I know I’m a good boy. Ask Mrs Washington, ask Brother John. Richie Jackson is a liar. A big liar. If he wasn’t a liar, I’d be in jail. Brother Samuel and I walk down the hall when we get back home. His black skirts go swish-swish as we walk past the eyes of the photographs on the wall staring down on me. Brother John is waiting for us at the door of the dorm. The three of us walk to my bed. It’s stripped down, no sheets, no blanket. Just the black and white mattress covered in plastic even though I’m not a bed wetter. On top of the bed is a big brown suitcase, open and empty. Brother Samuel looks at Brother John, then he turns and walks out of the room. It’s still dark outside, but the light from the parking lot is coming in through the cracks in the curtains of the window over my bed. I can hear the breathing of the boys still asleep and the strained silence of the boys not asleep, laying still, trying to hear what the fuck is going on. Which is what I’m wondering myself, what the fuck is going on?
“Pack,” Brother John says.
“Huh?”
“Pack up your things and don’t be all day about it.”
I look at him, but he has turned his back and is facing the window. I pull out my trunk from underneath my bed. I got on my basketball shoes, reach for my loafers, which are right beside my trunk and next to my rubber shower thongs. I put them in the big suitcase. Next I put in my other two pairs of jeans, my sweat pants and NYU sweatshirt, and my Nike jogging suit. I’m trying to put everything in neat. I never knew I had so many socks. Put in my briefs, pajamas. “Get your suit,” Brother John says. I straighten up and walk over to get my suit from where it’s hanging on a hook on the wall near the window, then I reach for my school uniform, jacket, vest, and pants that’s hanging on the hanger behind my suit. We give Mr Lee’s wife our dirty uniform once a week, she give us back a clean one for a dirty one. She talk like Mrs Washington: J.J., boy! If you get one inch taller, it’s gonna be all over! Ain’t gonna be a uniform in the house’ll fit you.
“Leave it!” Brother John says.
“Huh?”
“You don’t need to take the uniform. Get a move on! We don’t have all day for this nonsense!”
I put my blue suit in with the rest of my clothes and my miniature chess set in a box that opens out to be a chessboard. Mrs Washington gave it to me even though I don’t know how to play chess. I put my calculator that runs on solar energy, red purie boulder marble, and my toy clown Gonza in. Against the wall in my milk crate is all my books. You don’t have to lock books up, nobody steals them. I look at my Norton Reader, Earth Science for the Intermediate School, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which is loaned to me without me asking from Mrs Washington, Twentieth Century Art—
“Just”—Brother John’s voice sound funny now, less black, like, I don’t know—“just take Hamlet and your other paperbacks.”
I put The Call of the Wild, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Crazy Horse, Black Boy, David Copperfield, Indian Chiefs, Donald Goines’s Dopefiend, and Hamlet in my suitcase along with my loose-leaf binder. Brother John hands me the brown leather bomber jacket he got out the donation box for me.
“Do you have anything in the bathroom?”
The long glass shelf under the mirror appears in my head, the little section that’s mine with my name written on a piece of masking tape taped above the glass, with my toothbrush, toothpaste, and Mennen’s underarm deodorant and Vaseline lotion from Mrs Washington, Don’t walk around all funky and ashy.
“Yeah, I got some stuff.”
“Well, go get it.”
When I push the door open into the hallway, I hear Brother Bill shouting, “How’d he end up here in the first place if he has family willing to take him!”
“Brother John liked him—”
“Brother John liked him! Brother John liked him! What the hell is that supposed to mean, Brother Samuel?”
“It started out as an emergency placement—”
“This kid is here illegally because someone liked him! Are you crazy? Do you know what could happen if this harassment thing gets in the air and they find out the perpetrator is illegally living on the premises because someone liked him? For God’s sake, there is a thing called the law!” Brother Bill is screaming like hysterical.
“Well, he was an orphan. Three years ago we had a different—”
“I don’t believe this—”
I open the door and step out into the light and walk down to the bathroom to get my stuff. I don’t believe nothin’, everybody’s a liar. I hate Brother Bill, he cares about everyone else, not me. I get my toothbrush and other things from the bathroom and head back to Dorm Three. I almost bump into Mr Lee, who’s coming through the door too. He looks over his shoulder at me, shakes his head like he’s sleepy, then walks up to Brother John and hands him a manila envelope and a plastic bag. Brother John hands me the envelope.
“These are important papers—your birth certificate, your parents’ death certificates, immunization records, and other papers. This”—he hands me the plastic bag—“is the stuff from your locker.”
It’s my picture of my mother’s friends and my two letters, kaleidoscope, and other stuff.
“Make sure you put them in a safe place when you get to . . . to where you’re going.”
I put the bag and envelope on top my loose-leaf binder and close the suitcase. Brother John picks up the suitcase, and I follow him out the door staring at his big ass, then the floor. I don’t know where I’m going, but at least I won’t have to hear his fake nigger accent anymore.
It’s still kinda dark outside. At the end of the sidewalk, a car is parked. The driver sits up like he had been sleeping. Brother John asks him to open the trunk.
“I’ll get it,” the driver offers.
“Don’t bother,” Brother John says, and puts the suitcase in the trunk, then opens the rear door for me, and I climb in the backseat. Brother John looks like a giant old lady in his long black robe. I pull that robe up and jam my dick up her old asshole like it’s paper! Cut her throat! I fall back in the seat look away from Brother John at the back of the driver’s nappy head, then out the window at the swish of Brother John’s black robe up the sidewalk walking back into St Ailanthus. The car pulls away from the curb.
WHY? WHERE I’M GOING? I ain’t did nothing wrong. I’m a good boy! I’m not a homo, I didn’t do nothing to Richie Jackson. They, he, even said he couldn’t see who it was. I know it wasn’t me, and now because of that bitch I’m being sent away? Where’s this car taking me? I’m gonna run up on him one day and like kill his ass! I . . . I get so . . . so depressed when I think about motherfuckers telling lies on me I don’t know what to do—
“Here we are,” the driver says, pulling up alongside the curb in front of a big tree.
“Huh?” We ain’t been riding ten minutes. It’s just barely light out. I look out the window. The tree has grown so big it has grown into the protective iron gate surrounding it, the stakes of the gate sticking out like a barbwire crown. Broken glass and a big pile of dog shit so big an elephant could have dropped it is on the ground in front of me when the driver swings the door open for me to get out. I don’t move.
“Come on, man,” the driver says. “This is you.”
He walks around to the trunk, takes out the suitcase, my suitcase, I guess it’s mine—a present from St Ailanthus? He sets it on the sidewalk. I, a part of me, still don’t believe this shit done happened. How could anyone believe I did some weird shit to Richie Jackson? They’re crazy.
“Come on, man.” The guy yanks the door handle, pulling at it even though the door is already as open as it can get. Cool, cool, I try to respond cool like a man. “Hey, man, where you taking me?”
“I done already took you, little brother, you is here.”
“What here, man?”
“I don’t know what it is, all they tell me is where it is and who it is. So, you know, 805 St Nicholas Avenue, man
. This is your new crib.”
I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I know I gotta get out this dude’s car, which I do, stepping over the pile of shit onto the sidewalk. I go to pick up my suitcase, he tells me chill out he’ll carry it. The streetlamps blink off by the time we get to the front door. Morning. I look at the words over the numbers on top the door, ST NICHOLAS ARMS. What’s that? The driver touches the iron-gated glass door, and it swings open, ain’t no lock, nothing, we just step inside like Yo! Ho! Ho! Hello. The lobby is like a huge dirty white cave covered with graffiti from the filthy cracked used-to-be-white floor tiles on up the marble walls tagged NEMO, Ja Rule, someone on the fifth floor named Bettie is a ho who will suck anybody’s dick, even the high domed ceiling is tagged, how they get up there?
“You goin’ to your folks?” the driver guy says.
“My parents are dead,” I say. What’s all this “folks” shit? I hate niggers talk all corny.
“Say here ‘St Ailanthus temporary emergency placement. Permanent placement with grandmother Ms Mary Johnston and great-grandmother Toosie Johnston—’ Say your grandmother currently in hospital and when she returns home you are to be placed with her—umm...” His voice disappears in the lobby, then comes back even more confused. “Hmmm, she musta been sick a long time.”
I look at him, stupid shit! I feel like I’m out on Coney Island in the House of Mirrors, where every real shit comes back distorted. You’re real. The distortion is an inaccurate reflection of you caused by the use of fucked mirrors. Bent mirrors, elongated mirrors, wiggly mirrors—but shit ain’t you. Or is everybody all of a sudden on fucking acid or E? He looks at me stupid like he is, big-lipped black motherfucker. I stare at him with as much hate as I can muster up. Man, if this jigaboo stupid ol’ motherfucker say one more word—
“Yeah—” he says.
“Yeah WHAT!” I scream, and rear back to leap on his ass.
He drops the suitcase and whips out a gun. Whoa!
“Yeah this, motherfucker. You move on me, kid or no kid, your black ass is dead. I don’t know what your problem is, but I get paid to drive people, get it? Drive motherfuckers, deliver’em to the door of where they going, stand there until someone open the door—someone whose name is the same as the one on the piece of paper they give me, then stand there until the door closes behind the motherfucker. You dig? You dig?”
“Yeah.”
“I ain’ done nothin’ to you, brother man. Nothin’! ” He looks at me like I’m that pile of shit that was in front the car door. “You done got use to pushing people around, ain’t you? The world ain’t a bunch of little kids, my man.” Then his face changes back into the face it had been before he pulled the gun and he picks up the piece of paper he had been reading from.
“Now, like I was saying.” He sticks the gun into a holster under his shirt. “She must have been sick a long time, ’cause, OK, you was supposed to go to your grandmother’s house when she came out the hospital—naw, must be a typo or some shit, that was four years ago—I’m just telling you what it says. Well, you all can straighten all that shit out, the details, later.
“Go on.” He nods toward the elevator, signaling me to walk in front of him. In the elevator he slides his back up against the wall, still holding on to the suitcase. “Press six, we’re going to Apartment 610.” He stops, looks at me. “You alright, buddy?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” You asshole.
“This is it,” he announces as the elevator stops on the sixth floor. He follows me out the closing doors. Everything seems slowed down. I look at my feet. They’re moving. I hear the feet behind me moving. It’s not that I’m dragging my feet but that the air, yeah, the air is providing so much resistance. I feel like I’m walking through water. I see her face in it, ripply but clear. Funny, I been trying so hard to remember, so long nothing, and now everything is so clear.
“Come on! Get a move on, brother man!”
It’s not me, I want to tell him, it’s the thickness of the air, or water, or whatever’s rising. “I don’t know where I’m going!” I shout back at him. Fuck his gun. Hallway stinks, pee. I wish he would shoot me! If I had the gun, I’d shoot myself. The hallway looks like it’s been painted with blue snot. She’s so pretty. Her hair smells like perfume.
“Six-ten, this is it. Stop! Ring the bell!”
I look down at my shoes, bigger than the driver’s. I should jump him, let him kill me, but all of a sudden I never been so tired in my whole life. I’m too tired to jump him. Plus I never had a fight with a grown man before. I’m only thirteen. The place where the bell should be is a bunch of wires, painted the same weird color as the hallway, sticking out a hole in the wall.
He knocks on the door hard. First nothing, then I hear some feet, not walking but dragging, shuffling like scrape-step scrape-step stop. Hear the thing over the peephole move back, feel the door get ready to open. Remember the snotty-eyed collie at Miss Lillie’s. Shit, I had forgot all about that. Hail Mary Mother of God blessed art thou among sinners and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. The door opens. The driver reaches in his pocket! But it’s for the scrap of paper, not his stupid gun.
“Is this the residence of Mary Lee Johnston and Toosie Johnston?”
“Who wanna know?”
“Ma’am, the Black Star Car Line, driving for, doing pick up and delivery for the Bureau of Child Welfare, Services for the Mentally Retarded and Lincoln Hospital Outpatient Services in the Bronx. Are you Mary Lee or Toosie Johnston?”
“Who you?”
“Oh, man!” The driver is getting pissed. “I ain’t got all day. Lady, is this your grandson or great-grandson?”
“Gotta be, he look jus’ like his daddy, jus’ like his daddy.”
She’s short, real short. Bent over, if she wasn’t looking at me, I wouldn’t be able to see in her face, which is dark and deep-lined with wrinkles. Ashes to ashes. She’s old. Do old people like that fall asleep and die when they’re asleep? Miss Lillie said that about somebody once. How y’all? Come on in, you ain’t scared of dogs? Big tall yellow ugly fat in her pink polka dots. I hate dogs! Old Batty Boy, I kill you now, dude! I feel a surge of anger. No living relatives! Smell funny in her house. Her eyes are yellow. It’s obvious she ain’t my relative. But if the brothers lied about this shit, maybe they lied about my pops. But this bitch ain’t none of my nothing! Grandmother or anything else.
“OK, now I’m gonna ask you again one more time, ma’am, are you Ms Toosie Johnston or Ms Mary Lee Johnston?”
“I tell you what, one of de somebodys you talkin’ ’bout is dead, so shut up!”
The driver look like he want to shoot her now. I hope he does. He don’t say nothing, though. She got on an old no-color dress, like a rag almost, like something from slavery movies in Black History Month. Air coming out the apartment stinks, old fried chicken grease, mothballs. What happened to this little boy doll here? Ophelia floating down the river, STUPID!
“Ain’ nobody but me—”
“Me who!” the driver shouts.
“Toosie Johnston!” she shouts back, and he shoves my suitcase inside the door.
“I wanna go back!”
“No happenings, man. I got things to do. This done already took me twice as long as it was spozed to! You know what time I was there to pick you up? Git inside, man. Adjust yourself. Stop acting stupid. These are your peeps.”
She pulls the door open wider. I walk in past her. She shuts the door. The driver’s footsteps are disappearing. She gets in front of me, I pick up my suitcase and follow her down a vestibule, then we turn into a long dark hallway lit by one dangling lightbulb that reminds me of the cartoons where the giant opens his mouth to swallow you and his tonsils is dangling. The hallway is painted the same blue as the walls outside of the apartment, the linoleum floor looks like black and green paisley flowers or something. Some places the layers of linoleum is worn through to the wood. Doors on either side of the hallway are closed tight. Five doors. The old la
dy walks slow dragging a leg, this is slow like erosion, Brother John always teaches about erosion, the slow gradual wearing away of the earth’s surface. I can’t imagine myself as old as her, maybe she’s sixty maybe she’s a hundred? The rank smell is getting stronger.
“Come on!” she says. I look down at her, her hair is in snowy white little braids. I start to laugh, the laugh gets caught in my lungs somewhere. She drags her leg ’cause it’s swollen like an elephant leg, the rest of her is crunched and dark. Come on where? On my right are three doors, on the other side of the hallway are two more closed doors and an arched open doorway that’s probably the kitchen. She pushes open the first door on the right.
“Dis yourn.” Yourn? This is THE HOUSE OF MIRRORS! Goddamn!
“I’m yo muh’deah. Call me Muh’deah or Toosie, your mama useta call me that steadda Gran’ma.” Mine? Toosie? Muddy? “I don’t rent out this room no mo’, I never really did. It useta be mines, ya know.” No, I don’t. How the heck would I know? I look down at her, her dress look like she cleaned a bicycle chain with it. I—This is all a weird mistake. I ain’t staying here with this . . . this witch.
The room looks like it’s for a lady or old people or something. There’s a big old four-poster bed and a large wooden wardrobe. And in front of the bed up in the corner is a tall oval mirror and next to it like a vanity table with a skirt around it. There are two windows with the shades pulled down. Everything—the bedspread, the linoleum, the skirt around the vanity table for putting on makeup—is this ugly green and black color, in different designs, the curtains and bedspread is like green and black forests, and the floor is green and black paisley linoleum. Two chairs are upholstered in the forest. A roach is crawling out a big crack in the linoleum toward me, ain’t even afraid. I don’t get this, I got a home, a bed. I feel like someone cut my heart out and is eating it in front of me. I feel stupid, wild, lonely, like after my mother die everything just fall apart.
“Gone put yo’ stuff up.” What time is it? I put my suitcase on the big bed. My bed is a kid’s dorm bed. Today is like when my moms died, only it ain’t, today ain’t that day, and there’s been a big mistake and—what time is it? I really should be in school. Another roach crawls toward me, like to show me who rules. It’s what, about seven, eight o’clock? ’Bout this time I usually be in school. I run over to the window, try to lift one of the dirty brown shades and it comes a loose crashing to the floor! Outside, the sun is shining. Yeah, by the time the sun is up like that, I usually be in school. Yeah, eight o’clock I usually be in school, but I’m here in this dingy-ass room. Look like the green and black forest is alive or some shit, advancing on me. What am I doing here instead of school where I should be. Goddamn, this is a horrible-ass mistake! Brother John said himself he was very pleased with my progress and that I would for sure be in the computer class next semester. For Chrissakes! Holy Mary Mother of God! Today is what, Thursday? My first class is English Select, which I’m already late for! I’m never late to class. I love that class, school. If I don’t be a dancer, I’m gonna be a computer programmer or something when I grow up. I better not have missed class! Select is very special, it’s a privilege to be in it. We’re a group of boys that read ahead in our English text, The Norton Reader, which is really for high school and college kids. We select the text we want to read, discuss and write about it. (We never pick anything easy.) We picked Hamlet, not Mrs Washington, even though she’s a fucking Shakespeare freak. Also what “Select” means is we’re selected from the pool of students based on our ability and previous performance to be in that class. I must be fucking bugging, BUGGING! To be sitting up in this . . . this roach hole when I got a class, classes. I open the suitcase and snatch out my brown leather bomber jacket. Even if I missed English, I can still make earth science!