No Time to Die (12 page)

You cool, Ache. Slick. Long as you can think in the dark, what you need light for? Can’t run up on nobody at high noon. Think about that
 …

The voice that called him “Ache” silenced the others, inverted his fear of dark to light so that when he was thrown in the closet again, his only concern was that he would be ignored, overlooked, forgotten, and perhaps left to starve to death. The memory of the dark steadied him as he edged cautiously along the hall and entered the main gallery.

He had never been inside a place like this—a large, two-tiered room where people moved in a slow parade, brochures in hand, pausing to study each picture. Lights shone directly on the paintings, so he did not look at them.

Somewhere in the crowd, a woman’s voice filtered up, explaining that the Studio Museum had originally opened in 1967 in a rented loft on upper Fifth Avenue to showcase the works of black artists who were excluded from gallery and museum shows downtown. At that time, only Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, and Romare Beardon had general national exposure.

The museum opened at its current site in 1982, and visiting artists were regularly sent to Harlem’s schools to help children develop an appreciation for the fine arts.

The woman spoke to the crowd and he eased forward, then stopped. The voice did not belong to Felicia Temple. This woman was too short, her hair was dark, and she wore glasses, so he stopped listening and wandered away.

He stepped into the garden where a loose knot of a dozen or so people were standing in the sun examining
the sculpture and murmuring among themselves. A faint breeze ruffled the wide brim of a woman who stood apart from the group. When she turned, he saw that she was not the one.

He moved back inside, and the tight squeezing he thought had gone away now returned. It spread beyond his throat and dropped anchor in his chest. Felicia Temple wasn’t here. Maybe she didn’t even exist. He thought of the masks again and confusion overwhelmed him. Maybe it had been the ghost of one of those others, standing at that easel in the garden. Maybe no one had been there at all.

He headed for the steps leading to the second floor and took them two at a time, nearly knocking over the waiter walking down with a platter balanced above his head.

“Whyn’t the fuck you look where you goin’?”

The waiter stared in surprise, then stepped around him gingerly, as if circumventing a large rodent. A man and a woman standing directly behind the waiter stared at Ache, then looked away, shaking their heads.

By the time he reached the top of the stairs, his stomach had churned into a loop of pain and it was hard to concentrate. He saw a line forming near a large reception table decorated with trays of food. There was a line near the bar also.

He listened to the chink of plates and utensils and gazed at the food and wondered how much it cost. Was it free? No one was reaching into their pockets. It was free. So were the drinks. He watched the women on the line reach into the trays for small things to place on their plates.

She was not there. Nor was she at the bar where long thin glasses were filled and refilled with a sparkling
wine. He turned to retreat down the stairs when the three-piece combo—flute, bass, and drums—struck up, sending a soft fanfare of sound over the room. He glanced to the right of the musicians and saw her sitting at a small glass table with two men and another woman. Sweat made his palms slippery as he adjusted his glasses. He had nearly missed her.

She was laughing at something but the sound did not reach him. She leaned forward to shake someone’s hand, and the sleeve of the red loose-knit silk sweater slanted off her shoulder. Her hair glimmered in the indirect lighting.

Behind his sunglasses, he could make out the movement of her mouth and he wanted the words to spill over him. He wanted her to raise her hand and wave and smile; her eyes to follow him and let everyone know that she knew him. And they would all smile and nod approvingly.

But she raised a shawl of some kind to her shoulders and the two men and the woman rose when she did. A second later the glass table was empty.

Two days later, as he packed groceries, he listened to the lady who was the housekeeper chatting with the cashier.

“I know this is a large delivery, but I’m going out of town for a few days. My niece’s getting married in Florida and I’m going down to help her mama. Make sure that woman put the right fork in the right place on the right table, you know what I mean? Some folks want to do things right but just don’t know how. I’m leaving next Tuesday.”

He listened as the cashier said, “I know what you
mean. There’s so much to think about when it comes to weddings. Especially big ones. A thousand things can go wrong just like that.”

He bowed his head. He did not want the woman to recognize or remember him.

I did not get to Dr. De’s until Saturday morning, a week later. And only after Dad had looked at me closely, then asked if I needed “walking around” money. And after Alvin, more directly, did a pretty good imitation of Eddie Murphy baying at the moon when I had come down to breakfast.

I’d had no time for hair grooming. I was still at war with myself trying to adjust to the idea that James might not have killed Marie and that he might not have been responsible for Claudine either.

When I stepped into the crowded barbershop, Dr. De, Smitty, and Charlie each had at least four people waiting. “… and that’s not counting the folks who took a number and stepped out to the laundermat or the supermarket,” a young man said as he moved over on the bench, allowing me to squeeze in.

Dr. De caught my eye and smiled. “Hey, hey, Mali. Good to see you. You number five, okay?” He nodded and clicked his scissors, using his usual psychology. Once a person stepped in, he or she was drawn into the set and leaving was unthinkable. Those who took a
number and left, somehow made it back just as the chair was vacated for them.

I removed my scarf, and my reflection in the mirror stared back, telling me not to bother taking a number, just take a seat and make myself comfortable.

I settled in, glancing at the other faces, and, as usual, felt the familiar warmth and comfort close around like a cocoon. I watched the men, at ease with themselves. When they glanced out the window, the plate glass seemed to provide an additional buffer as they watched the passing parade.

“Hey, that’s Kenneth.”

“Is that Kenneth? Naw.”

“Yes it is.” The observer turned from the window and raised his voice like an auctioneer: “Anybody in here kin to Kenny? Know Kenny? Owe Kenny? No? Okay, now we can talk about Kenny.”

“Damn. Mack Daddy ain’t lookin’ too cool,” Charlie’s customer said. “Done lost the glide in his stride.”

“Just got out. How you expect he be walkin’ after all them years?”

“Had it goin’ on back in the day. Diamond on every finger, and two on his thumbs. Then his dippin’ ’n’ dabbin’ had him grippin’ ’n’ grabbin’. He be lucky now to even see food stamps.”

“Ain’t nuthin’ sorrier than a broke-ass pimp,” Charlie concluded.

In here, where private language prevailed, the verb “to be” was conjugated without igniting a sociological firestorm:

“Yeah, brother. I be gone a few weeks.”

“Is that right? Well, I be lookin’ after your lady.”

“Mm-hmm. And when I git back, you be Dee E Dee. Dead.”

In here, slow days were never slow. It only meant
that Dr. De could step out to the Sugar Shack and maybe sit down to a meal and rest his feet for forty-five minutes instead of sending for a quick takeout from Pan Pan’s.

Slow days meant space enough for the two old historians, eighty-four and ninety-one, to bend knee-to-knee over a chessboard older than they were and work strategy like Hannibal.

Dad got his hair cut on the slow days and sometimes stayed all day.

I preferred Saturdays, when I could catch the latest talk. The television positioned on top of the soda dispenser was turned off and the observers, tired of their window watch, turned to the rap inside.

“So like I was askin’ y’all,” said Charlie, the middle barber. “Who’s really bein’ empowered by all this empowerment money?” He raised his scissors and spun the chair in a half-circle to close in on the nape of a young boy, the scissors working the outline of a Coptic cross in low relief against his fade.

“I say it’s like this,” Charlie continued. “The folks inside the barricade—which is us—ain’t gonna see one damn dime a that dollar.”

“Tell it, brother,” Dr. De nodded. “It’s gonna be just like that last War on Poverty. Buccaneers, brokers, and B.S. artists cleaned up while homeboy on the corner singin’ ‘a change gonna come someday.’

“Soon as you bust one gate, a wall goes up someplace else. The fight goes on.”

I glanced at the faces in the silence. Behind the bravado and good humor, everyone in the shop was seeking not just a haircut but respite from shared pain. And, if not a common understanding of why life was the way it was, at least a common idea about how to prevent it from getting any worse.

“You got to see the big picture,” Dr. De said. “Those buccaneers, brokers, and B.S. artists, their only contact with the barricades happen when they rattlin’ through on Metro-North and gaze out on the scene: Tore-up streets and tenements. Hi-rise cages somebody nicknamed the projects. A ‘project’ is somethin’ you workin’ on, experimentin’ with, you know what I’m sayin’?

“Some a them dig the scene and don’t see a thing. But there’s one—maybe the buccaneer or the bullshitter—pardon me, ladies—shoots a glance and a lightbulb goes on. Bam! Before he hits the Bronx, that dude has figured out how more gold could be scooped from this zone than from a South African mine.”

“Now, wait a minute, brother,” a young man said. He was sitting on the bench near the man next to me. “You got it wrong. Sure, back in the day there was a lot of stealin’ and dealin’. But what’s happenin’ now is different.”

“How so?”

“Well, the folks are a lot more hip. They’re not gonna stand still for no shady stuff. People gettin’ busted for the smallest things nowadays.”

“You right. It’s the small things. Them squeegee guys and jaywalkers know the deal. Crime don’t play. P-L-A-Y.”

“Ah, you talkin’ apples and oranges now.”

“Naw we ain’t. Crime is crime is crime.”

“Except the big boys get community time. Cops get overtime. And we get hard time.”

“What you say, brother!”

“Tell it so we know it. That’s why we got to stand up for what’s real instead of fallin’ for whatever they throw our way.”

I closed my eyes, leaned back, and rested my head
against the wall intending to listen, but I must have fallen asleep. I saw my Grandaunt Celia and heard my mother saying, “Stand up for what’s right. Don’t let anyone beat you down. Always remember Aunt Celia and how she stood up—”

“… Mali?”

I had been dreaming. I heard my name. I heard something else but it was outside the dream. I woke and Dr. De was tapping my shoulder.

“You ready or you want to nod? I know some of the B.S. is boring but you really let us know it. You was cuttin’ zzzs like a cop on overtime.”

I raised my head from the shoulder of a man seated next to me, a complete stranger. I hoped I hadn’t drooled on him.

He held up his hand, cutting into my apology. “Don’t be sorry. Hey, I’m blessed. Can’t remember when somebody pretty as you been within wavin’ distance. You still sleepy? Be my guest.”

I settled into Dr. De’s chair and listened to the talk, trying to piece together what I thought I’d heard: Jobs lost. Numbers missed. Hard times. Food stamps. Food. I wasn’t dreaming.

“… man, you kiddin’,” said an older man now seated in Charlie’s chair.

“Naw, it was Billy told me. He was shootin’ a video over by that supermarket, testin’ his camera before a weddin’. Aimed at the window and caught this dude scoopin’ a box of cereal. Cornflakes. Right outta somebody’s groceries. Caught the brother’s hard times right on tape. Said he felt like goin’ in there and droppin’ coins on ’im but the weddin’ party showed up and he let it go.”

“Well, they cut welfare everywhere but on Wall Street,” Charlie said. “City ate four hundred million in
taxes to keep the big boys from jumpin’ across the Hudson. But they cut food stamps. Got young girls on the streets pushin’ brooms bigger than they are when they should be in school. Got that Gestapo sommabitch downtown talkin’ how he gonna cut children off food stamps if the mamas don’t take any kinda job come their way.”

“Fuckin’ power gone to his head.”

“And they warehousin’ more brothers than they got room for. This just the beginnin’. Folks be snatchin’ more than cereal.”

I listened through the buzz of the clippers, then shifted suddenly as if a current had passed through the chair.

Dr. De grabbed my neck and held it steady. “Girl, you tryin’ to ruin my rep. I almost cut a groove in your scalp. Hold on a minute and you can go home and slide into a coma if you want.”

I held up and, twenty minutes later, walked out with a business card I picked from the flyers and ads posted near the door.

Outside on the crowded avenue, I ignored the sun beating time like a drummer on my newly exposed scalp. I concentrated instead on the elaborately fancy print on the card in my hand.