All-Bright Court (19 page)

He yelled at her. “You don't think I'm good enough for you. I'm nothing but a
casero
, cleaning up piss and shit. You want one of those
blancos
sitting behind one of those fancy desks, not the man who cleans up after them.”

“That's not true,” Gloria yelled back at him. “How can you say something so crazy? Trying to push me into the arms of a white man.”

“You should've married one, somebody who could give you something. With me you will never have nothing.”

“You give me all I need. You're mixing up what I'm saying. I'm thinking about the future. Maybe we can send Miguel to college. Being a secretary is all I think I can do. It's all I think I can be good at. You're good at cleaning.”

Orlando laughed bitterly. “I'm good at it. I can't read. I can't write in two tongues. I'm a stupid man. That is what makes me a good janitor,” he said.

“Orlando,” she said. “You are a man. I take pride in your work. You take pride in your work.”

“It's not pride I take
in
my work. I work hard, do honest work. That is what I take pride in. But it is not enough.
Mi padre
worked and took care of everybody, us kids, Mommy, a brother too. I have trouble feeding just three mouths.”

“That was Puerto Rico. It's not the same now, here. Nothing works for us here. Here we pay, pay, pay. Water, food, big rent, heat. Bills, all the time bills. And what do we get? Hell, we pay for a sewer that backs up in the yard.”

 

Gloria was accepted at secretarial school in downtown Buffalo, with enough grant money to cover the cost of the yearlong program. There was one problem: what to do with Miguel. Her classes started at eight
A.M.
, but she had to leave Lackawanna by seven. Now that Orlando worked nights in Buffalo, he did not get home until eight.

“I'll get someone to keep him mornings,” Gloria told Orlando. “Maybe the lady in back of us.”

“Her? She has twenty-seven kids.”

“Don't be silly. Mrs. Taylor is a nice woman. She keeps her kids nice.”

“I don't know,” Orlando said. “Where will she put
mi niño?
When it's time for his nap, she will have to put him on a hook.”

Gloria decided to ask anyway. Venita was at Mary Kate's when Gloria came by. She had Miguel with her, hanging from her hip. Though Gloria spoke to Mary Kate, Venita jumped in. “I'll keep him. Can I keep him?” She reached for the baby and he went to her. “See, he like me, with his pretty self. Girl, you got you a pretty baby. He a angel.”

“He's no angel,” Gloria said. “You'll see that.”

“You mind, Kate, if I keep him?” Venita asked, and before Mary Kate could answer, she turned to Gloria. “I know you ain't asked me, but I want to keep him. I'll do it for free.”

“Gloria, I think you should let Venita keep your baby. If the truth be told, I can't really take him on, and she good with kids. She love them.”

Venita's morning son began coming the next week. The first morning, Venita tried to sit and hold him, but he was eight months, too big for that. He climbed out of her lap and slid off the couch. He explored her living room and kitchen, and Venita was amazed that he kept finding things. She thought her house was clean, but suddenly he would be chewing, and when she pried his mouth open, she would find a tiny pebble, a grain of rice, a button.

Venita told Gloria about Miguel's ability to find things when Gloria unexpectedly picked up the baby herself one afternoon.

“I told you he wasn't an angel,” Gloria said.

“Yeah he is, and he fast. You got to watch him like a hawk. I don't let him get into nothing. Where your husband?”

“He didn't wake up. I hope it wasn't a problem, me getting here later,” Gloria said.

“It wasn't no problem. Don't feel like ya'll got to rush to come get him.”

Gloria did not fully understand what Venita had said. For, though Orlando was supposed to pick up Miguel at noon, sometimes he would come before then, as early as nine or ten, cutting short his morning's sleep to spend extra time with the baby.

Venita did not go to Mary Kate's house when she was watching Miguel. She did not want to share the little time she had to spend with him. Miguel was too busy exploring his new world to pay much attention to the woman who had mistaken him for an angel. But Venita did not notice. She was content to follow him through the living room and kitchen, snatching danger from his hands until he began slowing down. Miguel seemed to have a clock in his stomach. He knew he had a ten o'clock bottle. Sometimes, before Venita took it from the refrigerator he was there trying to open the door.

This was the only time Miguel would let Venita hold him. She would sit on the couch, rocking back and forth, pressing him to her breast, playing with his curly hair, singing to him.

She had tried singing “Mockingbird,” but she wasn't sure of the words. “If that diamond ring don't shine, Mama going to buy you a bottle of wine . . . A bottle of wine? That can't be right,” she had said. “What mama would buy her baby a bottle of wine?” She could not think of anything to rhyme with “shine,” so she sang “This Old Man” and “Old MacDonald.”

Mary Kate did not say anything, but she missed Venita, wanted her to come over for starch and gossip. She would look out the window of the back door, lifting the curtain.

“Who you looking for?” Dorene had asked her one day when she had come home for lunch.

“Nobody,” Mary Kate had told her. “I was just looking.”

“She coveting that child,” Mary Kate told Samuel one day.

The morning before Thanksgiving, Orlando picked up Miguel at Venita's at ten, took the baby home, and then lay on the couch while Miguel played with blocks. Though Orlando had had a short nap, he was exhausted. The long bus rides, the staying up nights, the work, and the cold were all wearing on him. Orlando's eyes closed.

Miguel crawled away from the blocks and headed for the kitchen. He stopped along the way to put a piece of string in his mouth. In the kitchen, he opened the cabinet under the sink and pulled out two cans of food. Behind them was a bag of beans.

They were fava beans. The plastic bag was torn open and the beans had spilled onto the shelf. Miguel sat before the cabinet and picked up one of the tan, pebblelike beans. Gathering beans in both hands, he stuffed his mouth until it could hold no more. Then he swallowed. Three beans fell from his mouth. Two slipped down his throat.

As he began to gag, his tongue shot out, sending another bean falling to the floor. But the two beans were still caught in his throat. Unable to make a sound, he fell over on his side, a bean still clasped in one hand. He curled up, just as if he were asleep.

Orlando awoke to Gloria's screams, but it was too late. The baby was dead. Before the ambulance came, Orlando shook Miguel so hard to try to wake him, he broke his neck.

Mary Kate called Venita, and without a coat, Venita ran out of the house. She and Mary Kate were among the crowd that stood in Gloria's front yard. When Venita saw the baby's body carried out of the house, covered in a sheet, she sank to the ground. Mary Kate tried to pick her up, but she couldn't. A man from a few rows over carried her to Mary Kate's house as Gloria was being brought out on a stretcher. Orlando followed behind, no longer a man, barely a statue.

Venita blamed herself. Gloria blamed herself. Orlando blamed himself. Gloria's mother blamed him too. She accused him to his face. “If it wasn't for you,
mi nieto
would be living. I hate you. You killed Miguel.
Asesino. Asesino
. I'll see you in hell before I send my Gloria back to you.”

Mary Kate later told Samuel, “A flavor bean, favor bean. I ain't never hear tell of such a bean the baby choked on. Gloria fell out, and Venita, she fell out, like somebody struck her with a bolt of lightning. She blamed herself. But it ain't nobody fault.”

“Naw, it ain't nobody fault,” Samuel said.

“Venita was the one all the time carrying on like that baby was hers,” Mary Kate said. “You don't run 'round getting attached to other people kids. Don't nothing good come of it.”

19

M
IKEY
could see the man's breath cloud and dissipate before him in the night air. He could feel it and smell it. Warm, almost hot, and redolent of oranges. The man wore a black ski mask. As he held a gun to the side of Mikey's head, he said, “I should kill you. You think you somebody, don't you?”

Mikey did not know if he should answer. He thought it was a rhetorical question. “You think you somebody?” the man asked. “Answer me, paperboy.”

“No, I don't think I'm somebody,” Mikey said.

“Good. 'Cause you ain't nobody. You ain't nothing. Hear me? You not shit, boy,” the man said. “You been collecting for your papers. Well, I'm collecting too.” He ripped the full coin changer from Mikey's belt and stuffed it under his jacket. With one big, shaking hand, he searched through Mikey's pockets.

The sweet smell of the man's breath was making Mikey sick. He tried to block it out, tried to block out what was happening to him by forcing the scene out of his mind. He ground his thoughts to dust.

From the dust came a vision of the man with the gun as he came toward him through the field. He was walking left of the narrow path of packed snow. His head was bowed and his hands were in his jacket pockets. He kicked up the deep snow as he walked, and as he silently passed, Mikey thought, I know this guy. That was—But a gun at his temple interrupted his thoughts. The man's fragrant voice said, “I should kill you.”

And there was a summer field of dandelion and Queen Anne's lace. Mikey and his father were crossing the field. He was only three, and they were eating Popsicles from the Red Store. Orange-colored sweet juice dripped from one of his father's blackened hands and into the dirt along the dusty path. Mikey could see the orange drops leaving brown dots as they fell in the dust. And from the dust rose the man's sweet voice. “Get out of here,” he said. But Mikey stood and looked at the man. “If you tell, I'll kill you,” the man said, his voice echoing in the thin winter air.

Mikey took off along the slippery path. Running toward home, he thought, I know him. That was Isaac. Then he fell, the ground seeming to come up to meet him. He tumbled into the whiteness of the field, coming to rest face down in the snow, its coldness numbing him. He expected to escape the terror of this nightmare and find himself in the warmth of his bed. But he was awake in the bed of cold whiteness, and he did not know where Isaac was. Mikey leapt up from where he lay, expecting the gun to reappear. His foot became tangled in the buried weeds as he started running. He stumbled, but kept his balance.

As Mikey ran, kicking up clouds of snow, Isaac's words came back to him. “If you tell, I'll kill you.” With each stride he moved farther and farther from the field, grinding Isaac's sweet words to dust. By the time he rounded the row to 18, there was nothing left for him to tell. He had ground Isaac's words to a fine powder that blew away in the wind. There was no robbery, no gun. There was not even Isaac.

20

I
N THE CLOSET
under the stairs at 79, the albino girl lay and dreamed. She dreamed there was a door at the end of the sloping closet, a small door. Through the door came a black boy. He was small when he came through the door, but once in the closet he was big and he sat with his knees to his chest. The boy had come to bring the albino girl color. He had come with a small tin of watercolors.

He opened the tin and painted her soft, fat, white body. The boy painted with short, quick strokes that felt like the licking of a cat's tongue. He mixed the colors and painted her black. He used them all up to make her black.

The girl was allowed outside then. She could be seen. The wind blew on her and the sun shined. Its light did not hurt her eyes. She was loved. Her mother and father loved her. The boy loved her, and she and the boy danced. There was something in the dance that summoned rain. It fell like a punishment and washed the color away. The rain made her ugly again, and she ran back inside. She hid in the closet, and the boy followed her. He told her he would bring color again. He would go home for crayons. “They won't wash away,” he said.

And the boy made himself small again and went back through the small door. But before the boy could come back, the colorless girl awakened.

She awakened to find the door at the end of the closet had disappeared, and she had been sleeping. She had been hiding and dreaming in the closet because she was not loved. Her parents believed this child was punishment. She was a spell worked up by her grandmother.

 

“She working a spell,” Zena's mother said when Zena told her of Greene's kindness.

“She never even talked to you before. Why should she start now?” her mother asked.

“Because I'm having Karo baby. It's her grandchild,” Zena said.

“I'm not sure that's not a spell too.”

“Oh, Mama,” Zena said.

“Don't you ‘oh, Mama' me. You was too young to remember when Greene first come up here. That was the summer them bats came. She was country, country, had them funky asafetida tied 'round them kids' necks.”

“I remember that Karo used to wear one,” Zena said.

No one could ever remember Greene's children being sick. They never got chicken pox, measles, whooping cough, mumps, not even a cold. Most children stayed away from them because the bags gave off such an odor, but Zena did not.

It was Zena who convinced Karo to take the stinking, dirty bag from his neck back in 1966.

She came near Karo. She danced the Willoughby with him. She held his hands for pop the whip.

“It's stupid,” Zena said to him. “It don't really protect you from germs. That's country. You know the school nurse say ya'll don't get sick 'cause don't nobody come in breathing distance of ya'll. Why don't you just take it off?”