Night riders?
— mail me a letter. Nigra, you act like you don’t know who running the show. They wrong. I know.
That’s when I decide to come North, train or no train. Locomotion or no locomotion. We took what money we had and some we didn — I earned, see, saved; I earned and saved — took and stole away in the night.
How old was Inez?
I don’t member exactly but she was jus a girl. No older than you.
Inez often spoke about the three of them crowded into their first apartment, on South Park (later renamed King Drive after the beloved doctor-reverend). A kitchenette—railroad flat, she called it — heated by lumps of coal that warmed the iron potbelly stove. She taught Pappa Simmons to read by the stove’s light.
But I thought you said Page taught all his niggas to read? If he did, then Whole Daddy surely learned and shared.
Why’d you come here?
Cause we followed the train and the train followed the bridge over the river and the river ran all the way to Cairo.
In Kankakee County?
Yes. We stopped in Cairo to change trains. You could go east or west or north. I asked the conductor, What’s the nearest city? He told me, Take that train, the one going north. We did. We here.
But Inez said—
I don’t care what Inez said. I tell you without lie.
EARLY AFTERNOON. The sky had already died from red fire to ash gray. Gray sidewalks, tar patches in the asphalt, vacant lots sparkling with old glass. Inez and George lived here in Morgan Park — far south, past Woodlawn, past South Shore — a two-hour train ride from North Park. Porsha strolled along the brick sidewalk with cold sun on her head.
She found Pappa Simmons palely asleep in his favorite talking chair. Pale but also on the edge of color. The red he had pined for, so many years — how many? it took her several minutes to count that number on her fingers — in reaching distance. She summoned George. He look funny, she told him.
George listened for his pulse, checked his heartbeat.
FRAGRANT COOKING brought Porsha to Inez’s bosom, a white welcome table, again and again. Inez, you got any of that applesauce? I’ll take four biscuits, please. Did you make more? Yes, cherry preserves. Inez, can you cook me one of those hamburgers? You ought to go in business. Now Inez can cook, Pappa Simmons said. She learned from the best, but she can’t hold a match to the best. But apples up here ain’t nothin like the ones we had back home. And the meat don’t taste live. To indulge in these culinary delights, Porsha marked the fourteenth day — why the fourteenth? the day after unlucky thirteen? she liked even numbers? the halfway point of the month? (well, that would be fifteen, or even sixteen) or perhaps it took the first two weeks of each new month for her to channel enough strength to weather Inez’s storm of pessimism? — of each month in her datebook. In this way she could remember to visit Inez. Then Inez started to forget. She forgot her recipes. She forgot the day of the week. She forgot all that happened the day before. She forgot your name. She mistook you for Mamma, insisting that Mamma’s aging face was masked behind your fresh skin.
Even if Inez was standing right before your face, she wasn’t there. Worst of all, Inez kept no portrait of Pappa Simmons readily visible to the visiting eye. You had to search through dusty photo albums to find his face and form. Photographs don’t lie. Inez was a looker in her day. Mad pretty. And George made a handsome soldier.
In the failed daylight, Inez stood on the walk before the house — one of the small, low houses that George claimed the government had built for soldiers returning from the war — her thin frame etched against the sky, as if she had been awaiting Porsha’s arrival. Colorless beside the marigolds, tulips, and roses (red, pink, and yellow). The rotten handwriting of time scribbled up and down her face.
Inez. Porsha kissed her on the cheek. Felt wrinkled skin beneath her lips. How are—
Terrible.
Can’t you ever look at the bright side of things? What are you doing out here?
Junior was here today.
John? Today? When?
Your father did something terrible.
My father?
He stole all my money?
He did what?
He stole my key.
Wait a minute. Lucifer. He—
Stole my key.
Key? What key?
To my safety-deposit box.
Porsha held up her hands as if to push Inez away.
He got all my money, my bonds, my stocks, my savings, my valuables, my certificates. Everything. Inez was crying now, hands over her face, the fingers larger than the shrunken head. Porsha guided her up the porch steps, hands on her thin shoulders, through the door, past the flower-filled sitting room — cream-colored plastic-covered antiques, and clam-shaped glass bowls offering candy — through the cramped living room, no larger than a chessboard square — the sketch of Inez done in Mexico, two photographs, Champions of the People (King and the Kennedy brothers), and God Save the Kings, that hovered above Inez’s head on the chair where she always sat, the latest issue of Jet on the TV stand — past the guest bedroom where Porsha had always slept when she visited, patting Inez’s back — burping a baby. Inez, get some sleep. Everything will be okay. She helped Inez to bed. Tucked her underneath ancient covers.
It don’t matter, Inez said. I’m going home. Going home. Soon. Soon. Good Lord break of day. And with that, she fell asleep, eyes shut painfully tight.
Porsha moved down the hall to the patio — as a girl, you imagined it an island, separate from the rest of the house, separate from everything else; deserted island populated by you and Pappa Simmons — where George sat at the glass table, bent over his newspaper, eyes swimming beneath his reading spectacles and magnifying glass throwing his face in large relief. The portable radio blared the baseball game.
Porsha. He looked up as she entered. His eyes, despite the spectacles, were watery and weak.
Porsha flopped down onto the couch beneath the world map where red thumbtacks indicated all the countries Inez and George had visited: Morocco, England, Italy, France, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Turkey, Spain—Spain would be an island without the Pyrenees—and more.
George put the magnifier down on the glass table, clicked off the radio. His eyes were uneasy behind the heavy reading glasses. I didn’t hear you come in. His white sleeveless T-shirt fit snugly against his firm flesh. He shifted his feet, gloved in backless house shoes.
Inez was out front.
Out front? George removed his glasses. I thought she was in the bed.
No, she was out front.
I didn’t hear her go out. She gets worse and worse. I can’t watch her every minute.
Why don’t you get some help?
George watched her.
You know, have someone come in a few days a week?
I already looked into that. You know how much they want?
Porsha watched him. No. How much?
George eased back in his seat. I’ll tell you it’s a lot. More than I can afford. We’re not rich.
Porsha fought back her words. He got all kinds of money, Uncle John said. She sat, not speaking, until she settled down inside herself. Was Lucifer here today?
Lucifer? Lucifer never comes here. You know that. John was here.
Today?
No, last week sometime. The week before. He wanted money.
Same ole same ole. John always wanted money. Family legend, Inez gave him ten thousand dollars cash to open a lounge, and another ten thousand to open a garage, five thousand down payment for Gracie’s house, and a thousand here and a thousand there to pay his taxes, keep the hounds abay, and stay out of jail. John had squandered a good deal of their money, tens of thousands.