Beulah tipped him a nickel.
Thanks, downhome. He grunted off.
Four bad younguns stood on the stoop of their building.
My name is Ran
I work in the sand
I’d rather be a nigger
Than a no-dancing white man
Get on way from here, Beulah said.
We ain’t doin nothin to you, granny.
Boy, watch yo mouth. I’ll knock yo teeth back to Tupelo.
I ain’t from no Tupelo.
I know where you from. I know yo kind.
Aw.
If yall was nice boys, you’d help us wit these bags. Can’t you see my niece got all these here bags?
It took all four puffing boys to get the steamer trunk to the third floor.
Sho is heavy.
She got some gold.
Or some cold.
Or somebody dead in there.
THE SEEK-AND-FIND-HER MANEUVERS of the babies started after the train sliced off Sam’s leg, smooth as bread or a tube of lunchmeat. Sam and Dave liked to jump the speeding trains. One miscalculated jump landed him in Mercy Veterans Hospital (years later renamed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., General Hospital, MLK, where Dave wasted away).
No loss, Beulah said. That damn fool brother of mine left his sense back home when he came up here, Beulah said. He mightest well have left his leg.
Sam shook for three nights with fever. His tongue spat out red words.
What’s that he’s mumblin? Gracie asked.
Something bout that Filipino woman, Beulah said.
What Filipino woman?
The one who had his baby.
What? This truly surprised Gracie, for Sam had never said word the first about it.
Back when he was stationed overseas. It ain’t nothing, Beulah said. Over there, them women so po they’ll do it all night long for a can of beans.
I was so glad to get shut of them niggas, Beulah said. And when they get out the service, first thing they do come visit me. Well, first they go to California looking for R.L. Ain’t there but a moment. Come visit me. I like to think they come to stay fo good. One night, I prayed to God, Please send them niggas back to Houston … I guess they heard God’s call, or maybe they jus missed all that devilment. They took the first locomotive back to Houston. But those two weeks they stayed wit me …
Well, Beulah, I guess they didn’t want to get shut of you, cause two years after that—
— they come for good.
The doctors put a spoon in Sam’s mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue—like you had to do when Nap had one of his seizures—shaking, like he hadn’t got spilled onto the tracks but had actually caught the train and was riding it. That fever so hot that Gracie saw red plumes spreading over her hands and climbing red up the sanitized white walls. Only Beulah could stand the heat of Sam’s bed.
Sam, Beulah said. Sam.
Quiet down now, Beulah. They gon put us outa this room.
Sam, you want me to hold up yo leg? Sam.
Beulah, he can’t hear you.
Sam. You the baby. Mamma told me to guard after you kids. Mamma told me—
The hours trembled on, and days. Sam shook off the fever. The doctors gave him a wooden leg, the same leg — no, they forced him to buy a new one, the termites crunching down to the roots of that first one — that, years later, Jesus and Hatch mistook for a toy when the family went visiting him, laid up drunk wit that lady who would steal his life, steal the wood of his head with her ax, already knowing and planning her crime, cause she always fled the apartment whenever we visited, didn’t want us to see the guilt in her eyes, read her war plan—the boys knocking one another upside the head with the leg, or using it as a bowling pin, the same leg that Sam often set on fire when he got drunk and bounced down the stairs naked to smother it out.
Sam out of danger, Gracie returned home. She needed a Scripture to celebrate his recovery. She kept her Bible high on the closet shelf, away from cheese-seeking mice. She opened the closet and found a baby — the first of many she would battle or evade in all the years that have followed — nibbling the pages.
THE BIBLE was the only gift Daddy Larry ever gave her, four-leaf clovers inside, small dried bookmarks picked by his own Houston hand. She brought it with her when she came North. Why come North? To escape finger-cutting cotton fields. To avoid bundles of cotton inside some cracka’s house, shirts, skirts, socks, draws, and sheets. So, go North where yams grow in the sidewalks, lemonade flows from fire hydrants, and the sky rains silver and gold. Bumping her Bible and her suitcases against seat sides on the whistling northbound steel-smoking hound that dragged her past black ‘Sippi fields and yellow oceans of corn to this red gray green city. A rich, hideous city built of stone and steel and mist. Tall buildings — cliffs of solar glass — side by side, no elbowroom between them. Their shadows slanting across the train’s steamy window. Beggars seated in their depths. Tar Lake at the end of every street. A flow of people moving up and down the avenues, circling a drain of boulevards. Winking traffic lights. Congested cars moving terrapin-slow. Light or dark square cars, not the bright-colored round cars people drive today. Great green buses driving a wedge through streets. Ties hauling suitcases. High-butt women in tight weaved dresses shaking keys. I got a rainbow wrapped and tied around my shoulder. Tough boys shoving their faces into each other. One of the mysteries of city breeding. Life in proportion to beauty. This place up North was not in God’s world.
The conductor took her suitcase without her asking, and beckoned her to step down the train’s narrow metal stairs where a small metal footstool awaited her on the platform. With one hand firmly holding the passenger railing and the conductor guiding her by the elbow, she turned her back to the platform, curved her Bible discus-like up to her chin, eased one heel then the other onto footstool, and took a short hop to city concrete. She retrieved her suitcase, thanked the conductor, then headed for the station lobby, past passengers training or detraining and cars steaming in wait.
Gracie! Beulah opened her arms like a strong machine, curved black hat like a snail shell on her head. Hair below her shoulders in one electrified whitening ray. She sucked Gracie in with vacuum power and speed.
Hey, Beulah. Glad to see you.
Beulah loosened her grip just enough to allow Gracie to angle, bend, and hug Sheila.
Gracie. Sheila’s hand rubbed concrete circles on her back. Gracie. So glad to see you.
Gracie searched the words for warmth and truth.
You, redcap! Beulah screamed. Come take my niece’s bags.
Once home, Sheila and Beulah allowed her an hour to bathe and rest, then guided her out of the apartment to discover the city. She can still remember smartly dressed city people betaking themselves to their chosen destinations, remember the casual walk to the Elevated platform, her first sight of a green commuter train, car doors rattling sliding banging open, and city people charging out like racehorses. Faces at every window formed a chain of countless eyes all staring at her. She clutched her Bible to her freshly bathed and powdered bosom. Train rocked and rumbled by.
This not our train? she asked.
No, Beulah said.
That’s when Sheila explained the city’s complicated network of trains and lines: subway and Elevated, A train and B train, express and local, rush hour, the Englewood line, Howard line, Jackson Park line, Evanston line, Ravenswood line. On and on.