The Gift-Giver (4 page)

Wonder what kind of house he live in where he can just take out blankets, I said to myself.

Sherman stared at me and didn't say anything. I sat on the box with him until Amir came back. He had a blanket stuffed in a shopping bag. Sherman didn't seem so mad now. He went inside the dark, stinking basement and I went home.

I could hardly eat for thinking about Sherman. How was he going to live in that basement?

The next morning I left earlier than usual. I went to 130 and called through the basement window. Sherman came to the door.

"Here's my lunch."

"Thanks. I'm sorry for what I said to you. But please don't tell no one else."

"I won't."

Amir came over also and gave Sherman an apple and a sandwich.

Sherman eating better than me, I thought.

Me and Amir walked to school together.

"He's got to go back. He can't stay in that basement," Amir said.

"Why not? Long as he gets some food. He ain't got no mother or father. I'd die if that happened to me."

"No you wouldn't. Someone take care of you."

"How do you know?"

"I just know."

"You mean you was taken from your family too?"

"In a way."

"But you with them now, right?"

"Well, not my real family. A substitute family."

"A substitute family? That's crazy. I'd do just like
Sherman. Run away and take care of myself. Get my friends to help me."

"He'll get put in one of them homes for runaways."

"It ain't fair, Amir, to take people from their family. That's like slavery. He should do what he wants."

Amir looked at me serious. Finally he said, "Sherman can't keep his family together hiding in that basement."

"How he gonna keep his family together, Amir? He just a kid."

"He could do it. He got to want to do it. And he got to keep himself together, otherwise he can't help them. He keep messing around in the streets he won't be able to do nothing for nobody."

"He can't do nothing for them now. They already all split up and separated."

"Doris, look. When you keep your mind on seeing someone again or being with them, then how can you be split up? You be thinking about them and they be thinking about you."

"That still don't mean you really together, Amir."

"But you are together. Don't you understand? And, see, when you determined that you gonna make something be, you can make it be."

"Amir, you a magic boy or something? How Sherman gonna make it be?"

"He goes back to that foster home. He keep track of where his brothers and sisters be. He make sure they keep track of him. And he just keep thinking about the day when he's able to be on his own and bring them together again. But if he be running the streets, he gonna lose track of where they are. They gonna lose track of him. He'll forget why he was out there in the first place. He may even forget he got a family."

That was the first time I ever heard Amir talk so much. "Amir, you sound like a mother or father."

He laughed. "Doris, we got to make Sherman go back where he supposed to be."

After school I wanted to go see Sherman, but Mickey and Dotty was with me. I think Amir wanted to go see him too, but Yellow Bird and Big Russell was with him.

I got a chance to go around there later and gave him a piece of fruit I snuck out of the house.

That's how it was for a few days. Me sneaking food out the house and running down to the basement when I got a chance. Amir did the same thing. I started getting worried that my mother would begin to miss the pieces of fruit and crackers I took. I could hear her now. "You know we just one step away from welfare."

And Sherman didn't seem right. He looked mean and skinny. And I'm sorry to say this, but he was smelling kind of rank too.

One afternoon we all sat on the stoop of my building. Two big, red-looking policemen came over to us. "Do you kids know a boy named Sherman Shepard?"

"Yes," we said.

"You seen him around here?"

"No," I yelled before anyone had a chance to answer.

Mickey said, "I saw him four days...."

"No, we ain't seen him," I butted in.

"We ain't seen him all week," Amir said.

The policemen looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and left.

Big Russell said to me and Amir, "Why didn't you tell them we saw him outside the schoolyard last week?"

"Sherman ran away from his grandma and if the police catch him they'll send him to reform school," Amir said.

"How you know?" Russell asked.

"He told me."

"How come he talk to you and run from everybody else?"

Amir opened his eyes real wide. "I don't know," he said.

Someone else said, "Well, Sherman got away from that mean grandmother of his. But what happened to his brothers and sisters? They run away too? That's a whole lot of runaways."

Me and Amir looked at each other. "Nothing happened to his brothers and sisters," Amir said. "I saw them yesterday."

Russell stared at Amir like he knew he was lying. "Where you saw them?"

"On the block."

"What time. I was out all day and half the night, my man. I ain't seen nobody from that family."

"Well, it must've been when you went home to eat, or go to the bathroom."

I laughed. Amir sure was slick when he wanted to be.

Russell laughed too. "Amir, with them eyes you could see things no one else is seeing."

Amir just smiled. "You got that right, Russell."

I went upstairs. My mother was in the kitchen so I had to make believe I wanted to feed the cats again.

"Ma, can I have some milk for the cats?"

"Girl, food is too high for me to be feeding them old alley cats. Just give them a little. And this is the last time."

When I got back down everyone had left for the playground. Just Amir was there. We went to 130.

Sherman came to the door. We all sat on an old crate. Amir said, "Sherman, you got to go back to the foster home before you get in trouble. The police was looking for you today."

"You ain't said nothing, did you?"

"No. But you better go back."

"I ain't living with no strangers."

"Are they mean?"

"I don't know. I ain't lived there long enough to find out."

"They might be nice. Some foster families are okay."

"How you know?" I asked Amir.

"I always lived in foster homes."

"You don't have no mother or father either?"

Sherman looked hurt. I was sorry I opened my big mouth.

"No. My mother and father is dead," Amir said.

Sherman said, "Ain't no strangers could be my mother and father. My grandma is my mother and father."

I thought about his grandmother. She looked like she was mean. She never talked to no one. I wondered how he could love her.

"Sherman, you could still visit your grandma," Amir said. "You'll get used to living with a new family. If the people are mean then ask to go to another family."

"I ain't going back."

"Reform school is worse. It's like jail."

"Who's going to look after my grandma? She old and sick."

"We will," Amir said.

Hold it, I thought to myself. I don't know nothing about that old woman.

"Come on, Sherman, why don't you go back?"

"How can I live with strangers like that?"

"You just watch them. See how they do. Then you know how to act. Some of them okay."

"What if they ain't right?"

"You tell someone. You get out of there."

"Yeah, you run away."

"No. That ain't gonna do no good. Cops pick you up. Reform school is worse."

"How you know? You been there?" Sherman asked.

"Yes."

I couldn't believe it. Amir in reform school?

Suddenly we see the same two policemen coming down the block. Sherman scooted back in the basement.

"Hide behind the furnace," Amir said.

Then he whispered to me, "Doris, tell Sherman what I told you about keeping his family together."

"Amir, I..."

"Don't say nothing now."

Me and Amir sat there.

"Hey, sonny," the cop said, looking at Amir. "You know a boy live around here name Sherman Shepard?"

It was funny how they didn't remember they already talked to Amir earlier. I wondered how anyone could forget his face.

"Yes," Amir answered.

"You seen him around?"

"Yes. I saw him in the park this morning. I'll show you."

Amir walked down the street with the two policemen. Sherman came out the basement and we died laughing.

"Boy, that was close," Sherman said. "Maybe I need to hide out somewhere else for a while."

I was thinking about Amir. "Why don't you go back to that foster home.

"No! I ain't going back there!"

"But, Sherman, you know, like Amir was saying...."

"Doris, don't tell me about what Amir be saying—I AIN'T GOING BACK!"

"Amir said you keep messing around in the street you won't be able to do nothing for your family."

"What do he know?"

"I don't know, Sherman. Sometimes he talk kinda weird. But suppose something do happen to you? Sleeping in basements and on roofs. What about your family then?"

His face looked like a piece of material that somebody crumpled up. I said to myself, Sherman, please don't cry. You gonna make me cry too. "You keep running away and your brothers and sisters ain't even gonna know where to find you."

He didn't answer for a long time. He turned his back to me so I couldn't see his face. I felt like I had a lump the size of a baseball in my throat. He sniffled real loud, then he turned around.

"I hate it in that foster home."

"What about your brothers and sisters?"

"I don't know."

"You gonna upset them more when they can't find you 'cause you don't have an address."

"I'll go back, but if I don't like it I'll run again."

Sherman went over to Third Avenue to catch the bus crosstown—back to his foster home. I was glad he went.

But I wasn't happy for long. Mickey and Dotty's mother saw me come out of the basement with Sherman. Her mouth flew open and she grabbed me. "I'm taking
you straight to your mother. Fooling around with some boy in the basement. What is this world coming to?"

"But, Mrs. Johnson, I wasn't doing nothing."

She didn't even listen to me.

"I can't let my Mickey and Dotty play with you no more."

You think them twins is angels, I said to myself. That woman pushed me all the way home. She couldn't wait. She started talking before my mother even opened the door. Mama's eyes turned red. Her lips got skinny like a long piece of thread.

"Ma, let me explain."

"It better be good." She was shaking.

"Ma, Sherman ran away 'cause the authorities took him from his grandma and I was giving him food 'cause he was living in the basement and he was hungry and he ain't got no mother or father."

"Why you lie to me telling me you was feeding cats?" she yelled.

"I didn't want him to get in no trouble. Me and Amir was helping him."

"You was down there with two boys?"

I started to cry. "Ma, he ain't got no mother or father. I thought you was suppose to help someone like that."

She sat down and unloosed her fists. "Okay, but you was wrong. You not supposed to help someone hide out. You should tell me."

I couldn't stop crying. "Suppose that happen to me?" I sobbed.

She put her arms around me. I was surprised. "Oh hush, girl. You ain't gonna be put in no home. Nothing gonna happen to me and your daddy. And if it did we
got plenty family. You don't have to live with strangers. But don't you ever lie to me like that again. I won't punish you this time because you really hurt for that poor boy."

That nosey Mrs. Johnson left talking about, "You don't know what mess these children can get into."

I got another sermon from my father, about how it's good to help friends, but don't help them do wrong.

I couldn't sleep that night. I tried to imagine how it'd feel to live with strangers. You got to do things their way. Sleep in a strange bed, eat strange food. Look at strange faces.

I kept seeing Amir in reform school eating bread and water like in jail. No mama and no daddy. I rather see my mother mad and evil, and my father lecturing at me and putting me under punishment every day of the year, than not to have no mother or father at all.

Mrs. Johnson must've told Mickey and Dotty the whole story. They asked me a million questions the next day. We got to school late. So we had to stay in. Mickey and Dotty left before I did cause I got double punishment for talking in class. All day people asked me questions about what happened to Sherman. I had to write one hundred times "I must not talk in class."

Mrs. Brown finally let me out. My two best friends didn't even bother to wait. But Amir was there. "I waited for you," he said. I was glad. We walked to 163rd Street together.

"Amir, how come you was sent to reform school?"

"When my parents died I went to live with my aunt and uncle. Then I ran away from them."

"At least they was family. Not strangers."

"Sometimes there ain't no difference. They had a lot of children. We all ran wild. Did whatever we wanted to."

"That don't sound so bad to me."

"You get tired of that."

"Why you run away?"

"I went to look for my little brothers and sisters."

"You mean you was like Sherman?"

"Yes. We was separated."

"You found them?"

"No. I just know they live in a big home—upstate somewhere."

"They live with a foster family too?"

"No, they live in a home with a lot of other kids."

"You still miss them?"

"Yes," he said real quietly.

He put his hands in his dungaree pockets, and kicked an old, rusty can into the street. Amir looked so sad. I tried to think of something happy to say.

He turned to me and said, "Let's go visit Sherman's grandmother."

"Nobody goes to visit Sherman's grandmother. I told you that before. We never even went up there when Sherman lived on the block."