Homegoing (26 page)

This wasn’t the South that Willie knew. It wasn’t the South her parents had known either, but she could tell from the voices of the men in the audience that none of them had ever stepped foot in that South. All they wanted was to laugh and drink and whistle at the girls. It made Willie almost glad she was the one cleaning the stage instead of singing on it.

Willie had been working there for two months. She and Robert hadn’t been doing very well since the night she asked him where they would live. Most nights, Robert didn’t come home. When she got back from the club, just hours before sunrise, she would find Carson sleeping alone on the mattress. Joe had been picking him up from Bess’s once he finished teaching and putting him to bed every night. Willie would crawl in next to Carson and wait, wide-eyed, for the sound of Robert’s boots coming down the hall, the
clop clop clop
that meant she would have her husband that night. If she did hear it, if he did come, she would close her eyes quick, and the two of them would play the game of make-believe, acting like the people onstage at the club did. Robert’s role was to slip in quietly beside her, and hers was to not question, to let him believe that she still believed in him, in them.

Willie went outside the club to put the trash away, and when she came back in, her boss started walking toward her. He looked annoyed, but Willie had never seen him look any other way. He’d been in the war, and he walked with a staggering limp that he liked to say prevented him from getting a more respectable job. The only thing that seemed to make him happy was stepping outside to lean against the ragged brick of the building and smoke cigarette after cigarette after cigarette.

“Someone vomited in the men’s room,” he said, heading out.

Willie just nodded. This happened at least once a week, and she knew the routine without having to be told. She grabbed the bucket and the mop and made her way over. She knocked on the door once, then twice. There was no answer.

“I’m coming in,” she said forcefully. She had discovered weeks before that it was better to enter rooms forcefully than it was to do so timidly, since drunk men had a tendency to lose their hearing.

The man in the bathroom certainly had lost his. He was hunched over, his face in the sink, mumbling to himself.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Willie said. As she turned to leave, the man looked up, and caught her eye in the mirror.

“Willie?” he asked.

She knew his voice immediately, but she didn’t turn. She didn’t answer him. All she could think about was the fact that she had not recognized him.

There was a time, when they were still just sweethearts dating and at the beginning of their marriage, when Willie thought she knew Robert better than she knew herself. This was more than a matter of knowing what his favorite color was, or knowing what he wanted for dinner without him having to tell her. It was a matter of knowing the things that he could not yet let himself know. Like that he was not the kind of man who could handle invisible hands around his neck. That Carson’s birth had changed him, but not for the better. It had made him deeply afraid of himself, always questioning his choices, never measuring up to a standard of his own making, a standard that was upheld in his own father’s generous love, a love that had made a way for him and his mother, even when the cost had been great. That Willie could recognize these things in Robert, but be unable to recognize his hunched back, his hanging head, frightened her.

Two white men walked into the room, not noticing Willie. One wore a gray suit, and the other a blue one. Willie held her breath.

“You still in here, Rob? The girls are about to get onstage,” the blue suit said.

Robert sent Willie a desperate look, and the gray suit, who hadn’t yet spoken, followed his gaze to her body. He looked her up and down, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

Robert shook his head. “All right, boys. Let’s go,” he said. He tried to smile, but the corners of his lips tugged down almost immediately.

“Looks like Robert’s already got him a girl,” the gray suit said.

“She’s just in here to clean up,” Robert said. Willie saw that his eyes had started to plead, and it was not until then that she knew she was in trouble.

“Maybe we don’t even need to go back out,” the gray suit said. His shoulders relaxed, his body leaned against the wall.

The blue suit started grinning too.

Willie clutched the mop. “I should go. My boss will be looking for me,” she said. She tried to change her voice as Robert had. She tried to sound like them.

The gray suit eased the mop away. “You still have cleaning to do,” he said. He caressed her face. His hands started to move down her body, but before it could reach her breast she spit in his face.

“Willie, don’t!”

The two suits turned to look at Robert, the gray suit wiping the spit from his face. “You know her?” the blue suit asked, but the gray suit was two steps ahead of him. Willie could see him collecting all the clues in his mind: the dusk of Robert’s skin, the thick voice, the nights spent away from home. He sent Robert a withering look. “She your woman?” he asked.

Robert’s eyes had started to fill up. His skin was already sallow from his being sick, and he looked like he might be sick again any minute. He nodded.

“Well, why don’t you come over here and give her a kiss?” the gray suit asked. He had already unzipped his pants with his left hand. With his right hand, he stroked his penis. “Don’t worry, I won’t touch her,” he said.

And he kept his word. Robert did all the work that night while the blue suit guarded the door. It wasn’t more than a few tear-stained kisses and carefully placed hands. Before the gray suit could ask for Robert to enter her, he came, a shuddering, breathy thing. Then, immediately after, he grew bored with his game.

“Don’t bother coming to work tomorrow, Rob,” he said as he and the blue suit made their way out.

Willie felt a small breeze come in from the closing door. It raised the hairs on her skin. Her whole body was stiff like a piece of wood. Robert reached for her, and it took her a second to realize that she still controlled her body. He was already touching her by the time she moved away.

“I’ll leave tonight,” he said. He was crying again, his brown, green, gold eyes shimmering behind the wet.

He left the room before Willie could tell him he was already gone.

Carson was still licking his ice cream. He held it in
one hand. His other hand held Willie’s, and the feel of her son’s skin on hers was enough to bring tears to her eyes. She wanted to keep walking. All the way to Midtown if need be. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her son so happy.

After that day with Robert, Joe offered to marry her, but Willie couldn’t bear the thought of it. She took Carson and left in the middle of the night, found a place the next morning far enough away that she figured she wouldn’t see anyone she knew anymore. But she couldn’t leave Harlem, and that little corner of the great city had started to feel like it was pressing in on her. Every face was Robert’s and none was his.

Carson wouldn’t stop crying. It seemed like for whole weeks at a time, the boy just wouldn’t stop crying. In the new apartment Willie had no Bess to leave him with, and so she left him by himself on days she went to work, making sure to shut the windows and lock the doors and hide the sharp things. At night she would find that he had put himself to sleep, the mattress soaked with his ever-present tears.

She worked odd jobs, mostly cleaning, though every once in a while she would still go out for an audition. The auditions would all end the same way. She would get onstage, feeling confident. Her mouth would open, but no sound would come from it, and soon she would be crying, and begging the person in front of her for forgiveness. One auditioner told her she had better make her way to a church if forgiveness was what she wanted.

And so she did. Willie hadn’t been to church since leaving Pratt City, but now it seemed she couldn’t get enough of it. Every Sunday she would drag Carson, who had just turned five years old, out with her to the Baptist church on West 128th between Lenox and Seventh. It was there she met Eli.

He was only a once-in-a-while churchgoer, but the congregation still called him Brother Eli because they thought he had a fruit of the spirit in him. Which fruit, Willie didn’t know. She’d been going for about a month, sitting in the very last row with Carson on her lap even though he was too old to be a lap baby and his weight hurt her legs. Eli walked in with a bag of apples at his side. He leaned against the back door.

The preacher said, “The fire of God is fallen from Heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”

“Amen,” Eli said.

Willie looked up at him, then returned her gaze to the preacher, who was saying, “And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”

“Bless God,” Eli said.

The bag crinkled, and Willie looked up to see Eli pulling out an apple. He winked at her as he took a bite, and she quickly snapped her head back as the preacher said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

“Amen,” Willie murmured. Carson started to fuss, and she bounced him on her leg a bit, but that only made him squirm more. Eli gave him an apple, and he held it in his hands, opening his mouth very wide to take just a tiny bite.

“Thank you,” Willie said.

Eli tipped his head toward the door. “Take a walk with me,” he whispered. She ignored him, helping Carson hold the apple so that it would not drop to the floor.

“Take a walk with me,” Eli said, louder this time. An usher shushed him, and Willie worried that he would say it again, but louder, and so she got up from her seat and left with him.

Eli held Carson’s hand as they walked. In Harlem, Lenox Avenue was impossible to avoid. It was where all the dirty, ugly, righteous, and beautiful things were. The Jazzing was still there, and as they passed it, Willie shuddered.

“What’s wrong?” Eli asked.

“Just caught a chill is all,” Willie said.

It seemed to Willie that they had walked all of Harlem. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d walked so much, and she couldn’t believe that they had gone so far without Carson crying. As they walked, her son kept working on his apple, and he seemed so content that Willie wanted to hug Eli for giving her that little bit of peace.

“What do you do?” Willie asked Eli once they had finally found a place to sit.

“I’m a poet,” he said.

“You write anything good?” Willie asked.

Eli smiled at her and took the apple core Carson was dangling from his hands. “No, but I write a lot of bad.”

Willie laughed. “What’s your favorite poem?” she asked. He scooted a bit closer to her on the bench, and she felt her breath catch, something it had not done for a man since the day she first kissed Robert.

“The Bible’s the best poetry there is,” Eli said.

“Well, then why don’t I see you in church more often? Seems like you should be studyin’ the Bible.”

This time Eli laughed. “A poet’s got to spend more time livin’ than he does studyin’,” he said.

Willie found out that Eli did a lot of what he called “livin’.” In the beginning she called it that too. It was a rush, being with him. He took her all around New York City to places she never would have dreamed of going before him. He wanted to eat everything, try everything. He didn’t care that they didn’t have any money. When she got pregnant, his adventurous spirit only seemed to grow. It was the opposite of Robert. Carson’s birth had made him want to set roots, whereas Josephine’s birth made Eli want to grow wings.

The baby was barely out of her stomach before Eli flew. The first time, it was for three days.

He came home to her smelling of booze. “How’s my baby doin’,” he said. He wiggled his fingers in front of Josephine’s face, and she followed them with wide eyes.

“Where you been, Eli?” Willie said. She was trying not to sound angry, though anger was all she felt. She remembered how she had stayed quiet on the nights that Robert used to come home after being gone awhile, and she didn’t intend to make the same mistake twice.

“Aw, you mad at me, Willie?” Eli asked.

Carson tugged on his pants leg. “You got any apples, Eli?” he asked. He was starting to look like Robert, and Willie couldn’t stand it. She’d just cut his hair that morning, and it seemed the more hair he lost, the more Robert started to peek through. Carson had kicked and screamed and cried the whole time she cut. She’d spanked him for it, which had quieted him, but then he had given her a mean look, and she was not sure which was worse. Seemed like her son was starting to hate her as much as she was fighting not to hate him.

“Sure, I got an apple for you, Sonny,” Eli said, fishing one from his pockets.

“Don’t call him that,” Willie hissed through her teeth, remembering again the man she was trying to forget.

Eli’s face fell a little bit. He wiped at his eyes. “I’m sorry, Willie. Okay? I’m sorry.”

“My name’s Sonny!” Carson shouted. He bit into the apple. “I like to be Sonny!” he said, bits of juice squirting from his mouth.

Josephine started crying, and Willie grabbed her up and rocked her. “See what you done started?” she said, and Eli just kept wiping his eyes.

The kids grew older. Sometimes Willie would see Eli every day
for a month. That’s when the poems were flowing and the money wasn’t too bad. Willie would come home from cleaning this or that house, and find scraps and stacks of papers all around the apartment. Some of the papers would have just one word on them like “Flight” or “Jazz.” Others would have whole poems. Willie found one that had her name on the top, and it had made her think that perhaps Eli was there to stay.

But then he would go. The money would stop. At first, Willie took baby Josephine to work with her, but she lost two jobs that way, so she started leaving her with Carson, whom she couldn’t ever seem to keep in school. They were evicted three times in six months, though by that time everyone she knew was getting evicted, living with twenty strangers in a single apartment, sharing a single bed. Each time they got evicted, she would move what little they had no more than a block down. Willie would tell the new landlord that her husband was a famous poet, knowing full well that he was neither husband nor famous. One time, when he’d come home for just a night, she had yelled at him. “You can’t eat a poem, Eli,” she said, and she didn’t see him again for nearly three months.