Leaving: A Novel Read online

  Love punched the back wall and Tom squeezed the rope more firmly. Karl came in to check out the sound.

  “All right, Love.” Tom stood up to go, thinking he might be aggravating the situation further. “All right,” he said again. He slid his hand over his shaved head. “I hope that I see ya again, but I don’t want ta promise that I will, because sometimes people just don’t get around ta doing what they intend ta do. I want ya ta know that I care about ya. All right?” Love didn’t look. Instead, he turned around and faced the wall.

  “Well. Good luck ta ya in life, anyway. Just remember that we care about ya.” Tom cleared his throat and waited a moment, but Love was silent, facing the wall in a self-imposed time-out. Tom considered how much Love had grown in four years, from someone more like a baby than a boy to a young man with a hard, set jaw. He wondered if Love was any better for being at Los Aspirantes, or if it had left him less prepared to return to the streets.

  “Bye,” Tom said. Love didn’t say anything.

  Tom left the office and walked slowly through the den to the front of the house. He opened the door and waited again, just in case. But there was nothing.

  SANTA RITA JAIL

  HE CAME TO the front of the recreation room, stood on the table and read from a book in his hand, The Slave Narrative of Clay’s John:

  They put all the men in the hold and lay us chained to the bare floor, up to six hundred in one ship. When the bottom was covered with bodies, they put in another shelf of us, two feet above our faces, so we couldn’t sit up on the whole journey to the West Indies—three thousand miles, weeks bound to the floor. At night the rats would crawl over us, sniffing our faces, biting our infected sores. On the decks above, they raped our wives, our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, for their pleasure, but also so we would multiply their profits: every pregnant woman was a slave-and-a-half.

  After long nights in the rolling sea, we’d wake up in our own vomit. Sometimes we’d wake up and the man chained to us would be dead from sickness, starvation, or beating. And sometimes that man was our brother or best friend or father.

  They didn’t want us to die—we were only valuable to them alive—but they wanted to maximize their profits, spend the least possible for transport and food, keep us weak and submissive, which meant they would at times incur the “affordable loss.” Some of us who were too sick to take care of were thrown into the ocean to the sharks.

  Eleven to fifteen million of us came across the Atlantic this way, to work in the “New World,” not just North America, but Central America, the Caribbean, and South America, our families split up and torn apart, leaving behind everything that we knew, everything that made us who we were.

  CHAPTER 3A

  MAY 1960 • RUBY 22, LOVE EASTON 14, LIDA 3 MONTHS

  RUBY AND EASTON rode the 72 up San Pablo and then transferred to the 51 on University. Ruby wore an olive-green dress that was purposefully wrinkled, a dry-leaf-textured cotton with straps and a high V-neckline. She’d sponge-oiled her skin with vanilla, and it shone red on her meaty shoulders. She carried Lida wrapped in a yellow blanket of the same material, like a loose, wrinkled cocoon. Ruby had been in California only one year, but she was already going around to restock the department stores with her dresses.

  Easton carried a multicolored stack of these dresses, his chin buried into the center and his eyes peering over the top. He wore Corbet’s suit jacket, brown slacks, Corbet’s dark brown loafers, a blue-collared dress shirt, and a dark brown tie. Corbet had even let him use his cologne for good luck; when Easton smelled himself, which he did often on the bus ride, he thought he smelled like a man.

  They got off the 51 on Shattuck by the theater. Ruby kept her eyes down on the brick sidewalk as they weaved among people toward Woolcrest’s Department Store.

  “Love E, you ask her this time,” Ruby said to him as they walked through the main lobby where women stood around large glass cases of perfume and scarves. The mirrors and counters reflected the lights from the chandeliers.

  Ruby walked down the middle aisle toward the back of the store to a carpeted area filled with rows of dresses and ladies’ undergarments. Easton could already feel his face heating up. Mrs. Usher met them at the back counter behind Women’s Wear. She had a lazy left eye that drifted to the side. She came out from behind the counter, walked directly up to Ruby, and lifted the baby from her arms.

  “Oh, this baby. This sweet child.” She brushed her age-spotted White hands against Lida’s cheeks. On her arm was a shiny gold bracelet, and on her left middle finger, a ring with a large diamond cut in a rectangle. Ruby stood silently watching Mrs. Usher rock Lida, watching as Lida crinkled her face and then began to wail.

  “Oh. Oh. Don’t cry.” Mrs. Usher shook her head. “What a big, beautiful girl you have, Ruby. She looks just like you. Are you going to be a brilliant dressmaker like your mama?”

  “I brought the new dresses,” Ruby said.

  “Oh good. Yes. Yes. Here.” She handed the baby back to Ruby and directed Easton: “Set them on the counter, son. Oh, they’re just beautiful. All the others sold like hot dogs. You have such an eye for color. Of course, it goes with your skin so beautifully. I’ve always believed coloreds have such beautiful skin. Look at these ugly, old yellow hands of mine.”

  Easton looked at her hands as she turned them above the glass counter, ugly and old, as she had said, yet somehow desirable, like the gaudy diamond on her finger.

  “Thank God my husband can’t see anymore. It’s a blessing in disguise, I tell him.”

  Easton smiled at her joke, and she looked up at him and smiled too. Ruby nodded to him, but he looked at the carpet.

  “You look very swell today, young man,” Mrs. Usher said.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Love E turn fourteen las month,” Ruby said.

  “Oh, that is marvelous. What a glorious age. What I wouldn’t give to be fourteen again. I had a big crush on Joe Rolands. Oh my.” Her eyes glazed and she touched her chest. “I can feel it still, right here. We had to audition for Romeo and Juliet, and I was so nervous. Well, don’t tell Mr. Usher.” She laughed again. Easton smiled.

  “You said maybe you might have a place for him when he turn fourteen,” Ruby said.

  “Oh.” Mrs. Usher looked straight at Easton as if she’d never seen him before. He brushed his cheek with his fingers and wished he still had the stack of dresses to hide behind. He looked down, unable to watch her left eye lazily drift around. But he felt her other eye stare at his shiny, kinky hair, his long forehead, and wide, flat nose. He felt his brown skin burning on him like hot mud and wished he could wash it off. He swallowed hard.

  “Well actually, I just don’t know what he could do,” Mrs. Usher said.

  “He’s real good at math in school. He gets real good grades. He even teach me some.”

  “I could work the register,” Easton said quietly. He lifted his eyes to see her reaction.

  “Oh no.” Mrs. Usher shook her head. “You couldn’t handle the money.” She looked up the aisle toward the front counter where a man in a tie and gold watch was setting a perfume advertisement straight. “No, you couldn’t do that. You’d have to have experience with money to do that.”

  “He helps me at home with the dresses,” Ruby said. “Maybe he could work in this department. He can tailor the clothing already. He’s good with pins.”

  “Well.” Mrs. Usher picked up one of the new dresses and unfolded it. She shook it out and hung it on a rack behind her. With her back to them she said, “You probably wouldn’t feel very comfortable here.” She turned back and shook out another dress. “You understand.” She stretched the shoulder strap over a hanger and turned away again. “Aren’t there any positions nearer where you live?”

  “This ain’t so far from us,” Ruby said. “Here, let me help you.” She handed Lida to Easton and went around the counter to help with the dresses. “He could come after school and help with de evenin customers. The sh
oe department always seem so busy.”

  Lida began to cry. Easton shook her, but she continued. Mrs. Usher stopped what she was doing and looked at him. He shook harder, but Lida wailed louder. Other customers stared and whispered. He could feel them pointing, hear their accusations. He squeezed Lida’s warm body as tightly as he could and she stopped.

  “He’s very good with your baby,” Mrs. Usher said. “Why don’t you have him take care of all your children while you sell your dresses.”

  “She is all my chilren; and besides, he would really like to work at dis store.”

  “That’s all right,” Easton said. The lights seemed brighter now, blinding almost, reflecting from the metal rack, the glass counter, and dress mirrors. He stepped back toward the aisle.

  “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Usher said, as she twisted her ring. “I just don’t see our customers feeling very comfortable. They’re very old-fashioned, many of them. You’d be the only colored employee. It’s not that I wouldn’t hire you because of that. We fully support—my husband and I both voted for Rumford and we’re glad those laws were made—it’s just I wouldn’t want you to feel uncomfortable, and we can’t afford to lose customers. And really, I don’t know where we’d put him.” She licked her lips quickly and went back to the rack of dresses. She took a green one off and put it with the other green ones and arranged the yellow with the yellow.

  “What about de stockroom,” Ruby said. “Or he could run de elevator.”

  “I’ve told you.” She stopped sorting and looked right at them, her voice louder now. “We just don’t have a proper place for him. If I knew you were going to push your whole family on us, we would have never taken these dresses. It was a favor to you, really. We have many other suppliers. I hope you understand that.”

  Ruby stepped away from the counter and backed up to Easton.

  “I’m sorry. We done mean nothin by it.”

  Mrs. Usher continued to talk, her face to the counter. “We never take dresses right off the street like that, and I personally asked Mr. Caulfield to do it this one time. And he didn’t think twice about it, you understand.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  The lights made Easton feel as if the floor were moving and the walls collapsing. He closed his eyes and Lida started crying again. Ruby took her from his arms.

  “I didn’t think twice about you being colored, Ruby. I don’t think you could say that we’re prejudiced here. We simply can’t lose customers. I would hate to feel that we couldn’t sell your dresses anymore because of some sort of accusation or misunderstanding.”

  “No ma’am. That’s not what I meant. If you don’t: have a spot for him, we’ll jus look nearer where we live.” Ruby rocked Lida gently in her arms, but the baby did not stop crying.

  “Yes. Yes. I’m glad you understand. I’m sure he’d be much happier there.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Easton turned and walked up the aisle quickly, as if he were underwater and dying for breath. Ruby thanked Mrs. Usher for taking the dresses and apologized again for disturbing her.

  When she finally emerged through the glass doors, she found Easton leaning his head against the telephone pole. Ruby shifted Lida into one arm and put her hand on Easton’s shoulder.

  “Come on, now. You got to get yourself used to it. I jus put it out a my mine and say de Lawd has his reason for everything.”

  “Leave me alone.” Easton shrugged her hand off him and shook his head.

  “Don’t be angry at her, Love E. She doin us a favor.”

  “I’m not angry at her.” He turned and yelled, “I’m angry at you. I knew I shouldn’t have tried. I shouldn’t have listened to you and your countryfied ways.”

  “Why you angry at me?”

  “You sound like some field nigger in a henhouse: ‘Oh, yes ma’am. He jus turn fourteen.’ ‘No ma’am, we don mean nothin by it.’ ‘You jus gots to listen to de Almighty.’ ‘Oh, yes ma’am. Hallelujah.’ Why don’t you learn to speak proper now that we’re out of Carolina.”

  He turned away again and walked to the bus stop. On the bus, he sat in a separate seat behind her, and they rode in silence the entire trip home.

  CHAPTER 3B

  DECEMBER 1976 • LIDA 16

  LIDA SHOWERED IN the evenings before going to work at Lucky’s, her first job ever. She raised her arms in the air and held on to the curtain rod, breathing the thick steam into her nostrils, the water running down her back and thighs.

  Through the half-open rectangular window by her face, she listened to the evening sounds of the street: the scraping of metal roller-skate wheels; Telli, their Jamaican neighbor, laughing from her stoop; and on this night, a car honking and a man calling out, “Come on, come on.”

  She picked up the orange clamshell soap and scrubbed her arms from her shoulders down in a counterclockwise direction, then put her nose against her arm and smelled the peach scent on her skin. The warm soapy water gathered around her feet over the partially clogged drain and she put her big toe on the holes of the mesh, pressed down, then lifted up, and the water drained more quickly. She turned her foot over and looked at the geometric imprints on her skin.

  The door to the bathroom opened, and as if a sudden breeze had blown through the stall, she put her foot down for balance and pulled her arms to her sides. The curtain, normally transparent between the flower pattern, was all steamed up.

  “Mama?” she asked. The bathroom door closed and then the medicine cabinet squeaked. Lida pictured her towel hanging on the door hook. “Mama? That you?”

  “Naw. Just me,” Easton said.

  “I’m taking a shower. Can’t I get privacy?”

  “Can’t never wash all that ugly off a you,” he said, without a trace of his old News English.

  “Where’s Mama?”

  “She fixin supper.”

  “What you want in here?”

  “I’m just gonna shave.” He tapped the razor on the sink and turned on the water.

  Lida faced the shower nozzle and put her forearms together in front of her chest, as if she could make herself narrow enough to hide in the stream of water. She heard the spray of the shaving cream and his hands slapping together, then another tapping on the sink.

  She closed her eyes and let the water run over the top of her head and over her mouth. She pressed her elbows into the sour spot in her stomach and burped softly. Any transmission of fear might provoke him. She knew this. To show anger was fine, an act of embarrassment reflecting only on herself, but fear was an invitation. She heard the razor scrape against his face, swish in the water, and then scrape again.

  She stood on her tiptoes and peered out the rectangular window. She could see only the side of the house next door and a cat in the garbage below.

  “Mmmm-hmmm! You sure turned into a full-grown woman.” She spun around and saw him looking in at her from the back of the curtain, licking his tongue over his gold-capped tooth. “You out all night shakin that all over town, lettin those little boys stick they thangs up into you?” His eyes traveled up her body, stopping at the small stream of water running off her pubic hair..

  She stared at the razor clenched in his hand. “Mama.” The word stuck in her throat.

  “She ain’t never gonna believe you.”

  “Mama!” she yelled.

  “Shut your mouth.” He stuck the razor out at her, its straightedge covered with small hairs. She raised the shell of orange soap to throw at him and he laughed.

  “Look at that.” He pointed his chin at her hard nipples. “You can’t hide how you really feel.”

  She covered herself with her elbows.

  He let go of the curtain, perhaps to come in from the other side and grab her, perhaps to take off his clothes. She heard the toilet seat lift, then the spatter of urine. She backed against the window and waited, the sour smell flooding her nose and sickening her. She breathed out for as long as she could. It wasn’t the smell of urine that most disgusted her, but that it was his uri
ne, like his hand reaching out and touching her, getting inside her. When she couldn’t breathe out any longer, she faced the open window and sucked in the cold air.

  He flushed the toilet, and for a moment she couldn’t hear anything else. She couldn’t tell what he was doing. The shower got cold, but she didn’t complain. Then she heard the cabinet close and the bathroom door open again. The hiss of the toilet died away slowly. The pipes rumbled. She stood in the back of the tub, listening, frozen in the silence. Finally she peeked around the corner of the curtain, crouching down low, where he wouldn’t expect to see her. The bathroom was empty, his razor and shaving cream gone from the sink, but he had left the door wide open.

  CHAPTER 3C

  AUGUST 1993 • LOVE 14, RUBY 55

  “YOU CAN STAY in Love E’s ole room.” Ruby led Love up the same shiny wooden stairs she and her brother had first mounted more than thirty-four years ago. “You wasn’t never loud in here when you was a chile, but that time’s all over now. This here’s the biggest room. That’s his drawing pad and charcoals on the table. Jus done touch nothin what ain’t yours. My brother was fond of his pictures.”

  Ruby went to a sketch on the wall beside the closet. “This here is John and Bobby Seale. Huey shot jus ’round the corner on Seventh. And that there John Coltrane. Your great-grandpa Corbet fond a Charlie Parker, but Love E always say he ole school.” Ruby laughed and looked down at the long wooden floorboards a moment.

  Love tossed the garbage bag full of his belongings from Los Aspirantes onto the bed.

  “I’ll let you alone to get yourself the feeling for a bit.” Ruby closed the door behind her.

  Love looked around his new room, the single bed in the middle of the floor, the rolltop desk. Then he went to the window and looked onto Cranston Avenue. Many of the wooden Victorians were still standing, but the colorful paint had curled off, and every third house was boarded up. The houses that were still inhabitable looked as Ruby’s did—tall fences around the yards, black bars on the lower windows, and pieces of tar paper ripped off their roofs. The homes were each tilted in some way, collapsing in on themselves as if they’d been punched in their stomachs.