Blanche Cleans Up Page 10

  At least she hadn’t got singed. She laughed at that ass Allister trying to trick her into telling him about Ray-Ray. No wonder so many women thought all men were fools—but a fool could be as dangerous as any other man. She wondered what would have happened if Felicia hadn’t shown up. And what was up with her playing champion of the help? Playing was right. Blanche was sure Felicia’s attitude was less about looking out for the help and more about going against Allister.

  She was glad she’d gotten Ray-Ray’s note out of her hands, but she knew she hadn’t heard the last of it. She could see now that she’d have been better off flushing it down the toilet. Where was that negro? She had some talk for him! Although she had to admit she enjoyed watching Allister jump up and down like somebody put a hot coal in his drawers. And Ray-Ray really deserved a medal if he was going to use that video to keep Brindle out of the governor’s office—even though she had a strong feeling that Ray-Ray had a more personal reason for wanting to bring Brindle down than simply saving the state from Brindle’s brand of leadership. But what did Brindle expect Samuelson to do? Ray-Ray didn’t impress her as a person likely to be moved by Scripture.

  She brewed some tea when she got home and drank it while she made her grocery list: apples, pears, toilet paper—what did Malik do with all that toilet paper?—tissues, honey (Karen was never bringing that back), baking potatoes, toothpaste. She didn’t expect Taifa or Malik to show up for hours. Taifa had talked Malik into helping her sell candy bars in front of the new supermarket on Centre Street in exchange for two days of doing his dishes. Shaquita had gone to the mall with some friends.

  Blanche’s own legs were eager to be on the move again. All that business with first Felicia and then Allister had made her edgy. The sun was shining, too, something that hadn’t happened all that often during this so-called spring. Lord! What she wouldn’t do for some real heat. She sorely missed North Carolina’s weather. The dogwood would be in full, sweet-smelling bloom down there about now. Buds were just appearing up here. She put her jacket back on, grabbed a couple of reusable shopping bags, and headed toward Dudley Square.

  Dudley Square was full of Saturday afternoon bustle: kids running out of the library, police cars taking up too many parking spaces, women jockeying strollers and shopping bags, men checking out the women and one another’s cars. She never tired of looking at folks, particularly her own. Of course, she’d never seen a face of any color that could be called average, but she thought this was particularly true of black people, who seemed to have a wider range of feature sizes and shapes than other people. She figured this was because most blacks born in America were the children of a lot of African nations thrown together in slavery and most black families had also picked up European and Native American blood, whether they liked it or not. So, every black face was like a picture of the world: one or more of a zillion shades of brown or black; lips from dime thin to bee-stung plump; eyes that slanted up or down or were round as coins; flat noses, fat ones, long and pointed ones. Black folks had them all.

  The smell of Jamaican meat pies from Dudley Pastry wrapped around her like a mother-made cloak. The music snaking out of Nubian Notion across the street put extra rhythm in her walk. For a moment, Dudley Square put her so much in mind of 125th Street, Harlem, USA, that she looked across the street half expecting to see the Apollo Theatre. There was also something about the low, crumbly buildings that reminded her of downtown Farleigh.

  Maybe these similarities were signs that there was a place here for her, just as there was a place for her in Harlem and Farleigh. But those two cities were special. Farleigh was her birthplace. Her great-grandparents had lived and died there. The dirt knew her. It was her root place. And she knew she was always welcome in Harlem, it being home to all American blacks; plus, actually having been her home for nearly twenty years, before she moved back to Farleigh. In either place she could plop herself down and be herself.

  But she was in Boston now, and the way she was ignored by salesclerks and followed by store security people downtown was just one more sign that this city wasn’t putting out the welcome mat for her. Boston didn’t seem to allow much room for differences either. If you were white and lived on Beacon Hill, you had to wear a lot of navy blue and worship old money. If you were an Irish Catholic from South Boston, you had to have big hair and a bad racial attitude. As for Roxbury, when she’d first moved in, three women in Rudigere Homes had, without being asked, given her the names of their hairdressers, as if there was something wrong with her unstraightened hair. And practically every mother in the housing development had found time to tell her how wrong she was when she’d said it was just as bad to scream at, curse, and dis your kids as it was to beat them.

  Folks in Harlem and Farleigh might have had the same attitudes toward her beliefs and looks, but they had more class than to get in her face. But did she really care whether this place felt like home? Wasn’t she already dreaming about packing up and getting out of here as soon as the kids were finished with school? The only problem was that her dreams never lasted long enough for her to see where she was headed.

  She took her time with the shopping. She hated getting the groceries home and finding that the label stuck on an apple covered a bruise, or that the broccoli stems were rubbery with age. She checked contents, too. If a product had too many ingredients she couldn’t pronounce, she looked for another brand. She finished her shopping, dropped her groceries off at home, and hurried on to Miz Barker’s store. She had a couple of questions she needed to ask.

  Miz Barker was in her usual spot, peering over the counter like a soldier over the castle wall. She raised her slow-moving eyelids and shifted in her seat when Blanche opened the door.

  “Hey, Miz B. How you doin’?”

  “I’m fair to middlin’. Ain’t no useta complaining noway.”

  Blanche set her handbag on the glass-fronted counter full of Snickers bars, Reese’s peanut butter cups, and jars of loose candy.

  “Where’s Pam?”

  “She went up to the house to start dinner. Child’s still sweet as pie and smart, too.”

  Overnight, all Miz Barker’s harrumphing about her granddaughter coming to stay had disappeared.

  Blanche got right to one of her reasons for stopping by. “Me and Malik went to a Community Reawakening Project meeting the other night. It was about lead poisoning.”

  “What kinda meeting?”

  “That group Aminata Dawson started.”

  “What the name of it again?”

  Blanche told her.

  “Humph. Don’t make no sense. Just like some of these names these young girls give they babies. Where they get these names from, I’d like to know. Now, Aminata’s name…”

  Oh shit! What was it about old folks that made them think they had the right to take your conversation anyplace they liked? Blanche promised herself that when she was eighty-five she’d answer the question she was asked and not go rambling in the middle of her answer.

  “…African she told me. That’s all right. But some of these made-up names they be coming up with, I just don’t…”

  Blanche decided to keep her mouth shut on this issue to keep from disagreeing. She thought it was great that black parents were making up their children’s names instead of depending on European names. She especially liked the names that were some combination of the parents’ names, like Malik’s friends Janel, whose parents were Janice and Nelson, and Charmita, named after Charles and Juanita. A name made up for you was really your name, one that had never belonged to anyone else, had never even been said out loud before. A name couldn’t get more personal than that. But if she told Miz Barker what she thought, they’d be there all night while Miz Barker lectured her on all the ways she was wrong. Be cool, she told herself. She could get Miz Barker back on the subject if she just hung in.

  “She grew up around here, didn’t she?” Blanche asked.

  “Who?”

  Blanche sighed and hoped they weren’t go
ing to have to go back to the beginning of this conversation before they could get to the end.

  “Aminata.”

  “Sure did. Married that Dawson boy. Didn’t last long. He went off somewhere and never come back. Wonder what become of him?”

  “But she stayed.”

  “Where she gon’ go with a child to raise? And look what all that mother loving and looking out got her. Boy sitting in prison for murder. Don’t make no sense.”

  “She acts kinda strange when she talks about him.”

  “And wouldn’t you? Your only child in prison for the rest of his natural life?”

  “I mean real strange, Miz Barker. It’s like she goes into a trance and just repeats…”

  “I know how she do. I seen it. Better than crying herself to death or taking to drugs. Aminata ain’t crazy. She trying to keep herself from going crazy. When she goes off on her son talk, all a person got to do is touch her or speak to her and she straightens right up. Right up.”

  “Malik wants to do a school project with her. She’s supposed to take him to some interviews.”

  Miz Barker’s lizard lids rose to reveal eyes sharp as shale. “Wondered what this was all about. What kinda interviews?”

  Blanche told her that Aminata was convinced that lead poisoning had made her son violent enough to kill his friend. “And not just her son. She wants to talk to the parents of those four boys they’re holding on murder charges to see if any of them had lead poisoning. Malik wants to do his school paper on Aminata’s idea.” There was a hard ring in her own voice that Blanche didn’t like. Just because Malik believed Aminata and not her was no reason to be a bitch. “I think Aminata made up the whole lead poisoning and violence thing because her son killed—”

  “I don’t know nothing about no lead poisoning,” Miz Barker interrupted. “But that boy of yourn’ll be as safe with Aminata as a black man-child is gonna be round these parts.”

  But her own son hadn’t been safe with her, Blanche thought, then cringed at her own unfairness and the probability that Miz Barker had also heard the green-tinged edge in Blanche’s voice and knew what it meant. She was grateful Miz Barker didn’t speak on it, which didn’t mean she never would. Blanche bought some baking soda and a six-pack of kitchen matches—atonement for her meanness.

  “You seen Ray-Ray lately?” Blanche held out her hand for her change.

  “You sure full of questions today.”

  Blanche felt herself blushing but decided to bluff. “Who else am I supposed to ask? Mr. Al?”

  Mr. Al owned the barbershop around the corner and had been in business as long as Miz Barker had. Like her, he was a source of community history and current goings-on, but he and Miz Barker hadn’t spoken for years. Neither one of them would say why, but each bristled at the sound of the other’s name.

  “I ain’t no bear, woman, so don’t try to bait me.” Miz Barker rose from her wooden stool and rubbed her behind with both hands. “Umm. Butt near ’bout gone to sleep. Old butt can’t handle too much hard stool. When I was a girl…”

  Here we go again, Blanche thought, so she was surprised by Miz Barker’s next words.

  “Why you looking for Ray-Ray?”

  “I didn’t say I was looking for him.”

  “You was going to.” There was no doubt in Miz Barker’s voice.

  “I got something I want to talk to him about.”

  Miz Barker gave her a long look.

  “Ray-Ray did something I didn’t like, and I intend to tell him ’bout hisself,” Blanche said.

  Miz Barker’s eyelids slow-lowered to half-mast. “Well, if I see him, I’ll tell him you looking for him.” She turned her back to Blanche and fiddled with something on the shelf behind the cash register.

  “So now you got an attitude.” Blanche’s voice was as sure as Miz Barker’s had been a bit ago.

  The older woman turned to face her. “People been bringing that boy trouble ever since he was a child. I never seen a person try as hard to be good as that boy did when he was young. Went to school. Didn’t steal. Always polite. And being beat up right and left by these hoodlums round here ’cause he didn’t want to be in no gang or steal cars and such. It didn’t stop when he growed up neither. Some people can’t stand folks different from them. Make trouble for ’em. Don’t make no sense.”

  And what made Ray-Ray so different from everybody else—the fact that Miz Barker thought he was special? Or the fact that he was male? All her life Blanche had been listening to women make excuses for some man acting like a boy—many of the same women who raised their own sons to believe that taking care of their trifling behinds was women’s greatest joy.

  “Most black people I know been brought trouble at one time or another,” she told Miz Barker. “Sometimes it’s ’cause they’re different, but sometimes it’s ’cause what goes around comes around. This ain’t about me wanting to pick on Ray-Ray. It’s about him doing me wrong and me having the right to speak on it. Nobody’s perfect, not even Ray-Ray.” Blanche picked up the greasy little bag Miz Barker had put her purchases in. “I’ll be seeing you, Miz Barker.”

  “Humph!” was the old woman’s only reply.

  Irritation made Blanche walk even faster than usual. “That woman’s too old to be so silly about that boy!” she said to the sidewalk. But she did feel better about Malik going off with Aminata tomorrow.

  She was halfway up the hill to Rudigere Homes when she saw Miz Johnson grown son, Tongues, heading down the hill toward her. She couldn’t help but smile.

  Tongues hopped and bobbed toward her like a man walking on hot coals. His jacket and shirttail flapped around him as though a windstorm had gotten under his clothes. If he owned more than one shirt, they all looked like the plaid flannel one currently hanging over a pair of wrinkled khaki pants.

  “I dreamed ’bout you, Blanche.” He wheeled around and bounced back up the hill alongside her. “I dreamed ’bout you, just like last time. I told you, remember? I said—”

  “Don’t even go there, Tongues, okay? Just like I told you last time, I don’t wanna be your girlfriend.”

  “I know, I know, I know what you said, I know what you said, but you sure is one fine woman, Blanche. I loves me a big strong woman, yes, I do, Blanche, I do. You make my heart—”

  “Tongues, am I gonna have to get mad to shut you up?”

  Tongues spun around and did a little leap before acting out how he’d got his nickname. “Sha lal kall ba Somalla damalla na kah hola maka…”

  Blanche watched him for a second, laughing to herself and shaking her head. Crazy as he can be! But she loved that speaking-in-tongues thing. She’d heard it started when he’d tried to use the speaking in tongues he’d seen in the Pentecostal church to convince the army he wasn’t fit to fight in the Korean War. They drafted him anyway. But whatever he’d seen in combat had changed his game into a way of dealing with any threat, no matter how mild. Otherwise, he was quiet and polite, with a shy smile and a sweet hello for everybody. Except that every couple of months he’d fall in love with some woman and declare his feelings whenever he saw her on the street—until he fell for someone new. He’d never done any harm, and Blanche had to admit there was something spirit-lifting about being adored, even by Tongues.

  Taifa, Malik, and Shaquita showed up in time for dinner, all with plans for the evening: Shaquita was meeting Pookie—to tell him about her pregnancy, Blanche hoped. Taifa wanted to go to a party around the corner, and Malik wanted to go to Janel’s to play some video game Blanche probably wouldn’t let in her house. But that wasn’t all he wanted.

  “So, whaddaya think about the interviews, Moms? Aminata’s gonna do ’em tomorrow.” Anyone who didn’t know him would have thought from his tone that he didn’t care one way or another about going with Aminata.

  “You can go, sweetie.” Blanche paused to make room for his huge grin. “But you gotta be prepared to interrupt her.”

  Malik frowned at Blanche as though it were her fault A
minata was slightly off. But he listened closely to what she told him Miz Barker had said about how to stop Aminata’s gentle-son speech.

  “Have fun and don’t get pregnant!” Blanche had whispered to Taifa as she was leaving the house. It was a standing joke with them—something Blanche always said when Taifa was on her way to some hormone-laden activity. With Shaquita in the house, it wasn’t really funny, but seemed even more important to say than ever—like lighting a blue candle for protection.

  When they’d all gone, Blanche made herself a gin-and-tonic and carried it to her favorite armchair. She sat sipping her drink and listening to the silence. Suddenly loneliness slithered up her legs and wound round her body like a boa constrictor. Lately, it attacked her more and more often. She was still looking forward to being her own woman again, with the kids grown and gone, but the closer she got to that, the more clearly she remembered that life alone wasn’t all joy. She’d gotten used to being needed. She didn’t always like it, but it was now so much a part of who she was, she couldn’t quite see herself without it—like trying to imagine herself with a different face. She fought off thoughts of Leo that flooded her mind as they always did when she was feeling like she wanted to be attached to someone for a while.

  How long had he been married? Two years? Three? Sometimes she forgot he now had a wife and thought of him down in Farleigh still waiting for her to come back to him, like he’d always done. It was time to get over being hurt about it. If she’d wanted the man, she could have had him. He had been really clear on that. She was the one who hadn’t been clear. She still wasn’t. Would she have felt differently if she and Leo hadn’t known each other since grade school? If he hadn’t been her first boyfriend and the man everyone down home expected her to marry? She hoped she hadn’t let a good thing get away from her just to prove she was her own woman. But she’d hated the idea of being matched and labeled, and she’d never been keen on marriage. Yet, for the hundredth time, she wondered exactly when Leo had given up on her—if there’d been a way she could have stopped him, short of becoming Mrs. Leo.