The Gift-Giver Read online

  Everyone cracked up. She couldn't think of a good comeback, so she got mad at me. People get mad easy in the summer. When it's over you never have the same friends you started out with. After that, Mickey and Dotty stopped speaking to me.

  One day I'm gonna find out how a rumor starts. No one ever knows the one who said anything. It was always told by someone else. Now, I ain't saying they started the stories, but after Mickey and Dotty stopped speaking to me a second rumor started. That me and Amir was boyfriend and girlfriend. If my mother and father heard such a thing, I'd be in the house the rest of the summer.

  I was sitting on the fire escape one afternoon watching everyone outside. Ma came over to me.

  "What's wrong with you? You sick?"

  "Nothing's wrong. It's too hot out there."

  "It ain't cool on the fire escape."

  I didn't want her asking me a lot of questions or pouring some nasty medicine down my throat, so I went outside. When I got to the stoop Mickey yelled, "There's the giant. I wonder where's shorty."

  I ignored her and went down the street. I couldn't play with the Nit Nowns because they was on my block playing potsy with Mickey and Dotty. So I went to the library.

  It was quiet and cool. I sat there and read a book for a while. I wanted to take it out but I didn't want Mickey and them to see me coming down the block with a book. Then they'd know I ain't had nowhere to go but to the library. But then I couldn't stay too long 'cause Ma would think I was hanging out in the playground. And I'd have to spend the rest of my life on the stoop.

  I left and started thinking about how I could make some new and exciting friends. As I walked down the block I saw Amir.

  "Where's your good friends?" I asked.

  He smiled. "I don't know."

  "They ain't real friends, you know."

  "Why?"

  "They talk about you."

  "Shows they care."

  "I ain't talking to none of them or bothering with them."

  "You been staying in the house?"

  "Yes. But I see you still be with them. You should hear how they talk about you. You want to know what they say?"

  "No. I don't care."

  "I do. They saying you dumb. And you way older than us. And all kinds of things."

  He looked sad. I was sorry I told him. My father once told me to think before I talk. "Amir, I'm sorry. But I got mad when they said that junk."

  He stopped walking and climbed up the big rock in the Franklin Avenue lot. I followed him. He didn't look at me when he talked.

  "I am older than you and the others. I'm twelve. Be thirteen in October. I been in so many different foster homes I never stayed in one school for too long. My records never came from my other schools."

  "How come they keep changing your homes?"

  "Things happen. The people get tired of you. Or they move to another city and can't take you. Or there's something wrong. The authorities take you out that home and put you in another one."

  "How does it feel to keep changing homes? Living with strangers?"

  "You get used to it, I guess. You get to see a lot of different kind of people."

  "But don't it bother you? Don't you feel scared when you go to a new place? All that changing around?"

  "Not anymore. Some of the people is okay. Like there was one old man in a family I lived with. Nobody bothered with him. And nobody bothered with me. So me and the old man became friends.

  "I used to go to the store for him. Sit in his room and talk to him. Keep him company. He showed me how to play every card game there is. He used to treat his family so good even though they didn't bother with him. Once I asked him why he was so nice when they was so mean. He said kindness always comes back to you. He told me I'd been a blessing to him. He called me the little gift-giver."

  "What he mean by that?"

  "I ain't sure. But whenever I worried about my brothers and sisters, he used to say, 'It's gonna be all right. You a good boy. Somebody gonna be good to your brothers and sisters.'"

  "Is that why you be with us, Amir?"

  "Yes. It's like being with my brothers and sisters again. And I don't want to get in no gangs. Be in no trouble."

  I looked at Amir. He did seem much older with his clean blue shirt and clean neat pants. And I really hoped his brothers and sisters was okay.

  "Amir, you don't care what people be saying about you?"

  "No. It ain't important."

  "Well, the next time I hear them talk about you, I'm...."

  "Don't say nothing about what I told you. This is between me and you."

  "Well, I ain't going to the Sunday school picnic, and I ain't speaking to none of them again as long as I live on 163rd Street."

  "Everybody goes to the picnic. Why you let them run you away? Don't hide in the house."

  "I ain't hiding."

  "If you know what they say ain't true, don't let it bother you."

  "I ain't like you, Amir."

  We left the lot. As we walked toward 163rd Street I noticed that Amir wasn't all that much shorter than me. Just a little. Mickey was always exaggerating.

  We turned the corner to 163rd Street. I prayed nobody be there to see the two of us walk down the street together. But it seems like the whole block be out when you don't want no one to see you. People who ain't been out all winter or summer was out that day.

  I just looked straight ahead like I didn't see nobody. Amir went and stood by the boys who was trying to open the fire hydrant. The stoop was so crowded I almost stepped on someone's hand. I heard Lavinia say, "Can't speak, Miss Stuck-up?"

  Next day I went to the library again. I went a different way so Mickey and Dotty think I had some new place to hang out—some new friends. I walked down Franklin Avenue and I see Amir sitting on top of that rock in the lot. He had a pencil and pad.

  "What you doing?" I asked.

  I climbed the rock. He was drawing. It was a picture of the whole block. And it was beautiful.

  "No wonder you always looking at things like you see inside them," I said. He could draw anything.

  "Amir, when you start to draw?"

  "Every time I went to a new family, I had to study the people hard, so I'd know how to act in that house."

  "What does drawing have to do with that?"

  "You have to look at something real good to draw it. You have to see how it works. You have to understand it."

  "I guess you could draw all them people you ever lived with?"

  "Yes."

  I started going out every morning after I did my chores and meeting Amir by the rock. He'd show me a little about drawing. It didn't make no difference that Amir was a boy. It was like having a real good friend. Sometimes we'd go to the library and I'd show him the two books about Africa I was always reading. Or we'd just sit on that rock for a while and talk. I could never stay too long, else my mother'd miss me.

  Once when we was just sitting on the rock he said, "It was hard when my family broke up. All I could think about was finding my little sisters and brothers."

  I tried to think how it would feel if my family got busted up like Amir's or Sherman's. Then he asked me, "What you want to be when you eighteen?"

  "I'm gonna be a singer and a dancer, or maybe a model or a nurse or a doctor. I'm gonna leave the Bronx, and travel all over the world."

  He looked at me and smiled. "That's nice, Doris."

  "What you want to be, Amir?"

  "I don't know. I just want to put my family back together again."

  14. Burdens

  I felt good even though I only had one friend now. I just hoped my mother wasn't looking for me because me and Amir stayed in the lot kind of long that day. But soon as I walked in the apartment I knew something was wrong.

  I didn't smell no food cooking. It was only two o'clock and Daddy was home. I went into the living room. Mama was crying. My eyes filled like a faucet. I never saw her cry except when Grandma died.

  Daddy put his arms around me. "It's
okay, sugar."

  My mother looked up. I rather hear her yell, scream, and fuss, but I got scared when I saw her cry.

  "Mama, what?"

  She wiped her eyes. "You go on in the kitchen. Daddy and I got some things to discuss. Don't worry."

  "Why can't I hear?"

  "You not to worry, sugar, we...."

  "Wait," my father said. "Let her hear too. This is a family problem. Sit down. I ain't got no more job. I could get some part-time work till the factory calls me back, but that ain't enough to make ends meet. Your mother could do a little work, but then there won't be no one to look after you and Gerald when she goes and I'm gone too."

  My mother said, "Maybe between the unemployment check and if I go to work we could manage."

  "We'll manage for one week, and that's all."

  "We gonna have to go on welfare," my mother said.

  My father is a quiet man. But he balled up his fist and yelled, "I ain't having no social workers coming in here asking me about every crack in the wall. Forget that. I'll work ten part-time jobs. We ain't going on no welfare."

  I got real scared. Sherman and them was on welfare. Then they got taken away.

  My father had these lines around his mouth. It looked like somebody took a pencil and drew them there. "The other thing we could do is send Doris to stay with your sister for a while," he said.

  I jumped out of the chair. "No! I want to stay here! I could take care of Gerald while you work."

  My mother looked at me and laughed and cried at the same time.

  "Girl, you can't take care of yourself. I have to remind you to do everything."

  "I can do better. Please, let me help. I don't want to stay with Aunt Mavis and them." I thought about Sherman and Amir, all separated from their family. "Please, let me help. I don't want to live nowhere but here."

  My father looked at me. "So many things could happen to you and Gerald when me and your mother is out. Your aunt got a nice house in Queens. She won't mind."

  "I want to stay here." I never could understand what was so great about Mavis's house. Everything was so clean you was afraid to breathe. Cause your bad breath might leave a film over some of her precious decorations. You couldn't touch nothing. You couldn't move around. I couldn't even go to the bathroom in her house. It just didn't seem like the right thing to do. And my father know he can't stand her house neither. I heard him say one time that he couldn't understand a house that had no smells in it. That it was like nobody lived there.

  My mother said, "See, honey, I could work longer hours if I know I don't have to worry about you and Gerald being here alone."

  "Would Gerald go with me too?"

  "No, that'd be too much. Gerald could stay with your uncle in Brooklyn."

  "No. That's just like Amir and Sherman. You splitting me and Gerald up. If I got to go to Mavis I want my brother to come with me."

  My parents was shocked. They just stared at me with their mouths open. I surprised my own self too. Guess I didn't know how much I loved that pesty baby.

  "I ain't no baby. I'm ten going on eleven. I could take care of things."

  My father said, "She is growing up."

  "I always wanted my little girl to enjoy her girlhood. I didn't want to put no burdens on her. She's gonna have them soon enough."

  "Ma, please. I'll surprise you."

  My father said, "Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Grant could look in on them to see if everything's okay. It'll only be for a while."

  "Ma, please?"

  "I hate to see little girls taking care of babies and houses and trying to do a woman's job," my mother said.

  "You say she never wants to help. Now she does," my father said. He sounded so tired.

  "Daddy, let me mind Gerald. I can. I promise."

  My mother looked at me. "Doris, if I don't watch you every second now, you'd be over in that playground running wild. How I'm gonna trust you with the baby?"

  "Ma, I promise. I won't go nowhere."

  "I'd be worried sick."

  "Ma, I'll just stay in the house. You could call me on the phone."

  Then my father said, "I don't like my children running loose. Or my wife not being able to mind them 'cause she got to work, to help."

  "Ma, Daddy, why don't you just trust me for once?"

  They looked at each other. "Well, maybe Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Johnson will keep an eye on them," my father said. "And you won't be gone all day. Maybe we can try it."

  Lord, I said to myself, I'm going to have three mothers now.

  "If Mrs. Grant or Mrs. Johnson say they'll look in on them, then I'll do it," my mother said.

  "Okay. And if this arrangement don't work out we'll have to do something else."

  The baby came stumbling over to me. He grinned like he knew what we was talking about.

  "Mama, you want me to ask Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Grant now?"

  "No, Doris, just wait. Me and your father will ask them."

  "So when you gonna start, Ma—tomorrow?"

  "You just can't wait to see me leave."

  "When Daddy start his part-time jobs?"

  "Day after tomorrow."

  "You gonna want me to start the dinner and do the food shopping. Maybe I'll go to the laundry in the morning and then buy the food in the afternoon. Then I'll clean the house later."

  My mother laughed. "Girl, you go from one extreme to the other. All I want you to do is mind Gerald and keep you and him safe till me and your father get home. You don't have to do nothing else except keep that junky room of yours clean."

  Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Johnson said they'd look out for me and Gerald. My mother got a job and I was left alone with the baby.

  "Now, Doris, this is Mrs. Fox's number if you need me. It's hot and you don't have to be cooped up in this house. You can take Baby out and sit on the stoop. Now remember, no company."

  I ain't got no friends noway—except for Amir, I said to myself.

  Then she said, "I made Baby's lunch. All you got to do is feed it to him." Her mouth was all pulled down. Her dimples didn't show. It's funny. I hate it when she's fussing and evil. But that's better than when she's sad and quiet.

  Look like soon as Mama left Mrs. Grant was at the door.

  "Everything okay, honey? I'll be back later to see how you doing."

  I made up the beds. Washed the dishes. Thought about surprising Mama and starting dinner for her. Dusted the furniture. Mama was gonna be shocked at me.

  Baby woke up and I bathed him like I see Mama do. I peeped out the window a couple times. Mickey and them out there running wild.

  There was so much water on the floor after I washed the baby I had to scrub the bathroom when I finished. Then while I was doing that, Baby goes on Ma's dresser and puts cold cream all over his self. He had it in his hair, up his nose, in his ears, under his fingernails.

  "Boy," I screamed, "look at you!"

  Then he started crying. He's yelling and screaming. Then there's a knock on the door.

  "Doris, what's going on in there?"

  I opened the door.

  "It's okay, Mrs. Grant."

  "Why is he screaming?" She pushed her fat self through the door. "Have mercy! What's wrong with this child?"

  "He got into the cold cream."

  "Your mother left you here to watch him. How you let him do that?"

  "I was scrubbing the...."

  "Come on here, boy. You look like a little grease-ball. Let me put you in the tub."

  She grabbed him before I could say anything. But he screamed so loud she had to let him go. She stayed in the bathroom while I cleaned him off. Like I needed her to help me. I was glad when she left.

  I cleaned up the dresser. Ran behind Baby. Mama called three times and Daddy called twice. Then I fed Baby his lunch. Gave him his bottle. And made myself a jelly sandwich. Then I scrubbed the kitchen floor. Of course, Baby played in the dirty water. That boy wouldn't take his nap. I was tired. No wonder Ma be evil when I get in from school. But the
dumb thing was that after all that work I forgot to clean my own room.

  I could hear the boys playing stickball. And Mickey and them sound like they was jumping rope. Well, I had more important things to do now.

  I sat at the living room window. Baby was on my lap and he finally fell asleep. Amir walked by and looked up to the window.

  "What happened to you today?"

  "I had to take care of Baby for my mother."

  "Can you come out now?"

  "I could if I wanted to but I'm gonna wait for my mother to get home." I really wanted to go out on the stoop and talk to Amir. I missed the library and the walk with him. Being perfect was hard.

  She came in at six o'clock, looking scared. "Everything okay?"

  "Of course. Baby's sleeping." I waited for her to say something about how nice I had everything.

  "Did Mrs. Grant or Mrs. Johnson come in?"

  "Yes."

  "So you stayed in all day?"

  "Yes."

  She threw off her shoes. "Whew, girl, I'm tired. That woman has the funkiest house. Just 'cause they know a maid is coming they make sure you got some mess to clean."

  "Mama, don't you see how I got the house?"

  "Doris! It's beautiful, honey. Girl, you really surprised me." She hugged me for a long time. I know she ain't noticed the house till I told her, but she ain't hugged me like that since I was little like Baby.

  "Last week I couldn't trust you to braid your own hair right. What happened?"

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  "You can play outside after supper."

  "That's okay, Ma."

  "What's wrong? You been in the house all day."

  "Nothing's wrong. Taking care of Baby and the house just wore me out."

  She laughed for the rest of the evening about that. "Now you know how I feel."

  Daddy came in real late, about twelve o'clock. He looked tired and sad. I could tell my mother was trying to make him happy. She said, "Our baby girl took care of things wonderful. She got the house sparkling."

  "She's growing up," he said with his head down in his plate. "This won't be for long. Things gonna be back to normal soon."

  "I hope so," my mother said. "I hate you driving that taxi. There's so many crazy people out there."

  "Yeah. Seems like every nut in the city got in my cab tonight."