His Own Where Read online

  Sweet port wine and soda, flower wineglasses, crochet lacy tablecloth, and two red candles definitely lit. The greens and ham the rice and peas and cheese and crackers and tomato juice standing in small glasses on small glassy plates. The perspiration smell of toilet water. Buddy, helping carve, he feel the swarm of aunts and uncles cousins. Feel them sweaty near, amazing and predictable. And rhinestones and the wellmade gray-plaid special suit. The hugging and the jokes. The sudden ashtrays and his mother in a brandnew apron serving. Serving and remote. Retreating to the kitchen sink excuse from laughter where the family relax drink rum to celebrate another year survival. His mother serving her way out of the loosely loving festival of food and thankyou to the Lord.

  His father when he help to dry the dishes silverware pots cup and saucers try to bring her into the ordinary comfort of his arms and she collapse in them unhappy. “We need another cabinet,” she tell his father. She continuous in putaway and polish: sort and starch. “This is our own house,” she would repeat. “We sacrifice, we save and borrow for this house. At least it is our own. Or will be.” And then say, “I know it is not beautiful, but it is clean.”

  She leave it, finally. When she leave them then his father turn to him, to Buddy and the house. The house become a house of men strip to the basic structure truth of it, the four rooms gradual like one that spreads around the actions of a day. His mother hungering for order among things themselves, for space she could admire, simply hungering and gone. Where did she go, and Buddy wondering about this last disorder she did not repair. This disordering of life of marriage of her motherhood. Strange lovely woman warm and hungering and gone.

  Buddy father clean the house down to the linoleum. Remove the moldings. Take away the window drapes and teach him, Buddy, how to calculate essentials how to calculate one table and two chairs, four plates, two mugs. Together they build shelves and stain them. Throw out the cabinets and bureaus opening and closing like a bank. His father teach him hammering and saws and measuring and workshop science. House be like a workshop where men live creating how they live. Throw out the lamps and build lights into the ceiling. Indirect direct white/lavender. Buddy working with wires and pliers rush from school to work beside his father on the house.

  On duty in the night his father dream and draw the next plan for the next day, working the house into a dream they can manage with their hands. Years like this working on the way they live with open shelves and changing furniture from store to slowly made in wood they pick up awkward.

  Buddy see him sleeping and unconscious. Bandages a brace a cast a bruise black swollen on the brown skin of his face. His father face asleep, unshaven. Thick lips promising to speak to smile again. Eyes closed. No intimation of their waking focus gentle calculating inches and diameter or grain. A short man, Buddy’s father, short and powerful and maybe handsome. Buddy not sure what handsome mean, in general, but to him, to Buddy, this man, his father, is a lonely, handsome man, powerful and short.

  three

  from the other side of the other bed the nurse was speaking to him, that longago first time.

  “Don’t you have no mother, boy?”

  Buddy stare back sullen.

  “You don’t have to answer me. A woman my age know who has a mother and who don’t. You don’t. You don’t have no mother. Night after night, from afternoon you come sit by your father. Very nice, and what you should be doing. But how old you getting to be and what they call you?” Buddy stir himself, feeling most of all surprise. The woman talk like a knife try to butter but cuts the bread.

  “Sixteen.”

  “I knew you was sixteen. Or seventeen. Who’s taking care of you and what’s you name?”

  “Buddy. Buddy Rivers.”

  “Well, that’s all right too, but who is taking care of you, when you leave the hospital, Buddy Rivers?”

  “Everything’s okay. We got things under control.”

  “That’s how all you young people answer me. Everything is mind your own business, am I right?”

  Buddy be annoy by now. The woman is a private nurse for the patient in the next bed. Be bad to make an enemy have to see an enemy in the same room where his father dying. And her question bother him. His relatives ask the same thing and discuss where he should move. Assume that he should move out of the house he and his father put together like their lives until now. Move! He will not move among the doilies, wallpaper, headboard beds, and extra extra chairs that scatter through the houses of his relatives. The gold-thread sofabeds. The monstrous glossy large television console. The wobbling bright installment furniture and Wollworth bric-a-brac that make it dangerous to stretch your legs straight out or swing your arms around. He will not move. It is a home they made. Not very clean in the usual way. But beautiful and full of what they absolutely need for everyday. Full and free from stuff just lying and lying around.

  “I’m sure your father would expect you to show respect when people speak to you,” the nurse was saying. That was the whole nagging way she came on on the first night that she talk to him, to Buddy.

  Buddy could never get over this difference between women and their daughters. Like this nurse, this obnoxious, nosy woman who spoke to him like that when they were strangers, she was the mother of his Angela. She was the mother of the girl Buddy felt guilty to be so aware of there right where his father lay, his face asleep, his life dying. But he was. He was even waiting for her. Weeks before they even spoke, he would feel himself waiting for the girl whose name he didn’t know.

  Every evening around eight, just before the end of visiting hours, she would come and get her orders from headquarters. Her mother jangling with coins and keys and inquiries and orders: who ate what for dinner, who was where, and so forth. Angela was pretty. And she was pretty cool. He could tell she was embarrass by his witness to the nightly scene. But she keep cool. Keep her voice down low, releasing monosyllables as brief as possible:

  “Yes. Okay. You said that. I won’t. I did it.”

  She was pretty. And he like the coolness. The splash tongue of her mother inhibit both of them. Neither said hello.

  Buddy always remember how the woman sizzle with suspicion even before Angela and him really start to talking with each other.

  Then one time when Angela come by, wearing jeans and looking comfortable, her mother run through a tirade so tough that Buddy try to help out Angela and introduce himself and walk her home. The tirade start because of the bluejeans:

  “Angela! Did you forget something?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Did you forget you were coming here to see me in the hospital?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “What’s the matter? You see how you dress and you askin me what is the matter. Are you a hippy? You think a hospital is a hippy hangout? This is a hospital and I am a professional woman. And I am your mother. Look at you.”

  Angela try to walk out. The woman seize Angela by the arm and snarl upclose.

  “You wait right there. I’m not finish talking to you. Do you hear me?”

  Buddy want to interfere.

  “And you, Mr. Rivers, you can sit right down again. What you standing for?”

  “I think you should let go of Angela.”

  “Angela, you saying. Angela. What other names you call each other, I would like to know. You pretending not to know each other all this time and what’s the truth behind it?”

  “I hear you call her Angela, that’s all,” Buddy say, still standing.

  Angela be trembling furious. The woman whirl and scream at her. “On top of everything you better not let me see you evil lip.”

  “I be as evil as I want to be.”

  “All right. You said it.”

  “I say what? Let me go, Ma.”

  The woman smack Angela in the face.

  “You finish, Ma? You finish now?”

  “No. I’m not finish. I’m just starting with you. Come back here.”

  Angela break through the d
oorway, knowing her mother probably will not leave the patient by himself to follow her. Buddy follow Angela.

  “What you want?” Angela be crying but no streaming tears.

  “Let me walk you home.” Buddy catch up to her, walking along, worrying about her face. Thinking, feeling about Angela, he almost forget his father.

  On the street they walk separated.

  “Why the two of you go on like that?”

  Angela feel stung: “the two of you.” She like the solid look of Buddy dark out the corner of her eyes upon her mother every night. Him, Buddy sitting there sly don’t miss a minute of the interaction. Still he say, “the two of you.” What did he mean? They walk separated. She not answering the question, hurt.

  Streets turning off except for candystores, and liquor stores and iron grates dull interlocking over glass. Except for the bars the people party high, knees and feet poke rapid sharp toward an indoor kitchen, bedroom. People hurry calmly from the nighttime start to glittering like oil.

  “My mother picking on me, picking, picking on me. I wish she would just kick me out.”

  “You must be the oldest.”

  “I am. Three brothers younger than me, and then a baby sister. My mother work and scream. My daddy work and both of them work nights. The problem is they think I’m working nighttime too—They think I’m maybe running the streets.”

  “What your father do?”

  “Driving a cab. So I take care of all the cooking. Baby-sit. But I try to study anyhow.”

  “Where you go to school?”

  “Lane.”

  “Didn’t know people studying at Lane. Thought you people just fight and then just fight some more.”

  “Oh, come on! Only thing we did was try to raise the flag of liberation. Now you know how folks react to liberation. But I been hearing about you. At Boys’ High. I even know your name.”

  She don’t tell him how she hear how he suppose to be so fine and really B A D and have the teachers shook and shaking. Buddy have a lot of friends hanging out with him at school. They stick together pretty tight, and he have a reputation everybody say the same about him so she hear things all the time.

  When they reach her building Buddy see chalk scribbling on the granite and the outside stairs curve interesting worn.

  Angela ask him inside.

  Two of her brothers, Ronald, three, and Edwin, eleven, in front of the TV, wearing undershirts and BVDs. The third brother, eight-year-old Tyrone wearing the same, in the bathroom floating a TV dinner tray in the bathtub. Angela take Buddy to her room where the Baby, Debby, is sleeping. A doll carriage holding Debby asleep. Angela have a cot and ironing on top of it, she have to iron. Over by the radiator a scratch formica table and chair Angela use for studying. An overhead threesocket fixture, one bulb screw into it. Long nails in the wall hold clothing, hangers, dresses, skirts and jackets hung on them.

  Buddy feel depression in the clutter-stricken room. Feel like a carpenter hands tied. Want to toss out everything and start the room from scratch. Keep it bare enough so Angela feel free.

  “Your parents think you pretty wild.” Buddy not quite leaning on the edge of the table desk. “Are you?”

  Angela answer, giggling. “You believe it. After I cook dinner, feed my baby sister, I drag over hear my mother, come back, wash or iron, study, worry about my father when he come home will he be shaking me awake and want to carry on, complain, and like that, I am pretty wild. Just like my mother say, a freak for parties.”

  Buddy dig on the fantastic stack of 45’s piling from the floor. “Don’t you have no phonograph?”

  Angela say no and she explain why she don’t play her records in the parlor where her father turn hysterical and call the music sinful. Call her when she dance and sing “a whore.”

  Buddy like this girl, this Angela. He hate the room she have. Make him feel himself like overgrown from Mars. He hate the whole apartment skimpy on the peoplespace. Rooms crush small by stuffed-up piece of furniture huge sofa and huge matching lamps huge things that squeeze the family mix into a quarrel just to move around a little. But all he say, that first night when he look at how she live at home is that he see her in the hospital, tomorrow.

  four

  his life form into habits following his love. Angela and the hospital and his father all roll into hours that he spend with them. Now every night he be walking Angela home from the hospital and then he go back there and stay there at the hospital watching his father/the body of his father on the hospital bed until they make him leave.

  Sometimes Buddy wishing he could bring Angela to the house sanded and hammered into a home by him and his father. The house of things eliminated. The house made simple into home where Buddy waiting to know his father again alive in action taking a wall apart or building a low wall like a window ledge between two rooms.

  Angela parents carry on so strict and wild that Buddy can only see her every day. Walking home. And for half a minute visits when her father may be sure to be out working. Or a few times managing the walk into the cemetery on a weekend afternoon. And one time at a party. And sometimes at the store.

  Buddy and Angela keep track of daytime just by figuring out the last and next time they will come together and how long alone. They become the heated habit of each other.

  five

  another evening and Angela mother rip into the love between them. Say she cannot sleep for worrying about her daughter and “that poor man, your father” and his son, Buddy.

  Buddy ask the woman why she worrying and what about. The woman sob and shriek and curse at Angela and call her nogood lowdown. Angela feel humiliated and refuse to answer back.

  Again her mother smack her in her face and Angela break away running. That night after Buddy walk Angela home he does not go back to see his father at the hospital. His head feel heavy and his feet.

  Instead, Buddy slide into the darkness, thinking and feeling about Angela, and find himself walking to his father house. Buddy takes the sidewalk broom from inside and come out to the cold night, sweeping the stoop, the stairs, the yard, the sidewalk. Sweeping under the night. Ragged and shrill in the ragged shrubbery three or four male cats howl close to the female magnet listening calm.

  Buddy consider bothering the cats but change his mind.

  Back into the house, the workshop of his father and his life wanders heavily and tall inside the easy space.

  Saying her name, Angela. Pretending she is here to dance with him here where nothing but himself will move.

  The phonograph lies low along one wall on a board shelf where the parts in factory packages remind him of the work to do the wires to organize attach. Work interrupted by the accident that snatch his father. Buddy start to fool with parts and try to concentrate on diagrams of wiring and speaker placement. But he be thinking Angela.

  In the kitchen, absentminded opening a can of soup, stirring with a wooden spoon. Into the basement opening with a screwdriver a can of black lacquer paint, stirring with a wooden spatula. Back upstairs to relocate the (parts of the) phonograph packages. Buddy abandon the phonograph project. Next he remove a long piece of lumber from its wall hinge supports. Clean it, start to paint it.

  Lacquer shining smoothly. Black black like a glisten polishing the lumber plank he handle easily. The black the lacquer black glistening lumber invitation to his touch and finger press he better not. Too soon to touch still wet. Too soon to touch like Angela. Too soon to really touch her.

  six

  when angela father come home drunk that night the phone ring and he hear his wife telling him that Angela defy disgrace them in the hospital calling her a loudmouth woman.

  Angela father smile at this but still his wife continue: “She left here with a boy. Were you there when they came home?”

  “What boy?”

  Angela mother explain how Angela run out on her because she wouldn’t hardly leave the bedside of her patient. She describe how the boy, Buddy, follow after her, Angela, and how the bo
y, whose father be dying in the hospital bed, how the boy never come back to the bedside of his father, that night. Is he, the boy, in that house with Angela? What did the devil daughter do with the boy? That devil daughter can’t be trust no way. She making it impossible for decent people try to earn a living to go out with easy mind and earn they bread.

  Angela father say he will take care of it, find out what is going on behind they back. Hang up the phone. A spare, goodlooking man. Slip into the room where Angela in bed, turn a flashlight on her face.

  “Angela, get up,” he shout at her.

  “Angela!”

  Rubbing her eyes from sleep she see him stepping on the clothes she have iron and stack by her bed.

  “Move, Daddy—”

  That’s as much as she can say. His fist come down her face, her cheek. She scream aloud. His knuckle slap her head around, and pound her punching through to ribs. Angela struggle her hand under the pillow where to protect herself she hide a kitchen knife not to be beaten like she is. Seize the handle, ship the knife into his view and tell him “Leave me alone.”

  “You little prostitute.”

  He kick the cot over and she fall to the floor face down and lose the knife. He leap beside her beating her across the back.

  “You get out of this house, get out of this house, get out.”

  Angela pass out. Her father pause, then drop his arm and leave the room. After a while Angela come to. Her mouth taste ugly. She wince to move. She listen if she hear him near, awake. Hear nothing. Tears come from the pain of putting her coat around her. She struggle down into the street. It be almost morning. Angela staggering, bolt and collapse along the street toward Buddy house. Some men in a old Cadillac try to pick her up (thinking she drunk) until one of them come close enough to see her swollen face and bloody.