Stateway's Garden Page 16

  One time, I stole some binoculars from a store on the North Side, almost getting caught in the process, just so I could see what really goes on at the beach. There would be kids tossing balls around; I saw the clean coats of dogs that weren’t of a mixed breed, big boats at least thirty miles from the shore looking as though they were heading to the actual state of Michigan, and dirty brown sand a similar color to the water.

  We were not allowed to go to the beach. Weren’t really allowed to go past Martin Luther King Drive because the police harassed us terribly. They were stoplight military police and they’d swirl around in cars and pickups like border patrol in Mexico. Kevin had been manhandled numerous times for trying to hang out by the water. I never wanted to go. Mother said it shouldn’t be a big deal not going to the water anyway. Black people are not a water kind of people. But I’d still admire the view from the ramp, sipping a beer and believing in some way I was cousin to the water that was fighting and crashing into the shore.

  After sitting out there those two or three hours, my brother might finally come out. He’d stuff his hands into his pockets and smile at me as though we were friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. He’d walk down the front hall with the girl, who I’d probably see around the buildings again before I’d see my brother. At that moment my head would lower and I’d walk slowly back into our condo-apartment.

  We had a nineteen-inch television right at the door, using a coat hanger as an antenna, propped up on another floor-model TV that hadn’t worked my entire life. Our couches were blue and kept almost clean by my mother. We had a large closet with nothing inside but coats and shoes smelling of mildew. The floors in the living room were black and made of a smooth and shining version of porch concrete. If you fell while playing—and I did—things could get pretty bad. Forty stitches across my forehead sealed a cut from chasing a cat we had.

  Most times, though, it was almost like I was living alone. I’d be by myself the majority of the time until Mother came from work. Yes, she off-and-on worked but didn’t have a regular schedule like most secretaries or coffee-go-getters. Mother worked her job three days a week, part-time, but came home as infrequently as a Midwestern truck driver.

  “You and your brother are old enough to take care of yourselves now,” she’d say as she left in the mornings or late at night. The first time she said that I was six or seven. From what was explained, she and my father broke up when I was about two, and he’d seen me three times since. I don’t remember any of those. Point is, she took their breakup hard, vowing to spend the remainder of her young-looking days finding his replacement.

  Mother didn’t look young at all by then.

  She was a living replica of the building we lived in: lighter skinned with a newly widened body, and as she grew older there were small pimples forming on her face acting like little windows to her thoughts. Mother was nice to any and every man she met outside our building but was rather impatient with me. When I was younger she’d say, “Smile at all the men you see, son. I want them to know you’re a good boy. We may just be walking by your next daddy.” It seemed she was training her daughter to trap a husband and not her then six-year-old son.

  Mother worked at a law firm downtown, inside the Loop right at Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street, and caught cabs to and from work, which were paid for by her boss. Although Mother was from the Stateway Gardens housing projects filled with poor black people, she was quite conscious of the fact that millionaires lived within minutes of her. I guess I was too. Chasing them was her way of getting out, of finding an exit.

  But I knew the millionaires and I shared something more important: our condo views of the city. On days I thought of my mother I’d walk to the east end of the ramp. There, leaning with a beer against the gate, I could see the “L” station clearly. It was located on Thirty-Fifth, right in between Wentworth Avenue and La Salle Street. Silver train tracks seem to shine even when they’re dirty. I would hold my arm into the air, then press it against the gate while closing one eye, and imagine the tracks as a new bracelet or a watch against my wrist. From that spot on the east end of the ramp you could also see everyone who entered and exited the building.

  A couple of times, I was lucky enough to see my mother coming in. From hundreds of feet away Mother’s thighs looked as thick and muscular as those on racehorses. For work she wore the normal corporate outfits: dry-cleaned business suits, white tops and skirts that revealed small sections of pantyhose, high heels that clattered loudly and made her sound as though she’d arrived with a stable of ponies, and she kept what little hair she had neatly pinned away from her face. I’d run quickly into our condo-apartment and brush my teeth to remove the smell of beer from my breath and gargle as much mouthwash as I could. I always thought it would be cool to carry Mother’s briefcase. Briefcases make black people look important. By the time I’d make it to the first floor, something would be there in place of the briefcase: a firm face. Mother looked as though upon entering the building she was rewarded for working by walking through a mood-swinging drive-thru that replaced whatever good energy you had with what the building contained. It was impossible to be positive in the projects. Not many people worked normal jobs. There was no motivation to. I’d catch her standing in the hallway of the building, in the middle of the first-floor hall, which was probably twenty-five feet long. It was decorated and perfumed with that same graffiti and piss. To the left was the elevator.

  The elevator door was made of a dull version of iron that over time looked gray and resembled the bolted and sealed versions of safes in a bank. It closed with a similar heavy-handed thunder, reminiscent of prison doors. Although there were two elevators, they never worked at the same time. They took sporadic shifts, like co-workers enjoying a cigarette break, and made creaky noises when traveling up and down. Mother and I would have to wait for whichever one decided they’d show up for work that day.

  Waiting wasn’t a problem for me. I was patient and still enjoying the buzz from beer and the view of the lake. Mother was the opposite when coming from work. From what she said, there were no men with potential in the projects, so her face remained hard. She’d lean against the concrete wall, tapping her fingers against it in a typewriting motion. When she saw me, she usually said little. I’d carefully position myself right next to her, quietly, trying to imitate that typewriting motion.

  “You check the mail?” she’d ask without turning.

  “Yes.”

  “Anything?”

  “Nah.”

  “Nothing? Nothing at all?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “You seen your brother?”

  “Nah.” Although I had, I’d shake my head to match.

  “Anybody you know that knows where he is?”

  I’d shake my head again.

  Mother then took the three steps to the elevator button with her pinned hair beginning to dangle from the sides of her head.

  “You know which one of these stupid things is working today?” she asked.

  “I don’t think either one of them is.”

  “Figures.”

  “I walked up and down, Mother.”

  “I can’t walk fourteen flights of stairs in heels.” She began biting her lip. “I’d get all kinds of corns and calluses on my feet. No man wants an already old woman with ugly feet.” I’d look down at her shoes and nod. “As messed up as this place already is, they actually talking about putting people out of here.”

  “Putting who out, Mother?”

  “That’s what they’ve been whispering for a little while now. That they’re gonna tear the buildings down. The politicians said soon.”

  Mother continued pressing the button with increased force. When she turned toward me again, the light skin of her face was red.

  “You go to school today?”

  “Yes, Mother,” I said and nodded agai
n.

  “Good. Yeah, that’s good.”

  “It was fun.”

  People continued walking by us briskly in the elevator hall. Mother looked at each one and turned up her nose.

  “That’s really good, then,” she said as though there were no pause in conversation. She took her hands from the button on the wall and stood directly in front of me. “You have to make sure you finish that school,” she said. “Have to do your best to get away from here on your own. Don’t ever let nobody just put you out of a place. They don’t want us living over here by this lake anyway, especially not for what we pay.”

  That’s when it would begin: Mother’s use of big words to explain how we lived on property considered to be worth more than our lives. In papers she read about how our project buildings brought the lakefront area’s property values down and that over time we’d be shipped like slaves to various suburbs that were far from the city’s limits, given stipends to pay mortgages on homes we didn’t ask for, and kept at bay in an ignored neighborhood away from the city’s real money.

  “You have to get out on your own, son,” she’d say while focusing somewhere on my face. “You hear me?” She’d then look me right in the eye. “Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Don’t let nobody move you out. That gentrification thing they’re talking about is worse than an eviction. At least if you’re evicted it’s because you didn’t pay rent or broke some damned rules. In that process you’re forced out with no say-so, they don’t even give you a reason. Just think of that, son. And they try to call it restoration.” She’d take a breath. “Tracy, you listening to me?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Are you sure that letter didn’t come?”

  “Nah, it didn’t.”

  “We really need that. We get it, we’ll move.”

  Right then the elevator door opened and we’d step on. I made sure to allow Mother to go first; she taught me manners. As we rode slowly up each flight, on an elevator that stopped on every floor even though the only button pressed was fourteen, I’d rack my brain trying to figure out what those words she used meant or thinking of something to make conversation with Mother. I knew she’d be heading into the apartment to change into something that would force her to go right back out.

  No sooner than the sun went down, and the fireworks from the opening inning of a White Sox game began vibrating our building, Mother was heading for a bath. I’d hear her humming in the water. She pulled clothes bought by her boss from the closet in her bedroom: a red dress here, leather or suede boots there, pretty panties, necklaces, perfumes, whatever was needed, because he was always who she wanted to impress. Mother told me that her boss was our ticket out of the projects, that he was going to put us in a nice apartment on the North Shore, or somewhere we could live easily. He promised she’d have a full-time position within six months of working for him, making money comparable to the attorneys’ secretaries at his firm. He promised. She believed. But being honest, Mother had no experience as a secretary. No real work history at all.

  She met her boss at a lounge in Hyde Park, about four miles southeast of Stateway. By then, hanging late at lounges was something she did a lot. I’m sure she met him while with friends of hers who went to those lounges for the same thing. I pictured him that night wearing a black suit with pinstripes, shoes shined by guys that worked the underground station at the Metra, and having very little cash in his pockets because he carried Visa or American Express cards only. Mother was sure enough sitting at the bar with her legs big, striking, and crossed, skin shining from Johnson’s baby oil and skirt pulled above the knee, using eyelashes she spent hours curling to get his attention. He bought her and her friends all the drinks they could handle because he could afford to and told Mother how wonderful she looked, how wonderfully better he could make her look.

  And I met him the next morning.

  Mr. Caldwell was the darkest and tallest black man I’d ever seen, taller than Kevin, who was at least six foot one, taller than baseball players at Comiskey Park. It was obvious that being rich sat well with him. Most would assume that a man wearing a suit as expensive as his surely would not be in a project building, and definitely not dealing with the women living there. He walked through our condo-apartment that next morning as though he owned all the property on State Street, including our buildings.

  Eventually, he began coming to our house late at night when Mother was home, at two, three, and sometimes four in the morning. He’d walk past me on the porch as I attempted to admire the waves of water on the lake. I remember him once tossing five dollars at my feet like it was a bone to occupy a Great Dane. Wasn’t even enough to buy a twelve-pack.

  Mother would have already prepared herself in the bedroom for his late-night visits, getting fully dressed only to get undressed within eight minutes. She’d tell me make sure to stay outside awhile. But I didn’t. And they didn’t sound like my brother and his girls. Mr. Caldwell spoke to Mother as if he hated her, like she was the mutt he couldn’t train to do tricks. The banging against the concrete wall had the irregular rhythm of a drum, and he’d race to the front door the minute the yelling and heavy breathing stopped, passing me quickly on the porch as I stood there peering at the flashing lights of Chinatown. He headed abruptly down the stairs. Never had the patience to wait for the elevator. I’d follow just to make sure there was nothing in the mailbox.

  Mr. Caldwell was married. Happily married judging from the shine of that gold ring on his finger. Mother said when you’re married, you have to take what you can get on the side, and from the way she described her dealings with Mr. Caldwell on the elevators when coming from work, she was definitely more than he thought he could have on the side. He sent cabs for her on early mornings and late evenings, usually on the four days she was expected to be at work as his personal assistant. She was off Fridays but didn’t come home. Mother wouldn’t so much as leave a message or a phone number while being gone for so many days.

  She eventually fell in love with Mr. Caldwell. He was the kind of man she needed, the man who could take us out of the projects. Problem was, Mr. Caldwell didn’t like me. Said to my mother that I always gave funny looks that made him feel uncomfortable. Actually, I don’t remember looking him in the face at all. I recognized his husky Lincoln Town Car when he pulled into the parking lot, the strong cologne as he sprinted past me on the porch heading up or down the stairs, and his voice (I heard it from the room). Mother said she wasn’t taking any chances on losing what she’d worked so hard for, on finally moving away from the projects. She especially wasn’t going to lose it on account of me. I was old enough to take care of myself anyway.

  “I asked you to smile at him,” she said firmly. “That’s all I asked you to do.”

  I assumed that by looking away when he came to our apartment, not noticing the five dollars he threw at my feet or the wrapper from the rubber dangling from his suit jacket’s pocket, that I was smiling at him. He stopped coming to our house on those late-night visits and Mother came home less. It didn’t stop me from checking the mail looking for the letter. But from what she explained whenever she showed up to grab clothing and ask about the letter, he found her a nice apartment downtown on Roosevelt Road, next to Lake Shore Drive. It had expensive furniture and couches with well-designed pillows and no crates underneath. They went to dinner on nights he visited her there. Since Mr. Caldwell took care of my mother and her new apartment, she made sure I was nowhere around. I didn’t smile enough so I wasn’t allowed to know the address. Probably would have stopped by with Kev when we did our thing in that area. Mother explained that she needed me at home anyway. I was to continue checking the mail and know exactly what day we’d be able to move. We’d move before they tore down our buildings and took my views of Chinatown and Comiskey, of Lake Michigan and Minnesota to make new condos, before they got the chance to stick us in
a suburb we never wanted to go to.

  Because there was only one exit.

  STEPHANIE WORTHINGTON

  The two of them sat together over martinis, homemade (motel-made), mixed with inexpensive Dmitri vodka and a couple of olives bought from the liquor store on the corner of State Street. Said they needed a sophisticated drink for the occasion. She remembered his thin yellow legs folded over the bed and hands tightly closed in knuckleballs pressing firmly into the mattress. She sat in a hard white chair, a little dusty, anxiously speaking about the joys of leaving the city, of leaving what they knew. Her voice filled with so much ambition that even roaches crawling around in hopes of leftover pizza crumbs stopped, looked up, and listened enthusiastically.

  Stephanie Worthington was once a timid girl, an almost tall (five foot seven) black girl from the South Side of Chicago. She was curvy and had a good look, a real good look. Back home she was called “Ms. Sade,” elegant, too sophisticated for the environment, with a smile revealing her perky mouth. Or perhaps she more closely resembled Anita Baker, with the precise jawline and versatile hair. But either way, everyone agreed that Stephanie had the stuff to go somewhere. Such talk.

  Jacob was a lean and light black boy with square shoulders. He lived in the project building across from hers, located on Federal Street. Many people thought they were brother and sister, not boyfriend and girlfriend, considering how they matched each other. Already, at nineteen, Jacob looked great in a suit. He had slanted eyes making him look “different” from other black people and repeatedly said he was willing to do whatever it took to escape the projects for good.