C H A P T E R • 5
I followed Mister Bell through the walls of vendors standing close, their tables almost touching, taking up most of the sidewalk space on 125th Street, creating a bazaar.
On the table in front of his bookstore, red, black and green liberation flags flapped on little sticks among the sale books and videocassettes placed to lure the sidewalk traffic inside. A campaign poster for the incumbent in last season’s Democratic primary was incongruous beside the perennial Marcus Garvey poster propped up on the second table behind an inventory that included apples and oranges (5/$1) and handful bags of nuts and raisins ($1).
His bookstore was one of the storefronts at the base of the Theresa Hotel where it moved when the State Office Building took its catty-corner site on Seventh Avenue.
It’s the Speakers Corner, the African Square, where Malcolm, Fidel, our local Kenyatta and President Nelson Mandela have come and gone. Gil Scott-Heron offered “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” as part of the morning’s soundtrack.
Mister Bell made his way slowly through the small crowd who hover around his store like tick birds at some Serengeti watering hole. They slapped his shoulder and murmured things I couldn’t hear before he escaped into his bookstore.
“Pearl, I ain’t seen you in a minute,” one of the crowd outside said to me. “I heard you was putting out your daddy’s paper since he passed.”
My memory served up the name of a slight built man, to match with the familiar face. “Yes, Riley. Yes, I am. But I’m going back to California this weekend.”
“I miss Charlie.”
“Thank you. I miss him too.” And I did. At that moment, away from the office and the responsibility, I missed my father like a little girl.
This was his world but I had a place in it we made together when I walked around Harlem with my hand in his hand.
“Man, gimme some grapes,” a customer said, and the light caught his pinky ring as he peeled a five from a money clip.
“He don’t sell grapes. Don’t you know there’s still a boycott?” another man told the customer.
I recognized Joseph, another of my father’s cronies who he argued with while I listened and learned.
“That ain’t got nothing to do with me. Give me an orange then.”
After he made the sale, Joseph and I watched the customer navigate the crowded street.
Joseph turned to me. “Pearl, you need to tell the story about this mess in the streets.”
“Come on,” Riley said. “You know you shop out here.”
“I do not,” Joseph said. “And this chaos makes it impossible for legitimate businesses to get the bank assistance and customers we need to exist.”
“If the bank told you that lie, then why’d they give a loan to the white man and his franchise?” Riley asked.
I pulled out my notebook. “Are any of those so-called legitimate businesses black?” I asked. “Because this street bazaar certainly is.”
“Pearl, I see you’re taking notes,” Joseph continued. “I’m telling you. There are a lot of us, and there should be more. Especially in the second-floor offices and down the avenues.” He got louder. “No one but niggers would put up with this bullshit.”
“What about the street vendors in Chinatown? And what about Washington Heights and Flushing?” I asked.
Joseph said. “They own the inside business and the outside business.”
“Okay. And who would the Journal reporters talk to for a bank story?” I asked.
“Cecelia would have been good. She was a bank officer. But she’s gone,” Joseph said. “Reverend Gary is on the board. But he’s not going to talk to any reporters about anything but his self.”
“You can mourn her,” said a woman standing at the edge of the group. “In fact, I’ll mourn her myself because nobody deserves to die in the street. But God don’t love ugly. She had the nerve to tell me the bank was not in the social work business when I applied for a business loan.”
“Do you think it’s fair to take it personally?” I asked her. “A bank officer’s job is to say no sometimes.”
“I’ve heard I could have got my loan if I’d had the right friends.”
“Can you tell me who the Journal should talk to about the bank’s lending policies? The reporters don’t have to use the name.”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
When I went inside Freedom Books, Mister Bell wasn’t in front and I called to him at the door of his back-office sanctuary. He told me to wait and I sat down in the corner in the rocker where I always sat, surrounded by books from floor to ceiling on all sides, with the overflow spilling onto tables and stacks on the floor. But I remained poised at the edge of my seat, vigilant, to keep from losing myself in the warring upset and comfort of being in this familiar space with this man who reminded me so much of my father.
When he came out, I stood up and asked him, “Do you need anything? Can I do something?”
“There’s nothing I want that anybody can give me now,” he said.
He waited for me to follow him and when we were in front of the bookstore, he hugged me and then started preaching.
“Why don’t the Man stop people from speeding through here like fools? Because they are white people. They are running over the bridge, trying to get out of Harlem before they get caught in the dark. Like Night of the Living Dead.”
I heard him behind me as I started back to the office. He was husky at first but then he pitched his voice to carry beyond the crowd and Taj Mahal singing “St. Kitts Woman” over the speakers.
“Our women and children are on these streets.”