Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (7 page)

Somehow, I could not tell her what I had told the man—my friend—on the train. I said I wasn't sure, that maybe I would be a schoolteacher.

“That's just what I wanted to be,” she said proudly, “and I studied right hard for it, too, and I believe I would have made it, but then I had to go and get myself mixed up with some no-count nigger. I didn't have no sense. I didn't have no better sense but to marry him. Can you beat that?” and she laughed and set my plate in front of me. “Go on, now, eat. Foolish me. You know I had a little boy like you? And I don't know where he's gone to. He had the same big eyes like you and a dimple right here”—she touched the corner of her lip—“when he smiled. But I give him to my sister, she lives in Philadelphia, because I couldn't raise him by myself, and my sister she was married to a undertaker and they was right well off—of course my sister and I never did get along too well, she was too dicty for me, you know how some folks are—and they said they'd raise him just like their own. And I reckon they tried. But he walked off from them one day—I reckon he was about sixteen—and don't nobody know where he went. I keep expecting him to come through this door. Now, your brother,” she said suddenly, “he's a right fine boy. He wants to make something of himself. He's got ambition. That's what I like—
ambition.
Don't you let him be foolish. Like me. You like my barbecue?”

“Yes ma'am,” I said. “It's good.”

“But I bet you like your mama's better,” she said.

I said, “My mama's barbecue is different. But I like yours, too.”

“Let me give you some more ginger ale,” she said, and poured it. I was beginning to be full. But I didn't
want to go, although. I knew that, now, it was really beginning to be late. While Miss Mildred talked and moved about the kitchen, I listened to the voices coming from the other rooms, the voices and the music. They were playing a kind of purple lazy dance music, a music which was already in my bones, along with the wilder music from which the purple music sprang. The voices were not like the music, though they corroborated it. I listened to a girl's voice, gravelly and low, indignant, and full of laughter. The room was full of laughter. It exploded, at intervals, and rolled through the living room and hammered at the walls of the kitchen. But it traveled no further. No doubt, lying in bed, in one of the rooms off the hall, one would have heard it, but heard it dimly, from very far away, and with a certain anger—anger that the laughter could not travel down the hall and could not enter one's dark, solitary room. Every once in a while, I heard Caleb, booming like a trumpet, drowning out the music, and I could almost see him, bouncing his head off Dolores' shoulder, rising like a spring from the sofa and jack-knifing himself across the room. Now, someone was telling a story: it concerned some fool he worked with in the post office. Only this voice and the music were heard. The voice began to be hoarse with anticipation and liquid with exuberance. Then his laugh rang out, and all the others laughed, rocking. “He said—he said—I don't know what's the matter with you niggers. You ain't got good sense. I'm
working for my pension.
And Shorty say, he say, Yeah, baby, and that pension's going to buy you enough beans for you to fart your life away! Ho-ho! Ho-ho! Ha-ha!” Then, by and by, the voices sputtered out, the voices dropped, and the music took over again. I wondered how often Caleb came here and how he had
met these people who were so different, at least as it seemed to me, from any of the people who ever came to our house.

Then Caleb's hand was on my neck. Dolores stood in the doorway, smiling. “You stuffed yourself enough, little brother? Because we got to get out of here now.” I stood up. “Wipe your mouth,” said Caleb, “you ain't civilized at all.”

“Don't you pay him no mind,” said Miss Mildred. “He's just evil because Dolores thinks you got prettier eyes than him.”

“That's the truth,” said Dolores. “I was just thinking what a pity I didn't see your little brother first.”

I knew that she was teasing me, but I fell in love with her anyway.

“Keep on talking,” said Caleb, “and I'll give him to you. Ain't neither one of you noticed how much he can eat. Come on, Leo, put on your coat. One of these mad chicks is liable to kidnap you and then I don't know what I'll say to your mama.”

We walked slowly down the hall, Miss Mildred, Dolores, and Caleb and me. I wanted to say good-night to all the others but I knew I couldn't suggest this. We reached the door, which had a metal pole built into it in such a way as to prevent its being opened from the outside, and a heavy piece of chain around the top of the three locks. Miss Mildred began, patiently, to open the door. “Leo,” she said, “don't you be no stranger. You make your brother bring you back to see me, you hear?” She got the pole out of the way, then she undid the chain. She had not turned on the hall light; I wondered how she could see. To Caleb she said, “Bring him by some afternoon. I ain't got nothing to do. I'll be glad to look after
him—let your mama and daddy have a day off, go to the movies or something.” I thought this was a splendid suggestion and wondered how I could persuade Caleb of this. There was no question of ever being able to persuade our parents. The last lock yielded and Miss Mildred opened the door. We were facing the bright hall lights; no, the building was not very clean. “Good-night, Leo,” Miss Mildred said, and then she said good-night to Dolores and Caleb. She closed the door. I heard the scraping sound again, and we walked down the stairs. “She's nice,” I said, and Caleb said, yawning, “Yeah, she's a very nice lady.” Then he said, “Now, I don't want you telling nobody at home about this, you hear?” I swore I wouldn't tell. “It's our secret,” Caleb said.

It was colder in the streets than it had been before and there were not many people.

Caleb took Dolores' arm. “Let's get you to your subway,” he said. We started walking up the wide, dark avenue. We reached the brightly lit kiosk which came up out of the sidewalk like some unbelievably malevolent awning or the suction apparatus of a monstrous vacuum cleaner. “Bye-bye,” said Caleb, and kissed Dolores on the nose, “I got to run. See you Monday, after school.”

“Bye-bye,” said Dolores. She bent down and kissed me quickly on the cheek. “Bye-bye, Leo. Be good.” She hurried down the steps.

Caleb and I began walking very fast, down the avenue, toward our block. The subway station was near the moviehouse and the moviehouse was dark. But we knew we were late—we did not think that we were
very
late.

“It was a
very
long show,” Caleb said, “wasn't it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What did we see?”

I told him.

“What were they about? Tell me about
both
pictures. Just in case.”

I told him as well and as fully as I could as we hurried down the avenue. He held me by the hand and he was walking much too fast for me and so my breath was short. But Caleb had great powers of concentration and could figure out enough from what I said to know what to say if the necessity arose. But our troubles, that night, came from a very different source than our parents. I had just reached the point in my breathless narration where the good girl is murdered by the Indians and the hero vows revenge, we were hurrying down the long block which led east to our house, when we heard the brakes of a car and were blinded by bright lights and were pushed up against a wall.

“Turn around,” said a voice. “And keep your hands in the air.”

It may seem funny, I don't know, but I felt, at once, as though Caleb and I had conjured up a movie; that if I had not been describing a movie to him, we would not have suddenly found ourselves in the middle of one. Or was it the end? For I had never been so frightened in my life before.

We did as we were told. I felt the grainy brick beneath my fingers. A hand patted me all over my body, front and back, every touch humiliating, every touch obscene. Beside me, I heard Caleb catch his breath.

“Turn around,” the voices said.

The great lights of the police car had gone out; I could see the car at the curb, the doors open. I thought I could see, across the street, a colored man, in the shadows, staring, but I could not be sure. I did not dare to
look at Caleb, for I felt that this would, somehow, be used against us. I stared at the two policemen, young, white, tight-lipped, and self-important. They turned a flashlight first on Caleb, then on me.

“Where you boys going?”

“Home,” Caleb said. I could hear his breathing. “We live in the next block,” and he gave the address.

The flashlight had gone out and I could see their faces. I memorized their faces.

“Where've you been?”

I trembled. I did not know of whom the question had been asked. I did not know what to answer.

Now I heard the effort Caleb was making not to surrender either to rage or panic. “We just took my girl to the subway station. We were at the movies.” And then, forced out of him, weary, dry, and bitter, “This here's my brother. I got to get him home. He ain't but ten years old.”

“What movie did you see?”

And Caleb told them. I marveled at his memory. But I also knew that the show had let out about an hour or so before. I feared that the policemen might also know this. But they didn't, of course, know: such knowledge is beneath them.

“You got any identification?”

“My brother doesn't. I do.”

“Let's see it.”

Caleb took out his wallet and handed it over. I could see that his hands were trembling. I watched the white faces. I memorized each mole, scar, pimple, nostril hair; I memorized the eyes, the contemptuous eyes. I wished that I were God. And then I hated God.

They looked at his wallet, looked at us, handed it
back. “Get on home,” one of them said, the one with the mole. They got into their car and drove off.

“Thanks,” Caleb said. “Thanks, you white cock-sucking dog-shit miserable white mother-fuckers. Thanks, all you scum-bag Christians.” His accent was now as irredeemably of the islands as was the accent of our father. I had never heard this sound in his voice before. He raised his face to the sky. “Thanks, good Jesus Christ. Thanks for letting us go home. I mean, I know you didn't have to do it. You
could
have let us just get our brains beat out. Remind me, O lord, to put a extra large nickel in the plate next Sunday.” And then, suddenly, he looked down at me and laughed and hugged me. “Come on, let's get home before the bastard changes his mind. Little Leo. Were you scared?”

“Yes,” I said. “Were you?”

“Damn right, I was scared. But—
goddamn!
—they must have seen that
you
weren't but ten years old.”

“You didn't
act
scared,” I said.

And this was the truth. But I also felt, I don't know how, nor do I really know why, that I couldn't let him feel, even for a moment, that I did not adore him, that I did not respect him, love him and admire him.

We were in our own block, approaching our stoop. “Well. We certainly have a good excuse for being late,” he said. He grinned. Then he said, “Leo, I'll tell you something. I'm glad this happened. It had to happen one day and I'm glad it happened now. I'm glad it happened while I was with you—of course, I'm glad you were with
me,
too, dig, because if it hadn't been for you, they'd have pulled my ass in and given me a licking just as sure as shit—”

“What for?”

“Because I'm black,” Caleb said. “That's what for. Because I'm black and they
paid
to beat on black asses. But, with a kid your size, they just
might
get into trouble. So they let us go.
They
knew you weren't nothing but a kid. They knew it. But they didn't care. All black people are shit to them. You remember that. You black like me and they going to hate you as long as you live just because you're black. There's something wrong with them. They got some kind of disease. I hope to God it kills them soon.” We started up the steps to our house. “But it's liable to kill us before it kills them.”

I said nothing. I said nothing because what he said was true, and I knew it. It seemed, now, that I had always known it, though I had never been able to say it. But I did not understand it. I was filled with an awful wonder, it hurt my chest and paralyzed my tongue.
Because you're black.
I tried to think, but I couldn't. I only saw the policemen, those murderous eyes again, those hands, with a touch like the touch of vermin. Were they people?

“Caleb,” I asked, “are white people people?”

“What are you talking about, Leo?”

“I mean—are white people—
people?
People like us?”

He looked down at me. His face was very strange and sad. It was a face I had never seen before. We climbed a few more stairs, very slowly. Then, “All I can tell you, Leo, is—well,
they
don't think they are.”

I thought of Mr. Rabinowitz and Mr. Shapiro. Then I thought of my schoolteacher, a lady named Mrs. Nelson. I liked her very much. I thought she was very pretty. She had long, yellow hair, like someone I had seen in the movies, and a nice laugh, and we all liked her, all the kids I knew. The kids who were not in her class wished they were. I liked to write compositions for her because she
seemed really interested and always asked questions. But she was white. Would she hate me all my life because I was black? It didn't seem possible. She didn't hate me now; I was pretty sure of that. And yet, what Caleb had said was true.

“Caleb,” I asked, “are all white people the same?”

“What do you mean, the same?”

“I mean—you know—are they all the
same?
”

And Caleb said, “I never met a good one.”