Leaving: A Novel Read online

  “Listen to this guy talk,” the officer said to his partner. “I thought he was taking the Fifth. Seems more like he’s been drinking a fifth.” His partner laughed, but his smile quickly faded.

  “I’m just saying, what are you bothering us for? Isn’t it worse what they’re doing to us than what we’re doing to them? I mean from your point of view.”

  “I don’t have a point of view. I’m just doing my job. Now, turn around.”

  “You don’t have a point of view? What do you mean? How is that possible? Don’t you care? Don’t you think for yourself?”

  “That’s enough. Turn around.”

  “Can’t you think for yourself?”

  The officer hit Easton in the ribs with a jab of his baton and Easton fell to his knees.

  “What did you hit him for?” Sandra yelled. She ran over and stepped between them. The policeman lowered his baton.

  “Come on,” she yelled again. “Aren’t you going to hit me too?” He looked down as if he were being berated by his own daughter. “Aren’t you going to hit a defenseless woman? Or is that finally sinking too low for you?”

  Charles approached them, and the second policeman lifted his club.

  “So now you want to hit me? Now I’m the one needs a whuppin ’cause I want to see what you done to my friend.” Charles crouched down and took Easton by the arm.

  “Stay back,” the first policeman said.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Sandra continued. “He was just talking, just talking like a civilized human being.” She turned around and knelt in front of Easton. Both policemen hovered there for a moment. They looked like they wished to finish the arrest, to maneuver around Sandra and Charles somehow, but instead they squeezed their fists around their batons and waited. Easton looked up at them, frozen there like angry children whose toys had been taken away.

  * * *

  FOR THE NEXT month, Easton recuperated at home. Once in a while he would venture downstairs. In the evenings, the living room was lit by a single curved lamp, and the mellow sun filtered through the burgundy curtains of the Victorian. Corbet sat in his chair with his pipe, smoke floating in front of the single bulb as he rocked beside the phonograph and listened to Charlie Parker. The rug was a dark, blood-red Persian he’d brought home from the shipyard. The polished wooden walls, railings, and windowsills also shone red.

  Corbet usually drank a glass of bourbon, slowly raising it to his lips and then placing it down on a circular black cast-iron table imprinted with Chinese serpents. His eyes were often closed, and his back was to the staircase, where Easton would sit and watch him.

  Corbet would shake his head and caress his strange pipe and, as if he were invoking some demon, growl softly with the music—sometimes not so softly, like hitting bumps in a road. For a week now, since he’d been laid off, Corbet sat in that chair every day and listened to music. He’d injured his foot, though because of his diabetes, he hadn’t known it until it was beyond repair. His foot was now infected and the doctors said they would have to amputate.

  “Sit here,” Corbet said one night.

  Easton did not move from his seat on the bottom steps. He was not sure he had been spoken to, if Corbet wasn’t instead commanding some spirit to sit down beside his knee. He’d heard about people from the war having dreams while they were awake. But Corbet raised his left hand and motioned to him with a wave.

  Easton stood and straightened his slacks; it took some effort, his ribs were still sore. He passed the kitchen and looked in at Ruby, who’d just come home from the Pearsons’ and was fixing supper before going upstairs to mend pants for a neighbor. She sliced carrots and brushed them into a pot on the burner. Easton was hungry after a long day of taking care of the baby. For two years, while Ruby cleaned houses on the weekends, he had stayed home all day with Lida, keeping her from knocking over picture frames, from falling down the stairs, from drooling on her clothes, wiping her bottom when she went.

  Every once in a while he’d go out to look for work. He’d applied to do construction at the postal processing plant, but they wanted someone at least eighteen. There was no point in trying the trains now that White people were getting Pullman jobs.

  Easton approached Corbet in the living room and stopped next to him.

  “Assez-toi, pre de moi.” Corbet patted the side of his chair.

  Easton sat down on the carpet, the curved rocker creaking toward and then away from him. Corbet put his pipe on the table, then reached out and placed his hand around the back of Easton’s neck, just below the skull. Easton straightened quickly at this unusual sensation, the first time Corbet or any man had touched him other than to hit him. The fingers of Corbet’s large hand stretched all the way from the back of one ear to the other, and Easton soon tilted his head into the full, strong warmth of it.

  Corbet’s fingers tapped lightly on the side of Easton’s neck to the rhythm of the saxophone; they fluttered at frills, stopped at breaks, then dropped one at a time with a long descending scale.

  “Hear that?”

  Easton nodded his head, but only slightly, afraid the hand might be removed if the lesson was learned.

  “Hear that?” Corbet tapped more quickly, higher up toward his ear as the pitch raised. “That: nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh, du-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh.” He rocked the chair and shook his head slowly, his eyes closed. Easton closed his eyes too. He felt the tapping of the sax on his neck, but he listened to the swing of the drums. Tsst-t-tss, tsst-t-tss, bat ba-boom. The music entered him: the bass shook his stomach and the snare slapped his chest and he shook his head with the hi-hat. The saxophone fingers tapped on his neck, and he rocked side to side near the chair as the big warm hand pulled and pushed him.

  Then—ting, ting, teeee-ing—the song ended.

  Corbet took his hand away and picked up his glass of bourbon. Easton felt the sudden cold on his neck.

  “Now you hear it all in there?” Corbet asked. “That’s the Bird flyin free. Saying, I’m not a body. You look at me, but you don’t see me. You want to hold me down, you want to put this bird in a cage, but you can’t put music in a cage; you can’t capture my spirit, ’cause I’m free inside. Inside I’m free.”

  The record ended and the needle sat in the last groove, going around and around in the silence of the late evening. Ruby called them to the table for dinner, and Easton helped Corbet stand, pulling his arm over his shoulders.

  SANTA RITA JAIL

  TODAY I READ to you from the Life of Gustavus Vassa, the African:

  On the passage [from Barbados to Virginia] we were better treated than when we were coming from Africa, and we had plenty of rice and fat pork. We were landed up a river a good way from the sea, about Virginia country, where we saw few or none of our native Africans, and not one soul who could talk to me. I was a few weeks weeding grass and gathering stones in a plantation; and at last all my companions were distributed different ways, and only myself was left. I was now exceedingly miserable, and thought myself worse off than any of the rest of my companions, for they could talk to each other, but I had no person to speak to that I could understand. In this state, I was constantly grieving and pining, and wishing for death rather than anything else. While I was in this plantation, the gentleman, to whom I suppose the estate belonged, being unwell, I was one day sent for to his dwelling-house to fan him; when I came into the room where he was I was very much affrighted at some things I saw, and the more so as I had seen a black woman slave as I came through the house, who was cooking the dinner, and the poor creature was cruelly loaded with various kinds of iron machines; she had one particularly on her head, which locked her mouth so fast that she could scarcely speak; and could not eat nor drink. I was much astonished and shocked at this contrivance, which I afterwards learned was called the iron muzzle. I had a fan put in my hand, to fan the gentleman while he slept; and so I did indeed with great fear. While he was fast asleep I indulged myself a great deal in the looking about the room, which to me appeared very f
ine and curious. The first object that engaged my attention was a watch which hung on the chimney, and was going. I was quite surprised at the noise it made, and was afraid it would tell the gentleman anything I might do amiss; and when I immediately after observed a picture hanging in the room, which appeared constantly to look at me, I was still more affrighted, having never seen such things as these before.

  CHAPTER 5

  DECEMBER 1976 • LIDA 16, RUBY 38, EASTON 30

  LIDA SAT AT the bottom of the stairs, where she could see Ruby but not be seen by Easton, who was speaking to a group of people in the living room. She held the torn strap of her dress. She had proof she could show Ruby this time: not just the usual scratches he made, but the broken strap and the teeth marks on her nipple where he’d bitten her when he came on his hand.

  The living room was packed with people. A few men sat on the floor between the coffee table and the couch with their knees to their chests. Everyone was in their socks, their shoes all piled up by the door—Ruby’s orders. Thirty people stood in the entrance hall and up against the walls by the writing table, blocking the picture of Corbet, their backs pressing into the stacked boxes of record albums.

  Lida knew most of the people by name, and the others by sight. The pock-faced man with a short goatee was the guy Marcus bought his weed from. Marcus’s father was there too—he’d brought the whole wheat pretzels that Ruby put in bowls throughout the room. Marcus’s mother was there, but she sat next to a man in a jade suit who owned the fancy Seagull’s Restaurant downtown. Telli, the Jamaican woman who’d sold stationery out of her house across the street before it burned down, sat in Corbet’s rocking chair, her poodle on the lap of her red satin dress. Dr. Cott was also there, standing by the vase of pussy willows on the vanity. He’d fashioned Easton’s gold cap, the one he licked with the tip of his tongue.

  The others Lida had seen only a few times at previous meetings, people Easton knew from Merritt College. They all wore their coats and scarves inside the house because Ruby had opened the window, the fresh air billowing in through the long burgundy curtain. Many of the men wore the same waist-long black jacket that Easton had put on after he was done with Lida.

  Now he stood at the front of the living room addressing the gathering, the curtain waving up like a giant robe behind him. She knew that he could not see her white socks on the bottom step. But if she stood up to cross the back of the room, even if she quietly glided on the wooden floor, he would see her between the heads. Her hands tingled at the thought of it. People would turn and greet her. He would say something to her, or about her, before she could reach the entrance of the kitchen, where Ruby leaned against the door frame watching Easton speak, her hands thrust deep into her dress pockets.

  “They took Li’l Bobby. They took Bunchy. They took John and Fred, George and Jonathan. But they ain’t gonna stop Lionel!”

  “Bring ’em back,” Dr. Cott shouted at him. “Bring ’em back, brother.” There was short applause.

  “When we put down the guns, we didn’t stop warrin. It’s been a long stretch since our party split, since the division: International over there, Central over here. But now it’s time for a healing. Y’all know I been down for Eldridge; from the time I was down with him in Algiers, I stood by him tight and took no muzzling of the Panther.” There was none of his News English left now, almost the opposite of what happened to Ruby, who’d worked on refining her speech every day.

  “From the time he stripped down to his bones and walked out into the street in front of them pigs, I knew he was the bravest man alive. He made me know what I am and what I got to do. But now we got to get together, to take stock in our new power. It’s a soft power, but it’s real power. Let’s give it up for Elaine and our softer side: we have helped our brothers and sisters when the White supremacists would not. We feed the homeless, we have free health care, free legal aid, we be escorting our grandmothers from the Social Security building. We even kill the rats and the roaches, and we got an elementary school too. An now, next April, we’re gonna have the first Black mayor of the city of Oakland, California!” Everyone erupted into applause. Ruby clapped with her hands above her head.

  Even if she told her, Lida thought, even if her mother believed it had happened, how would she explain why? She could prove there was sex, but not why she’d let it happen, why she had waited to tell after so many times, after so long. She had been afraid that it would look like her fault, like Easton always said it would. She could hear herself say that she’d been afraid, but she only half believed it herself.

  “We will have everything though they gave us nothin,” Easton continued. “No one gave it to us. Not no White aid from the National Guard. No thanks to the COINTELPRO agents—maybe one of Hoover’s boys out in us right now. Not no White kids from the university. Not no Jerry Brown. None of those folks gonna give us this victory. Two hundred years—” Easton bent forward and closed his eyes, his fist clenched against his forehead. “Two hundred years—”

  “Take us back, brother,” Dr. Cott yelled.

  “Two hundred years after this land was sposed to be free and equal for all people—”

  “Okay? That’s what I’m sayin,” yelled Telli.

  “We will finally say, here in Oakland, the Wild West—” Easton paused. Ruby laughed, and the smile stuck on her face. Easton went on, “A brother can be elected mayor of a great city, no matter if his great grandady was brought over in chains from our homeland to lick the boots, milk them cows, pick the cotton, and hang from the noose of the White man’s rope!” The room erupted in applause again. A number of the men, including Marcus’s dealer, shot their fists up in the air.

  Lida stood on the step and looked straight at Ruby as if she had to focus on an object at the end of a long tightrope. She did not want to lick the knob of the staircase in front of everyone, so she quickly licked her fingers and touched them to it. Then she started to walk, her shoulders stooped, so she wouldn’t be seen above the applauding crowd. The sofa in the middle of the room was the only place not protected by standing bodies. Eight feet of smooth wooden floor and then she would be in the kitchen. There was silence after the applause died away. She reached the middle of the couch and felt the silence stretching on for an unusually long time. She turned her face to the front of the room and saw him watching her.

  He did not look away. He stared at her with his jaw clenched. Then a smile grew on his face, first only on one side and then broadly, until his eyes were shining at her. He lifted his hand toward her and all heads turned to see. Even Ruby, still wearing the smile on her face, now looked at her for the first time all night. But the smile was for Easton, not Lida. She stopped walking toward her mother as if the last door of a cage had suddenly shut in front of her.

  She faced Easton, his arm outstretched. All eyes were now on her. She pulled the ripped strap of her dress over the scratch on her shoulder.

  “There’s our hope,” he said. “The next kin. The future of the Party. The first Black governors and senators. The first Black CEOs of oil companies. The first Black president of the United States of America!” Everyone in the room applauded and Lida froze, staring at him like a mouse trapped by his smiling cat eyes. She turned to the kitchen and saw Ruby applaud too, her loose arms wobbling, tears on her cheeks as she looked back and forth between her daughter and her brother.

  Lida held her hands together at the bottom of her throat, her arms over her chest as if she were naked. She turned toward the front door and pushed her way through the applauding crowd. Once more she glanced at Easton. He laughed, and the whole room laughed with him at what they must have thought to be her bashfulness.

  She held on to the umbrella box and slipped her bare feet into her Eastmans, kicking his loafers away. The laughter followed her out the door, down the steps. It echoed in her ears as she ran up the block, as the pavement blurred beneath her feet, and all she could see in front of her was his smiling face and his shining gold tooth.

  *
* *

  SHE RAN ALL the way to Marcus’s East Oakland apartment, not bothering to hold up the ripped strap of her dress anymore.

  “You bleeding?” Marcus asked as he let her in.

  She sat on the low yellow sofa next to the guitar and stared at the moss-filled fish tank in the corner. The filter bubbled slowly, each sphere of air building at the top of the spout, pulling up and struggling to free itself.

  Marcus moved the guitar and stood back. “What happened to you? You ripped up your dress.”

  Lida kept her eyes fixed on the tank and spoke softly. “You said you’d kill him.”

  “Who?”

  “Him.” She shook her head and blew out through her nose, like a horse shaking off flies.

  “Him?”

  “Him HIM HIM!” She grabbed a pillow and threw it on the floor. Then she grabbed all the pillows and threw them on the floor, each time yelling louder, “HIM!” When there were no more pillows, she kicked the coffee table, and the brass ashtray banged against the glass.

  Marcus moved the guitar. “Listen. Lida, listen. I’ve been writing a song for you. Listen, girl. It’s kind of like ‘Wind Cries Mary.’” He strummed and sang: “When you come around, sweet Lida, I see my possibilities.”

  “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Lida picked up the ashtray and threw it at his clothing shelf across the room. It smashed against the wall and took a chunk of plaster with it.

  Marcus put the guitar on the carpet and ran to her, kneeling at her side, but she pushed him back and punched him in the chest. He had to grab her in a bear hug just so she wouldn’t hurt him.

  “Shhhh. You all right. Shhhh. Stop that.” He laughed as she wrestled to get away from him.

  “I ain’t joking! You said you’d kill him. You’re a liar!” She tried to stand, but he pulled her down again. She coughed and vomited a little on his shoulder, and he let go of her and backed away. She spit on the carpet, her face rabid with disgust. She stood up, looked around, and circled the room.