Dancing on the Edge of the Roof Page 2

  Chapter Two

  What happened was this:

  I dragged myself into work one afternoon, it was August, I think. One of those hot, hazy, ugly summer days, when it's so muggy the walls sweat.

  It was one of those days from hell: T had a cold and fussed all morning, and Bertie wouldn't hardly budge from the bed. I had four loads of clothes to do before work and was tryin' to mix up some ham salad for lunch, too. Add to that Rashawn's loud music and “Montel” and you know what my day was starting off like.

  Had to take a later bus, and made it to the fourth floor just in time: I was slipping on my uniform as I punched in. The head nurse, Karen Baronne, Nurse Diesel to you and me, had a bug up her ass that day and was layin' for me.

  “Glad you could make it, Louis,” she snarled in that way of hers, looking at her watch as if the numbers had turned to diamonds. “We're honored with your presence.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever,” I told her, throwing my stuff into my compartment, and sliding into my sneakers like I was stealing home. She pulled a stack of charts out, and opened the top one.

  “We're down one today. Ruthene claims she's got the flu. You'll have to cover four west by yourself.” She grinned at me, looking like the grill on an old Thunderbird with caps. “And Mr. Sayre's got the trots today, so have fun.”

  “Shit,” I said, thinking about the shit I'd have to take off Mr. Sayre. For real.

  I took a deep breath and headed toward 462. Figured it would be the last deep breath I'd take for a while. Nurse Diesel's voice followed me.

  “Better yet, Mr. Sayre can wait a minute. Go to 470 first, Mrs. Berman's daughter might need some help.”

  I grabbed supplies from the closet as I went by.

  “What's she doing in there? Painting the room? Miz Berman ain't no trouble.”

  “You right about that. Mrs. Berman died just before lunch. Evans-Reagan is about to take the body away. You can help the daughter clear out the room. Dr. Brewster's got four semiwarm ones he wants to send up asap and we need the bed.”

  I just looked at the bitch. She talked about Miz Berman like she was just a piece of meat. Like she wasn't nobody. Like those four poor souls about to enter this place was nobodies, too.

  I put the towels down and walked to Miz Berman's room just in time to see them wheel her out. I patted the white blanket–covered shoulder gently. I had liked Miz Berman, she was OK. She was one of Dr. Guinness's old ladies. He was the cancer doctor, they call it oncology now. I could hear her daughter inside the room, still crying.

  Isn't it funny how, even when the flesh is gone, as Reverend Mack says, something's still there? I guess it's the spirit. That old lady, she was a spitfire. Feisty little thing. She took chemo like a champ, went toe to toe with that cancer like Muhammad Ali, pitching and ducking, dodging outta the way. Well, in the end, it got her anyway. But she sure gave old man death a run for his money.

  Her daughter sniffled a little while we folded up the gowns and underwear things. She would hand them to me to put in the little suitcase. And even through the clothes and the makeup things, and the fancy tortoiseshell comb and brush, I could feel the fierce snappiness of that old lady. I could feel it through the soft, flannel cloth of a nightgown, the spirit of the woman who sent me to the liquor store a week before for a pint of Wild Turkey and to the carry-out for cigarettes.

  “Now, Miz Berman, this is a smoke-free environment,” I mocked Nurse Diesel, who was thin-lipped and tightassed and had no sense of humor. “And alcohol ain't allowed.”

  Mrs. Berman threw back her tiny head and laughed. Laughed hard. Laughed until she choked, then started coughing. I had to put her oxygen mask back on.

  “What will they do, ‘arrest me for smoking’ as they say in the movies? Throw me out for taking a snort?”

  “Aw, Miz Berman …” Shoot, I knew a few cigarettes and some liquor wouldn't hurt her. She had the cancer everywhere already.

  “Now, Miss Juanita, don't contradict me, just do as I say.

  Hell, I'm dying any way you look at it. So why shouldn't I enjoy a nightcap if I want to?”

  I sure couldn't think of a reason, so I bought the bourbon and Winstons for her. Late at night, after ten o'clock rounds, that little old lady would pull off her wig, turn on a little tape player her son had brought her, turn out the lights, and sip her bourbon and smoke her cigarettes. I would leave her that way, smoking quietly in the dark, forties swing music playing in the background.

  “Good night, Miz Berman.”

  “Good night, Juanita.”

  She had some spunk, that old lady.

  “What you want to do 'bout these?” I asked the daughter, showing her a tote bag I found at the bottom of the tiny closet. It was filled with paperback books. Mrs. Berman loved to read.

  The daughter blew her nose.

  “What are they?”

  I held up a book.

  She snorted, blinked back tears then chuckled, her wet eyes shining in the afternoon sunlight.

  “Oh, those.” She waved her hand. “I never read that kind of stuff. Throw them away … no. On second thought, give them to the hospital volunteers.” She blew her nose again. “Maybe someone else can get as much pleasure from them as Mother did. They were her one vice.”

  I decided not to tell Miz Berman's daughter about the bourbon and the cigarettes. And I didn't give the books to the hospital volunteers either.

  And, truthfully, I really didn't plan to read them either. I didn't read much then. It all just sort of happened.

  By the time me and Miz Berman's daughter finished clearing out that room, Nurse Diesel started bitching at me for taking so long, one of the other nurses needed help in 424 and there were trays to bus because Dietary Services was running an hour behind. I just stashed those books in my locker and took off down the hall. Spent the rest of the afternoon running to the lab, wiping Mr. Sayre's behind, and moving the comatose patient in 430, among other things. Didn't give that little bag of books much thought until it fell out onto my bunion when I opened my locker before I went down to dinner.

  “Shit!” My little Tupperware containers, potato chips, cigarettes, sanitary pads, and those books went everywhere.

  “Juanita, you comin'?” asked Patty, one of the girls I worked with. “Leigh's holding the elevator.”

  Just as she said that, some of the chips spilled onto the floor. There was no way I was going to make Leigh and Patty wait while I picked up all of those crumbs, so I told them to go on. Kicked a book away with my good foot, as I put my dinner back into my tote bag. My toe was killing me. Stuffed the rest of the mess back into the locker and would have closed it, too, except I noticed that damn book over near the nurses' stand where I had just kicked it.

  Since I was mad at that book, I picked it up and went to throw it into the trash bin on my way off the floor. But the shiny gold letters on the pink, blue, and silver cover stopped me.

  Enchanted Voyage of Love it read. I flipped through the pages, stopped at 361 and tried to read the first two sentences. Didn't know half the words, but I got the point. Rory was kissing that woman in a way that I hadn't been kissed in a long time. It made my toes tingle and left me with a fluttery feeling in the pit of my stomach. I went back to my locker and got the rest of those books.

  Took them with me down to the cafeteria, told the girls I had a headache and wanted to be alone. Found me a little table in the corner, and began to look at those books—one by one.

  I'd never seen nothin' like them in all my life. On the covers were handsome men with dark hair, muscles on their arms, and fire in their eyes. These men were joined—and I do mean joined—at the hip with some young thing whose head was thrown back, her mouth open. They must have been doing it … good. Even I felt the heat.

  The books had fancy, flowery names like Passion in Paradise and Oceans of Love. The women who wrote them had fancy names, too: Alexandra Windrush,
Priscilla Nottingham.

  And the stories themselves? Well, at first I didn't think I could read them. I barely made it through high school. I was five months pregnant with Randy when I wore my cap and gown, so you know I wasn't paying much attention in class. Now that I'm grown, I read when I need to—in order to get my job done, catch a bus, read a label or a sign in the store. Didn't touch newspapers. Watched the news on the TV.

  And I never read books. To be honest, I didn't think I could. And I was scared to try.

  But the covers grabbed me. They got me to thinking. They made me dream about people long ago. Think about things I couldn't do. Places I would never go.

  Lives that I would never live.

  I looked at one book with a green and pink cover. I like green and pink. It was called Love's Prize.

  I opened the cover and read the first page. I almost threw it down. The words were so hard.

  Words like “sodden,” “uncompromising,” “bland,” and “adjacent.” Lord, I almost gave up.

  It took me almost my whole lunch hour to read a few pages. I didn't know what half the words meant.

  But I wanted to know.

  And I was hooked.

  “Juanita? Juanita? You ready to go? It's almost six-thirty, girl. You know, her Witchness will be looking for you. Juanita!”

  I couldn't wait until my shift was over. Read a few more pages on the bus ride home, and didn't put the book down again until I fell asleep that night—at four A.M.

  On my way to work the next day, I stopped at the drugstore and bought a paperback Webster's Dictionary to help with the words I didn't know. And I finished Love's Prize three weeks later.

  Since then, almost a year ago, I read all the time. I read on the bus to work. I read during breaks and at lunch. And I read at night after I put Teishia to bed, when Bertie and Rashawn go out, and the apartment gets quiet. In fact, now I make Bertie put the baby down by nine o'clock so she's already sleep by the time I get home. That way, all I got to do is take a bath, fix a cold drink, light a cigarette, and read. I read all kinds of books, everything I can get my hands on.

  When I read, it's like I leave myself, leave my body, and especially leave my life behind and I fly away.

  Don't you know I read about a place called Timbuktu? It was a city in Africa, still is, I think. And, back in the day, and I mean a day hundreds of years ago, they had doctors, and famous schools and libraries filled with books. In Africa! Years and years ago. Now, that's a place that I could be.

  Or in Russia. Not with the Communists, and with all the mess that's happenin' now, but way back when the czars were in power, and the royalty went around in fancy sleighs, dressed in fur hats and silk underwear.

  That's living!

  In these books I read, Juanita Louis disappears and becomes a woman who walks the streets of the Forbidden City, or rides out west with Apache warriors. I get to talk with the Pygmy and find out what they know, or dress in designer clothes and run a business and drive a Mercedes-Benz! When I read these stories, I melt away into the woodwork.

  And I become somebody.

  I leave the projects and the poverty and the sirens and the cursing behind. I dump the cheap wine and the long bus rides and the Kool cigarettes into the trash. I leave it all.

  And I have adventures. I have fun and I laugh.

  I have a life.

  And I am loved.

  In the romance novels I read, there's always a man. And soon, he becomes my man. He's tall and handsome, smart and brave, and he only has eyes for me. We do it in meadows and on mounds of down-filled pillows, we do it all night, then do it again in the morning. And we enjoy it.

  Now, I have done it myself in real life, too. But not like that.

  Randy's father and I did it in the backseat of his car when I was sixteen. Randy came along when I was seventeen. I don't even remember now what it was like.

  I married Tyrone Bolte two years later. He had a good job at Timkin, said he'd take care of me and Randy. That's how I got Rashawn. I also got bruises, broken ribs, black eyes, and a miscarriage. Tyrone was the meanest man I ever knew.

  Fumbled along for a year or so, married Marvin Watson. Pretty man but no job. No life. Just like me. We had those two things in common. Oh, yes, and my daughter, Bertie, her real name is Roberta. Marvin and I stayed together for five years, then I woke up one day, looked over at Marvin, and said, “Baby, this party's over, you got to go.” I figured if I was a full-grown woman, who had to get up, get dressed, and go to work every day, why was this healthy, full-grown man laying up in my bed with no job? Shit, if I had to work, everyone had to.

  Married Rodney Louis on the rebound. It lasted for a year until I rebounded his ass outta my house for carrying on with one of my neighbors upstairs.

  You know, I don't remember much about these men. We ate, we drank, we smoked, we slept together, and still, I don't remember much. Except for my children, it's like it never happened.

  Not like Lucas, Dominic, Ruark, or Henri. Not like Andre or Gianni. In my books, the men are dashing, courageous, smart—and sexy.

  But are there really men like that these days?

  Do real people have lives like the ones I read about?

  Bertie says I shouldn't read all these books. Says they ain't real: says, “Momma, no one ever had a life like that.” She says they're dead anyway, and it's all white folks in those stories. She's wrong about that, and seems like the black folks in these books have great adventures, too.

  Rashawn says I'm livin' in a dream world. He says I've turned into a different person since I started reading. Like I'm someone else now.

  He just don't know.

  Chapter Three

  I'd been thinkin' about going away for a while, it wasn't just somethin' that popped into my head. I would see Swee' Pea in my dreams most every night, over and over, carrying that bandanna on a stick. I'd see him crossing oceans and mountains and deserts. Going to China and Egypt. But soon, I didn't see him anymore, I saw myself, taking his place. I saw myself running away instead.

  I didn't know where I was goin'. And I didn't know what I was lookin' for. I just knew that I had to get out of here. This place, this life, it was choking me. It wasn't enough for me to just read about other people and other lives.

  I wanted to see it for myself.

  I wanted to live it for myself.

  I couldn't think about what I'd be leavin' behind, 'cause if I had, I wouldn't go. I'd think of a million reasons why I shouldn't.

  And I did.

  Oh, well, Bertie needs a baby-sitter.

  Why? She don't work. She can get up in the morning with her own child. She could get a job, too, except that since she lives with me, and I pay for everything, and do everything and keep Teishia, why should she get a job? She's got a fool to take care of all her earthly desires. If I left, Bertie would have to change. She wouldn't have no choice.

  Now, would that be a bad thing?

  And when I thought about it, hard and clear, without the veil that covered the memories I had of Bertie in a soft, hazy glow. When I ignored the spotty remembrances of the cute, bright-eyed little girl with braids that went every which way, I knew she wouldn't miss me. I had spoiled her. Tried to make things easier for her than they'd been for me. It hadn't worked. She would only miss the things I did for her. Things she would have to start doing for herself.

  I heard her talk about me once. She was headed to the mall with one of her friends. Teishia was in the crib taking a nap. Bertie must have thought I was in the bathroom or something.

  “You ain't gonna tell your momma you're leavin' Teishia here?” I heard the friend ask.

  “She ain't goin' nowhere,” Bertie told her. “Don't worry about it.”

  That wasn't how I wanted to be remembered as a person.

  “She ain't goin' nowhere.”

  And Randy didn't need me. Not really. As far
as he was concerned, the only thing I could do for him was send him money and keep the phone on. Well, one moneybags is just as good as another. Randy can get money from Rashawn for cigarettes. Rashawn makes more than me anyway.

  Randy was real quiet when I told him I was leaving. The only way I knew he was still there was I could hear him breathing.

  “Where you goin', Momma?” he asked me. The static on the line made his voice sound metallic and strange with no emotion, like a robot.

  “Wherever I end up, Randy,” I answered, knowing how crazy that must have sounded.

  Randy didn't say anything else. It was a long-distance call so finally I said good-bye and hung up.

  And Rashawn? Well, he's on his own.

  Everybody had a life but me. At forty-two, it's about time I had a life, too. Ain't it?

  I'll miss little Teishia, she's my heart. But that's all.

  Went to say good-bye to my sister, Kay. She does hair at a little beauty shop near downtown. I caught her just as she was finishing a weave. When I told her I was leavin', she just looked at me, narrowed her eyes like she used to do when we was little and I would tattle on her to Momma. She laughed and said, “Girl, you crazy!”

  I shrugged my shoulders, picked up a couple of the hair pieces that she was using and fiddled with them.

  “Maybe so, but I'm still leavin'.”

  Kay laughed again.

  “Anybody goin' with you? Rashawn? Bertie?”

  I shook my head.

  “No way.”

  “You goin' by yoself?”

  I nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “What, you havin' one of those … oh, what they call them things, Doreen?” She hollered over to one of the other girls who was laying on a perm. “That man was on ‘Oprah’ last week. Whatchu call them things? When people start going crazy when they hit forty?”

  “Midlife crisis!” one of the customers yelled back from the shampoo bowl.