No Time to Die Page 16

  “Beside, the one time I had my stuff delivered, boy was so ugly—”

  “Did he look ugly or did he act ugly?” I said, glancing from the flyer and sitting up in the chair.

  “Both.”

  “What did he do?”

  Bertha had reached into a large plastic bag, pulled out an armload of white towels, and begun to fold and stack them on the narrow counter. She stopped now and gazed toward the window in concentration.

  “Well, that’s a funny question ’cause you know, he really didn’t do anything but I kinda felt something. He stepped in, put the bags down—rather, he slammed ’em down—and had this look—like a dog has when the world is kickin’ ’im in the behind. Boy didn’t crack a smile when I said it was a good thing he wasn’t deliverin’ eggs.

  “He was mad at somethin’ or somebody so I didn’t let ’im take one step further into this place. Don’t need no bad vibes floatin’ ’round when I’m tryin’ to hit a number. And you know how the Five-O or the FBI can tag somebody by their DNA thing? Well, I work my own test. I looked at him and I said to myself, ‘Mmhmm. DNA Dat Negro Anxious.’ So I give ’im a tip and had him tip right on out. Then I locked my door.”

  “You locked your door?” I said. “You never do that.”

  Bert stopped folding again and held up her hand. “Well, there’s a first time for everything. I know he ain’t darkened my doorway again. I walk to that store, do my own shoppin’ and deliver my own stuff, and I’m satisfied. Besides, who knows what these delivery guys be pilferin’, then turn around and sell the stuff on the street, sometimes right back to the person they stole it from. Hell with that. I ain’t got time to be checkin’ every bottle, bag, and box. If I bring it home, I know it’s there.”

  I stared out of the window, listening as she spoke. … Don’t have time to check every item I buy. Probably sell it back to the person they stole it from.

  Or perhaps bring it back. Bring it back. Is this what he did?

  “What did he look like?”

  Bert touched her hand to her chin again. “Ah, lessee. Damn, that was a while ago and you know my brain ain’t functionin’ too tough in this heat. But I kinda remember him bein’ about maybe twenty-two or twenty-three years old, medium height, dark brown complexion, hair cut close, and had real big arms—like he was into weights or somethin’.”

  “You eat cereal? Cornflakes?”

  She looked at me again and I could practically hear the wheels turning, wondering what was coming, but she only shook her head. “Girl, you ask the damnedest things. But no. I’m a grits and greens girl from way back. No cereal for me.” Then she leaned over and scanned the flyer. “Why? You got a coupon or somethin’? I’m big on coupons.”

  “No,” I answered. “No coupon. Just an idea.”

  When I left the shop, a mass of thunderclouds had moved in, blotting out the sun and easing the temperature down a few degrees. More folks were in the street now, and moving fast, intent on completing as many errands as possible before the storm broke. I didn’t hurry because my next stop was only three blocks away.

  On 136th Street between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and Edgecombe Avenue, I stopped in front of Felicia Temple’s brownstone where a For Sale sign had been tacked above the door.

  I rang the bell and waited a few seconds, not sure if anyone was in the house. I was heading back down the steps when I heard the lock turn behind me.

  “May I help you?”

  A short, round, middle-aged woman stared down the steps at me. She seemed determined to smile through some profound anguish. “Are you here to see the house?”

  “Well, yes,” I said, making my way back to the door. We stepped inside and the woman said, “I’m Irene, the housekeeper. I’ll be here until the place is sold. If you have any questions …”

  She whispered but her echo carried through the room and she walked softly as if we were treading on sacred ground. I glanced at her sad expression and decided to tell the truth.

  “I’m Mali Anderson,” I said.

  “Mali Anderson? Were you here before?”

  “No. I’m Jeffrey Anderson’s daughter. My dad was a friend of Ms. Temple.”

  She put her hand to her mouth and smiled. “Oh. Oh, yes. Your father and Ms. Temple were very good friends. I—oh, this is so …” She paused, searching for the words in the silence. “You have an idea how I’m feeling about this situation. I’ve worked for Ms. Temple for so long, I can’t believe she’s …” The small smile faded as she retrieved a tissue from her pocket.

  “I’m supposed to keep an eye on things until everything is settled, but sometimes, at night, I listen, and I feel like she’s moving around right near me. I’m not afraid or anything but I can’t tell you how much I miss her. Maybe so much so that I’m imagining things. Sometimes I think I can still hear her laughter.”

  I nodded. “My dad said the same thing. How she laughed, smiled, seemed to light up every place she entered. He enjoyed being in her company.”

  We walked through the double parlor and stood for a minute in the back room. The rooms were large but seemed vast in their emptiness. I glanced at the pink-marbled fireplaces, the pier mirrors, the intricate moldings adorning the ceiling. Sunlight splashed through the Tiffany glass windows in the rear and imprinted a pattern of red, yellow, and blue on the parquet floor. Irene, still holding the tissue, gazed out into the garden.

  “This is where she did most of her work. Right down there.” Then she turned to appraise me with her sad eyes.

  “I suppose your dad … How did he take it? I know it’s been a while, but is he all right?”

  “My father,” I said without exaggeration, “was deeply affected. He misses her very much.”

  She turned from the window and we made our way slowly back toward the front of the house. “I simply don’t know how it happened,” she whispered. “I turn my back for one minute and she’s gone. Somehow I can’t help feeling that if I’d only been here. If I’d only—but no, I decided to go to Florida to help my sister organize my niece’s wedding. Something they could’ve done themselves. They didn’t need me. I see now that I was probably intruding on something they could’ve handled very well without me. I could’ve simply gone as a guest and returned the next day. But no. I had to go and leave Ms. Temple here to fend for herself.”

  She looked at me quickly and smiled a weak smile. Her dark, round face was lined around the mouth and her eyelids were crinkled from days and nights of crying.

  “No, I didn’t mean that ‘fend for herself’ thing. My God, she was a grown woman, perfectly able to care for herself, but she was too busy to do certain things, you know what I mean. Cleaning and ironing and cooking and shopping. I came here every day and that’s what I did. She had her job and I had mine.”

  “This is a big place. Housekeeping must’ve kept you very busy.”

  “Oh, I enjoyed it, especially the cooking. And the shopping was no problem. Supermarket right there on Lenox. Everything delivered fresh. Every Wednesday. Sometimes when she wanted something special, I’d take the bus down to the Union Square green market, but usually I shopped on Lenox, because it was so convenient.”

  “I suppose you’ll be sorry when the house is sold …”

  “Sorry, yes. But sort of glad too. I can’t tell you how upsetting this whole thing has been. Discovering her in that horrible, horrible condition. With all that—”

  “With all that what?” I whispered when it seemed that she wasn’t going to go on.

  When she was able to continue, she nodded quickly, as if to shake the image. “She didn’t even eat cereal,” she murmured, more to herself than to me. “The cereal was for me. And the police asking all those questions I couldn’t answer.”

  “Like what?” I said, not wanting to follow up on the cereal question. I had enough information already.

  “Well, like did anyone have a grudge against her? Did she owe anyone money? Did she have any enemies? Had she received any strange phone ca
lls? Things I knew nothing about. Then they wanted a list of my relatives, especially the male relatives. Wanted to know if I had left my keys with any of them. On top of my loss, I had to listen to that. I was so upset I went to bed and couldn’t get up for days. My doctor had to give me medicine to calm my nerves.”

  She looked at me and snapped her fingers. “Ah, here I am, going on and on. Painting such a bad picture. At this rate, the house will never get sold. You’re not interested in the place, are you?”

  “No, but my dad spoke of her so often I wanted to see the house before it was sold. It’s magnificent.”

  “You should’ve seen it when it was furnished,” she sighed.

  The bell rang again and Irene looked at her watch. “Expecting a young couple, doctor and his wife. Wife’s a painter, just like Ms. Temple was. They’ve been here twice already and I think they’re leaning toward …”

  She walked to the door, her footsteps sounding hollow across the empty room. I followed, knowing that my visit was over.

  Ache leaned out of the bedroom window and took another draw from his dwindling stash. The blunt was so hot it burned his fingertips. The clock across the street above the drugstore read nearly 10:00 P.M., time for Hazel’s talk shows to wind down. He waited patiently, holding the acrid smoke in his lungs as long as he could without choking, feeling no anger, no fear, just extra good. Even the voice that he usually listened to was quiet except to let him know that whatever was gonna go down would just have to go down, that’s all. This was it.

  He’d reached this point several times before, smoked half a bag once, only to have his courage drain away when he moved down the hall and approached the living room. Now he extinguished the smoke, dragging the reefer-filled cigar along the window ledge, and watched the tiny sparks waft like fireflies into the night. When they disappeared completely, he turned from the window to face his darkened room.

  This is different.

  He heard his footsteps moving. They sounded loud enough to drown out Hazel’s laughter as she clicked the remote, surfing the channels. The paper in his hand felt damp from his sweat but he didn’t care.

  This is different.

  Hazel looked up from the sofa and her smile disappeared at the sight of him. “What’s eatin’ you? I don’t wanna hear no shit about you bein’ mugged again.”

  “It ain’t that. It’s this,” he answered, surprised that his voice was so steady. “It’s this,” he repeated, liking the way he sounded.

  Hazel peered at the piece of paper in front of her and jerked back as if a snake had slithered across her lap.

  “Where the fuck you get that? You been riflin’ in my things?”

  “I needed it to show the recruitment people. They wouldn’t let me take the test without it.” He heard his voice waver and he grew angry as he felt his resolve begin to disintegrate under her stare.

  “So what good did it do you? No GED, you couldn’t even get in the door.”

  He held the paper so tightly it was in danger of shredding. “Yeah. I know. It says here that Nathan Milton is—”

  “I know what the fuck it says. I put it there, didn’t I?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Well you nuthin’! You wanna know why it’s on there? You wanna know what happened? I’ll tell you about that son of a bitch, Nathan Milton. I’ll tell you what he did.”

  She rose from the sofa abruptly, and instead of moving toward him, he was surprised to see her edge away, staring at him as if he had mutated into some alien thing. She maneuvered until she could go no further and leaned against the wall.

  “Our daddy,” she said. Her voice sounded as if she had swallowed marbles. He listened, dumbfounded, as she went on. “Yours and mine. You didn’t know that, did you? No, you too dumb to know anything. But you shoulda known somethin’ was up. You got the same damn ugly face. Every time I see you, I see him. He the one. Goddamn sommabitch.

  “I’m fifteen,” she said, raising her hand to her chest. “Fifteen, and he come in the midnight hour, all fortied up, tellin’ me I oughtta be glad. Ugly and fat as I am, nobody want me anyway so be glad he willin’ to do the job.

  “That’s what he said and that’s what he did, climbed on and started workin’ me, all the while calling me fat. Ugly. My own daddy. Your daddy. But after the third time, when I knew his shit was gonna be a habit, I sat down and figured out everything. I may be fat and I may be ugly but I got a brain. I figured out that rat bait work on the biggest rat. All you got to do is mix enough of it with sugar and put it in the coffee.”

  She did not pause to see what effect this had on her son but moved away from the wall and toward the television, the remote gripped in her fist like a weapon.

  “Even the fuckin’ doctors couldn’t tell or didn’t wanna be bothered tellin’. They didn’t cut ’im open or nuthin’. Looked at that gut blown up like a balloon and said it was ’pendicitis. That was the first time in my whole life I got to smile. Imagine that. ’Pendicitis. Ain’t that a laugh.

  “He gone but you still here. You still here. And every time I look at you, I hear how ugly I am. You don’t even have to open your mouth and I hear him. It’s like a radio ain’t never been turned off.”

  They faced each other, squared off like boxers in a ring too small to maneuver in, too confined to avoid the blows.

  “So now you know, and can’t do nuthin’ about it. Can’t do shit! He already checked out, and I”—she slapped her hand to her chest proudly—“I did it. Me! I beat you to it!”

  He did not move from the doorway but stared at her as she walked back toward the sagging couch. He had not seen her take this many steps in years, and when she moved, the folds shook under the filthy, tentlike dress.

  He tried to imagine her at fifteen and wondered what had changed except that she’d given birth to someone who never should have been born.

  Rat bait. His emotions seesawed between admiration—a keen, unfamiliar sensation—for her using the poison and profound hatred for how she’d made him pay. Day after day after day.

  And he thought of the one earlier instance when she’d moved this fast. That time, when he had given up, when he stood on the counter so hungry he trembled, and jimmied the lock on the cabinet. Food was behind the lock and he hadn’t seen any the entire day. He had listened to her snores and tried to work fast, absorbed in the thought of what he would find. He knew it was food. It had to be food, because she kept it locked up tight.

  The cabinet opened under the light pressure of the butter knife and a whole store was stacked before him, more than he’d seen at one time in one place in all his eight years.

  He’d reached for the nearest and largest item, a box of cornflakes, and stepped from the counter onto the stool but it collapsed under his shaking weight, sending him to the floor to stare in fright at the scattered cereal and then at his mother standing in the doorway.

  He was surprised at how quietly she worked, sweeping it up slowly. Then she looked around thoughtfully and began to sweep under the table, in the corners, angled the broom into the narrow greasy space between the stove and the fridge, pulling out the dirt, dustballs, cobwebs, dead roaches, roach shells, roach eggs, and quietly mixed it all in with the cereal.

  Then in one swift maneuver, caught him in a choke hold and slammed him and the box of cereal into the hall closet.

  He’d had no idea how long he was inside because there was no light. All he knew was that he ate the cereal, swallowed the dirt, consumed the roaches, vomited on himself, and then ate some more. He kept eating, trying to fill the hole in his stomach which seemed to grow larger with each fistful he brought to his mouth.

  The box was empty when the key turned again and one of her “overnighters”—the old nice West Indian one who, when he spoke fast, could hardly be understood—lifted him out, stripped his soiled clothes, and rushed him into the bathtub.

  “God damn, Hazel! When you gon’ stop treat de boy like a yard dog? Smell like fuckin’ shithouse for sure.”
>
  And she had yelled, “You want ’im, Pop?”

  That was the first time in a month that he’d touched water, actually bathed, and while he strained to scour away the filth, he strained to listen. He heard her laughter roll down the hall like a cascade of stones.

  “I’m axin’ you, Pop. Do you want ’im?”

  “Awh, mind now, girl. God watchin’ you, you know …”

  He remained still, trying not to splash, waiting for the response from the old man that might have delivered him, but it never came.

  He heard low murmurs and an occasional giggle as they popped the cans of beer and whispered some more and he waited and waited until the water had grown cold but they had forgotten about him.

  He watched her settle back on the sofa, her chest heaving as if she had run a mile.

  “So what you gonna do now that you know? What difference it make to you?”

  None at all, he wanted to say, but he could not answer. He moved away and allowed the scrap of paper, stained with his sweat, to fall to the floor.

  See, Ache. I coulda told you what the deal was. I knew it was somethin’ funny went down, but you know … looka here. Here’s what you gotta do …

  In the room, he lay down on the bed and squeezed his eyes tight, trying to shut out the sounds that seemed to flow out from the cracks in the peeling paint.

  Whatcha gonna do … Friday comin’. You ain’t got two coins to rub together. Not even for a hot dog. Can’t sneak in that kitchen. End up in that closet again. No food. No money. She kick you to the curb and you be nuthin’. She told you you was nuthin’.

  He opened his eyes wide now, staring into the dark, straining as the images came into focus. Ragged Natalie, the little girl left on the roof with the smile frozen on her face; the silver-haired artist in the garden who’d looked right through him; the pretty woman on Edgecombe who’d invited him in for that glass of water; the tough-talking sister on Seventh Avenue who’d put up one hell of a fight. And there were those three in the Bronx, anonymous and innocent.