junky costume jewelry. I threw the jewelry away, too, after I got a better look at it. Trash. And I got a couple of paperbacks. Always some books. If I didn’t have anything to read, I’d really go crazy.
On my way back to Forsyth, somebody screamed bloody murder inside my head. Along with that, I felt like I was being hit in the face. Sometimes I got things mixed up. I couldn’t tell what was really happening to me and what I was picking up accidentally from other people’s minds. This time, I was getting onto a bus when it happened, and I just froze. I had enough control to hold myself there, to not scream or fall on the ground from the beating I felt like I was taking. But you don’t stop half on and half off a bus at Seventh and Broadway at five in the evening. You could get killed.
I wasn’t exactly trampled. I just kept getting shoved out of the way. Somebody shoved me away from the door of the bus. Other people pushed me out of their way. I couldn’t react. All I could do was hang on, wait it out.
And then it was over. I was barely able to get on the bus before it pulled away. I had to stand up all the way to Forsyth. I did my best to knock a couple of people down when I got off.
I didn’t want to go home. Even if Rina and Emma had called Doro, he couldn’t have gotten there yet. I didn’t want to hear Rina’s mouth. But then I started to wonder about the john?how bad I had hurt him, if maybe he was dead. I decided to go home to see.
There was nothing else to do, anyway. Forsyth is a dead town. Rich people, old people, mostly white people. Even the southwest side, where we lived, wasn’t a ghetto? or at least not a racial ghetto. It was full of poor bastards from any race you want to name?all working like hell to get out of there. Except us. Rina had been out, Doro told me, but she had come back. I never have thought my mother was very bright.
We lived in a corner house?Dell Street and Forsyth Avenue?so I walked home on the side of Dell Street opposite our house. I wanted to see if there were any police cars around the corner before I went in. If there had been any, I would have kept going. Doro would have gotten me out of any trouble I got into, I knew. But then he would have half killed me. It wasn’t worth it.
Rina and Emma were waiting for me. I wasn’t surprised. There was this little drama we had to go through.
Rina: Do you realize you could have killed that man! Do you want us to go to prison!
Emma: Can’t you think for once in your life? Why’d you leave him here? Why didn’t
you at least?at least?come and get me? For God’s sake, girl …
Rina: What did you hit him for? Will you tell us that?
They hadn’t given me a chance to tell them anything.
Rina: He was just a harmless old guy. Hell, he wouldn’t have hurt?
Emma: Doro is on his way here now, Mary, and you’d better have a good reason for what you did.
And, finally, I got a word in. “It was either hit him or screw him.”
“Oh, Lord,” muttered Rina. “Can’t you talk decent even when Emma is here?”
“I talk as decent as you taught me, Momma! Besides, what do you want me to say? ‘Make love to him?’ I wouldn’t have loved it. And if he had managed to do it, I would have made sure I killed him.”
“You did enough,” said Emma. She was calming down.
“What did you do with him, anyway?” I asked.
“Put him in the hospital.” She shrugged. “Fractured skull.”
“They didn’t say anything at the hospital?”
“The way he smelled? I just shriveled myself up a little more and told them my grandson drank too much and fell on his head.”
I laughed. She used that little-old-lady act to get sympathy from strangers, or at least to throw them off guard. Most of the time when Doro wasn’t around, she was old and frail-looking. It was nothing but an act, though. I saw a guy try to snatch her purse once while she was hobbling down the street. She broke his arm.
“Was that guy really your grandson?” I asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
I glanced at Rina with disgust. “You can’t find anybody but relatives to screw? God!”
“It’s none of your business.”
“I wouldn’t pretend to be so disgusted with the idea of incest if I were you, Mary.” Emma sort of bared her teeth at me. It wasn’t a smile. She and I didn’t get along most of the time. She thought she knew everything. And she thought Doro was her private property. I got up and went to my room.
Doro arrived the next day.
I remember once when I was about six years old I was sitting on his lap frowning up into his latest face. “Shouldn’t I call you ‘Daddy’?” I asked. Until then, I had called him Doro, like everybody else did.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” he said. And he smiled. “Later, you won’t like it.”
I didn’t understand, and I was a stubborn kid anyway. I called him “Daddy.” He didn’t seem to mind. But, of course, later, I didn’t like it. It still bothered me a little, and Doro and Emma both knew it. I had the feeling they laughed about it together.
Doro was a black man this time. That was a relief, because, the last couple of visits, he’d been white. He just walked into my bedroom early in the morning and sat down on my bed. That woke me up. All I saw was this big stranger sitting on the side of my bed.
“Say something,” I said quickly.
“It’s me,” he said.
