The Swan House (10 page)

He shrugged, not a bit curious like I was. Maybe in his part of Atlanta it was the most common thing in the world to be an orphan. To never know your father and to have your mama killed in an angry dispute, leaving four kids to fend for themselves.

Finally, after he'd slopped spaghetti sauce on several plates and murmured “The Lord bless you” to several men, he asked, “How'd she die?”

“In the plane crash in June. Did you hear about it?”

“Yeah, I know about that, Mary Swan.” He looked almost offended. “I read the papers. I don't reckon there's a soul in Atlanta who didn't shed tears over that tragedy. Didn't know anybody on that plane, but it broke my heart. A whole lotta pain in Atlanta.” Then he met my eyes, and I saw kindness and sorrow in his. “I sure am sorry for you, Mary Swan.” And I knew, with a tingling down my spine, that he meant it.

But I didn't want to talk about the plane crash. After all, I was coming down to the inner city to get away from my problems and listen to someone else's. So I went back to asking about Carl's family. “So your aunt took care of you after your mom was killed?”

“No. My aunt was in no shape to care for us. It was Miss Abigail. Good thing she arrived in Atlanta 'bout that time. She took us in and fed us and got us to school and loved on us just as if she was as black as we were.”

“But you're living with your aunt now?”

“That's right. Took us a while to get things back together, but we're coming along.”

“And you go to school and then work in the afternoons?” I didn't know any teenager in Buckhead who had a job after school.

“Yep. I missed two years of school 'cause I had to be working. To help pay the bills, ya know what I mean? Like I said, Miss Abigail got me the job in the late afternoon so that I could go back to school. She says I'll be able to go to college one day if I want to. And I do.”

I was glad that we ran out of spaghetti just then, so that when I went into the kitchen Carl thought it was just to get another pot of noodles. But really, I was crying, crying for this kind boy who told his tragic tale as if it were the most natural thing on earth. And it struck me then, that in his world, this world of the inner city of Atlanta, maybe it was.

The next Saturday morning I was up and dressed and waiting almost impatiently for Ella Mae to drive up. Daddy didn't say a word about it. He just watched me go with this mixture of pain and relief in his dark brown eyes. I think he considered anything that got me out of the house that sticky July a small miracle.

And Ella Mae was right. It did seem to help to leave Buckhead and its grief for a few hours and discover another type of pain in Grant Park. But mostly I think I agreed to go back because something deep and rebellious in me wanted to be friends with Carl Matthews. I'd never had a black friend my own age. Blacks weren't allowed at Wellington. Only one school district in Atlanta was desegregated, and it wasn't mine.

After the meal was served, Carl shooed Miss Abigail out of the kitchen. “You've got people to be talking to, now. Go on. I'll clean up.” I noticed right away how protective he was of Miss Abigail. And I noticed something else. He knew how to clean up. The prospect of having his elbows in that sudsy water as he washed plates and silverware and pots and pans didn't seem to bother him a bit. “Wanna help?” he asked, smiling that same wide, white smile.

“Sure,” I said with a shrug.

“You wanna wash or dry?” He was already rolling up his sleeves. “Don't make any difference to me.”

I was petrified. I had no idea what to do; I'd never washed a dish in my life. But I was also proud. “I'll be glad to wash.”

He had lined up all the pots and pans and plates and glasses and silverware on one side of the sink and put a stopper in the sink. The hot water bubbled into a foam when he squirted a little of the dishwashing liquid into it. I looked at the pile of dishes beside me and grabbed the biggest pan, caked with red sauce. Plunging it into the sudsy water, I stifled a little howl of pain. That water was hot! With a soggy sponge, I started scrubbing the pan with its stubborn sauce. The water was turning a dull shade of red, and I felt the sweat prickling my brow and upper lip. The pot would not come clean.

It took a moment for me to realize that Carl was staring at me with that same smile on his face. Then he scratched his head as if he were perplexed. “I've never seen anyone do dishes like that before. We always start with the glasses and silverware and save the pots and pans 'til last. Let 'em soak in the water. Ya know what I mean?”

My cheeks were burning, and I was inwardly cursing this boy who had the nerve to tell me how to wash dishes! My mind searched for a reply that would put him in his place. But before I could say a thing, he took up the rag and said, “Here, I'll show you, Mary Swan. I don't guess you've had the chance to do many dishes with Ella Mae there all the time.”

He wasn't snooty or bitter or self-righteous. It was a statement. But it still bugged me to death, the way he smiled so politely and then changed the water and started all over. I felt like he had slapped my hands for committing a terrible sin. Humiliated, I grabbed a dish towel and started drying the glasses he placed in the dark green dish holder.

Somewhere between the silverware and the last pan, I got over my humiliation. When all the dishes were dried and stacked, we walked into the big room where Miss Abigail and Ella Mae were engrossed in a conversation with a sickly looking white-haired woman.

“Leave 'em be,” Carl whispered to me. “They're always talkin' and prayin' with people. Wanna go outside? I'll take you to my house.”

I shrugged, thinking I should at least tell Ella Mae what I was up to. When I did, she got a scowl on her face and said, “Fine little jaunt ova' ta yore house, Carl. Gonna take ya a while.”

“We'll be careful, Ella Mae,” Carl said solemnly.

Miss Abigail nodded at Ella Mae and smiled at Carl, so Ella Mae just shrugged and said, “Y'all be back fo' too long.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Carl said. And to me, “You can meet my brotha's and sista'.”

It was hot and miserably muggy outside as we walked down the street. Carl pointed at a massive old Victorian house with trash in the yard and windows broken out. “Twelve different families live in there.”

“In one house?”

“Yep. White families. That there's a tenement house. Lots of 'em round these parts.”

Many of the houses were two-story and Victorian looking. Some, I could tell, had once been beautiful old homes. But now virtually all were in disrepair. “Whites and blacks live in this neighborhood?”

“Yep. Used ta be only rich white folks. Then they got scared and run lickity-split away from here, so that's when the poor whites moved in. Now ya got both blacks and whites, and Mexicans too, but they don't like mixin' together. 'Cept at the church when there's a free meal offered!” He chuckled a little. “Ova' where I live near Cabbagetown, it's all black families.”

“Cabbagetown! That's really what it's called?”

He smiled. “Sure is. This here's Grant Park, and then there's Cabbagetown. And not far away there's Mechanicsville and Buttermilk Bottom and Summerhill and Reynoldstown. Those are all black neighborhoods.”

“Funny names. But then again, I live in a place called Buckhead.”

“I've heard of Buckhead. Lotsa ladies I know work in Buckhead.”

“You know where the name came from?”

“Nope.”

“Well, the story goes that back in the 1800s a man named Henry Irby shot a large buck near Paces Ferry Road and Peachtree.” Peachtree was a wide road that ran smack through Atlanta from south to north. “He mounted the head on a post in front of his tavern, and people started calling the place ‘Buck's Head.'”

Carl grinned. “Makes sense.”

“And do you know where the name Peachtree comes from?”

“Now, Mary Swan, that ain't too hard. Comes from a peach tree, I reckon. Musta been a lotta them round these parts, the way they call everything in this city Peachtree somethin'.”

“Well, it might be because of the peach trees, and it might be because of the pitch—you know, the resin, in pine trees.”

“You mean it shoulda been called Pitchtree?” He narrowed his eyes in a teasing way.

“Yeah, maybe. Fact is, there weren't that many peach trees around back in Indian times. But one thing's for sure. Indians lived here, Muscogee and Cherokee, and there was a village known as Standing Peach Tree right where the Chattahoochee River meets Peachtree Creek.”

Carl lifted his eyebrows. “They teach you stuff like that at your school?”

“No, I read it in a book.”

“Well, that's just fine.” He stopped then and said, “That's where I work in the afternoons.” He indicated a gas station with a sign that read “Abe's Fill 'er Up.”

“I don't know who named the place, but I figure it pretty well explains what it's here for.” He was grinning from ear to ear.

I almost stuck my tongue out at him, but by now I knew his teasing was perfectly harmless.

“And over there's the Rite Price Laundromat where me and my friends hang out on the weekends.”

We must have been walking for at least fifteen minutes, and I was beginning to wonder if I should have come with him. “Are we almost there?”

“Not far now, Mary Swan. Over there's the cemetery—they call it Oakland. Right famous place,” he commented.

Oakland Cemetery! Way across the street, I could see a tall redbrick gateway rising in three arches with wrought-iron gates marking the entrance. Carved in the stone above the main arch was the word
Oakland
.

I nodded in the direction of the cemetery and said, “That's where my mom is going to be buried.”

“Go on. Ya don't mean it?”

“Sure I do.”

“She hasn't been buried yet?”

“No. Daddy and the rest of the people who lost family members in the crash are dealing with lots of red tape in getting the bodies back to the States. Most of the funerals are just now taking place. Mama's is scheduled for next Saturday.” I suddenly felt a funny catch in my throat.

He walked with me to the entrance to Oakland, and I peeked through the gate. Tall oaks and magnolias lined a narrow red-brick cobbled road with stone monuments on each side. “Have you ever been inside, Carl?”

“Yep. Lotsa times. Big ole place, sprawlin' out all over. Kinda rundown now. But mighty lot of famous folks are buried in there.” He got this distraught look on his face, just for a second, and then he turned away from the cemetery and kept sauntering down the street.

I watched him take his long, nonchalant strides. I wondered if he just liked to wander around in cemeteries, or if he went in there to attend funerals of people he knew. I was finding it hard to swallow. My head felt light, and I wanted to sit down on the curb, but Carl was already halfway down the street. I felt an awful aching inside for my dead mother, but even more so for this boy who was an orphan, who attended a run-down church and had a night job and had missed two years of school so he could help care for his siblings. I had to jog to catch up with him, and when I did, I was sweating and out of breath from the thick heat.

“It must be really hard to be a Negro,” I said softly. Then I wished I hadn't.

He looked over at me, wrinkled his brow, and shrugged. “I'm used to it.”

We walked a little farther without saying a word. The houses on this street were small, wood clapboard, different colors, mostly with peeling paint. Many had little porches on the front, and on some of those porches men and women sat rocking back and forth, fanning themselves and staring at me as if I were a Martian. And I guess I stared back, all the while thinking to myself,
This is what poverty looks
like
.

It wasn't so much the unkempt homes or the sparse grass and trash along the route. It was the people. The children with a kind of dirtiness that meant they hadn't taken a bath for weeks. The men with toothless smiles and the wide women wearing clothes that looked like they'd picked them out of a rummage sale with their eyes closed. It was something I couldn't quite define—something that made me feel sad.

“Here's where I live,” Carl said. He stopped in front of a white wooden house. Its yard was neat with potted flowers on the front porch. I couldn't help but notice the contrast with several of the surrounding homes, which had car carcasses in the front yards.

As soon as he opened the screen door, his siblings came to greet us.

“Carl's here,” one of the boys called out. “He done brought a friend. A white girl!”

The two boys studied me solemnly at first. The little girl, who couldn't have been more than seven or eight, stood beside Carl and gave me a shy smile.

“Mary Swan, I'd like ya to meet my little brotha's, Mike and James, and my sista', Puddin'.”

Mike, the oldest, stepped forward and held out his hand. “Pleased ta meetcha.” He puffed out his chest and mashed my hand in his, so that I stepped back and said, “Ouch!”

“Mike, watch yorese'f, boy!” Carl remonstrated in a voice that was very different from the one he used when he talked to me. Then he said, “Excuse us, Mary Swan. He's mighty full of himself for a twelve-year-old, but he's all right.”

“Nice to meet you, Mike,” I said. “Good grip you've got there.”

Immediately the other boy rushed over to shake my hand. “I'm James and I'm ten.”

I regarded him warily with a sliver of a smile on my lips. “Good to meet you too. Be careful with my hand, please.”

He opened his mouth in a smile, took my hand, and pumped it up and down several times. I pulled my hand away and shook it down by my side, pretending to be in pain. The boys stared at me silently. Then I winked at them, and they burst into laughter.