Leaving: A Novel Read online

  Easton knew the time would come when he’d have to settle into the pecking order with the back-row boys, and the sooner he got that over with, the better. He grabbed Charles by the hair and brought his face down onto his knee with the solid force that ensured he and Charles would become close friends in the future. At that time, kids in Oakland didn’t carry knives like everyone did in Norma, so the whole class screamed when Easton pulled a blade out of his back pocket and brandished it toward the rest of the back row. Charles was still on the ground when Miss Grossbalm walked directly to Easton and took the knife from his hand. That’s when he knew he was in love. She led him by the wrist and walked him to the principal’s office.

  He was suspended for a day. It would have been much longer had Miss Grossbalm not explained that Mr. Waters had antagonized him, which was no surprise to the principal. But he did punish Easton for bringing a knife to school, and he did call Corbet.

  For this act of self-defense, Papa Samuel would have been proud of him, not for being suspended—for that, he still would have gotten a whipping—but for having fought back and won. However, Corbet was different in every way from Papa Samuel, and Easton didn’t know what to expect.

  * * *

  WHEN EASTON RETURNED home, Corbet sat him down on the couch in the living room and then went to his rocking chair. Ruby came up behind Easton and put her hands on his shoulders, watching her father carefully. He pinched tobacco between his thumb and forefinger and ground it into his pipe very slowly, as if he were squeezing the life out of it. He lit the pipe and leaned back in his chair. Easton wiped his cheek repeatedly as he looked around the room for a switch or any long piece of wire. The only thing he saw was a thick leather belt, and that was still firmly wrapped around Corbet’s waist.

  It was a long time before anyone spoke. Ruby shifted her weight a few times in the silence. Finally she said, “Sometimes I think we should jus tie all de boys to dey desks at school.” Corbet nodded his head slowly and took another drag from his pipe. The tobacco glowed orange for a moment. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been burned, Easton thought. Ruby continued: “But dat jus remine me of de racehorse dat all de folks love in Greenwood. Dis horse beat all de udder horses in town and beat all de horses out to Orangeburg County, an all de people love dis horse ’cause it be fast and beautiful, wid his shiny muscles on his legs. But when dis horse ain’t racin, it still had a whole lotta mischief. He always jumpin out de fence and runnin into someone’s field. He run ’round an et all de carrots and de turnips and run through de rice patties, an jus do a general stompin all over. It was jus in his nature to be wile. But de people got real mad ’cause dey losin dey crop. So de owner, he tie him up to de barn. Well de horse start neighin and kickin and makin all kind of a racket all night long. So de owner start to whip him to make him stop. But de horse jus get madder and madder. He stop while de man whip him, but when de man come out again, he see dat de barn door done been kicked down. So he made de horse lay down and he tied de animal’s legs to de stable. But dat nex night, de horse pull de ropes so hard, he break his own leg, and de nex day de man had to take him out an shoot him. Lose hisself a mighty fine racehorse.”

  Easton looked at his sister in bewilderment.

  “Tell me this,” Corbet said. “Who started it?”

  Easton stood straight up in front of the couch, as though he were answering a question in the classroom. “I’ll tell you I sure enough finished it. He didn’t get a chance to hit me. Not one boy could take me in that whole school.”

  “You sound awfully proud of yourself.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What did he do to start the fight?”

  “He said something to me.”

  “Something? Just spoke to you, so you hit him.”

  “He called me a name.”

  “What did he say?”

  Easton looked straight at Corbet but didn’t answer. He measured his new father’s eyes, his ability to catch a lie. There was a white glaze over their color, like a dog who was going blind.

  “What did he say,” Corbet repeated, “that made you risk getting kicked out of school and ruining your future?”

  “He called me a nigger,” Easton said.

  “He didn’t call you no nigger!” Corbet yelled. He stood up and came at him. “I’ll call you nigger, nigger. You get called nigger ten times a day. Now you tell me what that boy said to you or you’ll wish you were back in Carolina.”

  “He called me a faggot.”

  “A what?”

  “A faggot! And he called you a faggot too. He said you take it up the ass.”

  “Stop that nastiness, Love E,” Ruby yelled.

  “He said you make him sick. He said you’re unnatural as a tree growing into the ground!” Easton wiped his mouth and waited.

  Corbet stared at him. Easton’s nostrils flared and he clenched his fists. The cavernous space of the living room held Easton’s epithets like the chiming of a clock. Corbet shook his head, turned, and sat back down in his rocking chair.

  Ruby pulled Easton back by the shirt.

  “Why are you sayin all this?” Ruby begged. But Easton ignored her and went on.

  “So I took his face and I slammed it into my knee. He didn’t get up even by the time I was walking out the door.”

  “And you think that makes me happy?” Corbet said. “You think that makes me proud of you?”

  “I don’t care.”

  Corbet lowered his pipe and looked into its ashes.

  “Dat’s just de kind of foolishness dat’s gonna keep you from making somethin of yo’self,” Ruby yelled. “What do you think Ronal would have said to you ’bout acting like some street nigger with no brains in yo head. Ronal was never suspended for fighting even once.”

  “And look where that got him: six feet under.”

  Ruby slapped him and looked as if she might slap him again, but Corbet stood and came between them.

  “Come on. Come on. That’s just the lesson he’s got to unlearn. Why don’t you go on in the kitchen. Let’s have some dinner.”

  Ruby didn’t move, but Corbet stared her down. She gave Easton one last hard look, turned, and went into the kitchen.

  Easton and Corbert stood side by side and watched her go, mostly to avoid looking at each other. When the door closed behind her, Easton went back to the couch and Corbet went back to his chair. They sat and listened as pans crashed onto the stove.

  “She’s just trying to look out for you,” Corbet said.

  Easton nodded. They could picture Ruby’s movements by the sounds she made, the opening of the refrigerator, the washing of the vegetables, the swish of the trash bag.

  “Is it true?” Easton asked, looking down.

  Corbet rocked back and forth. “What’s that?”

  Easton didn’t reply. From the kitchen came the sound of fat sizzling in the hot frying pan.

  “Oh,” Corbet said. “You mean am I a faggot.”

  Easton looked at him and then away.

  “I can’t answer that, not in the way they mean it,” Corbet said.

  “Never mind.” Easton shook his head and stood to go.

  “No, I mind. Sit down.” Corbert reloaded his pipe and lit it. “Does it bother you if I am?”

  Easton shrugged.

  “It’s okay if it does. It still bothers me sometimes. That kind of talk gets into your blood. If people tell you that you’re bad long enough, for whatever reason, you start to believing it. It takes a lot of strength to like yourself.”

  Easton did not look at him. In some ways he would have preferred a beating to this talk. At least in a beating there wasn’t anything expected of him; it happened and it was over. But with this … Corbet seemed to be waiting for something. Easton stood again and brushed his palms against his slacks.

  “I’m going to help her with supper,” he said.

  “Okay.” Corbet watched him walk into the kitchen and disappear. He listened carefully, listened for what they might s
ay about him, but they didn’t speak. He turned to his phonograph, put the needle down, and sat back in his chair.

  CHAPTER 2B

  SEPTEMBER 1975 • LIDA 16

  IN HIGH SCHOOL, Lida and Marcus often hung out in the back of his father’s health food store. This night Lida scooted between the boxes and waited for him, her naked ankles showing between her tapered red pant legs and red pumps. Marcus tiptoed back into the storage room. He had a purple cloth band tied around his hair, which was fully grown out into a Hendrix Afro. He held a joint in one hand and sang into a jar of honey: “‘Have you ever been experienced?’”

  Lida bent forward laughing, and Marcus sat down next to her. He pulled off the headband and wrapped it around her.

  “It don’t look right on my skinny face,” he said. “You got your face already. It takes a man’s face a long time to show, but a girl got her face when she start high school. That’s how I know you’ll be pretty for sure. Now!” He took a hit from the joint.

  While he closed his eyes and inhaled, she scratched herself once on the arm for the one compliment, hard enough that a white line appeared. He held the joint out to her, and she pinched the end but didn’t smoke it.

  “Have a hit,” he said.

  “Say I’m bad,” she said.

  “You’re bad, girl. You’re so bad.”

  She took a drag off the joint.

  “That’s why I love you,” he said.

  “You lie.”

  “I’m not lyin.”

  “You don’t love me. There ain’t nothin about me to love.”

  “Sure there is. I love your big ole nose and your big ole dark eyes and your big ole big oles.” He bent forward laughing and she slapped the back of his neck.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  “Honest, though.” He sat up, looked at her, his thick eyebrows raised. “If I was on my own, I’d marry you. We’d live in our own big ole house, and I’d take you with the band on tour all around the country.”

  This time Lida laughed, but Marcus’s face was serious.

  “That ain’t right,” he said. “Now! You gotta say you’d marry me.”

  Lida looked at her feet and put the toes of her pumps together, which meant it was going to be a wish she wanted to have come true. But before she made the wish, she tested him.

  “You’d still marry me if I got a ugly ole mustache?”

  Marcus looked at her face closely to make sure she didn’t. “Sure. Yeah.”

  “What if I got no big ole big oles?”

  “But you got ’em. Can’t do nothin ’bout that.” She had to move away from him, go somewhere so she could see him better. She stood up and crossed the concrete aisle, sat on a box and looked down at him in his white tee and bell-bottom jeans. He had wide shoulders and a hard chest from swimming at school.

  “What’d you do if I got another man?” she asked.

  “I see you most every night and every day at school and every morning ’fore school, and you’re only with me.”

  “But if I did?”

  “I’d kill him.”

  “How you gonna kill him?”

  “I’d shoot his head off with a bullet.”

  “How you gonna shoot no one’s head off?”

  “We gotta gun right behind the register since the BART tracks went up.”

  “You a liar.”

  He scrambled to his feet and disappeared into the front of the shop. Lida waited without moving. There weren’t any windows in the stockroom, and she stared at the ceiling where the smoke had settled around the hanging yellow lights. It was easy to forget in this room, forget that there was an outside.

  “All right. Who is he?” Marcus returned with a black .38 revolver hanging by his leg. Lida looked at his big hand, his long fingers, the same ones that strummed his guitar, now gripping the handle of a gun with a firmness she’d never seen in him.

  She turned away and walked slowly toward the back of the room; she tried to picture the confrontation—the shooting, the body—but she couldn’t get herself to willingly conjure Easton’s face. She turned and looked at Marcus instead.

  “You’re crazy,” she said. “I ain’t got no other man. Get yourself up outta here with that.”

  CHAPTER 2C

  MARCH 1993 • LOVE 13

  LOVE WAS IN the quiet-room almost every day that month, including the morning of his last day at the house. A residential staff member sat in the office holding the rope to the quiet-room door, only Love’s shiny knees visible.

  They’d carried him in an hour earlier during breakfast, all three staff on duty, one holding each arm and one wrapped around his legs. They carried him from his room, where he’d broken his window with the Sega, through the living room with the Rocket-ship Behavior-Level Board pasted to the wall, past the dining room table where the other five children sat on Silence, eating their Frosted Flakes.

  “Wheeeeeeee. I’m a hornet!” he yelled, trying to kick the books off the cubbies as he went by.

  “One thousand Bonus Points to everyone who’s ignoring,” said the staff holding Love’s legs. The other kids turned back to the table and took slow sips of sugary milk off their spoons.

  An hour later, Love was doing his sit-time against the back wall.

  “Here’s your buddy, Love.” The staff guarding the quiet-room stood up and handed the rope to Tom. “You guys can talk, and then we’ll process.”

  Tom still had a red splotch on his head where Love had hit him earlier that week. He wore beige drawstring pants and an orange and black West African dashiki.

  “Hey there, Love.” Tom took a seat in the plastic chair. “I’m sorry ta see ya havin a hard time.” Love looked away at the ceiling and sucked his bottom teeth. “I wanted ta come say good-bye. I’m still angry about ya hittin me and Rick, but I didn’t want ya ta leave and think that I’d always be angry” Love looked at a scar on his own leg. Tom leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and rested his chin in his hands. Right behind Love’s head was the tiny hole in the wall that, four years earlier, Love had dug with a nail he’d managed to sneak in. Tom had held him in his lap and pried the nail from his fingers.

  “I really hope things go well for ya at your grandmother’s. I heard her house is very nice. I think you’re capable of succeeding.” That was the line the therapist had said wouldn’t put too much pressure on him. Love let out a long, aggravated breath; he’d heard the rhetoric so often that he used it at the talent show as his imitation of White people.

  The other children in the house were transitioning for school. They looked into the office one by one on their way to the bathroom to brush their teeth. Tom rubbed his forehead. “Anyway, I didn’t come here ta lecture ya about things you’ve heard a million times.”

  The staff turned off the TV in the den, and the house went silent. The other children were sitting on the couch, and then they were called to line up at the door.

  “Chris, you may line up,” said a staff member. Chris walked to the door in an exaggerated gangsta swagger. “No. Go back to the couch and try it again, without the dramatics. No. Now take a time-out at the blue wall for not following directions.” There was a possibility during a time like this that every kid in the house would go off and have to be restrained, just to let off some steam. They knew from the other kids who had left that it was likely they wouldn’t see Love again, and there was no telling what kind of maniac would move into the house in his place. But Chris went to his time-out corner, hit the wall once, and then remained calm.

  Love could hear every sound in the living room and imagine every move, down to the nervous smiles on the kids’ faces.

  “At least ya don’t have ta put up with this anymore,” Tom said.

  Love didn’t answer.

  “Just try and keep outta trouble.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Listen. Rick could have pressed charges against ya for breaking his nose and ya’d be in juvenile hall again, right now.”

  “So?�
�

  “Oh yeah, I forgot, ya don’t care about that crybaby shit. Come on, man. I’m not telling ya this as a staff. I can’t tell ya what ta do anymore. I’m tryin ta give ya the best honest advice I can. Ya can’t go around doin that kind of shit if ya want ta have a chance in life. No college is gonna look at ya if ya’ve been in jail. I’d like ta see ya in the newspapers sometime: ‘Dr. Love LeRoy talks ta bugs.’ The Nobel Prize in bug studies, or whatever it is you call it.” Tom waited for Love to respond.

  “E-n-t-o-m-o-l-o-g-y,” Love spelled.

  “Right, entomology.”

  Another staff came in from the den. “Okay, man, the kids are in the van. We’re taking off. Karl’s gonna stay back with you.” Tom nodded his head.

  Love stared at the carpeted floor between his feet, picturing the kids leaving outside. He heard the front door slam and the van door slide open and shut. There was a moment before the van started, and Love knew Peter, or whichever staff was driving, had turned around to lecture Alfred about keeping his hands to himself during the ride. Then the van started, beeping as it reversed out of the driveway, and drove off.

  The house fell silent except for the faint clanking of Karl doing dishes in the kitchen. Tom looked through a small locked window at the lush green leaves moving silently on a tree outside in a neighbor’s yard. Now that Love was leaving, Tom couldn’t wait to quit this job.

  “How come nobody wants me?” Love asked. He didn’t betray any emotion at all, as if he’d asked why flies have four thousand eyes. He stretched the edge of his Warriors shirt over his bare knees.

  Tom shook his head and continued to stare out the window into the open space of the neighbor’s backyard, at the sunlit rooftops beyond it, and the windblown, light blue sky. He remembered when Ronald Love LeRoy first came to Los Aspirantes and Jenn, his teacher, affectionately called him by his middle name one day. Love was outraged and felt teased until he noticed how much the girls liked it.

  “I know ya’ve been here a long time,” Tom said. “But your grandmother wants ya now. Everyone has ta leave here by fourteen. It has nothing ta do with you.”