him this time and his solitude would be his to own. He tucked himself away in the unlit unadorned room with the open Bible with the names and dates in it. He lay on the sheets of his grandparents’ old, creak-ridden bed and tuned the small portable radio that sat near the nightstand.
There were men talking about Jesus on the first station he found. Jesus had not been a wealthy man. He had not prized wealth. Jesus, who was God’s Son, was without wealth. The conversation circled around itself and he wondered if this was what people meant when they said that God’s wonders were mysterious to men. But if he twisted the knob a little to the left he could hear mariachis singing. And if he twisted it to the right he could hear a brave new sound with singers who didn’t even sing, just spoke over the beat as fast and clever as his gramps entertaining the table at dinnertime. He wondered again at the story that to him was the beginning of the world: his great-granddad running from the War, pursued by the government, loving and marrying women as he went, and finally beginning a family in Alabama. Or was it Mississippi? And which woman had it been, Estrella or Fern or Celie, that gave him his son? Where had he gone to, this old man? The beginning of the family world was as mysterious as God, as mysterious as God’s wonders.
Touissant fell asleep and only woke when he felt his granny tapping her fingers against his stomach. Her hands were rough and reminded him of his mother’s touch, so infrequent that he wasn’t even sure if she meant to comfort or reprimand, the feeling was so mixed. He wanted her to explain to him what he should feel, but she was whispering to him in a register below hearing. He heard his gramps’s loud voice from down the hall, not his words, only the voice itself, deep and loose. Now he felt her fingers squeeze him a little tighter and now he felt her climb into bed beside him.
“That old boy,” she said, “that old boy. Think he got all the stories in the world, don’t he now?”
Touissant didn’t realize that that was a question and didn’t answer.
“See, Two-saint,” she went on, “we all got our stories, e’ry life got its story, but only some be yellin our business in the street, you see what I’m sayin? Yo’ grandaddy, he gotta tell the world.” Her fingers had stopped on his shoulder. “But it ain’t who shout the loudest. That’s why I like you, Two-saint. Not too many people be quiet like you.”
She paused and he could hear a quick wind beat its reproachful Godhand upon the low roof. He grew aware of the outside world, the night-darkened valley.
“You gon’ have yo’ own, baby, if you keep that quietness and don’t feel like you ain’t got you somethin important just ’cause you ain’t loud, carryin on.” Over the low and sagging sound of her voice he could hear the twins riffing away again. He wondered if his mother, who reminded him so much of Granny, could sing; and if Granny herself could sing. “E’rybody got theirs,” Granny said again. “E’rybody got stories. His old man was a nationalist runnin from his government; my daddy, on the other hand, he was good people, honest to the last degree, worked hisself to death out in them Alabama fields. I still remember his mule carryin him home . . . ”
Erycha was six years old. Erycha was six years old and a girl. Erycha was six years old and a black girl. Erycha was a little six-year-old black girl. Erycha was a little six-year-old black girl living in a poor, cramped under-lit little apartment on the other side of town. Erycha was a little six-year-old black girl living in a poor, cramped under-lit little apartment on the other side of town with her unmarried and impoverished parents: her father, who drifted in and out of the apartment and in and out of her life; her mother, who enabled him in his transience and unreliability with her forgiveness and by paying the bills on time and on her own. Their daughter, being only six years old, took things as they came.
Erycha was a poor little six-year-old black girl living in a poor, cramped under-lit little apartment on the other side of town whose distracted mother would occasionally pay her surprising affection, would buy her a book about ballet or let go an hour in first-grade gossip, rubbing her feet. Erycha was a poor little six-year-old black girl living in a poor, cramped under-lit little apartment on the other side of town whose changeable father, though unreliable and often unemployed, never was away from home for more than a few hours at a time, never truly absent. Erycha was a poor little six-year-old black girl living in a poor, cramped under-lit little apartment on the other side of town who took advantage of her parents’ distracted ways, escaping the cramped under-lit little apartment house by walking out the apartment, down the stairwell, across the walk and over the gates. Standing there, on the empty Avenue, she could see where her Del Rosa Gardens apartment complex ended and the empty street stretched on indefinitely. Erycha was a poor little six-year-old black girl living in a poor, cramped under-lit little apartment on the other side of a beautiful new town called Highland. And she was learning.
“Fresh food,” her mother would say. “Or-ganic. What’s so hard to understand about that word?”
“Best I could do.”
“O’viously. If you actually payin me attention an’ still cain’t buy the expensive ones that say organic on the label.”
“Those the only two options. Either I’m stupid or I ain’t payin you mind, huh? I’m tryin to save you some money. That’s the way I think, practical. I’m not no boojie gentleman like you want me to be, Evelyn. Jus a roughneck, I suppose.”
“Really, now?”
“I’m jus sayin.”
“I’m just askin, why not help me out, make some damn money so’s we don’t gotta go buyin this low-grade unhealthy shit?”
“I been explained this: Messicans take e’ry damn job where they ain’t gotta show papers, which is e’rything but security, an’ you know my paperwork won’t stand up to that background check.”
“Mexicans mess up your papers? Mexicans the reason you gotta mark ‘yes’ where they ask if you been to jail? I never had to trouble over that question, Mexicans or no Mexicans.”
Erycha would hear her father’s heavy steps nearing the apartment door, then the slow apprehensive opening of that door, and finally its close and lock. Then her mother’s voice would again scorch the air with questions. It was always this way, a known protocol: even when he was working and there were no issues around government assistance or staying away when the welfare woman came, even when he was bringing checks home regularly, there’d still be a fight if he brought the wrong groceries, or did something else that could be judged unreliable. Erycha hated it but she was used to it, too, how her dad would come back home after however long away and walk slowly in, sit himself down with that pain in his slouch, and commence to look down darkness. And how her mom would come from her kitchen with suspicion in her voice.
“Takes you this long to get groceries?”
“Stepped out.”
“Been steppin three hours now. Long time to shop. Short time to go to the casino with my paycheck money, though.”
“Wadn’t at the casino. I just don’t like shoppin in the daytime is all. A man shouldn’t go shoppin while it’s light out, all them girls at the stores, makes him feel unemployed. But you wadn’t even home three hours back so how you think you know how long I been gone?”
“Right, of course. I was at work. But Erycha said you left while it was still light out.” She nodded at the child.
“Babygirl.” Her father shook his head. “Dime-dropper.”
“Don’t bother her. She playin.”
“Solidarity,
