The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

“Don’t cry, Uncle. You make me sad.”

“You was on’y gone for a hour or sumpin’,” Ptolemy said, “but I felt that I lost you like I lost Maude Petit in that fire.”

“What fire, Uncle?”

Robyn pulled up a chair next to the old man, in front of the silent and dark television set. She listened as he told her the broken story of a child stalked in the flames by a huge shadow and a man, or maybe a coyote, that danced on fire. There was a dead dog and a dead man in a tuxedo, the ABC’s that didn’t work anymore, and Reggie, hanging like an anchor from Robyn’s leg.

She didn’t question nor did she understand exactly what her aged friend had said. She held his hands and nodded now and then. He asked her questions that she had no answers to and told her stories that made him laugh and shake his head.

At one point he looked up and asked, “Why you run away like that, girl?”

Robyn heard this question and understood its meaning. She brought her hands to her throat and made a sound that had feeling but no meaning.

“I sleep on a sofa, Uncle,” she said. “Hilly try to be gettin’ up in there wit’ me almost ev’ry night he home.”

“That boy’s a thief.”

“Niecie nice,” Robyn said. “She took me in, but nobody evah offered me a bed and open they doors and showed me their money and said take whatevah you want.

“I loved my mama, but she was wit’ just about ev’ry man she met. Sometimes she tell me to go stay wit’ my friends ’cause she didn’t want her boyfriends lookin’ at me an’ thinkin’ she was that old.”

“I don’t know why not,” Ptolemy said. “You a lovely girl. They cain’t help but look at you.”

“I wanna stay here an’ live wit’ you, Uncle.”

“Me too. I wanna stay here wit’ you too.”

“An’ I want you to buy me a bed an’ some sheets an’ pillows and blankets, but I don’t want your money. We gonna start puttin’ your money in a bank account and get you a special bank card so you can buy the bed and then I can sleep in it.”

“But you got to wear clothes so I cain’t like your legs like I did at that other place,” Ptolemy said.

“You don’t like to look at my legs, Uncle?” Robyn said, the sly smile returning to her lips.

“I don’t like to like to look at your legs, child. That was a long time ago, and now is now.”

So, Mr. Grey, you wish to start a debit account along with the accounts you already have?” Andrea Tolliver asked, her smiling black face as insincere as the white sheriff who wanted Li’l Pea to testify against the men who had lynched his uncle. She was a dark-skinned black woman with bronze hair and golden jewelry around her neck and wrists and on at least three fingers.

“Whatevah Robyn say is what I want,” Ptolemy said in a tone that he knew made him sound sure and smart.

“But do you want a debit account?” the banker asked. “You already have an account that automatically pays your bills.” She glanced at the computer screen before her. “It is overdrawn, however.”

“I need to buy a bed, an’ Robyn tell me that you just cain’t take all your money into a sto’ an’ put it down ’cause there’s thieves all around you.”

Ptolemy took a moment to look around the room from his seat at the bank officer’s desk.

“Are you looking for someone, Mr. Grey? Maybe some teller you know?”

“Shirley Wring,” he said, a smile rising to his lips. “Double-u ara eye en gee.”

“No . . . no Shirley works here.”

“My uncle been savin’ his extra money in a box in his closet,” Robyn said then. “I told him that that wasn’t safe and that he could maybe get a little bit’a interest if he brought it here. I’m taking care’a him but it’s his money and so I brought him to his bank.”

Ptolemy watched the bank officer’s eyes scrutinize the girl. He’d seen older black women do this to young ones before.

Andrea Tolliver was older now and she didn’t have to lie to young men on the street about her address and telephone numbers anymore. She knew that Robyn could talk an old man out of his money.

“Miss?” Ptolemy asked.

“Yes, Mr. Grey?”

“If this child wanted to steal my money we wouldn’t be here.”

Watching her watching him, Ptolemy knew that he had read her right, that he had said the right words.

“We can put the money in your savings account, Mr. Grey, and issue you a debit card. Do you want your, um, niece to have a card too?”

“No,” Robyn said. “No. I don’t need one. This is for my uncle, not for me.”

Ms. Tolliver smiled at the child then. It was her last test to make sure that the girl was not trying to rob an old man.

Ptolemy gazed paternally at Tolliver, and then he grinned.