After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such subtle confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or is still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
“But the greatest test of all is what I’ve seen with my own eyes. I have studied these people. Yes, I’ve moved among them, eaten with them, laughed with them, but I’ve known my purpose here from the beginning and I’ve never let myself get too involved. I was placed on this very spot as soon as I graduated from school, so there was no way for me to get caught up in the mad rush down this hill and have my work tainted. I’m already sitting on the last street of Tupelo Drive, and no one will ever live in that house at the very bottom but the Nedeeds. Remember, this whole wall is a window that faces up, and it always will.”
“Those willow trees block your view for over half the year,” Lester said. “And Nedeed might be counting on that.”
“My trees are dead. I killed them when I realized that they might interfere with my work. I didn’t cut them down because I was so terribly fond of them. Willows are the most elegant of all trees. And, you see, in the fall and winter I can still imagine that they will bud again in the spring, and my sense of loss isn’t so great. Yes, I had often thought about what you just said, and yes, I am certain that the information they give me can be verified.”
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition
I have lost my passion: why should I keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use them for your closer contact?
“No, son, these are photographs,” Braithwaite said as he weighed the volume and frowned, “taken with extreme care and immeasurable accuracy.” He took off his glasses and pointed to his eyes: “And this is the camera.” He turned to Willie. “You see, I knew you didn’t have the whole story of what went on today. How could you? You were too close to it. So I made a special effort to bring you here to explain—not Luther’s side or my side, but all of it. And for you especially, it’s important at this stage in your life to guard against hasty conclusions.”
“Well, sir.” Willie cleared his throat. “I’ve seen a lot these last few days and I’ll admit that I haven’t sorted it all out yet. But I can say one thing, and I hope you won’t take this the wrong way—I wouldn’t live in Linden Hills if it was the last place on earth.”
The even voice that answered was as soft as it was sad: “Then you must read the twelfth volume of my work when it’s completed, because everything you’ve done this week is in there. I’ve watched you, and I’ve made inquiries. You’re bright. Ambitious. And now, up close, I can smell the potential about you. You might think you’re only passing through, but for someone like you, young man, this probably will be the last place on earth.”
“Hey, how about that, Willie?” Lester winked. “The professor’s predicted that we’re gonna be neighbors.”
Willie didn’t smile. He wanted to punch Lester. He always went on like everything in life was a joke. But some things were deadly serious.
“Excuse me, Dr. Braithwaite, this has all been nice of you, but I’d really like to go home now and lie down. Could you call that cab for us?”
“Surely. Forgive me. I suppose you’ve figured out that I don’t get much company, but I didn’t mean to bend your ears.”
“No, this has been great,” Lester said. “I wanted to ask you about that copy of The Philadelphia Negro. Did you really know Du Bois?—because it’s signed.”
“Why yes, we met once at a dinner party at the Nedeeds. Now, that’s an interesting story …” he began, and then glanced at Willie. “But unfortunately, it’s quite a long one and—”
“No, you can tell him,” Willie said. “If you don’t mind showing me where the phone is, I’ll call the cab myself. It might take a while to get through with all this snow.”
Willie had gotten three busy signals in a row when he put down the receiver and sighed. He could hear Braithwaite’s laughter through the open door in the hallway. To his left, the darkened front room had dust covers on the furniture. So he really didn’t use this part of his house. Quietly, Willie moved into the living room and saw the closed drapes on the front bay window. That was probably the one that looked down the hill. Feeling like a thief, he walked over and pulled one edge of the drapery, the bright light making him jump as if an alarm had gone off. He glanced back over his shoulder before pressing his nose to the glass.
The white clapboard house at the bottom of the slope sat quietly behind the snowbanks and its frozen lake. There was no sign of life in or around it. It was difficult to imagine children ice skating down there or women hanging wreaths in those windows, sweeping the porch, drying laundry, but in almost two hundred years it must have happened sometime. History is a written photograph. Closing the drape, Willie wondered if Braithwaite would have gotten a much different picture all these years by keeping his desk up against this window.
She knew she was dying. Sitting back on her heels with the album in her lap, she could feel it happening: the passage of air through lung tissues that disintegrated a little with each breath; heart muscles that pumped and weakened, pumped and weakened with each surge of blood through the body; blood moving through each loosening vein, each tightening artery, nourishing cells that split and divided toward a finite end hidden by her skin. The cold that settled around her and the emptiness within her helped to give the process a clarity that would have been lost if she’d had the freedom of the outside world. In the normal rush of affairs, it was so easy to forget that she was born dying. And being deprived of the infinite expanse of the stars or the sound of waves from a bottomless ocean, she had to anchor the questions and answers for her limited existence to the material enclosed within those four walls.
It had all come to this. She curled her fingers around the cellophane pages, the past dissolving into the present and bringing with it the meaninglessness of whatever had gone before. Everything else, every other word or action had been only a bizarre temper tantrum against fate. Because after all that, here it finally was: a dying body, the ticking of a cracked clock and a smeared photo album marked me.
Staring at the gaping hole that was once Priscilla McGuire, she reached her hand up and began to touch her own face, her fingers running tentatively across the cheeks and mouth, up the bridge of the nose, and spanning out over the eyes and forehead. She tried to place the curves and planes, the shape of the jutting cheekbones and texture of the hair into the hollow of the hand that she brought back and held before her. The fingers returned again under the parted lips, in the holes of the nostrils, over the arch of the brows, and under the hair to the bone of the scalp. She brought her fingers back again and again with a new shape and form to place in the air before her.
But it was difficult to keep it all in position. When she returned with the curve of her ear, the chin had shifted and melted up toward the mouth; the nose dissolved before she could bring back the lips. She started all over, pressing a bit harder into the hollows of her cheeks, under the chin, moving quickly to return with a new shape in her fingers before the image vanished. She now closed her eyes and used both hands, trying to form a mirror between her fingers, the darkness, and memory. Wha
t formed in her mind might be it, but she needed to be sure. She looked at the small light bulb overhead—if she only had a shiny surface. The plastic cereal bowls were too dull and crusted, the silver spoons too small. Her head turned toward the sink and the aluminum pot she had used for catching water.
The pot was tilted against the sink, its handle lodged in the drain. Water had collected there, so she lifted it carefully and brought it back under the light. Holding the pot as still as she could, she found that an image would form if she brought it down to her waist. As the water came to rest, a dim silhouette appeared in front of her. Rimmed by light, there was the outline of her hair, the shape of the chin, and if she turned her head slowly—very slowly—there was the profile of her nose and lips. It was impossible to determine the shape of her eyes, even from the side, but this was enough. No doubt remained—she was there.
She took the water and began to walk back toward the cot. She moved slowly past the metal shelves, the empty cereal and milk cartons, the scattered and torn remnants from the boxes and trunks, the shrouded body of her child. In that small space, she passed the ghosts from every spectrum of human emotion she’d released in that room. But when she finally sat down to cry, the tears belonged to none of them. The gentle drops were falling from her bowed head into the pot because this was the first time she had known peace. Raising the rim to her lips, she began to drink the cold, rusty water. So it had all come to this. She would take small sips, very small sips—and think. Now that she had actually seen and accepted reality, and reality brought such a healing calm. For whatever it was worth, she could rebuild.
December 24th
The final credits for Miracle on 34th Street rolled onto the screen of Willie’s secondhand black-and-white set. He reached for his TV Guide and sighed. That was it for the night. There was only the sermonette and then “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As much as he hated losing those last ten minutes before he was forced to be alone in the quiet room, he wasn’t going to put himself through that: whoever the band was, they always played the damned thing off-key. There was absolutely nothing left to do. The tiny kitchenette was immaculate. Every scrap of ribbon and colored paper had been slowly folded and put away. The presents for his family, Lester, and the Andersons were stacked up neatly in the corner. Wrapping them had taken hours because he had made sure the paper was cut evenly and tightly molded to the shape of each box. The ends were glued instead of taped so that there would be a smooth, continuous surface. Ribbons were matched to the various colored prints, each crisscrossed with a different design before being looped and shredded to form stars, flowers, and butterflies. And this year he was going to admit to his family that he had wrapped them himself instead of lying about having it done at the department store. He would risk having his brothers ridicule him because it looked like something a woman would do. This was his way of doing things; it had always been his way. And they would just have to accept that or give him back his damned ties, shavers, and gloves. He could keep them for himself since he hadn’t bought himself anything anyway. Or he would return them to the store and get a down payment for the new coat he needed so badly. But he was planning to use the money that he got from Nedeed to buy a coat. Willie wanted to forget that he had to go back down into Linden Hills. When he thought about Christmas Eve, he imagined himself walking up the steps to his mother’s apartment building, loaded down with shopping bags full of gifts. Grinning and banging on the door with his foot because he had a quart of Chivas Regal under each arm for their party. Still, the money for those presents had come from Linden Hills, and the two bottles of Scotch would have to be bought from what Nedeed gave them tonight. He tried to pass over all that and just concentrate on what it would be like spending Christmas with his family. Going down to Nedeed’s was just something to get through without thinking, like he had to get through this night without sleeping.
He got up, shut off the television, and looked down at his clothes. He was so tired that if he undressed, he might be tempted to lie down on the bed. And since the room was cool, he might pull the covers over him and, once he was warm, he might fall asleep. And if he fell asleep, there was no doubt about one thing: he would dream. Willie made a wide circle around the bed and sat on the windowsill, one foot on the floor and the other leg propped up against the pane with his elbow on his knee. The cold of the glass penetrated his shirt and pants, chilling his shoulder and the side of his thigh. Good, this was exactly where he’d spend the rest of the night. There was no danger of falling asleep here. He saw that the snow had already been trampled into a gray mush, lumped with garbage, exhaust fumes, and cinders. The calendar said that there should be a full moon, but it wasn’t visible from his window. Willie could see only a small patch of sky between the buildings that surrounded his one back room. The same snow, the same sky, would be different just a few blocks away in Linden Hills. The snow was still clean down there, and under a full moon that had nothing to block it but bare tree branches, it was probably glistening on those long slopes and wide streets.
Why was he always thinking about Linden Hills? Wasn’t it enough that he spent his days down there? He didn’t have to spend his nights there as well, but it seemed as if he wasn’t allowed to leave it; he even brought it home in his dreams. A tremor went through Willie’s spine. Now, why had he thought that? He didn’t mean to say that; he had meant to say that he even brought it home in his thoughts. He was always thinking about Linden Hills, that was all. So when you think about a place all the time, it’s like you never leave it. He glanced at the bed, frowned, and then sighed very deeply. He was too tired to lie to himself anymore. No, he brought that place home in his dreams. All those dreams this week were about Linden Hills. But you were supposed to dream about things after they happened, not before. Yet it had happened with that woman who killed herself. He had dreamed that she would have no face. No, he was the one who had had no face, but it was still about her. In fact, all those dreams had been about women and none of them had had names until now. He knew her name was Laurel. God, how could he ever forget that name after yesterday?
Now there was nothing left to dream about but Nedeed. What was that woman like down there in Nedeed’s house? He had never heard her name. A whole week in Linden Hills and he had never heard her name. But she was waiting for him, he felt that in his guts; he just had to fall asleep. Willie shuddered. Christ, now he really was turning into a woman—he sounded like somebody’s superstitious old aunt. Wake up, man. This is the twentieth century, and that’s Putney Wayne outside your window. You’re free, black, and twenty. And that’s the way you’re gonna stay. Free to move anywhere in this neighborhood, or in this world that your pocket change allows you. Free to stay as black as you are today unless you decide to fill your bathtub with Clorox. The only thing that’s gonna change is your age. Yes, he would turn twenty-one next year. He had no say about that, but that’s the only thing he couldn’t control. There was no such thing as fate or predestination. He wasn’t too certain about there being a god, but if there was one, he wasn’t up there pulling any strings. People pulled their own strings, made their own fate. If some clown down there in the alley on a holiday drunk came by right now with a gun, shooting up into the air, the bullet would go through his brain. But he had decided to sit at this window. He had turned off the TV, gotten up, and placed himself right here. An inch to the right or left would make all the difference in the world. Life was chance. And dreams were bullshit. It was time to grow up. He wasn’t being drawn into anything. He was going down to Nedeed’s because he needed the money. He could change his mind anytime he wanted to, even up to the last second if need be. And so what? The world would keep turning, the moon would keep rising. And the only difference his going or not going would make would be in his pocket. So the guy was weird. So he’d lied about his wife. That was Nedeed’s problem, not his.
All those people in Linden Hills had problems, which only proved one thing to him: they were part of the human race. Name him one m
an without a problem, and he’d name the day that the funeral would be held. Willie’s laugh was dry and soundless. He had seen a funeral this week. When that poor slob got married, it was like a death march and Willie was the only one who seemed to know it. And then the real funeral hadn’t been that at all, at least not to that guy Parker. He couldn’t put his wife away fast enough. A wedding that was like a funeral, and a funeral that was already a wedding. If anything was the problem with Linden Hills, it was that nothing seemed to be what it really was. Everything was turned upside down in that place. And he was tired of thinking about it, tired of trying to put all those pieces together as if it were some great big puzzle whose solution was just beyond his fingers. If life was chance, and it could all change with someone moving just an inch to the left or right, there were no answers. Then where was he going? And what had he been doing with his own life until now? He wasn’t going to stay in Putney Wayne, that much he knew. And he wasn’t going to keep bagging groceries until he was fifty years old. There was better for him than that. So was that professor right? Linden Hills would be the place where he’d end up? Where he had to end up?
Willie’s head began to throb. He was wrong. If he could ask those questions, then there had to be an answer. But there had been no new poems this week. His poetry had always helped him sort things out. He had asked a hundred questions and he had a hundred answers in his head. He remembered his very first poem. He couldn’t have been more than five years old. He had asked himself one day in school, how can my mother love my father when he makes her cry? And the poem just came while he was tossing that blue alphabet block. A little nothing of a rhyme that he still carried around, but that had been the beginning. He grew up believing that there was a poem somewhere to fit everything. But this past week he couldn’t put it all together. Over and over he had asked himself when the day was through, What does it mean? And there was nothing. Images, snatches of phrases, he had loads of those but nothing to order them. Other people’s work had kept cramming itself into his mind. But where was his? Maybe it was just overload. He had already memorized 665 poems and this last one just wasn’t working but. Would he have to start writing them down? He couldn’t imagine that. Poetry wrote itself for him. If he had to pick up a pen and paper, he just knew there would be nothing to say. And even if he forced himself to jot something down, those strange curves and loops in front of him would be as unreadable as Chinese. His poems only made sense in his ears and mouth. His fingers, eyes, and nose. Something about Linden Hills was blocking that. And to unstop it, he would have to put Linden Hills into a poem. But first he needed the right question, didn’t he? Perhaps he hadn’t been asking the wrong questions all week, just ones that were too big. It would take an epic to deal with something like What has this whole week meant? He’d leave that to guys like Milton. No, just find something small and work from there. Find something immediate, and it would write itself out. Okay, you can’t separate Linden Hills from Luther Nedeed, who seemed to be in the middle of almost everything this week. So what is the question about Nedeed?