Those Bones Are Not My Child (99 page)

Zala crossed over to the Jiffy Mart. Two undercover cops in a sneaker car were watching Parents for Justice cross Gordon Road. They got out of the car. The Black man had a square of toilet paper on his freshly shaven jaw. The white guy’s shirt buttons were about to pop off his belly. He slung his jacket over his shoulder with two fingers. Crossing, the Black cop, in a shiny gray suit that matched his glasses, yanked on the short-sleeve shirt of the fat guy, telling him to put on his jacket.
Zala tried twice from the outer-door phone to get Leah or Gaston on the beeper. She watched the two plainclothesmen take the long way to Seven Hills Congregational.

“Sonny coming?” When Kofi turned up his nose, she handed him the narrator’s part and went upstairs to get her brother herself.

Coming into the vestibule were people she’d never seen before. The program was going to start soon, because everybody was men and men liked to stand around and be last. There was a reddish-brown man with a white turban on his head; his beard was bound in a hairnet. There were some very dark men in short-sleeve brown suits with no collars. Some African men came in too. Their shirts were very pale and very crisp and the creases in their pants were very sharp. They wore sandals. A tall redheaded white man wore sandals too. He had on a long shirt that looked like a girl’s. Flowery and sheer, it went down to his knees; his white pants were crinkly and not very clean.

A nice-looking man who used to come to the house was standing next to Baldy Bean and Mason clicking a metal thing every time somebody went through the inner doors and sat down in church. She was just about to go outside and tell Sonny all about himself when a lady stuck her head out of the office and called Baldy Bean to the phone. He winked at Kenti before he went in, or maybe he was winking at Mason, ’cause right away Mason pulled the man clicking the thing and pointed his finger at the man with red hair like the clicker had forgotten to count him.

“You coming to my play or not, Sonny Spencer? We’re doing the last rehearsal and I want you to come. I come when you play ball,” she said, appealing to fair-is-fair. “Whatchu doing? It’s hot out here.”

He was looking at the people on the sidewalk, on the steps, and in the doorway.

“You did good with Jacob at Jabbok—I listened. I want you to come and listen to me. This is your last chance.”

He tried to brush her out of his line of vision like she was Raggedy Ann. Kenti refused to move, so he had to walk around one of the big white posts to keep spying on people behind their backs.

Sonny had been overhearing juicy bits about hair standing there on the top step, Stuff about Negro pubic hairs and head hairs from Caucasians.
Witnesses had lied about hairs. Cops had been sent to the dog pound to collect hairs. Scrubbing the bottoms of their shoes on the mat, not eager to go in and cut their conversations short, people had been talking about money too. Money that SCLC and other groups had doled out to the families. An older woman had ducked to the side by the high hedges she was so angry, she was telling her friend what Venus Taylor had done with her share of the money: she’d had a tummy tuck. The woman was fuming and spitting so bad, her friend had to take out a handkerchief. Right there on the church steps on a Sunday, the woman had said Venus Taylor, mother of the murdered girl, should be flogged for what she’d done with her money. Sonny had wanted to laugh in her face. “Yeah, let’s stone her, stone her at the altar.” People were a trip.

It was like his mother had written in her diary: gossip was some people’s idea of citizens in action. Calling the emergency hot line was what they thought participatory democracy was about. Polls were taken and that was supposed to be as good as intelligent debate. People coming up the stairs sounded like they’d handed their heads over to the pollsters. Did Williams do it? Did he get a fair trial? Do you still think it’s the Klan? Circle yes or no, check a box, call this toll-free number.

“People are dumb,” he said, his lip curled. “Dumber than shit.”

“So. Everybody’s stupid and rotten but you, hunh?”

Kenti expected him to lift his chin in the air and say “That’s right,” but he didn’t. His mouth drooped and then pulled his whole head down to watch an ant who’d come out of the cracks. The ant was as fat as a blackberry and would be a big spot if he squashed it, but he didn’t. He just kept stepping and stepping to hurt it and keep hurting it with the edge of his big, heavy shoe.

A Boys’ Club van came up the street and went past Zala, boys back from an overnight trip, sleeping bags stuffed in the rear window. Something caught her in the back of the knees. She didn’t look around for a cause. It had been happening often enough for her to know a few of the old demons were still hiding out. She concentrated on getting from one telephone pole to another. A posted sign where she’d expected to see
LOST DOG REWARD
turned out to be someone offering free kittens. On the next pole was a poster advertising a local production of
Deathtrap
. She almost laughed. Paulette, on her honeymoon in New York, had
urged Zala and Spence to fly up and join them, maybe take in a Broadway play. The long-running thriller about a burnt-out playwright who schemed to murder his wife for her money had been Paulette’s choice, especially after learning that one of the backers of the nasty drama was Claus Von Bülow, on trial again for attempted murder of his wealthy wife. Zala laughed—like they had flying money.

Often, out walking in the morning, her lungs clear, joints oiled, no guck in her eyes, she’d be overtaken by a vitality and would feel like a character in a musical about to burst into song, a hundred violins sawing away, a French horn in an achingly lyrical solo. But just as sudden it could be the blow at the back of the knees.

She was sure she could keep moving and walk the strange charley horse out of her legs. She stepped on a candy wrapper that crinkled like the blue tissue airmail from Gerry. Gerry had applied for a position with UNESCO. A major conference; the issue, who would inform the world about Africa, colonialist Africanists or Africans? Partway down the side of the letter was wet-on-wet brushstroke, an ink blot.

She could see Sonny on the portico and people moving quickly up the steps to go in. When he saw her coming, he played Samson between the pillars. Zala laughed as loudly as she could, to show him she could and to invite health into her lungs.

“How’s it looking?”

Instead of answering her, he was searching her face. She was sure she had a mustache of sweat and looked wilted, but he seemed to be aware of something else. She studied him for a clue.

To get away from her eyes, which seemed to be frisking him, Sonny took three steps backward and bumped into his father’s friend from California.

Dolph backed over the threshold. “People sure are whistling a lot for a city that’s supposed to have everything under control.”

From where Spence stood, passing out programs, it looked as though Zala were backing Dolph and Sonny into the vestibule. If they’d had their hands up, the picture would have been complete, the picture provoked, he supposed, by the sight of so many undercover types.

“Keep the focus on the petition,” one of the Parents for Justice members was saying to Mason, who always looked strange to Zala without his right hand, Lafayette.

“Let’s try to get a civilian task force formed before we adjourn,”
Reverend Thomas said from the corner. He was pulling on a roll of tape, preparing to rehang the
DEFEND THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE
sign.

Sonny was behind her now. His hands on her shoulders like clothes-pins, he turned her toward the sign. “Somebody’s added ‘Without Spying or Harassment,’ ” he told her. From the way he said it, she had a pretty good idea who it had been. She tucked her pocketbook under her elbow firmly. His eyes seemed to bore through the straw even after he moved off and worked his way toward the stairs.

People crowded around those listed to speak and offered handshakes of solidarity. They didn’t miss the opportunity to pass out brochures, but did miss the eyeball messages that telegraphed between members of STOP, Parents for Justice, and Inquiry and shut the congratulators out of the circle. The shared past of the families, vets, and community workers had led to a consciousness that overrode expedient alliances with those who also worked hard to encourage people to battle against forgetfulness, but only for the opportunity to market glow-in-the-dark merchandise.

More people were moving into church as the choirs trooped up the stairs. Spence had seen the look on their faces before at other memorial programs and meetings: slack from so many revisions, new theories, changing stakes, sifted facts. Their step was wary as they entered the church.

Reverend Thomas squeezed Zala’s shoulder as he went past to enter in front of the choirs lining up two by two to march in. Support of the program was voiced loudly. Confident predictions were made. Backs were slapped and Zala’s hand was pumped. Spence flashed a broad smile as he went in. But Zala felt that Sonny alone knew her heart’s desire.

When the junior and senior choirs split at the center aisle, Zala followed behind the seniors, quick-stepping down the left aisle. She scanned the faces in church on the lookout for a particular pair as she advanced toward a pew in the front.

The floorboards thundered. Gladioli in the vases along the pulpit shook. Saints glowed at the windows. Panels of the Twenty-third Psalm turned amber in the sunlight. Tape on one cracked pane had covered portions of
THOU PREPAREST A TABLE BEFORE ME IN THE PRESENCE OF MINE ENEMIES
for so long, even old-timers referred to the scene as the Last Supper, ignoring the inimical faces closing in on the diner.

Zala pulled a T-shirt from her bag and drew an index card from her pocket. She looked up. The pulpit had never seemed more elevated, the padded wine velvet chairs more thronelike. “Great God Almighty” slid without pause into “No Hiding Place Down There”; then they sat. She was glad they would remain in the choir stall. She didn’t want to be alone in that high place. If only Mama Lovey were present, or Paulette. Zala slipped the T-shirt over her head and used the hardwood back of the bench to brace her shoulders. Can’t live with your heart in your mouth always, she counseled herself.

Reverend Thomas got right to the point. “If people are to win victories over their worst terrors, the noblest traits in them must be appealed to.” This he directed to those scheduled to speak, taking his time to roam his eyes over the gathering to pick them out before he continued, speaking of the children and the community, the love and concern for their care being the noblest and oldest sentiment in the Black community.

“We’ve all been favored before with articles and talks that point up the inaccuracies and untruths concerning the Atlanta Missing and Murdered Children’s Case. One would think further education would be unnecessary. But many of us are still unwilling to dismantle the authorities’ myth. While we may despise the treachery of lies, we seem to fear the squalor of the truth even more. Let us bow our heads and pray for the strength to overcome our own fearfulness. Let us pray for the strength to become more accountable to the generations to come. And for the strength to make this city responsible to people’s need for the truth, so that our children will not grow up cynical and warped by our failure of courage.”

He looked the assembled over and gripped the sides of the lectern. His shiny, black, fulsome sleeves draped down over the sides of the wood. He bowed his head finally and began, “Father, Mother, God, Spirit,” pausing a long time for this departure from his usual invocation to sink in before he asked that the gathering be blessed and the tongues of the speakers be touched with the light. And as the people said Amen, he nodded to Zala. She mounted the steps as Reverend Thomas pointed the crowd’s attention to her name on the Cradle Roll. Then he praised this longstanding member of Seven Hills for the courage to come before the 204 in attendance.

Zala braced her knees against the shelf that held a water glass and a carafe. Looking up from her note card, she gazed out. She knew now how ministers could be so perceptive about individual members of a congregation. From where she stood, everyone was distinctly visible. A whole row of men, their shirts opened at the throat. A woman powdering her nose. A patch of tissue on a shaving cut, a pair of hands folding a crocheted-edged handkerchief, a couple who sat close together rubbing shoulders. She spotted a pair of old patent-leather dress shoes in the aisle: the undercover cop, legs crossed at the ankle, had tried to mask a hole in the bottom of one with shoe polish. She was strengthened by the encouraging nods and smiles. Someone in the choir behind her said, “Hmm-hunh.” The woman in the center pew closed her compact with a click and lifted her powdered face, expectant. Zala began.

“ ‘We are all each other’s harvest, we are each other’s business.’ From a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. ‘We’ve always been at the center of the theft.’ From a poem by Andrew Salkey. ‘Of all the virtues,’ says Maya Angelou, ‘the most important is courage, for without courage none of the other virtues can be practiced with consistency and passion.’ ” Zala held on to the lectern and stepped carefully to the right and then to the left, still holding on, she turned to her chair so that her T-shirt was visible to all. She stepped back and repeated the two-word inscription. “From a poem of the same title by Alexis DeVeaux—‘Question Authority.’

“From the start, there was silence. Not only in City Hall and in the squad rooms and newsrooms, but there was silence in our neighborhoods too. Even now there is a taboo against speaking out. Those who do speak out are put down with a look or a sarcastic remark that says, ‘You’re making too big a fuss and are trying to make our leadership look
bad by washing dirty linen in public.’ ” She was bolstered by the murmuring of the elderly woman she’d helped out of a cab, a woman who probably still did her washing outdoors in big pots and knew no better way to get linen fresh than to let the sun at it with a breeze blowing through.