Cinnamon Kiss

Would it swell up and suffocate the victim? Is that all it would take to end a life?

Bonnie’s hand caressed the back of my neck.

“She’s sleeping and cool,” she whispered.

The first bubble of water jumped up into the glass knob at the top of the percolator. I took in a deep breath and my heart smoothed out.

Bonnie pulled a chair up beside me. She was wearing a white 2 1

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lace slip that came down to the middle of her dark brown thighs.

I wore only briefs.

“I was thinking,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I love you and I want to be with you and only you.”

When she didn’t say anything I put my hand on hers.

“Let’s get Feather well first, Easy. You don’t want to make these big decisions when you’re so upset. You don’t have to worry — I’m here.”

“But it’s not that,” I argued.

When she leaned over to nuzzle my neck the coffee urn started its staccato beat in earnest. I got up to make toast and we ate in silence, holding hands.

After we’d eaten I went in and kissed Feather’s sleeping face and made it out to my car before the sun was up.

i p u l l e d i n t o the parking lot at five-nineteen, by my watch.

There was an orangish-yellow light under a pile of dark clouds rising behind the eastern mountains. I used my key to unlock the pedestrian gate and then relocked it after I’d entered.

I was the supervising senior head custodian of Sojourner Truth Junior High School, an employee in good standing with the LAUSD. I had over a dozen people who reported directly to me and I was also the manager of all the plumbers, painters, car-penters, electricians, locksmiths, and glaziers who came to service our plant. I was the highest-ranking black person on the campus of a school that was eighty percent black. I had read the study plans for almost every class and often played tutor to the boys and girls who would come to me before they’d dream of asking their white teachers for help. If a big boy decided to see if he could intimidate a small woman teacher I dragged him down to 2 2

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the main office, where the custodians congregated, and let him know, in no uncertain terms, what would happen to him if I were to lose my temper.

I was on excellent terms with Ada Masters, the diminutive and wealthy principal. Between us we had the school running smooth as satin.

I entered the main building and started my rounds, going down the hallways looking for problems.

A trash can had not been emptied by the night custodian, Miss Arnold, and there were two lights out in the third-floor hallway. The first floor needed mopping. I made meaningless mental notes of the chores and then headed down to the lower campus.

After checking out the yards and bungalows down there I went to the custodians’ building to sit and think. I loved that job.

It might have seemed like a lowly position to many people, both black and white, but it was a good job and I did many good things while I was there. Often, when parents were having trouble with their kids or the school, I was the first one they went to. Because I came from the South I could translate the rules and expectations of the institution that many southern Negroes just didn’t understand. And if the vice principals or teachers overstepped their bounds I could always put in a word with Miss Masters. She listened to me because she knew that I knew what was what among the population of Watts.

“Ain’t is a valid negative if you use it correctly and have never been told that it isn’t proper language,” I once said to her when an English teacher, Miss Patterson, dropped a student two whole letter grades just for using ain’t one time in a report paper.

Miss Masters looked at me as if I had come from some other planet and yet still spoke her tongue.

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“You’re right,” she said in an amazed tone. “Mr. Rawlins, you’re right.”

“And you’re white,” I replied, captive to the rhyme and the irony.

We laughed, and from that day on we had weekly meetings where she queried me about what she called my ghetto pedagogy.

They paid me nine thousand dollars a year to do that service.

Not nearly enough to float a loan for the thirty-five-plus thousand I needed to maybe save my daughter.

I owned two apartment buildings and a small house with a big yard, all in and around Watts. But after the riots, property values in the black neighborhoods had plummeted. I owed more on the mortgages than the places were worth.

In the past few days I had called John and Jackson and Jewelle and the bank. No one but Mouse had come through with an idea. I wondered if at my trial they would take into account all of my good deeds at Truth.

a t a b o u t a q u a r t e r to seven I went out to finish my

rounds. My morning man, Ace, would have been there by then, unlocking the gates and doors for the students,