An American Marriage(54)

“I’m not comparing,” I said. “I’m trying to tell you something. Let me tell you this, Daddy. I sold a garbage bag and I didn’t ask myself why someone would want to pay good money for it. I just worked him till I had every cent he had, because I needed cash to get a piece of fruit. I was craving that fresh taste.” The pear had been red like an autumn leaf and it was as soft as ice cream. I ate the whole thing: seeds, core, and stem—all of it. I ate it in the filthy bathroom because I didn’t want anybody to see me with it and take it from me.

“Son,” Big Roy said, and I knew just from the loosening of his face that even he knew the rest of the story. It felt like I was the only person in the world who didn’t understand how a man in prison uses a garbage bag. I had tried to share the pear with Walter, but he wouldn’t touch it, not when I told him how I got it.

“How was I supposed to know?” I asked my father.

In prison, you learn quick that anything can be a weapon to be used against the other man or yourself. A toothbrush becomes a dagger, a chocolate bar can be melted into homemade Napalm, and a garbage bag makes a perfect noose. “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have given it to him, let alone taken his money.”

I remembered myself retching over the metal commode, hoping the foul odor would help me vomit that pear, but nothing came up but my own stomach juices, bitter and sharp.

“I’m not blaming you, son,” Big Roy said. “Not for anything.”

Then the phone started up, like it knew that we were sitting there and it refused to be ignored.

“That ain’t Wickliffe,” Big Roy said.

“I know.”

It rang until she got tired. And it rang again.

“I don’t want to talk to Celestial until I have something to tell her.”

“You just told me that you’re going up there. That’s something to tell.”

Now was the time to say the words I didn’t want to say. “I don’t have money.”

Big Roy said, “I can help you some. It’s close to payday, but you’re welcome to what I have. Maybe Wickliffe can spot me a few.”

“Daddy, you already offered me your car. You can’t take money from Wickliffe.”

“This is no time to be pigheaded. You either drive up there with what money I can scrape together for you, or you wait for Andre to come get you. It may hurt your ego to take money from a senior citizen, but it’s going to hurt you more if you wait till Wednesday.”

It was amazing how much Big Roy reminded me of Walter right then. I missed my Biological something terrible. I wondered what he would have to say about all of this. I always figured that Walter was as far away from Big Roy as two people could get, and not just that Big Roy was the kind of man to make a junior out of another man’s son, while Walter was a borderline deadbeat. Knowing them both, I can see that my mama had a type, and I guess we all do. Her type of man is one with a point of view. Somebody who thinks he has figured out how this life thing works.

“You know,” Big roy said, “There’s the money your mother saved for you when you were just born. Might be a couple hundred dollars in your name. With your driver’s license and your birth certificate, you should be able to draw it down. Olive kept all your papers in her dresser drawer.”

The bedroom was set up the way it was when Olive was alive. Spread on the bed was the quilt with the overlapping circles she bought at the swap meet. On the west wall was a framed picture of three girls wearing pink dresses, jumping rope. I’d bought it for her with money from my first check. It wasn’t an original, but the print was signed and numbered. On top of the dresser, like a mischievous angel, was the poupée dressed in my john-johns.

When Big Roy said the bank book was in “her” dresser drawer, he meant the one on the top right, where she kept her most personal things. I positioned my hand on the brass drawer pull and froze.

“You see it?”

“Not yet,” I said. Then I yanked the drawer like I was snatching off a bandage. The draft in the room collided with the neatly folded clothes, releasing the scent I’ll always associate with Olive. If you were to ask me what it smelled like, I couldn’t answer any more than you would know what to say if someone asked you to describe the fragrance of coffee. It was the scent of my mother and it couldn’t be broken down into parts. I lifted up a flowered scarf and held it to my face. Pressure amassed behind my eyes, but nothing came. I inhaled deep from the cloth in my hand, and the strain became heavier, almost a headache, but the cry wouldn’t come. I tried to fold the scarf, but it looked rolled up, and I didn’t want to disrupt the orderly stacks.

A clutch of papers fastened with a green rubber band fit into the back corner of the drawer. I gathered the little stack and took it back to the kitchen where Big Roy was waiting.

“You never cleared out her things?”

“I couldn’t see the purpose,” he said. “Not like I needed the extra room.”

I took the rubber band off the bundle. On the top was my birth certificate, indicating that I was a Negro male born alive in Alexandria, Louisiana. My original name was on it, Othaniel Walter Jenkins. Olive’s signature is small and cramped, like the letters were hiding behind one another. Underneath that was the revised document with my new name and Big Roy’s signature laid down in a flourish of blue ink, and my mother’s handwriting is loopy and girlish. The first page of the bank book showed a $50 deposit the year I was born and $50 every year thereafter. The deposits picked up when I was fourteen and I added $10 every month. When I was sixteen I pulled down $75 to get the passport I now held in my hands. Opening the little blue booklet, I gazed at the black-and-white photo taken at the post office in Alexandria. Turning my eyes back on the bankbook, I noted the withdrawal I made after high school, $745 to take to college, leaving a $187 balance. With more than ten years of interest, there was probably a little more. Maybe enough to get me to Atlanta without having to shake down my father and Old Man Wickliffe.