There were few rules in my grandmother’s house and the ones she did have were normal ones that were easy to abide by: brushing your teeth in the morning, taking a bath at night, and saying grace before a meal.
Delia would come and spend weekends with us; sometimes Hy-Lo would bring her in his long green Oldsmobile.
Malcolm and I would spot it as it turned the corner and we would dash into a neighbor’s yard and stay hidden there until he’d leave. Sometimes Hy-Lo would sit on the steps of my grandmother’s front porch and smoke, his head turning left and right, his eyes picking through the children who ran and jumped their way up and down the block hoping to spot us among them, calling us out and ending our joy.
Mable always covered for us. “They went to the beach with Jacob and Lot,” she would say, her eyes boring into Hy-Lo’s, daring him to challenge her.
Jacob and Lot were Sam’s sons from his first marriage. They lived in Dallas and would share our summers in Queens until they became too old to find sweet content on Foch Boulevard. By the time they were in their late teens, their summer visits decreased from two months to two weeks and then nothing at all.
Hy-Lo would look back at Mable, sometimes even holding her icy stare for a moment or two, but in the end he would just bounce his head and cluck his tongue. He didn’t like to run up against Mable and had little to say against Sam’s sons. He and they had come to blows once when the boys were just fourteen and fifteen. Even at that young age, they towered over Hy-Lo. They loved my mother dearly, as if she were their own flesh and blood, and protected her as such.
Hy-Lo had made the sad mistake of speaking harshly to her in their presence, and even worse, he’d snatched at her, ripping the seam of her blouse. Their assault on him was quick and furious. Hy-Lo’s words had not finished tumbling from his mouth, his hand not completely loose of Delia’s blouse, before Jacob and Lot were on him, pounding him with their large fists until he fell to the ground, where they kicked him until Sam appeared and pulled them off.
My mother had been screaming from the corner she found herself huddled in, begging for them to stop before they killed him. I sat solemn on the couch looking down on my father’s head as it knocked against the top of my foot.
I wanted to join them and kick him until his blood left a dark stain on Mable’s carpet, but instead I pulled my knees up to my chin and watched as tears of pain squeezed out from under my father’s clamped eyelids.
Sam had sent him off with rough words that Hy-Lo did not have the strength to dispute. He walked bent over out the door and to his car. Delia tried to follow, but Sam used the same tone he had on my father and ordered her to stay put. “He’ll be okay. You stay here and tend to your kids.” Delia opened her mouth once and a small broken sound escaped before she ran up the stairs and disappeared.
Sam looked at me and his eyes softened. “Go on outside, Kenzie,” he said and I obeyed immediately. He did not say a word to Jacob and Lot, but something passed between them, a vibration that I caught hold of that allowed me to understand that there would be no verbal chastising or physical punishment for their actions. The beating was a long time coming. Sam had steeled himself against being drawn into Delia and Hy-Lo’s disputes but it was becoming increasingly harder to do so.
He sighed heavily and his body shook against what could have happened had he been the one to deliver the beating. Surely his fists would have done more than bruise Hy-Lo’s ego or break his skin. His fists would have found Hy-Lo’s heart and ended its even rhythm with one hard blow.
The spring before I turned twelve years old, white men with red pinched faces, cut off T-shirts, and hard hats came to Foch Boulevard. They brought with them noisy machines: trucks loaded with gravel and smoldering black tar. They spread the tar and gravel the length of Foch Boulevard as easily as my mother spread icing across a cake, and then they flattened it with a large silver rolling pin.
Things would be different from that day on.
The oak branches dipped in misery and the grapes turned gray and shriveled up black. Porches seemed smaller, more cluttered, as people began to long for down home’s wide-open spaces. Houses went up for sale and children were ordered to stay close to home or inside all together. People walked quickly, lifting a hand in hurried greeting instead of stopping to talk.
A new element had followed the blacktop and they did not care if butterflies graced the day and lightning bugs stole the night. They laid out poison for the raccoons and chopped away the crooked limbs of the grapevines and blackberry trees.
I was different after that. I lost my taste for Twizzlers and M&Ms, my body curved in places that drew the attention of boys and men, and my mouth came loose at the sides, spilling out words that I had previously kept hidden beneath my tongue.
I had begun to openly challenge my father.
I
was back at the hospital, standing at the doorway of the room, staring at the chair. It was where I’d left it, pressed against the wall beckoning me over. There was someone new in the bed next to Hy-Lo’s, a white man who didn’t look sick at all. His cheeks were rosy and his green eyes sparkled when I walked into the room. “Morning,” he said cheerfully in a Brooklyn accent I’d only heard in the movies. I just nodded and walked past him toward my chair.
“That your father?” he asked and leaned forward.
I sighed heavily. “Yes,” I muttered back at him and sat down.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“What’s wrong with you?” I shot back. The hostility in my voice was thick but did not seem to affect him.
He pulled at the sheet that covered his body; pulled it until it traveled up to his knees and all that was left below was the white bedsheet he lay on.
“Sugar,” he said and smiled. “I love Hershey bars,” he added and laughed.
I stared at the starched white sheet for a long time before I spoke. This time my voice was low and apologetic. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said and turned away.
“Uh-unh, don’t be, it’s my own fault, really. You get what you deserve, you know. They think they might have to take the rest of my right leg off. I guess they’ll just keep chopping away until I’m just a head!” He bellowed with laughter that was as buoyant as the ocean. There were no secrets there. No pain, disappointment, or regret—just joy.
No feet, no calves, and now the thighs were on their way out? Where was the joy in that? I thought that he had been placed in the D building in error. He should have been in the G building with the other lunatics.
“So now your turn: what’s wrong with your father?” he said after he wiped the tears of laughter away from his shining eyes.
“Everything,” I said and got up and pulled the curtain along its thin rod until it blocked out his face.
I pulled the chair from the wall and set it parallel to Hy-Lo’s toes. I shoved my hands into my pockets and stood staring at his drawn and ailing face. He would not last past Christmas. I could see it in the deep creases that crisscrossed his face like great chasms. He had sucked from the bottle and now the bottle was returning the deed.
I sat down and crossed my legs and arms. The wind howled frigid outside the window, but it was colder by his bedside than it was outside. I wrapped my arms around myself and watched as Hy-Lo’s cracked and peeling lips moved silently while he spoke to someone in his dreams. I watched him and recalled my own nightmares.
“Were you on Montgomery Street yesterday?” Hy-Lo stood directly in front of me. My mouth stared at his chin, while my eyes focused on his inflamed cheeks. I was eight, maybe ten, not older than twelve.
We were alone in the apartment; Delia and Malcolm were at the store.
“No, Daddy,” I said.
“Someone told me they saw you there. Are you calling my friend a liar?”
This was a game we had played since I was five. Hy-Lo would say
someone
saw me
somewhere
I wasn’t supposed to be. When I was five I questioned my five-year-old mind. When I was eight I began to wonder if I had a twin. At ten years old I knew it was a game. By age twelve I was sick of the whole thing.
“No, Daddy,” I said wearily.
He was silent for a long time. He just stood there breathing Smirnoff into my face. I rolled my eyes, held my breath, and turned my face away.
His cheeks flushed crimson at my act and he took a step away from me.
“Look at me!” he bellowed.
My body jerked at the sound of his voice but I did not allow my head to snap around at his command. I slowly, casually turned to face him. My face was bent in a smirk and my eyes were cold and black.
“Wipe that look off your face, Del— Kenzie!” he yelled and took a threatening step toward me. I almost laughed at his blunder. He had, for a split second, mistaken me for my mother. No two people could be less alike; I would never have married a man like Hy-Lo, not even if he was the last man on earth!
My mouth was drawn in a crooked line. I was trying to keep my composure but my eyes smiled smugly at him and he reacted.
Slap!
His hard palm came across my cheek with quick intensity. I heard bells in my head and the living room swam around me, as I crumpled to the floor. When I opened my eyes he was standing over me, looking down at me. “Get up,” he said and stepped out of my blurry vision. I couldn’t move, my face was on fire, and my hot tears only stung more.
I turned my head and watched his feet walk away and into the kitchen. I crawled into the bathroom and slammed the door behind me. I screamed that I hated him until my throat closed up raw and my legs grew tired of kicking the door. I sat whimpering on the cold tile floor until I heard the front door open, the brief exchange between Delia and Hy-Lo, and then my mother’s soft voice floating through to me from the other side.
“Kenzie. Baby?” I could hear her fingernails tracing over the pearl-colored paint of the door. “Kenzie, come on out. Please, baby. He’s gone.” Her voice was shaky.
“I hate him!” I screamed in my hoarse voice and gave the door one last kick for good measure.
“I gotta pee, Mommy,” I heard Malcolm whisper from behind her.
I swung the door open and tried to rush past my mother and brother. Delia caught me by the arm and pulled me close to her. “What happened, baby? What happened?” I fought against her embrace. I did not want to be cuddled and spoken to in soft tones. She held tight as I struggled against her chest. After a while I collapsed in my mother’s arms, repeating my declaration over and over in her neck: “I hate him.”
It was discussed with my grandmother before the idea was even presented to me. It was late, way past twelve at night. Malcolm was fast asleep in his bed and I was stretched out on the living room floor watching Wolfman Jack’s
Midnight
Special.
Tina Turner shimmied and shook her way across the stage as she belted out “Proud Mary.” Delia was in the kitchen sitting at the table. Her face was smeared in egg yolk and her feet propped up in the chair as she painted her toenails red. This was her Friday night.
The phone was balanced between her ear and shoulder as she tried to speak below the sounds that came pouring out of the television. “I just think it would be better for her. She’s getting older now, I think she needs a change of scenery.”
I wanted to lower the volume but that would be too obvious. So I moved as close to the kitchen as possible, tuned out as much of Tina as I could, and strained to hear what my mother was saying. “Well, this woman on my job sends her daughter there every year; she says she loves it.”
There was a long moment where my mother grunted in agreement. “Well, we can swing it. Not for both of them, though. Just Kenzie.”
More grunting.
“Well, I think Malcolm is still too young. Maybe next year.”
I twisted my face. I still couldn’t get the gist of what she was saying. I moved closer.
“No, Mama, you don’t have to help. Hyman and I can do it.”
Silence.
“I know that you can’t do for one and not the other but—”
Silence.
“Okay, Mama. Okay.”
When Delia came out of the kitchen I was back where she’d left me.
She stood there tapping her foot and singing along with Tina. “What a life. Ain’t she the lucky one,” she said as she gazed longingly at Tina. “I wish I’d married someone like Ike Turner,” she said and sighed.
We’d find out, years later, that she had.
My mother’s quiet conversation with Mable came to light just weeks later.
“Kenzie, look at this.”
I was at the kitchen table bent over a particularly hard math problem.
“Look,” she said again, nudging my shoulder with her finger.
I sighed heavily and peered up at her. She stood grinning before me, a colorful brochure clutched in her hand.
“What’s that?” I asked and reached out for it.
“It’s information on a sleep-away camp. See, it’s up-state.” She was talking quickly. She pulled up a chair beside me. “See,” she said with every page I turned. Her eyes sparkled at the glossy pictures of the tall green pines and shimmering blue of the lake. “Oh,” she gasped when we came upon the campfire and canoeing scenes.
I looked up and into her eyes and I saw the memory of her own childhood lingering there.
“What do you think?” she asked and leaned back in the chair. Her eyes were hopeful and she thumped her foot nervously in anticipation of my response.
“It looks nice,” I said and also leaned back.
“Yeah, it does.” She got up and reached for her Newports. She bounced the pack of cigarettes up and down in the palm of her hand. “You know, I wish I could send you down home. I mean, so you could be with family instead of strangers.” She was talking slowly and staring out the window. “Those pictures remind me of my summers down south. Down home.” She breathed out and leaned her hip against the refrigerator.
I saw her cheeks rise with the smile that followed her memories.
“Shoot, growing up down home was like living in summertime all year long.” She laughed and stuck a cigarette between her lips. She turned to the stove and then remembered the book of matches resting on top of the refrigerator. “I wish you could go spend a summer there, but all the old people are gone and my cousins are living just like me. Working and wondering where their babies are going to spend their vacations at.” She laughed again. “Things just ain’t what it used to be.”