Bruce ran in front of the television, chasing one of his sisters and trying to hit her over the head with his dirty unraveling cast.
“Stop that, you’re messing up the picture,” she said irritably. Now the doctors were saying that his arm wasn’t mending right and she had to bring him back to have it reset. Always something—she must remember to look at the clinic card for his next appointment. Tuesday the something, she faintly recalled. She hoped it wasn’t last Tuesday, or she would have to wait forever for a new appointment.
“I just don’t know,” she sighed aloud, shifted the baby into her arms, and got up to adjust the picture and change channels. She hated it when her two favorite stories came on at the same time; it was a pain to keep switching channels between Steve’s murder trial and Jessica’s secret abortion.
A rubber ball came hurling across the room and smacked the baby on the side of the head. It began screaming, and her eyes blazed around the room for the offender.
“All right, that’s it!” she yelled, charging around the room, hitting randomly at whoever wasn’t quick enough to dodge her swinging fists. “Now just get outside—I’m sick of you. Wait! Doesn’t anyone have any homework?” She only threatened them with homework when they had pushed her to the end of her patience. She listened suspiciously to the mottled chorus of “nos” to her question, but couldn’t gather the energy to sort through the confused pile of torn notebooks that lay scattered about the floor.
“Awful strange,” she muttered darkly. “No one ever has any homework. When I was in school, we always got homework.” But they had already headed for the door, knowing she had used up her ultimate weapon against them. “And we didn’t get left back like you little dumb asses,” she called out impotently to the slamming door. It had surprised her when Maybelline had gotten left back. Her oldest daughter had always liked school, and there were never any truant notices for her in the mailbox like there were for the others. Take her to the library, the teachers had said, encourage her to read. But the younger ones had torn and marked in her library books, and they made you pay for that. She couldn’t afford to be paying for books all the time. And how was she expected to keep on top of them every minute? It was enough just trying to keep the apartment together. She underscored that thought by picking up a handful of discarded clothes and throwing them into a leaning chair. So now truant notices were coming for Maybelline, too.
“I just don’t know,” she sighed, and sat back down in front of the television. She gently examined the side of the baby’s head to see if the ball had left a mark and kissed the tiny bruise. Why couldn’t they just stay like this—so soft and easy to care for? How she had loved them this way. Taking the baby’s hand in her mouth, she sucked at the small fingers and watched it giggle and try to reach for her nose. She poked her thumb into the dimpled cheek and lifted the child onto her breast so she could stroke its finely curled hair and inhale the mingled sweetness of mineral oil and talcum powder that lay in the creases of its neck. Oh, for them to stay like this, when they could be fed from her body so there were no welfare offices to sit in all day or food stamp lines to stand on, when she alone could be their substance and their world, when there were no neighbors or teachers or social workers to answer to about their actions. They stayed where you put them and were so easy to keep clean.
She’d spend hours washing, pressing, and folding the miniature clothes, blankets, and sheets. The left-hand corner of her bedroom which held the white wooden crib and dresser was dusted and mopped religiously. As she got on her hands and knees to wash the molding under the crib, the red and black sign in the clinic glared into her mind—GERMS ARE YOUR BABY’S ENEMIES—and she was constantly alert for any of them hidden in that left-hand corner. No, when her babies slept she made sure they went unmolested by those things painted on that clinic poster. There was no place for them to hide on that brown body that was bathed and oiled twice a day, or in the folds of the pastel flannel and percales that she personally scrubbed and sterilized, or between the bristles of the hair brushes that were boiled each week and replaced each month. She couldn’t bear the thought of those ugly red things creeping into the soft, fragrant curls that she now buried her nose into.
She wondered at the change in the fine silky strands that moved with the slightest force of her breath and raised to tickle her nostrils when she inhaled. In a few years they would grow tight and kinky and rough. She’d hate to touch them then, because the child would cry when she yanked the comb through its matted hair. And she would have to drag them from under the bed or out of closets and have to thump them on the head constantly to get them to sit still while she combed their hair. And if she didn’t, there would now be neighbors and teachers and a motley assortment of relatives to complain about the linty, gnarled hair of the babies who had grown beyond the world of her lap, growing wild-eyed and dumb, coming home filthy from the streets with rough corduroy, khaki, and denim that tattered faster than she could mend, and with mouthfuls of rotten teeth, and scraped limbs, and torn school books, and those damned truant notices in her mailbox—dumb, just plain dumb.
“Are you gonna be a dumb-ass too?” she cooed at the baby. “No, not Mama’s baby. You’re not gonna be like them.”
There was no reason for them being like that—so difficult. She had gone to school until her sophomore year, when she had her first baby. And in those days you had to leave high school if you were pregnant. She had intended to go back, but the babies just seemed to keep coming—always welcome until they changed, and then she just didn’t understand them.
Don’t understand you, Cora Lee, just don’t understand you. Having all them babies year after year by God knows who. Only Sammy and Maybelline got the same father. Daughter, what’s wrong with you? Sis, what’s wrong with you? Case number 6348, what’s wrong with you?
What was wrong with them? If they behaved better, people wouldn’t always be on her back. Maybe Sammy and Maybelline’s father would have stayed longer. She had really liked him. His gold-capped teeth and glass eye had fascinated her, and she had almost learned to cope with his peculiar ways. A pot of burnt rice would mean a fractured jaw, or a wet bathroom floor a loose tooth, but that had been their fault for keeping her so tied up she couldn’t keep the house straight. But she still carried the scar under her left eye because of a baby’s crying, and you couldn’t stop a baby from crying. Babies had to cry sometimes, and so Sammy and Maybelline’s father had to go. And then there was Brucie’s father, who had promised to marry her and take her off Welfare, but who went out for a carton of milk and never came back. And then only the shadows—who came in the night and showed her the thing that felt good in the dark, and often left before the children awakened, which was so much better—there was no more waiting for a carton of milk that never came and no more bruised eyes because of a baby’s crying. The thing that felt good in the dark would sometimes bring the new babies, and that’s all she cared to know, since the shadows would often lie about their last names or their jobs or about not having wives. She had stopped listening, stopped caring to know. It was too much trouble, and it didn’t matter because she had her babies. And shadows didn’t give you fractured jaws or bruised eyes, there was no time for all that—in the dark—before the children awakened.
She turned her head toward the door and sighed when she heard the knock. Now what? It couldn’t be the kids, once they were out she had to go down and scrape them from the streets unless they got too cold or hungry. Did that cranky old woman really call the cops? She opened the door and faced a tall pretty young girl with beaded hair, holding a struggling and cursing Sammy by the collar and a stack of papers in the other arm. The other children littered the hallway and stairs to watch their brother’s ordeal.
“Mama, I ain’t done nothing. Tell this shit face; I ain’t done nothing.”
“What a way to talk.” She snatched him and flung him into the apartment. “Missy, I’m sorry. Did he steal something from you? He’s always taking things a
nd I’ve beat him about it but he still won’t stop. I’ve told the little dumb-ass the teachers have threatened to send him to reform school.” She turned toward her son. “Do you hear that—reform school, you little…”
“No, wait, you’ve got it all wrong—it’s not that!” The girl shifted the papers in her arm uncomfortably. “He was downstairs eating out of one of the garbage cans and I thought you oughta know because, well, he might be hungry or something.”
“Oh,” Cora Lee seemed relieved, “I know he does that.” She saw the girl’s eyes widen slightly in disbelief. “He’s looking for sweets. The dentist at the clinic said all his teeth are rotten so I won’t give him anything sweet and he searches through garbage cans for them. I tried to make him stop but you can’t be everywhere at once. I figure once he gets sick enough from that filthy habit, he’ll stop by himself.”
The girl was still staring at her. Cora went on, “Believe me, my kids get plenty to eat. I got two full books of food stamps I haven’t used yet. I don’t know why I bother to cook; they just mess over their food—always eating that damned candy. But I had to stop Sammy because the doctors said his gums were infected and I didn’t want that spreading to the baby.” Why was this girl looking at her so strangely? She probably thought she was lying. Sammy was really gonna get it for embarrassing her like this. “I was just about to cook dinner when you came to the door,” she lied. She still had two more stories to watch before forcing herself to face the greasy sinkful of day-old dishes and pots that had to be cleared away before making dinner. “Okay, y’all,” she called over the girl’s shoulder, “come on in the house, it’s almost time to eat.”
Howls of protest and disbelief followed in the wake of her words and she ran out in the hall behind the retreating footsteps. “I said get your ass in this house!” she yelled. “Or you gonna be damned sorry!” The unaccustomed force in her voice stunned them into a reluctant obedience. They sulked past her into the apartment with a series of sucking teeth and “we never eat this earlys” that were not lost on the girl.
Cora smiled triumphantly at the girl and let out a long sigh. “You see what I mean—they’re terrible. I just don’t know.”
“Yes,” the girl looked down uneasily at her papers, “it must be difficult with so many. I’m sorry I had to meet you like this but I was coming by anyway.” She looked up and slipped into a practiced monologue. “I’m Kiswana Browne and I live up on the sixth floor. I’m trying to start a tenants’ association on this block. You know, all of these buildings are owned by one man and if we really pull together, we can put pressure on him to start fixing this place up. Once we get the association rolling we can even stage a rent strike and do the repairs ourselves. I’d like you to check off on this sheet all the things that are wrong with your apartment and then I’m going to take these forms and file them at the housing court.”
Cora Lee listened to Kiswana’s musical, clipped accent, looked at the designer jeans and striped silk blouse, and was surprised she had said that she lived in this building. What was she doing on a street like Brewster? She couldn’t have been here very long or she would know there was nothing you could do about the way things were. That white man didn’t care about what a bunch of black folks had to say, and these people weren’t gonna stick together no way. They were too busy running around complaining, trying to make trouble for her instead of the landlord. It’s a shame she’s wasting her time because she seems like a nice girl.
“There’s plenty wrong with this place, but this ain’t gonna do no good.”
“It will if we can get enough people to sign these forms. I’ve already been through four of the buildings and the response is really great. We’ll be having our first meeting this Saturday at noon.”
“I just don’t know,” Cora sighed and looked around her apartment. Kiswana openly followed her gaze and Cora Lee answered what she saw reflected in the girl’s face. “You know, you can’t keep nothing nice with these kids tearing up all the time. My sister gave me that living room set only six months ago and it was practically new.”
“No, I know what you mean,” Kiswana said a little too quickly as her eyes passed over the garbage spilling out of the kitchen can.
“You got kids then?”
“No, but my brother has two and he says they can really be a handful at times.”
“Well, I got a lot more than that so you can imagine the hell I go through.”
Kiswana jumped as they heard a loud crash and a scream coming from the corner of the room. Cora Lee turned around placidly and without moving called to the child tangled in the fallen curtain rods and drapery. “You happy now, Dorian? Huh? I told ya a million times to stop swinging on my curtains, so good for you!”
Kiswana pushed past her and went toward the screaming child. “Maybe he’s hurt his head.”
“Naw, he’s always falling from something. He’s got a head like a rock.” Cora followed her to examine her curtains and see if they were torn. “He’s just like his father—all those West Indians got hard heads.” Well, at least, I guess he was West Indian, she thought, he had some kind of accent. “This curtain rod’s totally gone.” She glared down at the child Kiswana was cradling. “And I got no more money to replace it, so these drapes can just stay down for all I care.”
Dorian had stopped crying and was feeling the colorful beads attached to Kiswana’s braids.
“Leave her hair alone and get up and go in the other room.”
Kiswana looked up at Cora alarmed. “There’s a big knot coming up on the side of his head; maybe we should take him…”
“It’ll go down,” Cora said and went to the couch and picked up the baby. Kiswana was still holding Dorian and made no attempt to hide the disapproval on her face. “Look,” Cora Lee said, “if I ran to the hospital every time one of these kids bumps their head or scrapes their knee, I’d spend the rest of my life in those emergency rooms. You just don’t know—they’re wild and disgusting and there’s nothing you can do!” She rocked the baby energetically as if the motions of her body could build up a wall against the girl’s silent condemnation.
Dorian tried to snatch one of the beads twisted in Kiswana’s hair and she cried out in pain as he jumped from her lap with the end of a braid clenched in his fist. “Son-of-a…!” flew out of her mouth before she stopped herself and bit on her lip.
“See what I mean?” Cora almost smiled gratefully at Dorian as he raced around the door into the other room.
“You know,” Kiswana got off her knees and brushed the dust from her jeans, “they’re probably that way from being cramped up in this apartment all the time. Kids need space to move around in.”
“There’s plenty of room in that school yard for them to play, but will they go to school? No. And the last time I let them go to the park somebody gave Sammy a reefer and when my mother found it in his pocket, I caught hell for that. So what am I supposed to do? I gotta keep them away from there or I’ll end up with a bunch of junkies on my hands.”
She saw out of the corner of her eye that Another World was going off. Aw shit! Now she wouldn’t know until Monday if Rachel had divorced Mack because he’d become impotent after getting caught in that earthquake. Why didn’t this girl just go home and stop minding her business.
“Look, I have your paper and I’ll look it over, okay? But I got a million things to do right now so you can come back for it some other time.” She knew she was being rude, but there were only three commercials left before The Doctors started.
“Oh, sure, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to keep you. You know, I wasn’t trying to tell you how to raise your children or anything. It’s just that…” She involuntarily glanced around the living room again.
“Yeah, I know,” Cora said with one eye on the television, “it’s just that I’m busy right now. You see, I got to get up…”
“And cook dinner,” Kiswana said sadly.
“Yeah, right—dinner.” And she went to open the door.
 
; Kiswana seemed reluctant to move. “You know, there’s a lot of good things that go on in the park too.” She pulled a leaflet out of her pocketbook. “My boyfriend’s gotten a grant from the city and he’s putting on a black production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream this weekend. Maybe you could come and bring the children,” she offered, barely hopeful.
Cora looked begrudgingly at the flyer. “Abshu Ben-Jamal Productions,” she mouthed slowly. “Hey, I know him—a big, dark fellow. Didn’t he have a traveling puppet show last summer?”
“Yes, that’s him.” Kiswana smiled.
“Came around here with a truck or something and little dancing African dolls. I remember; the kids talked about it for weeks.”
“You see,” Kiswana hurried on encouraged, “they love things like that. Why don’t you bring them tomorrow night?”
“I don’t know,” Cora sighed and looked at the leaflet. “This stuff here—Shakespeare and all that. It’ll be too deep for them and they’ll start acting up and embarrassing me in front of all those people.”
“Oh, no—they’ll love it,” Kiswana insisted. “It’s going to be funny and colorful and he’s brought it up to date. There’s music and dancing—he’s going to have the actors do the Hustle around a maypole—and they slap each other five and all sorts of stuff like that. And it’ll have fairies—all kids like stories with fairies and things in them; even if they don’t understand every word, it’ll be great for them. Please, try to come.”
“Well, I’ll see. Saturday is pretty busy for me. I have to clean up the baby’s things and do the wash. Then there’s so many of them to get ready. I don’t know; I’ll try.”
“Look, I’m not doing much tomorrow. After the tenants’ meeting, I’ll come by early and help you with the kids. Then we can all go together. Okay? It’ll be fun.”
Aw dammit! She could hear the opening music to The Doctors. Anything to get rid of this girl. “Okay, I’ll bring them, but you don’t have to stop by. I’ll manage alone; I’m used to it.”