Do or Die Read online

  I listened and felt a sudden irritation. I was the victim, not the perp, and didn’t appreciate the interrogation. I knew Dad was motivated by fright, by Starr’s death. I imagined his blood pressure rising along with his voice. To ask him to calm down was useless.

  “Listen,” I whispered, “I know you two are upset. So am I. From now on, I’ll try to be more alert, watch my back.”

  But Tad wouldn’t let it lay. “All the alertness in the world won’t help if you’re out at that hour. You’re fair game. You need to be home in your house.”

  I turned to look at him and wondered if he was advising me or an errant child. He brought his hand up and his fingers brushed the back of my neck and then the lobe of my ear. My irritation ebbed, replaced by something else.

  “You gotta be careful,” he whispered.

  So do you, I wanted to say, but Dad was present. I remained quiet, leaned against his shoulder, and felt an exquisite tension build under the light touch of his fingers.

  “Promise me next time that you’ll call. I’ll pick you up from anywhere.”

  I glanced at him and at that moment I would have promised to walk on the moon. Things were getting a bit thick so I removed myself from the sofa and offered to fix coffee. Dad declined. “I got work to do,” he said and retreated back downstairs.

  Tad also shook his head. “Gotta get back. You sure you’re all right?”

  “Never felt better,” I whispered.

  “Good. No more night owl rambling, okay?”

  His kiss came so quickly, I didn’t have a chance to agree or not.

  Then he was gone.

  17

  So now it was evening and I had to meet Jo Jo. I waited until Dad left for the club before stepping out. I felt like a kid sneaking off to a forbidden rendezvous. If I hurried, I could be back before midnight. I thought of Cinderella and her curfew and decided it was all bullshit. I’d take as long as it took to get what I needed.

  At 116th Street, Jo Jo, who had been leaning against a lamppost, fell in step beside me when I approached. He guided his bike with one hand and the wheels made a slight clicking noise as we walked.

  The air was cooler but a sultriness lingered and the street was busy. An evening program had just concluded at Canaan Baptist Church and the sidewalk was teeming with parishioners. Jo Jo guided the bike slowly around them and we moved on, passing a succession of crowded African restaurants. The doors were open to the street and the sound of “Soukouss,” a popular West African song, spilled out over the noise and laughter.

  On Powell Boulevard we turned north. I glanced at the high wrought iron that enclosed Graham Court, where Zora Neale Hurston once lived. I walked slowly, waiting for Jo Jo to say something. Finally he said, “Charleston told me what happened. You all right?”

  “I’m all right,” I said. “I’m trying to find someone you might know.”

  “I figured that. When I saw you earlier, I didn’t know if it was a good idea to conversate just then. Sometimes folks get funny if they think you eyein’ ’em or tellin’ they business. I mean, I see a lot when I’m on these runs but I keep my tongue in my mouth and my mouth shut. Charleston say, ‘Better cool than a fool. See, and don’t say, and everything will be all right.’ ”

  I smiled at Charleston’s advice. Always taut, tight, and straight to the point. As we walked, I saw that although Jo Jo was as tall as I, he was thin as a rail. If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder when he’d had his last full meal. But I knew he ate well and probably worked it off with the bike.

  “Charleston said you’re into rap,” I said. “How’re you doing?”

  “Not bad. Not bad. Want to hear my latest?”

  “Why not?” I said, hoping I wasn’t going to be weighed down with lyrics glorifying those B and N words. At the first breath, I’d have to stop him cold. And I’d have to lose whatever chance I had of finding out about the Saturday woman.

  “Why not?” I said again.

  He started to snap the fingers of his free hand, opening the beat, and the words came out in a singular, acerbic rhythm.

  “… Downtown clown

  runnin’ all around

  tellin’ everybody

  that crime is down

  crime is down

  he a liar

  should be fired

  open up your eyes

  be surprise

  people on the street

  with nuthin’ to eat

  got no bed to

  rest they head

  that’s how it be

  but he can’t see

  crime ain’t down

  it still around

  he a liar

  oughta be fired.”

  I saw the flare in his eyes. He was caught up in the recitation and had to breathe hard to come down, but a minute later, he flashed a smile. “It ain’t finished yet. But how you like it so far?”

  “Pretty good. I think it’s the best I’ve heard in a long time, Jo Jo. The best one.”

  The smile faded and he turned serious again. “You know, I wrote that for my friend.”

  “What does he think of it?”

  “It’s a she. She ain’t heard it yet.”

  At 125th Street, he held his hand out, pointing toward the west. “She sick. And I can’t get her to go to the hospital. I was wonderin’ if you could talk to her; bein’ that you a woman, she might listen to a woman … and bein’ that you work in the hospital, doin’ the work you do. You know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Where does she live?”

  He hesitated then said, “I’ll have to take you there.”

  We veered west on 125th Street, passing Showman’s Bar, which was crowded with folks celebrating “retirees night.” Every seat was taken, the music from the jukebox was blasting, and the windows appeared frosted with air-conditioned excitement.

  We passed a string of bodegas, brightly lit hairdressers and nail salons. Folks lounged curbside in plastic beach chairs drinking beer. A ball game boomed from king-size portables and cries of support rose on the night air. “C’mon, whatcha gonna do? Already in the fifth and ain’t done nuthin’.”

  I listened as Jo Jo spoke of the woman we were going to see.

  “She was real pretty. Really somethin’ to see. I used to deliver to her place all the time. She’d come to the door dressed in those nice evening robes or dresses and she had a perfume that smelled real good. Her hair was done up in those blond wigs and she was always laughing, you know. Like she was on top of the world. She usually had a champagne glass in her hand and her tips were heavy enough to keep me happy for a whole week.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know. Never knew her real name. They called her Saturday ’cause that was her day off. I mean she must’ve made a pile of cash ’cause she always dressed in the best. Lived in a brownstone near Garvey Park.”

  Saturday. Sara Lee Brown. She was alive. Sick but still alive. I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice.

  “Did she live alone?”

  “Naw. Lived with that player just got iced. But she was outta there long before he got killed. I think he put her out when she got too sick to work.”

  At Broadway, the steel framework of the IRT elevated-train line curved overhead in a skeletal arc. The corners on the far side of the street shone with neon carnival banners of Taco Bell, KFC, and McDonald’s.

  Beyond that, near the river’s edge, stood the peeling, gray-steel girders of that stretch of West Side Highway that Robert Moses, in his heyday as the city’s master builder, had left devoid of architectural amenities because, he had determined, it passed through “the colored section.”

  “Gotta make a detour here,” Jo Jo said.

  On Broadway, we walked three blocks south to Obaa Koryoe, a large and elegant, candle-lit, Ghanaian restaurant near LaSalle Place. Jo Jo pored over the menu and decided on a take-out order of peanut soup, and a large dish of fried plantains and baked fish with jollof rice.

  �
��Saturday get tired of Charleston’s menu so I try to change up from time to time. She like that.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “Just lucky. Harlem ain’t that big, you know. One day I was bikin’ by and saw this sister diggin’ in one of the Dumpsters behind KFC. I went over to drop some coins on her, ’cause, you know, I was in that same situation myself once upon a time and if it wasn’t for Charleston, I’d be dead by now. So I never forget. Some days I give up my last nickel.”

  He dug into his leather fanny pack, extracted a fistful of quarters and stacked them carefully on the counter. He brought out more as the clerk tallied the bill.

  We collected the packages and walked back to 125th Street. The lights of a full-service gas station faded in the background as we passed a row of anonymous steel-shuttered buildings. We veered off from the Cotton Club, closed for the night, and walked in the thick darkness of the underside of the West Side Highway, past a club called Harlem Heat Wave, strangely located in an otherwise completely deserted area and lit like a beacon.

  Jo Jo slowed down. We approached a row of shuttered garages and auto repair shops which slowly declined into a string of abandoned walk-in storage bins. One bin, larger than the rest, had a corrugated roof and a rusted door held tightly in place from the inside by a loop of wire. The wind blowing off the river carried the faint odor of raw sewage.

  He motioned for me to wait. I stepped back as he approached the door with the packages and knocked softly. I didn’t hear anything from inside, but he must have because he called out, “It’s me. Jo Jo. I got somebody with me.”

  Another, longer pause and he said, “Can we come in?”

  The wire was drawn through the hole and slowly disappeared inside and the door was pushed open. Jo Jo laid his bike against the side of the wall away from the street and motioned for me to stand by his side. He stooped his head and I followed him into a small, airless space lit by an oil lamp. A kerosene heater was situated just inside the door, unlit, but the scent of the oil saturated everything.

  “This my friend Mali,” Jo Jo said, setting the packages down on a legless table that rested on a small crate.

  “Hello,” I said, gazing at Sara Lee Brown seated on a low stool. Tuesday had told me that Sara was in her mid-thirties but she appeared a lot older. Despite the weather, she was dressed in layers of clothing—a dress, a sweater, a coat, several pairs of socks, and a pair of men’s shoes. Shadows danced on the walls as she reached out to shake my outstretched hand.

  “How you doin’, Mali? Jo Jo, don’t tell me you went and finally got yourself a girlfriend. I don’t believe it.”

  When she smiled, I was surprised to see a full set of teeth, hers or someone else’s, but a full set nonetheless. Her thin face was a mask of fine lines, probably from dehydration, and her hair was covered by a print scarf knotted at the back of her neck. She had a dry cough and reached for a handkerchief to cover her mouth when she felt one coming on.

  “We brought you something,” Jo Jo said. He opened the packages and for a minute, the mélange of African spices filled the space and chased the odor of the kerosene.

  “This peanut soup’ll do you good,” he said, speaking softly as to a child reluctant to take its medicine. The spices worked their magic and in five minutes, the container was empty and she got started on the plate of fish, plantains, and rice.

  I looked around in the flickering light at the crates piled against the walls and at the bedroll that rested on a length of board atop a broken metal frame. The floor was covered with pieces of discarded carpet, and carpet padding was tacked to the walls. Old cushions, flat and stained, were stacked near the makeshift bed and a padlocked metal trunk, which probably contained all her worldly possessions, stood nearby.

  I was not going to get the story from her, not tonight at least. Probably not ever. She looked extremely frail and I imagined that whatever was wrong with her had probably cut into Short Change’s profits, so he had kicked her to the curb. From there, the Technicolor dream had evaporated, the blond wigs disappeared, and her life fell into a nightmare of living a week here, a week there, anywhere she had been welcomed. Sometimes, only for a night.

  Then when the novelty of her presence had been eclipsed by other realities, she had been shown the door by a string of well-meaning hosts who strung out the apologies:

  Sara, I got husbands/boyfriends/bills/kids/mouths to feed/things to do/etc., etc. You can understand where I’m comin’ from, can’t you?

  And she had nodded and smiled, always smiled because maybe she might be able to return one day when she came across a few dollars or some other miracle.

  And so this place beckoned. Cold and damp and dirty but where no one was likely to come up with those apologies.

  Sara Lee ate noisily, as if she was accustomed to eating alone and needed sound to keep her company. I had her story, most of it anyway, and she didn’t have to say a word.

  “I know what you thinkin’,” she said. She had glanced up before I had a chance to look away. “Life ain’t always been like this. At one time I was a high flyer. So far up there and so into the money that nobody could come close to what I made.”

  I glanced around the space crowded with the detritus of another life. I wanted Jo Jo to say something but he too was silent and seemed awed by how fast she had eaten. In less than ten minutes all the plates and containers were empty and now we sat silent in the dim glow.

  “Uh, Saturday, we were … I mean, I was wonderin’ if you changed your mind about goin’ to see a doctor, or maybe to a clinic.”

  She looked from him to me and back again.

  “With what? I told you before, it cost dollars even to walk across the street these days, let alone walk into a clinic.”

  She turned to me then, looking at my clothes, shoes, haircut, and the resentment at where life had brought her welled up but didn’t spill over as I had expected. Instead, tears came. “I’d like to get outta here. God knows this ain’t no way to live. One more week in this dirty place and I’ll be dead. If it wasn’t for Jo Jo …”

  Her voice was barely audible although we sat almost shoulder to shoulder in the small enclosure.

  “He used to deliver to me in the old days,” she said, nodding to him. “I was in a brownstone. Livin’ good. Very good. But things happened. I wasn’t as careful as I shoulda been. Now I’m sick as a dog. Probably won’t see another year …”

  I thought of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and the stuff that had happened in their lives—abuse, neglect, rape, the desperate need for love, for money; getting messed up by the wrong promise from the wrong man. Whatever it was that had brought them to this life, in one way or another, they had managed to survive.

  But Sara Lee had left before S.C. had been killed. I wanted to ask how long she’d been living here but I kept quiet. With no walls to hang a calendar, time for the hungry is measured by the next meal, the way time for an addict is measured by the next fix.

  The difference was that Sara Lee had probably had a major falling-out with Short Change. Maybe she was angry enough to even the score? I stole another glance at her in the dim light and at the appalling surroundings. I imagined the makeshift roof leaking in a storm, or collapsing under the weight of snow in winter; the door trembling against the wind from the river.

  Saturday, who was accustomed to fine lingerie and bed linen, now slept in an overcoat and when the temperature dropped, woke up with numb toes and fingers. I imagined her trying to wash up in the public bathroom of the fast-food restaurants on the corner. How often had they chased her away?

  I glanced at her again and saw the flat look of resignation. “Sara Lee, would you go to the hospital if we take you?”

  “You know this ain’t no way for you to live,” Jo Jo chimed in, backing me up. “Couple months you be dead.”

  Sara looked around, appraising her habitat. Jo Jo followed her gaze. “Remember how you used to live?” he asked softly.

  “I was well then,�
� she murmured. “Young and healthy and everybody said I was pretty. Everybody.”

  “And you were,” he said. “I remember how you were. So you gonna let us—”

  “What about my things? This is all I—”

  “Don’t worry about them,” I said. “We’ll take care of all that after we get you settled, okay?”

  That seemed to satisfy her and I said, “I’ll stay with you while Jo Jo finds a cab.”

  “Why not an ambulance?” he asked.

  “If we call an ambulance,” I said, “they’ll take her to the nearest hospital in the area and if she has no coverage, they’ll probably treat her and release her. Or worse, not treat her at all. Since I work at Harlem Hospital, I can cut through some tape and arrange a few things, especially long-term care once she’s discharged. And I don’t mean discharged to one of those shelters either.”

  Sara Lee looked at me and the skin on her drawn face seemed to take on color in the flickering light. “You bein’ for real?”

  “Yes, I am,” I said.

  18

  As the old folks used to say, especially if they had just missed hitting the number by one digit, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no damn luck at all.”

  It turned out that the Saturday woman was HIV positive, which I suspected. The dry cough had been a symptom of tuberculosis, which I had not suspected. This called for tuberculosis testing for everyone who had been in touch with her and everyone who had been in touch with those who had been in touch.

  Jo Jo had to take off from his lucrative delivery job to await results. Charleston was philosophical about the loss of business as he too went to be tested. “Shit happens” was all he said. Dad had to be tested and so did I.

  And of course when I saw Lieutenant Tad Honeywell, dedicated, hardworking member in good standing with the NYPD—even though officers were tested regularly and received booster shots, and even though I had not been in close, physical contact with him since I’d visited the Saturday woman—I felt bound to tell him of the situation. (Harlem being a small place and the Capitol of Communication, where the drums worked overtime, he would’ve heard the word soon anyway.)