Hold Love Strong (3 page)

H
is nose boxed in, swollen and buckled like a jammed thumb, Lyndon Goines was a former amateur boxer who lied about being a Golden Gloves champion, a hardworking maintenance worker at the Queens Botanical Garden, and Ever Park's resident conversationalist, canvasser, activist, and organizer. Smelling like wet earth, he collected signatures on petitions then mailed them to city assemblymen, the mayor, congressional representatives, senators, the Supreme Court, and the president. He attended community and city council meetings clad in weathered three-piece suits. He'd step to the microphone, stomp his foot, and demand equality and justice. He wanted the potholes filled, the public streets paved flat and smooth like the streets in wealthy neighborhoods. He wanted the public library on Columbus Avenue, the only library within walking distance from Ever, to have the same amount of books as the smaller libraries in the exclusive white neighborhoods. He insisted that rather than putting new nets on the basketball rims in the park or fund
ing basketball leagues and clinics, the city should allocate money to supply our public schools with the proper resources and implements, textbooks published post civil rights movement, microscopes for biology class, rulers, compasses, and protractors for math. He wanted each school to have adequate paper and pens. He wanted working water fountains with drinkable water and toilets that flushed. He wanted solar-powered scientific calculators and college prep classes for young brothers and sisters in high school. He wanted the music programs reinstated. He wanted art classes again. And how about horticulture? Get the kids to know what it means to couple with the earth. And the elevators in Ever Park? He wanted them fixed once and for all. He said if the city, the state, the country had enough money to blast men into outer space and wipe the green Statue of Liberty clean, then they could certainly equally provide for its brown citizenry.

Lyndon Goines wanted and his wanting was only equaled by one thing: his love for my grandma. He'd been in love with her since he first saw my grandma walking down the street, hips, he said, swaying like two apples clinging to a branch in the breeze. Never once did he doubt his love for her. But never once did he shout about it either. He was the type of humble southern man who had come north to do two things: fight in Madison Square Garden and find his queen. All he arrived with was this desire, a suitcase of belongings, his boxing gloves, and a wallet-sized photograph of his mother, who, when Mr. Goines took the picture out to show, he swore was named Beautiful Gorgeous Weeks before she married his father, Everett. She was the first grandchild of a freed slave, and so was his father. Lyndon Goines was the middle son of five boys, and just about as gentle as he was indefatigable. Once a week, he brought my grandmother various forms of plant life. He brought her tiny cactuses, bonsai trees, and flowers: tulips, poppies, ranunculas, orchids, lilies. From his gifts, I learned the names of flora born and blooming miles from Ever. Once he brought an African violet, a Venus
flytrap, and an orchid that smelled like chocolate. But nothing, not one of his gifts, survived forever. Even the hardiest cactus he delivered eventually withered and bent at the stem. Still, the dying of a plant or my grandma's indifference never once caused Mr. Goines's love to wane. His heart was planted, rooted and green like an evergreen tree. Whenever he saw anybody in my family, he asked about my grandma. Then he suggested we put in a good word for him. We should tell my grandma to give him one chance, unhook the chain latch, let him and his punching-bag face in, just once, so he could sit in the kitchen, talk to her, watch my grandma's hips sway as she made her way between the stove, the sink, and the refrigerator. He swore he was a good man, a fine man. He'd even help with the dishes. But if she didn't believe it, if she wasn't ready, he said he had all of his life, forever to wait. He'd never been knocked out in a fight, never once stayed on the canvas. Sure, he'd lost. But he always lost by decision, in the middle of the ring, the referee holding his opponent's fist up.

So, every Christmas Mr. Goines showed up at our door with a Christmas tree. Every Valentine's Day: a dozen roses. Once, he arrived sweating and straining, his arms wrapped around a potted palm tree. And once, he showed up with birds.

My mother and my Aunt Rhonda were in the bathroom, leaning over the sink, squeezing their reflections into the small square mirror at the same time, hurrying to put on eyeliner, lip gloss, and mascara. Although they had each borne children, my mother and my Aunt Rhonda had the bodies of young, sexy sisters prepared to do nothing less than love. My mother was eighteen and the adolescence she had possessed and carried me within had become a bouquet she didn't know how to hold, present, nor take flattery for. The curves, the lush smile that made fireworks of her eyes, the way she threw her head back when she laughed and leaned forward when she sighed, all of the physicality that men cooed and fawned over, were like something
sticky yet unable to be removed or washed away. So she tried to hide it. She hunched and slouched. She covered her mouth with one hand. She folded her arms over her chest when young men were near. My Aunt Rhonda was the opposite. She was twenty-two and determined to not just be loved but be worshipped by every brother who laid his eyes on her. Her face and body, although more than moderately attractive, were constructions of elongated ovals with no clear perimeters, so parts faded into others, her eyes into her cheeks, her jaw into her neck, her shoulders into her narrow back, her back into her hips, her hips disappearing into her thighs. She complained about her physical shape all the time, how her body was half the body of my mother's, how her breasts dropped if she didn't cinch the straps of her bra. Yet she wore the tightest clothes and carried herself as if at the end of her limbs and on top of her head were plumes of jeweled feathers. And around young men, she used the most suggestive language, licked her lips, cocked her hips, and pretended to be dumb.

Sometimes, after hours of cajoling, my Aunt Rhonda was able to get my mother to dress and, at least, attempt to act like her. And on the night Lyndon Goines arrived with birds in hand, my Aunt Rhonda had succeeded. So my Aunt Rhonda and my mother wore matching tight white pants, white heels, and royal blue blouses that squeezed their breasts and ended in frills at their waists. They had a date, the twins from the third floor, calm, cool Jamel and his antithesis Dave, otherwise known as Doo-Doo, the heavyset, pigeon-toed brother with a lazy eye and a perpetually runny nose who my Aunt Rhonda swore she was only spending time with because she was a good sister, and she wanted the best for my mom, and Jamel and Doo-Doo were a package deal. Like every man between the age of eighteen and forty who was either secure enough to disregard the fact that my mother had a child or ignorant about the degree to which my mother had had her heart broken, Jamel had a crush on my mother. But two things made him different than
the others. First, every sister in Ever had a crush on Jamel, but because he wouldn't give them the time of day, they hated him, spread rumors that he was a homosexual, that his penis was so itsy bitsy there was no chance at being pleased. And second, none of the sisters' nastiness, none of their remarks or disapproval, or attempts to lure Jamel away from the despondency my mother dealt him, distracted him from what he wished for: one date with my mother. My Aunt Rhonda couldn't fathom what my mother's problem was. “You just like Momma,” she'd huff on a nightly basis, her hands jammed on her hips. “You don't think any nigga is good enough!” But finally, my mother had given in. Finally, she had accepted Jamel's offer.

There was a knock on the door. Then there was another. My cousins and I sat on the couch, but we didn't move to answer it. We were watching cartoons, mesmerized by the TV, absorbing all of the heroism we could. Donnel was nine and he didn't respond to noise unless it was Eric or me interfering with his relationship with the TV, asking questions or breathing too heavily or sneezing or coughing. Eric was seven and at the beginning of his infatuation with drawing things he saw and things he swore he had once seen. He had a few old crayons and markers on his lap and some paper he'd taken from school and he was in the midst of drawing the characters in the cartoon. I, sitting forward, my legs dangling above the floor, was five and very much an imitator of Donnel and, to some degree, Eric. Thus, because they ignored the door, so did I.

A third knock came and my Aunt Rhonda hurried out of the bathroom, sure it was her and my mother's dates.

“You all don't hear that?” she scolded, sashaying across the room, placing one foot directly in front of the other, her hips slamming left and right, as if the person on the other side of the door could see her.

“Hear what?” said Donnel, his eyes trained on the TV.

“Boy,” my Aunt Rhonda said, continuing to the door, “what I tell you before I started getting dressed?”

Although still a child, Donnel chose which questions he answered and which he ignored. So he was silent. My Aunt Rhonda stopped walking, put her hand on her hip, and waited if not for his answer then someone's. I was missing my two front teeth, and although I was too shy to smile and I covered my mouth with my hands when I couldn't stop myself from doing so, and although I recognized that everything I said sounded wet and whispery, I didn't yet understand that knowing an answer didn't require that I blurt it out. So I spoke.

“You said,” I slurred. “‘Don't start noth'n.'”

Quickly, Donnel pinned his middle finger on his thumb, then snapped it free, flicking me in the middle of the forehead so hard the blow knocked me back on the couch and the pain caused me to squint. But I didn't hold my head with both hands or squirm as if desperate to get out from under it. I heard Eric laugh and swung my foot to kick him.

“That's enough,” ordered my aunt.

With a long, swift stride to the couch, she yanked me upright. My eyes welled with tears. The middle of my forehead burned from the blow. Then my mother walked out of the bathroom and I swallowed, blinked, and sailed years away from pain. Even at the age of five, I was overcome by my mother's beauty when she let her beauty shine. She could transform herself, metamorphose from a gritty, testy sister who wore neither a smile nor a hint of being delicate to a being who exuded feminine glory.

“Abraham, sit right,” she said.

I sat as tall as I could, for not only did my mother demand it, but, although I was only five, her being in love and making her angry were the thing I most wanted and the thing I never wanted to do. Maybe Jamel would be the one; maybe he would be my father.

My mother tugged at the bottom of her shirt. She shifted and squirmed. She hooked her thumbs in the top of her pants and pulled them up.

“This shit's tight as hell,” she said.

My Aunt Rhonda quickly stepped to my mother. She fixed and repositioned her clothes. Then she shifted my mother's breasts in balance and tried to smooth a ripple out of the back of her pants.

“You got panties on?” she asked.

“How you know?” said my mother.

“Cause I see the line,” said my Aunt Rhonda. Then she pointed at the bedroom they shared with my grandma. “Take 'em off.”

“What you mean?” my mother asked.

“Don't wear none.” My Aunt Rhonda gave my mother a gentle push. “Hurry up. Go.”

My mother left the room and my Aunt Rhonda went to the front door and with one hand on the knob and the other ready to unhook the latch, she watched my mother close the bedroom door. Then she looked at Donnel, Eric, and me.

“You ready?” she asked.

She took a moment more to assess her own beauty, pressed an easy smile across her face, and opened the door. But to the surprise of us all, it was not Jamel and Doo-Doo at the door. It was Mr. Goines. Dressed in a wrinkled brown suit, white shirt, and yellow paisley tie, he took one long step into the middle of the room holding a small birdcage covered with a soiled bath towel.

“Lovebirds,” he said, pulling the towel from atop the cage. “Where is she?”

“She ain't here,” said my Aunt Rhonda, still holding the door ajar.

The birds chirped and cheeped, and I leapt from the couch and ran to the cage Mr. Goines held, his arm extended high at his side.

“You got birds?” I asked.

The birds were radiant. Dusty green feathers covered their bodies. Sunset red was their face. Their eyes were small black pearls. Donnel and Eric hurried from the couch and stood beside me.

“What's their names?” Eric asked.

“They don't have names,” Mr. Goines said.

“How do you got birds with no names?” said Donnel, peering into the cage like a child but sounding like the truculent young man he was bent on becoming.

“They're for your grandma to name,” said Mr. Goines.

The bedroom door opened and my mother walked out. Mr. Goines looked up, studied her, and said: “You know, the older you get, the more I swear you your mother's twin.”

Although she was always accepting of Mr. Goines, his gifts, his sudden arrivals, and the love he had for my grandma, the comment embarrassed my mother and she blushed, her penny-color skin swelling a warmer shade. She looked down and curled into herself a bit.

“Mr. Goines,” she said. “What you doing here?”

“He's got birds,” I announced.

“I see that.” My mother smiled at me. She looked at Mr. Goines and a tumble of airy laughter rolled from her mouth.

“You giving Momma birds?” she asked.

“She know you're bringing them?” scolded my Aunt Rhonda, sounding jealous.

Mr. Goines thought for a moment. Then he shifted his eyes to my Aunt Rhonda. “With all due respect, I believe your mother is the type of woman who knows more than she knows.”

My Aunt Rhonda jammed her hand on her hip and tilted her head incredulously. “What kind of crazy shit is that?” she asked. “Huh? Cause I know you ain't trying to make no sense saying some nonsense like that.”