Stateway's Garden Read online

  “No, Will.”

  “You’re not interested anymore?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “I don’t want to be by myself, Solane.”

  “No one does.”

  “Please then, we had something good. We have it.”

  “I know.”

  “Then let it be what it should.”

  There was a pause.

  “Will, when we were at your house…did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you, did you put one on?”

  “Did I what?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I really don’t.”

  “It hasn’t come.”

  William breathed hard into the phone. At that moment he felt as naked as he had when standing in the doorway. Clothes didn’t matter. If she were pregnant, everything would be different. He swallowed the chunk of saliva that had been forming in the back of his mouth and lowered his head.

  “You know for sure that you are?”

  “I took two home tests on Monday, both positive.” She exhaled deeply. “Went to the doctor today, she didn’t disagree.”

  “It’s mine?”

  “Please don’t do that. It’s no one else’s.”

  “Let me come see you. Let’s talk face-to-face.”

  “No need to,” she said before he finished the sentence. She positioned the baby snugly against her chest.

  “Why not, Solane? What’re you going to do?”

  “I already made the other appointment.”

  “Appointment for what?” William stood up from his chair, clenching the phone to his ear. “That’s mine, Solane, you can’t just do something like this by yourself.” William began thinking of what they could all be as a family. The five of them. He was losing something that two months ago didn’t belong to him. “I don’t think this is right,” he continued. “We should talk about this!” The moment he realized he was yelling he sat down in the chair, folding his left leg over the right one.

  “There’s nothing to talk about. Look, William, you’re a great guy, a really great guy. But I can’t have any more children by myself. Not mentally, financially, or emotionally. I can’t afford to do this again.”

  “You won’t be by yourself. You can move here. I have plenty.”

  “You’ll leave, just like all men do.” He could hear Solane repositioning the phone along her ear. She held it there using her shoulder. “Women don’t get the choice to leave, to decide whether we want to be parents or not. We don’t get any choice. I’m a twenty-five-year-old black woman with two young kids, no fathers, no husband present, no real career, and very little money…I’m chasing a man who’s exactly the opposite.”

  “So, what?”

  “So, I have to accept my life for what it is.”

  She lifted the baby in her arm and, trying to get comfortable, changed position in her chair. She still held the child loosely. But no matter her movement, she couldn’t relax. There were four pictures of her children on the table, two of her, and one of her aunt and half sister, Stephanie. She admired their smiles for a moment but turned her face as she smelled the air outside the apartment; it seemed to mix with the sourness of water from the mop bucket used earlier in the morning. She turned again, and there, in the corner, were the stained chairs with peeling plastic and bent legs on the opposite side of the room. She was surrounded. Solane thought about relaxing on the sofa to her right, just long enough that she could catch a breath. It was soft and she could rest her head easily there. Instead, she stood and walked to the front window and gazed onto State Street, at the various people in front of the building. The men with hats tilted. The women pushing strollers and stress similar to hers. The children running without restriction to and from the building parking lot, into one of the busiest streets of Chicago like they were playing dodgeball with cars. Those same neglected children she desperately hoped hers wouldn’t be. She tugged at the baby still clutched along her waist, holding her tightly. The January wind beat firmly against the window and shook the glass. Solane lifted her head with the sun shining brightly in her eyes and thought of how William would’ve liked looking at her right then. He always noticed how the tint in her eyes changed when light reflected directly into her face. But their conversation made the throbbing pain in her right temple worse. Solane used two fingers to reach the other side of her face—the side without the phone—gathered her hair, and placed it behind her ear.

  “I can’t get myself together with another baby, not raising another baby by myself,” she said while repositioning the child.

  “Let’s at least talk about this,” William said. “I almost got married once.”

  “You did? Why didn’t you? What happened?”

  “Let’s just talk about us, Solane.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “I didn’t really leave.”

  “What you mean by that?”

  “I was young…I told her I didn’t want kids just yet.”

  “You left her and you don’t want any kids? Yeah, I have to go, William.”

  “That was a very long time ago.”

  “But still.”

  “Maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say and maybe I didn’t know what I wanted, but things are different now. Let’s just talk about it. Give me a chance.”

  “I don’t have room for that. Can’t run that risk.”

  “Please talk to me. This doesn’t make sense. Why did you even call me to tell me if you already decided?”

  “I have to go, William. I shouldn’t have called.”

  “If you won’t talk to me, I’m not giving you the money to pay for it.”

  “I don’t need your money, William,” she huffed into the phone. “I can’t take the chance…the chance of you not being there, of another man not being here. I’m getting it done.”

  “I’m not like that—you have to know I wouldn’t do that to you, Solane.” He paused. “You’re not being fair.”

  “For the first time, I think I’m being fair to me. Fair to me first.”

  “So, you’re calling to say this helped what?”

  “I just wanted to explain everything to you.”

  “I didn’t need any explanation.”

  “William, I haven’t heard from you in months. I waited for you. I hoped you’d call.”

  “I don’t remember you calling me after you left either. If you already decided on what you’re going to do, then why even bother?”

  “I guess I hoped you’d say something. Something different.”

  “Like what?”

  “I have to go now, William.”

  After he heard the click of the phone, William sat at his desk for ten minutes. He was surrounded by shelves of books, by large windows exposing the modern architecture of Chicago, and to his right was the black briefcase he’d paid nearly four hundred dollars for. He thought about all the trips he planned to take around the world: Taiwan, Tokyo, Melbourne, Montreal. He simply needed a woman, a beautiful, interesting, and slim woman, to enjoy fine wine and the adventures their lives could bring. Solane brought too much baggage. He stood and walked to his bookshelf, attempting to submerge himself in work again. His routine had simply been interrupted, not altered. It was she who was being selfish and life would resume as it once was. Nothing’s changed. Nothing changed. Nothing.

  When he dropped his body into the seat, all five feet eleven inches and one hundred seventy-two pounds of it, he wished he could say the opposite. Say that something was different in his life. Something somewhere.

  William picked up the phone to call Solane back. He hadn’t dialed the number in so long he forgot the final three digits. His options were infinite. He couldn’t get the number right. After a while, he thought to call his cousin who set up their first date.
No answer. William leaned back in his chair.

  “I’ll just go to her place,” he said to himself. “She’ll have no choice but to talk to me then.”

  William forgot how Solane was embarrassed about her living arrangement. She never invited him to her home. Didn’t even tell him the specific area she lived in. She made up excuse after excuse as to why he could never come over, or be introduced to anyone, why he couldn’t pick her up. They always met somewhere downtown or she hired a taxi. Said it felt safer that way. He didn’t want to seem pushy or place pressure on her and asked very few questions. Sure, she finally told him she was from the projects, those on State Street. But there were also the Dearborn Homes and the Harold Ickes Homes and the Robert Taylor Homes and…now, at the most terrible of times, he remembered not only that he didn’t know her well but he had no idea, none whatsoever, where she even lived.

  REAGANOMICS, LEFT LYING IN THE ROAD

  At an early age you taught me what the word philanderer meant because you used it often when staring at the wall in your bedroom. But I never told you that as you stared at that wall, I was being taught by Beverly’s Band.

  See, I’ll tell you about it now because you really don’t know everything about him, but my first stepfather spent substantial amounts of time picking food from his teeth with nails as sharp as a bobcat’s, and used the left hand, which usually revealed a cool gold ring or bracelet or something making him shine, to snatch traces of women from the other teeth. He was a black man with a guitar he strummed effortlessly. I assumed he was born with it. He was a different skin shade than anyone in our apartment, not olive or dark brown but somewhere in between, and had a mustache he combed like a hi-top fade. Sometimes he purchased small combs from the Chinese Dollar Store on the corner of Thirty-fifth and King Drive, and after practicing music for three or four hours at a time, he’d strut to the bathroom picking or sucking his teeth and tugging at those hairs. He spoke softly for a man, almost sweetly, as though his mediocre singing voice brought foundations of a different language, but his breath always smelled of cinnamon and cigarette smoke. And although you two were never really married, you guys always called each other husband and wife. So, like I said, he was my first “stepfather.”

  You weren’t as pretty as him anyway. Not even close.

  You still had a tall woman’s posture then, with nice and clean legs—no hair at all—but Stepfather jokingly mentioned your stomach seemed to pooch after a couple years, that your breasts hung low, that corns on your feet showed in bulges when you wore closed-toe shoes.

  I remember you two originally met in high school, how he moved away to the “sewer of NYC” as you called it, and once he failed there—many times from what you said—he needed a place to live back in Chicago.

  “When your daddy makes it we gonna be rich, son,” you’d say, regardless of what was going on or how many times he failed. He was probably thirty-nine by then and still trying.

  Stepfather spent most weekends away from us, especially when I was really really young. On Friday nights he packed three shirts, two pairs of underwear, and various duos of patent-leather shoes in a gray duffle bag with faded black handles and a drawstring, sat the bag by the door, and held the guitar in his hand. He’d be chewing gum. Every lucky black kid in Stateway spent Saturday morning with an Aldi brand of cereal and a television—whether it worked well or not—tuned to the tightest cartoons the ABC network could offer. My Saturdays were different. I’d stand at our heavy front door with your hand safety-pinned to my shoulder, yelling for my stepfather. There would be the horn of a van blasting in the background. Even fourteen floors up I could hear it. You always made sure I gave my stepfather the best send-off possible, and of course you would as well, because that just might be the weekend he got his “lucky break.”

  Sometimes it seemed as though he were heading to the army for boot camp and not on another trip throughout the Midwest playing music. He would come to the door slowly, casually even, like he had James Brown’s cape and the door actually was an entrance to the stage, cigarette in his left hand and guitar pick in the other. It never rained or snowed or anything like that on those Saturday mornings when Stepfather left for gigs, even in April or December. He wore cool jackets with promising colors and bleached white T-shirts underneath. I must admit, he was way too stocky to pull off the jackets. Each time he left I peered through the window trying to get a better glimpse of who he’d be leaving with. I did it while you were busy kissing him. You’d remove your hairpins when Stepfather left for gigs, hair just all over the place. He always said he liked that.

  After you guys finished he’d kneel in front of me, look me square in the eye with saliva acting as paste for the cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, and say, “Pretty soon I’m gonna start taking you with me, son.” Yeah, Jacob hated he said that, but I loved the fact that he always called me “son.” And I’d reply with a quick “Okay,” although I never really believed I’d go anywhere. I’ll be honest, he was a convincing man who looked you fresh in the face while speaking, without quivering or blinking. I’m sure at least fifteen to twenty percent of what he said had truth, although it was hard trying to figure out what part that was.

  His weekend trips on the road began extending longer than Saturday to Monday and went into Tuesdays and Wednesdays; they grew into a week, two weeks, sometimes a month. Each time he said he’d only be gone a couple of days. Over that time I grew incredibly close to you.

  You always talked about cooking fancy stuff and paying closer attention to us kids, but you were best at washing hair. Remember you used to do that tingly thing where you’d shift the water hot and cold on my head? I really liked that. As long as I made sure my homework was done and the bathroom cleaned, we got along just fine. But sometimes, on those long trips when Stepfather would be doing a gig and not return as he promised, I’d have to walk into the bedroom in order to see you. If he was really late, you’d never come out. You’d be sitting in the chair just watching the wall. Eventually, I began staring at the project-building concrete too, at that wall in your bedroom, wondering what the heck you saw.

  “Hi, Mother,” I’d say.

  “Philanderer.”

  “What?” You nodded at me and smiled with the straightest white teeth ever. Could’ve put any dentist out of business. Right then you’d readjust your hairpins, making certain they were tightly in place, and look at me. The smile would be gone. “Mother?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing.”

  “Why are you looking at the wall like that?”

  “I’m waiting for your daddy.”

  “Oh! He coming back soon?”

  You wouldn’t reply to that.

  “Did you eat your dinner?” you asked. I nodded, knowing you hadn’t even boiled us water in weeks. “Come here,” you said.

  I walked toward you sitting in that dark-colored chair thinking maybe you were upset with me. “Just so you know, Mother, I did my homework too.”

  You pulled me close and propped me between those firm legs of yours. You hadn’t done that since I was a toddler. Then you began examining my face, skin especially, like you planned to clean my nose or wipe crust from my eyes.

  “You look just like your daddy,” you said. “Nice skin, always shiny and clean like it was produced in a factory.”

  That was the beginning of my stepfather’s extended trips and you staring at walls mumbling that word philanderer.

  Sometimes we’d talk a bit as you sat in the chair.

  “What you doing, Mother?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why you staring at the wall?”

  “I’m looking for your daddy.”

  “You see him?”

  “I see all kinds of things.”

  Those things changed, though. Stepfather would return from his trips way overdue, smiling, shining, hugging and kissing you, and wearing new clothes
. He had so many new clothes stuffed into his duffle bag upon returning that it was hard for the zipper to close. He had those jackets he wore and cool blue jeans we called “floods” because they revealed socks to the top of the ankle.

  I have to say, he eventually held on to one of his promises.

  He came through the front door on a Friday afternoon one summer, horn from the blue van vibrating dust off our windows hundreds of feet in the air, and hugging you tightly. When you guys separated, he looked at me. Didn’t have to kneel as far by that time. Stepfather placed his wide hands along my shoulders, fingertips callused from pressing guitar strings, and began speaking in a serious voice I’d never heard before.

  “I think you’re about ready to start hitting the road with me,” he said. His breath smelled like he smoked three cigarettes at a time. I immediately looked to you, but you had your head out the window trying to get a better glimpse of the van. You were breathing in an irregular way. “It’s about time you learned what life is like in the real world,” Stepfather continued, hands still on my shoulders.

  Before you could turn to acknowledge what he’d said, we were already in my bedroom shuffling through the huge three-drawer dresser with no handles, grabbing the same things I’d noticed he packed each and every time he went away: two pairs of underwear, a pair each of black dress and white sweat socks, three T-shirts, the hand-me-down and only pair of Jordache jeans I owned, and the black jacket I looked cool in. I hugged you abruptly and walked down the green stairs of the building, believing I was never coming back.

  When I got closer to the van I immediately noticed that it wasn’t a normal blue. It was this murky tint, a dark blue with chipping paint, probably a color only found in the deluxe 120 box of Crayolas I saw advertised during Thundercats. It had a door on the side with no window and a handle that definitely took a grown person’s arm to maneuver. Stepfather moved into the van, lifting me easily and shoving me to the far side of the van’s wall. There was no window on my side either, which made the inside of the van very dark once the door closed. In the back were two bench seats and an open space that looked large enough to fit dead bodies. There was a drum set there, a beat-up guitar I knew was beneath Stepfather ever touching, and a large Fender speaker with various cords dangling like tentacles.