Just Above My Head Page 13

  “—her own sister told me that, man—!”

  “—how you get that close to her sister?”

  “—you jiving, man—I know them sisters—”

  “—in a basement on One hundred and sixteenth Street!”

  “For true?”

  Laughter. Whispers. Great expectations.

  “One reason Julia keeps to herself so much,” Joel said, “is that she’s worried about her mother. Amy’s not been feeling well, lately, and Julia’s been fasting and praying—interceding with the Lord, to touch her mother’s body.”

  He said it with a conviction which must have cost him something, for it was not his language at all. I don’t know why I suddenly felt sorry for this man whom I didn’t like.

  “Florence mentioned it to me,” Paul said carefully. “What’s the trouble seem to be?”

  I knew then, for the first time, why Florence felt that she could not refuse this Christmas invitation, and why Paul had not protested. He stared at Joel with a genuine worry, and also as though he were assessing Joel’s strength—wondering how the man would bear whatever might come.

  His look reminded me, briefly, of the look on my mother’s face that morning. Paul and Florence knew, or feared, the same thing.

  “We’ve been to a couple of doctors—but Julia don’t believe in doctors—and, look like it’s female trouble, brother—one doctor said she might have to have an operation.” He looked at Paul, helplessly. “You know.” He looked, briefly, at me—but I was a man now. Just the same, an old-fashioned reflex caused him to lower his voice. “We kept it quiet—you know—but Amy lost a baby, little over a year ago now. She wanted that baby so bad. And she ain’t really never been the same since.”

  Paul sipped his wine, and Joel sipped his. I stood there, listening to the boys in the other room. From their responses, and the lewd gravity of Crunch’s voice, I supposed that he was giving them sexual instruction. I could also guess this from Jimmy’s face. He had not moved from the window, and I could see him from where I stood: and he was listening.

  “If it’s that serious, man,” Paul said—he coughed—”I wouldn’t depend too much on Julia’s fasting and praying. The Lord put doctors here for a purpose.”

  “Oh, I agree with that, man,” Joel said quickly, “and me and Amy made a appointment, just quiet like, to see another doctor just as soon as the holidays is over.”

  “Why you going to wait that long?” Paul asked; but then we heard Amy and Florence greeting the boys in the other room, and Paul and Joel fell silent, looking at each other.

  I watched Amy walk to Jimmy. She rubbed one hand over his head, then bent down and kissed him and took a sip of his punch. He said nothing and made no movement, but his eyes glowed as he looked up at his mother, and she kissed him again.

  Then she stood just above him, staring out of the window with him.

  Florence came into the kitchen. She said, in a low voice, with no preliminaries, “Joel, you take Amy to see a specialist, you hear me? Don’t you be counting ten to do it, and don’t you be fooling around with none of Julia’s shit about the laying on of hands!”

  Joel looked horrified; perhaps he had never before seen a woman so angry.

  And Florence repeated, “Yes. I said shit, talking about your holy daughter, in your kitchen, on Christmas Day.” She kept her voice low, but with an effort, and her voice was shaking. “You take your wife to a specialist, or I will. And I’ll teach your daughter something about the laying on of hands.” She stared at Joel. She said, with sorrow, “You and Amy should have done that a long time ago.” Then she leaned down close to his face and whispered, “You goddamn, no-count fool, your wife is sick!” She looked at him with a look I had never seen on any face before: if it terrified me, I cannot imagine what it did to Joel. One saw in her face and heard in her voice that she did not want to say it, but she did: “And I’m not sure your daughter wants her to get well!” Then she watched his face, and her face softened. “Joel. Sometimes people who think they own the kingdom of heaven think they own everything—and everybody else—too!”

  Amy had left Jimmy and started for the kitchen, and I couldn’t move, or open my mouth. But Florence straightened, just as Amy entered, and said, in a loud cheerful voice, “If you menfolk hope to eat Christmas dinner, you better get out of this kitchen.” She picked up the bottle, and put it in Paul’s hands. “You hear me? Now haul it!”

  But Joel was in no condition to haul it. His face was wet, he could scarcely rise, his funky sweet odor rose. Amy looked at him and came and put one hand to the side of his face, whispering, “What’s the matter, sugar?”

  He looked as though he were about to speak, about to weep—about, Paul said much later, to spill the beans all over himself. So Paul said cheerfully, “We’ll go for a little walk, he’ll be all right,” and winked at Amy, and I helped Joel to his feet.

  I must say for him that, once on his feet, he straightened, shook his head, and smiled. He said to Amy, “See you in a minute, sugar.”

  We walked back into the room where the boys were. Peanut, Crunch, and Red were preparing to rise, and leave with us, but I said sharply to Arthur, “Wait here till I come back,” and I simply avoided Jimmy’s enormous, wondering eyes. Paul put the bottle of wine on the table, and I followed Paul and Joel out of the house. We didn’t even bother to put on our coats, and so we made it, quick, to a bar on the corner, saying nothing.

  Saying nothing: saying nothing is much to say. Paul and Joel sat near each other. Neither spoke, because neither could: they sat in the whirlwind silence, the silence which one can neither bear, nor bear to break.

  And the bar, since this was Christmas Day, was, except for the bartender, empty and silent, seeming to wait.

  I wanted to run. I said, as the bartender slouched toward Paul and Joel, “Look. I told the boys to wait till I come back. So, I’ll go on to the house and let them go to their Christmas dinner—and—you want me to come back for you?”

  “Yes,” Paul said. “We don’t want to keep your mother and them waiting.”

  So I went out and back up the street again, and climbed those steps again, and rang the bell.

  Amy opened the door for me.

  “Why—where’s Joel?” she asked, and she sounded terrified, like somebody about to have a fit.

  “He’s with my father,” I said. “They talking. They be back in a minute.” I closed the door behind me and walked into the kitchen, Amy walking very slowly behind me. Except for the sounds of cooking, the kitchen, too, was silent. Florence was cutting out biscuits. Julia, dressed in a long, light blue dress, sat at the kitchen table, arms folded, looking, at once, like a high priestess and a sullen girl.

  “Where’s my father?” she asked me.

  “With my father,” I told her, and walked on into the living room.

  “That doesn’t tell me where he is!” Julia called behind me.

  I walked back into the kitchen. “Your father and my father are sitting in the bar on the corner. You want to see him so bad, you drag your holy ass on down to the corner bar, you hear me, child?”

  “Hall,” Florence muttered; but she kept on cutting out biscuits; she did not look up.

  “Do you know,” asked Amy, her eyes suddenly enormous, in a face suddenly grown gaunt, “who you are talking to?”

  “I know that my mama’s doing all the work in your kitchen this Christmas morning,” I said, “and I don’t care who I’m talking to, I don’t think that’s right.”

  “My mother’s sick,” said Julia.

  “And you,” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Told you this was going to happen,” Florence grunted to Amy. “Told you,” and started placing the biscuits in the paper-lined, grease-covered pan.

  “I”—Julia began—and stopped. I stood directly in front of her, staring at her, looking her up and down. I made it the most unsanctified look I could manage. I wanted to make her know that her sanctified bullshit didn’t reach me, t
hat her daddy wasn’t nothing in this world but her clown. The strangest thing was that Amy, standing behind her daughter, eyes blazing out of that blazing face, seemed to hear this message, along with a message I couldn’t hear. “Help, Lord Jesus,” Amy said, and turned away; while I remembered that Julia, after all, was only thirteen years old. I touched her upper arm, she flinched, something altered behind her eyes: I was suddenly frightened, and ashamed.

  “I’ll go get your father for you,” I said, and went back into the living room.

  Peanut, Crunch, and Red stared at me—they were sitting on the sofa, hearing, speaking, and seeing no evil. Jimmy and Arthur were at the window, and Jimmy was admiring Arthur’s silver ring.

  “Okay,” I said to the boys. “You’re liberated now—let’s go,” and they grinned and rose. Arthur and Jimmy turned toward us, models of deceit. They had heard everything, of course, everything; but what they had made of what they had heard was not to be revealed to me that day.

  Nevertheless there was, in Jimmy’s look, as he turned toward me, something trusting and proprietary, and, in Arthur’s look, a pride elaborately noncommittal.

  “See you, Arthur,” said Peanut, Crunch, and Red, and “Merry Christmas, Jimmy!” Crunch ran over and lifted Jimmy off the ground and kissed his forehead. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” Crunch said, “and you have yourself a happy new year, you hear?”

  “Yes,” said Jimmy, smiling with that incredibly diffident and trusting pleasure to be found only in the face of a child, “you too.” And he raised his eyes to Crunch and Arthur, and then turned to us. “Merry Christmas. And happy new year, too.”

  Julia was standing in the kitchen doorway, arms folded across her breasts. “Look like my brother’s mighty popular,” she said.

  “But so are you, Sister Julia,” Crunch said quickly. He looked at her, and added, after a brief, charged beat, “We just don’t dare express ourselves with you the way we express ourselves with him.” He paused again. “I’m sure you understand, Sister Julia.”

  She moved her folded arms, embracing herself more tightly, her hands caressed her shoulders. A faint smile touched the corners of her lips, her eyes flashed and darkened. “Of course I do,” she said. She smiled again at all of us, but especially at Crunch. “Merry Christmas and happy new year to all of you,” she said. “Praise the Lord.”

  “Praise the Lord,” the boys said, after a moment, and stumbled through the kitchen to greet and say good night to Amy and Florence.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told Arthur, and walked to the door. Peanut, Crunch, and Red came behind me. I put on my father’s Christmas present and I took my father’s coat and scarf, and Paul’s overcoat, and we all hurried down the steps.

  “See you all!” I said. “Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!”

  “You too!” they cried. I stood and watched them run in one direction, up the hilly, wintry street. Then, I turned and ran in the opposite direction.

  Paul and Joel had not moved at all, and I wondered, for a moment, if they had even spoken. Each had a glass of whiskey before him.

  I brought them their coats. I really did not know what to do with myself, whether to go or stay.

  “Have a drink,” Paul said. “We won’t be a minute.”

  I got myself a drink and wandered to the other end of the bar, looking at the jukebox. I did not want to be there—I didn’t want to overhear their conversation. On the other hand, it didn’t seem right somehow, to start playing the jukebox. I thought of striking up a conversation with the bartender, but he didn’t look like he wanted to talk. He had a dark chocolate, battered face, like an aging prizefighter, a cigarette burning between his lips, a do-rag on his head, and he was leafing through a magazine.

  Just the same, I ventured: “Merry Christmas. Can I buy you a drink?”

  He looked up. His eyes, large, dark, and gentle, changed his face completely. It was almost as though the man who looked up was not the man I’d spoken to.

  “Merry Christmas yourself,” he said. His smile made him look much younger. “Believe I’ll have a taste of sherry.” He poured it, and raised his glass. “To you,” he said. “You live around here?”

  “No,” I said. “Just Christmas visiting.”

  He glanced toward Paul and Joel, who were leaning toward each other and speaking in low voices.

  “The gray-haired one, he plays piano near here”—and he named the joint—”don’t he?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He’s my father.”

  He smiled. “Ah. You lucky. You still got your father.” He sipped his sherry and looked at me gravely. “And you got your mama, too?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I got my mama, too.”

  “You the only child?”

  “No. I got a brother younger than me.”

  “How much younger?”

  “Seven years. I had a little sister, but she died.”

  He lit another cigarette. “You lucky, though. My old man split when I was a little fellow, and my mama—well, she give me to her mama, you dig?” And he laughed. “So I sort of had to make it best I could. My grandmama passed away last year—so—now, well, I’m all alone on Christmas,” and he laughed again.

  I didn’t know what to say. His laugh, his manner, rejected pity, but: “That’s too bad,” I said.

  “Ah. You got to take it like it comes, right? Anyway, my grandmama was a great old lady. Maybe if it hadn’t been for her, I might be dead, or on the needle by now, you know? Who knows. Anyway, my mama and daddy was too young to have a kid—they no more knew what they was doing—!” He looked far beyond me, playing with his glass of sherry.

  I heard Paul: “—the Holy Ghost don’t change the child’s diapers, or teach it how to cross the street—!”

  I was really beginning to like the bartender. He was considerably older than I was, close to thirty, I judged, but he suddenly made me realize that I had no friends my age. I had never thought of that before, but now, I wondered why.

  “Let’s have another round,” I said. “Hell, it’s Christmas.”

  “Now,” he said grinning, “you don’t want to show up drunk for Christmas dinner.”

  “I don’t really care,” I said, and he and I laughed together again.

  I heard Joel: “—I always been a man run and ruled by women, you know that—”

  “I don’t know shit! I know you got a problem in your house!”

  The bartender poured my drink and his, then looked toward Paul and Joel. “This is on the house. We might as well let the old folks in on the festivities, what do you say?”

  And he winked and walked to the end of the bar, and said to Paul, “Me and your son is getting acquainted, sir, and we thought that you might like to join us in a Christmas drink? On the house, sir, if you please.”

  And he filled their glasses.

  Paul looked at the bartender, looked at me, and smiled. “Thank you very much, son,” he said, and he and the bartender and Joel touched glasses and I raised mine in their direction. “A very merry Christmas to you, and, if I don’t see you before, have a happy new year.”

  “That goes for me, too,” said Joel and turned, raising his glass to me. “And the same to you, Hall!”

  I bowed, and sipped my drink. The bartender came back to his place at the bar.

  “That your name—Hall?”

  “Yeah. What’s yours?”

  “That’s a nice name. My name—my name is Sidney.”

  “I’m glad to meet you, Sidney.”

  “I’m glad to meet you,” he said, and we shook hands.

  Paul’s voice: “And since when—tell me the truth now—since when did you start believing in the Holy Ghost?”

  “Getting stormy over there,” said Sidney.

  “Yes,” I said. “When was Jesus born?”

  “Today, you nut,” said Sidney, and we both cracked up.

  Joel’s voice: “—yes, I understand I have a wife and a daughter—”

  “And you have a so
n,” said Paul.

  Sidney was watching my face. “Maybe we should play the jukebox,” he said.

  “Right away.” I walked to the jukebox, and maybe I was drunk—a little drunk—or maybe I was evil, but the first record I played was Nat King Cole’s “White Christmas.” Sidney was absolutely delighted, laughing so hard that his big, thick, upper lip curled upward toward his nostrils. “You a mess,” he said. “And I bet you a liar, too.”

  For that moment, leaning on the bar, caught in the New York sunlight, which was harsh outside but which was softened here by the curtains at the bar window, his face changing like a fountain of water spinning in the air, his eyes bottomless and bright and flashing, the white teeth in the dark chocolate face hiding and revealing the dark pink tongue, he was incredibly beautiful and I felt myself flow toward him, as I, too, at the jukebox, in my not-quite-chocolate, fleece-lined, three-quarter coat, leaned forward, staring at him, cracking up. It was a moment I was to remember much later, it was to stand me in good stead: the shape of things to come.

  But then, I played some of the others, “Silent Night” for example. In my memory, it’s Mahalia’s voice, though I’m not sure, when I think about it, that Mahalia had started recording then. I came back to the bar, and we quieted down, and my newfound friend and I had another drink together—for the road, for I knew that we had to be leaving soon.

  “You be working tonight?” I asked him.

  We both looked at the clock behind the bar. It was four thirty. “Well, I get relief from about six to nine, and then, yeah, I come back and work till closing.”

  “Well, I’ll come back later,” I said. “Okay? I’ll bring my girl with me.”

  “Beautiful. You a real show-off, ain’t you? You got your mama and your papa and a baby brother, and a girl.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m greedy. I’d like to have a friend, too.”

  He took my hand in his and gripped it hard. “You got it, baby,” he said. He let go my hand, and his face changed. “That’s just the way it’s going to be.” He grinned. “What time you coming back?”

  “Oh. Around midnight, okay?”