoulders Peaches shrugged her off. Later, when we were checking out the tube, I asked her why she was so upset about Big Joe.
“You know your mama likes him and he’s sweet for an Old School dude,” I said.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with Big Joe, Squeezie,” Peaches said later, tagging me like she always does when she’s upset. “I think if she loved my daddy she wouldn’t go messing around with somebody else.”
I wasn’t even going there. I mean, you’re supposed to give people their propers when they’re alive but after they’re gone for years all you have to do is just don’t diss them. I personally never diss no dead people, anyway. Okay, so Peaches was sad and walking around like she lost her best friend, which is me. The closer the wedding got the more down she was. Nothing anybody said could cheer her up. Her mama asked her up front if she wanted her to say no to Big Joe.
“Honey, I’ll do it for you,” Peaches’ mama said.
“Do what you want,” Peaches said.
I thought that was kind of mean but I knew my friend was hurting inside. She was only nine when her father passed but they had been real close. She always said that he had been her best friend before me. When Peaches was young he used to take her to the park and he would get right down in the sandbox and make castles and stuff with her. When we got older he would take me and Peaches to a restaurant on Saturday afternoons and make believe we were grown ladies and that was, like, super-cool. Having your father for a best friend was all right and I could see how she felt. But I could also see her mother’s point of view. Big Joe had loved her mama for a long time and he did own a Bar-B-Que joint that was the serious bomb. What’s more, it didn’t take geometry or nothing like that to see that her mama loved Big Joe, too.
When the woman who’s the borough president announced that the city was sponsoring a street fair on 145th Street, I saw a chance to cheer Peaches up. Peaches and me are home girls and I can’t stand for her to be sad all the time.
“So let’s go on to the street fair and eat some potato salad or whatever else they got,” I said.
She said okay and I said we should wear our black pants and put on some fly tops in case any boys showed and she said she wasn’t in the mood for boys and she was going to wear the top she had on. Whatever.
So we’re at the street fair and it looks like it could develop into something. They had hooked up some monster amps on a flatbed truck and the usual hoochie mamas were showing off their stuff. Me and Peaches, who are both on a conservative tip, were standing in front of my crib checking things out. I’m not homely but I don’t have Peaches’ looks so I was scopin’ and hopin’, if you know what I mean.
Leroy hooked up some jams and the dancing started. I was wishing that somebody would come over to us because I knew Peaches loved to dance and I figured that maybe a little shaking would get her out of her bad mood. That’s when J.T. showed up.
J.T. was tall and dark, had pretty eyes, a thin face, and he was built nice for a sixteen-year-old. The guys on the block said he could really play ball, too. But he was always in trouble. He had even been in the Juvenile Detention Facility last Christmas for snatching a white lady’s pocketbook You knew you were going to read about him in the newspaper one day or see his picture on television with his hands behind his back.
“Hey, Squeeze, what’s happening?” he said.
“Hey, J.T.,” I came back.
He stood a little way from us and started eyeballing the food table. There was beans and rice, fried chicken, ribs, plantains, and corn on the cob.
I pointed him out to Peaches and right away she got caught up in her attitude and talking about why J.T. had to come around to mess things up.
“It’s a street fair and he lives on this street,” I said.
“You know he’s a thief, right?” Peaches said. “And I got the money on me for the wedding gift.”
Peaches and me had gone downtown earlier looking for a wedding gift for her moms and Big Joe.
“Why are you going to spend two hundred dollars if you’re so messed around about the marriage?” I had asked her when we were walking out of Macy’s.
“I got to get them something,” she said. “And I am not messed around about the marriage!”
Whatever. Anyway, J.T. was slowly sliding over toward the eats.
“What do you want?” Peaches asked him.
“This is a free party, right?” he said.
“So you coming around to cop what you can get for free?” Peaches asked in this nasty way.
I didn’t want to get into nothing with J.T., because sometimes when boys go to those youth houses they come out dangerous, so I told Peaches to cool it.
“Cool
what
?” Peaches put her hand on her hip. “I’m not scared of no J.T.”
“Why don’t you just chill?” J.T. said.
“Why don’t you just shut up?” Peaches got right up in J.T.’s face. “You shouldn’t even be talking to decent people. I know you’re sleeping in the street. You ain’t even got a home and you’re telling somebody to chill. Leave me alone!”
Peaches was getting loud, flashing proud and drawing a crowd. People were turning to see what was going on. Mrs. Liburd, a little Bajun lady, came over and said we shouldn’t argue.
“You’re such lovely children,” she said, reminding us that we didn’t need to be showing ourselves out.
J.T. dropped his head and walked away. He went toward where I thought he lived. You could see the hurt in his eyes. It made me feel bad for him and for Peaches, too, because that’s not the way she shows when things go right.
I thought about saying something to Peaches but I figured it wasn’t the right time.
Some brothers with dreads started playing steel drums and that was getting us back to a good mood. The steel drums were on the money and when Big Joe showed up with a portable barbecue grill everything was everything. Peaches’ mom was working with Big Joe and they looked like a cool couple.
“You want to go help them serve?” I asked Peaches.
“They didn’t ask me to help them,” Peaches said.
“Maybe because they’re afraid you’re going to chump them off,” I said. “Like you did J.T.”
“They just don’t need me,” Peaches said. “I usually make the potato salad at home. Now she got him I guess she wants to eat his nasty potato salad.”
I have eaten girlfriend’s potato salad and it’s not all that but I saved that for later. I went over myself to lend a hand.
Big Joe had on his chef hat and an apron. He was slicing up the ribs and dipping them in the sauce. Peaches’ mama had on an apron and she was serving up some lemonade. Every once in a while she would glance over at Big Joe and give him a little smile and he would give her a little smile right back. I like to see that in old folks.
Me and Peaches have been best friends for as long as I can remember but wrong is wrong and everybody knows what God don’t like. After a while Peaches did come over but she made sure nobody thought she was having a good time.
“Hold up on the serving until we set out the trash cans,” Big Joe said.
Big Joe was a real good cook and the food line was stretched halfway down the block.
“Now hear this! Now hear this!” It was Leroy on the P.A. system. “Anybody who is already fat and greasy should get on the back of the line and please save me some food if y’all want me to play some decent music!”
With the food going, the music blowing, 145th Street was like a huge rent party without the door charge. Everybody was having fun. Except for Peaches, of course, but you could see she was needing to work at being miserable. Then little Debbie, wearing a dress so tight you could see everything she had, said something to the guys in the steel band and they started playing a reggae version of “Here Comes the Bride,” which was corny but in an okay kind of way.
Peaches smiled and I half smiled back at her.
“You still mad at me, girlfriend?” she asked.
“No,” I said, even though I was, a little.
“Look, you want to come with me and I’ll take a plate up to J.T.?” she said. “I know I didn’t act right.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “Just let it slide.”
“Right, so now J.T.’s mad at me, and I hurt my moms, and now my main girl is hurt, too.” Peaches gave me that smile she knows always gets around me.
“You know you got a fast mouth, girl,” I said. “I don’t know how you can be so correct and righteous in your heart, and still fix your mouth to say all them mean things.”
“As long as I got my Squeezie to get me straight I’m all right,” Peaches said. “Come on upstairs with me.”
I really didn’t want to go up to where J.T. was. I was just happy that girlfriend was seeing where she was at. “I’m not going up there,” I said, but when she fixed a plate of chicken and greens and salad and said she was going anyway I naturally had to go with her.
We covered the plate with some aluminum foil and went into the building next to John’s Fish House. The halls were kind of dim and the tin on the stairs rattled as we went up, Peaches going first and me behind her.
“I guess I got to get used to my mama getting married, Squeezie,” Peaches said.
“I think you do,” I said. “Same way she got to get used to it if you get married.”
“She’s still wrong for marrying him so soon,” Peaches said.
We went up to the top floor to where we thought J.T. lived and saw there was a padlock on the door. Peaches turned and looked at me and I looked at her.
“Maybe they moved,” I said.
We went back toward the stairs and Peaches stopped. She looked up past the landing that led to the roof. Then she started up even though there wasn’t much light up there. Like a good homey I followed.
“Who coming up here!” The voice sounded like a growl more than a person and I was ready for some serious stepping.
“It’s me,” Peaches said. “That you, J.T.?”
“Get out of here!” J.T. stepped down in front of Peaches. He had his shirt off and he spread his legs and had his fists balled up.
“We brought you a plate,” Peaches said.
Wham!
J.T. knocked that plate from Peaches’ hand and it went up against the wall.
“What’s wrong with you, fool?” Peaches was up in his face again.
“Get out of here!” he said.
I was reaching for Peaches to pull her back because I didn’t want her to get hurt. Peaches came down two steps and turned back toward J.T. He was so mad the spit was flying out with his words.
Then, just when I thought we were going to go on down and get back to the block party, Peaches started back up the stairs again. J.T. put his arm in front of her and Peaches grabbed it and started wrestling with him.
“Don’t you touch her!” I heard myself screaming.
J.T. slipped on the stairs and somehow Peaches pushed him down a little and ran past him up toward the roof. Something inside me just went crazy, like a heavy panic thing, and I tried to run up the stairs after her and J.T. put his hand right over my face and started pushing me back. I hit the wall and had to catch myself before I fell down the stairs. Then J.T. turned to go after Peaches. I caught his leg and he kicked me with his other leg and I had to let him go.
So by this time I’m crying and my shoulder is hurt. Then I hear J.T. cursing again, and this time it’s cursing and almost the same growling noise he was making before. If it had been anybody else but Peaches, I would have been down the stairs in a heartbeat, but I couldn’t leave her in no danger.
I got my teeth clenched up and went upstairs ready to scratch J.T.’s eyes clean out of his head if I had to. He was standing on the steps just below the door that led to the roof. He saw me and tried to push me back with one hand.
“Just get out of here! Just get out of here!” he was saying.
I looked on the landing and Peaches was down on her knees and there was somebody else there, too. It was J.T.’s mama. She was sitting on the landing with a blanket around her. There was an empty cracker box, old newspapers, and open cans of food scattered around the landing.
J.T.’s mama was shivering. The light coming through a crack in the door to the roof filtered through her hair to make a halo around her thin face. She looked over Peaches’ shoulder to me, the big sad dark eyes looking like they were a hundred years old. Peaches was just holding her with both arms.
J.T. was still carrying on but he was slowing down and the growling noise was like him halfway crying at the same time he was talking. After a while he stopped and leaned against the banister. His mama brought her hand out from the blanket around her and she put it on Peaches’ arm.