Those Bones Are Not My Child (81 page)

She chewed over the two “we”s. Neither included her. He seemed about to say something further, in fact did, but mumbled it. Something about her going to the sauna. She tried the knob, making as much noise as she could, uncertain whether the shower curtain had been drawn closed or open. Since the evening Gerry had walked in on Sonny while he was changing into fresh pajamas, he’d made it clear he didn’t like Gerry around, pulling the coverlet up over his head when she came up the stairs with breakfast.

“Why is this door locked?”

“The door is not locked, Zala.”

It was the voice he’d used at the hospital, the long-suffering voice he’d used to tell her to look again. Her throat swelled so she couldn’t swallow. She knew the anger she felt was unfair, but she was helpless against it.

Spence shook his razor briskly and set it on the sill by the plants. “Unplug the stopper?” It was a while before he heard him do it, longer still before he heard the shower curtain being pulled back again. He turned, and when a foot emerged, hesitantly, then a leg, Spence stepped on the end of the bathmat so it wouldn’t slip. But Sonny would not step out with him standing so near.

Spence filled the toothpaste cup and turned his back to water the plants. “Don’t worry about the tub,” he said as casually as he could. “I’ll wash it out.” One day soon, they would joke about the crud Sonny left each time he took a bath. Where the hell did it come from? All he did was lay around in bed, play checkers, once and a while sit in the window.

Spence took his time watering the plants, watching the water bubble up around the base of the begonias before the thirsty roots sucked it down through the soil and he could pour a little more without fear of overflowing the pots. He listened to the buff of terry cloth against Sonny’s wet skin. The slow, careful dabbing when he came to a sore spot. The hard rubbing to get the adhesive residue off. If only he’d talk. “Ah-hunh,” “uhn-uhhhn,” and “pamb-uhhh-uhn” didn’t say very much. No one mentioned going to Lovey’s minister anymore, or to “somebody” who might be good to talk to—most definitely not to the police. Sonny talked with his sister and brother a little. That was progress. And he seemed to manage a few words with Zala.

When Spence turned, Sonny jumped, clutching the towel in front of him. Rage swelled Spence’s neck. Who’d done this? Who’d wrecked this moment, father and son, a shave and a bath? When Spence knelt down and took the sponge and the can of cleanser, his foot knocked against the hamper and the lid banged down. Sonny looked at him and smiled, but there was no fun in it. A smile to ingratiate, to disarm. He was shivering.

“Your robe’s on the door, Sonny.”

It was the faded plaid cotton flannel one hanging on the back of the door. They’d chosen it over the new one still wrapped in Christmas paper in the hall closet at home. Sonny was backing away and not taking his eyes off of Spence. “You’ll catch cold,” was as much as Spence could say before anger welled up again. He scrubbed at the ring in the tub. And when he turned the tap on to slosh the suds away, he looked up at his son. For a minute he looked almost like himself, taller, thinner, slowly tying the sash around the robe and watching him, tense, alert.

“It’s all right, Sonny.” He stared at the boy’s neck. Scrawny, but not as emaciated as before; the flesh was not sagging in folds. The doctors had told them that they’d had to clear a passage in his esophagus. He couldn’t eat without choking. He’d still been on intravenous feedings at night their fifth day in Miami, his daytime meals graduating from gruel to bland soup with a few solids by the end of the week.

Spence took his time getting up when he heard the children. He tipped his head in the direction of the window. Sonny would not take his eyes from him until he turned to look out. One of the boys was chasing the girls with a stick. When they screamed, Spence started, but the shrieks got no reaction from Sonny at all.

“Bet that stick is supposed to have touched a rat or something.” For his efforts Spence received a wan smile. And then Sonny was watching him again, wary, backing toward the door, his hand behind him searching for the knob.

When he noticed Sonny’s gaze move up from his face to his head, Spence smiled. “My hair, you noticed?” He ran his hands over his bush and tried not to be too eager. “Yeah, had to get rid of that curl. Like it better this way?”

It was an obedient nod, quick, unengaged. Spence would have given both arms to see him cock his chin, push his lips out and size him up, then issue some outrageous remark about his hair. It was enough that he was standing there, the bruise on his upper lip faded to a smudge. Or maybe it was the beginning of a mustache. He was nearly thirteen now.

It was in fact a miracle. Members of the American refugee committee, which Paulette had worked with, had come to inquire about the boy. Handbills Paulette had brought down from Atlanta were examined, one in particular placed apart from the others on the bulletin board. A worker from a child-find agency had inquired too and left behind a stack of handbills, one of them from the mass mailing Zala had done. The intake clerk thought she saw a resemblance and went daily to see the boy, checking his chart against the description—height, weight, dental work, blood type, chicken pox scar, smallpox vaccination. It was the vaccination scar that said he’d been born before 1970, the year inoculation methods changed.

“Sonny?” When they’d asked if he was Sonny Spencer, he’d tried to slip away. Now he was trying to make himself small to back out of the door. He hadn’t exactly denied who he was, but he’d not been eager for the hospital clerk to place the call to Atlanta.

“I love you, boy.” Zala was waiting in the hall with her arms open wide. But by the time Spence stepped out of the bathroom, Sonny had wriggled free from his mother’s embrace and darted into the bedroom. The door clicked shut on a corner of the bathrobe. Together Zala and Spence watched the small piece of flannel disappear. Then they searched each other’s faces for a progress report, listening to the movements behind the door.

“I’ll get the truck,” Spence sighed. He touched her face. She looked as worn out as he was. “Whatever happened to happily ever after, Zala?”

…

“Don’t trample in my yellow root tea, girls.” Mama Lovey tossed the eggplant back and forth and watched the truck churn up dust along the road. The two little girls waved goodbye to Kenti. Then they turned to the kitchen patch on the lookout for a china cup or a teakettle.

“What yellow root tea look like, Miss Gerry?”

Gerry didn’t hear them. Slippers in her hand, she was hurrying through the rows of snap beans in the direction of her stepmother. The girls studied the different kinds of greens, searching for the particular ones the women in the sauna had asked for. There were thin blades that smelled like furniture polish and tasted like lemon when they crammed in a mouthful. There was curly stuff they recognized from lunch, swimming in butter on the Irish potatoes. There were tall fragrant stems for putting in iced tea to make it taste like green gumdrops. There were needles that Miss Lovey boiled up in the yard with ladled-up rainwater, to rinse her hair with. The plant with the round blue-gray leaves that smelled like cough drops they broke off in bunches to take to the cabin and put in the steamy basin on the stove down there.

“They bare all over, all the way up to their titties,” one of the little girls whispered, taking off down the wide path. The other giggled and ran behind her, hands over her mouth, her shoulders hunched to her ears.

Gerry tucked the loose slip strap up under her stepmother’s cap sleeve, then pinched her. “Talk to me. You haven’t said a word to me all day. I’ve missed you.”

Lovey extended her cheek and Gerry kissed her. Then the two turned toward the road, their arms around each other’s waists, and watched the truck get smaller. When it turned off, Lovey pulled the handkerchief from her head and wiped her hands with it.

“Like having a sneak thief in the house,” she sighed.

“He is exactly the topic I wanted to raise with you, Lovey.”

“What makes you think I ain’t talking about you, Geralanna?” Chuckling, Lovey squatted down and lifted the basket. “Could be talking ’bout most any of us, and I probably should.”

“What I want to know is, where does he go when he climbs out at night?” From her blouse pocket Gerry produced a tattered piece of blue-and-white cotton. “I found this hooked on the chicken wire this
morning. I almost missed it. Looks like one of the black-and-white striped feathers, doesn’t it?” She held it up. “Another two nights and his pajamas will be ripped to shreds.”

Mama Lovey tucked the basket under her arm and moved Gerry aside when she attempted to take it from her. “Sundiata come round once they back off and give him some room. He’ll quit the shimsham if they give him time.”

Gerry bent down and brushed soil from between her stepmother’s toes. “Has he come round to you? I saw you out here last night in your nightgown. Over there,” Gerry said, looking toward the white field of Regale lilies, artemisia, cotton-lavender, and Queen Anne’s lace. “You were standing by the white roses. Later I heard the thump on the porch roof, and when I looked, I saw him over there.” She pointed to the part of the field where the daisies mingled in with hydrangea, delphinium, foamflower, candytuft, foxglove, and silver mound. “Do you two meet at night to talk? What does he say?”

“It’ll all come out in the wash,” Lovey said, tramping off toward the back porch. “Everything in good time.”

Gerry followed her up the steps, where they wiped their feet on the rug. “Think it would help to have talent night?”

Mama Lovey laughed a good hearty laugh and pushed the screen door open. She reached up and swung one of the smoked hams aside, then ducked under the sprigs of drying herbs. But she didn’t go through to the kitchen.

“Here,” she said, turning around in the cramped space, inviting her stepdaughter to take in the shelves of jars, funnels, pectin, the zinc tub they washed their feet in, the stool used to get light bulbs down from the storage bin. “Here’s where he comes to do his talking, but only to himself. I expect this little squeeze place is like the room they kept him in.” She left Gerry there staring at the stool.

In years past, when the family gathered for holidays, Talent Hour could usually draw the boy out no matter how aloof he was trying to be, how much he thought himself too grown for silly games. Lovey would put the old Decca records on. Sometimes she could get Gerry’s father up to join her. Maybe he’d tell an anecdote. Zala would recite poetry. Kenti would do ballet and sing a song. Spence would read part of a speech from Douglass, Malcolm, or King. Maxwell would get them on their feet for the Guinea-Bissau marching song. Kofi would say he’d act out
an episode from
Space Raiders
but Sonny had to go first. So Gerry would do one of her magic acts and Sonny would watch, then call it stupid. Then they had him. He would have to do something for the show. Once he brought the house down after gesturing in dumb show, then lying down on the floor. “That was ‘Silent Night,’ y’all.” They’d thrown the sofa pillows at him, and the general free-for-all had almost toppled the Christmas tree.

Gerry found Mama Lovey in the bedroom on her knees, the dusty handkerchief on the bed by the Bible, her braid hanging down her back. She always prayed before the ritual bath at the sweat house. Gerry went into the living room and started arranging things for Family Talent Hour. Reluctantly, she put the projector and her slides aside for another time.

“Mama, where’d you get this from?” Kenti reached to the floor of the truck and took the wax tablet from Zala’s handbag.

“It used to be mine. It was in the attic. You can write on it with your fingernail or a bobby pin. See? When you lift the top page, it disappears.” But there was a collection of messages that remained, faintly visible to the eye but definitely there to her fingers. Zala moved her fingertips over the impressions, reading her past.

Kenti knelt on the seat, facing the back of the truck, and started writing. She lifted the top sheet and the writing disappeared. She passed it through the cab window to her brothers.

Sonny was sitting in a tire with his arms around his knees. He wouldn’t look up. Kofi took the tablet from her then leaned back against the stacks of straw and started writing with his nail. He handed the tablet to Sonny and tapped his arm until he took it.

“Remember?” Kofi moved close to the tire and waited for Sonny to read what he wrote out loud. “Member that earth science project you did?” When his brother didn’t answer, Kofi read a few billboards as they drove on. Sometimes Sonny took a long time to answer, and when he did, the answer was short. It took time to make up short answers, so Kofi waited. He didn’t have anything better to do. He wasn’t even hungry. They passed a McDonald’s and he saw his father watching them in the rearview mirror, expecting them to say something. Sonny wasn’t even looking.

“What’s that say?”

Kenti was pointing to writing on the wall of a brick building: MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE! FREE MAGGIE BOZEMAN AND JULIA WILDER! Kofi touched Sonny’s arm. “What’s that first word mean?” Sonny didn’t move his head. But when the truck stopped, he moved his eyes to watch the train coming.

Kenti leaned her cheek on her hands and looked at her brother in the tire. “Awwww … you don’t know how to read anymore? You forgot?” Then she lifted her head up. A bug was crawling over the mound of her thumb.

“Don’t move,” Kofi said, crawling toward her. “A ladybug’s good luck.” He put his wrist next to hers and the red-and-gold speckled bug crawled onto his hand. “You’re supposed to make a wish.” He closed his eyes and made one, peeking at Kenti. Her mouth was moving, her forehead was wrinkled, and her eyes were squeezed shut. She was making the same wish he was. He turned around to show Sonny, holding his wrist right under his nose.

“Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, Babylon is on fire cause Sundiata’s back home.”

He knew that would get him. Sonny kept his mouth closed over his teeth, but he was smiling, then he was laughing, then he wasn’t. He was shivering like he was scared the train was going to jump the track and crash into the truck.