Gwenyth moved in when the last Jewish family moved out. She had waited because she said she did not trust people who did not appreciate a good pork chop or celebrate Christmas.
She’d come to be closer to her son. Delia would say she came to make her life more miserable.
My Uncle Randy, Gwenyth’s youngest son, lived with her in between shacking up with whatever woman would have him. She kept a hide-away bed for him in the hall closet and there was always a plate of food warming in the oven.
Charlie, the oldest of her three sons, lived two blocks away. He and his common-law wife, Carol, rented the first floor of a private house. Gwenyth called her the rabbit because she made babies like it was going out of style. They had two children and one on the way.
I was thankful she had rung the bell when she did and maybe in my juvenile mind I had looked on her as a savior, but that would change.
Gwenyth stepped into the hallway of our apartment. From there she could tilt her head to the left and see the kitchen; a tilt to the right would reveal the living room and the two bedrooms that sat at the back.
She pushed Hy-Lo to the side and walked into the kitchen. Gwenyth was a thick woman with large shapely legs, broad hips, and a behind that sat up high on her back. Her lips were small and delicate, but the words that lived behind them were razor sharp like her laugh.
It was warm and she wore a light blue sleeveless dress that showed off her wide shoulders and beefy arms. The material hugged her hips and sat a little too far above the knee for a grandmother. A small patent leather pocketbook dangled from her wrist and her favorite imitation gold and sapphire ring sparkled brightly beneath the sixty-watt kitchen bulb.
“Children.” That was how she greeted us.
“Goodnight, Grandmother,” my brother and I responded in unison.
She surveyed the mess at the table and shook her head. She did not immediately acknowledge my mother, who pretended to busy herself at the kitchen sink. She did not like Delia because she had taken her prized son away from her. And instead of attending the small wedding that took place in the backyard of my Grandma Mable’s home, she called the house twenty times (ten times during the ceremony) crying and screaming for my father to come to his senses and return home. “That woman is trash, Hyman! A whore!”
Back then Delia put Gwenyth off as crazy and looked into her husband’s eyes and said a loud and happy “I do!”
She had no idea what she had committed herself to.
“Malcolm, why are you on the floor?”
Malcolm, still on his knees, fork in hand, peered at her over the edge of the table and shrugged his shoulders. His tears were gone, leaving behind salty tracks on his dark brown cheeks.
Gwenyth laughed. “Get up from the floor before the roaches get you.”
My mother dropped a glass into the sink. I knew that last remark had unnerved her. Delia kept the house spotless— Hy-Lo would have it no other way—and roaches were rare visitors in our home.
“Oh, Delia, how are you, dear?” Gwenyth barely turned her head in my mother’s direction. “Careful, you could cut yourself and bleed to death.” She giggled and then looked down on me. “Kenzie, dear, how are you?”
“Fine,” I mumbled, not looking at her.
“Hmmm,” she sounded and touched the top of my head.
“Mother, I have to go to work.” My father’s voice was irritated. Gwenyth’s presence had sobered him right up.
“I know that, Hyman,” she snapped at him. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“But—”
“Now, Hyman,” she demanded and walked past him, through the living room, and into my parents’ bedroom.
Hy-Lo followed like a puppy with his tail between his legs, closing the door behind them.
I looked at my mother. She was crying again.
My own tears rolled down my face and I turned toward the windows of the hospital room. The sun was gone, leaving only a black backdrop outside. I could see my reflection as clear as if I were looking in the mirror. My face was absent of makeup and I had bitten away the mocha-colored lipstick I had applied before leaving the house that morning.
I stood up and began to pace back and forth across the brown and beige tiled floor. I didn’t have to go all the way there to remember the bad times; there were so many of them that they left little room for any other memories.
I could kill him, I thought to myself. Pull the tubes from his body or the machine plugs from the wall. Everything would stop working and he would die and I would not have to ride two buses to figure out why.
Yes, I could release both of us from our miseries.
I stopped myself, suddenly aware that my thoughts were spilling out of my mouth. I sat back down and pulled my coat tighter around me.
I could see the old man in the bed next to my father; he had propped himself up on his pillow and was staring at me. His hand held the emergency call button; his thumb was poised for attack.
I cleared my throat and smirked. I wanted to smile, but those had been hard to come by for months, years. So I just turned my attention back to Hy-Lo.
Nurse D. Green approached. Her soft-soled white shoes squeaked against the gleaming floor of the hospital room. I watched her reflection walk toward me. The smile filled the windowpanes with each step she took until she blocked out the night and only her grinning lips remained.
She checked the machines that monitored Hy-Lo’s heart and blood pressure and then she changed the intravenous bags. Hy-Lo stirred but didn’t wake and I waited.
“How are you doing today?” Her words startled me and I jerked a bit as if she’d tapped my shoulder instead of spoken.
“Fine,” I replied meekly and then quickly averted my eyes. I did not want to invite any further conversation.
She read my actions and nodded. Her eternal smile never wavered and then she walked out of the room. She walked like my grandmother, hard and heavy, the soles of her shoes slapping against the floor.
Looking at Hy-Lo, I wondered if he would be there tomorrow when I arrived. Maybe I would come in and find an empty bed, the few belongings he’d checked in with stuffed into one of those large manila envelopes with his last name written across in thick black Magic Marker:
LOWE
.
G
od, I miss America!” Glenna’s voice came over the phone lines in choppy waves. She was on layover in Berlin. She was doing Europe this month and hating it. “Oh, I hate these long trips,” she complained each time she got a new transatlantic schedule from the airline. Glenna held a master’s degree in child psychology and had worked two jobs to put herself through school. When she graduated she decided she wanted to spend a year seeing the world before settling down to pursue her career. Twelve years later she was still flying the friendly skies, serving tea and coffee to overbearing passengers twenty-two days out of the month. “God, I hate this place,” she said again as a bus rumbled noisily through her background.
“Then quit,” I said, balancing the phone between my cheek and my shoulder while I tried to put my coat on.
“How is everything?” she asked. I knew the
everything
either meant my drinking or Hy-Lo. She wanted to know if I was still clean or if we’d gotten the call yet. The call that would say he was finally out of our lives forever and for good. “Okay, I guess.” I was avoiding her. “Listen, I was just on my way out,” I added, hoping that would put an end to her questions. I hadn’t had a drink for more than six months and didn’t want to discuss the toll it was taking on me, the visits to Hy-Lo being the main evidence.
“How is everything,” she repeated, sounding annoyed.
“I saw him,” I said abruptly and held my breath so I could hear the surprise in Glenna’s voice. There was nothing for a long time except for the harsh, brassy street sounds that emanated from across the Atlantic.
“Glenna, I said I saw him—”
She cut me off and her response was just as sharp as her interruption. “I heard what you said, Kenzie. I just don’t understand why.”
“Maybe if you knew
your
father, you would understand,” I said, and then I couldn’t believe that I had said something so hurtful to her.
“What?” Glenna screamed back before the line cracked and went dead.
“Glenna, I’m sorry … I didn’t mean it,” I said into the emptiness that listened at the other end of the line. My words echoed back and said:
Yes, you did.
I didn’t know why I kept coming to Hy-Lo’s bedside. Not the first time, not the second, and not now. Maybe it was the same reason why Delia kept going back, even after the beatings that sent her running in the first place were still fresh in her mind, the bruises still fresh on her behind.
Mable didn’t understand why Delia kept going back either. All of those years, all of the times he tore her skin and blackened her eyes. It was always the opening question to their long and turbulent discussions about Hy-Lo.
“I don’t understand why you keep going back to him.” My Grandma Mable spoke in a hushed tone. “He ain’t gonna stop drinking. He always promising, promising. Don’t you know his promises don’t mean shit?”
I sat at the top of the stairs, barely breathing, my tiny knees pressed tightly together and my arms hugging my shoulders as I eavesdropped on their conversation.
“He ain’t shit. I told you that before you got married. But you know what I say: experience is the best teacher.” She leaned back in her chair and cocked her head so she could watch Delia sideways.
There was the cracking sound of a walnut shell giving way and I could hear the pop and fizzle of the Pepsi-Cola as it covered the ice cubes in their glasses.
“How much experience you need before you decide you’re an expert at getting your ass kicked? When you’re dead and I’m raising your children?”
“Mama.” Delia’s voice was tired. She had been sitting at the dining room table with Mable since ten o’clock. It was near two in the morning now. Delia stretched and rubbed the small of her back. She winced at the pain there and wondered if her spine was cracked. Hy-Lo had kicked her way across the room. His foot had landed so hard in her back that she saw stars before she even hit the wall. That’s how she got the black eye.
“Mama
what?
” Mable waited, but Delia said nothing else. “Let me tell you something, Delia. You my daughter and I love you, but you disrupting my life too. I gotta leave my job and come and get you and my grandkids so that Hyman doesn’t kill you.”
I winced at her words.
“Now, I got plenty of room here for you and the kids. You can stay until you get yourself together and get your own place or you can stay forever, whatever is best for you. But whatever you do, don’t go back to that man!”
Mable’s fist came down hard on the wooden table and my mother’s quiet agreement followed, “Okay, Mama.”
I could see her face reflecting off of the china cabinet that sat in the corner of the living room. It was swollen and bruised, sabotaging the beautiful Cherokee-African features she’d inherited from her mother. Her eyes were turned down in shame, their deep black color clouded with tears.
We found ourselves escaping to Mable’s house at least twice a month. Us three with only God and the stars to watch over us. Delia running for her life, dragging us along by our tiny hands. Sometimes we tripped and fell over our untied laces, but she would snatch us up by our collars and brush at our knees all in one motion and then we’d be moving again.
Most times we took the bus, dried sleep in the corner of our eyes, our hair helter-skelter on our heads, coats and scarves wrapped around our thin pajamas.
Thankfully, the majority of the time the bus would be near empty. A late-night passenger or two might be on their way to work or home, but it was the bus driver who seemed most interested in us. He would watch us so hard and for so long through the rearview mirror that I thought he would run the bus up onto the sidewalk or go careening into oncoming traffic at any moment. His eyes made me feel naked, as if my whole life had unfolded before him.
I would untangle myself from my mother’s embrace and take a seat far away from her and my brother. I was better than that life the eyes in the rearview mirror saw. I stuck my tongue out at him and closed my eyes.
If there was money, we would take a cab, but that was a luxury. Sometimes we would call Mable at work and she would jump in her car and pick us up at the meeting place. The meeting place was a small all-night diner four blocks away. We would huddle into a booth and Delia would let us order french fries and grape soda.
Delia would have black coffee. She’d sit and sip it in between puffs on her Newport. Her hands would shake and fresh tears would well up in her eyes. Mable would come in and pay the check and then we would be on the Belt Parkway doing seventy all the way to her house.
Once, Delia tried to take us to Gwenyth’s apartment. It was right downstairs and it was three in the morning. I had to go to school and Delia had to go to work in the morning. “We’ll just go to your Grandma Gwen’s house and let Daddy sleep it off,” Delia had whispered to us. Malcolm was almost two. He lay sleeping in Delia’s arms, his skinny legs swinging with every step she took. We tiptoed down the stairs to the first floor.
Delia kept pushing her hair to the right side of her head in an attempt to try and cover the bald spot. “I didn’t mean it, Delia!” he had screamed at her as he followed her around the house with the tuft of chestnut brown hair in his hand.
No, he hadn’t meant to pull it out, but what did he think was going to happen when he tried to drag her across the floor by her hair?
Delia knocked softly on Gwenyth’s door. She looked over her shoulder to see if this would be the night Hy-Lo broke tradition and followed her out of the apartment. We stood there staring at the gray door with its brass knob. We could hear the low hum of the television coming through from the other side. The hall was drafty and we shivered in our pajamas. I looked at my mother. “I’m cold,” I said, and the tone my voice took on was much older than my seven years. Delia ignored the anger that came across loud and clear in my words and knocked a bit more loudly. Still no one came.