Chapter 96

Lucille still lived in Harlem, but not in the grand home of her heyday. She had been forced to leave that palace decades ago when her star had faded and she’d stopped making music and started emptying bedpans for a living. Now she lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment on the sixth floor of a ten-story tenement building.

“It’s not much, but it’s home.”

The apartment was crammed with relics from her former residence—large pieces of furniture, gaudy sculptures, and six-foot-tall vases filled with colorful plumes. Nearly every inch of wall was hidden beneath an array of family photos and framed memorabilia.

She pointed at the floral sofa. “You’ll sleep there. It’s one of those convertible beds. The bathroom is back there, kitchen over there. I think there’s room in the hall closet to hang your clothes. What doesn’t fit, you’ll just have to leave in your suitcase.” Lucille stopped talking, rested her hands on her hips, and considered her surroundings. “So this is it.”

She slipped a set of keys from the pocket of her orange housedress and handed them to Harlan. “I think your mama and daddy would be glad to know that you’re here.”

* * *

The convertible bed turned out to be a monster that nightly sought to impale Harlan with its coiled metal springs.

The other problem was this: Every day, Lucille rose before dawn, clomped loudly into the kitchen (which was an extension of the living room), and flicked on the bright overhead lights and the radio. She made her coffee, clipped coupons, and placed telephone calls to various companies that were, according to her, “trying to railroad an old woman.”

When she was done with Ma Bell and the others, Lucille spent an hour or so complaining about the rowdy neighbors above her, the president, the mayor, and the skank next door who didn’t have the decency to keep her music to a respectable level when she knew good goddamn well there was a senior citizen on the other side of her wall.

Lucille would then march into the living room and stand above Harlan until he opened his eyes.

“Morning, Lucille.”

“Well, good morning to you too. You want a cup of coffee? Some eggs? Bacon?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Do you want some eggs? Bacon?” She was also becoming forgetful.

* * *

For a time, being back in Harlem was exactly what Harlan needed.

He’d stopped drinking. Cold turkey. Didn’t even think about copping a bag of weed. He took up walking—covering miles each day. Sometimes he would just find a shaded park bench and sit for hours people-watching.

For a brief period Harlan would buy a newspaper and read it from cover to cover, but he found the news too depressing.

 

Twin Boys Found Strangled to Death in Bushwick Apartment Building.

 

Entire Family Lost in Early-Morning Three-Alarm Fire.

 

In a case of “mistaken identity,” prominent black poet Henry Dumas was shot to death at a Harlem train station by a New York Transit Authority police officer.

 

Another Nazi War Criminal Found in . . .

 

Thoughts of suicide still lingered—coming and going like his desire for alcohol and reefer.

* * *

One steamy August day, Harlan walked himself all the way to his old neighborhood and stood in the shadow of the colossal housing tenement that had displaced his and hundreds of other families.

Flooded with memories and despondent, Harlan continued east on 133rd Street, somehow made it across the busy Harlem River Drive, and spent an hour mesmerized by the ebb and flow of the filthy river. He found himself gripped by a melancholy so severe, he had to fight the urge to plunge himself over the railing into the murky waters.

The episode was as unnerving as it was sobering.

Harlem held many memories, but the ghosts that remained were bitter and vengeful. Harlan was fragile, which made him easy prey—he knew he couldn’t stay in Harlem, not if he intended to live long enough to figure out what God had planned for him.