“Ever since,” Sovereign James said, and then he stopped, remembering the vastness of that parking lot and the can of root beer that he moved from hand to hand to keep the cold from burning his fingers. “Ever since I’ve been blind I experience the world differently.”
“Different how?”
“It’s like I owe something, a bill that I forgot to pay. And it’s not just that... It’s as if I was tied by a long rope and then all of a sudden the rope is cut and I’m free, but I don’t know where I am, much less where to go.”
“But what do I have to do with that?”
“When I could see, people touched my life all the time and I took it for granted. I thought I knew everything. All I had to do was look at somebody or hear five words out of their mouth and I thought I knew everything about them. I wasn’t grateful for a damn thing. My own father fed me and protected me from the world. He built a house for his family and one day I just took off. I didn’t even go to his funeral. Now it’s too late. But... but you came up and saved me, and if I don’t give you something, I mean something more than a reward, then I’m still the same man I was — not worth saving.”
As Sovereign spoke a world opened up to him. He realized how much he missed his father’s father and how he had been a bad son. Maybe, he mused briefly, this was why he had never married and sired children; maybe he didn’t feel worthy to be a parent.
“I think I know what you mean,” Toni said. “It’s like my auntie G.”
“Who’s that?”
“She lived upstairs from us. My mama said that she was our auntie, but really she was Mama’s mother, only they got raised by Auntie G’s mama. Auntie G had had my mama when she was just twelve, so her mother raised them both like they was hers. Nobody said until my mama was grown, and so she treated Auntie G like they was sisters. And Auntie G lived in her rooms upstairs and was always makin’ brownies and lettin’ the little kids come up an’ watch her TV. One time when I was still little my mama got arrested and Auntie G let me live with her for seven weeks.”
“She was your grandmother.”
“She was my auntie G. And when she died, when I was twenty, nobody did nuthin’, not even Mama. The city buried her in what they call Potter’s Field and there wasn’t even no service or nuthin’.
“I was away then and when I got back I spent three weeks tryin’ to find the number of the grave site so I could at least bring some flowers for her.”
“What was her real name?”
“Giselle Breakwater. I told the people that but they didn’t care. And now I feel like I let her down.”
“No,” Sovereign James said.
“What you mean, no?” Toni said, anger threatening to come out in her voice.
“The fact that you tried to find her makes the memorial for her. You sitting here right now talking about her is better than any bouquet or eulogy. You are a living testament to that woman. No one could do more.”
Toni and Sovereign sat in the silence that followed his words. If he could have he would have seen that her brow was furrowed and her eyes were steady on him.
“There’s an envelope on the glass table between us,” Sovereign said. “It’s for you.”
He waited long enough for her to take the letter and open it. Inside she would find twenty-five twenty-dollar bills and a folded piece of notepaper saying Thank you.
“They wanted to give me hundred-dollar bills at the bank, but I thought twenties would be easier to deal with,” he said.
“This nice,” she said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Um... what do you do, Toni?”
“You mean like a job?”
“Yes.”
“I work at a beauty shop part-time sometimes. I do braids mainly, but Iris teaching me about stylin’.”
“Only sometimes?”
“They got a whole lotta full-time girls. I just take their place when they out sick or sumpin’.”
“Do you like the work?”
“I like bein’ around the people there. It’s almost all women except for Albert. He’s gay and Iris say he’s the second-best stylist in the whole shop.”
“Next to her?”
“No, next to Lisa Banning. Lisa used to do them wild hairstyles for Motown singers in the eighties. Iris say that Lisa could make wine into water.”
“You mean water into wine.”
“No,” Toni said with a sneer in her voice. “Lisa say that it’s easy to turn water into wine... all you need is some fruit. But turnin’ it back — that’s the hard trick.”
Something about the banter in the language reminded him of his grandfather and their long weekend excursions down the Southern California shoreline.
“You smilin’, Mr. James.”
“I’m forty-nine years old,” he said.
“I’ll be twenty-two in September.”
“You know what that means, Toni?”
“What.”
“It means that you’re already in the twenty-second year of your life. When you’re born they say how many months old you are until your first birthday. But all that time up till then is your first year.”
“It’s like you’re always ahead of yourself,” she added.
“That’s right.”
“So you in your fiftieth year,” she said.
“Half the way into a century and all I have to show for it is a pair of crazy eyes.”
“You don’t really have to give me all this money, you know.”
“Can you use it?”
“Oh yeah. I’m livin’ wit’ my mama but she wants me to help out.”
For years after his grandfather’s suicide Sovereign wished that they had gone farther, that he hadn’t gone to buy that root beer. In his dreams he’d get to that spot along the beach wanting more than anything to go farther. But in the dreamscape the paved path had ended and he couldn’t take a step more.
And that afternoon with Toni Loam he felt that he wanted to talk more, but there was nothing else to say.
“You got somethin’ to drink, Mr. James?”
“Over there,” he said, gesturing toward the open kitchen, “in the refrigerator.”
“You want sumpin’?”
He shook his head and listened to the muted sounds of the young woman opening the refrigerator and jostling a bottle that clinked against another. Orange juice, he thought.
“Glasses are in the cabinet to the left of the icebox.”
“You sure you don’t want some?”
“No, thank you.”
“It must be hard gettin’ around in here.”
“I know the place pretty well and I have a woman come in to clean and do some light shopping.”
“Must be nice to be rich like that.” Toni had returned to the red chair.
“Rich people,” Sovereign said, “the truly wealthy, own the earth. I just rent this little piece of turf. One big storm and it could all wash away. A moderate-sized earthquake could swallow up everything I ever did.”
“You too deep, Mr. James.”
“Call me... call me Sovy.”
“What kinda name is that?”
“My nickname. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Uh-huh,” she mused. “It must be messed up to wake up one day and be blind.”
“We all have problems in life, I guess,” James said. “My grandfather broke his back before I was born and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Toward the end there the only way he could get anywhere was if somebody pushed him.”
“I think I’d kill myself if that happened to me,” Toni said.
“I should probably let you go, Miss Loam,” Sovereign said, getting to his feet. “Thank you again for helping me.”
“Thank you for this money. It’s gonna be real helpful.”
They walked to the door and she opened it.
“You can call me if your maid gets sick or you need help some day that she don’t come,” Toni said.