Читать книгу The Last Poets - Christine Otten - Страница 32

-

FLINT, MICHIGAN, SEPTEMBER 2001

Sandra Saint-Claire

‘Sometimes Jerome works in my basement. And he’s down there, talking and saying his poetry. I hear how his voice changes, low to high, fast, slow. Or just mumbling. I’ve got a ping-pong table down there, and that’s where he used to write. Trying stuff out. I like it when he does that. I like lot of his poetry.

I remember him making ice cream for us from snow in the wintertime. He’d pack the snow down hard and pour fruit syrup over it. Other times he’d bring us crackers and pop in the middle of the night. He was nine. As children we didn’t get along. He was so bossy. When we were teenagers, whenever a guy came to the house for my sisters or me, he’d first have to deal with my brother Jerome. He would interrogate them like he was our father. We lived on West Chestnut. But at a certain point my mother couldn’t take living with my father anymore and so we moved in with her mother.

So then we lived in a mixed neighborhood for the first time, with Italians and blacks. And anyway, back then white people didn’t come into our neighborhoods. Our businesses were black-owned. There weren’t even any white kids at school. And believe it or not, it was much better that way. There was more cohesiveness, no confusion. Everybody seemed to get along. My father used to talk about white people. “Don’t trust them,” he’d say. He grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and down there you didn’t look white people in the eye when you talked to them. My father had some racist ideas, but his ideas gave me self-confidence. I’m very outspoken. Whatever I have to say, I say it. As a matter of fact, some of the kids I went to school with thought I would become a politician rather than a nurse.

I can’t remember what started the riots in Akron. I didn’t get involved. There was a curfew. We had to stay inside. There were tanks parked on our street. Jerome, he went over to them, gave the military police some lip. My mother called for him to come inside. “Leave those guys alone. They’re just doing their job.”

You know what did bother me, though? When Martin Luther King got assassinated.

Jerome says this is a blessed house. I think he likes being around me and my kids. The neighborhood is really decayed, but the people are okay. I always tell him he should buy a house here. Invest. At his age. That green house across the street was sold for five thousand dollars. But I don’t know what he’ll do. I won’t be here forever. I’ve outgrown Flint. I’m thinking about getting back together with my ex-husband, my son Rachet’s father. When you get older it’s no good being alone. Jerome says he might stay here in the house if I go. He’s changed a lot. He takes things more seriously. Even though it does get on my nerves when he spends days in his room just sleeping and watching TV. I think he could do more for himself. But he says he needs it. Sometimes he’ll be sitting out here on the porch and suddenly he’ll just start saying stuff. I’m pretty sure he just comes up with it on the spot. It’s not like he sits down and thinks real hard. It just comes. My daughter gave him a typewriter and he types out his poems later on that.’

◆

You hear that? That deep, dark quiet behind the sounds? That’s the difference with New York, Detroit. None of that constant background noise, that drone. Every sound here is individual. The rustling of the leaves on the trees. Killer Joe’s dogs barking when his friend feeds them. That guy goes around twice a day, just for the dogs. Killer Joe’s too old to take care of them. He’s in his seventies, but always well-dressed. I’ll bet he was a handsome guy when he was young.

I was sitting out here last night. It was already dark. I dozed off a little. All of a sudden I hear a man singing at the top of his lungs. I look up. An attractive, strong voice, as a matter of fact. I see lights on in the house across the street, the yellow one there. The front door’s open and all I see is the silhouette of somebody dancing and jumping. The flickering light is from the television. He’s singing along with some rather old song. Must have been drinking. A little later he comes outside. Sees me sitting here, walks over. Tom’s his name. Launches into a long story, that he used to live here. Moved back from Arkansas. A musician. He plays in a blues band, he says. And he works in construction now and again to make ends meet. He’s planning to fix up that house all by himself.

There’s so much talent here.

Before eleven, twelve o’clock in the morning it’s dead quiet on the street. Most people are sleeping in. There’s practically no work in Flint since the General Motors factories closed down. The quiet suits Sandra fine, ’cause she only does night shifts. Means she can sleep some during the day.

I prefer to sit here after dark.

Calms me down.

Listen.

Are you chilly? Sandra’s got a sweater for you.

It’s getting on to fall already.

Just smell it.

I think I’m gonna to have to find another place if Sandra moves.