“And once you know?”
“I thought it might bring me some kind of peace.” I laugh. “I see now I was wrong about that. Besides which, I’ll never know it all. Too much time has passed. Too much lost.”
“Like this neighborhood,” he says. “It doesn’t matter so much what you recover from the past as what you do with yourself now.”
“Spoken like a true renovator.”
He grins. We come to a house with the word OFFICE painted in red on its side. Two boys, about ten, in do-rags and basketball shirts, shoot hoops at a goal on the corner. They quit their trash-talking long enough to stare at me. “Reg-gee,” one calls. “‘S up, man?” His sneakers glow in the sunlight. His loose drawers look like grocery bags slipped down over his knees.
Reggie nods at the boys, and we step inside the office. It’s cool; a rusty blade fan hustles in the corner. The wooden floor creaks. A cricket by the door trills now and then, like a smoke alarm losing its juice. The room smells of egg rolls, doughnuts — fast food sacks clutter the trash can. Next to it, a box of CDs: DMX, Swizz Beatz, Method Man. Above a small desk, framed on the wall, a Frederick Douglass quote: “What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity.” Next to it, pinned with a nail, Psalm 100:
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us and not we ourselves; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
A list of donors also appears on the walclass="underline" Lannan Foundation, Amoco Corporation, Cultural Arts Council of Houston, Wells Fargo Foundation, Philip Morris.
“I know, I know,” Reggie says, watching my eyes. “I felt funny, at first, taking dead presidents from a tobacco company, but they were happy to give — ”
“Poor neighborhoods are a rich market for them,” I counter softly. “Blacks smoke more and suffer higher lung cancer rates — ”
“Shit, girl. You get these figures from the mayor’s office?”
I realize I sound the way he did, lecturing Ariyeh. “Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“So you frown on — ”
“It’s just that, working for the mayor, I see black and Hispanic officials bought off all the time. They’re usually the only Democratic leaders opposed to smoking bans, because of grants like yours — ’goodwill’ gestures to neighborhoods like this.”
“Say what you will, I needed five thousand dollars for a community Thanksgiving dinner last fall,” Reggie says. “It would have taken me months of paperwork, a bumper-car ride through the usual aids agencies, with no guarantees. Smoke-folks made the eagle fly right away, no questions asked.” He points out the window to another house, right behind the office. Wet blouses droop on a line. “That’s our Young Mothers Residential Program. We offer one-year residencies to single mothers and their kids. They get to live in this nice, refurbished place while they work and further their education. Our aim is to help them become self-sufficient and pull themselves out of poverty.”
“That’s wonderful, Reggie.”
“So. Does it really matter where the money comes from?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, buzzing from our banter.
“The biggest problem around here is teenage moms with no jobs, no husbands in the house — most of the neighborhood boys wind up in jail. We got a woman living here now, Natalie, former hooker, crack addicted — clean eighteen months. Two children, a little girl, three, and her boy Michael there.” He points out the window at the kids shooting baskets. “The blue shorts.”
He steps outside, motioning me to follow, and knocks on Natalie’s door. A thin woman, dark and as sleek as Kwako’s metal sculptures, answers, blinking painfully in the sunlight. “How you doing?” Reggie asks.
She scratches her ribs. The straps of her red cotton halter slide down her shoulders. “Fine.” A croak and a whisper. She clears her throat. “Studying my economics book. Sasha’s asleep.”
Reggie introduces us just as a bright black BMW lurches to a stop in the street, blasting rap. “Skeezer! Say mama!” a young man yells from the car. “Got some Wild Cat here, or how ‘bout some Kibbles and Bits? I know you be wanting some, sugar. Your name on it, right chere. Take a look.”
Natalie lifts a hand to her mouth.
“Easy, now,” Reggie says to her. “Ignore them.”
“Assholes. They come by here every day in some new G-ride. I worry about Michael.”
As she says this, the young man waves to her boy. “Yo, Air Jordan! Special today, just for you, some mighty African Woodbine. Ax your mommy is it payday. A twinkie’ll do.”
Michael looks like he’s going to hurl the basketball at the shouter’s face. “Get the hell out of here!” he screams. “Leave my mama alone, you sorry-ass — ”
“Michael!” Natalie calls.
“Scotty got your mama bad, bitch-boy. Foe-one-one. Skeezer, best teach this little bitch-boy some manners. Might be he be a dead rag someday.”
Reggie moves toward the street and stands with folded arms. The car pulls away, but not before the young man spots me and yells, “Miss Ann! Miss Thang! What up?”
I try to get a better glimpse of his face.
Reggie rubs Michael’s head. “Let me know if you see them again, okay?”
“Bus a cap in that nickel-slick peckerwood — ”
“Michael, just let me know if you see them, all right?”
“Sho.”
Reggie tells Natalie not to worry, keep studying, she’ll be fine.
“Take care,” I offer lamely. She stares at me, then Reggie, then cuts back to me with what appears to be a nasty little sneer of suspicion.
Back in the office, Reggie says the young man in the car is a “smalltime asshole, Rue Morgue’s his street name, thinks he’s a world-class bad-ass.” He tells me Wild Cat is coke mixed with methcathinone. Kibbles and Bits, crack rocks.
“And African Woodbine?”
“Pot. Cheap as hell these days. Kids half Michael’s age are selling and using the shit. See what we’re up against?”
“You’re very brave.”
He laughs. “I’m just trying to keep a few of us alive. What you just saw — it’s why I can’t stand Ariyeh’s old man. She and I fight about it all the time. He’s living in the past, dig, no idea what’s happening in our community today, the pressures the kids are under. He bought this notion, long ago, that if a black man just shuffles sweetly, mumbling, ‘Yessir’ and ‘Nosir,’ he’ll do all right. And those fucking spells of his, as if he could just magic away all the trouble on the streets …”
“He did what he had to, in his time, to stay alive. At least he never wound up in prison.”
“And you. You got your own magic, eh?” He touches my arm. “High yella. Lets you pass through walls.”
I ignore this. “It was good to meet you, Reggie. I hope to see you again before I leave.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” he says. “I didn’t piss you off just now, did I?”
“No.”
“You’re not leaving mad?”
“Not at all.” I smile, to reassure us both.
“Friends, then?”
“Friends.”
“Okay. Good. I’m glad. Ariyeh’s really happy you’re back.”
“I missed her, too.”
“I hope you find your daddy.”
Probably ran off with some Skeezer. “Thank you. I appreciate the tour.”