RL's Dream

Twenty-One

Big lumbering Gerry and Soup-spoon went with Chevette, Sono, Hamela, and baby George to the ice cream parlor on Mercer. The adults had hamburgers. Hamela had chocolate ice cream with strawberry syrup and George had his mother’s milk. When everybody was through, George started whimpering and Gerry picked him up in his big hands. After a while George stopped crying and even smiled for his big playmate. Soon the baby was sleeping in the crook of Gerry’s arm. His tiny lips pushed in and out and his little chest pumped like a bird’s.

“That music was really good, Mr., um, Mr. Wise,” Gerry said. He was whispering.

Soupspoon smiled at the gentleness of this awkward, high-voiced man.

“Call me Soup. And thank ye for the compliment.”

“I mean it. It was real good.” Without looking he stroked George’s forehead with his finger. Sono smiled in spite of her taciturn nature.

“You two married?” Soupspoon asked.

The question brought a sad frown to Gerry’s face. He looked over at Sono with dread.

“I’m only ever gonna get married once in this life,” Sono said with the solemn voice of a preacher. She reached out to touch Gerry’s arm, and in doing so, George’s little hand. “I mean I love Gerry but I was married to Tony and when he died I promised God that I’d never marry another man.”

“What he die of?”

The three young people, even child Hamela, went quiet. Soupspoon understood that something was wrong about the death. Sono and Gerry glanced away, but Chevette didn’t avoid his eyes.

“They thought he was a drug dealer, uncle,” she said.

“Who did?”

Chevette hunched her shoulders. “Nobody knows. But the cops said that Tony was wearin’ the same kinda purple runnin’ suit that somebody who stole from some uptown dope dealers was wearin’. They said that the guys prob’ly shot’im without makin’ sure who it was.”

Hamela put her hand up on her mother’s elbow; her big brown eyes, in the fluorescent light, were like moons.

“That was five years ago,” Sono said. “But if it was ninety-five Tony’d still be my only huzbun. Ain’t no other man gonna take his place.”

“Oh come on, Sono. You know you love Gerry,” Chevette said.

“I ain’t never said I cain’t have no boyfriend,” Sono told Soupspoon as if he were a judge reviewing her case. “Pinklon come an’ told me that he loved me. He come up here an’ spend my money an’ get me pregnant. And then when they cut me open for George he off wit’ his bitches an’ leave Hamela in the ’partment for three days by herself. If it wasn’t for Chevette, Hamela woulda died.”

“Hamela was scared of the dark,” Chevette said. “And her momma told her that she couldn’t play with matches, so she couldn’t light the candles.”

“Yeah,” Hamela agreed.

“Why didn’t she just turn on the lights?” Soupspoon asked.

“They done turnt off the phone, gas, and electric while I was pregnant. Said I owed them twelve hundred dollars includin’ deposits, an’ that I cain’t get it turned on till I pay’em. So I said fuck’em,” Sono said. “Only reason we got heat is that it’s steam an’ everybody gets it. Everybody should get they lights too.”

“So Chevy turned on the candles,” Hamela said. “And she stayed with me in my bed.”

“How come you didn’t take her up to your house?” Soupspoon asked.

“ ’Cause my a’nt is a bitch, that’s why. If you don’t give her no money she ain’t gonna spit.”

“Where she live?”

“Upstairs. My momma send me up here from Shreveport ’cause she got nerves. She kept Buster but I come up here, an’ momma send part of her welfare to A’nt Vella. Only A’nt Vella don’t care nuthin’ ’bout nobody ‘cept for how much money they got.

“When Hamela needed me I come on down to Sono’s an’ stayed.”

Soupspoon was listening but he was also watching. Watching Sono watch Gerry. Whenever baby George would begin to frown and move around, Gerry rubbed his forehead with his finger. Then George’s face smoothed out and Sono glowed.

Sono was all smiles for Gerry.

“Why don’t we take the babies home to bed and get some wine?” she asked.

Soupspoon got two bottles of good red wine in one of the liquor stores on Broadway and then treated for the taxi down to the girls’ building, not far from Rudy’s nameless club.

Getting a cab wasn’t easy for a gang of black folks and their babies. Every time they’d hold up their hands for a cab the driver sped up or turned on his OFF DUTY lights. Finally Sono stood out alone. She was the lightest-skinned one of them. The first cab she hailed stopped. The Pakistani driver was upset at first. But he liked Hamela, who sat on Soupspoon’s lap in the front seat. He drove them the crooked road to their big apartment building and Soup-spoon gave him a two-dollar tip.

“Black people could treat you right too,” he said while handing the man the money.

“Thank you, sir!” The cabbie nodded and grinned.

Soupspoon wondered if the young foreigner understood.

Sono’s apartment was large enough for the family and Chevette. Hamela had her own room and George had a crib next to Sono’s bed. Chevette stayed on the couch in the family living room. Everything was nice except that there was no electricity and no phone. The youngsters went around lighting candles when they got home. There were candles all over the house; in the living room, kitchen, and toilet.

The first thing they did was to put George in his crib. Hamela was crying and didn’t want to be left alone. So they all went in with her to put her to bed.

Soupspoon sat in the corner and played soft chords while Gerry told the story of the Lion Who Thought He Was a Man. It a was long rambling tale that was funny in places; all about a lonely lion who wanted friends so he pretended that he was something else. Sono and Chevette, only girls themselves really, sat beside the bed listening intently. Hamela was a little queen with her big teeth and drowsy eyes. She was asleep for five minutes before the adults could tear themselves away.

By the end of the first bottle of wine, Gerry had told of his whole dream to write a history of black people. He was a student at Hunter College and still lived with his mother in a big house in Queens. He was going to get his Ph.D. in history because “black people’s history isn’t all that dry stuff that white people have. Black people’s history is stories and words and music. Black people have built the culture of America with their play, and nobody knows it really because it’s not written down in books. You see, books make things seem real, and even if you’ve got something else just as real, if it’s not in a book then nobody cares...” He went on like that for a while. Sono beamed at him while he talked, moving his big hands in the air and looking into her Asian eyes.

They were sitting in Sono’s small kitchen; Sono and Gerry across from Soupspoon and Chevette. When Soupspoon pulled the cork out of the second bottle, Sono said, “I bet you never heard the music they play ’round here.”

“What music?” Soupspoon wanted to know.

“Down Charlton. Chili Morton and them.”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s a band like, play at this restaurant on Charlton.”

“What kind of music is it?”

“I don’t know all that stuff. It’s just that they play good and maybe you’d like it.” Sono turned to Chevette. “Why don’t we go down there?”

“Why’ont you an’ Gerry go on,” Chevette said. “Me an’ uncle stay here with the kids.”

Sono raised her eyebrows and caught Gerry by one of his big fingers. “Com’on,” she said. “Let’s get outside.”

Sono’s couch was just large enough to serve as Chevette’s bed. “I don’t mind sleepin’ in it,” she told Soupspoon. “I ain’t all that big, and at least I don’t got no big nigger runnin’ ’round tryin’ t’look in my drawers.”

“What you mean?” Soupspoon felt comfortable in the young woman’s company. Candles flickered around the room and the muted sound of salsa music came in through the walls.

Chevette was beautiful and knew it; but she didn’t care about it. She was open and friendly and sure enough in herself that she didn’t mind if somebody might not like her. Soupspoon saw home in that girl; life so hard that it made you good.

“When I used to live upstairs my a’ntee had this goofy old man named Willy up there. He always comin’ in on me when I’as on the toilet or in the bathtub. I had t’stop takin’ baths a’cause’a him. I had to come down here even if I had to pee.”

“So that’s why you come down here to live?”

“Uh-huh. Sono’s nice. She mad all the time but that’s ’cause she got these babies and a lotta bills from when she lived wit’ Pinklon and then when she was in the hospital. She work now, but a good girl cain’t make no money at Rudy’s.”

“You’re a good girl,” Soupspoon declared.

Chevette smiled. She moved three inches closer, put her hands together as in prayer, and clamped them tightly between her knees.

“I like you, uncle,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. She reached out and ran her small finger around his thumb. Then she brought her hand back between her knees.

“Shoo’,” Soupspoon snorted. “I’m old enough t’be yo’ daddy or, what was that you said, huh, yeah, uncle.”

“You ain’t old.” Chevette brought her shoulders forward and looked slantwise at Soupspoon. “Old is in your head. Old is when you cain’t laugh no more.”

“Who told you that?”

“Nobody need t’tell me what I could see, uncle.” She touched his thumb again. His hand jumped, and she smiled. “When Hamela an’ me be playin’ it’s not like I’m old and she’s a baby. We like each other an’ we like to laugh. There’s all these young men walkin’ around cussin’ an’ talkin’ mean. They say all kindsa nasty things when you be walkin’ down the street. An’ even if they talkin’ nice it’s just ’cause they want sumpin’.”

Chevette put her hand next to his, comparing their sizes.

“They don’t never laugh an’ sing, buy a girl her dinner and her taxi ride just ’cause it’s nice. They don’t just be nice to be nice.”

“Somebody should be nice to you.” Soupspoon’s heart took shape in his mind. The blood was singing ahead of the beat.

“You see?” she said. “Between you an’ me an’ Hamela we all the same age.”

“You could have anything you want, girl.” Soupspoon didn’t think about putting his hand on Chevette’s thigh. It was just that he was sitting there next to her and she was turned toward him with her leg up on the couch. “It ain’t like the old days when a black man or a black woman had to look at the ground when a white walked by,” he said. “If you got dreams today you could have’em. Ain’t nobody could stop you from that.”

“I want it too, uncle. You know I want me some money and nice clothes. And I wanna good man who looks good too. You know, like a real black man. Like coal but fine too. An’ you know I love Hamela and little George but I don’t want no babies, not right now I don’t. You see, I wanna get some money on my own with a good job and then I want a man who could work too. And mosta the time we be up here workin’ in the days an’ goin’ out to some clubs on the weekend. An’ then we have us a house down in New Orleans, up near the lake. They got some nice houses up on the river up there. And we could go down there ’round Christmastime up until Mardi Gras. And then my momma an’ them could stay there the rest’a the time so we don’t have ta waste the rent when we up here...”

“But what would you do?”

“Huh?”

“What kinda job would you get?”

Chevette sucked her tooth and licked the last bit of orange lip-stick from her lips. “Oh,” she sang and leaned forward to hold Soupspoon’s hand to her leg. “I don’t know. I could be a nurse, because I really like to help people. Or I could be a computer operator. You know Sono got a girlfriend works for the city in computers. She’s only trainin’ but they pay good for that and they pay for your doctors too. But really I’d like to make clothes. Or maybe I could go to FIT and work my way through bein’ a model and then when I get too old for that I could design things. You know, kinda like get the experience first and then go out on my own. They got a lotta pretty black models now, just like you said. You don’t have to be white no more.”

“You sure pretty enough to do it,” Soupspoon said. He moved his finger along with hers. The pain in his hip, just under being sharp, moved somewhere in his chest. It was cancer or sex, he didn’t care which. He felt the beginnings of an erection with surprise.

“I better be gettin’ outta here. I mean gettin’ home,” he said.

Chevette didn’t let go of the fingers on her leg. “What do you dream about, uncle?”

Soupspoon tried to remember the last time he actually heard his heart beating.

“I don’t know. I’m too old to be dreamin’ ’bout what’s gonna happen. When I dream it’s about what was.”

Chevette moved a little closer. She picked up his hand and held it in his lap.

“Um,” he said.

“What do you dream about the past?”

“I don’t know really. It’s like everything I did seems to be happenin’ all the time. Like things that was over start up again.”

“Like what do you mean? Like old friends?”

“I knowed a man name of Robert Johnson,” he said, and he felt that he’d said that same thing over and over, day and night, for his whole life. He said it to the crowds of people in smoky clubs all around the blues circuit in Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, and a hundred other places that all looked the same. He said it in the morning when he watched himself in the mirror; and on the toilet when he grunted and strained and needed something in his mind to hold on to. He said it to himself when walking down some familiar street in a strange town. He’d said it to Mavis Spivey when she was talking about the loss of her only son.

“What, uncle?” Chevette said. Her face was closer to his now. The back of her hand rested on his half-hard thing. He put his hand to the back of her neck.

“I wanna cry,” he said.

“How come?”

“You got a nice face, Chevette. Big ole eyes and kissy lips...”

Chevette leaned forward to kiss him lightly. He felt the pressure of her hand and sat there for the longest single moment he ever felt in his long life. He didn’t even want to breathe because breathing distracted him from this beautiful girl.

“Tell ’bout your friend,” she whispered.

“Just a lazy nigger is all. Lazy nigger could play music that was brand new.”

“Did you like him?”

“I loved him, Chevette. And when he died it broke my heart to know that he was gone. ’Cause you know livin’ weren’t the thing when I was young man comin’ up. Livin’ was bein’ a slave. An’ all you could really do was lose yo’self in whiskey, women, and the blues. An’ when you got tired’a that it was time to die. An’ the onliest man I ever met who could face that truth and still be a man was Robert Johnson.”

“He was brave, your friend?”

“It wasn’t that so much but he never let himself know that he was scared. He had somethin’ t’hold on to.”

“What was that?” She turned her hand around to hold on to him. When his eyes got big she grinned.

“I don’t know.”

“How long ago did he die?”

“Fifty years this year.”

“Fifty? Damn, that’s how old my grandmother is.”

Their hands began moving together. A girl of eighteen and a man who could have sired her grandmother. They kissed and she wasn’t sad. He moved his soft leathery hands on her young skin and she trembled for him.

“You a virgin, girl?”

Chevette shook her head to say that she was not. She didn’t like to stick her tongue in his mouth but she took his thing out of his pants and stroked it.

“Go over and get that bottle’a wine,” he said.

She did as she was told but first she took off the torn shirt top and cutoff jeans. Then she poured out a glass of wine and blew out all of the candles except for one. She brought the wine and the candle back to him.

She dipped her right hand into the glass and then let the liquor dribble from her fingers into Soupspoon’s open mouth. With her left hand she guided his only half-solid cock up and down until she finally got it in.

Between the tastes of wine from her hand Soupspoon told the girl how pretty she was and how wonderful she was. He told her that she was young and beautiful and generous and he meant every word that he said.

He felt the pain when she got excited and rode him hard. But she seemed to get more pleasure from his hands moving over her body as she moved slowly like waves over his chest.

Much later on the door came open. Chevette was still riding the old man. His cock was now limp and lolling between his legs. But his hands still moved slowly on her and his whispers still thrilled her.

Sono and Gerry watched for a while and then they moved into her room, closing the door behind them.