The whole time I was talking to Loren, I was thinking about Mr. Moses and the dream that got away from him. I had never lost a dream like that. I had never really had a dream that was so much a part of me as the old man’s dreams. But I was thinking that there were things that were getting away from me, and people I thought I knew who now weren’t so clear. Mr. Moses never asked me anything about myself, but I wondered what he knew.
“He can live in the streets for all I care,” Reuben said.
“Well, I don’t want him living in the streets,” Mom said. “Whatever he’s doing, he’s my son. And he’s going to be my son for as long as I am alive.”
They were talking about Ty. He hadn’t been home for two days. The police hadn’t come to the house, so I thought he was okay, but I wasn’t sure. Reuben was acting like he didn’t care.
I knew my brother, at least I had thought I knew him before he started acting so strange. Now every night I would wake up, turn on the light, and look at his empty bed. I wanted to hear him grunt and pull the cover over his head, the way he did sometimes, or ask me if I was crazy waking him up in the middle of the night. I wanted him to be the old Ty, acting like he was tired of me hanging around him all the time. The thought of Ty living on the street gave me a nervous feeling inside. But it was almost as if I was the one who wasn’t home, instead of him.
Mr. Moses had said that there were no homeless people, just people who weren’t in their homes. I liked that, but I didn’t know if it made a real difference. I thought Mr. Moses was not in his home, and now Ty wasn’t in his.
I heard Mom talking on the phone to Ira. Ira played saxophone when he could find work, and sometimes he taught or drove a cab. Mom told Ira that Ty was running the streets and asked him to give her a call if he saw him.
When Mom was happy, her voice sounded full, like it was coming toward you right from her mouth. But when she wasn’t happy, you had to lean forward to hear her. I had to lean forward a lot after Ty left.
“He’s got a good home, and he’s got a good life,” Reuben said. “If he don’t want to be in it, it’s because he’s just dumb.”
Bum. Come. Dumb. Fum. Gum. Hum. I didn’t want to hear Reuben talk like that about Ty.
“He’s living in a fantasy, a dream world,” Reuben said.
“Reuben, the boy’s all right,” Mom said. “Ty is a good, decent young man.”
I wondered if Ty was living in a dream world. And if he was living in a dream world, did he know about dreams, like Mr. Moses knew about them? I was beginning to think a lot about the old man. I thought that I could be thinking about him because I didn’t want to think about Ty or the little pieces of my life that seemed to go floating around the house. There was a warm feeling to Mr. Moses, a feeling that made me think he liked people a lot, maybe even liked me and Loren. It was good the way he talked to me and called me Mr. David. There were things I didn’t know about him. He was probably too old to know good, even if he wasn’t hundreds of years old the way he said he was. Him being that old didn’t make any sense, but it didn’t mess with me, not like Reuben’s not making sense tightened my stomach.
I hated it when Reuben talked to himself. Ty said Reuben was crazy, and as soon as his crazy papers were filled out they were going to lock him up.
“So what do you want to do?” We were on the roof working on Sessi’s house. She had made it bigger, six feet long and four feet wide, and high enough so that if I stood right in the middle, I could stand up almost straight, so it had to be at least five feet six inches.
“Why don’t we go to the park and you can teach Kimi how to play basketball,” Sessi said.
“It’ll take too long to teach him,” Loren said. “By the time he knows as much as me, he’ll be too old to play.”
“He doesn’t have to be a professional,” Sessi said. “He just wants to play an American game.”
“You know anything about slavery?” I asked Sessi.
“Why do all Americans think Africans know so much about slavery?” Sessi asked. “We have the same books that you do.”
“How come all Africans think that Americans know about basketball?” Loren said.
That was a good one and Sessi knew it. She fluttered her hands at us, really close to our faces. Sessi always did that, but Loren and I had both practiced not blinking.
“If Kimi wants to play ball with us tomorrow after church, he can come,” I said.
I said I would pick Kimi up at two on Sunday; then Sessi said I should call her father and ask his permission before I came over. I told her that if I had to do all that asking for permission and everything, I would rather not take Kimi out. She gave me a cute smile and I knew I would do it anyway.
Loren and I were planning to go down to the Countee Cullen Library on 136th, but when I told him that Ty hadn’t been home for two days, he said I should go to the pool hall on 141st Street.
“Sometimes he hangs out there,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
“Me and Junebug went to that store next to it to buy some comic books, and we saw Ty with a guy wearing a red do-rag—he looked like a Blood or something.”
“Ty?”
“No, the guy with the do-rag.”
I asked Loren if he wanted to go to the pool hall with me, and he said he didn’t care so we went down Malcolm X. When we got to 141st I stopped, and Loren pointed down the street where some guys were gathered in front of a store. It was almost to the next corner.
“You scared?” I asked him.
“Scared of what?”
I didn’t know of what so I started walking again. Loren said we could go in and play some pool if we wanted to. I knew we weren’t going to, and I could tell by the way Loren had his shoulders hunched up that he wasn’t as brave as he was pretending.
One hundred forty-first Street is different from 145th. One hundred forty-fifth is wide and one of the main streets people use to get across town, so it’s always crowded. Some of the buildings are new, and even the old ones are kept pretty clean. One hundred forty-first is quiet, and there are two empty lots on the block. Empty lots are like holes in the neighborhood.
Loren pointed out the pool hall, and I saw the older dudes just standing around on the sidewalk, like they were waiting for something to happen. It was hot but they were all wearing jackets. We stopped a little way down from them and I told Loren to look casual. What he did was to hunch his shoulders up even more.
“You going to go in?” he asked.
The pool hall on 141st Street is one of those places I didn’t have to know a lot about to know I should stay away from it. I had passed its dark windows plenty of times and imagined what was going on inside.
I was just about to say no when I saw Ty coming out the door. He had on his black coat and baggy black pants. He looked around and started walking away from us. I nudged Loren, and we went after Ty.
My heart was beating fast, so I slapped my chest twice, the way Loren and I do to let each other know we’re kind of nervous. Loren looked at me and then toward Ty.
“Ty!” I called to my brother as we got near him.
Ty turned around quickly, and I got the feeling he was ready to throw down if he had to. His coat was open and I could see his shirt was wrinkled and there was fuzzy stuff, it looked like cat hair, on the front of his pants. He smelled bad, too. Ty always stayed cleaned and neat. Now he looked and even smelled terrible.
“Yo, man, what you doing?”
“Hanging,” I said. “What you doing?”
“Got some running to do,” he said. “See you later tonight.”
“You coming home?”
“Be in about midnight.” Ty tilted his head back and looked down his nose at me. “He giving you a hard time about me?”
I leaned my head back, the way he did, and said no. Ty told me to stay cool and keep Loren cool, too. Then he spun around and walked away.
“You should have asked him where he’s been,” Loren said after Ty had wa
lked partway down the block.
“I was waiting for you to say something,” I said.
“You think he’s in some kind of trouble?” Loren asked.
“He doesn’t like to be dirty,” I said. “Something’s wrong.”
“If you want, you can send him to my office and I’ll psychoanalyze him,” Loren said.
“There’s nothing like a good chat between a brother and a sister to set things right.” Mr. Kerlin smiled and nodded. “Now, what we want is the same thing, to uplift the community. Am I right on that, my sister?”
“We’re talking about the same thing,” Mom said.
“Yes, we are,” Mr. Kerlin said. “And there’s no use in us fighting against each other when we are not the enemy. Indifference is the enemy. Apathy is the enemy.”
“I’m sure you’re anxious to improve the community,” Mom said. She had on her hairdresser’s apron and was leaning against the sink. “But your empty building has been one of the problems in the neighborhood for the past nine years.”
“That is another area of agreement!” Mr. Kerlin held his cigar between his fingers like it was a dart he was going to throw. “Now two factors have flowed together like two mighty rivers to create a tide of change. The first is the time. There’s enough affluence in Harlem to make rehabilitating the building worthwhile. The second is need. As the city finally sees fit to pay some attention to the neglected areas, there arises a need for decent housing, and I am moved to provide some of that housing. Now, am I a bad man, Mrs. Curry?”
“And the fact that the city council was going to take over your abandoned building and give the Matthew Henson Community Project a grant to open a homeless shelter had nothing to do with your being moved?”
“I am genuinely hurt that you question a Christian’s motives,” Mr. Kerlin said. “I hope you believe that.”
“Mr. Kerlin—”
“Call me Robert.”
“Mr. Robert Kerlin,” Mom said, and folded her hands across her chest, “you are a schemer and a scoundrel and the truth is not in you! Now that’s what I believe.”
“The Lord moves in mysterious ways. This I know,” Mr. Kerlin said. “But deep in my heart I do believe that one day we will both look back on this day and these events and appreciate how we have uplifted One hundred forty-fifth Street. Uplifted the street and the community.”
“I’m sure,” Mom said.
“And we’re giving meaningful employment to neighborhood people,” Mr. Kerlin said.
Mr. Kerlin looked pleased with himself as he swung his cigar around, and I knew Mom couldn’t wait for him to leave. The way he was smiling and waving his cigar around, he was acting like it was his house and not ours.
Mom had gone in to wake my father up when Mr. Kerlin first came to the house, but he hadn’t come out yet, and Mom left the kitchen and went into the bedroom again. I could hear her saying something about Mr. Kerlin’s waiting for him, so I figured he must have been up and almost dressed.
“You sure are a fine young man.” Mr. Kerlin was speaking to me.
“Thank you.”
“Maybe one day you can be the superintendent of a big building, like your father.” Mr. Kerlin put that cigar between his lips and turned it between his fingers.
“Maybe.” He had forgotten about me being a pilot.
Reuben came out tucking his shirt into his pants. Mr. Kerlin started talking about how he needed him to fix up the rear door, the one that led out to the yard, because he thought someone had tried to break in. I noticed he didn’t smile when he talked to Reuben. Before they left, Mom asked Reuben when he’d be home, and Mr. Kerlin said he would be a while.
“I don’t see how Mr. Kerlin smokes them stinky cigars,” I said after he had left.
“Loren’s mother said that you saw Tyrone today,” Mom said.
“We saw him down on One hundred forty-first Street.”
Mom sat down and took a deep breath. “How did he look?” she asked.
“Not too cool,” I said. “That’s probably because he hasn’t been changing his clothes. You know what I mean?”
“Yes, I know what you mean.” Mom’s voice got edgy. “Did he say anything about coming home?”
“He said he’d be by late tonight,” I said.
“It would have been nice for you to let me know that you saw him,” Mom said. “You knew I was worried about him, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know if I should say anything in case he didn’t come home,” I said. “You’d just be worrying more.”
Mom took my hand and kissed it, then she pulled me close and hugged me.
I was right. Ty didn’t come home and he didn’t call. I was awake most of the night, and Mom must have been awake as well. She came to the room twice and looked in, as if she might have missed him. I felt bad for me, but even worse for her.
When I got up in the morning, Mom was making soft-boiled eggs and toast. She answered good morning when I said it, but she said it low, the way she does when she doesn’t want to talk a lot. I knew she had something on her mind, so I just waited for it to come out.
“You think your brother’s using drugs?” she asked me.
Mom was holding her tea in front of her face and looking toward the window. She rolled her eyes toward me and asked again.
“I don’t know for sure,” I said, “but I don’t think so.”
“Is that because you don’t see any signs?” she asked. “Or is it just because he’s your brother and you love him so much that…”
She was crying again and I put my hand on hers. She got out a little smile and took my hand. She was quiet for a long minute, maybe two.
“Lord Jesus, give us strength,” she said. “Give us strength.”
I helped do the dishes and we started downstairs. Mom had to go to the Bronx to take her aunt Mabel to the doctor, and I thought I would go over to Loren’s house. On the way down we met Reuben coming upstairs carrying a brown paper bag. I hadn’t even thought about him not being home.
“Come on up and have some donuts and coffee,” he said. His breath smelled bad. Whiskey.
Mom told him about having to take Mabel to the doctor, that she had an inner ear infection and was always in danger of falling down. Reuben looked mad. His jaw tightened up and I didn’t know what he was going to do. He told me to come upstairs and have some breakfast with him.
“I’m going to Loren’s house,” I said.
He grabbed me by the collar and threw me against the stairs.
“Reuben!” Mom put herself over me. “I’ll call Mabel and tell her I can’t come.”
“Go on! Go on! What do I care?” He was shouting. “You said you was going to take her to the doctor, so go on! I’m finished working. Me and David are going to have some donuts and milk, and then he can go see his friend.”
“Reuben, please be careful.” She moved toward me, and Reuben pushed her away.
“I’m okay, Mom,” I said. “I’m okay.”
Reuben was helping me up, and I was trying hard not to cry. I knew that would just make him madder.
“Go on, woman!” he said to Mom. “We’ll be okay.”
I started up the stairs as Mom started down. I didn’t look back at her.
“I was born one year, almost to the day, that Malcolm X died,” Reuben said. There was sugar on his chin from the donut he was eating. “They had to kill Malcolm because they couldn’t control him. You know they can control most people. Did you know that?” “How?”
“They do it by making you think in circles,” Reuben said. “See, if they tell you to do something you don’t want to do, right away you’re going to think they’re stupid and you won’t do it. Say a man walks up to you and tells you to give him your money. What are you going to say?”
“Probably no,” I said.
“That’s just what you’re going to say,” Reuben said. “But if he told you there were germs on your money, you’d give him a look and wonder what his game is. Then you?
??d wonder why he’s coming up to you. So your thinking went to the money, then to him, and then circled right back to you. See what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s how they control you,” Reuben said. “They talk about you giving up your money, then they talk about the money having germs on it, and before you know it, your money’s gone.”
“Nobody said my money had germs on it,” I said.
“No, but they’re telling you that it’s better to use a credit card instead of carrying money around, don’t they?”
“That’s so nobody will rob you,” I said.
“No, that’s so you won’t think your money’s going,” Reuben said. “You buy something with a credit card and you take it out of your pocket. The man zips it through his machine, and then you put it back in your pocket. You got your TV, your CD, whatever, and you still got your credit card in your pocket. You think you got everything, but your money’s gone. See what I mean?”
“Yes.” I didn’t know what he meant, but I didn’t want to say that.
The telephone rang and Reuben answered it. It was Aunt Mabel wanting to know if Mom was on her way. Reuben told her yes. Then he hung up and sat back down.
There had been six donuts in the bag. Reuben had eaten one and I had eaten one. Now he pushed another one to me across the table.
“Another way they control you is through your dreaming. When you go to sleep at night, you got to dream or you go crazy. Even dogs dream. You ever see a dog dream?”
“Yeah, my friend Ralph had a dog,” I said. “And you could tell he was dreaming about running because his legs would go like he was running and so would his tail.”
“They put things on TV, real pretty things, and get you to dreaming about them,” Reuben said. “You see them on television when they come on, but you just push them on out of your mind because they ain’t real to you. You know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“They put a house on TV, all spotless and shiny. The wife, she’s smiling, the children are smiling, everything is pretty and nice. Maybe they even give them a little problem so they look like a real family. Looking for a new car—something like that. Then they go back to the news or the weather but that little scene, the house and family and all, is still in your head. You think you got it pushed out, but it’s just out of the front of your mind and pushed down into your subconscious mind and you dream about it. They got you dreaming about what they want you to dream about, so they’re controlling you.”