He had a point. But I didn’t see what it had to do with my finding an apartment, and I finally told him so.
“How much do you think this place costs?” Yoyo asked.
“Four hundred a month?”
“Only two hundred. Because there’s no kitchen. The absence of kitchens troubles Americans. So I knew I could negotiate a good price when I saw this place had no kitchen. The empty flat upstairs does have a kitchen, although that may be unfortunate for you. But I will talk to the landlady. She likes me because I keep it very clean in here. It’s not clean upstairs. But you can clean it. Americans are very funny in that respect, too. It’s always better to rent a filthy apartment for a low price and then to clean it up — but they don’t like to do that. What’s the trouble? All you have to do is get down on your knees and use a little elbow grease. Elbow grease! How do you like that? It’s an American idiomatic expression. I found it in my Webster’s. The departing university student — he now lives in Wisconsin, by the way, which is on the way to Winnipeg and apparently almost as cold — explained the term to me.”
Yoyo took me across the street to meet the landlady.
Elvina Peck had her gray and white hair pulled back in a bun. Her eyes were big and unmoving as she examined me, and her skin was almond brown — about halfway between Yoyo’s complexion and mine.
Yoyo introduced me as an honorable Canadian traveler, knowledgeable about Africa, with maternal roots in the wonderful city of Winnipeg.
“Yoyo,” Elvina said to my friend, “you talk just like your name, don’t you? You sure bounce at a person with a mouthful of words. Can’t your friend speak for himself?”
I introduced myself, said where I was from, and that I was looking to rent a flat on a monthly basis.
Elvina unfolded her arms. I was surprised to notice the form of her biceps, even though the wrinkled skin hanging from them jiggled slightly as she moved. Despite the fact that it was still only March, she wore a short-sleeved white blouse and bright orange slacks.
“Well, come on in, Mr. Cane. You look like an honorable sort, but I’d like to find out a little more about you.”
Elvina turned and walked down a dark hall, her thongs clapping against the hardwood floor. Yoyo and I followed her into the living room. She motioned for us to sit. She took a stool by the window and pried open the blinds to peer down at the street while we did business, which lasted about fifteen minutes. It was one of the strangest interviews I had ever had. She asked the names of my parents, of all things, and what they did. She asked the names and occupations of my grandparents, and grunted in the affirmative when I told her that my grandfather and great-grandfather had ministered at the African Methodist Episcopal Church on Druid Hill Avenue.
“I thought you had colored blood in you. But if you don’t mind me saying so, you’ve just about passed over the edge. Well, I’m not going to ask what you’re doing in Baltimore. I don’t even want to know. You don’t smoke, do you?”
“No.”
“Good, because there’s no smoking in my house. No dogs or cats?”
“No.”
“Good. Don’t buy any. Except for purse snatchers and wife beaters and the occasional state governor, dogs and cats are among the most vile creatures on God’s green earth. All they do is tear apart my garbage and leave their business in my yard.” Elvina cleared her throat. “I suppose a man needs a woman or two, always has and always will, and I am not so out of touch as to stand in the way of your biological functions. But if I see a lot of wildness going on, you’re out the next day.”
I could have opposed this restriction of my civil liberties, but thought the better of it. I didn’t know anybody in Baltimore, anyway.
“How much you willing to pay?” Elvina asked. “I haven’t seen the apartment.”
“It’s like Yoyo’s, but a bit bigger. It has a kitchen with a counter and a sink for doing dishes, and a fridge and a stove and they work. The bathroom works, too. Water runs. New toilet. Tub, but no shower. I’m telling you right now the whole place needs cleaning. How much you willing to pay?”
“Two hundred a month.”
“That’s what he’s paying,” she said, looking at Yoyo. “Yours has a kitchen.”
“Two twenty-five. I really can’t afford any — “
“All right, two-fifty. You give me cash when I give you the keys, and you give me a fifty-dollar deposit in case you break a window.”
I went to inspect the flat. Yoyo came along. It was as Elvina had described it. I was able to open the windows, which was a good thing, because the air inside hadn’t moved for an eternity. Dust covered the fridge, stove, counters, and walls. Cobwebs rounded the corners of the bedroom. The bathroom tub was stained brown, and the window was too filthy to see through.
“I’m a good cleaner,” Yoyo said. “But I have to make my living. This is America. I got you this apartment, and I don’t ask for any gratuity. But here is what you can do for me, my friend. Pay me forty-five dollars cash — special rate for friends — and I will clean this apartment for you. I will clean it top to bottom, floors, walls, bathtub, fridge, everything. It will take me three hours, working fast. I am a very good cleaner. You saw my apartment — you know I tell the truth. I have soaps and gloves and brushes and a broom and a vacuum and this incredible American product called Javex and another called Windex — so you don’t have to buy anything. Give me another ten dollars and I will help you find someone to sell you secondhand furniture very cheap, but very good, and I will even help you carry it. That I will do because you have visited Africa and because your mother comes from Winnipeg. Forty-five dollars won’t kill you, but it will help me very much. What do you say?”
I said yes.
We crossed the street again. I paid Elvina Peck from my wallet. I also paid Yoyo. Elvina gave me the key.
“You shouldn’t walk the streets with that kind of money, son. This is Baltimore. This is not Canada.”
“I had to pay, and you said cash.”
“Don’t get logical with me, son. I’m saying you walk these streets with that kind of money, some thug will knock you silly with a crowbar — and that’s on a good day.”
I thanked her for the advice, shook her hand, and stepped out the door. Yoyo remained inside, asked me to wait, and closed the door most of the way.
“Mrs. Peck,” I heard him say, “you remember our agreement.”
“What agreement?”
Yoyo sighed audibly. “We have an agreement, an honorable agreement, I hasten to add.”
“What agreement?”
“Mrs. Peck, I am a perfect tenant. I keep your place spicky-span.”
“It’s spic and span. But get to the point.”
“You said fifty dollars off my rent if I find you a good tenant.”
“I said that? When?”
“You said it last year, when I moved in.”
“Well, all right, if I said it, I said it. On the first of next month, if he’s still here, and if he’s paid me on time, I’ll give you fifty dollars off.”
“Thank you. You should let me clean your place sometime. I would clean your whole house for just forty-five dollars.”
“Are you out of your mind? Men can’t clean. I have outlived one son and two husbands and none of them ever cleaned anything except their own teeth.”
“Spicky-span, in the great tradition of African cleanliness, I tell you,” Yoyo said. “If the men you knew didn’t clean, it’s because they were Americans, all offense intended.”
“No offense intended, Yoyo. You say, no offense intended.”
“Yes, that’s right, no offense intended. They were Americans. Americans can put a man on the moon. I saw a show on TV says they can even slide a tiny little microscope into your veins and look inside your body, look at your heart, your knees, whatever. Americans know how to do lots of things, but they don’t know how to make coffee, they don’t know how to barbecue meat, and they don’t know how to clean houses. But I am not an Ameri
can. I am a Cameroonian. My father knew how to clean, and his father before him. All the men in my family line knew how to clean, and if you just pay me forty-five dollars, you will see that I can make your house spicky-span top to bottom, money-back guaranteed.”
“Spic and span, hunh? And if I’m not happy I get my money back?”
“That is the abject truth.”
“Who you calling abject? Young man, you talk faster than a cyclone.”
“I’m not so young, Mrs. Peck.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re younger than I am by a long sight and will stay that way till long after I’m dead and gone. Let’s talk about that cleaning another time. Go help your friend.”
Yoyo stepped outside. We walked down the steps together. He asked me when I’d be moving in. I asked him to help me find some furniture the next day. Yoyo said he could help me in the morning. In the afternoon, he’d be selling kebabs. Yoyo asked for my key. He said he would clean my flat late that evening.
I showed up at Yoyo’s door at nine o’clock sharp. He opened it before I could knock. I had already forgotten how black the man was. He was as black as coal. He was so black, he was almost blue. He was so black that even his irises and his pupils seemed one color.
“Hello, my friend. Come upstairs. Look at your apartment.”
It was transformed. The walls gleamed. The floors were shining, the cobwebs gone, the bathtub stain greatly diminished, the fridge and stovetop and windows glistening. I stomped on the rug and saw no dust rise. Yoyo said he had cleaned my apartment during the night. He didn’t like wasting time cleaning during the day. Daytime was for making money on the street.
Yoyo took me along to meet a student who was about to move out of her apartment at Charles and Thirty-first. He negotiated a single mattress and box spring, a lamp, two chairs, a table, and some pots and pans and kitchen utensils, claiming all the time to be the buyer, and asking my opinion about goods that he should or shouldn’t purchase. He played up the poor-Cameroonian-refugee role and bought all the stuff for sixty dollars, and got the student — a young woman from Weldon, North Carolina — to throw in two bath towels, two washcloths, and three dishtowels for free.
We carried the stuff by hand. It took us four trips, and Yoyo hurried me the whole time. We completed the buying and moving in less than two hours. Yoyo left me sweating on one of my new chairs.
“I have to go. Time to make money. Stay cool, my friend.”
Chapter 9
MILLICENT ESMERELDA CANE was my father’s older sister, and I had never met her. As far as I could tell, she and my father had not seen each other in years. My father habitually denied that anything had set them apart. Once, when I was a teenager, he said to me: “Sure I love her. She’s my sister. But she’s down there and I’m up here, so why make a fuss of it?” I didn’t believe him. I already knew that Mill had skipped my parents’ wedding, and that she had a thing about blacks staying within the race, and that she had never married — but that was all I knew.
It wasn’t hard to find her house. The phone book showed an M. E. Cane on Robertson Avenue. I drove by and saw a woman on the porch gesticulating at a man who was backing away. I parked and walked up the stone path. The man now struggled toward me with a heavy box in his arms. I heard him mutter, “Damn that old bat.” The box was open. I saw several volumes of the American Encyclopedia.
I walked up to my Aunt Mill. She was, as my father once said, as big as a house. Her forehead was pulpy, she had three chins, and she just got bigger and bigger from there on down. She looked at me over the rims of her half-moon glasses. “He told me I could return them at any time, and I’m returning them, so that’s just too bad, isn’t it? But man! He talked so much I wanted to hit him. On and on and on he went. So what do you want?” I said I was her nephew. “I ain’t got any white nephews. Not around here. So git off my — Wait!” She pulled the glasses down to the nub of her nose.
“I’m Langston Cane. The Fifth.”
“You Cane men pass that name down the line like it was an antique table,” Mill chortled.
“I don’t know what you have to laugh about, with a name like Millicent Esmerelda.”
“Oh my, he’s lippy, just like his daddy. I guess I got no choice but to tell you to step on up, Langston Cane the Fifth. You’re not in trouble, are you? Drugs? Guns? Police after you?”
“No.”
“I shouldn’t have asked. Look at you. You walk like a prep school boy. You ought to move your backside when you walk. Roll your butt and straighten your back. Around here, you have to look like a predator.”
“I’ve been walking this way all my life. I’m not going to change now.”
“Don’t come after me for money, ‘cause I ain’t got any. So you can just call up your daddy if you —”
I stopped climbing the steps. “I don’t need your money or his.”
“Hit your funny bone, did I? Well, git on up these steps. And pick up that Baltimore Sun. You’ll spare me bending down, which is a good thing, ‘cause when I sink that low, I’ve got no way to get back up.”
I handed her the newspaper and stepped inside. Mill’s house looked and smelled like a mausoleum. I didn’t believe she had ever opened a window or pulled back a curtain. Her shelves, desk, table, even the top of her television were covered with sculptures and mugs splashed with the names of foreign cities. Her living room looked like the inside of a Niagara Falls tourist shop. But the most striking thing was her collection of teddy bears. She had imitation grizzlies, kodiacs, polar bears, and bears brown and black. She had bears of every size and shape. They occupied bookshelves, perched on chairs, and saluted from above the fridge.
“Siddown here, let me get this Sunday Post off the chair.”
Mill looked for a place to put the newspaper and finally shoved it into the garbage bin. The paper began to rise out of the bin. She battered it back down with the heel of her palm.
“What can I get you?”
“Nothing, thanks. I’ve eaten.”
“Good. ‘Cause I don’t have much here. I usually order in. I only cook for the people at church. And that’s more than I care for. It’s beyond me how any woman could spend her life cooking for a husband.” Mill edged the glasses back down her nose. She was darker than my father. Her cheekbones jutted out, prominent even on her fleshy face. I could hear her low, regular wheezing. The pouches under her eyes were wrinkled and black, but the eyes themselves were alert. I felt them resting on my face. “I heard you lost a baby, and that things didn’t work out with your wife. That’s too bad.”
I looked at her, suddenly aware of how alone I felt. Barring the trip to Mali, this was the first time in years that I had traveled without Ellen.
“How did you know about that?”
“I hear from Aberdeen from time to time. So how are your parents and brother?” “They’re fine.”
“Your father is retired now?”
“Semi-retired. He sees patients in the afternoons, a few days a week. My mother still helps him. Does his books, handles appointments. Sean, as you probably heard, is a lawyer.”
“I heard he was doing very well.”
“That’s true. He’s a good man.”
“You were supposed to be the bright one, though. I heard about all those scholarships you got.” “That was a long time ago.”
“True enough. So what are you doing in this no-good city? Why in the world would you leave Canada? You ought to be up there right now, making up with your wife.”
“We’re divorced.”
“I don’t know what you want in Baltimore, but I can’t help you. I’ve been getting along fine by myself for more years than you’ve been living, and I ain’t about to let things get all stirred up now. How about we say good-bye? I might see you-all up in Canada one day — ‘cause I’m meaning to get up there. I spent part of my childhood in Oakville, you know.” With a great effort, Mill lifted herself up off the couch. She walked with her back bent.
I got up. “Take care of yourself, Mill.”
“You look like a baby, you know that? You’ve got a cute little baby face.” As I brushed by her on my way to the door, she slipped something into my shirt pocket. “That’s in case you’re short.”
I picked out the fifty-dollar bill. “I didn’t come here for money.” She wouldn’t take it back. I put it down on a teddy bear. She slapped it up and stuffed it into my pocket as I stepped outside. I slipped it in her mailbox and jogged down her steps. “Good-bye, son,” she called out. “Bye, Mill.”
I walked down the path toward Sarah.
“That your car?” she called out. I nodded my head as I unlocked the door. “Ugly little thing. Is that what people drive in Canada?”
“We’ve just got this one model.”
“Don’t mock me, son. I’m not as dumb as I look. Where you staying?”
“Three-oh-eight Adell Street. In Charles Village.” “Good. Down here in West Baltimore, black folks would eat you up.”
“There are black folks in Charles Village.”
“Not the same kind,” she said. “Around here, folks would use you for target practice. Well, if the police lock you up, don’t call me for bail.” I looked at her evenly. “I don’t hold no grudge against you, boy, even if your pappy did marry a white gal. It’s just that I don’t want to see you, is all.”
I drove away. In the rearview mirror, I saw her watching right up until I turned the corner.
Charles Village didn’t have a lot of shops and restaurants. In Toronto, a neighborhood teeming with students would have had delis and coffee houses on every block. Not Charles Village. The only place to eat on St. Paul Street was the Homewood Deli. It was gritty, unpretentious, and cheap. It served croissants, but on paper plates. Come to think of it, it didn’t sell a lot of croissants. More popular were grits, scrapple, corn biscuits, pastrami, and chipped beef. The Homewood sold regular coffee — none of the funny varieties with South American names and injections of steamed milk.