Hold Love Strong (13 page)

A
perpetual tidal of tumbling, his shoulders rising, his knees bending, his back bowed, his face unfurled, a tattered sail anchored to the sidewalk, Titty wept like a battered woman in Yusef 's arms.

“It's all right, big man,” said Yusef, stroking the nape of Titty's neck. “Let it out. Let it go.”

Without Yusef, Titty would have crashed to the concrete, splashed on our feet.

“Like a angel,” he sobbed. “Like a angel, that nigga could sing.”

It was the first day of February. In winter coats and white shirts with collars and cuffs that were too big for our necks and wrists, my friends and I stood outside the Holy Name. We were in the eighth grade, at a time in our lives when our heads and feet were big, incongruous balloons affixed to our bodies. We were growing into ourselves or so we were told. We had pimples and wisps of hair above our lips and, if we angled our heads and stood in the light just right, wisps of hair could
also be seen on our chins. The sun was bright. The sky was an electric, ethereal blue. There was no wind, and it was so cold no scent had the fortitude to hang in the air. A few church vans from other churches sat double parked behind a hearse on Columbus Avenue, and a steady stream of people gathered on the sidewalk, swelled with sadness, that steaming heat that made the coldness of the day inconsequential. Three days earlier, Titty's cousin, Pastor Ramsey's son Jeremiah, was killed for everything he had: five crumpled dollar bills, a nickel, two dimes, three sticks of Big Red, a book of matches, a condom, a bad joke with a punch line he could never get right, a head full of hymns, and a half-smoked cigarette, the habit he kept from his father. It was his funeral. Those who refused to let the public see them with anything other than unflappable stoicism, or at the very least indifference on any other day, wore true faces. Wrenched and twisted by grief, they held one another. They kept one another standing. They blinked slowly, holding themselves apart from the world, fighting back tears, regrouping so they could fortify one another again. Dappled about the congestion, shining, emanating the sweet of cocoa butter and knockoff bourgeois perfumes when hugged and leaned upon, women cradled small children to their chests. Some whispered secrets to distract others from their pain. Old men who had known this sort of death too many times to count wore black and blue suits. Some men's ties and shirts were spotted with faded stains of dripped coffee and food from previous services. Some men talked intermittently about current events and sports because the sin of Jeremiah's death was a theme they had hashed and rehashed so many times before that their sadness could now only be demonstrated by how their favorite player and team made them feel.

Wearing a black leather overcoat and a black Kangol driving cap pulled crookedly over his right eye, Mr. Goines walked through the crowd passing out flyers for a peace march and homemade buttons with Jeremiah's likeness on them.

“Put it on!” he shouted, holding a button over his head, spittle vaulting from his lips. “Pin them to your skin! Never forget young Jeremiah!”

With his spongelike brown eyes, Precious watched Mr. Goines and couldn't stop shaking his head no. But he didn't shake his head out of disgust. He shook it out of familiarity. Precious was raised by his father and his father was an old Black Panther, so Precious knew the sight of a man as the embodiment of paternal strength and maternal love. He sensed something. He lay his heartbroken eyes on me. He was still my most gentle friend.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm good.”

What a lie. Because who was? But then my greatest pain was not related to Jeremiah's passing. That is, I was saddened, perhaps even devastated by Jeremiah's death. But what Precious saw on my face was panic. Before Mr. Goines had come near us I had seen my mother across the street, like a skittish rat scampering between cars, scratching herself and darting from one car to the next, eyes glued to the ground. She scoured the parking lot, bending over and scratching the dried tufts of scrub grass that bloomed through the cracks in its concrete, kicking patches of gravel, and circling parking blocks in search of the nothing she thought she dropped or that something some other crackhead might have abandoned mistakenly, a few last crystals in a vial, a crumpled ball of tinfoil, a tiny Ziploc baggie. She had come home in the fall then left and came home and left on a binge again just after New Year's Eve. The arrival of Mr. Goines had distracted me for a moment and when I looked back my mother was nowhere to be seen. So I feared she was somewhere nearer and that everyone might soon see the teetering, spastic slow motion that was the collision and ensuing grapple between her emptiness and her craving.

I looked back across the street and lost myself in prayer and scanning the parking lot for my mother. I hoped that she had wandered off
to parts unknown. I hoped she would remain unseen, deceased if need be, at least until Jeremiah could be buried in peace, at least until everyone entered the church and the devastation that would be her public appearance passed.

Suddenly, from down the street came my grandma. She wore a black dress, a black hat, and black sunglasses that not only hid her eyes but made her look like a train. She aimed herself at me. She leaned forward, swung her arms, accelerated. Every time a young man was killed in or around Ever, she made rules and demands that made our home a penitentiary. We couldn't go out. No visitors. I couldn't be at the basketball court by myself. No one was going to die unnecessarily. Not on her watch. Over her dead body. But things had changed drastically. That is, her watch had proven to be insufficient. She couldn't keep Donnel in. And Eric followed Donnel's lead. And my mother, wherever she was, was a lost cause. And my Aunt Rhonda was a grown woman, so my grandma's rules didn't apply to her. So it was just me. I was the only one she could capture. She ignored my friends. She brushed past them. She kissed me on the cheek. Then she grabbed my shirt in her fist.

“You coming right home after all this,” she said. “Understand?”

I blinked. She tore her sunglasses from her face with her free hand.

“Answer me,” she demanded. Then, with my shirt still in her grip, she lifted her fist against my chin and shook me. “Abraham, I'm talking to you.”

“Gloria!” Mr. Goines shouted from behind us. He came up on our left, and swiftly putting the buttons in his pocket, he grabbed my grandma's wrist with both hands, crushing his black and white flyers around it.

“Let go of the boy,” he said, trying to pry her grip from me. “Abraham ain't done nothing. Gloria, let go.”

There was an awkward pause in which my grandma and Mr. Goines looked at each other. Then she looked back at me and I saw it there, how it
filled the dark depths of her brown eyes with smoke and ash. My grandma had seen my mother just as I had seen her. And then she saw that I had seen her as well and she froze, her fist still balled around my shirt.

“Gloria,” said Mr. Goines, his voice gentle, pleading. “Gloria. Come on now. We at a funeral. Let Abraham be.”

My grandma's face changed from the determination she pressed on me to a weariness that was the stalemate between rage and helplessness. Her furrowed brow quivered. Her shoulders slackened. Peeling back one finger at a time, Mr. Goines unclenched my grandma's fist. With one delicate tug, he pulled her from me. Then, as if my grandma's grasp of me was all that had kept her standing, she wilted and folded into Mr. Goines's chest.

“Let it on out,” he said. “Don't worry now. We gonna go on. Lyndon has got you.”

“You a fool,” said my grandma, weakly scolding him as she cried into his neck and halfheartedly pounded her fist on his chest. “You ain't no good.”

“Not now,” he said. “Not now, Gloria. Everything gonna be all right. Everything gonna be OK.”

Inside the church, I sat with my friends, Mr. Goines sat with my grandma, and Pastor Ramsey stepped behind the lectern, welcomed everyone, and fought through tears and the continuous constriction of suffering in his throat to explain how he had never imagined he would be where he was, doing what he was doing, presiding over the funeral of his son Jeremiah.

“But, I am obligated to be here,” he reasoned, his voice hovering at the threshold of devastation. “Not obligated by the Lord. Not obligated by paycheck. Not obligated because I wouldn't have food, or shelter, or clothing if I didn't stand before you today. But obligated by life. By my very existence. I watched this young gentleman grow up. I witnessed who he was in entirety. I know his truth; that he wasn't just some hel
lion from the projects. This is my son. Jeremiah. In a different time, in a different place, in a different country and city and century, he would have been David with a harp for a voice.”

Pastor Ramsey paused. He fought hard not to break down and cry. He held on to the lectern and rocked back and forth.

“So,” he said, his voice weak. “What are the living supposed to do? What am I, his father, supposed to do?”

Suddenly Pastor Ramsey filled with strength and pounded his hand on the lectern. “Should I cry out?” He pounded the lectern again. “Should I demand to know why? Do I plead for justice and peace?”

That was it. Pastor Ramsey deflated. He sighed and shook his head.

“I don't know,” he continued. “No, I have no idea. I know only one thing. There is only one thing I am sure of.”

Slowly Pastor Ramsey raised his hand in the air. He closed his eyes.

“Jesus,” he said, his voice becoming louder. “Psalm Twenty-three, verse four.
He causes me to lie down in green pastures! He leads me beside still waters! He restores my soul! He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake! Even when I walk in the valley of darkness, I will fear no evil! For He is with me! Thy rod and Thy staff—they comfort me! You set a table before me in the presence of my adversaries! You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows! May only goodness and kindness pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for length of days.
And let us say…”

“Amen,” said everyone in the small church, even those who questioned their belief, even those who doubted God like me.

“Amen,” Pastor Ramsey breathed. “In the name of Jesus. Amen.”

 

Then it was Valentine's Day and there were flowers from Mr. Goines in a glass vase on top of the TV. Reruns of the old
Cosby Show
were
on. Thirteen years old and I was already thinking, already determined to live in Brooklyn with a beautiful wife who was a lawyer and five well-meaning, well-behaved children. I would be Heathcliff, a doctor, a sweater wearer, a jazz fiend without an instrument, a humorist, a dropper of knowledge, a reveler in the bliss of life. I sat on the couch. With the card that had come with the flowers in her purse so she could read it once more on her way to work, my grandma had just left. She was thinking about the things Mr. Goines said. Maybe she would take him up on that offer of one dinner, one trip to the movies.

Suddenly, there was a clack. Then there was the click of keys at the door and then the door swung open and Eric launched himself into the apartment, out of breath, sucking in air and heaving it out of his mouth.

“Abraham!” he shouted.

“Nigga, shhh!” I scolded, swinging my index finger at the TV. “
The Cosby Show
is on.”

“Fuck the Huxtables!” he said. “Bill Cosby ain't shit!”

Eric was fifteen, and so enraged he was quaking, his arms shivering, the vein that ran through his temple and down the side of his neck pounding. Snot trickled from his nose, slid across his top lip, dripped at the corners of his mouth. Without turning around, he swung his arm and slammed the door closed. Its crash echoed down the hall, bounced back and forth from one side of the narrow corridor to the other. Eric stood in the middle of the room, waiting for me to either scold him for slamming the door or look at him. He was of average height for his age and although he was not fat he also was not thin. His body was soft, as if he had no muscles, as if between his skin and bones there was only all of the French fries and pork lo mein he bought from the hole-in-the-wall Chinese food spot. His eyes darted between me and the TV. Then he sighed. He would have refused this truth, but Eric loved
The Cosby Show
just as much as me.

“It just start?” he asked, seemingly forgetting why he'd stormed into the apartment, as if hoping that the Huxtables might offer him some salve for his wounds, some special elixir, a placebo, an absolution.

“Shh,” I said.

Bill Cosby was in the kitchen and Theo came in, pushing open the door that led to their living room and the rest of their house. They talked about this and that. Bill Cosby made a joke, a funny face, and rolled his eyes. Theo laughed and pointed at him. A halfhearted but all-he-could-muster smile stayed on Eric's face until a commercial came on. Not because he was good-looking; not because he was a good athlete or smart or had a good smile or game with girls or was the least bit chill, the least bit smooth, but secretly, Eric and I wished to be Theo. Why? The reason was simple. He had a father, a man who scolded and, most importantly, embraced him; a man who knew what he was thinking, who had caused the ways of his thoughts; who infused his demeanor with a fine soldierly pride just as much as he'd taught him patience and humor, whose shoulders were broader than his, shoulders he'd sat on when he was a kid, shoulders he could imagine having and using as a pedestal to plant his own children upon one day.

Suddenly, Eric remembered why he'd come home, why he'd launched himself into the apartment, and he rushed into the kitchen. I heard him tear open a drawer. Utensils and cutlery rattled and clanked off the floor. In their cage, my grandma's lovebirds squawked and screeched. Eric ripped out what he wanted and threw aside everything else. He slammed the drawer closed. It didn't close. He punched it, kicked it, yelled at it to shut. Then he shouted
Fuck!
kicked the cutlery that was on the floor, sending it clattering along the linoleum until it crashed against the wall, and came back into the room, the cleaver, his favorite knife, clenched in his hand and held at eye level. One of Eric's fingers was cut. Blood dripped down his
arm and fell on the floor from the point of his elbow, speckling the already stained grey carpet. He glared at me, daring me to say something, ask him what he was doing. Go ahead, his eyes said, go ahead and try to stop me.