Sunday You Learn How to Box Read online

  “Of course, moving is part of our plan. You don’t think this is the end of the road, do you? First, I have to make us a family. Then we’ll move.”

  We couldn’t move fast enough to suit me. As far as I was concerned, if living in the projects was part of the plan, Mom had already made a big mistake. One of my first memories of living there was the afternoon of my sixth birthday. Mom and I had celebrated with our own party. I didn’t know or like any of the project kids well enough to invite them into our apartment. A few of them had taken turns shoving me around since we’d moved in. Nothing too serious, but not exactly “let’s be best friends” either. Usually, I ventured out only when I’d checked beforehand to see if the courtyard was empty. At the first sign of another kid, I disappeared inside. It seemed to me to be the safest way to deal with it until I could come up with a better strategy.

  When Mom asked me if I was sure I wanted it to be only the two of us for my party, I said I was, insisting though that we still get dressed up. I chose my navy blue velvet jacket with the matching tie. She wore pearls with a camel-colored sweater set and alligator shoes. Toasting me with cream soda in a stemmed wine glass, she kissed me and whispered, “To Louis, on the day made just for him.” The two of us had such a fine time that I drifted quite contentedly outside to sit on the stoop and read from my favorite present, an illustrated edition of Grimm’s Fairy-Tales with gold-edged pages. I’d already read “The Fisherman and His Wife” several times, fascinated by the pictures of the fisherman on his knees at the ocean. And I stared into the pinched face of his dissatisfied wife, shaking her fist at the sky.

  Bubba Graves came across the courtyard and up to the stoop. “Sissy, who you think you are?”

  The afternoon had left me feeling pretty bold. “Go away, onionhead,” I told Bubba who was eight and at least a foot taller than me. He reached over and pulled me up by the collar of my jacket. “Who you callin’ onionhead?”

  “You see anybody else around here with a head like yours?” I replied, struggling to get away.

  Bubba looked furious at first. Then he started to fake a laugh. He pulled the jacket off me and threw it to the ground. Standing on it, he grabbed one sleeve and pulled on it grunting and dribbling, his eyes crossing and uncrossing again. When I heard it rip, I screamed like he’d torn my arm from its socket. He waved the sleeve in the air above my head shouting, “Look at your sissy jacket now! I fixed it for ya!” I stumbled into the house, holding the ruined jacket to my chest.

  Mom ran downstairs and stormed over to the Graveses’ apartment. When she held the jacket up in front of Inez Graves, demanding to know what she intended to do about it, Bubba’s mother barked at her, “That’s what the hell you get for sending your boy outside looking like a little white girl.”

  • • •

  Mom was a department manager at Saks Fifth Avenue in downtown Stratfield. She’d worked for Saks in New York City before she moved to Connecticut. Proud of being a department manager, she told me there weren’t any other black women managers in the New York or the Stratfield store.

  From the time I started school, I stayed at Miss Odessa’s until Mom picked me up on her way home from Saks. Miss Odessa asked me everything about Mom she didn’t dare ask her, knowing Mom would tell her it was none of her business. Being a kid, I couldn’t say anything like that to Miss Odessa so I usually pretended I didn’t understand what she was asking. I’d wait until Mom picked me up to tell her in front of Miss Odessa, “Mom, Miss Odessa wants to know how much you get paid to get dressed up and walk around Saks all day with a badge on, but I told her she should ask you.” Miss Odessa would be pretty snitty with me for the next few days when we were alone, but it was worth it.

  Every once in a while Mom would bring a guy home and we’d put on a kind of show for him. She’d cook and then go change into one of her dresses that she said was from the New York days. While she was changing, I was supposed to read to the guy from whatever book I’d taken out of the library. She’d make me read because it was pretty much the only way she could get me to talk in front of him and because it also made me seem as smart as she’d told him I was. The few nights I tried to make some excuse for not reading, like not having a library book that week, she’d wait until the guy left and wake me up to let me have it.

  “I don’t care if you read him the telephone bill. You do what I ask you to do when I ask you to do it. Don’t try to make a liar out of me, Louis.” It took me a while to figure out that these nights were her sales presentations and the sales presentations were part of “our plan.” If I didn’t do my part, it made it harder for her to sell both of us to the guy.

  The night she brought Ben home, I knew it was important. Some of the others had been a lot better looking or friendlier. A couple of them, I could tell, would have liked both of us, whether I could read or not. Most of them, once she’d changed into the New York dress, didn’t really listen to what I was reading. They just wanted me to hurry up and go to bed or anywhere so they could be alone with her. But with this Ben guy, she was nervous.

  “Ben works in the shipping department,” she said when she introduced him, “as an order clerk. Of course, a man as smart as Ben should be a manager. But they wouldn’t make a black man a manager for anything.”

  She didn’t act like she was having fun at all, but she was definitely working hard. When she changed into the New York dress he didn’t seem to notice, and I could tell she was disappointed. I felt sorry for her, so I tried to do my part better than usual. There’s only so much I could do with a library book except to read really loudly and exaggerate the different characters’ voices like I was playing all the parts in a movie. I thought it was going pretty well, especially the narration, which I was reading with a deep Southern drawl to make it more interesting. I looked up about halfway through and Ben was staring at me as if maybe he was a little afraid of me, even if I was only eight. Mom looked like she was in shock, like she couldn’t understand what I was doing, but didn’t know how to stop it. Later, after he left, when she got into bed I pretended to be asleep but she knew I wasn’t. “I just want you to ask me for something,” she said in the dark, turned away from me. “I’m just waiting for you to ask me for something you really want.”

  • • •

  Two nights later, when we were having dinner, Mom told me, “Ben says you’re definitely too old to be sleeping in the same bed with me.”

  I excused myself and pushed away from the table so I wouldn’t have to look at her. I got this picture of Ben stealing into our room in the middle of the night, staring at us, then shaking his head and sneaking back out of the apartment. What did it matter to him where I slept? Why was she talking about it with him?

  “We’re all going out Saturday night. Make sure you have a nice, clean shirt and pants to wear.”

  I stopped and turned back to her. “All of us?” I don’t know why I asked. I’d heard her alright. Maybe I hoped I had a choice.

  At the Chinese restaurant, Ben ordered everything for us without asking us what we wanted, pretending to read Chinese from the menu like he knew what he was doing. Mom started to laugh.

  “Ben speaks French, too.”

  But when Ben looked at her as if he wasn’t sure if she was making fun of him, she said, “So does Louis, Ben. Maybe you can talk to each other in French. Go ahead, Louis. Say something to Ben in French.”

  “I don’t really speak French,” I said to Ben quietly. “My class had a substitute last year who was Canadian. She taught us ‘bonjour,’ ‘merci’ and ‘comment allez-vous,’ but that’s all I know.”

  “Well, that’s French, isn’t it?” Mom asked me, in a huff. “Why did you contradict me, Louis?” Then she gave Ben her wide smile again. “Ben, you say something to Louis in French.”

  Ben looked down into his empty plate, up again at her and finally at me. He shrugged. “ ‘Bonjour’ ” and “ ‘merci’ ” and uh, the other one, huh? Well, I guess you got one on me, then. I’m st
rictly a hello and thank-you kinda guy.”

  “I certainly don’t know any other black men who can speak a foreign language at all,” Mom said quickly. “And I’ve got two right here at this table.”

  I watched them, saying as little as possible after that. When we got home I got yelled at for being rude, which surprised me since I’d been careful to call Ben Mr. Ben. I’d said, “Please, Mr. Ben,” “Thank you, Mr. Ben,” and “No, thank you, Mr. Ben.” I decided it was something else he’d told her, and I was beginning to understand that what he said was important to her, whether it was true or not.

  For the next few weeks, I knew Mom was still dating Ben, but we didn’t talk about him at all. First on Saturday nights, then on Friday nights as well, I packed my books and pajamas and went to Miss Odessa’s. I only saw Ben when they both came to pick me up. Mom always asked me if I wanted to stay at Miss Odessa’s until morning and I always said no. Ben would walk us through the projects back to our apartment in the middle of the night. He never said anything to me, but I heard him tell Mom one night that she should just tell me what to do, that where I slept should be her choice not mine.

  One Friday, before they went out, she told me to sit on the couch so she could talk to me. I knew trouble was coming. Mom never told me where to sit before she said something. Ben went to the bedroom door and inspected our room as if he was deciding whether Mom and I kept it neat or not. Mom said, “Louis, Ben and I are going to get married.”

  She said even though the wedding hadn’t happened yet they were thinking I could call him Daddy Ben or just Dad now if I wanted. “Which one do you think, hon?” I sat watching Ben, who still had his back to both of us, staring into the bedroom.

  “Why can’t I just keep calling him Mr. Ben?” I asked her. I don’t know whether I really said it so quietly or if she was stalling for time to think of what to say. “Ben, did you hear Louis? He asked me why he couldn’t just keep calling you Mr. Ben. I don’t know how to answer that, Ben.”

  Ben turned from looking into the bedroom and walked over to where I was sitting on the couch.

  “Flip. He’s being flip. Because you let him get away with it.”

  Ben stood over me. “Let me tell you something, Louis. From what your mother says, there are snot-noses out there a helluva lot smaller than you are taking pot shots at you. Maybe it’s because of your smart-aleck mouth. But you know what, buddy? You’ve met your match with me. Now try this on for size. You can call me Mr. Ben if you want to. But only if you call your mother Mrs. Ben from now on, too. Okay? Now what do you have to say about that, Mr. Flip?” I looked down at my shoes, hoping Mom and Ben had to leave soon and this part would be over.

  The next morning, Mom sat on my side of the bed and said gently, “Could you try calling him Daddy Ben just to see how you like it? It’ll be better for all of us. You’ll see.”

  Two weeks later, she showed me a very plain, black dress with long tight sleeves that she said she’d bought to get married in. “This is about the finest silk there is,” she said proudly. “Feel it.” I ran my fingers around the collar. I hadn’t expected it to be black. She looked beautiful in it, though, standing next to Ben in our living room. They stood facing the minister from the church me and Mom went to, with their backs to me, Miss Odessa and Miss Odessa’s boyfriend, Albert. The three of us sat on the couch because there wasn’t room in the living room for all of us to stand. When the ceremony was over, the adults drank champagne and Mom gave me a glass of ginger ale. With each sip, I pretended I was getting drunker. I went into the bathroom and spun around in circles until I got dizzy. Then I sat on the toilet, and rasped in my drunk voice the same thing Miss Odessa kept saying to Mom, “Jeanette, you got him, girl! You got him now!”

  I must have been in there for a long time, because Mom knocked on the door to ask if I was alright. When I went back out to the living room, Miss Odessa and her boyfriend were gone and I didn’t see Ben either. Mom was sitting at one end of the couch. It had been made up like a bed, the way it was when I stayed home sick and she let me come out and watch television or when she was angry with me and slept out there herself.

  From where I stood, I could see Ben in the bedroom, in his undershirt, taking off his watch. I thought at that moment he was probably the tallest man I’d ever seen, a giant in a dollhouse. I looked back to the couch. My pajamas were folded, placed in the middle of my pillow like they were a present. I couldn’t look at Mom. She reached for me and I stood there as she hugged me, kissed me on my forehead, my nose, then both sides of my face.

  “Good night, baby.”

  I wasn’t going to answer, but I knew she wouldn’t go away if I didn’t.

  “Night.”

  I bent down to take off my shoes. She started toward the bedroom, then turned when she got to the door.

  “Did you say good night to Daddy Ben?”

  I hung my pants over the chair, leg to leg, ankle to ankle.

  “Good night, Daddy Ben.”

  I hoped it was loud enough. I didn’t want to have to say it again.

  “Good night.”

  The door was already closed.

  • • •

  On Saturdays, Ben left for work at seven-thirty. I pretended to be asleep until eight. If I stayed in bed any later, Mom threw up every shade, slammed every drawer and dragged all the furniture around like she was single-handedly moving us to another apartment. By then, I was up and scurrying, trying to make up for lost time.

  It was all Mom’s furniture that she’d bought from Saks. I thought Ben would’ve brought something with him besides his clothes, but Mom said he’d been living in a furnished room. “It’s just as well,” she’d told me, “I haven’t met anybody in this town with the same taste as I have. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I had to cram a lot of junk in here that I couldn’t stand looking at.”

  As soon as I dressed and ate, we scrubbed and waxed together. We crawled through the apartment on our knees, with sponges, rags, steel wool pads, buckets of boiled water and ammonia. Around noon, depending on how much we’d finished, Mom sent me to Big Lou’s to buy a half pound of lunch meat, two fresh hard rolls, a pack of Salem cigarettes, a bottle of ginger ale and a half pint of scotch. In the beginning, Mom would call the liquor store before I got there, or send a note with me. But after a while, the man didn’t even look at the note and eventually I told Mom I didn’t need one anymore.

  When I got back to the apartment, she’d still be on her knees in a corner. “You get everything, alright?”

  I’d unpack it all and lay it out on the kitchen table. Mom came in and opened the cigarettes first. She’d stick out her lips and push the cigarette in between them to taste it, run her tongue over it. With a single hard pop of the match, she’d light it. The first drag was slow and long. She held the smoke, then let it drift out between her lips slowly without moving. Then, she’d reach for a small paring knife to break the seal on the scotch. “Get a couple of glasses down.”

  With her first sip, she scrunched up her nose as if she didn’t like the way it smelled. After the next, more swallow than sip, she’d go into the living room and put on a record. Sometimes Billie Holiday, sometimes Dinah Washington. She’d sing the first line of the song with them before she came back into the kitchen.

  “You want a little ginger ale?”

  I always imagined it was scotch. She’d add a little soda to her drink. “Come on and sing with me, baby.”

  Most of the time, if she was in a good mood, good enough to ask me to sing with her, it meant the afternoon would be filled with music and stories, mostly funny, of growing up in Harlem, New York. Sometimes, though, the stories weren’t funny, and her mood changed like the records she played. Suddenly she was angry, talking to herself as though I wasn’t there.

  “From sugar to shit,” she’d say and shrug, scraping a spot on the linoleum with her knife. “Right now, I got about a tenth of what I started out with.” She’d pour another scotch, without the ginger ale.r />
  When I was nine, she stopped one Saturday morning in the middle of a drink and looked at me hard, as though she hadn’t noticed me before sitting in front of her.

  “That. That thing you’re doing now. That’s why Ben says you’re a damn punk. He says he can tell already you’re gonna be a faggot. I’d appreciate it if you proved him wrong.”

  I froze, barely breathing, trying not to do anything. Mom had started to perspire a little, the muscles in her neck more pronounced, like thick rubber tubes balancing her head. She was through singing with Dinah. The good part of Saturday was over.

  4

  “You’re about to cheap your life away, Ben Stamps. People have to eat. If it were up to you,” she told him, “we’d be growing our own food in the projects courtyard.”

  Thursday night meant Grand Union. I hated grocery shopping because it was boring and because Ben and Mom fought every week about how much money to spend. Ben said we were spoiled because Mom had bought anything she wanted when it was just the two of us, but now it was his money too and she had to learn how to budget.

  Usually, he waited in the parking lot while Mom and I shopped. When we came out, he’d drive up in front of the store and wait in the car while Mom and I put the packages in the trunk. After we’d finished, Mom and I would get in, she’d count out the change, and he’d start an argument about how half of what she’d just bought was unnecessary.