The Women of Brewster Place (20 page)

“Movin’ into our block causin’ a disturbance with your nasty ways. You ain’t wanted here!”

“What have any of you ever seen me do except leave my house and go to work like the rest of you? Is it disgusting for me to speak to each one of you that I meet in the street, even when you don’t answer me back? Is that my crime?” Lorraine’s voice sank like a silver dagger into their consciences, and there was an uneasy stirring in the room.

“Don’t stand there like you a Miss Innocent,” Sophie whispered hoarsely. “I’ll tell ya what I seen!”

Her eyes leered around the room as they waited with a courtroom hush for her next words.

“I wasn’t gonna mention something so filthy, but you forcin’ me.” She ran her tongue over her parched lips and narrowed her eyes at Lorraine. “You forgot to close your shades last night, and I saw the two of you!”

The silence in the room tightened into a half-gasp.

“There you was, standin’ in the bathroom door, drippin’
wet and as naked and shameless as you please…”

It had become so quiet it was now painful.

“Calling to the other one to put down her book and get you a clean towel. Standin’ in that bathroom door with your naked behind. I saw it—I did!”

Their chests were beginning to burn from a lack of air as they waited for Lorraine’s answer, but before the girl could open her mouth, Ben’s voice snaked from behind her like a lazy breeze.

“Guess
you
get out the tub with your clothes on, Sophie. Must make it mighty easy on Jess’s eyes.”

The laughter that burst out of their lungs was such a relief that eyes were watery. The room laid its head back and howled in gratitude to Ben for allowing it to breathe again. Sophie’s rantings could not be heard above the wheezing, coughing, and backslapping that now went on.

Lorraine left the apartment and grasped the stairway railing, trying to keep the bile from rising into her throat. Ben followed her outside and gently touched her shoulder.

“Miss, you all right?”

She pressed her lips tightly together and nodded her head. The lightness of his touch brought tears to her eyes, and she squeezed them shut.

“You sure? You look ’bout ready to keel over.”

Lorraine shook her head jerkily and sank her nails deeply into her palm as she brought her hand to her mouth. I mustn’t speak, she thought. If I open my mouth, I’ll scream. Oh, God, I’ll scream or I’ll throw up, right here, in front of this nice old man. The thought of the churned up bits of her breakfast and lunch pouring out of her mouth and splattering on Ben’s trouser legs suddenly struck her as funny, and she fought an overwhelming desire to laugh. She trembled violently as the creeping laughter tried to deceive her into parting her lips.

Ben’s face clouded over as he watched the frail body that was so bravely struggling for control. “Come on now, I’ll take you home.” And he tried to lead her down the steps.

She shook her head in a panic. She couldn’t let Tee see her like this. If she says anything smart to me now, I’ll kill her, Lorraine thought. I’ll pick up a butcher knife and plunge it into her face, and then I’ll kill myself and let them find us there. The thought of all those people in Kiswana’s apartment standing over their bleeding bodies was strangely comforting, and she began to breathe more easily.

“Come on now,” Ben urged quietly, and edged her toward the steps.

“I can’t go home.” She barely whispered.

“It’s all right, you ain’t gotta—come on.”

And she let him guide her down the stairs and out into the late September evening. He took her to the building that was nearest to the wall on Brewster Place and then down the outside steps to a door with a broken dirty screen. Ben unlocked the door and led her into his damp underground rooms.

He turned on the single light bulb that was hanging from the ceiling by a thick black cord and pulled out a chair for her at the kitchen table, which was propped up against the wall. Lorraine sat down, grateful to be able to take the weight off of her shaky knees. She didn’t acknowledge his apologies as he took the half-empty wine bottle and cracked cup from the table. He brushed off the crumbs while two fat brown roaches raced away from the wet cloth.

“I’m makin’ tea,” he said, without asking her if she wanted any. He placed a blackened pot of water on the hot plate at the edge of the counter, then found two cups in the cabinet that still had their handles intact. Ben put the strong black tea he had brewed in front of her and brought her a spoon and a crumpled pound bag of sugar. Lorraine took three heaping teaspoons of sugar and stirred the tea, holding her face over the steam. Ben waited for her face to register the effects of the hot sweet liquid.

“I liked you from first off,” he said shyly, and seeing her smile, he continued. “You remind me lots of my little girl.” Ben reached into his hip pocket and took out a frayed billfold
and handed her a tiny snapshot.

Lorraine tilted the picture toward the light. The face stamped on the celluloid paper bore absolutely no resemblance to her at all. His daughter’s face was oval and dark, and she had a large flat nose and a tiny rounded mouth. She handed the picture back to Ben and tried to cover her confusion.

“I know what you thinkin’,” Ben said, looking at the face in his hands. “But she had a limp—my little girl. Was a breech baby, and the midwife broke her foot when she was birthed and it never came back right. Always kinda cripped along—but a sweet child.” He frowned deeply into the picture and paused, then looked up at Lorraine. “When I seen you—the way you’d walk up the street all timid-like and tryin’ to be nice to these-here folks and the look on your face when some of ’em was just downright rude—you kinda broke up in here.” He motioned toward his chest. “And you just sorta limped along inside. That’s when I thought of my baby.”

Lorraine gripped the teacup with both hands, but the tears still squeezed through the compressed muscles in her eyes. They slowly rolled down her face but she wouldn’t release the cup to wipe them away.

“My father,” she said, staring into the brown liquid, “kicked me out of the house when I was seventeen years old. He found a letter one of my girlfriends had written me, and when I wouldn’t lie about what it meant, he told me to get out and leave behind everything that he had ever bought me. He said he wanted to burn them.” She looked up to see the expression on Ben’s face, but it kept swimming under the tears in her eyes. “So I walked out of his home with only the clothes on my back. I moved in with one of my cousins, and I worked at night in a bakery to put myself through college. I would send him a birthday card each year, and he always returned them unopened. After a while I stopped putting my return address on the envelopes so he couldn’t send them back. I guess he burned those too.” She sniffed the mucus up into her nose. “I still send those cards like
that—without a return address. That way I can believe that, maybe, one year before he dies, he’ll open them.”

Ben got up and gave her a piece of toilet paper to blow her nose in.

“Where’s your daughter now, Mr. Ben?”

“For me?” Ben sighed deeply. “Just like you—livin’ in a world with no address.”

They finished their tea in silence and Lorraine got up to go.

“There’s no way to thank you, so I won’t try.”

“I’d be right hurt if you did.” Ben patted her arm. “Now come back anytime you got a mind to. I got nothing, but you welcome to all of that. Now how many folks is that generous?”

Lorraine smiled, leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek. Ben’s face lit up the walls of the dingy basement. He closed the door behind her, and at first her “Good night, Mr. Ben” tinkled like crystal bells in his mind. Crystal bells that grew larger and louder, until their sound was distorted in his ears and he almost believed that she had said “Good night, Daddy Ben”—no—“Mornin’ Daddy Ben, mornin’ Daddy Ben, mornin’…’ Ben’s saliva began to taste like sweating tin, and he ran a trembling hand over his stubbled face and rushed to the corner where he had shoved the wine bottle. The bells had begun almost to deafen him and he shook his head to relieve the drumming pain inside of his ears. He knew what was coming next, and he didn’t dare waste time by pouring the wine into a cup. He lifted the bottle up to his mouth and sucked at it greedily, but it was too late.
Swing low, sweet chariot
. The song had started—the whistling had begun.

It started low, from the end of his gut, and shrilled its way up into his ears and shattered the bells, sending glass shards flying into a heart that should have been so scarred from old piercings that there was no flesh left to bleed. But the glass splinters found some minute, untouched place—as they always did—and tore the heart and let the whistling in. And
now Ben would have to drink faster and longer, because the melody would now ride on his body’s blood like a cancer and poison everywhere it touched.
Swing low, sweet chariot
. It mustn’t get to his brain. He had a few more seconds before it got to his brain and killed him. He had to be drunk before the poison crept up his neck muscles, past his mouth, on the way to his brain. If he was drunk, then he could let it out—sing it out into the air before it touched his brain, caused him to remember.
Swing low, sweet chariot
. He couldn’t die there under the ground like some animal. Oh, God, please make him drunk. And he promised—he’d never go that long without a drink again. It was just the meeting and then that girl that had kept him from it this long, but he swore it would never happen again—just please, God, make him drunk.

The alcohol began to warm Ben’s body, and he felt his head begin to get numb and heavy. He almost sobbed out his thanks for this redeeming answer to his prayers, because the whistling had just reached his throat and he was able to open his mouth and slobber the words out into the room. The saliva was dripping from the corners of his mouth because he had to take huge gulps of wine between breaths, but he sang on—drooling and humming—because to sing was salvation, to sing was to empty the tune from his blood, to sing was to unremember Elvira, and his daughter’s “Mornin’, Daddy Ben” as she dragged her twisted foot up his front porch with that song hitting her in the back.

Swing low

“Mornin’, Ben. Mornin’, Elvira.”
Sweet chariot

The red pick-up truck stopped in front of Ben’s yard.
Comin’ for to carry me home

His daughter got out of the passenger side and began to limp toward the house.

Swing low

Elvira grinned into the creviced face of the white man sitting in the truck with tobacco stains in the corner of his
mouth. “Mornin’, Mr. Clyde. Right nice day, ain’t it, sir?”
Sweet chariot

Ben watched his daughter come through the gate with her eyes on the ground, and she slowly climbed up on the porch. She took each step at a time, and her shoes grated against the rough boards. She finally turned her beaten eyes into his face, and what was left of his soul to crush was taken care of by the bell-like voice that greeted them. “Mornin’, Daddy Ben. Mornin’, Mama.”

“Mornin’, baby,” Ben mumbled with his jaws tight.
Swing low

“How’s things up at the house?” Elvira asked. “My little girl do a good job for you yesterday?”

Sweet chariot

“Right fine, Elvira. Got that place clean as a skinned rat. How’s y’all’s crops comin’?”

“Just fine, Mr. Clyde, sir. Just fine. We sure appreciate that extra land you done rented us. We bringin’ in more than enough to break even. Yes, sir, just fine.”

The man laughed, showing the huge gaps between his tobacco-rotted teeth. “Glad to do it. Y’all some of my best tenants. I likes keepin’ my people happy. If you needs somethin’, let me know.”

“Sure will, Mr. Clyde, sir.”

“Aw right, see y’all next week. Be by the regular time to pick up the gal.”

“She be ready, sir.”

The man started up the motor on the truck, and the tune that he whistled as he drove off remained in the air long after the dust had returned to the ground. Elvira grinned and waved until the red of the truck had disappeared over the horizon. Then she simultaneously dropped her arm and smile and turned toward her daughter. “Don’t just stand there gawkin’. Get in the house—your breakfast been ready.”

“Yes, Mama.”

When the screen door had slammed shut, Elvira snapped
her head around to Ben. “Nigger, what is wrong with you? Ain’t you heared Mr. Clyde talkin’ to you, and you standin’ there like a hunk of stone. You better get some sense in you head ’fore I knock some in you!”

Ben stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the tracks in the dirt where the truck had been. He kept balling his fists up in his overalls until his nails dug into his palms.

“It ain’t right, Elvira. It just ain’t right and you know it.”

“What ain’t right?” The woman stuck her face into his and he backed up a few steps. “That that gal work and earn her keep like the rest of us? She can’t go to the fields, but she can clean house, and she’ll do it! I see it’s better you keep your mouth shut ’cause when it’s open, ain’t nothin’ but stupidness comin’ out.” She turned her head and brushed him off as she would a fly, then headed toward the door of the house.

“She came to us, Elvira.” There was a leaden sadness in Ben’s voice. “She came to us a long time ago.”

The thin woman spun around with her face twisted into an airless knot. “She came to us with a bunch of lies ’bout Mr. Clyde ’cause she’s too damn lazy to work. Why would a decent widow man want to mess with a little black nothin’ like her? No, anything to get out of work—just like you.”

“Why she gotta spend the night then?” Ben turned his head slowly toward her. “Why he always make her spend the night up there alone with him?”

“Why should he make an extra trip just to bring her tail home when he pass this way every Saturday mornin’ on the way to town? If she wasn’t lame, she could walk it herself after she finish work. But the man nice enough to drop her home, and you want to bad-mouth him along with that lyin’ hussy.”

“After she came to us, you remember I borrowed Tommy Boy’s wagon and went to get her that Friday night. I told ya what Mr. Clyde told me. ‘She ain’t finished yet, Ben.’ Just like that—‘She ain’t finished yet.’ And then standin’ there
whistlin’ while I went out the back gate.” Ben’s nails dug deeper into his palms.