Rails Under My Back (45 page)

See, a ho can pussywhip a nigger.

Yeah.

Look at Jerome. Henpecked. His bitch and her best friend gang up on the nigga.

Birds of a feather flock together.

Yeah, tsetse fly.

The boys shoved around rough laughter.

The train hit a curve—the tunnel tightened around it like a fist—the riders pressed hard against the rim. The boys resumed their filthy talk. Sweat began to sheet Shaneequa’s forehead.

COATED WITH FILTH, electric lightbulbs stretched toward the tunnel’s black mouth. Paint peeled from the walls—scabs from a wound—exposing the white undersurface. Sheila took the stairs slowly. Closer to the street now, sunlight pushed through a window, splattered against the oily walls, a fluorescent river, streaming down the sides and pooling into cracks on the tiled floor.

Heels ticked by clocklike. Night rushed in. Traffic moved, an unguided circle. Buildings flecked with tiny squares of yellow light. Houses hazed in smoke. Each streetlamp provided a small oasis of light. She felt pain in every step. This was the part of the journey she hated, walking under the eye slide of the drunks, drunks who cast foul shadows, crowding in and staring, pushing their breath in your face. Hey now, fine girl. Evil spirits possess bums at night, enter the empty tenements of their souls. She kept her hand firm on the skillet in her purse. Times like this, she wished she owned a cattle prod. Or a stun gun. Maybe even a real gun. It was very dangerous to live even one day.

Man, look at that caboose.

Yo, baby.

Hi, she said. She always spoke. Kept walking.

My, you a pretty one.

Everyone always noticed her good looks. (She was the spitting image of her mother, only a shade or two darker.) The shadow-circled eyes (like women in silent movies), the round face, the glossy black ponytail that heightened her high cheekbones, the thin neck, and the smooth caramel skin.
When you smile, Lucifer said, it gives your age away. She thought about it; when she smiled, the lines of her face stretched tight, vibrating with age.
But the hands—
Yeah, Lucifer said, they give you away too. He kissed them, running their roughness against his smooth lips.
She had tried to protect them, snapped rubber gloves over them for forty-four years. Labor bit through. Her hands. Her body part the most like her mother’s. But her sixty-year-old mind inhabited the same body she’d had at seventeen. Gravity had yet to take its toll, come drooping and sagging. And her respectful dresses and blouses hid her burns—not many really, four—one for each limb, each the size of a leather elbow patch, cause Lula Mae had left her baby by an open fire. How? Why? Beulah said that Lula Mae had gone to town to purchase Christmas gifts, while Dave claimed R.L.’s father had paid Lula Mae a visit—and Mr. Albert Post happened along to discover her. For all the years since, Sheila had tried to imagine Lula Mae’s face when she discovered Albert Post ducking her baby in a bucket of water.

Yo, bitch. Why you walkin away?

The walk home seemed long tonight, and she had to will each foot to step one at a time.
Step on a crack, break yo mamma’s back.

Give you five dollars if you suck—

Sometimes, after she heard or read about a torched bum, her heart lifted on flicking fingers of flame. Thank heaven for hell. She and Lucifer had moved to this neighborhood to enjoy the deeper currents of life: solitude, safety, sanctuary. Five years ago, Edgewater was the haunt of style and fashion. And the move from South Shore to here shortened her daily commute to work. Then the projects started spilling out roughnecks like sand from a broken hourglass. There was talk of privatizing Red Hook—a group of Japanese businessmen had already put in their bid—converting it into a luxury high-rise. After all, Red Hook was but a short walk from the Gold Coast. Soon, they might be forced to move again.

Bitch.

Keep walking, bitch.

Bitch, you think you better than me or something?

Yo shit still stink.

The city flowed up to her. (There are tides in the body.) An old wish returned. Her thoughts fled thirty years back down the sidewalk.
Miss McShan, I don’t want nobody but you.
Life struck straight through the streets.
I don’t ever want anybody but you.
The pavement vanished, slanting away into darkness.

You said, Yes, beneath the splintered scaffolding. Yes, drawn into a ball against the dawn’s wet chill. Fierce summer stars swimming through blue sky. Cause they left you there, in the light’s concentrated pool, perhaps expecting you to spill forth in a bright cascade of silver dollars. They left you there and you said, Yes, and he opened the door, shutting away the outside air. The lock clicked, skin setting off to light. Her eyes watching your eyes. Burning eyes, shoving hot pokers into your face. The heat can carry you to your inward-spinning self. Streaming through you. Lift skin to sky. Ice will flake and sink away.

She felt lighter inside now, nothing left to hide. All she had to face now was the knowable weight of Lucifer’s eyes.

THE SHEETS WERE CLEAN, fragrant, tight, white, stretched in the broad wide band that she had shaped that morning. She rushed to the bathroom. The tub was clean, white, and empty. Many a night, she would bathe Lucifer’s work-worn body in a tub of red leaves. Then he would massage her, rub memory back into her muscles. She felt an echo of her morning’s anger.

Where you goin?

He’s my brother.

She snatched up the phone.

Gracie, where’s Lucifer?

Sheila.

Where’s Lucifer? If necessary, she would bleed the meaning out of Gracie.

He was here.

Is that all?

I don’t know. I told him about John.

She said nothing.

Don’t worry, Gracie said. Blood is thicker than love.

PORSHA SHUT THE DOOR FIRMLY against sticking layers of old paint and floated out into the open flower of the night.
Will Inez even remember that I visited? Know this: I won’t visit her again.
Millions of fireflies—
fireflies? this time of year?
—supplemented the blackness with gold light and winking rhythm. Silent music. But sound also laced through the night. Shimmering crickets. A passing car, muffler firing and fender clattering chainlike.

You called a cab, ma’m? The driver’s face bloomed in the night light.

Yes.

The driver held the door open for her.

Thank you. She ducked into the cab and sat back by the open window. The driver shut her door, floated on a lake of shadows to his own door, and placed himself behind the wheel.

Where to, ma’m?

The Ship of Beauty on—

I know the place. In Woodlawn right?

Yes.

Enjoy your ride, ma’m. The driver put the car in motion even before he had shut his door. Service is rare these days. She would be sure to give him a nice tip. A dangerous profession. To be driving at this time of night in this neighborhood. She had phoned the dispatch certain that no cab would answer her call.
I shoulda called Uncle John and had him pick me up. Ain’t seen or heard from him in so long.

The long afternoon had left the night luminous. Light and shade were so mingled that the houses looked transparent.

The driver eased the cab onto the expressway, then kicked it into life to duplicate the motion of passing vehicles.

The speed saturated her with a soft relaxed feeling. She was taking a chance on going to the Ship of Beauty. She had not phoned first. (Nia kept her ear tuned to gossip. And she could talk. Bend your ear until daybreak.) What if Nia was at home? Well, she’d take a cab to Hombreck Park. What if
Nia was home in bed, with a
friend
? That she had no answer to. Truth to tell, she much preferred the Ship of Beauty to Nia’s home. (Nia knew a thing or two about keeping a comfortable home. She had found Porsha’s loft at Hundred Gates—
Girl, you gon be large, so live large
—and helped her decorate and refurnish it.) Nia kept a clean house, at least to the unsuspecting eye. Nice and clean everywhere but the bathroom and kitchen, areas where guests never visited, with the exception of Porsha. (If you had to go, she would direct you to her next-door neighbor’s toilet.) Nia didn’t even allow Mrs. Charles, her own mother, to enter these rooms. Roaches had invaded them. Small wonder. For days at a time, dirty dishes lay like sunken ships at the bottom of the kitchen sink. (Nia would rather buy a new set than wash the old.) And dirty bars of Popesoapontherope censer-swung from the bathroom faucets.

Nia, girl, look at this mess. You ought to be ashamed.

I ain’t got time to worry about no dishes. Life is too short.

Can’t you get a maid?

What for?

Porsha grabs up the loose socks, towels, and garments lying about on the mattress and stuffs them down the laundry chute. She arranges the dishes in the dishwasher. Empties the smelling garbage. Scrubs away the old dirt that lassos the tub.

House clean, she and Nia relax on the bed, eat popcorn—with plenty of butter, salt, and hot sauce—and laugh at gruesome movies.

She needed to see Nia tonight. The need burned upriver to her heart. Their friendship held strong and unabated across twenty years’ time. The thought circled about her mind. She urged the cab forward. Ah, it had already entered South Shore. She saw the buildings of her childhood, realized that the cab was taking her both backward and forward in space.

Two motion-chasing loops, one loop traveling to where the other had already been. Two girls turned the rope, while a third girl, turkey-short and round, jumped.

The fat girl lifted and wiggled her meaty legs and butt. Hopped on one foot, hands on hips. Bent over, skirt raised and naked butt high in the air, a huge moon shining through the yellow-shimmering branches of the jump rope. And switching from side to side firm as a tree branch. Now, she was actually twirling between the two ropes, a hog on a spit.

The bottom half of the rope slapped the ground while the upper turned a lazy loop in the air.

Hey, new girl, the fat girl said. You know how to jump double Dutch? The fat girl’s jaws were like two biscuits on her face.

Sure.

You do?

Porsha nodded. They had just moved from Kenwood to South Shore.

Well, if you don’t, you turn, you know how to turn don’t you, like this, you turn and I jump.

Porsha did as instructed.

What’s yo name?

Porsha.

My name is Tanzania.

Tanzania?

Tanzania nodded.

What kinda name is that?

It come from Africa.

Yeah, you big as Africa too, a boy said. His grin glinted like his glasses, thick cloudy lenses held on his face by an elastic strap that pinched his slick-bean head.

Shut up, old four eyes.

Least I ain’t got four stomachs.

Yo mamma.

Yo greasy grandmamma.

Curtains blew in tall windows, white to mute the sun. Sunlight formed a lattice from garden to roof. Roses shivered like birds in a bath. Roses—yellow, white, red—were Mrs. Charles’s obsession, every object in the house as fragrant as her garden. She kept her garden body-clean. Clean enough to lie down and sleep in, which she often did. Her neat rake patterned paths—ah, soothing to the eyes—leading to pure air. The garden involved constant preparation for a secret something.

Mrs. Charles, the shape and size of her daughter, and Nia ate at an infinitely long table covered with huge pots and plates, the centerpiece of an equally long room in the large house they shared. They worked their knives and forks with the force of the most ancient, stable habits of etiquette, and they enjoyed a glass of red or white wine as the meal required.

The backyard was off-limits to everyone but Nia and Porsha. Their private green haven.
This is our skyscraper dollhouse.
Mrs. Charles had constructed a farseeing tree house with fireplace kinder. Converted old tires into swings. The neighborhood double Dutch champion, Nia taught Porsha all her moves. Porsha taught Nia everything she knew about maps and globes. They would lie on their bellies in the grass, the whole world spread out before them. They would tickle their tongues with bladed leaves and assemble countries, piece by cardboard piece.

Porsha came to prefer the Charles home to her own.

NIA NEVER ALLOWED FAT TO SLOW HER DOWN. She was fast. She would organize the neighborhood girls into a Soul Train Line, seeing who could dance the nastiest. Porsha tried to be fast—she told her first boyfriend, Let’s kiss with our clothes off; wide-eyed with fear, he refused—but she couldn’t keep up with Nia. Nia knew all the latest dances, the Bump, the Dog, the Bone, the Superfreak, the Heart Attack. When boys rubbed up against her, she would rub back.
I don’t want you. Ole fat girl.

One day, M&M—Malcolm Martin—bumped up against her booty. Nia turned around, ready to slap the taste out of his mouth. Sorry. He smiled, teeth big and even and white.

Yo mamma sorry.

I ain’t say nothing bout yo mamma.

Yo greasy ass granmamma.

Why you want to be like that?

Yo fat greasy-ass sumo-wrestler combat-boot-wearin great-granmamma.

Later that day, M&M flashed Porsha a sign—smeared red crayon against lined notebook paper—from his desk on the other side of the room: I LIKE YOU PLEASE GIVE ME SOME PUSSY.

In the after-school playground, M&M greeted Porsha with his energetic pelvis. I’m all dick.

You nasty buzzard, she said.

Boy, Nia said, why you always actin so mannish?

Ain’t nobody said nothing to you, fat and black.

Nia kicked him in the nuts. A short explosive grunt parted his lips.
Damn. She broke his balls.
How you like that, poot butt?