MENTALLY, I check my questions for Ariyeh. Forget my reasons for returning to Houston. What would you do now, if you were me? Ignore the impulse to ditch Dallas and settle here now that I’ve found you and Bitter again? Ignore my “family” ties—and my concerns for Bitter’s health—and resume my safe and steady job? Or burn it all down, start fresh somewhere else?
We’ve got to deal with Bitter, and soon. Since Grady’s death he’s moped around, frailer than ever—and just as stubborn about his gris-gris.
She suggested I meet her at school. She’d only have forty minutes for lunch. When I arrive, children are running through the courtyard, tossing gooey pizza into trash cans. Teachers herd them into the building. Two cops in creaking leather coats stand outside the office speaking softly to a group of women. I find Ariyeh inside in a classroom whose floor tiles have peeled and curled in the heat. The fluorescent light hums like a kazoo. In a corner, a gerbil snuffles among pine shavings in a wire cage; the room smells of its flat, bleachy urine, of Kool-Aid and bologna.
Ariyeh tells me two students, nine-year-old boys, were discovered dead this morning in a Dumpster a block away from school. On an anonymous tip, police arrested a black man seen running from the site just after dawn. “They’re saying it’s Johnson.”
“The janitor?”
Ariyeh nods. “We’re hearing rumors that he confessed to murdering the other missing kids. He’s leading cops, one by one, to the bodies. I don’t believe it.”
All the teachers are angry. Johnson’s a good man, they say. He wouldn’t commit these atrocities. Why would he snuff so much healthy black promise? I remember him at the flagpole, swinging his broom at a little boy’s butt. Classes have been canceled, arrangements made to send the children home safely.
I stand out of the way while Ariyeh phones parenrs, bundles homework into backpacks, soothes a few weeping girls. Near me, two boys, apparently unruffled by the commotion, pore over a thin purple book. “What’s that?” one says, tapping the page.
“That’s is, is what it is.”
“Iz-iz?”
“Is. ‘He is happy.’”
“I don’t get it.”
Finally, Ariyeh says to me, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Where can I take you?”
“Reggie.”
At the Row Houses, things are nearly as hectic. Reggie is sitting in his office, holding Sasha, Natalie’s baby girl, on his knees, while surfing the Net on a laptop—compliments of Rufus Bowen. Michael and three other boys are helping Reggie reorganize his files. They’ve scattered papers and folders all over the floor. Michael looks cool toward Reggie. “Hey, it’s the ‘bout it ‘bout it chick.” He winks at me. Sasha’s crying. Natalie’s at work, Reggie explains. He starts to tell us about a news site he’s found on the Web that claims America’s tobacco giants colluded with the old apartheid government of South Africa. “Blood money, blood money, all of it. You were right,” he says to me—when Ariyeh interrupts him to tell him what’s happened. “Oh, sweetie,” he says. He hands Sasha to me then pulls Ariyeh into his arms. The child squirms against my chest. I’m reminded again of Sarah Morgan and the baby that changed her life.
“Got a quiet corner?” Ariyeh asks.
Reggie suggests the last Row House on the block. “Go on down,” he says. “I’ll be there soon’s I log off and give these boys their next set of instructions.”
She nods and steps out the door. I pace the office, trying to calm the baby. “What’s with Michael?” I whisper. Playfully, Sasha pulls my hair.
He sighs. “You heard me the other day, dissing rap. On top of that, now he’s upset with me for letting his mom work for Rufus. I guess I’m with him on that one. Turns out, between school and this new job, we hardly ever see her anymore, and when we do, she’s beat.”
“But you got your computers?”
He clicks the mouse. “Yeah, but she seems so unhappy. And Michael … well, I used to be his hero.” A pained smile. “Maybe it takes too many compromises to keep a place like this running.”
“You’ve done much more good than harm.” The baby burrows into my shoulder.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.” He tells the boys to separate pink and green pages. Michael just sneers. I wonder if Rue Morgue has been mentoring him. I wonder what “mentoring” means.
Sasha has spent herself and is hovering now near sleep. Holding her, I follow Reggie to the sharecropper house. It’s cool, dim as evening inside. Ariyeh’s sitting on a butter churn. Reggie walks over and slips his arms around her. They whisper together. He kisses her cheek. My limbs grow weak, and I tighten my grip on Sasha. “Shhh, shhh,” Reggie goes, his mouth in Ariyeh’s hair.
The baby is limp in my arms. Light, moist, the color of angel food cake. I lean against a saddle on a wall. A kerosene lantern sits on a barrel; across the room, a pair of high-topped leather shoes. I imagine plucking a rooster in the corner, washing it for supper, calling my children, hearing shouts of alarm in the street… what’s that? what are they saying? a riot in the white part of town?… oh Lord, oh Lord, this can’t be good.
Hold me … I squeeze Sasha tight …
“Oh shit,” Reggie says, pulling away from Ariyeh. He checks his watch. “I have to pick up Natalie. She’s got afternoon classes. The buses have been running late all week, so I promised her—”
“I’ll go,” I say right away, watching his hands on Ariyeh. “Stay with her.” Hurriedly, I hand Ariyeh the kid. I’m too aware of my skin, my longing for touch. It’ll be a relief to step into the sun. Motion. Distraction. Escape.
Reggie gives me directions. I kiss Ariyeh’s cheek, then leave the little house.
In the car I rub my arms until my skin begins to sting. I don’t want to want. Need. Be. I’d like to wipe myself clean. Sexless. Skinless. Free. “You’re an asshole,” I whisper. “Right? I’m not attracted to you. Not in the least. I’m not attracted to anyone.” I slip on my shades.
E-Future Systems is on Kirby Street, in a two-story glass building near a couple of barbecue chains and a Tex-Mex place advertising “Heaven-on-Earth Cabrito.” The receptionist, behind a glass-and-marble counter, tells me to take a seat in the red-tiled lobby. The chairs resemble mousetraps ready to spring. The backs are low; my legs ride high. A fake fern spills from a pot beneath granite stairs. The receptionist speaks into a phone stem attached to her head. It looks like a carrot just out of her reach. She’s a pretty honey color.
Rufus Bowen enters the room, laughing into a cell phone. “Dude, what’s your burn rate?” He’s wearing a sleek gray Armani suit, the kind most of the Dallas mayor’s boys wear. He punches off the phone, leans over the counter and exchanges a few words with stem-lady. Then he turns to me. “Miss Washington. Good to see you again. Natalie will be ready in a few minutes. She’s with one of our clients right now.”
I picture her straddling a guy in a big leather chair. I have no idea what her job is.
“Would you like some coffee or tea?”
“No, thanks.” Crazy: I feel the baby’s warmth, again, in my arms.
He spreads his hands. A casual gesture of power, the kind Rue Morgue might make. “What do you think of our little operation here?”
“Very impressive. I’m not sure what you do, exactly.”
“You’ve heard of the Nielsons? The TV ratings system?”
“Yes.”
“We provide a similar service for Interner users. We rank the most popular sites, keeping tabs on them so investors can judge where to put their money. It’s been quite lucrative. Just last month, we made our first public stock offering.”
“Congratulations.”
He sits next to me and actually manages to look comfortable in one of these chairs. “I hoped we’d get another chance to talk sometime. I was fascinated by what you said that night in the gallery. ‘Human scale,’ was it?”
“Right.”
“Does our building qualify?”
“Well, two stories, no problem,” I say. “Anything over four is getting out of hand.”
He laughs. His breath is warm and smells of chocolate.
“I’m serious.” I watch him. He seems to want a serious answer. “Bedrooms, kitchens—the rooms we actually inhabit, for our private comfort—are built to human specifications. What makes us think public buildings—community spaces—should be any different?”
“Yes, but the population is so large”—is he humoring me? flirting?—“we need to accommodate—”
“Size isn’t the answer.” I’ve made this point time and again in planning sessions—usually to no avail. “We build multilane superhighways to ease traffic congestion, right? But they entice even more people to abandon mass transit, so the new highways become glutted. Local circumstances. Hand, foot, eye. Always the best measure.”
“So you’d tear down all the skyscrapers?”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. I lean away from him. “Why not? They’re made to intimidate the individual, aren’t they? Make him feel small in the great institutional shadow.”
“My my. You’re certainly the innovator.”
“I don’t know whether you’re flattering or insulting me.”
“No ‘or.’ Pure flattery.” He smiles. “Actually, I’m looking for an innovator to work with us. Someone who knows the ins and outs of public relations, who’s comfortable in that gray zone between business, politics, citizens …”
“City planning is hardly PR.”
“Still, it’s a public service. Clearly, you understand the value of image, of selling ideas.”
“And what ideas do you need to sell?”
“Myself. The idea that a company run by a black man can be integral to the city’s health.” He sits forward. “You know what it’s like, right? I’m one of the few black CEOs in this town. That means I’ve got to be twice as prepared as my white counterparts. I’ve got to be smoother, better-dressed, better-behaved. Hell, I’ve had to learn to play golf He laughs. “Control my temper—slightest irritation, I’ll get tagged as the ‘angry black man,’ and that’s the end of my business.”
“I imagine a lot of folks are extra careful around you, too.”
“Oh, absolutely! You do understand! Some of these fellows, man, they get so self-conscious … I never figured politeness would make me cringe.” He folds his hands on his knee. “I founded this company, gave it direction … when I started, my friends assured me, ‘Green is the only color business looks at.’ But when it came to raising the scratch, I learned early to send white representatives to our potential investors. You’re with that, right?”
“I am.”
“So.”
“Is this a job interview?”
“When can you get me your résumé?”
I laugh, but he’s not kidding.
“I trust my instincts,” he says. “Move quickly, lock my key personnel into place. That’s why E-Future has grown so fast.”
“Can I ask you … what were you doing in the cemetery the other day?”
He smiles and smoothes his tie. “We need some tax shelters. We’re thinking of acquiring land, developing new sites.”
“Disturbing those graves?”
“We were just looking.”
“For the sake of argument. If I came to work for you, that’s the first thing I’d try to talk you out of. It’s a historic neighborhood. It needs to be left alone.”
“It’s crime-ridden and poor. It’s going to be developed sooner or later. That’s inevitable. Isn’t it better if a black man has an interest in it?”
“Is it?”
“I’d like a chance to convince you.”
“If you’re serious about this,” I say, slow, measured, “you need to know …”
“Yes?”
“Things are up in the air for me right now.”
He nods. “I hope you don’t mind. I’ve talked to Reggie. I know a little about your situation. I was going to call you.”
I feel my face go hot.
“Your uncle, your ties to this place … it got me thinking. I figured you might be interested in a position in town.”
“I don’t know.”
His earring catches the sun. “What do you want? Humanly?”
Our eyes meet, then Natalie appears in a doorway behind the receptionist’s desk, wearing a long red dress.
“Think about it,” he tells me, rising. “We’re a solid, honest, black-owned company, still on the ground floor but growing. And I’m committed to investing in our local community.”
Another caretaker. These men. Goddam.
Natalie tells Rufus good-bye. He smiles at us both, hands me a card with his fax number on it and the sctibbled instruction, “Résumé.”
“You can just drop me off at home, and I’ll walk to class from there,” Natalie says. For several blocks we sit stiffly in the car. It’s hard for me to concentrate on anything but Bowen’s offer. I ask, “How’s Michael these days?”
“Hanging.”
“And you? The job’s working out?” I brake too hard, jostling us.
“Takes a lot of time away from my kids—and half my pay goes for child-care. I’ll probably have to quit school soon.”
“Oh, I hope not. That would be a shame.”
“The hardest part would be telling Reggie. Hell, school’s not gonna bring me anything better’n this.”
“Anyway. I’m glad things are nice for you,” I say. Nice?
She snorts. “A year ago I was nearly dead on the street. Anything’s nicer than that.” She points to a shack on the edge of Freedmen’s Town, next to a burnt store and an abandoned car. Someone has spray-painted on a cinder-block fence, “Five-dollar whores in two-dollar gowns at the funeral of Hope and Love.”
“Old freak room in there,” Natalie says. “We’d cook the rocks, I’d smoke that sweet stuff and, man, I didn’t care how many fellas asked me to give ‘em brains. I’d suck ‘em all night, long’s they kept the goods coming. Living high in the Rock Resort! I have to say, I miss it sometimes.”
“Well. I hope you find a way to stay in school.” She’s too tired to listen. Maybe it’s just as well. Join a sorority? Look at Goya? Where would that get her?
She steps out by the Row Houses, thanks me again. Behind her, Michael sails through the air with a ball. Angry. Innocent? Golden.
Editorials appear in the Chronicle decrying America’s “declining values” and the “pathology” of African American communities. The child-murder suspect—the paper doesn’t name him; is it Johnson?—was “apparently delusional”: a blurry bio of a blurry existence on the edge of booming Houston. No word yet on whether all the bodies have been found.
Reggie has been exceedingly attentive to Ariyeh; I’ve seen little of them both. He’s commissioned a new sculpture from Kwako for the Row Houses, and she’s been helping them clear a space next to one of the porches.
Bitter is still wearing nutmegs, feeling chest pains. “You’re sleep-walking right into trouble,” I told him last night.
“You know what they say, Seam. Never wake a sleepwalker. Let him go where he wants, cause he just might head for hidden treasure.”
He no longer seemed mad at me for leaving his house; resigned, maybe. She’s her mama’s child, all right. He asked about my “accommodations” and the possibility of my fixing him some okra one night. “Of course,” I said.
“This come for you.” He handed me a letter. A second apology from Elias Woods: “I just want everything to be right before I go. Please forgive me.”
When I left, Bitter was sitting on his porch singing,
Papa, li couri la riviere,
Maman, li couri peche crab.
Fe dodo, mo fils, crab dans calalou.
Coming home, Lord, coming home. Wade in the water, children, wade in the water. Wade in the water, children. God’s a-gonna trouble the waves. Walk together, children. Don’t you get weary. Don’t you get weary, there’s a great meeting in the Promised Land. Ya-a-as, Lord, I’m trying to make Heaven my home.
Ariyeh weeps softly beside me. The dead kids’ parents huddle in the front pew. Crespi stands by the door, clasping his hands. Photos of the children, enlarged to the size of standard house windows, have been affixed to posterboards and mounted on thin wooden easels behind the altar.
A gap-toothed grin. Merry eyes.
The choir sings, I’ll lie in the grave and stretch out my arms, lay this body down. Lord, I’m-a coming on home.
Reggie holds Ariyeh’s hand. Before the service, he told me he didn’t trust the cops’ version of the murders (apparently, few of the victims’ bodies have been retrieved). Johnson is in custody. No public details. No talk of a trial. No story, Reggie insists: “They’re setting this one up to just go away.” He has pals who work for the city; they’ve heard that Johnson thought it was better to kill black boys than to let them be raised in a blighted environment, where they were bound to go bad. In his foul logic, he was doing them, and the community, a favor. “Doesn’t wash,” Reggie said. “Crazy shit. I don’t like the smell of it.”
In the meantime, the victims’ parents wanted to go ahead and commemorate their children, as a healing gesture.
The missing boys’ smiles, caught by the camera, remind me of curved boats rocking in a current, drifting me back to my own Bayou City childhood, which has also vanished; to sitting in church with Mama, who’s gone missing too. Soon I’ll be done with the troubles of the world. Going home to live with God.
Flowers and wreaths spice the room with an earthy sweetness, reminiscent of Dale Licht’s aftershave (he always overdid it). I imagine him at Mama’s memorial service, weeping for a woman he probably knew better than I did. For a moment I miss him, his genuine love for Mama, his exasperated tolerance of me. I miss the love of others. Do I have the love of others? My not-family, Bitter, Ariyeh?
Coming home, Lord, coming home.
A man drops to his knees in front of the altar, asking God’s mercy. It sounds like a curse. Ariyeh wilts; I slip my arm around her.
Don’t know why I want to stay. This ol’ world ain’t been no friend to me.