Stateway's Garden Page 17

  The two had traveled downtown three days ago, on the number 3 Michigan Avenue bus, were going to declare their love the cheapest way possible, and head for Iowa, or Wisconsin, or Minnesota, or someplace where the cost of rent was low and jobs for blacks were plenty. But when Stephanie woke in the morning to be married, the only things she had left were faint scents from the bed and the blue dress shirt he left behind.

  The wind was blowing hard the morning Jacob left her, hard enough that it could push a small body like Stephanie’s to the side. She walked firmly along a busy downtown street in Chicago, maybe it was Jackson Boulevard, it could have been Madison Street, watching passersby, staring at dark briefcases in the grips of businessmen and the snobby looks of women as they noticed her. In her opinion, the men looked important, wealthy, purposeful. She couldn’t help but notice the fact that there were no small kids around and every individual’s face was forward.

  People from the projects rarely scare. Still, enduring the pressure of the downtown hustle while alone began to bother her. So Stephanie, unlike everyone else she was around downtown, pointed her eyes to the concrete or to the air, looking for something, touching nothing. Her face followed the quickness of taxis going by, the luxury of the shoes women pranced around in, and the tracings of elaborate architecture, where in Chicago large buildings actually have enough space between each of them that the sun is visible.

  “Hey, cute girl,” a man said. “You look lost. You know where you’re going?”

  She nodded her head confidently, yes, a strong stiff yes, anything that would ward off someone staring her down.

  Stephanie stopped at the corner, abruptly, like her pointy-toed shoes had antilock brakes. She looked in the window of an inexpensive diner. There was a black man with brownish hair, wire glasses, furry eyebrows. She immediately compared him to Jacob but realized Jacob was much better-looking. There was a black woman with him, with fragile legs appearing freshly shaven, neat hands, an expensive skirt. Stephanie gazed at the two a few moments as they tickled each other’s palms. She didn’t even know and never considered that other black people ever traveled downtown. As close as it was to the buildings, many of her friends from the projects frowned upon it. Going north on the bus was in some way insulting or demeaning or duplicating a traitor. She continued gazing at the couple’s non-matching hands connected on the table as they blended into something she couldn’t describe. They had soft smiles and exchanged lightly puckered kisses. The woman had a large wedding ring. Stephanie couldn’t help but get lost in its glare as it sprang along the clean window. She pressed her face so close that her nose flattened against the glass. They saw her; she motioned upright, face back to the concrete, then to the air, pretending as if nothing happened.

  * * *

  —

  JACOB WENT BACK to the projects. Got the first bus headed south on Michigan Avenue, early morning, a thirty-minute ride. It was cheaper than the “L.” He woke up at 1:30 A.M., seventy-five minutes after he and Stephanie had finished making love. She told him she loved him incredibly, and with their looks and thin bodies their lives would be simply wonderful. Opportunities for them would be everywhere. Jacob replied by saying he needed to call home. Said he did not like “whitefolkslife” and desperately wanted back the familiar feeling of the projects. He missed the harshness of everyone, the phony smiles with gossip to follow, the patches where grass didn’t grow, the fumes of building hallways. Three days in downtown Chicago had shown him enough. The mopped-clean streets, the quiet cars with mufflers, the brightly lit stores, and the blasts of ceaseless traffic. Stephanie climbed out of bed, got on her knees as he lay on a fluffed pillow, and explained that anywhere they went was probably better than home. He could even choose the place.

  “We’re going to do something different, Jacob. Once we get out there we’ll have jobs. We won’t be broke. We’ll have all we want. Watch and see.”

  “I’m not broke.”

  “I don’t mean money like that.”

  “Money. Is. Money.”

  “Yeah, you sure can say that slowly, huh?”

  “Whatever, Steph.”

  “Always having to hustle for little-ass money makes you end up selling water bottles next to the Dan Ryan, or peddling something not even worth a dollar on the damned train.”

  “So what’s wrong with that? It’s still money, I want mine.”

  “It’s stupid. And it won’t last.”

  “You don’t know that, like I said, money is money.”

  Jacob’s back was turned. He lifted his stringy body and began packing immediately. Stephanie kissed him on the cheek a couple of times, apologizing with solid, lengthy smooches. Back in bed he went. They made passionate love. She thought he was just getting nervous, maybe the jitters. This was a fight they had often and she knew the routine to calm him. It usually worked. They had never actually come this close to leaving, though. Mostly it was just talk about Stephanie’s ideas, all eventually leading to arguments. And she could understand his fears, because Jacob rarely traveled past Forty-third Street. She kissed and calmed him further, and fell asleep believing they had finally taken the step to leaving, to starting a real life. But Jacob never once closed his eyes and didn’t leave her a note in the morning.

  She woke early and called his name violently: “Jacob! Jacob! Jacob, where the fuck are you!” The long phone cord was still plugged into the jack and Stephanie tossed the receiver across the room. It scraped peeling paint from the wall. She then knocked over the small television with missing knobs.

  At noon, the time they were supposed to be married at city hall, she decided to put the dress on anyway. It was a bleached-white hand-me-down. After fixing the ruffles along the bottom, she did her makeup—mascara just the way Jacob liked. She curled her hair and puffed it a little in the back. Stephanie stood in the bathroom, admiring how she looked, wishing she were ugly so there would have been some excuse for being in this position.

  “How could he leave me like this?” she asked aloud.

  Exhausted, she sat on the toilet. Because without Jacob, she would be naked; he was who believed in her, who told her over occasional sniffs of drugs that they needed a change of environment. Yes, drugs can do that kind of thing. He was who she’d known all along, who she’d planned to be with since the third grade. She figured that was actually something special because in big cities like Chicago, people hardly consider they’ll marry the person they grew up with.

  After standing and finishing dressing, she walked down the busy street. The rampant sounds of horns became normal after a while. She attempted to keep her head lifted, but the shadows of buildings outweighed her, kept her nearly bowed, reminding her of the enduring structures she was anxious to leave on the South Side.

  People continued bumping into one another downtown. Everything seemed so urgent there. She was used to people from her “city” walking slowly, aimlessly, drowsily, and dodging one another as if each had a contagious disease. There was no eye contact downtown, no smiles, no familiar scent of toppled garbage, no hellos. Yet, everyone managed to take a glance at her in the white dress. She then remembered Jacob’s flexible smile, childlike, and missed him more. He was soft and warm like sweetened oatmeal and she needed that in a new world she didn’t know. Stephanie kept walking: Madison and Wells streets. A man and a woman stood there holding hands. They began heading inside a bar. But Steph could see each of their fingers and stared at them uncontrollably, like she was watching some confusing movie, or wondering about a seventeen-letter word in a novel. The red traffic light flashed a stain along her dress as she stood on the corner and woke her from the daze. There, a pay phone on the opposite side of the street caught her eye. She couldn’t resist walking toward it, sliding in a quarter, and dialing.

  “Hello?”

  “Jacob?”

  “Hey…”

  She held the phone tight to
her ear. Wanted to hear him breathe.

  “Why’d you leave, Jacob?”

  “My leg started to hurt, I needed my pills, I really really needed them.”

  “Come on, Jacob, please. Tell me the truth. Tell me why.”

  “I just didn’t really wanna do it like that, it’s just I’ve been thinking, I don’t wanna be there, I don’t wanna leave Chicago, I don’t wanna go nowhere else.”

  “You leave me in that motel—leave just like that? Like it’s nothing? You don’t want to be with me?”

  “Steph, I wanna be with my family.” She could hear him straightening his body during the conversation.

  “You barely even talk to your family.”

  “I been thinking about changing that.”

  “You always talking fast, saying a bunch a words, and sticking with none of it.”

  “Not this time.”

  “So you for real just left like that? We’re supposed to get married today.”

  “I know—maybe we could get married back home, live here, we could actually have our family here, we could try for real this time.”

  “Come on, that place is not for marriage. And not for any kids of mine.”

  “It ain’t so bad, this is our home.”

  “I’m not going to end up like my sister.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Laney’s life ain’t so bad.”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m standing here in my wedding dress, Jacob.” She looked down at the ruffles, making certain she was telling the truth. “I want us to live together, in a house, have a backyard, and some real grass that grows. You know what I mean, the stuff they say in the movies. I thought you wanted the same.”

  “You the one wanted the movie-fairy-tale shit, not me.”

  “I guess you decided just this morning you didn’t.”

  “I wanted you smiling, Steph, I do what I do so you smile, that’s all I was trying to do.”

  “You sound like a cheap book read too fast.”

  “You the one that wants the whitefolkslife.”

  “Not having a house full of roaches doesn’t mean you’re white.”

  “I might not even be able to get medicine for my leg there, who knows where you talking about going, I’ll be just fine here.”

  “You’re not thinking. Our new place will grow on you.”

  “Nah, you always tell me how to think, I’m thinking just fine, I left because I wanted to, I don’t need you trying to talk me into going nowhere else.”

  “But I need you with me, Jacob.” Stephanie pressed her lips to the receiver as if hers could touch his, dreaming of how damp his mouth felt, how his kisses always felt like a back massage. “We need each other.”

  “I think I wanna be around my family, just come back.” He paused. “Everything will be okay.”

  “I can’t come back.”

  “You spent your bus fare?”

  “Nah. Not that. I just can’t.”

  She could hear him continuing to speak into the phone, words leaving his mouth with the speed of a typewriter. Maybe he was even crying, yet the computerized sound of his voice no longer had any effect. It was as neutral as the color gray. She hung up.

  For the first time, she’d lost something, something that actually mattered as much as her wishes. She was confused and the screen dreams of love and romance seemed much larger now, maybe unattainable. She considered calling him back and possibly getting on the next bus headed south. Home wasn’t so far away. But instead, she continued.

  The horns grew louder and people began moving faster. Much faster. Stephanie stomped another couple of blocks, all the while seeming to hear that pay phone ring and ring and ring in the distance. She stopped when approaching the stained wall of a building. How familiar. She began analyzing scraps of newspapers covering a homeless person as he rested there.

  He wore a dingy coat—although it was warm outside—and she likened his smell to the incinerator from her building. He looked at her crisply through one good eye; a fresh bloody scar closed the other. It looked as if he had been damaged in a fight with a large cat. Stephanie gazed at his clothes: the missing buttons on his jacket, the ripped seams of his pockets, the looseness of his pants. She wondered if he’d experienced similar things as she had when he was younger, if he was once hopeful and driven to do something different with his life. The truth was he reminded her of many of the over-forty men she already knew.

  How could he get to this point? she thought. Did he have no family? Did no one ever believe in him? Did he lose who loved him?

  Stephanie stared hard enough that she could see the emptiness of his stomach through the one eye. She somehow felt the hot and searing steel of polluted city air attaching her to him, brutally binding two people she once believed had nothing in common. She wanted to walk away but couldn’t move. Stephanie wanted to reach down to him, ask him penetrating questions about his past. She needed reassurance of his circumstances being extreme, that they were his fault and virtually impossible for her.

  “Can I get a dollar, sister?”

  He held out his palm. Stephanie noticed the twitching of his wrist. The paperweight of her dollar would have pulled his shoulder from its socket cleanly. His voice was so sluggish that maybe even his vocal cords had become demoralized.

  “Please, lady, do you got a dollar? I really needs something to eat.”

  Stephanie didn’t answer. She simply watched him, glaring at the hollows of his face from teeth he missed, at the scar over his eye dividing his face in halves. If she did answer him, their connection would be stronger. Maybe permanent. She chased her thoughts from his filthy clothes, from being homeless or helpless or hopeless because of failed dreams about leaving Stateway, of being alone and without Jacob. Right then, it all seemed inevitable.

  She’d shifted far enough to not notice the pay phone any longer, but swore she heard it continuously ringing. Her head went back and forth: the homeless man/the phone. She couldn’t become him. Anything but that. The speed of her thoughts became authority. She handed her entire purse to the man, including any change for the phone. With it, Stephanie had given him the keys to her home, to the small, six-building, self-contained city she had within the projects. There was neither relief nor satisfaction. She stepped to the curb, and looked back at him assaulting the purse. He reminded her of zombies in movies looking for brains. She turned abruptly and could see the grilles of sporty cars coming. The flashing traffic lights. The architecture. The focused faces on concrete. The women with great shoes. The leather briefcases.

  There was one thing she didn’t give the homeless man: the bus tickets purchased for herself and Jacob when they arrived downtown. Those were folded and tucked into her sock. She didn’t touch them, though. Didn’t even reach. And on the other side of the street was the bus station. She planted her feet, stretched out her arms, closed her eyes, and wondered whether she should cross.

  But she didn’t move. Not even a little. Nope. Not yet. Not just yet.

  THE TORNADO MOAT

  As I got to be an older teenager, I began thinking meteorologists were terribly overpaid. They’re just psychic friends from infomercials everyone seems to trust. Nothing is predictable in a city like Chicago, especially not the weather. Reason I know is because I always tried to master predictions when standing on the ramp. And not just weather.

  Although the porches of our buildings had what seemed like cages around them, the living-room windows of our project apartments opened dangerously wide, enough to push an obese person through. The one benefit of those windows was that you could easily reach out and touch clouds to check for moisture. Early mornings brought nice results. My hand extended to its farthest point out the window during cold winters, sometimes accidentally scraping my knuckles on the Illinois Institute of Technology buildings a block away by the “L�
�� station on Thirty-fifth Street. I’d try to predict temperatures to the degree, levels of precipitation, whether a northern wind would bury cars and carry enough snow to create a project-building ski slope.

  Chicago, while you’re standing in a high-rise building, becomes the unfriendly city that’ll insult you with a forty-degree Fahrenheit day in June. Or on the day your eighth-grade class plans a trip to the Shedd Aquarium there’ll be a tornado warning. Damned tornadoes. Never failed that some guy’s voice would come on the radio or television saying, “Attention. Attention. We have an emergency broadcast. There is a tornado warning for Cook, DuPage, Will, McHenry, and…” whatever freaking counties he felt conveniently worked with the dumb no-work-or-school agenda for the day. It had to be a plan. Because immediately after his dry announcement, followed by that looooo­ooooo­ong brutal beeping sound that made alley cats lose hair, everyone would be afraid to go outside and do anything. They always try to convince you tornadoes are so frightening. I disagree. They’re sympathetic, even spontaneous, and if you’re listening, they’re capable leaders. A tornado once told me I was getting a B on the history final I only attended the last two days of class to complete, that I shouldn’t allow cheese on the eggs to cook more than five minutes in order to achieve the golden yellow of Kraft macaroni, even told me my mother wouldn’t be coming home for a few days because the simple threat of dark clouds struck fear in her. She never wanted to be seen in public with her hair imperfect. The tornado explained to me in detail that there would be seven accidents on the Dan Ryan Expressway, causing cars to line up in slow motion like ants traveling to their hill. If I awoke and no one was home, I’d step onto the ramp during tornado warnings, standing in front of blistering bars with loose oval cutouts allowing sixteen-year-old fingers to wiggle freely like worms, and see the rain flooding the project building parking lots. Water gathered past the curbs encircling the building easily. Our very own tornado moat.