Читать книгу Joy - Marsha Hunt - Страница 7

Like usual, a few mornings ago I was laying in the bed next to Freddie B, staring at the ceiling and listening to him snore while I waited for his 6:45 alarm to go off. I always wake ’fore it buzzes, and sometimes it’s worrying to hear that old noisy clock of his tickety-tick by seconds that won’t never get another chance. But I’ve resigned myself to listening to it, ’cause he can’t rest good at night till he sees it set, even though he knows that for all them forty-some years we been married, I wake at least half an hour ’fore that alarm, don’t matter what time it’s set for. I rue the day I bought him that ugly square faced clock and wish I could throw it out sometimes.

What really don’t make no sense is that he likes to set it on the little built in shelf by my side of the bed.

‘What’s the good of that,’ I ask him, ‘when I ain’t the one needs waking.’ But he don’t bother to answer. That’s his way. When he can’t think up a good answer, he don’t say nothing. Playing like he don’t hear and he hears good as me and anybody else when he wants to.

I knew he wouldn’t budge when our bedside phone started going, so the minute it did I reached over him quick to pick it up, though I was half tempted to leave it ringing, as I suspected it might of been that wicked wench in apartment 207 on the fourth floor calling for the umpteenth time to complain about the water pressure being too weak in her shower.

Not but the week before, I had to put her straight. I didn’t mince my words neither ’cause tenants will sure take liberties if you do. ‘Just ’cause we managing the building, Miss Gonzales, don’t mean folks can ring us all hours of the day and night,’ I said.

She tried to claim that with Freddie B usually holding down a day job she thought she best try to catch him ’fore work. But like I told her, ‘My husband ain’t no plumber and plumbing ain’t what we’re paid to do. Maintenance is all. And if you want a plumber, Miss Gonzales, call you one.’

We ain’t nothing but glorified cleaners, and I don’t mind saying it, ’cause though we took on a building this size, the man that interviewed Freddie B down at the real estate agency promised that my husband could keep his construction work as long as he could find time to put out the garbage and see to the halls, stairs and elevators for the sixteen apartments. And I’m the one to do most of that. If we had to mess with all else in this half baked building, there wouldn’t be time to scrub your teeth in the morning. But the hussy in 207 seems determined to want to get my husband down in her place, ’cause she keeps calling ’fore daybreak about that shower of her’n.

So when I hauled the phone over to my side of the bed, I was right ready to give Miss Gonzales a mouthful, but luckily I didn’t start straight in, ’cause it wasn’t her. It was Tammy. Joy’s mama.

I peered at the clock thinking that if it was 6:20 in San Francisco where we was, it wasn’t but 9:20 for her over in Richmond, Virginia, and knowing how much she likes to sleep late, I figured she wasn’t calling just to jaw. For a start, she wasn’t pronounciating every word like usual. Though Tammy tries to give off like she’s educated, she didn’t get no further than high school like the rest of us. Don’t make me no difference if she likes to take airs. That’s always been her way, and since Joy told her years ago to stop correcting me all the time, I don’t feel I got to watch every word with Tammy and just say out what I have a mind to.

‘Tammy? What ch’you doing ringing my phone at this hour, girl? You ain’t got nothing better to do than to be calling folks at the crack o’dawn,’ I teased her.

There was a time when she was still living ’cross the bay in East Oakland that she used to try and phone me at least once a day, but ever since she got hitched up with that cop from Chicago after he retired and moved back to his home town in Virginia, she don’t hardly bother to call no more. It’s Joy who keeps me posted on what Tammy’s doing, not that Joy stays in touch with her mama all that much.

‘Baby Palatine, are you sitting down?’ Tammy asked me.

‘Girl, who are you kidding,’ I laughed, ‘my black behind is still in the bed and I’m proud of it.’

But me funning and bad talking didn’t put her in no joky mood. ‘Well, I’ve got bad news,’ she said.

Tammy thrived on bad news and given half a chance could really spin a sad story out, especially if it was about somebody else. Listening to her could be more entertainment than them afternoon soap operas. But that early in the morning I wasn’t ready to hear no long drawn out tale, so I asked her to make it quick ’cause I needed the toilet, which wasn’t altogether a lie.

‘I didn’t know if you still turn on Good Morning America as soon as you get up, because I would hate to think you heard it first on the news,’ Tammy said, ‘because that would be terrible.’

I sat bolt upright and reached for my glasses but they wasn’t where I thought I left them on the sidetable. I can’t think good till I got ’em on. And from her sorry-sounding voice I suspected I needed to be in a clear mind.

‘I got an unfortunate phone call a couple hours ago.’

‘Tammy, what’s up?’ I interrupted, but what I really wanted to add was that I didn’t need none of her suspense and it was way too early to put up with one of her melodramas. She can turn a cankersore into lip cancer or a pot burning into a four alarm fire and she’s good at getting me going. Freddie B says that she should of been a politician or something, ’cause she’s that sharp at getting folks riled up about nothing. Like the time she had me on the warpath hotfooting it to Alameda with her to complain about the county raising Bay Area land tax, when I didn’t even own no land. When my husband seen me afterwards pacing up and down like a tiger in a cage he had to remind me that it was only Tammy that was gonna have to pay something extra anyway.

He says the only reason she bothers with me is that she can get me on a rampage so quick, but true as that may be, she’s as much like family to me as her three girls. And I wouldn’t of changed that for nothing even though I wasn’t in the mood to have her calling at no 6:20 in the a.m.

‘Tammy, my poor husband is trying to sleep next to me and it ain’t fair me hanging on the phone with the cord stretched so tight across his neck, he’s near to strangling while you don’t say nothing.’ Freddie B sleeps heavy as somebody in a coma, and I could of probably tied the telephone cord around his neck and been choking the breath out of him, and I bet he wouldn’t of stirred. But Tammy wasn’t to know that.

‘It’s Joy,’ she said and waited just long enough for the tremor in her voice to give me goose flesh.

Joy was more like my daughter than she was hers, and for years it was usually me calling Tammy with news of Joy, ’cause Joy came to me ’fore she went to anybody, especially when she got into trouble which wasn’t all that often. But it was often enough to keep me on my toes.

If I’d of had a child, I reckon it would have made me mad if she had always been rushing with her agitations and whispers to some other woman first. But then Tammy brought that on herself, ’cause there was a time when I was ready to listen to her children and she wasn’t. And from back then, Joy took the habit of coming to me to share both the good and bad.

I prepared myself to hear Tammy say what I had long predicted which was that Joy’d got herself arrested, ’cause with all that gadding about she did down South with Rex Hightower, that rednecked, toothpick of a so-called boyfriend of hers, I warned Joy that it wouldn’t be long before some of them Okies found reason to lock her up in a backwater jailhouse and throw away the key. She ran around like she thought she was some kinda blue-eyed blonde. ‘Nigger,’ I used to say to Joy and point my finger in her face so she knew I meant business, ‘don’t forget what you are and where you are.’ But she let that good advice slide off her quicker than grease off a hot comb, ’cause she was always slow to listen to what she didn’t want to hear. Miami, Atlanta, Memphis, Alabama … She wasn’t scared to go none of them places, though she wouldn’t always let on that’s where she was calling from ’cause she knew I didn’t hold with it.

That’s why I figured Joy was in the South when she had phoned me at the weekend and wouldn’t tell me where she was nor where she was headed. Though I’d got used to her being secretive about things like that when it suited her, it didn’t make me feel no easier when she’d call me regular and refuse to say where she was. Being from down South myself, I don’t have no illusions about what goes on. Don’t matter what the newspapers say about how things is changing. They ain’t changed all that much for no colored girl to be flaunting herself with no white man. ’Specially no hillbilly singer that’s rich and famous as Rex and got girls throwing themselves at him. Like that great big fat woman I seen at the Mayfair supermarket wearing one of them ‘Rex Is Better Than Sex’ buttons that they give away with his last record. I was itching to tell her that I knew from reliable sources that he couldn’t get it up, but my better self told me not to ’cause it wasn’t Christian.

Soon as I knew it was Joy that Tammy’d telephoned about, I didn’t want Freddie B’s clock to tick another second till I knew exactly what was going on. And through my nightclothes, I could hear my heart thudding like a jack rabbit’s waiting on Tammy to get to the point while she coughed a couple of times and cleared her throat. It’s a nervous habit she claims, but I know it’s her ruining her lungs with them cigarettes. Water filters or no water filters.

It wasn’t but two words she finally eked out to end my Tuesday before it had a good chance to start.

‘Joy’s dead.’

I had to laugh. ‘Say what?’ I hadn’t never heard of no such foolishness.

‘Don’t make me repeat it, Baby Palatine, because it was hard enough to say it. You’re the first person I’ve had to utter those words to, because Jesse’s not home and I haven’t been able to contact either Anndora or Brenda. It so infuriates me to have daughters that I can never reach when I need them.’

I’d stopped listening to what she said. What was the point? Joy dead? It wasn’t possible. She was light and life and sun and stars and everything glorious save God hisself, and to think that she wasn’t somewhere on the planet was more than I could take in. So I didn’t. With my free hand, I smoothed the covers over Freddie B and shifted him a bit to where he didn’t snore so loud. He’s better on his back. And while I didn’t say nothing, neither did Tammy. We was both holding receivers that didn’t seem to have anybody on the other end.

There was hardly light coming into my bedroom with the drapes closed, but I squinted to look from corner to corner. Wasn’t much to take in but two easy chairs and a old dresser with the portable TV set on it. It was the same room where Joy’d slept last time she come to stay. Me and Freddie B hadn’t been long moved into the apartment and hadn’t nobody lived in it ’fore us. Even though it was a poky size and painted avocado green, she said she was real happy to see we’d settled in a brand new building with a nice view of the Bay Bridge. She was due for another visit in four days, and her and me were gonna take off for Reno. Freddie B said he didn’t mind me tagging along with her. He was always generous about letting me go off with Joy and loved her near as much as I did. She was the child we could never have, my baby sister Helen used to say.

But odd as it sounds with me being practically old enough to be her granny, Joy was my best friend, right from the get-go. From back thirty-odd years ago when she wasn’t but eight years old, I could have a better time with Joy than anybody. For a start she was always like somebody grown and had more common sense than most. And with my husband out working all the time and having to take on-site jobs that was fifty or sixty miles away from home, I didn’t see him awake much except on weekends. So I spent a lot of time on my own till Tammy and her three little girls moved across the hall from us in Oakland that February of 57, right after my brother Caesar’s birthday. Or maybe it was 56. Whenever it was, it was too long ago to think about.

Hearing Tammy’s voice down the phone suddenly jarred me out my thoughts. ‘Baby Palatine, are you still there?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, why don’t you say something?’ Tammy asked. I could hear her sucking away at a cigarette.

‘Ain’t nothing to say.’ How could I tell her that I was mad ’cause Joy was supposed to be coming and I was really looking forward to the trip to Reno. It was way too soon for me to take in more than that. Pitiful as it sounds, I wasn’t able to think beyond that one disappointment.

Tammy must of thought I’d lost my mind, and she wouldn’t have been far wrong when I come to think that I wasn’t crying or nothing and my voice didn’t even crack like it do when I hold back tears.

I said, ‘Listen, Sugar, you caught me ’fore I had chance to set on the toilet. Why don’t you let me call you back.’

‘Baby Palatine,’ she asked disbelieving. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah. Right as I can be under the circumstances. How ’bout you?’

She was the one had birthed Joy into the world and she wasn’t crying neither, whereas most mothers would have been hysterical. But then Tammy wasn’t like most mothers. By her accounts feelings was things to keep to yourself, although she was known to let herself get well and truly revved up if anything happened to Anndora. But it seemed like a bus could run over Joy and Brenda, and Tammy wasn’t fazed. She liked to claim it was ’cause Anndora was her youngest, but I wasn’t never convinced. My baby sister Helen said from the first that she laid eyes on Tammy with them three girls that Anndora was favored ’cause she was the lightest skinned and the prettiest. But I didn’t want to believe that, although as I got to know Tammy better, I grew to thinking Helen may not have been far off the mark. Crazy as she talks when she got that alcohol in her, ol’ Helen can put her finger on the button about some things. A alcoholic can zoom in on the truth quick as a child ’cause they can’t take in but the bare facts, and like Helen said, there’s a whole lot of mothers that would have got to ignoring Brenda, homely as she was. So Tammy couldn’t be chastised all that much for it.

Brenda was the eldest, and it was hard to believe looking at her big bulgy lips, eyes and forehead that she slipped out the same womb as Joy and Anndora. There was Anndora looking so beautiful – green eyed and olive skinned with that wavy auburn hair. So fine that it was easy for anybody to catch theyselves gaping at her even after they got to know her ugly ways. And Joy who wasn’t just special to look at with her black almond eyes and perfect features, she had a wonderful way about her, always ready with a smile and something nice to say to somebody. That dark honey brown skin of hers just glowed, she was that bright in spirit, and when she walked in a room, frisky as a prancing puppy, strangers and everybody would want to talk to her. If Joy’d had of been born with a tail, it would have been wagging all the time, and it was more than once when she did them newspaper interviews while her and her sisters had that hit record of theirs that them writers described her as captivating. That was a perfect word for her, and I couldn’t have said it better myself ’cause Joy could charm blue birds out of the cherry trees. And to see her in one of them slinky evening gowns they used to perform in … well couldn’t nobody wear a gown like Joy Bang with her long legged self. She was queen.

‘Baby! Baby Palatine! Hello! Are you still on the phone or am I just giving away money to A T & T?’ Tammy’s voice in my ear jolted me out of a vision of Joy in her red sequined gown. Glimmering. It was my favorite, out of all their stage outfits. ‘Dammit, Baby Palatine, I know you’re still there, because I can hear you wheezing.’ Tammy was always making a to do about my touch of asthma. ‘Now, I’ll hold on while you go to the bathroom, because we have a lot to discuss.’

‘Well I plan to be a few minutes,’ I said, ‘so I’ll call you back.’

If I could of had things my way, I’d of turned back Freddie B’s clock and tried to sleep off what I was wanting to believe was some kinda nightmare. ‘Maybe I’m just dreaming this,’ I tried to pretend, but something else kept saying, ‘This is for real’.

Tammy’s voice jumped in my ear again. ‘My line’s bound to be busy, because I have to call Brenda and Anndora somehow. So keep trying, if it is … Don’t you want me to tell you how Joy died?’

No I didn’t. So I just put the receiver back like I hadn’t heard the question. That’s a trick I learned off Freddie B who was still sound asleep next to me. I switched off his alarm ’cause if he didn’t wake, I didn’t need to tell him nothing.

Joy dead didn’t make no more sense to me than if somebody’d said the sun fell out of the sky. It’s no wonder I was pretending like it wasn’t true.

I grabbed my upper plate from by the phone and put both feet firmly on the floor. My legs didn’t feel like they was mine and I held on to the bedpost for a minute before I shuffled off to the bathroom like I do every morning first thing.

Thinking back on it, I guess I was in shock ’cause I acted like folks who been in a bad accident and ain’t unconscious but might as well be, ’cause they try to keep going like didn’t nothing happen. Once I seen a man act just that way after a motorcycle had hit him … the blood was gushing off his ear and he was laying on the ground wanting to talk about the weather.

I should of been boo-hooing hearing Joy was dead, but instead, I sat on the toilet cool as a cucumber and did my business. It wasn’t till I reached for the toilet paper that I noticed my hand was shaking like somebody with St Vitus Dance.

‘Joy’s dead,’ I heard myself say.

‘Don’t talk ridiculous, fool,’ I answered back. ‘She can’t be dead. Y’all’ll still be driving to Reno this Sunday night, you watch.’

I was really looking forward to spending a couple nights with her in a hotel, like in the old days when her and Brenda and Anndora was out on the road promoting the hit record they had out in 77. Bang Bang Bang they called theyselves.

I heard myself say to Joy like she was standing by me in the toilet, ‘It was gonna be like better days. You and me in a nice hotel with room service and crispy, snow white sheets that I didn’t iron myself. And me running you a hot bubble bath…Did you mess up, Joy? Your Uncle Freddie B’s been laid off work two months, and we can’t afford to have you go messing up on us now. So pull your socks up, child, and stop fooling ’round. Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, come on out.’ I was hoping Joy was playing one of them hide and seek games that she was so good at when she was a bitty thing.

‘Come on out, so we can head off to Reno,’ I pleaded, while in my mind, I had a picture of her and her sisters, clear as if I was looking at a television set. They was waiting by the side of a stage in them red sequined dresses with the halter neck, and I was standing by with four face cloths. ’Cause Brenda sweated more than the others, I used to keep two on hand for her and one for Joy and Anndora who was there more for show. They sang the odd do-wops, but Brenda, singing the lead, got the sweatiest, so soon as they finished their stint, I’d hand ’em each a face cloth and rush on stage to collect up any of the big sequins that fell off while they was finger popping and dancing about. Them sequins was too hard to come by and way too expensive to just leave at every venue. So after I’d collected them up, I’d sew ’em back on ’fore the girls had to wear the dresses again. That was part of my job as their wardrobe mistress. But that was more the title their record company give me, so’s the accountants knew what to put by my salary on the girls’ weekly tour accounts. I did a whole lot else, including making sure Anndora and her sex-mad self turned up to the shows at all and seeing that Brenda had enough to eat when and if she wanted, though a diet wouldn’t have hurt her one bit. She always was too big. Not roly-poly fat, but big like a mountain across the girth. Backside as well come to think of it.

Remembering how happy we all was back then is what got my eyes to tearing, and I was grateful when a few measly tears dribbled down my cheeks, ’cause as much as I don’t hold with women crying, especially us colored ’cause we supposed to have more sense, it seemed right to show some emotions, though I wasn’t making no sounds.

Sitting there on the toilet, my throat grew that tight, it nearly gagged me just to swallow. I knew a cream soda would of eased it straight away, but me and Freddie’d drunk the last of them six cans watching tag team wrestling on TV the night before.

But I dragged myself into the kitchen anyway, realizing full well as I headed down the hallway that I wasn’t going to get no cream soda to drink. That was my pretend, but what my mind was actually set on was a kingsize box of Sugar Pops that I kept in a cupboard for Joy. They was left over from her last visit and even though the date on them had expired I didn’t sling ’em in the trash, ’cause as long as I saw them everytime I opened the cupboard, I got the feeling Joy was coming any minute.

She didn’t visit us but twice a year since she moved to New York from LA a few years back, ’cause she said Rex didn’t like California. That was her excuse, but I reckoned that she used to sneak to LA and just not make it up to Frisco to see us. Not that I told her as much. She had her own life to lead and I never did want her to feel like she was obliged to come ’cause she owed me and Freddie B a visit. But still, I knew when she did turn up, she’d be expecting to find Sugar Pops like I always kept in store from when she was little and used to sit up at my table munching on ’em and reading the funny papers.

Even after she got grown and wanted to show off that she’d give up the funnies and didn’t like to read nothing but the New York Times, she still couldn’t pass up Sugar Pops with chocolate milk poured over ’em. She’d say, ‘What you eat is one thing, but what you read is something else,’ and I’d take that as my cue to slip the National Enquirer off the table ’fore she sat down, so I wouldn’t have to sit through her lecturing me about reading rubbish. When the girls was touring, I didn’t never get to read what I liked, ’cause if Joy caught me buying Jet or Drum in them airport lounges, she’d shoot me a look out the corner of her eye like she was the only one grown and I was a child, and I’d put them back.

While I stood there in my kitchen with my bare feet on the cold linoleum floor and tried to believe that Joy was coming like we’d planned, nothing would stop my mind from trailing back and forth over memories, and I caught myself hugging that box of Sugar Pops so tight that I’d crushed it. Both my cheeks was wet with tears, though I still wasn’t crying out loud. Just sniffling like a big baby.

‘Tears ain’t never solved nothing,’ I listened to my better self chastise ’fore I set it straight. ‘Aw, shut up. You think you know everything. I can cry if I want. That child was as good as mine.’

And it was true. So much so that after Joy came along, thirty odd year back, it didn’t never trouble me no more that I couldn’t spawn none of my own.

But my better self was in a ornery mood and said, ‘Don’t shed no crocodile tears in here, and furthermore, you can throw out that old tired box of Sugar Pops ’cause neither you nor Freddie B eats that mess no way.’

I stuffed the box in the trash and headed for the living room with the sound of Tammy’s voice on the phone singing in my head. Joy’s dead…Joy’s dead…Joy’s dead…

With our living room drapes at the cleaners and with nothing but flimsy white nets up to the big picture window, it was shocking bright being that the window’s south facing. The sun had the nerve to shine like it was gonna be a good day and it bounced off the brass planter that Joy’d sent me from Puerto Rico last Mother’s Day and hit the mirror over the mantel. Usually San Francisco mornings is still dull and misty in late March, so I should of been glad it wasn’t miserable and drizzling like it had been for the past week. But I was ready to be mad about anything.

All that buoyed my spirit for half a second was spotting my glasses on the teak dining table that Freddie B will insist on keeping pushed under the window that looks across to the Bay Bridge. I grabbed my ugly bifocals and shoved them on, and soon as I could see good, my head cleared up enough for me to say, ‘Have you lost your mind throwing away that box of cereal when that may be all y’all got to eat ’fore you know what’s hit you. You better fetch that mess out of the trash before God strikes you for being wasteful. And what if it’s a mix-up and Joy ain’t dead?’

That’s how come I still couldn’t bring myself to wake Freddie B with the news. What was the point telling him something that I didn’t believe myself? And anyway, repeating tales can make them real.

I knew what not to think but not what to think, and turning to head back into the kitchen to retrieve them Sugar Pops my eyes fell on the one thing that I realized soon as I looked at it, they should of avoided. It was Joy’s first grade picture taken a couple years ’fore her and her family moved to our building in Oakland from Wilmington, Delaware. It’s such a cute picture. She got her hair in two braids and is smiling to beat the band with both front teeth missing, which she tried to pencil back in ’fore she gave it to me and which completely ruined the photo, but I still put it in a nice gold painted picture frame. At the time, though she wasn’t but eight, it made me furious that she was childish enough to draw in her teeth, and I asked her why she did it. She could see I was in a temper and said she’d erase it, but like I said, ‘Child, you can’t be erasing on no picture. That’s ridiculous.’

‘Don’t tell Mama. Please please don’t tell my mama,’ she all ’a sudden cried out with her eyes bucked like she was scared to death.

I hadn’t never seen Joy crying, not that I’d known her more than a couple months, but she was happy natured and didn’t never get into stews like children usually do. But she was sure scared that day that I’d tell Tammy.

It made me wonder whether Tammy beat on her or something, but I didn’t never hear no whipping noises and didn’t never see Tammy raise her hand to none of her children. Not even Anndora, who needed it ’cause she could get set on doing something and bring the house down till she got her own way. But Joy didn’t never put a foot wrong at that age that I could see, so there wouldn’t of been no reason to hit on her.

Anyway, that day Joy gave me her picture I made her a promise that I wouldn’t never tell her mother. She made me say, ‘Cross my heart to God or hope to die’, ’cause she wouldn’t believe me. Over the years I had to promise not to tell Tammy quite a few things. ‘Don’t Tell Mama ought to be your middle name,’ I used to say to Joy.

Standing there in my living room looking down at that first grade picture, I said out loud, ‘Miss Joy ‘‘Don’t Tell Mama’’ Bang.’

The sound of it made me chuckle, though thinking back, I had many a sleepless night ’cause I was worried that Tammy should have been told something that Joy made me promise to keep back. Though most of the time, when she was little, them secrets was about kids’ stuff. Like when her and Brenda’d been jumping up and down on their mama’s bed and broke the springs.

But there was a few times I promised Joy that I wouldn’t tell Tammy something that I knew I had to keep from Freddie too, ’cause although he’s ready to turn a blind eye to most of what folks get up to, being a good Christian, he ain’t ready to tolerate things that is well and truly wrong. Like the time Joy was s’posed to go to her eighth grade picnic, and I discovered she was hiding down the hall in Artie What’s-his-name’s apartment.

He was a ex-sailor that Freddie B didn’t want to rent to no way, ’cause he was white. But like I told Freddie, Mr Houseman who owned the building was white, and it didn’t make no sense that we’d work for white but not let ’em rent. But Freddie B is from New Orleans, same as me, and it took him a long time to trust white folk, and at that time we hadn’t long been out the South.

Anyway, that morning of Joy’s eighth grade picnic, I’d seen the girls off to school like usual, ’cause their mama was off to work before them, and I was setting in my place watching The Heartline on the TV when I smelled something burning. I got a real good nose, and no apartment house I’m managing will ever burn to the ground, ’cause when I get a whiff of something I don’t wait a minute to check things. Soon as I opened my door, I knew the smell was coming from down Artie’s ’cause his apartment was the onliest one down that end of the ‘L’ shaped hall. And like I thought, it was coming from his place, but when I knocked loud on his door, didn’t nobody answer. And being as me and Freddie B was in charge of the building, I didn’t have no choice but to open it with my spare key, ’cause I couldn’t let the place burn down to the ground. But to my open-mouthed surprise I found Artie, bold as day, sprawled across his put-you-up in a nanky looking undershirt and puffing on a cigarette as nonchalant as if he couldn’t smell nothing.

I could tell once I was inside the room that it wasn’t nothing but some toast that had burned, but at least, like I said to him, he should have opened the window to let the smell out. Warm as it was that morning, he needed to let some air in anyways, which is what I was fixing to do when I marched over the other side of the room to his window.

That’s how I spotted Joy’s feet in her old red tennis sneakers peeking out from behind a brocade curtain in the corner of Artie’s room where he kept his clothes hanging on a rail.

The shock of discovering that Joy was in there nearly give me a heart attack, and I felt a hot flush come over me so fast that I didn’t know where I was and was rendered speechless with my mouth hanging wide open. But something told me to go and lay in wait outside the door instead of causing a ruckus right then and there in that white boy’s room.

I couldn’t hear nothing but myself breathing once I got outside his door, and I was standing there for what seemed like an hour ’fore Joy came creeping out on her tippy-toes shutting Artie’s door real quiet behind her.

She had her hair in a chignon on top of her head with a red ribbon tied round it, and from the back she looked grown though she wasn’t but thirteen.

I let her get ten paces away before I called out in a harsh whisper, ‘Tipping ain’t gon’ help you none, Madam.’

Dim as it was in the hall with no window and no light on, I could still see she was so scared that she jumped a pace and looked ready to pee herself. The whites of her eyes was practically glowing, ’cause they had popped out so from fear of what I was gonna do to her, I reckon.

‘What on God’s name was you doing in that white boy’s room?’ I hissed at her like a alley cat. ‘It wasn’t but two hours ago I waved you off with your packed lunch and them cupcakes I baked for your picnic. So what on earth is you doing back here? And in there with Artie of all people!’

That day is the closest I ever came to hitting Joy, ’cause I was so mad she’d done something to leave me feeling like I didn’t know her. Far as I knew, she hadn’t taken no notice of Artie except to mention that she didn’t understand why he never came to my place for the cups of coffee I offered him from time to time when we bumped into him. But standing there fussing at her in the hallway, it seemed I may just as well have been talking to a stranger though I’d known her ’bout five years by then.

She said, ‘Don’t get in a temper. I was just trying to help Artie.’

‘Help him do what, pray tell!’ I almost shouted though I was trying hard not to raise my voice.

She didn’t answer right away which made me suspect she didn’t have nothing reasonable to say and then she broke out crying by the time I’d escorted her ’round to our end of the passage.

‘Don’t tell Mama, will you?’ she begged, falling down on her knees with her hands clasped together like somebody praying.

‘That’s supposed to mean something?’ I asked her. ‘Any ol’ body can do that. I ain’t fooled.’

‘Please don’t tell Mama,’ she said like a four year old expecting a whipping.

‘Joy, I can’t keep something like this back from Tammy,’ I said. But no sooner than I said it, I knew that there wasn’t no way I could tell Tammy that I’d found Joy in Artie’s room, ’cause Tammy had grown short of temper back in those days, and there wasn’t no telling what she would of done.

‘You know that Mama won’t let me go to church with you anymore if you tell. And that’ll be the end of choir practice and Sunday school and everything!’ Joy cried.

I knew she was right, ’cause whenever Brenda did anything wrong, which was regular, the first thing Tammy would threaten was, ‘That’s it! Now I put my foot down. It’s all that shit you’re being taught in that damn backward ass church of Baby’s that has you so you don’t want to listen to me anymore. Well, damn the church! I’ll keep you home, if you can’t behave like a human being!’

I was the one that got the three girls inside a church for the first time, ’cause Tammy didn’t believe in nothing and would have been happy if they didn’t. My baby sister said Tammy wouldn’t of let them girls of her’n go to Sunday meeting with me and Freddie at all, except Tammy was so happy to get some quiet and the apartment to herself on Sundays.

That morning of the Artie episode, I looked down at poor Joy, still pleading on her knees. ‘Don’t tell Mama, Baby Palatine? Please? Please? Pretty please!’ She oozed them pleases out, spreading them on thick as molasses.

But I wasn’t in the mood to sympathize when I asked, ‘I want to know first off what you was doing up in Artie’s. Don’t you know it’s dangerous to be in a man’s apartment like that?’

Artie wasn’t really a man. Wasn’t but nineteen, but he was way too old for Joy to be keeping company with, no matter if it was only eleven o’clock in the morning.

‘I wasn’t doing anything bad,’ Joy said before I made her get off her knees and go into my apartment. ‘Artie’s dying from cancer, so I said I’d make his breakfast this morning.’ I thought I caught her crack a smile for a split second while she was wringing her hands and looking down at her feet, though I couldn’t see her face ail that good until I got her inside my apartment, ’cause there wasn’t but one small window around our end of the hall and a couple of the light bulbs in the ceiling fixture was out that give off a decent light. She looked a mess with her red and white checked shirt half out her cotton skirt which was creased. Not nowheres near neat as I was used to seeing her.

‘Stop all that crying, anyway,’ I said to her pushing her away when she went to try to hug on me. ‘That ain’t gonna save you.’

I didn’t know what to think. Joy didn’t never step out of line that I knew of, and being kind hearted like she was and always ready to help folks, it didn’t seem all that strange that if Artie was dying from cancer that she wouldn’t have wanted to do something for him.

But the onliest problem I had believing her was that he looked strong as a ox. Artie was a big strapping blond thing from Idaho who had been a year in the navy ’fore he got discharged. ’Cause of having something wrong with his knee, he’d told Freddie B.

‘Is it knee cancer?’ I asked Joy. She had tears smeared across her face and with her nose running, she was a right sight.

‘Maybe,’ she said, and looked like she was ready to start crying again. ‘He didn’t say.’

I didn’t know what to believe. Cancer seemed awful far fetched. It ain’t like no cold you just catch in the night and I didn’t know whether it was Joy lying to me or Artie lying to her. But I always thought the best of Joy, so I hated to believe she might not be telling the truth as she thought it to be.

‘Now don’t upset yourself. Calm down, and let me give you one of them nice chocolate cupcakes I got left over from that batch I baked for you to take to the picnic’ After she nibbled at it, slow and mournful, I gave her twenty-five cents to ride the bus back over to her junior high school. Wasn’t no need of her missing the whole fun day where I was hoping she’d have a chance to make a girlfriend as she didn’t seem to have one in particular like most girls her age.

‘And stop worrying,’ I said as she stepped out the door, after I made her wash her face. ‘I won’t tell.’

But no sooner than she was gone I headed straight down that hall to tell that Artie to get his duds and get out. Cancer or no cancer, I wasn’t in the least bit interested and I didn’t want no part of him if he was talking to them girls on the sly.

That was one of them times that I knew I had to keep the story back from my husband, ’cause he would have asked me questions that I didn’t have no answers to neither then nor now. Him and me didn’t have no secrets from each other till Joy come along. And it didn’t feel right.