God Help the Child: A novel (10 page)

He had passed a couple, parked near an empty lot, taking turns sucking on a crack pipe. The sight was of no interest to him until he noticed a child, maybe two years old, screaming and crying while standing in the backseat of the crackheads' Toyota. He walked over to the car, yanked open the door, dragged the man out, smashed his face and kicked away the pipe that had fallen to the ground. Then the woman jumped out and ran to help her partner. The three-person fight was more hilarious than lethal, but it
was long enough and loud enough to get the attention first of shoppers, then the police. All three were arrested and the little screaming girl given to childcare services.

Felicity had to pay the fine. The judge was lenient with Booker because the crackhead parents disgusted him as much as they did Booker. He arraigned the couple and issued a disturbing-the-peace ticket for Booker. The entire incident enraged Felicity who wondered aloud why he meddled in things that didn't concern him.

“Who do you think you are? Batman?”

Booker fingered his right molar to see if it was loose or broken. The female had had more strength than the man, who swung wildly but never got in a hit. It was her knuckles that connected with his jaw.

“There was a little kid in that car. A baby!” he said.

“It wasn't your kid and it wasn't your business,” shouted Felicity.

A mite loose, decided Booker, but he would see a dentist anyway.

On the bus home each knew it was over without saying so. Felicity continued nagging for an hour or so after they arrived at her apartment, but up against Booker's leaden silence, she quit and took a shower. He didn't join her, as had been their practice.

Booker's work history was thin—one embarrassing and disaster-ridden semester teaching music in a junior high
school, the only public school teaching he could do since he had no certificate, and he was cut from the few music auditions he signed up for. His trumpet talent was adequate but not exceptional.

His luck changed at the precise moment it needed to when Carole tracked him down to forward a letter addressed to him from a law firm. Mr. Drew had died and to everyone's surprise he had included his grandchildren—but not his own children—in his will. Booker was to share the old man's constantly-bragged-about fortune with his siblings. He refused to think about the greed and criminality that produced his grandfather's fortune. He told himself the slumlord money had been cleansed by death. Not bad. Now he could rent his own place, a quiet room in a quiet neighborhood, and continue playing either on the street or in more little rundown clubs. Having access to no studio, the men played on corners. Not for money, which was pitiful enough, but to practice and experiment with one another in public before a nonpaying, therefore uncritical, undemanding audience.

Then came a day that changed him and his music.

Simply dumbstruck by her beauty Booker stared open-mouthed at a young blue-black woman standing at the curb laughing. Her clothes were white, her hair like a million
black butterflies asleep on her head. She was talking to another woman—chalk white with blond dreadlocks. A limousine negotiated the curb and both waited for the driver to open the door for them. Although it made him sad to see the limo pull away, Booker smiled and smiled as he walked on to the train entrance, where he played with the two guitarists. Neither one was there, not Michael or Chase, and it was only then that he noticed the rain—soft, steady. The sun still blazed so the raindrops falling from a baby-blue sky were like crystal breaking into specks of light on the pavement. He decided to play his trumpet alone in the rain anyway, knowing that no pedestrians would stop to listen; rather, they closed umbrellas as they rushed down the stairs to the trains. Still in thrall to the sheer beauty of the girl he had seen, he put the trumpet to his lips. What emerged was music he had never played before. Low, muted notes held long, too long, as the strains floated through drops of rain.

Booker had no words to describe his feelings. What he did know was that the rain-soaked air smelled like lilac when he played while remembering her. Streets with litter at their curbs appeared interesting, not filthy; bodegas, beauty shops, diners, thrift stores leaning against one another looked homey, downright friendly. Each time he imagined her eyes glittering toward him or her lips open in an inviting, reckless smile, he felt not just a swell of desire
but also the disintegration of the haunt and gloom in which for years Adam's death had clouded him. When he stepped through that cloud and became as emotionally content as he had been before Adam skated into the sunset—there she was. A midnight Galatea always and already alive.

A few weeks after that first sighting of her waiting for a limousine, there she was again, standing in line at the stadium where the Black Gauchos were performing—a hot band, new, upcoming, playing a blend of Brazilian and New Orleans jazz, one show only. The line was long, loud and jittery but when the doors opened to the crush he managed first to slip four bodies behind her and then, when the crowd found bench seats, he was able to stand right at her back.

In music-powered air, with body rules broken and sexual benevolence thick as cream, circling her waist with his arms seemed more than a natural gesture; it was an inevitable one. And together they danced and danced. When the music stopped, his Galatea turned to face him and surrender to him the reckless smile he'd always imagined.

“Bride,” she said when he asked her name.

God damn, he whispered.

Their lovemaking from the very beginning was serene, artful and long-lasting, so necessary to Booker that he deliberately withheld for nights in a row to make the return to her
bed brand-new. Their relationship was flawless. He especially liked her lack of interest in his personal life. Unlike with Felicity there was no probing. Bride was knock-down beautiful, easy, had something to do every day and didn't need his presence every minute. Her self-love was consistent with her cosmetic company milieu and mirrored his obsession with her. So if she rattled on about coworkers, products and markets, he watched her mesmerizing eyes that were so deeply expressive they said much more than mere language could. Speaking-eyes, he thought, accompanied by the music of her voice. Every feature—the ledge of her cheekbones, her invitational mouth, her nose, forehead, chin as well as those eyes—was more exquisite, more aesthetically pleasing because of her obsidian-midnight skin. Whether he was lying under her body, hovering above it or holding her in his arms, her blackness thrilled him. Then he was certain that he not only held the night, he owned it, and if the night he held in his arms was not enough, he could always see starlight in her eyes. Her innocent, oblivious sense of humor delighted him. When she, who wore no makeup and worked in a business all about cosmetics, asked him to help her choose the most winning shade of lip gloss, he laughed out loud. Her insistence on white-only clothes amused him. Unwilling to share her with the public he was seldom in the mood for clubbing. Yet dancing with her in down-lit uncool clubrooms to tapes of Michael Jackson's soprano
or James Brown's shouts was irresistible. Pressing close to her in crowded rap bars bewitched them both. He refused her nothing except accompanying her on shopping sprees.

Once in a while she dropped the hip, thrillingly successful corporate woman façade of complete control and confessed some flaw or painful memory of childhood. And he, knowing all about how childhood cuts festered and never scabbed over, comforted her while hiding the rage he felt at the idea of anyone hurting her.

Bride's complicated relationship with her mother and repellent father meant that, like him, she was free of family ties. It was just the two of them, and with the exception of her obnoxious pseudo-friend Brooklyn there were fewer and fewer interruptions from her colleagues. He still played with Chase and Michael on weekends, some afternoons, but there were glorious mornings of sun at the shore, cool evenings holding hands in the park in anticipation of the sexual choreography they would perform in every nook of her apartment. Sober as priests, creative as devils, they invented sex. So they believed.

When Bride was at her office, Booker relished the solitude for trumpet practice, scribbling notes to mail to his favorite aunt, Queen, and since there were no books in Bride's apartment—just fashion and gossip magazines—he visited the library often to read or reread books he had ignored or misunderstood while at university.
The Name of the Rose
, for one, and
Remembering Slavery
, a collection
that so moved him he composed some mediocre, sentimental music to commemorate the narratives. He read Twain, enjoying the cruelty of his humor. He read Walter Benjamin, impressed by the beauty of the translation, he read Frederick Douglass's autobiography again, relishing for the first time the eloquence that both hid and displayed his hatred. He read Herman Melville, and let Pip break his heart, reminding him of Adam alone, abandoned, swallowed by waves of casual evil.

Six months into the bliss of edible sex, free-style music, challenging books and the company of an easy undemanding Bride, the fairy-tale castle collapsed into the mud and sand on which its vanity was built. And Booker ran away.

N
othing. A call to our CO asking for more extended leave. Rehab. Emotional rehab—whatever. But nothing about where she's headed or why until today. A note scribbled on a piece of yellow lined tablet paper. Christ. I didn't have to read it to know what it said. “Sorry I ran away. I had to. Except for you everything was falling apart blah, blah, blah…”

Beautiful dumb bitch. Nothing about where she's going or how long she'd be gone. One thing I know for sure she's tracking that guy. I can read her mind like a headline crawling across the bottom of a TV screen. It's a gift I've had since I was a little kid. Like when the landlady stole the money lying on our dining room table and said we were behind in the rent. Or when my uncle started thinking of putting his fingers between my legs again, even before he knew himself what he was planning to do. I hid or ran or screamed with a fake stomachache so my mother would wake from her drunken nap to tend to me. Believe it. I've always sensed what people want and how to please them. Or not. Only once did I misread—with Bride's loverman.

I ran away, too, Bride, but I was fourteen and there was nobody but me to take care of me so I invented myself, toughened myself. I thought you did too except when it came to boyfriends. I knew right away that the last one—a conman if ever I saw one—would turn you into the scared little girl you used to be. One fight with a crazy felon and you surrendered, stupid enough to quit the best job in the world.

I started out sweeping a hairdresser's shop then waitressing until I got the drugstore job. Long before Sylvia, Inc., I fought like the devil for each job I ever got and let nothing, nothing stop me.

But for you it's “Wah, wah, I had to run…” Where to? In some place where there is no real stationery or even a postcard?

Bride, please.

A
city girl is quickly weary of the cardboard boredom of tiny rural towns. Whatever the weather, iron-bright sunshine or piercing rain, the impression of worn boxes hiding shiftless residents seems to sap the most attentive gaze. It's one thing for onetime hippies to live their anticapitalist ideals near the edge of a seldom-traveled country road. Evelyn and Steve had lived exciting lives of risk and purpose in their adventurous pasts. But what about regular plain folks who were born in these places and never left? Bride wasn't feeling superior to the line of tiny, melancholy houses and mobile homes on each side of the road, just puzzled. What would make Booker choose this place? And who the hell is Q. Olive?

She had driven one hundred and seventy miles on and off dirt roads some of which must have been created originally by moccasin-shod feet and wolf packs. Truckers could navigate them but a Jaguar repaired with another model's door had serious trouble. Bride drove carefully, peering ahead for obstacles, alive or not. By the time she saw the sign nailed to the trunk of a pine tree, her exhaustion quieted
a growing alarm. Although there were no more physical disappearances, she was disturbed by the fact that she'd had no menstrual period for at least two, maybe three, months. Flat-chested and without underarm or pubic hair, pierced ears and stable weight, she tried and failed to forget what she believed was her crazed transformation back into a scared little black girl.

Whiskey, it turned out, was half a dozen or so houses on both sides of a gravel road that led to a stretch of trailers and mobile homes. Parallel to the road beyond a stretch of sorrowful-looking trees ran a deep but narrow stream. The houses had no addresses but some mobile homes had names painted on sturdy mailboxes. Under eyes suspicious of strange cars and stranger visitors, Bride cruised slowly until she saw
QUEEN OLIVE
printed on a mailbox in front of a pale-yellow mobile home. She parked, got out and was walking toward the door when she smelled gasoline and fire that seemed to be coming from behind the home. When she crept toward the backyard she saw a heavyset red-headed woman sprinkling gasoline on a metal bedspring, carefully noting where flames needed to be fed.

Bride hurried back to her car and waited. Two children came along, attracted, perhaps, by the fancy automobile, but distracted by the woman at the wheel. Both stared at her for what seemed like minutes in unblinking wonder. Bride ignored the dumbstruck children. She knew well what it was to walk into a room and see the exchange of
looks between white strangers. The looks were dismissible because, most often, the gasps her blackness provoked were invariably followed by the envy her beauty produced. Although, with Jeri's help, she had capitalized on her dark skin, stressing it, glamorizing it, she recalled an exchange she once had with Booker. Complaining about her mother, she told him that Sweetness hated her for her black skin.

“It's just a color,” Booker had said. “A genetic trait—not a flaw, not a curse, not a blessing nor a sin.”

“But,” she countered, “other people think racial—”

Booker cut her off. “Scientifically there's no such thing as race, Bride, so racism without race is a choice. Taught, of course, by those who need it, but still a choice. Folks who practice it would be nothing without it.”

His words were rational and, at the time, soothing but had little to do with day-to-day experience—like sitting in a car under the stunned gaze of little white children who couldn't be more fascinated if they were at a museum of dinosaurs. Nevertheless, she flat out refused to be derailed from her mission simply because she was outside the comfort zone of paved streets, tight lawns surrounded by racially diverse people who might not help but would not harm her. Determined to discover what she was made of—cotton or steel—there could be no retreat, no turning back.

Half an hour passed; the children were gone and a nickel-plated sun at the top of the sky warmed the car's interior. Taking a deep breath, Bride walked to the yellow
door and knocked. When the female arsonist appeared she said, “Hello. Excuse me. I'm looking for Booker Starbern. This is the address I have for him.”

“That figures,” said the woman. “I get a lot of his mail—magazines, catalogs, stuff he writes himself.”

“Is he here?” Bride was dazzled by the woman's earrings, golden discs the size of clamshells.

“Uh-uh.” The woman shook her head while boring into Bride's eyes. “He's nearby, though.”

“He is? Well how far is nearby?” Relieved that Q. Olive was not a young rival, Bride sighed and asked directions.

“You can walk it, but come on in. Booker ain't going nowhere. He's laid up—broke his arm. Come on in. You look like something a raccoon found and refused to eat.”

Bride swallowed. For the past three years she'd only been told how exotic, how gorgeous she was—everywhere, from almost everybody—stunning, dreamy, hot, wow! Now this old woman with woolly red hair and judging eyes had deleted an entire vocabulary of compliments in one stroke. Once again she was the ugly, too-black little girl in her mother's house.

Queen curled her finger. “Get in here, girl. You need feeding.”

“Look, Miss Olive—”

“Just Queen, honey. And it's Ol-li-vay. Step on in here. I don't get much company and I know hungry when I see it.”

Well, that's true, thought Bride. Her anxiety during
the long trip had masked her stomach-yelling hunger. She obeyed Queen and was pleasantly surprised at the room's orderliness, comfort and charm. She had wondered for a second if she was being seduced into a witch's den. Obviously Queen sewed, knitted, crocheted and made lace. Curtains, slipcovers, cushions, embroidered napkins were elegantly handmade. A quilt on the headboard of an empty bed, whose springs were apparently cooling outside, was pieced in soft colors and, like everything else, cleverly mismatched. Small antiques such as picture frames and side tables were oddly placed. One whole wall was covered with photographs of children. A pot simmered on the two-burner stove. Queen, unaccustomed to being rebuffed, placed two porcelain bowls on linen mats along with matching napkins and silver soup spoons with filigreed handles.

Bride sat down at a narrow table on a chair with a decorative seat cushion and watched Queen ladle thick soup into their bowls. Pieces of chicken floated among peas, potatoes, corn kernels, tomato, celery, green peppers, spinach and a scattering of pasta shells. Bride couldn't identify the strong seasonings—curry? Cardamom? Garlic? Cayenne? Black pepper and red? But the result was manna. Queen added a basket of warm flat bread, joined her guest and blessed the food. Neither spoke for long minutes of eating. Finally, Bride looked up from her bowl, wiped her lips, sighed and asked her hostess, “Why were you burning your bedsprings? I saw you back there.”

“Bedbugs,” answered Queen. “Every year I burn them out before the eggs get started.”

“Oh. I never heard of that.” Then, feeling more comfortable with the woman, asked, “What kind of stuff did Booker send you? You said he sent some writings.”

“Uh-huh. He did. Every now and then.”

“What were they about?”

“Beats me. I'll show you some, if you like. Say, why you looking for Booker? He owe you money? You sure can't be his woman. You sound like you don't know him too good.”

“I don't, but I thought I did.” She didn't say so, but it suddenly occurred to her that good sex was not knowledge. It was barely information.

Bride touched the napkin to her lips again. “We were living together, then he dumped me. Just like that.” Bride snapped her fingers. “He left me without a word.”

Queen chuckled. “Oh he's a leaver, all right. Left his own family. All except me.”

“He did? Why?” Bride didn't like being classified with Booker's family, but the news surprised her.

“His older brother was murdered when they was kids and he didn't approve of his folks' response.”

“Awww,” Bride murmured. “That's sad.” She made the acceptable sound of sympathy but was shocked to learn she knew nothing about it.

“More than sad. Almost ruined the family.”

“What did they do that made him leave?”

“They moved on. Started to live life like it was life. He wanted them to establish a memorial, a foundation or something in his brother's name. They weren't interested. At all. I have to take some responsibility for the breakup. I told him to keep his brother close, mourn him as long as he needed to. I didn't count on what he took away from what I said. Anyhow, Adam's death became his own life. I think it's his only life.” Queen glanced at Bride's empty bowl. “More?”

“No thanks, but it was delicious. I don't remember eating anything that good.”

Queen smiled. “It's my United Nations recipe from the food of all my husbands' hometowns. Seven, from Delhi to Dakar, from Texas to Australia, and a few in between.” She was laughing, her shoulders rocking. “So many men and all of them the same where it counts.”

“Where does it count?”

“Ownership.”

All those husbands and still all alone, thought Bride. “Don't you have any kids?” Obviously she did; their photographs were everywhere.

“Lots. Two live with their fathers and their new wives; two in the military—one a marine, one in the air force; another one, my last, a daughter, is in medical school. She's my dream child. The next to last is filthy rich somewhere in New York City. Most of them send me money so they
don't have to come see me. But I see them.” She waved to the photographs gazing out from exquisite frames. “And I know how and what they think. Booker always stayed in touch with me, though. Here, I'll show you how and what he thinks.” Queen moved to a cabinet where sewing materials were neatly hanging or stacked. From its floor she lifted an old-fashioned breadbox. After sorting through its contents, she removed a thin sheaf of papers clipped together and handed it to her guest.

What lovely handwriting, thought Bride, suddenly realizing that she'd never seen anything Booker wrote—not even his name. There were seven sheets. One for each month they were together—plus one more. She read the first page slowly, her forefinger tracing the lines, for there was little or no punctuation.

Hey girl what's inside your curly head besides dark rooms with dark men dancing too close to comfort the mouth hungry for more of what it is sure is there somewhere out there just waiting for a tongue and some breath to stroke teeth that bite the night and swallow whole the world denied you so get rid of those smokey dreams and lie on the beach in my arms while i cover you with white sands from shores you have never seen lapped by waters so crystal and blue they make you shed tears of bliss and let you know that you
do belong finally to the planet you were born on and can now join the out-there world in the deep peace of a cello
.

Bride read the words twice, understanding little if anything. It was the second page that made her uncomfortable.

Her imagination is impeccable the way it cuts and scrapes the bone never touching the marrow where that dirty feeling is thrumming like a fiddle for fear its strings will break and screech the loss of its tune since for her permanent ignorance is so much better than the quick of life
.

Queen, having finished washing the dishes, offered her guest a drink of whiskey. Bride declined.

Reading the third page, she thought she remembered a conversation she'd had with Booker that could have provoked what he wrote, the one in which she described the landlord and details of her childhood.

You accepted like a beast of burden the whip of a stranger's curse and the mindless menace it holds along with the scar it leaves as a definition you spend your life refuting although that hateful word is only a slim line drawn on a shore and quickly dissolved in a seaworld any moment when an equally mindless wave fondles it
like the accidental touch of a finger on a clarinet stop that the musician converts into silence in order to let the true note ring out loud
.