Homegoing(76)

“I’m coming in,” she said forcefully. She had discovered weeks before that it was better to enter rooms forcefully than it was to do so timidly, since drunk men had a tendency to lose their hearing.

The man in the bathroom certainly had lost his. He was hunched over, his face in the sink, mumbling to himself.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Willie said. As she turned to leave, the man looked up, and caught her eye in the mirror.

“Willie?” he asked.

She knew his voice immediately, but she didn’t turn. She didn’t answer him. All she could think about was the fact that she had not recognized him.

There was a time, when they were still just sweethearts dating and at the beginning of their marriage, when Willie thought she knew Robert better than she knew herself. This was more than a matter of knowing what his favorite color was, or knowing what he wanted for dinner without him having to tell her. It was a matter of knowing the things that he could not yet let himself know. Like that he was not the kind of man who could handle invisible hands around his neck. That Carson’s birth had changed him, but not for the better. It had made him deeply afraid of himself, always questioning his choices, never measuring up to a standard of his own making, a standard that was upheld in his own father’s generous love, a love that had made a way for him and his mother, even when the cost had been great. That Willie could recognize these things in Robert, but be unable to recognize his hunched back, his hanging head, frightened her.



Two white men walked into the room, not noticing Willie. One wore a gray suit, and the other a blue one. Willie held her breath.

“You still in here, Rob? The girls are about to get onstage,” the blue suit said.

Robert sent Willie a desperate look, and the gray suit, who hadn’t yet spoken, followed his gaze to her body. He looked her up and down, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

Robert shook his head. “All right, boys. Let’s go,” he said. He tried to smile, but the corners of his lips tugged down almost immediately.

“Looks like Robert’s already got him a girl,” the gray suit said.

“She’s just in here to clean up,” Robert said. Willie saw that his eyes had started to plead, and it was not until then that she knew she was in trouble.

“Maybe we don’t even need to go back out,” the gray suit said. His shoulders relaxed, his body leaned against the wall.

The blue suit started grinning too.

Willie clutched the mop. “I should go. My boss will be looking for me,” she said. She tried to change her voice as Robert had. She tried to sound like them.

The gray suit eased the mop away. “You still have cleaning to do,” he said. He caressed her face. His hands started to move down her body, but before it could reach her breast she spit in his face.

“Willie, don’t!”

The two suits turned to look at Robert, the gray suit wiping the spit from his face. “You know her?” the blue suit asked, but the gray suit was two steps ahead of him. Willie could see him collecting all the clues in his mind: the dusk of Robert’s skin, the thick voice, the nights spent away from home. He sent Robert a withering look. “She your woman?” he asked.



Robert’s eyes had started to fill up. His skin was already sallow from his being sick, and he looked like he might be sick again any minute. He nodded.

“Well, why don’t you come over here and give her a kiss?” the gray suit asked. He had already unzipped his pants with his left hand. With his right hand, he stroked his penis. “Don’t worry, I won’t touch her,” he said.

And he kept his word. Robert did all the work that night while the blue suit guarded the door. It wasn’t more than a few tear-stained kisses and carefully placed hands. Before the gray suit could ask for Robert to enter her, he came, a shuddering, breathy thing. Then, immediately after, he grew bored with his game.

“Don’t bother coming to work tomorrow, Rob,” he said as he and the blue suit made their way out.

Willie felt a small breeze come in from the closing door. It raised the hairs on her skin. Her whole body was stiff like a piece of wood. Robert reached for her, and it took her a second to realize that she still controlled her body. He was already touching her by the time she moved away.

“I’ll leave tonight,” he said. He was crying again, his brown, green, gold eyes shimmering behind the wet.

He left the room before Willie could tell him he was already gone.

*

Carson was still licking his ice cream. He held it in one hand. His other hand held Willie’s, and the feel of her son’s skin on hers was enough to bring tears to her eyes. She wanted to keep walking. All the way to Midtown if need be. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her son so happy.

After that day with Robert, Joe offered to marry her, but Willie couldn’t bear the thought of it. She took Carson and left in the middle of the night, found a place the next morning far enough away that she figured she wouldn’t see anyone she knew anymore. But she couldn’t leave Harlem, and that little corner of the great city had started to feel like it was pressing in on her. Every face was Robert’s and none was his.



Carson wouldn’t stop crying. It seemed like for whole weeks at a time, the boy just wouldn’t stop crying. In the new apartment Willie had no Bess to leave him with, and so she left him by himself on days she went to work, making sure to shut the windows and lock the doors and hide the sharp things. At night she would find that he had put himself to sleep, the mattress soaked with his ever-present tears.