TAKE THE FIRST STEP. They said my child is laying down there, one foot, they say, half stuck in a bag of garbage like he had crawled out of it. Black beans and candy wrappers, bones, rags and coffee grounds, and Robert Brown on the stoop.
This street in the morning looks like a burnt mattress after the firemen put the fire out. The children burst out of the doors like black seed pods and they take all that glass—is it my window that broke?—and all those bottles and they smash them up after school when the street is done smoking and stinking. The children make knives from the busted springs and jump out—Bam!—from the doors. I say—whoosh!—and they run away. With the springs and the glass they got plenty to do all day after school.
On this floor Mrs. Perez is shouting and hollering. She say, “Ay! Ay!,” and I say she should go back wherever she come from. Back there her husband, or whatever, could chase her through all that brush they got down there. He could mash her up where the pigs is. But here on this floor in that room with four walls and a window and a door, he got no right. I got to listen to that all night? She got yellow skin where he hits. And she grin at me like she won something. I see from here the snow is coming. That’s right, fall down baby, cover it all up.
I take the second step. Robert Brown is a smart boy and I don’t think he’s anything but drunk down there. He likes coffee black, he likes his cuffs clean and he robbed me from my pocketbook but he never drank before. Now then he got that little car, German. But where did they get the money? Where do they get all the money from when in my life you never could see that kind of sugar? My sister’s boy he had money too and he was hooked when he was almost a baby and they got him and sent him to the place and he come back and got hooked again and now he lay around on the couch all day and look tired.
But Robert Brown is nobody’s fool. He see them all around here on this street sleepy and scratching theyselves all the long day and leaning up against nothing. He laugh. He says, “Look at the fools, mamma!” But I don’t even look.
Here is Gloria screaming again. Last summer she was throwing herself around in a pink hoop and now she got Louie. She’s standing there so mad, she’s rocking, and she’s calling him names and shaking her little butt. Is she mad? Or what? He say, “No peace around here at all,” and he walk off and she laugh now, “Ha, ha, ha.”
But then I never seen anything like the way after a woman tells a man to get out, how she looks when he goes and stand there saying, “Ha, ha, ha,” and he don’t turn around, he walk up the street with his cap just so, his hands in his pocket and don’t turn around. There she is pretending she got her own business too and when he is far from her sight, she take off after him, walking fast like him, and still shaking with it. Gloria going to find out now: If you tell them to go, they go.
I take the third step. Willie Prentice in his life got himself cut six ways and he’s fixing up to fight again. I see that Portorican grinding his teeth and they are going to cut each other right here in the hall. Now, they’re just looking, head turning, right, left, slow, getting ready. But the Portorican is going to scream pretty soon like a buzzsaw.
Knives. When Buddy was little and he cut his toe with the axe, our daddy poured kerosene into the cut and took ashes from the stove and poured them over that toe and bound it up with flannel and he got well.
We stole too from my daddy—sewed up eggs in the hems of our coat and went down the road to school and stopped by the store and traded those eggs for stockings and candy.
On Monday we washed, on Tuesday we ironed, on Wednesday we scrubbed the floor with potash, on Thursday we run off and did what we did.
My little brother Buddy, he threw a turtle in the fire once and it walked clean out of its shell but Robert Brown never hurt the cats around here. And he took care of that dog till it run off. He went to school and learned what he had to and he went to the store and sometimes he polished his own shoes and he watched all the fighting around here and never said nothing and he never went up on the roof with the rest of them to do what they do up there and he never stole from nobody but me. Once he asked me why they come around sometime and I didn’t tell him they looking for colored tail or the stuff. I said they was policemen checking up. He say, “Checking up on what?” And I say the city got all these policemen and they got to do something with them.
I take the fourth step. The old women are crowding up on me. They step when I step—and I go slow. I don’t believe Robert Brown got into a fight. He is too fast a boy. And he never got mixed up with nobody around here. No. He say he got his own friends. Then he brought her around. He say, “This is my mamma,” and she say, “Hello, Mrs. Brown.” But did she mean Mrs. Brown? She never been in a place like this before I could see and she grin all the time and she was with him like white on rice, stuck on him, grabbing him, taking him.
I say what do you want Robert with a young white girl like that and he say, “Time has changed, mamma.” He say, “I got friends, mamma.” And I say, “She got friends too and maybe they aren’t your friends.”
She bring me bacon once, and flowers. Why did she do that? She think I don’t know anything but bacon? Get away old women! I go down by myself and don’t catch hold of my arm because I throw you all down the rest of the stairs. I throw you into the street. And they didn’t see the blood with their own eyes so how they know it is there?
I take the fifth step. He take her around in that little car and he wear a white scarf and he shoot out his cuffs like he had to go someplace to learn to do it. I told him to be careful and he say I got to learn. What did I mean and what do he mean?
They are crowding up in front of me now but I can’t hear what they say because the city is taking up the garbage which they do ten times a day and ten times a night. Where do we get all this garbage from? They crowding up there in front of me but I see Whitey got a bottle of Texas rum in his back pocket and George he is going to lift it right out like it was a straight splinter. They are all looking down at the stoop. I push them away easy because they made of sticks. They weak.
I can see him. He’s laying there and his foot is half stuck in a bag of garbage like they said. Is he drunk?
Because I don’t see that blood. Robert Brown—Robert Brown—Are you drunk, boy?