Dancing on the Edge of the Roof Read online

  Kay snapped her fingers.

  “That's it! One of them things.” She snatched a piece of hair from me and started to work that woman's head again. “You havin' one of them midlife crises, Juanita? You going to run away and marry a twenty-year-old man, or somethin' like that? Dance on a tabletop?” She laughed, and so did her customer.

  But I wasn't laughing.

  I said, “Dancing on a tabletop sounds pretty good. Kay, you know I'm gonna go.” Kay stopped laughing. Looked at my face. Then put that hairpiece down.

  “You for real, ain't you?” she asked me, frowning.

  I nodded.

  “Honey, you sit here for a minute. I'll be right back.” She patted her customer's shoulder, then grabbed me by the arm and pulled me past the shampoo bowls, out the back door, snatching a pack of Newports as she went. The door slammed loud behind us.

  “Now what's this all about, Juanita?” she asked sternly in her best big-sister tone. Her dark eyes looked straight into mine.

  I told Kay again that I was going away.

  “Whatchu mean you going away? What's the matter widchu?”

  “Ain't nothin' the matter.”

  “You OK?” Her eyes widened. “Oh, Lord, you ain't sick, are you?”

  Now it was my turn to laugh.

  “Naw, KayRita, I ain't sick.”

  “Hummph.” My sister shook her head, smiling. “You sound like you got the blues is all.”

  “Maybe,” I told her. “But I know one thing. I'm tired of this life I been living. It's time for a change.”

  Kay blew out the smoke.

  “Well, we all gets tired, honey. You just gotta deal with it, you know. You don't run away from home, though. Shoot. If everybody that got tired of things ran away, wouldn't nobody be home at all! Now what you gotta do is put them trifling kids out!” Kay rolled her eyes and shook her head while she talked.

  “I been after you forever to throw Rashawn out the door. And get Bertie off her butt. It ain't never made no sense to me, Juanita, the way you spoil them kids. Bertie coulda been working at the Big Bear or Kroger.”

  “Kay, it's time for more than that. I got to get outta that place. Leave and start over somewhere else. Doing something else.”

  “Doing what?” She paused and looked at me. I just looked at her back.

  “Somewhere else? Where? Where you gonna go? You don't know no one outside Ohio, except Momma's cousins in Philly, and we ain't even seen them since we was teenagers.”

  “I know.”

  “You ain't never been nowhere else, Juanita.”

  “No shit.”

  “You ain't never done nothin' else.”

  “I know that.” KayRita was my older sister, but I wasn't backing down off this.

  Kay didn't say anything for a second, just smoked her cigarette quietly. The smoke poured out of her nostrils.

  “Juanita, you can't just get up and leave home like some kid, runnin' away from your problems. That don't make no kinda sense at all. How you gonna leave here when you don't know where you're going or what you're gonna do when you get there?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. It was a good question. But I was beyond worrying about it. “I'm still leavin',” I told her.

  Kay looked me hard in the face.

  I looked back.

  Then she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply on her cigarette. Looked at me again. This time there was a tear in her eye.

  Then she said softly, “I think I know how you feel. I wish I could go with you.”

  After Kay, there wasn't anybody else I needed to talk to. Momma had been dead for five years, and Dad and I weren't close. He had remarried anyway, and was living in Mobile.

  I was on my own.

  I didn't have much money. Just what was left of my workers' comp check from last year. I didn't tell the kids about that or they woulda had me spend it. I thought maybe I'd run out of money before I got where I'm going, but I could always work. And maybe I'd get lost, but I bought me a map. So I just made up my mind to go where the wind—and the Greyhound—would take me: to the end of the line. To a new life.

  Bought two suitcases from the pawnshop.

  “Juanita, you need a gold necklace today? I got one just perfect for your slender neck. Just came in.” The man behind the counter held out a sparkling strand of gold.

  I looked at that man sideways. I ain't never had no slender neck.

  “No thanks, not today,” I told him, glancing behind the counter. “I need a suitcase, though. Do you have any?”

  “Do we have suitcases! Are you kidding?” He took me into the back room where at least fifty suitcases stared back at me.

  I had to sort through twenty of them before I found the right ones: not too old, not too new, not too big. I felt like Goldilocks.

  “You gonna get your VCR out?” the man behind the counter asked me after I paid him.

  “No,” I said. “Going away for a while.”

  “Oh, that's nice. Vacation?”

  “No,” I said, walking out of the door. “New life.”

  The man called after me.

  “New Life? Where's that?”

  I'll tell you when I get there, I said to myself.

  Wasn't too hard to figure out what to take, I don't have much. Folded-up jeans and T-shirts and socks, some lightweight summer things, some in-betweens. Put sneakers on my feet, left the heels and the Sunday clothes at home. Packed a couple of sweaters, left nail polish and stuff in the bathroom cabinet. If I needed more, I could buy it. Took the Bible my grandma gave me, left all those romance novels behind. I would write my own. Folded up my hospital uniforms and left them on the edge of the bed. Maybe Bertie could use them.

  At last I was ready. At eleven in the morning, I had already done more in a few hours than most people do in a whole day. Packed two suitcases, one small cooler, a tote bag, quit my job … I felt like Mighty Mouse.

  I came out of my bedroom carrying the suitcases and my tote bag, stuffed to the seams. Bertie was just folding up the sofa bed. Teishia was on the floor, playing with her toes. Bertie looked pissed.

  “Momma, where were you? I had to get up at eight-thirty with T this mornin'.” Noticing the suitcases for the first time, she asked, “Where you going?”

  “Going away for a while,” I replied. (In my “old” life, I would have used “I said.” In my new life, however, I “replied.”)

  “Goin' where?” asked Rashawn, who came out of the bedroom, yawning and scratching. “Momma, you didn't tell nobody you was goin' nowhere.”

  “That's 'cause I'm forty-some years old,” I told him as I knelt down to give T a kiss. “I don't have to tell anybody anything.”

  Rashawn frowned.

  “How long you be gone?”

  “Don't know yet.”

  “Momma, you trippin'!” exclaimed Rashawn. His deep voice rumbled like thunder in the small living room. “What's up widchu?”

  “What you mean you don't know?” screeched Bertie. “What about your job at the hospital? Who's gonna keep Teishia for me?”

  I kissed little Teishia again and set her, squirming, back onto the floor.

  “In the first place, Bertie, I quit the hospital this morning. In the second place, you don't have a job or anything else to do. You can keep Teishia yourself.”

  I felt as if I had blurted out a complicated math problem. I couldn't help but grin. Of course, Bertie didn't think much of my idea.

  “But Momma! I think I'm pregnant again! What am I gonna do? I need my rest!” she wailed, tears streaming down her face. “I'm gonna need some money …”

  “Momma, what's wrong widchu? You gone crazy?” Ra-shawn's face was dark like a thunderstorm about to break. Now he reminded me of his father—the way Tyrone looked just before he broke my jaw. Once, a long time ago, I would have been scared. Now, I simply did not give a damn.

 
“No, Rashawn, I'm not crazy. Bertie, you'll just have to get along. You're young, you can work. They always need aides at the hospital.”

  “I can't believe you! Just leavin' us like that,” Rashawn bellowed. “I can't believe it.”

  “Well, believe it,” I shot back. He acted like he and Bertie were ten years old!

  “You got shit for brains?” he roared at me. “You read them books, think you a white woman or somethin'? Think you just gonna dance outta here and into a new life? Like you got somethin' somebody wants?” He got up in my face so close I could see the flecks of gold in his eyes. Mean, nasty eyes. Like his daddy's. “Well, here's the news, Momma, and it's up to the minute. This is real life. And in real life, you ain't nothin'.”

  I slapped him. Hard. All six feet, two inches and one hundred ninety pounds of him stumbled back toward the couch.

  Bertie gasped. Looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe I was.

  “I'm your momma. Don't you ever talk to me like that! I may not be much to you, but to myself, I'm enough.”

  Rashawn didn't say anything. Just looked at me like he hated my guts.

  “Now you both listen to me, and you listen good. And you can pass this on to Randy, too. All your life I have taken care of you, most of the times by myself, too. I paid the rent, the food, everything! I paid for Teishia, and I work my fingers to the bone for y'all, for Teishia. And what have I got to show for it? I'll tell you: I ain't got shit! Unless you count grown children who expect me to wait on them hand and foot and give them money. You all will use me until you use me up and there's nothing left. Well, I'm through with that. I'm taking the little bit of me I got left and gettin' outta here. You can take care of yourselves.”

  “But Momma! Where you goin'?” whined Bertie. “When will you be back?”

  “Momma? Momma?”

  I closed the door behind me. “I don't know where I'm goin' or when I'll return,” I told them in my new voice using my new words. I am a new woman now. And I must use new language. “I'll call you.”

  How could I answer their questions? Heroines who have great adventures don't have time limits and they don't have … what they call them things? Agendas. They don't have no agendas. They take what fate hands out. They go where the wind blows.

  My tote bag was full but not with novels. I was leaving them at home. I had packed spiral notebooks and pen refills instead.

  I was going to write about my own great adventure. And I wasn't going to do it with no ninety-nine-cent pen either.

  Chapter Four

  OK, you're leaving home. Got your bags packed, food in the cooler, cash money in your pocket. All ready to go. Where? It's hard to know where to go when you haven't been anywhere.

  Years ago, when my sister and brother and I were kids, my momma took us on the bus to Cleveland when our grandfather died. Another time, we visited some great-aunts or someone in Akron. I think Momma sent me and Kay alone, but I was real little then and I don't remember much. We drove to Springfield once for a Memorial Day picnic when I was about twelve. I remember that it was cool that day, and that it rained.

  That's it.

  That's all of my travel experience.

  So when I got to the bus station, it was time to make a decision. I found a spot not too far from the ticket counter, sat down, and looked at the road atlas that I bought at the bookstore. Where was I goin', exactly? East? West? North? South?

  To the east were the big cities—Philadelphia, D.C., New York. They didn't really appeal to me. I had cousins in Philadelphia, but I hadn't seen them in years. Besides, cities meant more noise and tall buildings, police and projects, gunfire and poverty.

  I could stay home and see all that.

  To the north were places like Cleveland and Detroit. More of the same old stuff.

  Minneapolis? Canada? Didn't pay much attention to geography when I was a kid. I never realized there was so much up north. Thought about it for a minute, but changed my mind. Well, I didn't have room for a coat anyway. Maybe I could go to Quebec and Montreal on my way back. If I came back.

  The South? Atlanta, Memphis, Louisville, New Orleans, the Great Smokies, and tall pines of Georgia. My grandmother was born in northern Georgia. She told us stories about it: rolling hills, forests thick with those huge Georgia pine trees, hot, lazy summers. That sounded nice. I'd heard that Atlanta was a nice city, black folks were doing things down there. My finger slid over to Pensacola and down toward Naples. Florida sounded OK, too. Saw myself walking along a sandy beach in a bikini. Had to laugh out loud at that thought.

  “ 'Scuse me!” Some kid tripped over my feet. “I'm sorry.”

  “That's all right.” I moved my size nines out of the way, scooted the suitcases closer to my seat. Glanced over at the ticket counter, which was empty now.

  Buses leaving for Atlanta, Chattanooga, Cleveland, and New York City in the next hour. One bus headed for Cincinnati any minute, one going to Indianapolis at four. And one headed west through St. Louis to Denver, Colorado.

  Colorado. I flipped through the atlas till I found it. West. I had forgotten to look there.

  There aren't many cities after St. Louis. Not unless you look to California, or south to Texas. The states are big, boxy-looking things with names like Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The mountain ranges crisscross the land, and dotted lines marked Indian reservations and parks here and there. Then on to California, and the ocean.

  Put my finger on Columbus, Ohio, traced a line straight through to Denver, then up to those mountains I had seen. Up through Wyoming, and on to a state I had forgotten existed.

  I gathered up my stuff and shuffled over to the counter.

  “Ma'am?”

  “One way to Butte, Montana, please.”

  The man whistled. Punched keys on the machine.

  “Boy, that's a long way. Most people stop at St. Louis, or go all the way to L.A. You got family in Butte?” He told me the cost of the ticket.

  “Nope,” I answered, digging in my wallet. “Just going to see.”

  He counted out my change.

  “Ten, thirty-five, forty. Going to see what?”

  I almost felt silly when I answered him, but in truth, I was serious.

  “Whatever's there.”

  The man looked at me kinda funny when he handed me my ticket. He probably thought I was crazy, let out of the state hospital this morning. And guess what?

  I didn't care. Heroines can't get tied up with stuff like that. We're too busy living our exciting lives.

  The bus wasn't real crowded, so I got to spread out over two seats instead of one. Situated myself against the window, and pulled out my pillow. Saw a lot of other folks doing the same thing.

  There were a few people who looked like they had their whole lives with them: suitcases about to bust, shopping bags, tote bags with shoes falling out all over the place, plastic bags. Other folk don't have anything with them but a purse, or just hands in their pockets. Does that mean they just pack light? Or they don't have much of a life to pack?

  The older ladies always got to me. Packed to the gills, they carried suitcase after suitcase, boxes, grocery sacks, faded tote bags—all kinds of things. And you know what was sad about that? Their lives were in those suitcases, years and years of husbands and children, grandchildren, little jobs that didn't add up to much even when they were put together, church dinners and Social Security and chump change. I knew about lives like that.

  If I wasn't getting out of this place, I would be sixty-some years old before long, with my whole life packed in a brown paper grocery sack.

  Some kids, teenagers, pushed through the bus to the back with half-shaved heads hooked up to CD players, black combat boots, and half-empty army surplus duffel bags, earrings in their ears, eyebrows, noses, and navels. I could hear somebody screaming in the background— those headphones really didn't work too good. Those kids would be deaf before th
ey're twenty-five.

  They were too young to have much in their bags, hadn't lived long enough to have any real baggage. The kind that life leaves you with.

  And me?

  Well, I had left most of mine at home. And one of the blue suitcases I bought was half empty. I was saving space for whatever my new life would bring. Or maybe, I thought then, I'd bring it back empty again. Who knew what would happen?

  As the bus pulled away, most of the folks seemed to be ready to take a nap. Not me. I pulled out a notebook and my pen. It was time to write about the beginning of my adventure.

  I sat there for a while, counting red cars on the freeway, reading the signs and thinking how they'd put a McDon-ald's at every exit now, and wondering how to start. I flipped through the blank pages of the book and looked at the herds of cows I saw in the fields.

  I guess I was procrastinating. (A new word I had learned.) I wanted to start writing but I was arguing with myself. What do I tell? How do I begin? Do I start with the time I stepped into this bus? Or do I start at the beginning? The very beginning. The day I was born, or the first real memory I had. Read somewhere that you can't go nowhere unless you know where you've been. But God knows I hated to waste good paper on that mess. Yet I still thought long and hard about it. If I wrote it down, then I could read it over and over and remember. So that I wouldn't make all those same mistakes again. I started to write.

  I put it all down, I didn't leave anything out. I told about my previous life: when I was little and what it was like growing up, about my husbands, Randy's father, Teishia, and my job. About what it was like to live in a gray world, like when TV was only black and white.

  My parents were good people. They worked hard and tried to help us kids along as best they could. Daddy grew up on the tail end of the depression. Just the idea of being hungry and being poor scared him to death. He could squeeze the life out of a dime. He worked all the time— two jobs, three jobs—just to make sure that we kids had enough to eat and that the lights stayed on. There wasn't a job around that Daddy didn't like. He kept his money in the mattress—now, how old-fashioned is that? He didn't believe in throwing nothing out; we never had garbage. If Mom made a pot of beans, we ate them till the sight of 'em made us sick.