“Your breakfast is ready, Tug,” she said as she headed to the washing machine in the basement.
“Can we still go to the cemetery?” he called after her, afraid she might not allow him to go skateboarding in the parking lot anymore.
“I don’t see why not,” she answered, her voice calm and even.
Nearly every weekend in good weather, the two of them, and Marguerite, made the trip to the cemetery parking lot on 15th and Broad. Tug’s mother told him it was a sacred space where the ancestors slept below the streets.
“Will they ever wake up?” he’d asked her once.
“Not till Judgment Day, I expect, but they won’t hurt us. This place is special, because most all the people buried under here lived way back, during slavery. Gabriel the Blacksmith is buried here, and he led a slave revolt two hundred years ago. They caught him and hung him on the gallows, but he was a hero to the people.”
“We’re not slaves, Mommy.”
“No, Tug, we’re free, we’ve been free for over 140 years now.”
“Then why does Mr. Not try to own you?”
His mother opened her mouth, then shut it again. “Your godfather loves us, honey. If he seems a little gruff, that’s just his way. I love your... him, maybe too much,” she finally said.
“Gabriel was a blacksmith? Does that mean he worked in a forge, like the black god you showed me in that big book on Africa?” “Like Ogun,” said Tug’s mother, surprised he remembered their conversation about the Yoruba god.
“Yeah, Ogun was a god and a ninja too.” Tug thought of the comics he read at night in bed with Marguerite by his side.
According to their usual Saturday routine, Tug helped his mother make the beds, dust, restack magazines, place books back on their shelves. He did it not simply because it meant they would get to the parking lot sooner, but also because he liked being in the house with nice furniture, clean linen. He enjoyed the rhythms of domesticity.
Skateboarding was the only outdoor activity Tug enjoyed. He looked forward to sailing over the concrete, arms out, knees bent, with open space and no cars to dodge, while his mother and Marguerite watched him fly. Somehow knowing that the parking lot was also a cemetery comforted him. His mother once told him that ever since he was three years old, he’d always had a special affinity for graveyards, turning to look and point whenever they passed one in a car. Now he imagined the graves as a city below the ground, with Gabriel Ogun presiding.
As they were finally preparing to leave for the parking lot, Tug heard the front door open and close. Mr. Not was back. He didn’t usually come around until nighttime.
“Vee, I have to talk to you. Regina threw my clothes and my good shoes outside this morning, and now she’s threatening to come over here and run you out of this house. Harold, go and play while I talk to your mama. And take your sissy doll with you.” Mr. Not grabbed Marguerite and flung her at the boy.
“Go on, it’s okay,” said Tug’s mother. “When we finish discussing business, I’ll take you to the parking lot. Okay?”
Tug backed out the door with his eyes fixed on Mr. Not.
He went and sat in the swing, humming to Marguerite and rubbing her back the way his mother sometimes affectionately rubbed his.
“Go ahead, Marguerite, you can hum too. I lost you last night when I hit the zig-zags. Next time, hold my hand tight, so the Sandman and the zig-zags won’t get us.” Tug had brought his skateboard and backpack with him, and now he rolled the board underfoot back and forth.
He continued to hum while he listened to the escalating discussion in the kitchen. Suddenly, his song was interrupted by the Raggedy Ann doll sailing out the back door, head first, landing in a heap on the ground. The doll had lost its green cap and lay there with legs splayed, its smiling face kissing the grass. Tug left the swing and walked past Raggedy Ann to see who had thrown it out. At first, he thought it was Glenda the Good Witch, but when she said his name he realized it had been his mother. With her silk dressing gown streaming behind her, she strode over to Tug and grabbed him by the hand. Tendrils of hair had come loose from her long ponytail.
“I’m going to bring you next door to Mrs. Richardson’s house, and you stay there until I come get you.”
“But you said you were going to take me skateboarding.”
“I am, I will, but just wait there until I come get you.”
Mrs. Richardson was accustomed to her friend and neighbor Velma Holloway sometimes arriving unannounced with her son. Tug’s mother told him to sit down in the family room, then walked with Mrs. Richardson into the kitchen. When they returned from their brief conference, his mother said, “You mind Mrs. Richardson. I’ll be back in a few minutes, then we’ll go to the parking lot. Let me go get my business straight. Thanks, Betty.”
Tug folded his arms and looked away when she tried to kiss his cheek. After she left, Mrs. Richardson inserted a DVD of Tug’s favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz. “Call me when it gets to the part with the lollipop kids. That cracks me up,” she said. Then she returned to the kitchen to finish chopping vegetables while listening to Smokey Robinson croon, “Ooo baby, babeee... I did you wrong,” on Power 92, oldies-but-goodies radio.
The witch’s feet shriveled up and disappeared under the house, but Tug wasn’t thrilled the way he usually was. “Marguerite, do you think Mr. Not’s going to make Mommy cry again?” He looked around for Marguerite, only to realize he’d left her and the skateboard by the swing.
Going out the side door, Tug ran from Mrs. Richardson’s yard directly into his own. There was no fence dividing the two row houses. He gently lifted Marguerite and patted her head.
“I didn’t mean to leave you. It’s just that Mommy was rushing me.” As he turned to go back the way he came, Tug heard raised voices from the second floor of his house.
With Marguerite in tow, he ran inside and crept up the carpeted stairs. He walked past the bathroom and glimpsed Mr. Not shaving at the mirror that hung over the sink. Then Tug rounded the corner and saw his mother sitting on her bed, arms crossed, smoking a cigarette. He took a few quiet steps back and watched as Mr. Not turned his head at odd angles, like a bird trying to see behind itself, as he delicately pressed blade to skin to get the last bit of stubble from his lower jaw. Silence had overtaken the bickering couple. Tug thought he heard the faint music of an ice cream truck, but didn’t run to his mother. He went and hid with Marguerite behind the long velvet drapes on the second-floor landing, where he could observe. He listened for something he could not know he was listening for, a prelude to a kind of dance. Velma’s shaking foot kept time...
Ray Harold Vermeer studied himself in the mirror, touched a hand to his temple. The phone rang and Velma got up to see who was calling; when she saw Betty Richardson’s number on the caller ID she didn’t answer, but let it go to voice mail.
“Vee, I swear, Regina’s just bluffing.”
Velma placed her cigarette in the ashtray, rose from the bed, and walked toward the bathroom, as if she had been summoned. “Then why did you come over here this morning? You say this is my house, but when you and Regina argue, she threatens to fly on over here and act a fool, same way she did the time we moved in, calling me a slut in front of my neighbors.” Pulling another cigarette and matches out of her robe, Velma lit up with trembling hands.
“Will you forget about her for one minute! Why can’t we just spend a little time together like we used to before Harold came into the picture and Regina went on the warpath? Take off that bathrobe. Daddy wants to show you something when he comes out the bathroom.”