Leaving: A Novel Page 10

  “How come you ain’t got to go to school?”

  “I can’t. Got to have somebody working.”

  “I want to work.”

  “You will. But now you got to go to school first, and then you can make a lot of money working on computers. You get some of those tight Penny Hardaways and a red Impala. Yee-eh, boy.” Love held his fist out, and Li’l Pit tapped it and smiled. They walked toward Prescott and Li’l Pit rapped, his hand waving in the air:

  See ya homies later

  ’Cause I got to go to school

  Gonna eat a taco sandwich

  Gonna spit it up and drool.

  When they arrived at the administration building with all the adults around, they got very quiet and serious. They walked down the hallway and looked for an office where a lot of people went in and out. Li’l Pit stayed by the door as Love went up to the long counter. The woman at the desk did not look up at first. She was typing a letter and had to Wite-Out something on it. Without turning to see who it was, she spoke to him.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I need to know what class to put my brother in.”

  “What’s his name?” She rolled the paper down and began to type again. Love looked at Li’l Pit and motioned him to come to the counter. “She wants to know your name. Your real name.”

  “Paul LeRoy.”

  “Who’s your teacher, hun?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The woman let out a deep breath and took off her half-frame glasses. “What does she look like?”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying, lady,” Love said. “He isn’t in school yet.”

  “You want to register him?”

  “Yes please.”

  She stood up and came to the counter. Now that she was looking at them, she didn’t have an altogether unpleasant face. Her hair was braided with gold extentions and tied in the back. When she saw Li’l Pit, she smiled.

  “How old are you, hun?”

  “Ten.”

  She looked at Love and shook her head, still smiling a little. “You have to have an adult register him, and it has to be his legal guardian. You’ve got to have proof. And you’ve got to have his birth certificate, or some sort of medical record from the hospital he was born in.” She turned back to Li’l Pit. “Were you born near here?”

  “Highland.”

  “And you’ll need to get a physical and have your immunization papers. We can’t let anyone in until we know you’re not going to make the other kids sick.”

  “I’m not gonna make them sick.”

  “I know, hun, but we have to make sure. There’s a place at the district downtown called Student Services,” the woman continued. “Have your mother go there and they’ll help her get everything you need. Okay?”

  Love had stopped paying attention. He was staring out the window behind the desk into the bright light and the elevated BART tracks above Seventh. This feeling had often come over him at school, and he was surprised to see how quickly it came back. He closed his eyes and then looked back at the woman.

  “Can’t he just start until we get all that other stuff done?”

  “No, I’m sorry. Will it be difficult for you to get the paperwork?”

  He shook his head.

  “They’ll help you pay if you can’t afford it,” she said.

  “That’s not it.” Love said. Li’l Pit went over to the magazines on a table.

  “Does your mother work?”

  Love nodded.

  “What about your father?” Love looked down at the counter and saw his own reflection in the waxy surface. Li’l Pit turned through the pages of a Sports Illustrated.

  “Can any adult come in with him?” she asked.

  “My grandmother.”

  “Is she his legal guardian?” Love had enough experience with custody issues to know that it was complicated and that she probably wasn’t since Li’l Pit had been living on the street with their mother. But he shrugged his shoulders just to see where it might lead.

  “Well, have her come in and then we’ll know what to do next, okay, hun?”

  He nodded. When Love turned away to go, he noticed a sign on the inside door that read MRS. PIKE, PRINCIPAL. He left and Li’l Pit ran out behind him. When they got to the outside of the school, Love kicked the gate.

  “What did she say?” his brother asked.

  “I’m going to take you to the room and you just sit in there and be good and then the teacher will let you stay. Once I tell Nanna about you and she knows you’re in school, then she won’t mind you stayin overnight. What grade you suppose to be in?”

  Li’l Pit shrugged. Love thought back to the last time he was in a public school. When he was eight, he’d been in third grade.

  “You should be in fifth now, but we’ll say fourth since you’ve been out so long. No, we better say third. You’re kinda small.”

  “No I ain’t.”

  Love took his brother’s hand and pulled him back into the schoolyard. They walked past the administration building and down each hall until they came to a room with a plaque on the door that said MRS. TERRY, THIRD GRADE.

  Love opened the heavy door and stuck his head in. The room was filled with Native American artifacts, kachina dolls on the shelves, painted cardboard drums hanging from the walls with names on them, and a large photograph of an Indian warrior. Mrs. Terry stopped talking and the whole class looked at Love.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Pike says he’s supposed to be in your class.” He pulled Li’l Pit into the room.

  “Another one? I already have thirty-two.” She took a deep breath. “What’s your name?”

  Li’l Pit didn’t answer.

  “His name is Paul,” Love said.

  “Okay, Apaches,” said Mrs. Terry. “Let’s all give Paul a warriors’ welcome.” All the kids howled and paddled their mouths.

  “Sit over there, Paul, by Jesse.”

  Love pushed his brother forward and then left. Li’l Pit sauntered to the seat at the far end of the room, his right arm trailing behind his back. He sat next to a kid with freckles on his coffee-brown cheeks who smiled at his new neighbor.

  “What you lookin at?” Li’l Pit said. The boy looked down, and a few other kids giggled.

  “All right, Paul,” said Mrs. Terry. “You have to learn the Apache good-neighbor rules we’ve written here on the wall. Why don’t you read them to us.”

  Li’l Pit stared at the poster. He began breathing loudly through his nose like a bull. He looked around the room, and every time he met another kid’s eyes they hung their heads, but one boy kept looking at him.

  “Rah!” he barked.

  The class broke out in laughter. Li’l Pit barked again. “Rah, rah.”

  “We don’t allow barking in the class,” Mrs. Terry said.

  Li’l Pit stood up and barked right at her: “Rah, rah, rah.” He moved around his desk toward the front of the room, and as he looked at the other kids, they pulled back, the expressions on their faces caught between a scream and a laugh. Before Mrs. Terry could reach the intercom, he turned and ran out the door.

  He ran out of the gate, down Peralta, and caught up to Love on the sidewalk. Love stopped and pushed him back toward Prescott. “What’s up? Get back to school.”

  “They kicked me out.”

  “Damn, dog, what’d you do already?”

  “Nothin. Nothin. They say I can’t come back. I ain’t allowed ’cause I got to prove I’m a citizen.”

  “What you talking about?”

  “That lady in the office say my mama got to come down and prove I’m a citizen.”

  “You don’t know what you’re sayin.”

  “Well, I didn’t do nothin.”

  “Damn, dog. Whatever.” Love turned and walked away from him. Li’l Pit followed, always a few steps behind, picking up pebbles and tossing them at the tall iron bars of the projects.

  SANTA RITA JAIL

  TODAY I READ to you
from the narrative of James W. C. Pennington’s The Fugitive Blacksmith:

  About this time, I began to feel another evil of slavery—I mean the want of parental care and attention. Many parents were not able to give any attention to their children during the day. I often suffered much from hunger and other similar causes. To estimate the sad state of a slave child, you must look at it as a helpless human being thrown upon the world without the benefit of its natural guardians. It is thrown into the world without a social circle to flee to for hope, shelter, comfort, or instruction. The social circle, with all its heaven-ordained blessings, is of the utmost importance to the tender child; but of this, the slave child, however tender and delicate, is robbed.…

  Three or four of our farmhands had their wives and families on other plantations. In such cases, it is the custom in Maryland … under the mildest of slavery … to allow the men to go on Saturday evening to see their families, stay over the Sabbath, and return on Monday morning, not later than “half-an-hour by sun.” To overstay their time is a grave fault, for which, especially at busy seasons, they are punished.

  One Monday morning, two of these men had not been so fortunate as to get home at the required time; one of them was an uncle of mine. Besides these, two young men who had no families, and for whom no such provision of time was made, having gone somewhere to spend the Sabbath, were absent. My master was greatly irritated, and had resolved to have, as he said, “a general whipping-match among them.”

  Preparatory to this, he had a rope in his pocket, and a cowhide in his hand, walking about the premises, and speaking to everyone he met in a very insolent manner, and finding fault with some without just cause. My father, among other numerous and responsible duties, discharged that of shepherd to a large and valuable flock of Merino sheep. This morning he was engaged in the tenderest of a shepherd’s duties: a little lamb, not able to go alone, lost its mother; he was feeding it by hand. He had been keeping it in the house for several days. As he stooped over it in the yard, with a vessel of new milk he had obtained, with which to feed it, my master came along, and without the least provocation, began by asking, “Bazil, have you fed the flock?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Were you away yesterday?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you know why these boys have not got home this morning yet?”

  “No, sir, I have not seen any of them since Saturday night.”

  “By the Eternal, I’ll make them know their hour. The fact is, I have too many of you; my people are getting to be the most careless, lazy, and worthless in the country.”

  “Master,” said my father, “I am always at my post; Monday morning never finds me off the plantation.”

  “Hush Bazil! I shall have to sell some of you; and then keep you all tightly employed; I have too many of you.”

  All this was said in an angry, threatening, and exceedingly insulting tone. My father was a high-spirited man, and feeling deeply the insult, replied to the last expression, “If I am one too many, sir, give me a chance to get a purchaser, and I am willing to be sold when it may suit you.”

  “Bazil, I told you to hush!” and suiting the action to the word, he drew forth the cowhide from under his arm, fell upon him with most savage cruelty, and inflicted fifteen or twenty severe stripes with all his strength, over his shoulders and the small of his back. As he raised himself upon his toes, and gave the last stripe, he said, “By the * * * I will make you know that I am master of your tongue as well as of your time!”

  Being a tradesman, and just at that time getting my breakfast, I was near enough to hear the insolent words that were spoken to my father, and to hear, see, and even count the savage stripes inflicted upon him.

  Let me ask any one of the Anglo-Saxon blood and spirit, how would you expect a son to feel at such a sight?

  CHAPTER 7A

  JULY 1963 • EASTON 17, SANDRA 18

  EASTON AND SANDRA walked by the stream on campus, past the eucalyptus grove to a bridge made of redwood planks where they could see the water running beneath them. It was the kind of summer day particular to northern California that felt warm but in a light way, dry and slightly breezy, thin leaves fluttering every few minutes like paper chimes. Because it was a summer weekend, there were very few students on campus, and they were left to themselves to listen to the water and be aware of the space and silence between them.

  Easton picked at a pimple by his chin where his thin beard was growing in. He stopped himself before she could notice.

  “See,” she said to him, pointing through the boards to the stream. “I’m not making it up. Look at the stones. The big one is the eye. See?”

  He shook his head. He didn’t speak because he didn’t have the breath. His chest seemed to push against his lungs. He’d hardly spoken the whole time they were alone that day. He shook his head so that she would keep pointing, so that he could stare at her face as she peered between the wooden boards. She had let him kiss her once, at night by a car around the corner from her dorm. It had been a long kiss, and it had been dark, and he felt so unsure now whether she would ever let him kiss her again, whether she even remembered kissing him at all. He had made a mistake that night, and he worried that perhaps she hated him for it, that she was going to tell him in a few moments that they should only be friends.

  They had stopped by a car on the night of the kiss because she didn’t want to be seen in front of the dorm, and she couldn’t bring him in. There was a wall, a cement wall mixed with pebbles that formed the foundation of the dorm, which was built on raised ground like an unbreachable castle above him. They had stopped to look at the car, a silver Spider with a black leather interior.

  “Nice,” he had said. She nodded and squeezed his hand.

  They had come to hold hands in a very peculiar way. That night was their second date. He had taken her to Blake’s to see Dave Brubeck. She was very excited the whole time, watching him explain what he heard and how music was the only way people could be truly free. On the walk back from Telegraph, they had been followed by three young men, all White, one of whom said loudly, “It disgusts me,” and spat on the sidewalk beside them. That was when Sandra took Easton’s hand. The young men stopped following them at Channing Way; and, though nothing violent had happened, Easton felt he and Sandra had experienced their first intimate moment.

  Still holding hands, they turned from the car and faced each other. Everything he knew told him he shouldn’t be there and that he should keep still, though he knew what she wanted. He was grateful when she stretched out to him and kissed his lips. They backed away from the car, out of the streetlight, and stood against the wall in the shadows.

  Then he touched her breast with his hand. That was not the mistake that worried him as he stood on the bridge. She let him hold her gently as they kissed. It was after they pulled away from each other but were still close enough to hear the mingling of their breath that he said what still echoed in his own mind, as if some stranger had yelled it at him: “How does it feel to kiss a Negro?”

  She closed her mouth and frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  He didn’t know what he’d meant, only that some part of him urged it on by whispering in him that he must strike first.

  “Nothing,” Easton said. “I didn’t mean anything. I’ve always wanted to kiss a White girl.”

  “That’s not why I kissed you.”

  “That’s okay with me if it was. I liked it.”

  “For your information, you are not the first Negro boy I’ve kissed by a long shot.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her arm.

  “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said.

  But that was it for the night, and soon she was in her dorm and he was walking alone back to Shattuck.

  On this bright day on the bridge; Easton was glad for the sound of the rushing water, which kept him from talking and saying something stupid again.

  Sandra plucked a green leaf from the overhanging tree and traced
it against her palm as if she were painting. Then she took Easton’s hand and traced the leaf over his palm and wrist, up his arm, along his neck and onto his cheek. He closed his eyes and she brushed it across his face slowly, over his lips and onto his nose, up to and across his forehead.

  “You’re beautiful,” she whispered. “You’re beautiful.”

  He smiled, and she brushed the leaf over the corners of his smile.

  “Am I really the first White girl you ever kissed?”

  He kept his eyes closed and nodded. He felt her warm lips touch his, and he opened his mouth. The breeze rustled the leaves above them and raised the hair on their arms. Small pebbles turned on the riverbed below, little black and brown stones rolling over each other in the current of the stream. As they kissed, both of them, at different times, opened their eyes and looked at the face kissing them back: looked, and then closed their eyes again, as though leaving and reentering a dream.

  THEY DATED ALL summer, and by September, Easton was ready to introduce Sandra to his family. He knew he wouldn’t get a word in edgewise, so he took the opportunity to draw her while she sat in the living room. Ruby stayed unusually quiet that afternoon, but Corbet was full of stories.

  “See,” said Corbet, who sat in his chair drinking, his crutches leaning against the record shelves. “They still didn’t trust us to be officers in our own unit. They put us under White folks.”

  Easton studied Sandra at the other end of the couch. He felt the thick piece of sketch paper between his fingers, the fibrous texture like sacred parchment. He turned to a blank page in the tablet and held the stick of charcoal poised in the air above the center of the paper.

  “Jews,” said Saul. “They figured that we were the only White people that didn’t mind, so all the officers of the Negro companies were Jewish at first.”

  “That’s why Jews pissed me off so much.” Corbet laughed. “I thought they ran the army and the school and the government, for that matter. Everywhere I looked, some Jew was telling me what to do.” Sandra nodded earnestly, like she was interviewing the president.