To look at him, Lionel gave no signs of being frightened-he bounced on the balls of his feet, looking every way at once. But about halfway down the block he grabbed my hand, and I held his, awkwardly at first, feeling his tiny fingers moving like curious animals inside my closed fist.
19.
“Now, tell me how I know you again, baby?”
“You don’t,” said Martha. “Not really. My friend Anika, she knows your grandson Wayne.”
“Wayne in Gary?”
“No, ma’am. Wayne down in New Albany.”
The woman seated regally at the end of the long dining room table snorted and held up a wagging finger. “Grandson? Please, baby. That boy Wayne ain’t no kin to me. Godson. He my godson.” She took a long drag of her skinny cigarette and ashed it out in the juice cup at her elbow. “He still down there?”
“He’s in Louisville now, I think.”
“Well, you keep well clear of him. He dumb. Dumb and small-minded, too. There’s a difference, but he both. Stay clear.”
“Okay, ma’am. I will. I’ll do that.”
“Stop calling me ma’am, baby,” said the old lady. “Everybody call me Mama.”
“Okay, then.”
Martha smiled, barely, her face and her body rigid. She didn’t call the woman Mama. She wasn’t comfortable with that-she didn’t seem comfortable with any of this. Her sunglasses were folded neatly beside her at the table, like she was playing cards and this is what she was ready to bet with, if she had to. The room was small and stuffed with greenery, potted plants and vases full of flowers, all miraculously thriving in the low-hanging choke of smoke from Mama’s contraband Camels and the dope being enjoyed by her sons, who’d walked us up.
Mama Walker was middle-aged, but no telling how middle: somewhere north of forty-five and south of sixty. She’d been beautiful once and was beautiful now, in a way, an older lady’s leathery beauty. She was dark-skinned, and her face was lined, especially at the edges of her mouth. Her eyes were alert and alive, glittering with awareness, darting every which way at once. Noticing everything.
“Them two are my babies,” she said suddenly, swiveling to me, pointing with her smoke hand at the pair of men. “Twins. Believe that?”
I looked at them, and Mama’s babies nodded in unison from the love seat, two giants side by side, a couple of defensive linemen five years out of the game, old musculature hidden deep within layers of fat. In the apartment’s back room were a bunch of other kids, much younger, arrayed on and around a heavy sofa. Lionel, at Mama Walker’s encouragement, had fitted himself down among them, become instantly absorbed in whatever cartoon garbage was playing on the plasma screen across from Mama’s sofa.
Mama Walker stubbed out her Camel, pulled a new one.
“Misery sticks, I know. But I can’t smoke them Indian things. I feel bad about it and all, but them things taste like cow shit. So how old are you, baby?” The riff on slavery smokes was directed to me; the question was for Martha.
“Thirty-two.”
“Thirty-two. Thirty-two.” She looked at Martha carefully, critically, like a fine piece of jewelry. “Tricky age for us women, ain’t it?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Different for white girls, I guess.”
Martha shrugged uncomfortably. “I guess.”
“Everything different for white girls.”
I wondered again what the hell was going on here. I wondered, too, how I had managed to get myself implanted in it.
“And just so I’m straight on it,” said Mama, tilting her long head toward the back room, toward Lionel on the sofa. “Little man’s yours.”
“He is,” said Martha, looking yearningly toward the boy. “That’s right.”
Mama nodded slowly. She was looking at the kid, judging his complexion, casting as keen an appraising eye over the boy’s color as I had over Jackdaw’s-as I had over every runner I’d ever gone after. Mama Walker, I decided without thinking about it, without wanting to think about it, was moderate pine, red tone, number 211 or 212.
“So you what?” Mama Walker turned her eyes on me. “You Daddy?”
“No, ma’am,” I said quietly, and Martha rushed in: “He’s just a friend.”
“Just a friend,” she said, her voice low and easy, almost a whisper. “Just a friend.” She leaned forward, blew smoke out of the side of her mouth, and patted me on the knee. “Nice to meet you, Just-a-Friend.”
The Walker boys, over by the door, were sharing a one-hitter, silently trading hits.
“So where is Daddy?”
“Well…” Martha gave her head a tiny shake. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“You don’t?” Mama’s smile fell away. “And why not?”
“I really just want to uh, to, you know-to cover our business.”
“Oh, all right,” said Mama Walker. “Of course.”
There was the click-click of a lighter by the door, and I glanced over at the sons: son number 2 refiring the skinny pipe, son number 1 staring into space. A cartoon punch line blared from the television, one animated electric eel zinging another one, and the kids all roared. Lionel laughed along with them, perfectly at ease.
“But you know what, I do want to talk about it, just for a second. You don’t mind, do you?” She stared at Martha. “How about I just guess what happened to him?”
“Well…” Martha wrung her hands together. Her face was agonized. “I guess.”
“I’mma guess white men killed him.” Mama Walker said this without trouble, almost cheerfully. “’Cause of you. That it? Am I close on that?”
Martha didn’t answer, but Mama said, “I thought so,” as if she had. “That’s how they do, you know. You gotta be careful. North or no north, some things you just gotta be careful about. White man don’t play, you know? Right, Just-a-Friend?”
“Right,” I said.
“I’ll give you a little example, okay? All this shit hole here?” She pointed outside, at the trash-strewn street. “This all used to be green. Verdant. That the word, Marv?”
“Yes, Mama,” said one of her sons, in his thick voice.
Martha suddenly stood up. “I am so sorry that we bothered you,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “Hey, Lionel, honey?”
Lionel looked over from the couch, but meanwhile one of the big Walker boys had gotten up, too-not Marv, the other one. “Have a seat, little girl,” he said. “Mama talking.”
Martha sat. Lionel’s head swiveled back around to the screen. Mama gave no sign of having been interrupted. “It was verdant down here, back in the day. That’s what they say. I’m talking ’bout before I was born, understand. Before my mama was and hers was. There was a stream here. Little creek. I got a map, somewhere, somewhere in here, but you can see it, too, you go hunting through the dog shit and the broken glass out there, you can see, like, the traces of it, where it ran once, all those years ago. But see, the white men who were planning out the city, they didn’t like it where it was. The little river. So they just”-she made a quick gesture with her hands, sweeping the air-“ran it under the ground. Built right over it. You understand? You see?”
She waited. She wanted an answer. Martha whispered, “Yes.” I took off my glasses and wiped them on my shirt. Dope smoke wafted over from the love seat.
“They sent that little river underground, and they built their fucking ugly city over it. That’s how they do. Anything they don’t care for, anything that does not please, they use it up or they kill it or bury it, and they never think of it again. You see?”
Martha’s eyes were shut now. “I see.”
“So that’s what they did-open your eyes, sweetheart. Open.” Martha obeyed. “That’s what they did to your boy’s father. Them. White people.”