Dancing on the Edge of the Roof Read online

  Dad was a decent man, but his fear of being poor and taking handouts took away his laughter. He never smiled. Least not as far as I can remember. And when you looked in Daddy's eyes, you saw desperation and worry, even when the light bill was paid and Mom's pantry was full. Daddy was always afraid. Always.

  Mom smiled more but worked just as hard. Worked herself half to death, I think. She raised three kids and kept a garden the size of Indiana after we moved into the house over on 11th Avenue. She served in the Nurses' Corps at Mount Ararat Baptist—no Sunday ever started without her. She worked in the cafeteria at Central High School and did a little tailoring on the side. Mom could do anything with a needle and thread. She did it all so that we could have more, so that my sister, brother, and I could be more. KayRita did all right. She went to beauty school, and started doing hair right out of high school. But after that, everything went wrong. My brother died young. And I got pregnant in the eleventh grade.

  I remember when I told my momma that I was having a baby. I was young, stupid, and thought I was cute. Had the nerve to stick my chin out at Mom and tell her what my plans were. How grown-up I thought I was. I told her all about how I could take care of myself and the baby and didn't need nobody to tell me what to do.

  What a stupid bitch I was then.

  I remember thinking that Mom's whole face changed that day. That, somehow, her complexion lost its luster, and her dark brown eyes, which my granddaughter Teishia has inherited, weren't as bright anymore. But back then, I thought I was just imagining things.

  But I wasn't. Twenty-some years later, I know what happened to my momma. Because the same thing happened to me when my daughter told me she was pregnant. It was the hope that went out of my momma's face: the hope she had that I would finish school, and maybe have a chance to live a decent life. A life better than the one she had. Well, it died when I told her about the baby. And I never saw hope in Mom's eyes again as long as she lived.

  She never told nobody about that lump she found. Not even Kay, who was her favorite child. Mom never told no one until the damn thing was so big that it had spread its poison all through her skinny body, and there wasn't hardly nothing left.

  I put my pen down.

  I looked out the window, but the other cars were blurry, and I couldn't see much besides colors through my tears.

  Hope was something that my momma lost and never got back.

  I had lost it, too.

  But now I was going to try to get it back.

  When I was twenty-one years old I was married to Tyrone Bolte, who worked double shifts at Timkin. He had fistfuls of money, and spent it like most folks drink water. I remember we went and bought new furniture, and Tyrone paid cash money for it—laid out four one-hundred-dollar bills on the store counter. That salesman's jaw like to drop to the ground! It was the first and last time (so far) in my life that I had a car that ran steady.

  But Tyrone had demons on his back, and when they got a good grip around his neck, he'd do whatever he had to do to shake them off. I never knew what it was in his life that tortured him so. But when it did? Tyrone turned into a devil like you've never seen.

  He drank like a sailor, tore up most of the new furniture we'd bought, and beat the shit out of me. And you never knew when he would start up, or what would set him off. Seems like every day of those three years I spent with Tyrone I walked on eggshells and talked in a whisper.

  When Rashawn was nine months old, I was five months pregnant, and Tyrone got drunk and mad at me for buying a bedspread at Kmart on sale. When he got finished with me, the bedspread was cut up so bad I couldn't return it, and I wasn't pregnant no more. I was a few teeth short, too. I told the policeman he was just a little upset, and I lay down with that man in the same bed that night.

  I must have been crazy or stupid. Or both. Now that I think about it, I'm lucky to be alive. Last thing I heard, Tyrone is serving fifteen to life. He killed his second wife because she wanted to sell Avon.

  I tell about the hospital and all the people I met there— most of the ones I really helped died, but there's no way around that when you work the cancer floor. The nurses say you get used to it, but I don't see how. You get close to those people, and watch them fight death, and suffer. And you don't want 'em to suffer, but you got to hand it to them when they fight back at death just to grab a few more moments of daylight. I write about old Mrs. Berman and cigarettes and her liquor, and her gift of books, and the zombies who knocked on my door late at night looking for Rashawn.

  “Hey! Rashawn there? I need to get wid him, you know. Huh? Whatchu mean he ain't live here? Look, you don't understand, bitch. I need to get wid him, you know what I mean?”

  I write about my apartment and the street where I live, and I even tell about the little man at the pawnshop who wanted to know where “New Life” was. I talk about the long days, my off days, the ones before I began to read, before I knew there was a whole other world. I talk about the days when my life was wrapped up in talk shows and soaps, and measured from one commercial to the next. Now, that is no life at all.

  Bertie was my running buddy in those days, when I should have been making her go to work or school; when she should have been meeting other young people who were doing things with their lives. Instead, we both sat like lumps on the couch, smoking, patting Teishia, and discussing Erica Caine's plans and the people in Jerry Springer's audience. I let the soaps and the talk shows go after I started reading. I didn't care anymore. All I could think of was living a life of my own that would be worth mentioning somewhere. Even a footnote life was better than the one I had.

  I wanted that to change.

  I tell it all, all my past life. I try not to leave anything out, try to tell the good parts and the bad parts. 'Course, there's more bad than good, and more “just OK” than anything else. Then I draw a thick, red line.

  Past this red line, no words about the past life will ever go. It is the present and what is to come that will fill these pages. No wish I hads or I shouldas. Only “I did.”

  I remember my grandmother and grandfather talking over dinner once, long ago when I was a child. Granddaddy asked Grandma if anything had happened at a meeting she had attended. I remember what she said.

  “Nothing to write home about.”

  I remember wondering what she meant by that. In my child's mind, I saw my grandmother sitting there at her meeting, pulling out a little piece of paper and a pencil, and an envelope, then changing her mind and putting it all away again.

  Now, of course, I know what she meant.

  Nothing of value came out of her meeting.

  I want a life worth writing home about.

  Chapter Five

  I was only a few hours away from home, but it seemed like I was traveling in a foreign country.

  I guess I had forgotten that Ohio was mostly a farming state. There were fields of green corn and golden wheat as far as I could see. Wide-open spaces filled with cows, or rocky, funny-shaped hills spotted with sheep that didn't look anything like the little lamb that Mary had. Their fleece was gray and grimy. Silos stuck out here and there, and sometimes I'd see a man sitting up on a tractor, working straight lines into the earth.

  The space, the openness was strange to me. Houses and towns were miles apart, and seemed to like it that way. Even the garages were far from the homes, as if the people who lived there don't want the car too close. White clothes flapped in the breeze on clotheslines, now that was kinda pretty. I hadn't seen that in a while. There was no use drying clothes outside where I lived. The last time one of my neighbors did that, all her clothes were stolen.

  I don't know, I don't think the air was that fresh anyway. Not like out here.

  The bus turned onto another highway, and the scenery changed a little. The road wound back and forth through the quietest, greenest land I had ever seen. Here there were no barns, silos, or houses. Just green, as far as the eye could s
ee. Tall, funny-looking trees, all bunched together. There wasn't much sound either.

  I opened the window. I knew that I wasn't supposed to (the AC was on) but that manufactured air was giving me a headache. I was raised by a woman from central Georgia. My momma didn't believe in air-conditioning. If it was four thousand degrees outside, Momma would say, “It's a little warm.” I poked my head out the window and took a deep breath of Ohio country air and diesel fumes.

  I heard a hawk screeching but nothing else. Inside, the bus was quiet, too. I guess everyone else was either asleep or in a daze like I was. We went along like this for miles with no passing cars, no houses in sight.

  The bus slowed to a crawl, and began to climb up a little hill. The engine whined a little as if it didn't want to go any farther. The passengers murmured among themselves, necks craning as they tried to see what was going on. Then, suddenly, up over the ridge, I saw them.

  Over the loudspeaker, the driver spoke: “Sorry for the delay, folks, but, in case you didn't know, this is Amish country and they've got the road blocked off up ahead. Looks like a meeting of some kind … no, sorry. A funeral. They're probably walking to the cemetery over the next hill. They'll turn off here shortly, and then we'll be on our way in a few moments.”

  Now, you know I'm nosy. I practically pushed my whole body out that window. I wanted to get a good look so I could write it all down. I'd never seen anything like this. You know, there were no Amish people in my neighborhood.

  There were lots of them, all walking quietly, or riding in black, horse-drawn buggies, or in wagons. They wore gray or black, the women's heads were covered with bonnets, the men wore wide-brimmed black or straw hats and had long beards. There was no talking among them, no noise. I could barely hear the sound of their feet stepping on the roughly paved road. Even the children, and there were lots of them, were silent.

  The lead buggy, which I just barely caught a glimpse of, carried a small, wooden coffin, and I felt my chest tighten. This was the funeral of a little child. I thought of Teishia and tears came to my eyes. There ain't nothin' more sad than one of those tiny, little caskets. Nothin'.

  The bus stayed a respectful distance behind the funeral procession, moving slowly until the people began to move onto a side road that led around a bend. Then as the last of the group begins to make the turn, the bus picked up a little speed, and moved past.

  Most of the people didn't even look up, as if they were trying to ignore us. The roar of the bus engine didn't appear to disturb their thoughts, the metallic smell of the diesel fuel wasn't interfering with the sweet air they were used to breathing. Maybe they figured if they didn't see us, we didn't exist and couldn't threaten their way of living. Others, especially some of the younger boys, looked over real quick, and then looked back. Their expressions were curious but not sad. The women didn't look up at all.

  Except for one.

  I caught a glimpse of her as we rolled past. She glanced up at the bus and looked at me. I remember being surprised to see a face that was puffy and eyes that were red. I knew I was seeing a heart that had been broken. I wondered if she was the child's mother. The bus roared by and the woman's face was hidden by a blast of gray smoke.

  But I never forgot her or her sadness. I wrote it down. I thought about that woman's face for a long time. I still think about her even now, many days later and a thousand miles away.

  I knew what that kind of sadness was about.

  It's hard to put into words, hard to explain to other people. It's everywhere and it can surround you like the air you breathe. But it's hard to see.

  After Tyrone Bolte kicked me and I wasn't pregnant anymore, the funeral home put my baby in a little, tiny box and took her away. I cried until I couldn't cry anymore. I didn't eat for a week. And I put flowers on the marker that's in the cemetery where they buried her. I didn't have any money of my own to put a headstone there. So I just kept putting flowers on that little marker, and whispered the little girl's name to myself so that no one else could hear.

  Tyrone was really sorry about the baby. He cried and begged me to forgive him and take him back. Ignorant as I was, I did take him back. But I never forgave him.

  And I never told him where that baby was buried, or what I named her. I figured that she didn't need to be visited by the man who killed her.

  I just kept her life and her death to myself since I was the only person who ever really knew her anyway.

  I found that I was becoming claustrophobic. In reverse. I was used to living in a tiny, Cracker Jack–sized apartment, with four families above, four families below, and two on either side. Big families, lots of people: Mardee in 1026 had four kids, two of her daughters had babies, her father lived there and her son's girlfriend and their baby. Ten people. And she only had three bedrooms. I had two. I guess I was lucky—just me, Bertie, Rashawn (and Randy, when he was there), and Teishia.

  But out here, the farms are minutes not seconds apart. And they appear one at a time, not in bunches. I spied one lonely, white farmhouse with green shutters and didn't see the next one for a whole minute, sometimes two. I couldn't get used to that. Mile after mile and not one person in sight—horses, cows, even buffalo, but no people. Miles of gold and green. Plants. Weeds. Rocks.

  No people.

  It gave me the shakes just like my sister used to get when she rode the elevator. Kay said she felt trapped, crazy, and panicked, and that she couldn't breathe.

  And there were no sounds. Where were the sirens that I got so used to that they put me to sleep? What about the slamming of doors and the sound of liquored voices raised in anger, screaming babies, desperate knocking at my door?

  Now there is only the sound of grass growing, the piercing screech of a hawk, the roar of an eighteen-wheeler's engine zooming by in the passing lane. It makes me a little nervous, this kind of quiet. It makes me think too much, to remember what I'd like to forget. Maybe I'm not ready for big, open spaces. City noises were a great mask. You could always say it's too loud to think, too hectic to wonder about universal truths, too dangerous to remember something pleasant or painful. You can use the noise as an excuse for not opening your mind. You can hide behind the sound of gunshots and car horns. And you can starve your soul because that's what it really lives on: thinking, remembering, reflecting.

  Ohio and Indiana weren't bad. I'm familiar with the Midwest. I know what it's supposed to be like, even though I've never really been out of the city. Missouri was OK, too, still familiar.

  But Kansas was different. Flatter than Nurse Diesel's behind, miles and miles of wheat blowing in the breeze, no people, no buildings in sight most of the time. Empty, flat land. Haunted, almost. I tried to ignore it. I went to sleep. Hoping that when I woke up, we'd be in a city, where I would feel safe.

  But when the sun rose again, I saw the mountains, evergreen forests stretched out to forever, and wondered if I was making a mistake. Wanted to catch the next bus back to Columbus, Ohio, and go into my little apartment, and my little room, close the door and hide.

  Flat, green-and-gold fields I can live with. A black-and-white life I can live with.

  But mountains? I had no experience with mountains. I didn't know any snowcapped peaks personally, and the sight of the pine forests, spread out for miles around, made my knees weak.

  Everything here is huge, spread out, and empty. There are more elk than people, more eagles than cars. I'm not used to so much.

  Now I was really afraid. I thought that I had made a big mistake.

  What was I doing here?

  I panicked. I thought, “I'm not ready for this. Maybe I should head for Los Angeles after all. And hide. In a closet.”

  Instead of visiting this tiny dot on the map. A little place I just picked on a whim because it had a cute name, and I figured it would be as good a place as any to begin. It's west of Missoula, south of Thompson Falls, small letters near the junction of Interstate 90 North
and Route 135 on the map, near the Idaho border and south of Kootenai National Forest. Out in the sticks. Not far from the middle of nowhere.

  A town called Paper Moon. I picked it because Teishia giggled when I played the Natalie Cole version of the song. Other than that, I didn't know why I was going there, other than I wanted to go somewhere different from the places I had been. (Since I hadn't been anywhere, that was pretty easy.)

  And from what I could tell, little Paper Moon, Montana, population one thousand, situated at the base of a mountain, not far from Lake Arcadia, was about as far from where I'm from as you could get.

  I was afraid of open plains, mountains, forests, lakes, and wildlife.

  And I was headed to Montana.

  I should have had my head examined.

  So there I was sitting in a coffee shop in Butte, eating the best pot roast I ever had, and studying my little road atlas. Wondering how in the world I was ever going to get to Paper Moon, Montana. It was over two hundred miles away. Going there had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that I really thought about it, it made no sense at all. Hitching a ride on the space shuttle might have been easier for me than catching a ride to northwest Montana. Maybe I should have picked somewhere else. And there was another thing.

  In case you didn't know, there aren't many black folks in this part of the country. Funny, I never thought of that when I decided to take this trip—that I might be going places where black folks didn't live, where black folks might not even be welcome. But since Denver, I hadn't seen one brown face. And judging by the hostess's expression when she served my meal, the folks in Butte hadn't seen one either.

  The hostess stared at me for a few seconds before saying “Good morning” and inviting me to seat myself. Some of the patrons actually turned a little on their stools and studied me with blank but curious expressions. And the waitress almost spilled my Coke in my lap.