His Own Where (3 page)

from the other side of the other bed
the nurse was speaking to him, that longago first time.

“Don’t you have no mother, boy?”

Buddy stare back sullen.

“You don’t have to answer me. A woman my age know who has a mother and who don’t. You don’t. You don’t have no mother. Night after night, from afternoon you come sit by your father. Very nice, and what you should be doing. But how old you getting to be and what they call you?” Buddy stir himself, feeling most of all surprise. The woman talk like a knife try to butter but cuts the bread.

“Sixteen.”

“I knew you was sixteen. Or seventeen. Who’s taking care of you and what’s you name?”

“Buddy. Buddy Rivers.”

“Well, that’s all right too, but who is taking care of you, when you leave the hospital, Buddy Rivers?”

“Everything’s okay. We got things under control.”

“That’s how all you young people answer me. Everything is mind your own business, am I right?”

 

Buddy be annoy by now. The woman is a private nurse for the patient in the next bed. Be bad to make an enemy have to see an enemy in the same room where his father dying. And her question bother him. His relatives ask the same thing and discuss where he should move. Assume that he should move out of the house he and his father put together like their lives until now. Move! He will not move among the doilies, wallpaper, headboard beds, and extra extra chairs that scatter through the houses of his relatives. The gold-thread sofabeds. The monstrous glossy large television console. The wobbling bright installment furniture and Wollworth bric-a-brac that make it dangerous to stretch your legs straight out or swing your arms around. He will not move. It is a home they made. Not very clean in the usual way. But beautiful and full of what they absolutely need for everyday. Full and free from stuff just lying and lying around.

“I’m sure your father would expect you to show respect when people speak to you,” the nurse was saying. That was the whole nagging way she came on on the first night that she talk to him, to Buddy.

Buddy could never get over this difference between women and their daughters. Like this nurse, this obnoxious, nosy woman who spoke to him like that when they were strangers, she was the mother of his Angela. She was the mother of the girl Buddy felt guilty to be so aware of there right where his father lay, his face asleep, his life dying. But he was. He was even waiting for her. Weeks before they even spoke, he would feel himself waiting for the girl whose name he didn’t know.

Every evening around eight, just before the end of visiting hours, she would come and get her orders from headquarters. Her mother jangling with coins and keys and inquiries and orders: who ate what for dinner, who was where, and so forth. Angela was pretty. And she was pretty cool. He could tell she was embarrass by his witness to the nightly scene. But she keep cool. Keep her voice down low, releasing monosyllables as brief as possible:

“Yes. Okay. You said that. I won’t. I did it.”

 

She was pretty. And he like the coolness. The splash tongue of her mother inhibit both of them. Neither said hello.

Buddy always remember how the woman sizzle with suspicion even before Angela and him really start to talking with each other.

Then one time when Angela come by, wearing jeans and looking comfortable, her mother run through a tirade so tough that Buddy try to help out Angela and introduce himself and walk her home. The tirade start because of the bluejeans:

“Angela! Did you forget something?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Did you forget you were coming here to see me in the hospital?”

“What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter? You see how you dress and you askin me what is the matter. Are you a hippy? You think a hospital is a hippy hangout? This is a hospital and I am a professional woman. And I am your mother. Look at you.”

Angela try to walk out. The woman seize Angela by the arm and snarl upclose.

“You wait right there. I’m not finish talking to you. Do you hear me?”

Buddy want to interfere.

“And you, Mr. Rivers, you can sit right down again. What you standing for?”

“I think you should let go of Angela.”

“Angela, you saying. Angela. What other names you call each other, I would like to know. You pretending not to know each other all this time and what’s the truth behind it?”

“I hear you call her Angela, that’s all,” Buddy say, still standing.

Angela be trembling furious. The woman whirl and scream at her. “On top of everything you better not let me see you evil lip.”

“I be as evil as I want to be.”

“All right. You said it.”

“I say what? Let me go, Ma.”

The woman smack Angela in the face.

“You finish, Ma? You finish now?”

“No. I’m not finish. I’m just starting with you. Come back here.”

Angela break through the doorway, knowing her mother probably will not leave the patient by himself to follow her. Buddy follow Angela.

“What you want?” Angela be crying but no streaming tears.

“Let me walk you home.” Buddy catch up to her, walking along, worrying about her face. Thinking, feeling about Angela, he almost forget his father.

 

On the street they walk separated.

“Why the two of you go on like that?”

Angela feel stung: “the two of you.” She like the solid look of Buddy dark out the corner of her eyes upon her mother every night. Him, Buddy sitting there sly don’t miss a minute of the interaction. Still he say, “the two of you.” What did he mean? They walk separated. She not answering the question, hurt.

Streets turning off except for candystores, and liquor stores and iron grates dull interlocking over glass. Except for the bars the people party high, knees and feet poke rapid sharp toward an indoor kitchen, bedroom. People hurry calmly from the nighttime start to glittering like oil.

 

“My mother picking on me, picking, picking on me. I wish she would just kick me out.”

“You must be the oldest.”

“I am. Three brothers younger than me, and then a baby sister. My mother work and scream. My daddy work and both of them work nights. The problem is they think I’m working nighttime too—They think I’m maybe running the streets.”

“What your father do?”

“Driving a cab. So I take care of all the cooking. Baby-sit. But I try to study anyhow.”

“Where you go to school?”

“Lane.”

“Didn’t know people studying at Lane. Thought you people just fight and then just fight some more.”

“Oh, come on! Only thing we did was try to raise the flag of liberation. Now you know how folks react to liberation. But I been hearing about you. At Boys’ High. I even know your name.”

She don’t tell him how she hear how he suppose to be so fine and really B A D and have the teachers shook and shaking. Buddy have a lot
of friends hanging out with him at school. They stick together pretty tight, and he have a reputation everybody say the same about him so she hear things all the time.

When they reach her building Buddy see chalk scribbling on the granite and the outside stairs curve interesting worn.

 

Angela ask him inside.

Two of her brothers, Ronald, three, and Edwin, eleven, in front of the TV, wearing undershirts and BVDs. The third brother, eight-year-old Tyrone wearing the same, in the bathroom floating a TV dinner tray in the bathtub. Angela take Buddy to her room where the Baby, Debby, is sleeping. A doll carriage holding Debby asleep. Angela have a cot and ironing on top of it, she have to iron. Over by the radiator a scratch formica table and chair Angela use for studying. An overhead threesocket fixture, one bulb screw into it. Long nails in the wall hold clothing, hangers, dresses, skirts and jackets hung on them.

Buddy feel depression in the clutter-stricken room. Feel like a carpenter hands tied. Want to toss out everything and start the room from scratch. Keep it bare enough so Angela feel free.

“Your parents think you pretty wild.” Buddy not quite leaning on the edge of the table desk. “Are you?”

Angela answer, giggling. “You believe it. After I cook dinner, feed my baby sister, I drag over hear my mother, come back, wash or iron, study, worry about my father when he come home will he be shaking me awake and want to carry on, complain, and like that, I am pretty wild. Just like my mother say, a freak for parties.”

Buddy dig on the fantastic stack of 45’s piling from the floor. “Don’t you have no phonograph?”

Angela say no and she explain why she don’t play her records in the parlor where her father turn hysterical and call the music sinful. Call her when she dance and sing “a whore.”

Buddy like this girl, this Angela. He hate the room she have. Make him feel himself like overgrown from Mars. He hate the whole apartment skimpy on the peoplespace. Rooms crush small by stuffed-up piece of furniture huge sofa and huge matching lamps huge things that squeeze the family mix into a quarrel just to move around a little. But all he say, that first night when he look at how she live at home is that he see her in the hospital, tomorrow.

his life form into habits
following his love. Angela and the hospital and his father all roll into hours that he spend with them. Now every night he be walking Angela home from the hospital and then he go back there and stay there at the hospital watching his father/the body of his father on the hospital bed until they make him leave.

Sometimes Buddy wishing he could bring Angela to the house sanded and hammered into a home by him and his father. The house of things eliminated. The house made simple into home where Buddy waiting to know his father again alive in action taking a wall apart or building a low wall like a window ledge between two rooms.

Angela parents carry on so strict and wild that Buddy can only see her every day. Walking home. And for half a minute visits when her father may be sure to be out working. Or a few times managing the walk into the cemetery on a weekend afternoon. And one time at a party. And sometimes at the store.

Buddy and Angela keep track of daytime just by figuring out the last and next time they will come together and how long alone. They become the heated habit of each other.

another evening
and Angela mother rip into the love between them. Say she cannot sleep for worrying about her daughter and “that poor man, your father” and his son, Buddy.

Buddy ask the woman why she worrying and what about. The woman sob and shriek and curse at Angela and call her nogood lowdown. Angela feel humiliated and refuse to answer back.

Again her mother smack her in her face and Angela break away running. That night after Buddy walk Angela home he does not go back to see his father at the hospital. His head feel heavy and his feet.