Always (3 page)

“Okay, you black bisch! I ain't gonna have you back-talkin' me like you do Mom and Dad. You ai got no manners, that's yo problem now. What time does Myles get out of school?”

“I dunno,” I said quietly. Then she pushed me backward over the ottoman and my head bumped into the TV. It really didn't hurt that much, but I was just tired of her, the principal, and that white girl I had the fight with, so I started crying and rubbing the back of my head.

I saw a glimpse of a black hand, heard swack and saw whiteness. Before the first tear could fall, she smacked me so hard while I was on the ground it hurt my neck more than my face.

“I done told you, tar bisch, I ai Mom and Dad! I'll hurt
you up in here, girl, you just don't know. I ai nufin' to play with. Now, get your little spoiled black smutty ass up in that kitchen and I want it cleaned from top to bottom. I mean everything! If you leave even one speck of dirt in there, your ass is grass, and I'm the lawn mower.”

Still crying softly, I got up and walked into the kitchen. I noticed there were twice as many plates and glasses as there'd been before I went to school that morning. There was no way she could mess up the kitchen like this by herself. There were cigarette ashes
everywhere
, sticky dried sugar on the counter, eggs stuck in a frying pan, raw unwrapped hamburger sitting in the sink with flies buzzing around, and garbage that had spilled to the floor. The kitchen smelled worse than the boys' rest room I had to clean one time when I was on after-school detention.

I decided to take the course of least resistance and get it all straightened up so I would not have to deal with Kathleen, although I was sure she would make me help Myles clean the yard when he got home as well.

After a couple of hours you could have shot a 409 commercial in the kitchen. I cleaned the toaster and all the crumbs under it. I cleaned out the refrigerator, including the brown, green, and yellow gunk in the pan beneath it, and even got on my hands and knees and scrubbed the floor. I really went above and beyond the call of duty because I knew Mom and Dad would be home in two days, and although Kathleen would try to take all the credit, I would let them know that I'd done it all by myself.

As I put away the last pot, the door swung open so hard my skirt blew between my legs. With her wide nose and thick lips in the air, she looked around for something, anything, to get mad about. She snatched open the fridge, looked under the burners in the stove, inspected the countertops. She even shook the toaster for bread crumbs. Nothing. Then she smiled at me and said, “I told you to wash
all
the dishes.”

Looking behind me to where the dishes were neatly stacked, I replied, “I did.”

Kathleen said, “Move out the way, smut slut.” She walked to the cabinets and pulled out every dish, bowl, saucer, cup,
glass, spoon, fork, knife, and utensil and piled them on the counter. She reached under the sink and proceeded to pull out every pot and pan and added them to the silver and white mound. Last but not least, my dear, sweet sister went over and opened the china cabinet and pulled out all of my mom's fancy china and added it to the stack. Even their wedding china. “You chip one plate . . . and I'll chip yo black ass,” she said, then smiled as she walked out the door.

I did not care much for Kathleen after that.

Later that night something happened that I blocked out of my memory for years and years. Actually, the first time I thought of it was when we were on a campaign bus headed to Gary, Indiana.

I couldn't sleep the night after I washed everything in the kitchen, so I got out of bed and went downstairs to get some Tang. When I passed by Kathleen's room, I heard her moaning and groaning and stuff. I knew that her boyfriend had left her a long time ago and I didn't know of her dating anyone else, so being the average fifteen-year-old, I had to find out more.

I quietly opened the front door and walked outside barefoot. I remember the grass being wet between my toes because it had rained earlier, but curiosity had already gotten the best of me, so I kept going. When I got outside her room, I noticed the shades were not drawn as usual, so I moved quietly up to her window, shimmying between a few wet hedges. They grew thick on that side of the house, but I was too close to turn back.

I got about two or three feet away from the window and I could see beer bottles on the dresser and hear the Doors playing on the radio. I moved up a little closer and my mouth opened. I had never seen anything like that in my life. In fact, I'd never even heard my friends talk about such things. I could never imagine two people having sex . . . like this. I walked in on Mom and Dad a couple of times, on purpose, but this was something else.

Kathleen and our neighbor, a Russian immigrant who was at least as old as our father, were going at each other. Except
his face was buried between her legs, and her head was between his. As I stood there, something crawled on my leg and I jumped, and both of them held their heads up. To make it even worse, his head was not the only place where he was bald! I immediately ran in the house and up the stairs into my room. As I lay under the sheets, I was shaking, expecting her to open my door and do God only knows what to me. But she didn't. She never mentioned it and I never said anything to Mom and Dad.

The next night she made me and Myles eat frozen TV dinners, saying we had to cut back on “electwisity” as she called it. Myles, who was thirteen, refused to suck on the frozen Salisbury steak, but I didn't say a word.

One day, Dad told Kathleen he'd spoken to a friend and would be able to get her into a four-year university. The following week he and my mother took her to visit a college, and when Myles went to Scouts I had the house all to myself for one of the few times I can remember. How would I celebrate this momentous occasion? Would I raid the refrigerator? Would I call my friends over and play some of Kathleen's Redd Foxx and Richard Pryor LPs she had hid in the basement? No. I went into my sister's room and found a package of Lucky Strikes.

I'd always wanted to smoke and had tried it a couple of times before. The first time it burned my throat and made me nauseous. The next time I just coughed a lot and felt dizzy. But like anything I wanted, I worked hard at it until I was able to fill my lungs just like the ladies in the movies.

That afternoon I heated up my own after-school snack, went in the backyard, took out my smokes, shook the bow out of my hair, and placed my cat eye'd glasses on the windowsill. I sat in our fenced-in backyard and felt as beautiful as Ruby Dee in
St. Louis Blues
. As the California sun shone down on me, I lay on the lounger and felt good about myself. For some reason, smoking made me feel
more
secure and
more
confident, and not a day has passed since that afternoon that I have not enjoyed at least one puff.

Yeah, that's what I remember about '68, TV dinners . . . and I guess Lucky Strikes.

Chicago, Illinois

Four Seasons Hotel Grand Ballroom

7:45
P
.
M
. EST

“Hello, Franklin, and hello, America! This is Judith Finestein in the ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel just off Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, Illinois. The polls just closed on the East Coast forty-five minutes ago, and these canvassers, supporters, and campaign workers have been in the ballroom for about three hours. The last time I can remember this type of euphoria was in seventy-six in Plains, Georgia, when then-little-known James Earl Carter shook the political process and was elected the 39th president of the United States. Initially no one expected him to win, and a couple of months ago no one thought Vice President Ronald Steiner had a plausible reason to celebrate tonight. But after the well-publicized scandal in the Davis campaign coupled with the successful cross-country ‘We're in It to Win It' tour, many people are expecting him to pull off a Trumanesque upset and become the next president of the United States. He has momentum on his side, and in a three-man race with the weather conditions affecting voter turnout in many parts of the country, who knows what will happen?

“If you at home are having trouble hearing me, it may be because, this crowd of supporters are shouting as one, ‘I stand. You stand. We all stand, for Steiner.'

“As has been reported on numerous occasions, the race is so intriguing because we could elect either the first African-American president or the first female vice president. We have noticed that this room is packed to the brim with a strong contingency from California. We have also learned from our sources that Republican vice presidential nominee Mayor Sydney Ackerman of San Francisco will break with conventional wisdom and address the attendees within the hour. Her breaking with tradition is expected, since for this team, it has been anything but a traditional Republican campaign.”

Carol City, Florida

The Allen Residence

As the newscast played, Cheryl and Brandon sat on opposite sides of the room. She had just told him how she felt and what she had done weeks earlier, and as usual when he was upset, he said nothing. But she had never seen him this quiet. Like a faucet in winter, there would be an occasional drip in his demeanor, but on this night the drips had turned into cold brutal ice. He seemed beyond mere anger. As he dug his fingernails into the leather armrest of the couch, he sat and shivered, and she could feel the white heat of his rage from across the room. While he was a large man, Cheryl never feared that he would get physical, but she had never experienced anything like this before. As he sat with his eyes fixed and unblinking, the thought of domestic violence more than crossed her mind. Brandon's best friend in the Sheriff's Department worked in the black-and-blue division, which was a code name for internal affairs, so Cheryl knew if anything happened to her, there would be no repercussions. As the news reporter spoke in the background, she clenched her hands until her palms turned red in hopes that she, and they, would make it through the night.

Cheryl glanced at Brandon, and when his eyes met hers she immediately looked away. Then as the first exit-poll numbers of the night were broadcast, she heard the front door close. The rain was falling in thick splats and Cheryl jumped off the couch because she could not believe he would just walk out without an umbrella, coat, or anything. But he had. She opened the door as he was standing in the rain searching for his keys, and said, “Brandon, wait! Let me give you my umbrella!” His eyes swept over her like a light from a watch tower over the sea, then turned his attention back to the keys and opened the door to his patrol car. As he sat inside it, Cheryl saw him take a deep breath as if he was attempting to gather his composure. Then the yellowed dome light went off and he looked at his wife, backed
out the driveway, and disappeared into the night like a secret whisper.

CHERYL

My name is Cheryl Anne Allen and I have been married for five going on six years. I'm five feet three, a size six or eight, depending on the cut, and I run religiously every day. At one time I blew up to a size twelve, but I cut out red meat and buried a husband to shed it.

My complexion is brown. What shade of brown is irrelevant. I have a nicely proportioned figure, thanks to good genes and watching my diet, and I'm a Cancer, for whatever that's worth. I live in Carol City, a suburb of Miami, and work at one of the largest and oldest hospitals in the area as a nurse with fifteen years under my belt. I enjoy reading, although I don't do much of it anymore, and I am and always will be in love with the man I feel in my heart will be the next president of the United States.

I rarely tell this story to anyone because I don't think people would believe me, but I met Henry Louis Davis the Second in 1968. I cannot even say the year without smiling.

I was riding around with friends one day and they said they wanted to go to the shopping center. This was during the PM (pre-mall) period. So we went to Sears and I was messing with the typewriters. I was looking at the new Smith Corona and all its features when I saw him. He was so cute, and shy as I don't know what. I looked at him and he looked down. The first time he did it, I didn't think anything of it. I walked over to the vacuum cleaners while my friends were trying on clothes, and there he was about ten feet behind me. Now I was getting suspicious. So I walked into the ladies' department to join my friends, and he slowly followed. When I turned toward him he panicked and asked the salesgirl how much bloomers cost. I think I bit my tongue, I wanted to laugh so bad, but my girlfriends
were not so polite and burst out so loud I thought we would be asked to leave the store.

That day I remember I was wearing this lavender miniskirt and these powder-blue high-top patent leather go-go boots. I'd gone to the beauty parlor a couple of days earlier and asked Lori to cut my hair just like Diahann Carroll wore hers on
Julia
. So I was feeling
extra
cute that afternoon.

As I walked, I thought I'd give him a show. I slowed down and moved my hips with a little extra pop. Thinking back I probably walked more like Flip Wilson doing Geraldine than Dorothy Dandridge playing Carmen but when I looked back, he was gone. Boy, did I feel foolish because I'd done my best walking for nothing.

I decided to look for him. After all, I had not finished the show. I noticed a crowd around the TV sets and there he was. As I got closer, there was an eerie feeling and I knew something was wrong. This little black lady about my height was crying and so I walked up to him and tugged on his shirtsleeve. He looked around and said, “Hi,” and I saw his gorgeous coal black eyes and thick, long, dark eyelashes. And on top of it all, he had this smile that pulled you in like a warm hug. I asked, “What's going on over here?” and he said, “I don't know,” then moved aside and motioned for me to stand in front of him.

After we heard the news, I can remember getting a little weak in the knees. I mean this couldn't be true. There was no way that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot.