Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do Page 7

  “The gardens,” she said. “How can I tell you about the gardens?”

  “Start at the beginning,” I said. It was cozy in here, and I was in no hurry to get back.

  Flora wiped her mouth delicately with her napkin. “Okay. The first time I came here with Hank, there were still crack houses all over the place. Blue had just come off the road for good, and he had made plenty of money, so he started buying up property, including the place we're living in, but he was really focused on the crack houses. He had already burned down four or five of them.”

  “Burned them down?” My fork stopped midway to my mouth.

  “He made sure nobody was inside,” Flora said calmly.

  “Where were the owners?”

  Flora shrugged. “Absentee, I guess.”

  “Did anybody try to contact them?”

  “Of course, but after a while, when things kept happening in the houses and the owners never even appeared in court—”

  “Things like what?” I was trying hard to follow the line of reasoning that tells you it's okay to burn up somebody else's property if you don't like the way they chose to manage it. Last time I checked, the laws of the United States of America still applied in southwest Atlanta, and property rights were everything to the founding fathers. They owned us, didn't they?

  Flora put down her fork and looked at me. “Have you ever lived near a crack house?”

  “I don't think so.”

  “You'd remember if you had.” Flora's voice was hard and tight. “Because it's a constant parade ofthe worst of what we've become. All crackheads care about is crack, and all crack dealers care about is money. It's a lethal combination, and you can't build a community around it.”

  She took a sip of her tea. “Blue tried all the goodcitizen ways to deal with it. Calling the police, tracking down the owners, talking to the politicians, but nobody seemed to care enough to do anything. Then the crackheads killed a little kid for her lunch money right around the corner from here. Nine years old. She was waiting for the school bus, eight o'clock in the morning, and they dragged her into the crack house and strangled her.” Flora's eyes were hard as granite. “Then they raped her.”

  There was nothing to say after that, so I didn't try. Flora didn't say anything for a few minutes either. I folded my napkin and set my plate to one side.

  “That's the first house Blue burned,” Flora said quietly. “And you know what? People were glad. They would have thanked him for it if they had known who did it.”

  That's always the thing that makes vigilantes so appealing, I thought. They take on the bad guys, by whatever means necessary. The problem is, who gets to decide who's a bad guy?

  “Wasn't there an investigation?”

  “Who's going to investigate a fire at a crack house with an absentee landlord?”

  She was right about that. Abandoned and burned houses are a constant problem in too many of our communities, seemingly without solution.

  “What happened to the men who killed the child?” Flora shrugged impatiently. “What happens to crackheads? All I know is, once the house burned down, that was one less place for them to hide, and that's a good thing, right?” Her voice was full of fierce determination.

  “Right,” I said, knowing any other answer would be unacceptable. “Is that when he started planting gardens?”

  That brought a smile back to her face, and the tension that had popped up between us evaporated. “That was my idea. He showed us these four or five burned-out houses he had finally been able to buy and was in the process of tearing down. He was so proud of what he was doing for the neighborhood, but he hadn't said what he was going to do with the lots once he got them cleared. So I asked him and he said, ‘You want them?’”

  “What did you say?”

  “I just laughed. We were going back to Detroit in two days, but Blue was serious, so I finally said, ‘Why don't you hold on to them for me, and when we come back at Christmas, I'll let you know.’ He said okay, but I didn't really take him seriously. When we got back to Detroit, I forgot all about it, until we came back in December and Blue had leveled the houses and cleared the lots, plus three more. He drove me around to take a look, and as soon as I saw all that open land, I knew what to do. ‘Gardens,’ I told him. ‘We've got to do community gardens!’”

  Flora sounded as excited as she must have felt that day.

  “So I made him a plan and we got some people who were interested in growing, mostly old people, and I'd come down every couple of months when Hank came down on business to make sure everything was on track, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger, until now the Growers Association has over fifty members. In the summer, they supply the produce for every restaurant around here.”

  She glanced at her watch and smiled apologetically. “In fact, I better get going. I'm meeting with the senior gardeners today, and they have absolutely no patience for late arrivals.”

  “I'll walk with you,” I said, finishing the last of my ginger beer and still no closer to understanding what kind of plan Blue Hamilton could possibly have in mind for me.

  Back outside, the air was a fine mist that promised a late afternoon rain. The folks at the banquet hall next door were keeping a watchful eye on a delivery of those delicate, horrendously uncomfortable chairs people use to torture their wedding guests; across the street, I could see shoppers browsing through the neatly organized racks at the Goodwill store.

  When we passed the big, fenced-in hole in the ground where a building had been demolished but nothing had replaced it, Flora frowned and pointed an accusatory finger at the eyesore. “I told Blue he's got to get me permission to plant some corn and tomatoes in there this summer. That place is a disgrace. If they're not going to develop it, the least they can do is let me use it for the growers.”

  “Maybe he'll make them an offer they can't refuse.”

  I was just teasing, but Flora looked at me with an expression I couldn't read. I hoped I hadn't offended her.

  “You know the other reason these gardens are so important?” she said as we started across the street.

  “Why?” Thank goodness she didn't sound offended. “Because in order to make this a livable space, a real neighborhood, Blue has to do a lot of things that play to his dark side.”

  I looked at her, but she just kept walking. His dark side? Have we now left The Godfather and gone off into Star Wars?

  “I told him way back at the beginning, when he was just starting to burn the crack houses, that the problem he was going to have was finding enough ways to feed his positive life force to balance those other things.”

  Flora's eyes flickered over a man dozing on the front steps of St. Anthony's Catholic Church, but we were the last thing on his mind.

  “The gardens are about giving life,” Flora was saying. “They help Blue remember why he's doing all this.”

  Something in what she said reminded me of what my father told my mother once when she was fussing about the lack of any visible progress in some community group or another that was not organizing as efficiently as she thought they should have been.

  “You're looking at it all wrong,” my father said gently, at the end of my mother's tirade. “You can't work for black folks because you think they're going to be different. You have to do it because you're going to be different.”

  Flora was looking at me expectantly, and I realized she was waiting for a response.

  “I understand,” I said. “

  Sort of.” “‘Sort of’ is good.” She smiled and nodded her approval. “Blue takes a minute to get used to because he's one of a kind.”

  You got that right, I thought as she headed off to her growers meeting and I headed back to my boxes. Providing safe haven for the family of a righteous warrior like Hank. Burning crack houses and planting community gardens. A dark side that threatened to swallow the light. Blue Hamilton seems to be part Don Corleone, part Darth Vader, and part Johnny Appleseed. I wonder which part lives across th
e hall from me.

  11

  EVERYTHING WAS GOING SO WELL, I was afraid to admit it. I'm one of those people who believes that if you show too much pleasure when things are going your way, you run the risk of angering the gods and having them snatch it all away just to keep you humble. This is a deeply held blood memory, in spite of the fact that I don't consciously subscribe to any formal religion and would lean toward Buddhism if I had to pick one. My brain wants to meditate and embrace the middle path, but my heart wants to sacrifice small animals to a vengeful god who spends most of his time keeping track of sins and meting out punishments.

  But if I could be sure the gods weren't listening, I would probably indulge myself in a teeny-tiny pat on the back. The weasel called to tell me he received the payment and was moving me from the “dead-beat never- gonna-dig-her-way-out” file over to the “so far, so good, maybe she'll make it after all” file.

  Aunt Abbie's keeping an eye on everything at the house. She's also been spending a lot of time over at Howard talking to the women's studies students. They are very interested in the idea of postmenopausal visions, and she's a bona fide postmenopausal visionary, so it's a perfect match. When I told her about Blue, she wasn't as excited as I thought she ought to be, and I told her so.

  “It's new for you, dear,” she said gently. “I've already seen it all, remember?”

  I couldn't argue with that, and I was in such a good mood, I didn't even want to. Three boxes of Son's papers had yielded a lot of good memories and nothing even remotely incriminating. When I told Beth that news, she was on her way to another speaking engagement in Albany and a week ofworkshops in Augusta. I could hear the reliefin her voice so clearly that I wondered again exactly what she was so worried I might find, but I figured I'd know it when Isawit, whateveritwas, soItoldhertohaveasafetripand promised to check in with her on the road in a few days.

  Flora had come up yesterday to introduce her daughter, Lu, and to invite me to brunch on Sunday. I liked Flora, and I accepted with pleasure, mentally disregarding her telling me I didn't need to bring anything. Champagne is always a good neighborly offering, with a bottle of sparkling apple juice for Lu, whose direct gaze showed no sign of a spirit having been broken by her experiences with Detroit drug dealers. She was already as tall as her mother and wore her hair in the beaded braids that Venus Williams took back from the temporary popular-culture custody of Bo Derek. Aretha, whom I hadn't seen since move-in day, had been busy with a photography project, but Flora said she'd be there for brunch, too.

  Renting this apartment might turn out to be the best part of this whole thing for me. It had been a long time since I had any friends who talked about something other than who had the good drugs or what they learned in rehab. Being here was making me remember the pleasure of real conversation. While I was growing up, my parents' house was always full of people stating and defending passionate positions about everything. My lunch conversation with Flora had felt as familiar as baked chicken on Sunday.

  The only neighbor who remained elusive was Blue Hamilton, which was probably all to the good. I'm not sure I'm strong enough to deal with men just yet, especially men as intriguing as Blue Hamilton. The problem I've had all my dating life is that the guys who drive me crazy sexually never seem to care much about being a part of the righteous forward motion of all peoples of the world toward peace and freedom. This is part of my parents' revolutionary curse. I have to consider politics even in the midst of passion.

  This is not a problem during the early stages of a youthful courtship when all you want to do is flirt and make love and flirt some more. The problem comes when it's time for the relationship to progress to real conversation, and the man who can whisper a litany of sexy promises guaranteed to get you where you want to go in bed becomes suddenly tongue-tied or, worse, boring.

  On the other hand, my more politically advanced boyfriends were invariably lacking as lovers, mainly because they were always too busy bitching about the terrible state of mankind to focus effectively on the woman at hand. Son was the first man I ever loved who had a little bit of both, and you can see I almost lost my mind and my house behind it.

  He was sexy as hell and seriously committed to changing the way black folks live our lives. It was absolutely intoxicating to be able to segue from an impassioned exchange about our latest voter registration efforts to a night of the kind of lovemaking I had only dreamed about.

  After Son and I broke up and I became a dope fiend, my choice of male companionship was based on who had coke to share and who didn't. When I was high, I could tolerate a lot of bullshit from men simply to ensure my place at the table when the drugs came out. That was no longer an option, so I needed a new standard, a new criteria. But what were my choices? I had no idea what I wanted or what I was prepared to give to get it. Until I could figure it out, I thought celibacy made the most sense.

  Which doesn't mean I wouldn't like some company sometimes. Like now. I had done a full week's work, and there was nobody around to witness my job well done. It was after midnight, so I couldn't very well pop downstairs and invite Flora in for tea. That wasn't exactly the kind of company I was talking about anyway.

  See what happens? I started out being grateful for a productive and uneventful week and ended up whining about nobody to hold me. The only thing that pisses off that vengeful god I was talking about earlier more than gloating, is ingratitude, so this will never do. I stood up quickly, slipped a shawl around my shoulders, and stepped out onto my small balcony.

  It was cool and clear and quiet as a farmhouse after everybody's gone to bed. Was I the only person awake in this whole neighborhood? Even my bad sax player had deserted me. But the sky was clear, and the fresh air felt good against my face. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, stretched my arms high over my head, and exhaled in a long, satisfying whoosh!

  “Working late?”

  After I had jumped a foot in the air and come back down, I turned in the direction of the question. Blue Hamilton was standing on his own balcony across from mine. I hadn't even noticed him, but now, in the spill of the streetlight, I could see his outline and the glowing tip of the cigar he was smoking.

  “Do you spy on all your tenants,” I said, “or just me?” He stepped forward into the light wearing a white shirt, open at the throat, and no jacket. He smiled pleasantly and blew a thin plume of smoke into the air.

  “I can't be spying on anybody. I'm at home.”

  Even from here, I could see those blue eyes shining. I pulled my shawl around me a little tighter.

  “You startled me.”

  “I apologize,” he said. “I'm usually the only one out here this late.”

  I wondered how long he had been back from his fishing expedition.

  “Would you like to come over for a drink?” he said casually, as if it wasn't almost one o'clock in the morning.

  “It's kind of late. …”

  I could still see his smile in the semidarkness.

  “In Japan, it's already happy hour.”

  Still half-hidden in the shadows, I smiled back. Flirting is an art form if you do it right, and this brother was on it. “We're a long way from Japan.”

  “I've got some very good sake.”

  “I don't like sake.” “So does that mean you've accepted my invitation and now all we're doing is deciding on your drink?”

  That's the same way he boxed me about the rent, but does it really count as being boxed when all he did was ask me a question that allowed me to admit that a drink sounded wonderful and a little conversation sounded even better.

  “I guess it does.”

  “Good. Then why don't you come on over and I'll see what I can do?”

  12

  BLUE HAMILTON'S APARTMENT looked exactly like I thought it would: a man's den. The walls were dark, almost navy blue, and so were the blinds. The black leather sectional sofa was huge, wrapped around an equally large glass coffee table. On one side of the room was a wet bar that was
as well stocked as any restaurant I'd been to lately, and on the other side was an entertainment center housing one giant television screen, two smaller ones, a DVD player, two VCRs, a multidisc CD player, and what appeared to be an elaborate short-wave radio.

  On the largest TV screen a black-and-white movie was in progress. A smiling woman was playing a guitar and singing in French while two men and a tow-headed child gazed at her adoringly.

  “I know you don't like sake,” Blue said. “So what can I get you?”

  He acted like my stopping by was the most normal thing in the world, but it had been a long time since I had been in anybody's apartment at one a.m., and, I admit, I was a little nervous.

  “I'll have cognac, please.”

  I'll never do cocaine again, but an occasional drink hasn't been a problem, and it won't be. Cognac is always a good choice when you want to be sociable, but it's important to keep your wits about you. You have to sip it, which already imposes a certain discipline on the proceedings.

  “Cognac it is.”

  While he poured us each a splash in two giant snifters, I took a seat on one end of the couch and watched the woman on the screen kissing one man and going upstairs with the other. Their tender good nights were all in French, but there was no mistaking the longing in the eyes of the man left holding the sleeping child at the bottom of the steps.

  “Do you speak French?” I said, accepting one of the snifters and inhaling the rich aroma.

  He shook his head. “Not a word. I just like to watch foreign movies sometimes to see if I can figure out what's going on even though I have no idea what they're talking about.”

  “How many times are you right?”

  “Almost always,” he said, as I tried not to stare at his eyes, which seemed to be glowing in the room's low light. “But then again, how would I know?”

  We shared another smile.