Part 21 (1/2)

As Sonny-Boy tells me later, he is impressed with the proper way she talks.

”Here,” she says. ”Look at this.”

Sonny-Boy takes the book she hands to him. It is open. And he reads: Dear diary, New York April. Horns honking; pedestrians b.u.mping, freight trucks fart fumes, stirring gritty, eye-stinging dust amidst noises, harsh voices, while the Menthol fresh breeze caresses, raises dresses as funk rises from my parka, sweats.h.i.+rt, layered clothes of odd sizes, feet aching, sweating while I need a shave, feel a cigarette crave. And on a bench on the corner, a face behind a newspaper, no emotion behind it, looks up as I ask, ”Do you have a minute? . . . To talk a little bit?” He folds his newspaper, gives no answer, stands, moves farther away. No answer.

And Sonny-Boy says, ”This belong to Gladstone?” And there's surprise in his voice.

”Yes,” Isamina tells him. ”All of these,” flinging her hand out indicating the notebooks scattered on the table. ”His whole life, it looks like. He left them for his daughter. Did you know he has a daughter? Yvette?”

Sonny-Boy is silent. Yes he knows but he doesn't want to say the wrong thing, so he keeps his mouth shut. Gladstone always was secretive but he didn't think he would be so secretive as not to tell his wife about his daughter.

Looking at the diaries strewn on the table in front of him he recalls times in New York when he would come home tired and hungry to see Gabby chewing a pencil and staring into s.p.a.ce or scribbling in a notebook. And when he would fuss about coming home and nothing en there to eat, wanting to know if it was too much to ask for Gladstone to at least start the pot till he got home, Gabby would say is homework he doing. Perhaps some of those times he was writing things like this. Is true what Gladstone wife just say: Funny how little you can know about people, even your own flesh and blood.

And as he's thinking this Isamina asks him, ”Can I get you something to drink?”

”Got any rum in the house?”

She nods. ”How do you want it?”

”A little bit of c.o.ke. Not much. With some ice.”

After emptying his gla.s.s for the second time he says, ”Just leave the bottle on the table. Save yourself the trouble, heh heh heh.”

He pours his third drink and begins to talk, wanting to know why Gladstone didn't call him if he was having trouble. If he want somebody to talk to (and he looked at Isamina saying, ”I don't mean no disrespect to you”), why he didn't call him? He was his father, after all. They coulda talk man-to-man. Perhaps if he'd done that and got whatever it was off his chest, perhaps he woulda been alive today. Because problems ain't nothing but obstacles and ain't no obstacle so high you can't get over it. And nothing certainly ain't so bad that you got to take your own life.

But from when he was small Gladstone always was the kind of child that would keep everything to himself. And instead of growing out of it, look like he get worse. Look what happen in New York.

He, Sonny-Boy was living in Florida, true, and Gladstone was up in New York. But what is distance when your son in trouble? If he knew Gladstone was catching h.e.l.l he woulda jump on the first plane and go and see what happening. Gladstone didn't have to suffer through no hard times. He woulda even take him back to Florida till he catch himself.

”Don't blame yourself, Mr. Belle,” Isamina says. ”Things happen.”

Easy for her to say. How could he help blaming himself when is he who send for the boy? He thought he was helping him. But what Esther say to him not long ago is true. America not for everybody. It is a place where good people, just to survive, can put a sh.e.l.l around them so tough that you stop seeing the person you used to know. He, Sonny-Boy, see it happen all the time. But Gladstone never develop that sh.e.l.l and look how it almost kill him. And is his fault for bringing his own son to a city where human decency is as rare as a virgin in a wh.o.r.ehouse, and even when it is there it seem to be buried deep beneath the filth and garbage that surround everybody.

He didn't even recognize Gladstone when he walked out from the airport with a traveling bag over his shoulder, a carton with four bottles of rum in his hand, and a mustache above his lip.

But Gladstone recognized him. ”Pa?” he said.

And he stared at this man that was almost as tall as him, so thick-skinned that he know Esther was feeding him like he was the man in the house.

He say, ”Gladstone?”

And Gladstone say, ”Yes, Pa. It is me. And this for you.” And he holding out the carton of rum like he want to hand it over quick before he forget.

Those early days was good days. Good days. Showing Gladstone around, going to places he never went to in all the years he was in New York.

”This is the Empire State Building,” he remember saying. And Gladstone staring up at the building, making Sonny-Boy chest swell out because he can bring wonder to his son face just by showing him things that he pa.s.s by every day without even noticing.

He remember Gladstone saying, ”When you going show me where you work, Pa? I want to see where you work.”

But he was embarra.s.sed. Didn't want the boy to know he was only a janitor. Told him he was an office services engineer. That is what they was calling themselves: office services engineer. Because n.o.body en what they is anymore in America. Everybody is some kind of engineer or technician. h.e.l.l. n.o.body en even plain stupid no more-they mentally challenged. You know that? That is the new-fas.h.i.+on word: challenged. What a stupidness, eh?

Anyway, he was always giving excuses like ”One day when things not so busy,” or ”They don't like you bringing people on the job.” Excuses like that.

He couldn't understand why he was embarra.s.sed. After all, it wasn't like he had a big job back home before he left. If he had, he wouldn't have had to leave so he could get the money to send Gladstone to high school.

After a while Gladstone stopped asking and it seemed around that time that distance begin to widen between them, probably because he began to hint to Gladstone that he could do with some help. He knew Gladstone was in college and had to study but perhaps he could get a little part-time job to help out. He was working two jobs trying to make ends meet and still save a little something-doing janitor work at night cleaning offices in the city, knocking off at seven o'clock in the morning and going straight to his next job at a gas station in Queens till four in the afternoon, then going home and sleeping till nine, when he had to get up and get ready for his eleven-to-seven night job.

It was hard.

Meanwhile all Gladstone doing, as far as he could see, is reading books. So he told him one day, ”In America you have to get up and get. n.o.body don't give you nothing free. They always take something in return, even if it is only your dignity.”

And all Gladstone saying is ”okay, okay.” Till one day Gladstone look at him and say, ”Look, it is you who send for me to come here and study. And it was you who come over here as soon as I pa.s.s for secondary school and left me and my mother there to scramble. Least you can do is help me out now.”

What a blow, eh? What a blow. That is one Sonny-Boy didn't expect. It knock the wind out of him so hard he had to sit down. When he catch himself he say real soft, ”That is what you think? After all the money I send for school fees, for books, the barrel of clothes and school supplies and food I send every year, you saying I left you and your mother to scramble for yourself? That is the thanks I get? That is what education does do to people? Turn them stiff-necked and ungrateful?”

But it seem that Gladstone had it in his head that Sonny-Boy owe him something so he living in the apartment like he is Lord Byron while Sonny-Boy working his tail off and coming home and cooking food for he and Gladstone like he is Gladstone mother or woman, one of the two-Gladstone say his mother never learn him how to cook.

One day Sonny-Boy couldn't take it no more. ”Look, Mr. Big Shot,” he say. ”Money don't grow on trees over here, you know. You see them people you see going back home spending money and showing off? Well they just like me, working like a mule from the minute they land here. Like now, I working these two jobs just to support the two of we. Time for you to get up off your backside and help out, too.”

That wasn't too much to ask, eh? But Gladstone bust out with, ”Why you send for me, then?”

So now the blood really flying to his head. ”Wait a minute!” he bawling. ”Wait a gad daim minute! I send for you. Yes. But not for you to live like a king while I slaving to support you! This is America. Every tub got to sit on its own bottom over here. You think it easy? Eh? You see gold on the streets here? Eh?” He steups his teeth. ”You just like these black Americans over here. Lazy. Living off welfare and food stamps and expecting somebody to help them. . . .”

And Gladstone b.u.t.ting in saying, ”You know how you sound? Eh? You know how you sound?” And asking him if Francine that live across the hall is a black American. Because if he not mistaken, the last he know she was from back home just like them and ent she living on welfare? Eh? What about that? And he going on to give this lecture about how all kinds of people get welfare and that more whitepeople living on welfare than blackpeople, as if Sonny-Boy concerned about what other people do. Is he own color he care about. But this young generation? You can't tell them nothing. You can't reason with them.

So all Sonny-Boy can do is stare at his own son to see how the boy turn just like these Yankee children-contradicting their elders; talking, talking, talking and not stopping to listen and learn. And all he can say to the boy is, ”This is what all this book learning doing for you? Turning you stupid and disrespectful? If that is the case, you better off back home.”

That is when he feel his heart pounding so hard he think it going bust in his chest. He inhale, take a deep breath and sit down, and he thinking, look his crosses, this boy only here a few months and already with his American rudeness he giving him heart attack. But he also realizing that this isn't the only time here of late that his heart racing like that.

When he get home from his gas station job, even though he tired as a dog, sometimes it taking him a long time before his heart can settle down enough for him to drop off to sleep.

Not only that, he don't have time for enjoyment anymore. He used to be able to go to a dance every now and then on Sat.u.r.day nights, even when Gladstone first come over. Now his days off at the gas station job is Tuesday and Wednesday, so he working there Sat.u.r.days and Sundays and when he get home he too tired to do anything but sit down in front the TV and doze off.

Couple mornings after that argument is when he collapse in the bathroom and when he wake up he find himself in a hospital breathing out of an oxygen mask and with a tube in his arm and Gladstone standing up next to the bed looking down at him.

First thing Gladstone say after he ask Sonny-Boy how he feel is, ”Pa, I have a job.”

All Sonny-Boy was able to say was, ”Uh huh?” And he thinking, Look at this, eh? He had to nearly dead with a heart attack and end up in a hospital bed for the boy to get off his backside and find work. But he got a good feeling inside him anyway and he resting his hand on Gladstone arm.

When he come out the hospital things was better, with Gladstone holding down a little job at the college library and helping out with the bills. But Sonny-Boy decide that even though the heart attack wasn't serious (the doctor tell him he could live a long healthy life but he had to slow down), he would hold on a little bit till he figure his son could handle himself, then he would move to Florida where his cousin write and tell him things not so fast down there and the cost of living lower.

When he left for Florida, Gladstone had two part-time jobs: the one at the college library plus another one at a bank.

Next time he see his son, the boy sitting on a park bench like he sit down there waiting for his father from the moment he hang up the phone from calling him in Florida.

And Sonny-Boy can scarcely recognize his own son, this young man with bushy hair and fidgety hands but with his clothes clean somehow.

At first he feel himself standing there like he stick to the spot; then he have to control himself from rus.h.i.+ng over, shouting out his son name and hugging him. Instead he walk over calm and cool and say, ”Gladstone?” real easy.