All-Bright Court (13 page)

It was on one of these nights that it happened: Mikey went into the Chug-a-lug house.

His mother had forbidden him from going into any of the children's houses. “You play outside. You don't know what people be doing in they houses. If I hear tell you been playing in somebody house, I'm a tear up your behind.”

Mikey knew he was forbidden, and his mother's words were swimming around in his brain that evening.

He and some other children had been playing hide and seek out in the gloaming. This was the best time to play, when children could disappear into the shadows and slide around only half seen. Chris was it, and no one was to go off the row because the mothers would be calling them in soon. It did a child little good if he found the best hiding place a few rows over, if he sank into the deepest shadow, only to have his mother call him in before he could spring from it and win the game.

Chris was stationed at the side of the row, on the end by his house. He stood counting, and while the children scattered, he peeled paint from the building, and ate it.

“Let's hide together,” Cheryl said to Mikey, “in my house. My parents aren't home.”

“No,” Mikey said. “Let's go hide at the other end of the row.”

“What, are you afraid of going into a white person's house?”

“No.” That was not it at all. He wanted to tell her that his mother did not allow . . . The right thing to say was swimming around in his brain, but it was drowning.

“I've been in colored people's houses. I've been in this boy Dennis's house. You know Dennis?”

“Yeah, but—”

“I don't believe you. I've never seen you with him. His mother won't let him come over this way.”

“Who's not ready holler
I,
” Chris yelled.

“
I!
” Mikey and Cheryl screamed together.

“Let's go in the back door. No one will see us,” Cheryl said. “We'll win.”

“We will win, but it seem like cheating,” Mikey said.

“So?” Cheryl said. She led Mikey through the back door. Paulie was sitting right there in the window, but Mikey didn't even see him.

Not only was this the first time he was in someone's house without his mother's permission, it was a white person's house, a trashy white person's house. He wanted to look around, but Cheryl was pulling on his arm. She yanked him from the kitchen into the living room.

No lights were on on the first floor, and a blue light from outside filtered into the house. As Cheryl pulled on his arm, he felt both excited and scared. He was trying to see, but trying to avoid whatever dangers might come swooping out of the shadows. Unconsciously he began sniffing the air.

There was not one molecule of a familiar smell, no odor of boiled pork, black-eyed peas, no Dixie Peach. There was only a faint odor of yeasty sourness.

Cheryl led Mikey to the bottom of the staircase. He stopped cold.

“Come on. What's wrong with you? Scared?”

“No,” Mikey said. He followed her upstairs and into a bedroom. She went to the window. While Cheryl looked out the window, Mikey stood by the door. There were two unmade beds. On one was a fat baby doll tangled in a sheet. There was a dresser with its top drawer missing. On top of the dresser was a lamp. No shade was on the lamp, and the naked bulb cast fat shadows in the room.

“We'll give Chris a few minutes. Then we'll sneak back out,” Cheryl said.

Mikey wasn't listening.

Cheryl left the window and took her doll from the bed. “We're moving soon, to a real house, and I'm going to get a pony.”

“You not going to move, and you not getting no pony,” Mikey said.

“You're jealous,” she said. “I am going to get a pony, and I'm going to name it Midnight if it's black. If it's white I'm going to call it Snowflake. If it's brown—” Cheryl dropped her doll. “Roach,” she said, pointing at the wall. Mikey looked to where she was pointing. Over the dresser, a roach was crawling up the wall. Cheryl took off her sneaker and smashed it.

“You have roaches?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Mikey said.

“That figures. My daddy says colored people bring roaches wherever they go. That's why we're leaving here. It's dirty,” Cheryl said.

“Your daddy wrong. Colored folks don't bring roaches, and it ain't dirty here.”

“Yes it is, and you know it. It's a slum,” Cheryl said. She picked up her doll. “This is my baby.”

The doll was naked. It was the kind of doll that had blinking eyes, and one was broken shut. The one shut eye and the doll's molded smile made it look as if she were winking. Mikey stared at the doll's one blue glass eye.

“Do you know where babies come from?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Mikey said.

“Where, smarty?”

“I don't have to prove it to you by telling you,” Mikey said. He could hear the game outside. Chris, the it, was catching children and calling them out. One, two, three.

“Where?” Cheryl pressed.

“I do know. They come from storks.”

Cheryl laughed so hard her laughter filled the big, distorted shadows in the room. “That's a lie.”

“My mama say—”

“That's a lie parents tell their kids so they won't have to tell them where babies
really
come from,” Cheryl said.

Mikey walked over to where Cheryl was. She continued. “My mommy tried to tell me that one, but Daddy said, ‘Don't lie to the kid. Tell her the truth.' Want me to show you how grown people get babies, or are you scared?”

Mikey could hear children screaming. They had been discovered and were trying to beat Chris back home.

Mikey looked at the doll on the floor. The other eye had blinked shut. “I'm not scared,” he said.

Cheryl pulled down her shorts and underpants and reached to pull down Mikey's.

He was scared, so scared that for a few seconds he thought he had gone deaf. He let Cheryl pull down his pants and underpants, and he looked around the room as if he were being watched, as if his mother would materialize from one of the grotesque shadows. He could not see what any of this had to do with babies, and he had the feeling that this was a trick, that Cheryl would quickly pull on her clothes and run out and win the game.

Sound returned to the world. Right below the window there was squealing. Someone was making a dash for home, and Chris was shouting, “I got you. I got you.”

Mikey stood still, waiting for Cheryl to make a run for it. He would beat her. He would pull up his clothes and be the first one out.

“Lay down with me on the bed,” Cheryl said. She climbed onto her unmade bed. Mikey did not move. “Do you want to know or don't you?”

Mikey climbed onto the bed, his pants around his ankles.

“Lay on top of me.”

Mikey stared at her. He did not think he heard her right. His heart was beating so hard that it was blocking his hearing again.

“Lay down on top of me. I'm not going to bite you.”

Mikey heard Cheryl that time. “I'll squish you,” he said.

“You won't squish me,” she said, and pulled him down.

Mikey could feel himself sinking into her. He tried making himself lighter by holding his breath. Somehow, it seemed, by doing so he would stay afloat atop the softness, the moistness, the saltiness that was the sea of her body. He stiffened as he felt himself disappearing into her stomach, and he could not stop himself. Though there was something about this sinking, about this giving way, that he liked, he was frightened. It was as if her flesh were opening up and he were being drawn inside.

“You can get up,” Cheryl said. “That's it.”

Just as she spoke, the bedroom door opened. They both jumped up, their underpants and shorts twisted around their ankles. It was Paulie. He looked at them and, without saying a word, walked away.

They both pulled up their clothes, and as they went rumbling down the stairs, Mikey was thinking that there would be no explaining this to his mother. None. She was right: “You don't know what people be doing.” And his father. Mikey knew he would be whipped, but that was the least of it. What would they think of him? Naked with a white girl, a trashy white girl, a Chug-a-lug.

Mothers were calling their children, and Chris was chanting, “Ollie ollie oxen free. Ollie ollie oxen free.” The game was over.

At the landing at the bottom of the stairs Cheryl said, “We're home free.” She could see that Mikey was not listening. “Paulie won't tell, O.K.? He won't. Come on, we can win. We're home free.” She tried pulling him through the front door, but he broke free of her, busted out the back door, and headed for his house.

That night while he was in the tub, Mikey washed quickly. He did not want to give his mother or father a chance to come into the bathroom.

They did not come in, but Cheryl did. She came in through his mouth. A single hair of hers lay coiled at the back of his tongue. He had been scraping at it with his teeth, not knowing what it was until he pulled the yellow hair from his mouth.

He drew in a sharp breath, and he would have held it forever if he could, somehow thinking, hoping, wishing that by doing so he could keep his secret safe. If only he could stay there, holding it in, he could get lighter and lighter, light enough to float away.

But there was no need for Mikey to worry, for Paulie, like many children, could keep a secret better than an adult could. Besides, within the week they were gone, every last Chug-a-lug.

Jake and Angela had seen a house the first week they went out looking and had made an offer. Things began to move quickly, almost too quickly, the offer accepted, the loan approved. They left at night.

No one in All-Bright Court was sad to see them go. Mary Kate and Venita were sitting on the front porch, watching them pack up the Sky Chief. “I'm glad them trashy folks leaving,” Mary Kate said.

“They probably skipping out on the rent,” Venita said. “I don't know why they ever came here. Why would they come live 'round colored people?”

“I want to know who sold them nasty, trashy folks a house.”

“I'm glad they going. Good riddance to bad news.”

Mikey stood inside the front door, listening. “Mama?” he called.

“Boy, I thought you was watching TV with your daddy.”

“He sleep, Mama. Mama, is we living in a slum?” he asked.

“Boy, you be coming up with some questions.”

“Is this a slum?” he pressed.

His mother did not look at him. She cast her eyes into the night. “I suppose this is a slum. Why you ask that?”

“I just wanted to know.” He sighed and went upstairs.

“That some boy,” Venita said. “You got you a bright boy.”

“I worry about him,” Mary Kate said. “He keep things inside, brood over things.”

“He going be all right,” Venita said. “Where you think them folks moving?”

“I don't know,” Mary Kate said. “I'm sure they moving to a nicer place than this.”

Where the Zakrezewskis were moving was Niagara Falls, to a place Adam and Eve might envy. The Chug-a-lugs blew right out of All-Bright Court and landed in Love Canal.

13

T
HERE WAS
a war here last night. The people went into the streets and waged a war. They fought the buildings and cars and street lights. With rocks and sticks they raged against the night. They brought their anger and grief and pain out, and their shadows flew through the streets, black angels through the streets, given flight by a tempered-steel moon.

And from All-Bright Court wailing could be heard. It was coming through the walls, rising through the floorboards.

Mikey and his sisters sat on the stairs and watched their father cry. This was the first time they had seen him cry. He was not wailing, but they could hear wailing. It was coming through the walls. They could feel it under their feet.

Four hundred years of pain, four hundred years of sorrow, were being released. Their ancestors were waking up. They were standing inside the walls, and they were wailing from the other side. “How long, Lord? How long?” they were asking, and their sorrow shook the walls.

But their father was kneeling and sobbing into their mother's housedress. He was clinging to the dress and resting his head on their mother's pregnant stomach. Their mother was crying too, and she was moaning and rubbing their father's head with her small hands. Then the children began crying, though they did not know why. Martin Luther King had been killed, and it seemed all the world was crying. It was a time to cry. And Mikey and his sisters cried and clung to one another.

Their father was saying something. They could not hear what he was saying. Whatever it was, he was mumbling it into their mother's dress, whispering it into the baby's ear.

From the streets came the sound of the beating of angels' wings. The people were going to war. They were going up to Ridge Road. That is where the war took place, on the main street on the northern edge of town.

They raged against the night, turned over cars and burned them, attacked Ridge Road. They beat up on their own neighborhood. They beat up on themselves.

When the people returned to All-Bright Court, Mikey and his sisters and parents were standing on the porch. They were not crying anymore. They were shaking and watching the spoils being carried by. They saw televisions, and radios, and bottles of liquor, and cases of beer and pop, and bags of potatoes, and boxes of Fab, and bottles of Joy, and suits, and dresses, and roasts, and ten-pound buckets of chitterlings, and cartons of cigarettes being carried by. They saw Isaac and some other teenage boys skating by with their arms full of clothes.

“We broke into the rink too,” Isaac said. “Go on up there and get ya'll some skates, kids. Go get anything ya'll want. We opened up all the stores. It's Christmas Day.”

“Christmas,” Mary said.