The patrol car broke left on Nostrand. Thulani slid his hands in his pockets and tried to walk casually in case he was being watched. This was not easy, as he felt he looked guilty to anyone who saw him. Especially to the girl who would not stop hitting him, the old woman who cursed him in her language, and to the eyes that peeped out from behind curtains. Guilty.
She had to know that he had watched. That he could have been there thirty seconds sooner. That maybe she hadn’t had to take that last punch. Her eye wouldn’t be swollen, her lip busted up. She wouldn’t have had to take so much from them if he had come down off the roof at her first scream. Why else would she continue to hit him when he told her to stop?
He was exhausted but not ready to come home. Home was where he settled, and he was far from doing that. He took President Street, which was still lively with people, then walked two blocks, where there was no one. When his head began to clear somewhat, and the images that haunted him were not as sharp, one thought occurred to him: They’re still out there. They had to have seen him, even if it was dark.
Thulani turned into Kingston, then thought, What makes you think they’re not on Kingston?
He turned down Bedford.
What makes you think they’re not on Bedford? They could be packing. If they could rape her, they could just as easily shoot me.
Then he heard it again: “Still yourself.”
Thulani turned up Prospect Place and told himself, What will be, will be. If he had to step to them, he would. He had no one to back him up besides his brother, Truman, and Thulani didn’t carry anything to defend himself. For all the good it did him, he had fourteen birds on a rooftop and, to his surprise, some heart.
Thulani returned to his block on Eastern Parkway, back to everything familiar. Even so, he could not go inside his house. He was drawn to the alley and had to see the place where it happened. He looked down upon the spot where he had found her, knelt, and touched the rough ground where she had lain on her back. Though he could not see it, he knew her blood was on the street, perhaps where he ran his hand.
To look at it, a strip between a Chinese takeout place and a barbershop, there was no trace of a crime scene. Just a place from which you’d naturally turn your gaze. A place where men took a piss in broad daylight and sanitation workers collected garbage from the Dumpster in the early hours.
Even though he was not one to throw himself before people, he felt he should tell someone that a girl had been raped where he stood. But whom would he tell? Could he open his mouth and have sense come out? All through school teachers had implored him to speak up or speak clearly. Talking was not his favorite thing.
He stood up and dusted off the grit from his hands on his shorts. It was then that he saw some figure billowing up from the ground on the side of the Dumpster. He approached it carefully, for it seemed alive. Thulani grabbed the moving thing. His fingers discovered it was merely a piece of cloth.
The thin material slid through his fingers like silk, but it wasn’t silk. It was a fine cotton. Almost sheer. He couldn’t imagine why this fine cloth had been thrown away. When he held it up to the sky, he could see by the way the bottom danced in the breeze that it was a skirt.
Instantly he knew it was hers. He thought it was the kind of thing she would wear, though he did not know her at all. He pictured her wearing it.
He opened the skirt fully. It was a free-flowing skirt that was tied, not zippered or buttoned. The tie, a simple strip, had been ripped, yet managed to hang on to the body of the skirt by a few loose threads. He looked about. Someone could be watching him. He shook the street off the cloth and rolled it into a tight loaf that he held under his arm. It was time to go home.
Upon seeing him, Shakira, his sister-in-law, let out a gasp, an exaggerated one. “Ya look a sight!”
He shrugged but thought, Got to get past her.
Shakira did not mean to let him pass. She stood, her belly huge, and legs a big A before him. “And what do ya mean, chargin’ through heah wild and crazy, scarin’ poor Old Dunleavy to his grave?”
Mr. Dunleavy, a countryman from Thulani’s mother’s village, was the tenant in the first-floor apartment. He had been a retired photographer for many years when Thulani’s mother rented to him ten years ago. His mother was fond of saying, “He knew me before my parents were born.” Now Old Dunleavy was decrepit. Thulani laughed inwardly at Shakira’s concern for their tenant. Both she and Truman had plans for that apartment as soon as the boneyard claimed Old Dunleavy.
“The food is put away. You’ll have to fix your plate if ya want to eat.”
Shakira waited for some reply, the usual thing he’d say about her half cooking. All he wanted was to get away from her.
“Mnot hungry,” he said, taking a big step to get around her. He could see she was a face full of questions and she wanted to talk.
“What’s that you got there?” She spoke to his back. He wouldn’t turn around.
It was easier when Truman wasn’t on night shift because then Shakira had no use for Thulani. She and Truman would sit at the kitchen table and dream their dreams. Shakira was having some sort of difficulties with her pregnancy and was trapped in the house.
Thulani closed and locked his door by wedging the backrest of his chair underneath the knob. He fell into his bed with the cloth still tightly in his grasp. He lay on his back fingering the cloth, thinking that it had been tied around her body. The fine cotton cloth.
He had touched her. The girl. In fifteen or twenty seconds he had seen what girls hold secret, though she did not invite him. Or them. And he had her skirt. The torn cloth. In his bed.
He took the cloth and unfurled it from the tight roll, then spread it into a full rectangle on his bed. It was beautiful. An indigo sea, streaks of violet, drops of turquoise in bolder drops of gold. He ran his hands along the fabric, searching for the girl who wore it. To picture her in it, he had to see it fully open. He took two nails and a hammer from his bottom drawer and began to nail the cloth to the wall facing his bed.
“Thulani! What’s that noise?”
He ignored Shakira.
She jiggled the doorknob but could not get in.
“Thulani! What are ya doing?”
“Leave me alone” is what he said, but it came out in a mumble.
“Thulani, open.”
He blasted his stereo. Some Wyclef Jean. Finally she gave up.
Shakira didn’t really care, he reasoned. She was doing what she thought her role as woman of the house called for. He wished she’d do it elsewhere and leave him alone. He wanted no words tonight.
He hammered the last nail; then he lay in his bed to admire the skirt. He was so struck with the cloth he couldn’t sleep. At the Dumpster he could not fully appreciate the colors. The indigo. The turquoise. The violet and gold. But now, in his bed with the lights turned off, he saw the design, which was the pattern of a peacock in full fan. Thulani could not take his eyes off the colors. And in the semi-darkness it seemed as if a hundred golden eyes of the peacock all stared back.
THREE
With the exception of one recurring event, every Wednesday was like every Monday, was like every Tuesday. That Wednesday Thulani rose, showered, stepped into a pair of baggy Bermuda shorts, then went out onto his roof to be with his birds. Instead of sharing last night’s dreams with them, he asked aloud, “What should I do about her? It’s Wednesday.”
For the past five weeks since that night, he had spotted her, the raped girl, coming down Eastern Parkway every Wednesday at eleven-twenty, by the bank clock. The first time he saw her, he felt a strong urge to get to the street, just as he had done that night. Unfortunately, like that night, he couldn’t move. He simply let her pass and watched her until she slipped into what had to be Nostrand Avenue. Then he’d stay on his roof and listen to music, stare at cloud formations, or design bigger dovecotes in his head, until the bank clock showed one-fifteen and she returned from wherever she went.
He knew she would
be passing through.
He looked to his birds for advice, resolved to take any hint as a sign and act upon it. Yoli and Dija cooed sympathetically, but this told him nothing. Tai-Chi demonstrated the graceful art of diving for last night’s pizza crust but was cut off by Bruno, who swooped down and snatched it.
“What, you crazy?” he asked Bruno. “I’d scare her.”
The fact remained, Bruno had the pizza crust.
Thulani turned to Esme, who, as usual, was off to herself. “Hey, Es-may, hey, Esemaay. Hey, girl.”
Esme hopped away.
“Don’t be like that. Tell me what to do, what to say, you being a woman.”
Esme did not want to be bothered. She perched on the antenna.
Thulani waved her off. His birds could not help him, and he had detained them long enough. He watched them fly away under Bruno’s lead, banking right, left, and out of sight.
It was early yet. He had time before she would appear. He went inside to take breakfast. His brother, Truman, had come in from his shift and was off to bed. This left him with Shakira, who was stirring a pot of thick, lumpy, whole-grain porridge. She ate these concoctions whether she liked them or not for the sake of her unborn child. Natural foods were better for the baby, according to Shakira. He grabbed a bowl, his box of Cap’n Crunch, or “processed sugar,” and sat at the table.
“Correct me if I’m mistaken,” Shakira began, “but I did not sleep with you last night.”
Thulani grunted at her, rather than say the “Good morning, sistah dear,” she wanted. He watched her pour the glop into a bowl and thought, Vile. She read his face well but joined him at the table nonetheless. He would be content to eat in silence, although Shakira would never let him get away without conversation, sitting face-to-face. She swallowed a spoonful of her porridge, took a moment to clear her mouth, then asked, “Ya have plans?”
He never took this to be a serious question. She always asked this, and his answer was always the same: “Naw” or a head shake.
“Ya let this whole summer go by, no work, no studies, no friends.”
“So.”
“You’re not a child, Thulani. Ya should be planning. Doing. Thinking about college.”
He poured more milk and cereal into his bowl.
“Ya drink too much cow’s milk.” With Shakira it was always some new thing she got hold of from books and magazines. She had come to their house touting goat’s milk as “the righteous milk.” Then it was soy milk. Now rice milk.
He knew what to do in this situation. “Could you be looved?,” a favorite of his father’s. His music was there in his head when he needed to drown out Shakira. “Don’t let them change you.” He crunched loud, bobbing his head while she talked on. At this point The Wailers were much too mellow. He switched to Shabba.
Shakira had to know he had left her, although this did not discourage her. After nearly three years of Shakira in the house he knew her litany cold: He was too much into himself. He sat on his roof, talked to birds, got blacker by the sunloads, ate Cap’n Crunch, had no ambitions, no girlfriend, yah, yah. She could talk and talk. None of these things was on his mind. He thought only of her, the girl, and that she would be passing by in yet another hour.
Thulani washed and dried his bowl, watched some TV, then went back up to his roof. It was ten minutes past eleven. He knelt at the edge of the roof, in his “waiting for her” position. He still had not figured out what he would do or say, but he knew he would do something. Perhaps come down off the roof, tap her on the shoulder, and say, “Girl, I’ve been thinking about you. Are you all right?”
He played this back to himself to get a feel for her reaction. As he tried to picture her expression and what she might say, he realized he had only a distorted face to go by. True, he had filled in his dream girl’s face with her face, but he had wiped away her blood and healed her scars.
This made him wonder if she had healed in five weeks. Could he look at her without pausing on her scars? Would she recognize him and thank him for rescuing her, or would she fall apart?
He began to think that trying to talk to her was a bad idea. He was about to step away from the edge of the rooftop but then saw her coming down Eastern Parkway, her head and chest high, her gait proud and undaunted as she passed the alley. She carried a backpack and wore a long skirt that swayed as she walked. He imagined it was much like the skirt pinned to his wall, made of fine silky cotton, except for its single color, bright marigold. As he watched her walking swiftly with her head high, it puzzled him that she was not in hiding and that her colors were so bold.
He followed her for the three blocks with his eyes, not realizing that he had crept along to the other end of the rooftop. It was when she disappeared down Nostrand Avenue that he told himself he might never get another chance to talk to her. He ran inside the apartment, past a startled Shakira, and was on Eastern Parkway running after her. He stopped to catch his breath at Nostrand Avenue and to see if he could spot her. There were only a few bystanders at the bus stop; not one of them was the girl.
She could have turned on Lincoln Place or gone into a store on St. Johns, but which one? Thulani looked into shops along the block. Although he didn’t know her, he couldn’t imagine her going for pizza before noon. He didn’t glance inside Ayoka’s Hair Braiding, for braids didn’t require a weekly visit. Besides, she wore her hair pulled up on her head, never braided. He did glance inside the real estate office, the money transfer place, and the music store. No girl in a yellow-gold skirt. He tried the flower shop, this time going inside.
“Yeah, boss?”
“Just looking,” Thulani said. “For someone.”
The florist’s eyes said, Do you see anyone here? Thulani backed out of the store, accidentally kicking a potted plant.
Why was he running after her? This was crazy. He was crazy. Obviously she was all right. She had filed her police report and gotten tested. She didn’t need him to ask how she was, remind her of that night, or stare at her scars. She had passed by with her head held high, not offering the alley a side glance. She didn’t hide in dark colors. She didn’t need him to rescue her.
He decided to turn back, and there she appeared in her skirt, bright and yellow. She had stepped out of a shop on the opposite side of the street and tucked something, perhaps a small bag, into her backpack and continued down Nostrand.
He crossed the street to get a better look at the shop she had come out of. It was a store with Chinese characters painted on the door, and a sign propped in the window that read CHINESE HERBS AND MEDICINE, ACUPUNCTURE ON PREMISES.
He didn’t want to go inside; he just wanted to know what it was all about. Thulani pressed his face against the window but saw no one. On the counter sat a mortar and pestle and a set of measuring scales, much smaller than those used in grocery stores. Behind the counter were cabinets with about fifty little drawers, each one marked with Chinese characters.
When the shopkeeper, a middle-aged Chinese woman in a white lab coat, appeared from the back room, Thulani stepped away.
What did she want with Chinese herbs? Why did it take five or ten minutes to prepare? Where did she go next, and why did it take an hour before she returned to Eastern Parkway?
He could see her up ahead. There was a block and a half between them. He took one step, another, and a broad Mother-May-I in her direction. Her skirt movement hypnotized him. The dance of her lean and sensual body made him forget she was a rape victim; she was a girl whose skirt swayed with the sea. Not only did she pull him with her motion, but other men turned to watch her walk by.
Thulani wondered if she wore no bra and if her nipples showed against the fabric of her top. Picturing her body in detail made him erect, something that happened seemingly all the time. Girls had aroused him before, but this was different. She was flesh. Warm. Angry. And he did not have to imagine her. He had seen her. Touched her.
Then she stopped abruptly, and he froze, expecting her to turn around. Just as ab
ruptly as she stopped, she continued, only now at a slightly faster pace.
What now? he thought. Run after her? Then what? He only wanted to know she was all right. This was what he told himself as he walked faster to keep up with her.
She vaulted up the steps to some building in the next block. As he approached, he saw it was St. Augustine’s, a Catholic church. A statue of St. Augustine, a black missionary in a long robe, held out welcoming arms. Thulani wiped his hands on his Bermudas, wiped his sweaty forehead and face on his shirt, and went up the steps to the Catholic church. He entered the church, but he did not want her to see him just yet, so he stepped into a little room off to the side. The entrance to the room was draped in a maroon velvet curtain. There was a dark screen before him that separated his little room from yet another. Before him were the words “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned” in English, Spanish, and French.
If he remained quiet, he would not be discovered. He would wait and peer out of the velvet curtain until the service was over. When she came out, he would talk to her.
Excluding his brother’s wedding, it had been years since he had attended a church service. His mother was Episcopalian. He too was Episcopalian, back when he attended Holy Trinity on Fulton. That was three Easters ago. His mother was no longer with him, and he hadn’t been Episcopalian ever since. His brother had become a Rasta, the creed of his father. Now Truman was married and a transit worker. Those were his religions. Work and Shakira. He seemed less and less a brother.
The aroma of incense that drifted from the altar found his hiding place. Through the slightly pulled-back drapes he watched a black priest say mass to the girl and mostly elderly men and women. The priest spoke and made hand gestures, raising his fingers to his forehead, lips, and heart. The parishioners responded in kind. Thulani tried to follow what was being said but could not, for the priest and the parishioners spoke in what he thought was French.