Buddy (11 page)

Daddy finishes rubbing his eyes and nods. “We're going to the house,” he says.

“You can't get there,” Brother James says.

Daddy looks at him.

“Your street's flooded up to the eaves. Twelve feet of water at least. I'm sorry, T Junior. You're going to have to tell your daddy about his house. Y'all ain't got nothing left. It's all gone. Everything.”

“But what about Buddy?” I say.

“Buddy?” Brother James says.

“We left him locked in the bathroom. The car was too little for him to fit. He's been waiting and waiting.”

Brother James looks at Daddy. “You were planning on getting that dog?”

Daddy nods.

“You can't get there, son,” Brother James says. “Your house is standing in the middle of a lake.”

“But I can swim. I know how.”

“You can't swim in that black water. You don't even know what's in there. And what's your family going to do if you drown yourself going after that dog? Buddy was a street dog when you found him. Now he's got to take care of his own self again.”

“But he's only got three legs now.”

Brother James stoops down and looks me in the eye. “You can't get to that dog, Li'l T. It's the Lord's will,” he says. “And there ain't nothing you can do about it.”

21

The next day, I just lay there on my cot. Some boys in the shelter are starting to make gangs. They're coming up to people and acting big. The boss of the shelter takes them and puts them in a room with a counselor.

I'm thinking about what that would be like, sitting in a room with this white lady saying, “What's troubling you now?”

And I think,
What do you say first?
The bathrooms in this shelter stink. I can't eat watery red beans and rice one more time. I want my own clothes, not these ones with somebody else's name written in the neck. I want to watch the TV shows I like. I want a place where I can be by myself.

I want my dog.

I'm laying there and I close my eyes and I go flying. I go right out the window and over the broke pine trees and all that black water and I land right on the roof of our house. I lean over the edge and I look at the bathroom window.

Is that window covered up with water? Is it high and dry? Is it broke open? Is Buddy gone, roaming the streets and looking for food? Is he sitting there in the corner, panting in the heat and cocking up his eyebrow, just waiting for me to come let him loose? Or is he—?

And that's where the flying stops. I can't see nothing else.

Daddy's gone almost all day. When he shows up that evening, I'm still laying on my cot playing my Game Boy and Granpa T is laying on his cot looking at his pictures.

“What are you looking at?” Daddy says to Granpa T.

“Your mama,” Granpa T says, and hands one of the pictures to Daddy. “She's been gone a long time,” he says, “but I'll be seeing her again soon.”

“What are you talking about? You've got a long time yet,” Daddy says. “It's going to be all right now. We're leaving this shelter. I've got a job.”

Mama sings out, “Praise the Lord!”

Granpa T sits up. “Where are you working?”

Daddy says, “Right here in town. I'm going to help them clear up all these trees. Going to work with the same crew I helped before.”

“But where are we going to live?” Mama says.

“The church will give us a place to start,” Daddy says, “and it's all furnished. We get three months free, then we pay rent.”

“Hallelujah,” Mama says. “Praise God.”

Daddy looks down at me. “And the kids are going back to school again. Right here in town.”

“But when are we moving back to New Orleans?” I say.

“I hope never,” Mama says. “Next time I see that place will be too soon for me.”

“I want to go home,” I say.

“This is home now,” Daddy says. “We're starting over.”

They put us up in an apartment building on the other side of town. Stacked up on top of ours are maybe three more apartments, and they each have a balcony stuck on the front. We've got a little square of grass that I could cut in five minutes with a pair of scissors. Right in front of our grass is the parking lot. And then there's a six-lane highway with cars blasting back and forth all day long and making a circle all the way around the whole town.

Everywhere you look there's plenty of cars, cement, and buildings. But one thing there ain't hardly any of is trees. There weren't too many to start with and whatever there was got broke off in the storm. There ain't no iron fences neither. And there ain't no front porches or steps to sit on. There ain't no corner to the street, and as far as I can see, there ain't no end to it neither.

Tanya's standing out front clapping her hands and pointing at the raggedy flower boxes hanging on the front windows of every first-floor apartment. Baby Terrell is trying to walk up the sidewalk to the wrong apartment. Mama's saying how are we going to remember which one is ours. Granpa T's saying he thinks we're up to it.

Then Daddy puts the key in the door and in we go.

That apartment ain't hardly as big as the first floor of our house in New Orleans. It's mostly one big room with the kitchen and the table and the TV, and then off to the side are two little bedrooms. Granpa T stretches out on the sofa and says he guesses he'll sleep there because that's where he spends most of his time anyway.

Mama and Daddy take the bedroom that has a big bed, a crib, and a bureau with four drawers. Daddy opens those drawers and laughs and says all he needs now is some clothes, and Mama says he better not get too many because that's where she plans to put hers.

The other bedroom has two twin beds so close together you almost have to turn sideways to get between them. Mama says me and Tanya get that room and we have to make up our minds which bed is whose.

“Which one you want?” I say to Tanya.

She's standing there looking and looking, trying to decide.

I push past her. “I pick this one,” I say, and lay down on the one farthest from the door.

“But I want that one.”

“Too late,” I say. I turn over and stare at the wall.

The next morning, Daddy starts his job, and Mama takes us down to the school office. They give us uniforms for the school. They've got a whole big room set up with cafeteria tables loaded down with red and white shirts and khaki shorts and skirts. They've got piles of belts in one corner and a whole stack of book bags in another.

When we walk in, the ladies are all smiles. They say how they are so glad we can come to their school. They say how all the families gave their old uniforms so the Katrina kids can come to school. They tell Mama one store in town gave away all these book bags. They give her a piece of paper to take to some other place where somebody else is giving out free paper and pencils.

They're patting us on the back and holding shirts up against my chest. They're saying what a strong-looking boy I am. They're saying how Tanya is cute as a button. Tanya's showing all her teeth in her grin and I'm thinking I'm tireder than I've ever been in my whole life. I'm thinking I just want to go back to that apartment and climb in my bed and go to sleep.

That night Daddy is worn out at supper. He's saying he's awful out of shape but he'll get stronger. Mama's saying she made his favorite roast. Granpa T's saying he thinks he can fix up the apartment so the doors don't squeak if somebody would buy a little can of WD-40. Tanya's saying her doll likes the new bed. Baby Terrell is sitting in the high chair somebody gave us and rubbing his hands in his peas. After looking at that, I'm thinking I don't even want to eat. I just want to go to bed.

I'm still tired the next morning when I head off to school. My teacher's name is Mrs. Watson. She looks like she's about six feet tall. She's got red hair hanging down to her shoulders. She's wearing a blue dress. I walk in the door and she looks up and she says, “Ah! Tyrone. Welcome.”

And I think to myself,
I ain't Tyrone
.

She shows me where to hang up my bag. She hands me a stack of books. She shows me a desk. It has my name written on a card taped right on the tabletop. I sit down. I look around. Everybody's busy doing something—writing or drawing or something.

One boy lifts up his head and gives me a look. One girl turns around and grins like she's my best friend but she ain't. All a sudden I wish Jamilla was here. Or even J-Boy. He was mean about Buddy and he stole the lawn mower, but he's still somebody I know.

Mrs. Watson squats down beside me and looks me straight in the eye. Her eyes are almost green. “We have six new students because of Katrina,” she says. “We've been talking about what happened, and we've decided to make a book. Everybody's doing something to go in it. Would you rather write or draw?”

I don't say anything. I just put my head down on my arms. Then I feel her touching my shoulder. I figure she's already going to send me to the principal. I sit up.

“Why don't you draw?” she says, and hands me a piece of paper and a pack of colored pencils.

She stands up again and walks away.

I look at my paper. Ain't nobody going to help me. It's all on me.

I pick up a black pencil. I draw a dog. Then I draw water.

22

The days pass. In the classroom I sit at the desk. Three of the other Katrina kids move back home before I even find out their names. The ones still left are from someplace else in Mississippi. The only boy is the one who turned around to look at me that first day. His name is Jerome. I find out he hardly ever talks. I find out the grinning girl is named Mattie. I find out there's two kids in my class who don't even speak English. I find out my teacher is going to call me Tyrone no matter what.

It's coming on October. Baby Terrell's giving Mama a fit about trying to climb in the cabinets. One day we lose him and find him stuck up in the cooking pots. She's going around latching everything now. Can't get a glass of water without undoing a lock. One day he gets out the front door and Mama nearly loses her mind. She looks out and he's rocking down the sidewalk like he knows where he's going. She starts screaming and I go running. When I catch him he's grinning at me like he's proud. I don't fuss at him. I just snatch him up and carry him home and think I'd like to do that, too. Just walk out the front door and not come back.

Tanya's got about a hundred new friends plus a whole stack of new dolls. Everybody's giving them to her. She's got black dolls and white dolls. She's got dolls with hair and dolls without hair. She's got dolls in pink dresses, dolls in bathing suits, and dolls in nothing at all. She's naming them after all her new friends. Every night she kisses every one of them good night. It takes a long time. I lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling while she's kissing.

“Good night, Susie,” she says. “Good night, Keisha. Good night, Gaynelle.”

Looks like everybody's getting happy except me. And maybe Granpa T. He fixes all the hinges. He takes all the doors down and oils them and sands them and puts them back up. I help him some on a Saturday. Then he crawls up in the kitchen cabinets and puts down new paper all the way to the back corners. He takes apart the stroller somebody gave us and puts it back together again so it rolls twice as good. He looks around and there ain't nothing else to do.

So he sits in the dark and watches the TV.

When I go to school, he's watching the TV. When I come home, he's watching it. When I go to bed, he's still watching it. I ask him what he's watching. He lifts up his hand and says, “This here show,” and that's all. Sometime it's about animals in the jungle. Sometime it's about a war somewhere. Mostly it's just people acting stupid.

Mama stands in the kitchen and wipes her hands on a dishrag. “Are you still watching that TV, Granpa T?” she says.

He nods, and she shakes her head. “It's not right,” she says. “It's just not right.” I sit on my bed and do my homework and learn all my games by heart. I beat every level. I start over.

One night at supper seems like everybody's talking at once. Daddy says they're trying out a new way to keep the pine tree resin from gumming up the chain saws. Mama says she's thinking about making some pralines for the bake sale they're having for Tanya's class. Tanya says there's a girl in her class who has hair so long sometimes she sits on it. Baby Terrell reaches over and grabs one of Tanya's ponytails and Tanya screams. When Mama makes him let go, he starts banging his spoon.

I'm thinking I want to bang a spoon. I'm thinking I want everybody to just shut up.

I can't help it.

All a sudden I stand up. I turn around and go in my room and slam the door. Everybody sitting at the table gets real quiet. I hear somebody's chair scrape against the floor. I hear my door open and I flop over fast so I'm facing the wall.

“Son?” It's Daddy's voice.

“Leave me alone!” I yell.

I pull my pillow over my head as quick as I can and wait for the smack.

My room is quiet and I'm waiting. I hear Daddy breathing.

Then I hear the door close real easy, and the voices start up again at the table.

I squeeze my hands into fists and I hit my pillow over and over again until I'm finally too tired to move at all.

Don't nobody knock on my door or come in my room for a long time. I lay there in the dark and listen to them clean up the kitchen. When the TV goes on, I hear my door open. The light flips on. I turn over, and there's Granpa T.

“Are you going to lay there like a bump on a log for the rest of your life?”

I don't say nothing.

He sits down on Tanya's bed. “I must be getting old,” he says. “I'm always tired.”

“I'm tired, too.”

“You're young. You ain't got nothing to be tired about. Sit up.”

I lift myself up on my elbows.

“That ain't sitting up.”

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and sit on the edge. “Is this up enough?”

“Watch your lip.”

He's holding his box of pictures. He hands it to me. “Open it.”

There's only a handful of pictures inside. They're all of one woman. “You ain't never seen her in person,” he says. “Your grandmama passed before your time, but you can see she's the most beautiful woman in the world.”

I look at her. She's pretty all right, but she's not the most beautiful woman in the world.

“Her name was Alice,” he says.

“I know that,” I say.

“She could sing like a bird.”

I've heard that, too. Everybody says Tanya's going to sing like that someday.

“Did I ever tell you how I met her?” he says.

I'm thinking,
Probably
, but I don't say nothing.

“It was Sunday morning, the thirtieth of July, nineteen hundred and sixty-one.”

Here comes a story
, I'm thinking, and I sit back.

“I was finally out of the army and back home in Mississippi,” he says. “My pockets were full of money. I bought me a nineteen fifty-nine Cadillac. I was driving right smack through the middle of town. This very town we're in now.”

He shakes his head. “You should have seen it then. There weren't more than five or six stoplights and some railroad tracks. Now you can't get across town in less than half an hour.”

He stops and I wait.

“So I've got the windows rolled down,” he starts up again, “and I'm passing by the church. I hear them singing, and I decide to go inside. Turns out every seat is full. I'm standing in the back, holding my hat and wondering how to sneak out, when this girl—” He looks me up and down. “This girl not too much older than you are now, she stands up and starts to sing.”

Granpa T closes his eyes and raises his hands beside his face. “My heart lifts up,” he says. “My heart lifts up on the wings of song.”

He's swaying back and forth real slow like he's listening to something. Then his eyes pop open and he looks at me again.

“When I leave out of that church, Li'l T,” he says, “I'm so in love, I swear I'm going to marry that girl if I have to wait a hundred years.”

He looks down at the picture for a minute. He's smiling.

“Of course, I had to wait for her to grow up first. I moved on down to New Orleans for a job and before you know it, I was playing the fool. You name it, I did it. I was spending all my money on foolishness. I got the sharpest clothes. I got the sharpest car.”

He stops talking and looks at me hard, his eyes squinching up just a little. “I ain't going to tell you about the other stuff. You ain't old enough, and your mama would kill me.”

He shakes his head. “Um-hm,” he says.

Then he keeps on going. “But even with all that craziness, every Sunday morning, I drove that old car up to Mississippi, and I listened to her sing in the church, and I tried to get her to notice me.”

He draws a deep breath. “It didn't work. Even when she got old enough, she wouldn't give me the time of day. I'd speak to her at church. I'd pass by her house in the afternoon. I even wrote her some letters. One day, she finally gave me the lowdown. She said she'd heard all about me. She said she'd heard I didn't have the sense I was born with. She said she had better things planned for her life than passing time with me.

“I remember that like it was yesterday. She was sitting there as sweet and polite as can be. Then she looked up and shot me dead with those words. I jumped in that car, and I went spinning out of her driveway and barreling down the road. It was getting dark and I was somewhere in the woods halfway home when the car just started going slower and slower, and then it stopped.

“Li'l T, I was out of gas. That needle was sitting right on top of that big red E.

“I started cussing. That car wasn't going nowhere soon but I was still jerking at the steering wheel and banging on it and yelling at the top of my lungs.”

Granpa T stops talking. He's just sitting there, his mouth closed and his head nodding slightly. Then he looks at me looking at him. “All a sudden, I stopped,” he says. “I wiped my face, and I sat there holding on to the steering wheel and looking out at that darkness all around me. And I thought to myself,
Tyrone Elijah Roberts, is this how you want to live your life?
And right then, everything changed.

“I can't explain it. I just know what happened.
I'm a man
, I thought,
and men don't act like I've been acting. Men take things on their shoulders and carry them
.

“And so I picked up my load. Right then. Right there. And I started carrying it.

“When I got back to New Orleans, I stopped all my foolishness. I saved my money and two years later I bought a house, the very one that just got flooded.

“Six months after that, I carried your grandmama over the threshold. She was wearing a white wedding dress she made herself and a little round hat stuck on with bobby pins. She passed just before your daddy got married.”

“How come y'all only had Daddy?”

“That was God's plan.”

He ain't looking at the pictures anymore. He ain't looking at anything. “I miss your grandmama,” he said. “I miss her every day. She was the most beautiful woman in the world and she could sing like a bird.”

We just sit there for a while, looking at the wall.

“Why did you tell me that story, Granpa T?”

He stands up and puts the pictures back in the box. “It's time for you to pick up your load, son.”

“I ain't a man, Granpa T.”

“You're close,” he says. “You're getting awful close.”