The Return of Buddy Bush (6 page)

I
'm all dressed now and all I have to do is get past Miss Sylvines door downstairs without getting caught. I'm wearing my red short pants that Uncle Buddy gave me and a white blouse that was too big for Chick-A-Boo. She said I can wear it until she is big enough to wear her own blouse. Then she said I got to give it back to her. I might and I might not.

I am just about to open the door when I hear folk talking downstairs.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning, Gloria.”

“Where you off to so early in the morning, Miss Sylvine?”

“I'm going to a meeting over at the church.”

Well, they just made my day. Miss Sylvine is leaving and this Gloria person ain't nobody that BarJean ever mentioned to me. So I'll just leave when they finish gossiping in the hallway.

Soon as Miss Sylvine leaves, I make my escape.

This street feels like it is paved with gold. I want to cry. You don't know what it is like to want to be in a place like this while you in a hot peanut field chopping weeds. Sometimes I think I just chopped up a half a row of peanuts daydreaming about Harlem. Now I am here. Thank you, God. Look at these people. They don't know what my little twelve-year-old heart has been through. Ohhhhh, they so dressed up. I am glad I got Chick-A-Boo's new blouse on. I don't know if I look like a city girl, but I feel like one.

Everyone in Harlem must have a job because ain't too many folks walking the streets this morning. The few that are walking around ain't
even noticed me. Even if they do, they don't know me from Adam.

One thing for sure, folks here ain't as nosy as folks back home. Let me just try to walk down Main Street at home without Ma. Before my heels could hit the ground, someone would be on Rehobeth Road to tattle to Ma. If they can't find her, they going straight to Jones Property to tattle to Grandma.

Look at this place. Look at all these stores. There is even a grocery store on the bottom floor of BarJean's building. I better not go in there because I bet you the shoes I'm wearing BarJean has told everybody in there to keep an eye on me.

Uncle Buddy said all these people in Harlem are from down South, but they don't look like it. They look like they been up here all they lives. They come here so they can get some respect. Uncle Buddy said he didn't know what it felt like to be treated like a man until he came up here to Harlem. Maybe he should have stayed up here. Yep, maybe he should stay here now. Maybe it
ain't right for me to want him to come back home with me. If Uncle Buddy had not come back to Rehobeth Road in 1942, he would have never got in the mess he in today. Till this day, we don't really know why he came back. He wrote us a letter one day and said he was coming home soon. Home! That very next Sunday morning, there he was. For five years he lived on Rehobeth Road in peace and worked at the sawmill in Rich Square. At least he did until that terrible Friday night. That would have never happened to him here in Harlem. Now I have to find him and tell him they caught the white men who tried to kill him. I have to tell him they going to give him a trial too. At his trial Uncle Buddy can tell them that he didn't try to hurt that white woman. He can't tell the truth if he don't want to go home.

It sure feels nice walking down this street with cars passing. Don't many cars come on Rehobeth Road, except for Mr. Charlie and folks that farming. White folks and Randy ride up and down Rehobeth Road all summer. Ole Man Taylor owns most of
Rehobeth Road and he let Randy, who ain't old enough to drive, do all of his driving. Of course you see the milkman. Other than that, you don't see a soul from sunrise to sunset. But here in Harlem, cars are everywhere. Right in front of my eyes. It's too many to count. But I better stop looking at these cars and pay attention to the street signs so that I will not get lost or worse. I might get hit by a car the way Flossie Mae's brother, Wink, did last year.

For the life of me, I can't figure out how you get hit by a car on Rehobeth Road. You can hear a car coming a mile away because it's so quiet around there. Mr. Bud was driving over to see Grandpa when Wink stepped out in front of his car and it knocked him clean into Mr. Bay's cow pasture. He better be glad he wasn't hurt too bad to run, because them bulls had started coming toward him. Old as Mr. Bud is, he jumped that fence and helped Wink out with a broken arm before the bulls broke all his bones. If that boy had not got out, his obituary would be in that chest on Jones Property too. Right beside the paper for Mr. Bud, who died last winter.

First stop, a candy store.

Everybody in here look like they know I'm from Rehobeth Road. They looking at me funny. Maybe they know Uncle Buddy. As soon as I pay for my candy, I'm going to ask the storekeeper about my uncle.

“Can I help you, young lady?” the storekeeper asks when he see me looking in the glass case that is filled with candy and bubble gum.

“Yes, sir, I would like two chocolate drops.”

“Two chocolate drops it is. What a nice little voice. And just where are you from?”

“North Carolina, sir.”

“Don't know why I asked. Your Southern drawl is a dead giveaway.”

Oh, Lord, these city folks are a mess. He sounds like he from back of Grandpa's field and he talking about
my
accent.

“Where you from, sir?”

“South Carolina.”

He got some nerves. I saw South Carolina on a map at school and accordingly to that map South Carolina is farther south than North Carolina. But
I will just let him think he sounds citified.

“Do you know a man named Goodwin Bush?” I ask.

He stop dead in his tracks.

“What you doing asking about Buddy child?”

He knows my uncle.

“Well, I read about him in the paper and I just wanted to know if you know him.”

“Everyone in Harlem know Buddy. And we know what them white folks down home tried to do to him. So don't you go asking a bunch of folks around here about Buddy unless you want to get yourself in a world of trouble. White folks looking for him and I don't want no problems in my store.”

“But I ain't white, sir.”

“Don't make no difference. We don't talk about Buddy here in Harlem. And don't you back talk me. Now run along.”

“Yes, sir.” I pay for my candy and get out of his store.

This is going to be harder than I thought. But one thing I know for sure now. Uncle Buddy is
here in Harlem. If he was not here, why would that man act like that? They are hiding Uncle Buddy from the law.

Maybe if I walk a little farther, I will ask someone else. Maybe I will run into someone with a big mouth and they will tell me everything I need to know. I'm not getting very far because I have to stop and look in every store window. It is something to see, all right. One store has clothes hanging in the window on big dolls. The prettiest dresses I have ever seen. Well, maybe not as pretty as the dresses that Grandma makes. Her dresses got love in them.

My Lord, I believe a colored person own this dress store. 'Cause ain't nothing in there but colored folks.

Reckon its true that colored folks really own Harlem. I love it here already. A colored woman inside the store who just walked up to the window, she's smiling at me. I smile back and wave. She looking like she ain't got much time for children, so I better not ask her about Uncle Buddy. I think I'll just go in and look at all the pretty clothes.

I walk inside and before I know it, the woman standing over me. She smells like grandma's rose garden.

“Good morning, young lady. Can I help you?”

“No, ma'am, I'm just looking at the pretty dresses.”

“That's just fine, but what are you doing walking the streets alone?”

“Well, my sister is at work and I thought I would take a walk.”

“Taking a walk? You must be from the South.”

“Yes, ma'am, I am. But how did you know that?”

“Because, honey, up here folks don't let their children walk the streets alone day or night.”

“But why not?”

“Why not? Child, this ain't down home. This is the big city. Now you go on home and wait for your sister to get off work.”

Everyone here is just as bossy as the people down home. I go back on the street.

That lady ain't my ma and she don't know my ma, so I ain't going home just cause she say so. I'm just going to walk until I get tired. Uncle Buddy probably ain't found no job that quick, so he might
be out here walking the streets too. He could have on a hat and glasses so that people will not know who he is. But I will know him no matter what he is wearing.

Every store looks different. Filled with everything from candles to plants and furniture. One store here has more stuff than all the stores in Rich Square got put together.

I'm getting hungry. My chocolate drops wore off so maybe I better head home for something to eat. Then I'll go out again later to keep on looking for Uncle Buddy.

It don't take me long to get back to the apartment. I use the key that BarJean gave me this morning and go through the front door of the building as I pray Miss Sylvine don't see me. Lord, I'm glad to be back inside. Its almost as hot walking the streets of Harlem as it is working in the fields. Well, not quite.

I think I will just make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. BarJean sure do keep a lot of food in her pantry. She probably don't want me to say pantry. Lets see. What word can I use for
pantry? Maybe closet will do. I will ask Miss City BarJean when she gets home. Right now I just want to sleep for a minute before lunch.

I was going to go back out to look for Uncle Buddy again, but when I woke up, BarJean was putting her key in the front door. I guess I was tired after all. I'll start again tomorrow.

F
or a whole week I get up every day and do the same thing. Walk and look, look and walk. BarJean does the same thing every day too. She gets up and has her coffee, get dressed, and she is out the door to work at the factory. She said when Saturday comes she is going to take me to buy some fabric to make my new school clothes. And she said she is going to get my hair pressed and maybe even let me get my ears pierced. Ma ain't going to like that. Ma ain't never had her ears pierced. She said if God wanted us to have a
second hole in our ears for earrings he would have put two there, not one! I will worry about Ma when I get back home. While I'm here I'm going to do everything I can to look like a city girl. Ain't no need to come all the way up here and go home looking like you still a field hand.

And while I'm getting citified I will keep looking for my uncle.

But he ain't nowhere to be found. Nowhere!

“Good morning, little lady,” a man in a white shirt says as I walk past his shoeshine stand.

“Good morning, sir.”

He smiles and keeps on shining the black shoes of a man who is dressed like he on his way to church. He is writing away on a piece of yellow paper.

“What are you writing, sir?” I ask without thinking first.

“A novel.”

“You mean like Mark Twain's
Tom Sawyer
?”

“No, like Richard Wright.”

“Richard Wright. Well, I never heard of him.”

“Little girl, you should know who Richard
Wright is if you know who Mark Twain is,” the shoeshine man says.

“But everyone read Mark Twain's book,”

“That's real good and they should. But every little black girl in Harlem reads Richard Wright's books,”

“Who is Richard Wright?”

Now I know I said something stupid. The shoeshine man stop shining and the man in his chair stop smiling and look at me. He said:

“
I
am Richard Wright,”

“You mean, you are a real writer? Why sir, I didn't know there were colored writers!”

“Well, there are black writers and you should know all about them.”

“Them. You mean there's more than one?”

“Why, sure. There's Langston Hughes, who lives right across the street. There's Zora Hurston, who lives a few blocks away, and Dorothy West, too.”

“Women! Colored women writers?” I can't believe what I am hearing.

“Yes, child. And you should know who the black writers are.”

He is saying black, not colored. I'm not going to ever say colored again.

“Well, I don't know who the black writers are. Do you know who Buddy Bush is?”

The shoeshine man stand up fast. “Girl, who are you and where did you come from?” he says.

“Sir, I'm from down South and I'm looking for Buddy Bush.”

Mr. Wright don't seem to know or care who we are talking about, but this shoeshine man definitely knows my uncle. He grabs my arm and pulls me around the side of the building.

“Child, don't you know better than to come around here asking about Buddy?”

“But I have to find him.”

“Find him for what? Don't you know the law is looking for him?”

“Yes, sir, that's the reason I have to find him. I have to tell him that they caught the men who tried to hang him. I have to tell him that it's okay to come home.”

“Home! Child, what are you talking about? Harlem is Buddy's home now. He can't ever go down South again!”

“But he has to. Grandma wants him to come home.”

“Grandma? You mean Miss Babe Jones?” Then he looks at me real hard. “Good God from Zion, you must be Pattie Mae Sheals!”

The shoeshine man done forgot all about Mr. Wright. How on earth does this man know my name? He is hugging me so tight I can't breathe.

“Don't be afraid, child. I'm Tom. I'm Mr. Charlie and Miss Doleebuck boy.”

I just look at him. “But I know all of Mr. Charlie's children,” I say. Then I remember the missing boy that ain't been south of Baltimore since he left all them years ago.