Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do (13 page)

“All in favor?” asked Mr. Eddie.

Every hand went up. I watched Flora, but she just smiled. Her role seemed to be more facilitator than leader.

“That looks unanimous to me,” Bea crowed.

“All right, Bea,” Flora said. “I'm going to authorize you to convey that message to Mr. H at your earliest opportunity.”

“Me?!”
Bea's shocked surprise elicited another laugh from the group.

“That's one message he ain't got to worry about!” The woman next to me chuckled. “She ain't got the heart to talk stuff to that man. Trust me!”

Flora grinned and held up a hand for order. “Just checking, Bea. I thought for a minute you wanted my job.”

Bea grinned back. “Not if it means I gotta look into Hamilton's cold blue eyes!”

She got the color right, but I don't remember any coldness.

“All right,” Flora said. “I'll talk to him.”

There was more enthusiastic nodding among the growers.

“Anything else?” She looked around to be sure she hadn't missed anybody. “Mr. Charles?”

“Don't y'all forget the party on Saturday night,” he said. “I'm gonna have on my dancin' shoes and Eddie's threatening to do the electric slide again.”

General laughter. I couldn't imagine the dapper Mr. Eddie doing the electric slide, but it was definitely a multigenerational dance open to old people with any sense of adventure, so who knows?

“Anybody who needs a ride, call me,” Flora said, bringing things to a close. “Who's got the benediction?”

The tiny woman who had made the early motion to dispense with the reading of the minutes raised her small hand and stood up. The room quieted, and everybody reached for the hand of someone nearby. When we were all connected in our raggedy circle, the little woman smiled and her voice was soft as a child's in prayer.

“May the Lord watch between me and thee, while we are absent, one from another.”

“Amen,”
we all said together and squeezed one another's hands gently.
“Amen.”

20

I
THOUGHT AFTER ALL THE EXCITEMENT
at the growers meeting yesterday this would be a fairly peaceful day just to balance things out. How wrong could I possibly be? Everything started out fine. I was making good progress on sorting a huge box of photographs. I had dragged it into the living room, where there was a lot of open floor space, so I could spread everything out and look at the photos as if they were scenes from a movie. I have only stills to work with, but I'm a big fan of those Ken Burns specials on PBS. I know if you have enough pictures and enough patience, you can hook it up so nobody even realizes nothing's really moving.

I had just sorted through a bunch of stuff from a trip to Chicago and reached for another folder when a single snapshot slipped out and floated to the floor. When I leaned over to pick it up, I knew immediately that the woman in the photograph was the one Beth had me looking for. It wasn't hard to figure it out. Looking at her smiling up into Son's face, it was clear that they were in love. Madly in love. My first thought was: Did he ever look at me like he's gazing at her? Did I ever look at him with such absolute adoration?

The woman was young, maybe mid-twenties, and strikingly lovely with a voluptuous body and a sweet face. She was wearing low-rise jeans and a tiny little T-shirt that said goddess across her breasts. Son was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, jeans, and the biggest grin I've ever seen on his face. They were seemingly unaware of the camera, sharing a private joke as they strolled along, his arm around her shoulders, her hand in his back pocket. In the dictionary under the word
lovers
, this picture would not be out of place.

I didn't realize I was crying over it until a tear splashed down and rolled slowly across Son's chest. I rubbed it away with my finger and sat down on the couch. What was I crying about? I looked at the picture again. Who was I kidding? I was crying because I
know
he never looked at me like that. And because I know I never looked at him like that either, and I was jealous. Not of this beautiful woman, but of her happiness with a man who loved her.
And how fucked up is that?

“Pretty fucked up,” I said out loud. “Pretty fucked up.”

But I can do better.
I can reach for my higher self like they always tell you in rehab and women's magazines. I can try to tap into the best of myself. I can try to think about this picture I'm holding in another way.
But what other way was that?
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. What did Flora call it?
Having our moment of silence.
Maybe that's what I needed.

I tried to clear my mind and calm down. Two breaths, maybe three, and I could feel myself relax a little bit. Two more breaths and then two more and suddenly it hit me. This was what I had hoped for Son. My friend Son. This was what I had wanted to know immediately when I heard that he had died. Had he had a chance to love somebody the way I wanted him to love me? Had he been one of those who had a chance to make a call and tell his beloved to look for him in paradise? I wanted that kind of love for him, and this photograph was telling me he had found it. Was it fair for me to be mad just because he hadn't found it with me?

I opened my eyes and looked at the picture again. This time, I was able to share that smile. I was able to celebrate the sweetness of that moment and be glad for them. My better self congratulated me for listening to her, and I decided to reward myself with a cup of jasmine tea. For some reason, I carried the picture with me, and everybody knows there's only one place for photographs in the kitchen. I put it on the refrigerator door, right next to Blue Hamilton's performance snapshot, and considered the pair while I waited for the teakettle to boil.

I knew why those women in Blue's audience were reaching for him with such shameless yearning. Because nobody in their own lives was reaching for them that way, and they didn't want to forget how it felt before they got too old to care.

And how old is that?
said a little voice inside my head.
How old is that?
But before I could answer, someone knocked on my door. The answer to that question would have to wait.

21

I
OPENED THE DOOR TO FIND
Blue Hamilton standing there smiling apologetically. It was eleven o'clock on Friday morning, but he was dressed, as usual, in a dark suit and tie. I was dressed, as usual, in a pair of faded jeans and an oversize sweatshirt. Makeup and hair drama have never been my thing, but I found myself wishing that just once I could run into my landlord when I looked a little more pulled together.

“I'm sorry to disturb you,” he said. “Is this a bad time?”

“Not at all,” I said. “Would you like to come in?” “Thank you.”

He stepped inside, and his eyes took in the paperstrewn living room. Photographs covered the coffee table and most of the floor.

“Excuse the mess,” I said quickly. “Sometimes it helps to lay everything out where I can see it.”

“You looking for anything specific or you just looking?”

“Just trying to bring a little order to things.”

He nodded, and I realized that was pretty much his job description, too. From the kitchen, the teakettle released a soft whistle.

“I'm making some tea. Would you like some?” I asked, enjoying the faint aroma of his cologne.

“Thanks,” he said, stepping gracefully around the piles of paper lying in his path and taking a seat on the couch. He looked so comfortable, I found myself wondering if he had ever sat there before. The kettle's whistle was getting more strident by the minute.

“I'll get the tea,” I said, heading for the kitchen. “Do you take honey?”

“I'll take it straight.”

As I turned off the flame under the teakettle, my eye fell on his picture on the front of my refrigerator.
Oh, lord!
How embarrassing would that be if he saw it there. I snatched it off and stashed it quickly in the silverware drawer.

I set the two steaming mugs on the coffee table and took a chair. The sun was pouring in, and the smell of the tea and his aftershave made a spicy blend that any entrepreneurial aroma therapist would want to bottle for sale immediately.

“I haven't seen you around this week,” I said. “Another fishing trip?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Not this time. I have a couple of other places in the city. I try to have a presence there, too.”

“Kind of like a circuit rider?”

“Kind of.”

I took a sip of my tea. “It sounds like what my grandmother used to say.”

“What was that?”

“It's a sorry rat ain't got but one hole.”

That made him laugh, and laughing made his eyes do that twinkling thing they do.

“My grandmother used to say that, too.” He took a swallow of his tea. “But I think she was talking about something a little different.”

“How different?” I tucked my feet up under me and wrapped both hands around my mug to feel the warmth. He had stopped by to tell me something, but he didn't seem to be in any hurry, so I decided not to be in one either.

He leaned back and laid one long arm across the back of the sofa. His jacket moved with him and rearranged itself in a graceful flutter. “Well, most people need a lot of different places to go, to live, to be, because
they
are a lot of different people. They act one way one place, one way another. Eventually, if they get enough places so they can let all their selves show, they can relax.”

Aunt Abbie's voice was a tiny little echo in my ear.
He's not who he appears to be.
“So how many people are you?”

“My problem is a little different,” he said. “My problem is that I'm only one person. It doesn't matter to me where I am. I don't change.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Not for me, but it wears most people out.”

“Flora and Aretha seem to be thriving,” I said.

“They weren't the one I was worried about.”

It dawned on me that he was talking about
me
. What was I supposed to say to that? Since I didn't have a clue, I took a swallow of my tea and waited.

Blue's grin was worth waiting for. “See what I mean?”

That made
me
laugh. I set down my mug. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”

He nodded. “Good. That means it's working.”

“What's working?”

“I wanted to give you enough time to figure out what you wanted to ask me before we had this conversation.”

“Ask you about what?”

“About me.”

The idea of having a chance to ask him all the questions I've had since the day we met when Aretha was playing that Bob Marley song was so unexpected I would have dropped my tea if I hadn't already set it down. He was giving me permission to go to the source, and he was right. I had a thousand questions! So, of course, I pretended I didn't have a single one.

“What makes you think I have any questions about you?”

“Flora and Aretha both suggested you might have a few things you wanted to clarify.”

Busted.
“Well, I did have one question,” I said. “I was at the growers meeting yesterday.”

He nodded, but his expression didn't give me any indication of whether or not he had talked to Flora yet about their request for his assistance.

“Some of the people, two women, are being harassed by some guys and when Precious Hargrove's solutions didn't satisfy them, they wanted to ask you to help.”

“Flora told me.”

“What kind of help are they talking about?”

“They want me to meet with the young brothers and encourage them to behave in a more sensible manner.”

“Encourage them
how
?”

He put down his mug, and I thought for a sickening second I had gone too far, but his voice was calm. “Well, to really answer that question, I have to go back a ways.”

“I've got time.”

He looked at me steadily for a minute, as if he was trying to decide how to tell me something important. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and hard. “Twenty years ago, I had a buddy whose sister got snatched two blocks from here. She was coming from the grocery store, and a man dragged her over by the railroad tracks and raped her and then cut her throat and left her lying there.”

How many stories like that have we all heard? How fast do we learn to turn the pages of the newspaper, or put the for sale sign up, or just thank the gods that it wasn't anybody we knew and loved who had met such a terrible, lonely, meaningless death?

“This cat, her brother, was on the road with me, played in my band, and this was his baby sister, so he was in a bad way when he got the news. When he came home for the funeral, I came with him. It was bad … real bad. Then somebody told him that she wasn't the first one. Somebody had been snatching women around here for months, raping them, killing them, tossing their bodies into the Dumpster or leaving them in the street, and nobody was doing a damn thing about it.”

Something in his voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but I had asked him, so I had to listen.

“When we got back to the hotel, my buddy just kept drinking, and talking like you do when you're drinking, but something he said stayed in my mind. He kept asking how they could keep electing black folks to the mayor's office and putting in black police chiefs and still can't protect a woman coming home from the grocery store? ‘That don't make no sense,’ he kept saying. ‘That don't make no damn sense.’ And you know what?”

“What?”

“He was right. It didn't make sense. So I started trying to figure it out and one day I realized that the answer was obvious.”

He looked at me expectantly, but it wasn't as obvious to me as it had been to him.

“And what was the answer?”

His voice was so quiet now, it was almost a whisper. “We had to get rid of the bad guys.”

“The bad guys?”

He nodded. “What bad guys?”

His eyes bored into mine. “I think you know.”

Of course I knew.
We all know. That's why we triplelock our doors and run to our cars in the dark and don't walk in the parks alone and meet our daughters at the school bus. Rapists and robbers, wife beaters and woman haters, crack dealers and child abusers.
A bad guy is a bad guy is a bad guy. …

“And did you?” I said. “Did you get rid of the bad guys?”

He sat back. “You tell me.”

What had I noticed from the very first day? I could walk all over this neighborhood and never get nervous. The men spoke politely and always seemed to be about business. The absence of youthful predators and brokendown desperadoes was striking and wonderful.
I felt safe.

“But how—?”

“I'm a reasonable person, so I always give a man the benefit of the doubt. If someone is acting a fool, I'll sit with him and try to figure out why.”

“What if he didn't know what he was doing was wrong?”

He looked at me. “They always know.”

That's why it's so scary. Did the guy who killed Blue's buddy's sister
know
what he was doing? And if he did, how could he do it anyway? And what are we supposed to do with him then?

“So what good does it do to talk to them?”

“Sometimes people need to be reminded of consequences. But I am only required to remind them once.”

“And after that?”

“After that you have declared yourself on the side of chaos, and you will be treated accordingly.”

On the side of chaos.
That pretty well sums it up, I guess, and chaos is always bad for women and children, but I still had to know. I took a deep breath and went for it. “Have you ever killed anybody?”

He looked at me and his eyes softened a little, but his voice never did. “I'm a soldier, and we're at war.”

He said it so calmly it didn't even seem strange. I knew there was a war going on between black men, but I had never heard one of them acknowledge it so directly and declare a side.

“Why doesn't that frighten me?” I said softly.

“I'm not at war with you.”

“But how can you just decide to claim a part of a city and then—”

He interrupted me gently. “And then what? Make it safe for people to live in? Demand that the men act like men?”

“But is that your responsibility?”

“Absolutely.”

“What gives you the right?”

He considered the question. “Well, it doesn't make much sense for me to be careful not to smoke a cigar around Lu andthensendher outintothe world andnot make sure DooDoo and King James don't keep their distance.”

All he had to do was say the names and I had an instant flash of Uncle DooDoo leering at Aretha while he draped a muscular arm possessively around his niece. Ofcourse I wanted somebody to protect Lu from him. Of course I wanted somebody to make sure Mattie and Jerry could grow their collards in peace. Sure I liked being able to walk around after dark without looking over my shoulder and knowing there hasn't been a rape or a crack house in this neighborhood in five years. But what price was I prepared to pay for that safety? My head was spinning.

“You know what's funny about black women?” Blue asked gently.

“What's that?”

“They're the only women in the world that you have to talk into letting you protect them.”

“Maybe we've just forgotten how.”

“Exactly,” he said. “And that's why I'm here.”

“Why?”

“To help you remember.”

The idea of protection is so central to everything that goes on between men and women, even when we don't admit it. Probably
especially
when we don't admit it. Blue's decision to take matters into his own hands and create a safe environment for people to live their normal, ordinary, everyday lives seemed so extraordinary in the face of the chaos we routinely accept as a community that I didn't quite know what to say. His unequivocal acceptance of the traditional male role appealed to me on a truly visceral level, but did that mean I had to become a more traditional female to balance things out?

My mind was already on overload, but I thought I understood something I hadn't before. Something personal.

“Is that why you stopped singing?”

He smiled. “I didn't stop singing. I stopped recording.” The distinction was, I'm sure, crucial to a singer the same way a writer will always separate the act of writing from the choice to publish.

“Is that why you stopped recording?”

“That's part of it.”

“What's the other part?”

“The other part is a conversation for another day,” he said, standing up and buttoning his coat. “I've taken up enough of your time.”

“No problem,” I said, walking him to the door. “But what did you come over here to tell me?”

“Whatever you wanted to know,” he said, turning to face me.

The truth sounds funny sometimes when you just say it right out.

“I see.”

“So how'd I do?”

I opened the door and looked right into his eyes. “So far, so good.”