George Pelecanos (14 page)

At
some point, like most of the other people on the block, my mother and father
started renting out rooms in our house. Some were family, like
cousins
Ivy, June, and Neville, and all of us Jamaicans and
Trinidadians ate together. There was always loud laughter and somebody telling
you what to do. When we first moved in, my parents took in some black Americans
and a Chinese man, who were all real different from the West Indians--Miss Ruby,
Mr. Palmer, Miss Lucy, and Mr. Price. Mr. Kinney and his come-and-go wife were
Americans. They stayed in the room that looked over the backyard and were
pretty nice and quiet. There was Tommy and Doris (or Clay and Liston, as my
father called them), who were also American. All the Americans and Mr. Lee, the
Chinese man, kinda kept to themselves and ate different foods, like grits,
which Mr. Kinney taught me to make with butter for breakfast.

Mr.
Lee was a mystery. He always locked the door to his room, even when he was home
or just going to the bathroom. He was real polite. When he came home, he'd
stand in the living room and look at everybody and bow and say something under
his breath with a big grin, like, "...Harerow..." Sometimes his strange speaking
went on for many minutes. Then he'd go upstairs for the night. My father loved
it, he'd stand up and bow and smile. Then he'd have a big laugh when Mr. Lee
left and tell us, "That man got good manners." It got to the point that when I
heard Mr. Lee's key in the front door, I'd go to the kitchen so I wouldn't have
to do the greeting.

All
three bedrooms in the house were rented out, which left the living room and
dining room. My parents slept on a bed in the dining room and my sisters and I
shared a foldout sofa-bed in the living room. This felt normal to us. My moth
was always saying this setup was just for a little while and it helped them
make ends meet.

There
were a lot of times that I didn't like the folks who stayed at our house. I
didn't appreciate my mom cooking for everybody, and I thought they were stupid
when they asked where Jamaica was or turned up their noses at ackee and
saltfish or boiled green bananas and mackerel. But everybody knew food was
always cooking at our house or at the home of one of our aunts or numerous
cousins who lived nearby, so there were always people around and we always felt
safe.

Still,
there was a lot I wanted to understand about black Americans. Sometimes I would
sneak into their rooms when they weren't home. Not that I was looking for
anything, but I was curious to know who they were--their smells, how they were different
from us. Mr. Kinney's magic shave smelled like rotten eggs; he said he used it
so he wouldn't get razor bumps, but it stank. Snooping in his room one day, I
opened the can to see what it looked like and spilled it all over the floor. I
swept it up and put it back in the can and cleaned the floor, but then it
started smelling like rotten eggs, so I left and prayed that the scent would
disappear. If he ever knew what happened, he never said. In the other rooms I
would find clothes that didn't get hung up, leftover fried fish sand-wiches
brought home from takeout, suitcases that never got unpacked, framed pictures
and snapshots of smiling kids with missing teeth and shorts and barrettes. In
some of the pictures taken long before I was born, the young men and women wore
tweed suits and hats, their kids in front of placid monotone backdrops of
trestled bridges over duck-filled English ponds, with Queen Elizabeth always
somewhere in the background. But never any smiles. No Jamaican joy--only stern
faces. All kinds of people were coming and going; why my parents chose them
over other people was another mystery to me.

Everything
became clear to me when I woke up that Saturday morning, August 22.
The smells of cakes and pies being baked, greens being cooked, and
chickens being fried settled like a cloud over the whole neighborhood.
The Petworth Parents' Club, headed by Mrs. Florence Billops, was holding one of
its four-times-per-year dinners and bake sales. The money raised from these
events paid for annual community trips for parents and kids to places like the
New York World's Fair, Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, and stuff like that.

So
every mother in the neighborhood had started early in the morning, making her
specialty. This meant me and my friends would have to hang around all day in
case our mothers needed something from one of the corner stores, which they
always did. Then we'd get the money and take off running through the alleys,
pop over fences, shout at the friends who got to play kickball, and run in
sweating to Mr. G's or Chuck & Danny's midnight delicatessen. Mr. G was
this old--I don't know, eighty years old maybe--heavyset bald-headed Jewish man,
his fingers thick and curled up. He spoke with an accent I never figured out,
maybe German, and all he ever did was grunt when we slid the money on the
ounter or if we told him, "My mother said she'll pay you on Monday..." Then we'd
take off again, racing three blocks to see who'd make it back to the front
porch first.

Mom made peas and rice, cornbread, potato salad, greens, curry
chicken, and fried chicken. We'd start taking the food to Mrs.
Billops's by 10 o'clock, and people would be coming into the neighborhood and
double-parking all afternoon. In the evening, all my father's buddies would
start arriving for their weekly dominos games. Every week it was at a different
house--this week it was ours. My father and his friends also worked "serving
parties" in rich white households or embassies; you could tell when they had
one of those jobs cause when they came over, everyone's arms would be filled
with trays of hors d'oeuvres and bottles of scotch, rum, ginger ale, beer, and
all kinds of expensive-looking stuff.

Mr.
Christian, Mr. O'Connor, Mr. Palmer, Daddy Shaw, and my father would go to the
basement to play "cards," as they called dominos. Upstairs in the kitchen, my
sisters, cousins Ivy and June, my mom, and whoever else dropped by would heat
up hot combs and turn the radio to WOL while they pressed each others' hair.
The air in the house filled with the smells of "My Knight" hair pomade and
curry chicken, and with laughter from the kitchen, the booming voices from
downstairs, and Martha Reeves singing "Jimmy Mack."

I
was in the living room watching Saturday night movies on TV when the screen
door to the house swung open. It was Doris, who lived in the front room
upstairs with her common-law husband Tommy, and you could tell she was drunk.
Everybody in the kitchen went quiet.

"Hello,
Miz Wizzdom, I'ma, I'ma...You fixin' Valda's hair? You shoulda waited for me,
I'll do it. Hey, suga..." She was getting ready to squeeze my little sister's
cheeks.

"Doris,
gwan upstairs and sleep," my mother coaxed.

"Ah,
Miz Wizzdom, y'all think I'm drunk, but I ain't been drinkin'. Where Tommy? He
come
back in yet?" She was slurring and thoughts were
running from her mind to her mouth, getting her in deeper shit with the women
in the kitchen. I was peeking out from my chair in the living room.

"Come
here, Bobby, take this upstairs for me, will ya, hon?"

"No."
Mom didn't allow any of the tenants to tell us what to do. "No, you take your
things upstairs yourself.
Bobby, gwan back to your TV."

"Shit.
Y'all bein' like that, thinkin' y'all something special.
Y'all
ain't nuthin' but some black nigger Jamaicans."

Mom's
hand was on
cousin
Ivy's arm. She was ready to jump.

"That's
enough, Doris." The name was spoken in a way that said this was the last bit of
politeness coming. "You don't cuss me in front of me children. If you want
food, there's food--"

"I
ain't hungry." She was trailing a shirt or something on the floor behind her.

Doris
was a big-boned woman, maybe in her thirties, from South Carolina.
Black-skinned and thick.
She wore red lipstick and nail
polish and loved to party. She already had false teeth and sometimes pushed the
bridge out when she talked. She was always smoothing her beehive--"I got good
hair," she would say.

But
tonight you could feel everybody was tight-jawed. From downstairs came the
rumble of men's voices; they couldn't hear what was going on since the door to
the basement was closed. Mom had always felt sorry for Doris and tried to help
pull her life together. Mom had to put her out once already,
then
Doris came back and promised that she on a good track. But this was the second
weekend she had come in drunk. By now, everybody knew that when she had been
drinking, it meant she and Tommy were gonna fight.

"Tommy,
you up there...
?!
" she shouted to nobody.

I
walked around to the dining room and saw my mother staring at Doris with that
red-hot comb in her hands. "Don't you dare talk fresh in my
house!
"

That
was it. Even drunk Doris knew better than to push this woman.

"You
tek yourself upsteers and don't bother comin' back down 'ere"--each word slow
and quiet, with no fear. Doris went upstairs and we heard her door slam.

"She
gon' have to go, Miss Inie, cause she nuttin' but trouble. You can't keep
feelin' sorry for sumtin' like dat..."

Doris
stayed up in her room, but the mood in the kitchen changed. Everybody spoke in
hushes. "Lawd have mercy," was my mother. "I know, I know," was
cousin
Ivy. "You should tell Daddy..." from my sisters. "
No..." from both older women.

This
went on for half an hour until Ivy took June home. The game was breaking up
downstairs, and we were pulling out the bed to get ready for sleep, then Slam!

Booming
footsteps rolled across the ceiling above us, furniture was pushed, a body
shoved...voices muffled, a man and a woman...My sisters and I looked wide-eyed at
the ceiling and the swinging chandelier. The glass pieces were tinkling,
catching some light from the streetlamps outside and making strange dancing
patterns across the ceiling and walls.

BOOM
Two bodies fell together, like Bruno San Martino and Bobo Brazil, and it was as
if we were watching from underwater.

Then
the door upstairs opened and sound came rushing out.

"I'MA
KILL YOU,
MUTHAFUCKA !!"
Doris
banshee-screamed.

My
father was up from the basement and in the hallway shouting. Tommy pushed past
him, muttering,
"
She crazy, Mr. Wisdom, crazy and
drunk. I'm through--"

Doris
was running down the steps. "I'ma
get
you! You ain't
no good, I know you been seein' that bitch!"

Tommy
was out the door.

"Doris--"
my father started to say.

"I
ain't talkin' to you, you on his side.
Where he at?!"
Doris screamed.

My
mother huddled us into a corner. "Unna just stay pon the floor...Elly, come back
in, let that fool '
oman
go."

Blam!

"Omigodalmighty!"
My mother was on top of
us. I was on the bottom, holding my little sister but wanting to look out of
the window that we were now under.

Blam!
Blam!

I
could hear Tommy far off, shouting, "Woman, you crazy, you done shot that man!"

For
a tornado of minutes there was more shouting,
crying.
I was straining to look out the window. My mother was yelling at me to get
down,
then
yanked me away.

"What'd
I do?" I demanded. "I didn't do nuthin'...Doris shot him!!"

"Don't
say nuthin'! Just shut you mouth..." She was crying.

I
could see that Miss Lucy, the other American tenant, had made it to the middle
of the stairs and was humming and mumbling to herself: "...You let me see,
hmmhuhp, those people are trouble, you know..."

My
father was out front. "Ya nah come back in my 'ouse."

My
mother: "Elly, don't let har back in."

By
now, all the neighbors were out and we could hear police sirens coming down
Georgia Avenue and around 9th Street. Doris was out front crying, "I'm sorry,
I'msosorry, I'msorry...Tell Tommy
don't
leave me..."

My
mother and older sister moved out to the door.

"Miz
Wizdom, don't let the po-lice take me. I'm sorry, I didn't mean it."

To
get my little sister to stop crying, we started jumping up and down on the bed,
trying to reach the chandelier.
Trying to make it start
swinging again.

A
little while later, I was falling asleep while the police stood in the hall
talking to my mother and father. Miss Lucy was sitting on the steps picking at
her feet and minding everybody's business. My sisters and I were in a heap on
the bed. I heard Tommy come in to get some things. "Say goodbye to the kids for
me."

A
fresh breeze blew across my face. I opened my eyes to find that the sun was up.
My mother came in to wake us at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, August 23.

"
Mom,
is Doris in jail?" was the first thing I thought to
say. I wanted to know if that room would be empty. If I could finally move up
there and have my own room. It was the dead-center of the mid-Atlantic summer.
Already the air was wet and heavy. The cool night breeze was all but gone and
we would slowly drown the rest of the day in the sweltering summer heat. My
older sister went upstairs to the bathroom. My little sister rolled up in her
pillow for the last few minutes she could steal. I sat in the window. The
street was quiet. I saw Reverend Gilmore come onto his front porch with his
Bible under his arm and head to his car with his wife.