Homegoing(73)

Robert was holding Carson, bouncing him a little bit so that the boy wouldn’t fuss. “That ain’t the first thing we gotta do. First thing we gotta do is set me up with a job. I’m the man, remember?”

“Oh, you the man, all right,” Willie said, winking, and Joe rolled his eyes.

“Don’t y’all bring no more babies into this house, now,” he said.

That night, and for many nights after, Willie and Robert and Carson all slept on the same mattress, laid out in the tiny living room on the fourth floor of the tall brick building. On the ceiling above the bed there was a large brown spot, and on that first night they lay there, Willie thought that even that spot looked beautiful.

The building that Lil Joe lived in was full of nothing but black folks, nearly all of them newly arrived from Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas. On the way in, Willie heard the distinct drawl of an Alabamian. The man had been trying to push a wide couch through a slim door. There was a similar-sounding voice on the other side of the door, giving directions: more to the left, a little to the right.

The next morning, Willie and Robert left Carson with Lil Joe so they could walk around Harlem, maybe look to see if any For Hire signs were up in their neighborhood. They walked around for hours, people-watching and talking, taking in everything that was different about Harlem, and everything that was the same.

Once they rounded the block past an ice cream parlor, they noticed a hiring sign on a store door, and decided to go in so that Robert could talk to someone. As they walked in, Willie tripped on the lip of the door stoop, and Robert caught her in his arms. He helped her get steady, and smiled at her once she was on her feet, kissing her cheek quickly. Once they were inside, Willie’s eyes met those of the store clerk, and she felt a cold wind travel that sight line, from his eyes to hers, then all the way down to the coalpit of her stomach.

“Excuse me, sir,” Robert said. “I saw the sign outside there.”

“You married to a black woman?” the store clerk said, his eyes never leaving Willie’s.



Robert looked at Willie.

Robert spoke softly. “I worked in a store before. Down south.”

“No job here,” the man said.

“I’m saying I have experience with—”

“No job here,” the man repeated, more gruffly this time.

“Let’s go, Robert,” Willie said. She was already halfway out the door by the time the man had opened his mouth a second time.

They didn’t speak for two blocks. They passed a restaurant with a sign hanging up, but Willie didn’t have to look at Robert to know they would keep walking past it. Before long they were back at Lil Joe’s place.

“Y’all back already?” Joe asked when they entered. Carson was asleep on the mattress, his little body curled up just so.

“Willie just wanted to check on the baby. She wanted to give you a chance to rest. Ain’t that right, Willie?”

Willie could feel Joe looking at her as she answered, “Yeah, that’s right.”

Robert turned on his heel and was out of the door in a flash.

Willie sat down next to the baby. She watched him sleep. She wondered if she could watch him sleep all day, and so she tried. But after a while a strange and helpless panic set in, about what she didn’t know. That he wasn’t really breathing. That he didn’t recognize his own hunger and therefore would not whine for her to feed him. That he wouldn’t know her from any other woman in this new, big city. She woke him up just to hear him cry. And it was only then, when the cry set in, soft at first and then a shrieking, full-bellied sound, that she was finally able to relax.

“They thought he was white, Joe,” Willie said. She could feel him watching her as she watched Carson.

Joe nodded. “I see,” he said soberly, and then he walked away and let her be.

Willie waited anxiously for Robert to return. She wondered, for the first time really, if leaving Pratt City had been a mistake. She thought about Hazel, whom she hadn’t yet heard from since leaving, and a wave of missing hit her, desperate and sad. She had another forward memory. This time of loneliness. She could feel it approaching, a condition she would have to learn to live with.



Robert came back to the apartment. He had been to the barber, his hair cut close. He had bought new clothes, with the last of their savings no doubt, Willie thought, and the clothes he had been wearing when he left were nowhere in sight. He sat down on the bed next to Willie, rubbed Carson’s back. She looked at him. He didn’t look like himself.

“You spent the money?” Willie asked. Robert wasn’t meeting her eyes, and she couldn’t remember the last time Robert had done that. Even on that first day she’d gone to play with him, even as she pushed him, even as he fell, Robert had always kept his eyes steadily, almost ravenously, on hers. His eyes were the first things she’d questioned about him, and the first thing she’d loved.

“I ain’t gon’ be my father, Willie,” Robert said, his eyes still on Carson. “I ain’t gon’ be the kind of man who can only do one thing. I’m gonna make a life for us. I know I can do it.”

He looked at her finally. He brushed her cheek with his hand, then cupped the back of her neck. “We here now, Willie,” he pleaded. “Let’s be here.”

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