There Will Be No Miracles Here Page 5

  I don’t remember saying a word or cutting that cake, though I do sometimes still feel that little sensation—he’s on his way—which I suppose is the sensation of hope. All I know is that at some point cake was cut and eaten and everybody went home and I sat on the couch next to the front door and waited for him even after Mama and Tashia went to bed but I got tired after a while so went to bed, too. He did come back that night or the next day, but soon enough he was gone once again, which would not have been a problem if I had not lied.

  The lie in question involved Luke. He and I were on the phone, just holding the phone one boring afternoon as we often did for hours. He was playing a video game, playing with so much focus that I bet his tongue was hanging like it always did when Luke felt he was being excellent at something. I was sitting on my bed, listening to Luke extract great joy from that video game, so much joy that I could imagine enjoying a video game myself. My imagination got carried away, I guess, and I began to hallucinate.

  Oh, thank you, Daddy! I shouted. I been wanting one of these!

  What you talking ’bout, Casey?

  My daddy just walked in with a Playstation, Luke. Man that’s crazy.

  Luke had this little giggle in those days that would inspire even the holiest person to slap him in the goddamn face. He released the giggle.

  Fool, Uncle Crow is next door. Y’all’s car been parked out there all day.

  Young Luke was a lot of things at that time but he was not a liar. And aside from strong eyes he had good enough sense to know that the only people who visited the house next door were dope fiends, unless they were relatives of Dean, the chief dope fiend of that residence and a real decent guy despite or even because of his hobbies.

  Dean must have been our parents’ age, but he had more kindness and creativity than your average grown person. Was more resourceful, too—I remember a stretch of days when he carried a cardboard box through the neighborhood, selling toiletries for one dollar apiece. I’m sure he acquired those toothpastes and deodorants by honest means, because he was decent, as I said, and never stole a thing from anybody that I know of (and I would have heard about it). Dean was also always there when you needed him, like the evening he taught me and Luke how to install Aunt Chandra’s front door—Okay gentlemen y’all watch me now I’ma do what I gotta do soon as I figure out what I gotta do! Twenty years later that door still stands and Dean’s approach still works.

  I tell you about Dean because I haven’t seen him in a while and feel better when I think about him, especially that time he showed up with his head shaved and basketballs tattooed on his skull. Didn’t even know Dean liked basketball. But I also mention Dean because I want the record to show that I don’t give much of a shit that my father began, sometime before my tenth birthday, hanging with dope fiends. Nor am I up in arms that he acquired and consumed a controlled substance himself, heroin mostly, according to him and to any number of news outlets. I never witnessed it myself and I am trying to tell you things for which I have solid evidence, or at least more interesting things than the claim or fact that a man tried heroin once and, soon after, became addicted. My best bet is that heroin must be pretty incredible, must lead to enough ecstasy to make a man’s veins and future seem a small price to pay. Besides, I was, through my twenties, addicted to Skittles, enough of which will have you broke and strung out and dead, too—and while that may seem like comparing apples to oranges, so to speak, addiction is addiction and it just so happens that we’ve built ourselves a nice society that places all the folks addicted to fame and money and complaining a little lower than the angels and, down below waterbugs and Hugo Chavez, places men and women who get high every now and then or all the time. Not that I’m endorsing any of it. I’m just not going to be the one to jump all over the addicts we don’t like. At least not for being addicts. Daddy could have enjoyed all the heroin in the world for all I cared—I just wanted him to show up for my tenth birthday party and to inform me of his visit to Dean’s so I wouldn’t be caught up in a lie. And I wanted him to be more careful so I would not have to snuff out that fire on his shirt when I found him outside asleep in the Benz that night, and I wanted him to go back to Ace Pawn Shop and retrieve my old Sega Genesis and my Giga Pets and other items of mine, or at least give me a cut of the proceeds, and I wanted him to pick me up from school on time like he used to. That’s all.

  Instead, the three o’clock bell rang one fall afternoon in 1997 and I stood out on the front steps with all the other kids. I watched them stampede to the car line, to the arms of grandparents, to the sidewalk for a short stroll to Caravan Trail or Solitude Drive. Watched them all and waited on the steps. Some authority asked me twice or three times Honey, where’s your ride? which is what I wanted to know myself, but knowing not, I lied and said On their way and kept on waiting until the steps were empty except for me and the parking lot was also almost empty. I went to the edge of the hill to look down at Granny’s house. The driveway there was empty, too. I did not have a key and did not want to go there, anyway. I decided to walk.

  The house on Marsalis was three miles away, an hour away on adult feet, much longer for a ten-year-old with a book bag. But I knew exactly how to get there—down Red Bird Lane to the cemetery gate, right on Marsalis, keep on walking to our front door—and since no place you know how to get to as a child seems too far, I began the journey with a real sense of adventure and a fair amount of energy to boot. Both were gone by time I reached the cemetery. The sun was gone, too, not nighttime yet but cloudy and cold.

  I made the right on Marsalis. Less than halfway there. I kept my eyes down, one foot, other foot, and when I next looked up I saw an old woman standing in a schoolyard, packing up her things but still wearing her tangerine crossing guard vest. She smiled on me.

  Where you going this late, honey? Headed home, I hope.

  Yes, ma’am.

  All right, hurry on, then.

  I couldn’t walk any faster. But that woman made me feel, if only for a few blocks, that she cared that I keep walking, that I reach my destination, and that gave the journey a little Purpose, aside from the original purpose, getting home, which seemed unlikely once I reached the corner of Marsalis and Loop 12.

  There are many cities around the world that encourage and even honor the pedestrian. Dallas was not one of them, at least at Loop 12. Three lanes in each direction, a tiny strip of median, cars whizzing by eager to murder old ladies and little children trying to get home. Not even a walk signal that I recall. I stood back and let the light change once or twice. Walked down to the curb. Grabbed my book bag straps. When the light turned green I ran, eyes on the far corner, book bag flinging up and down my little back. Somehow I reached the other side. Still another mile to go. Walking slower now, feeling colder now because it was getting late and I was sweating, but I kept on going, past the creek that trickled under Marsalis, nearly to a shopping center where I could have bought some water if I’d had some money.

  A car pulled up beside me.

  Casey!

  My sister’s voice. The Benz. I had imagined rescue a few times on this journey, but not how mad I’d be if it happened. Mad or not, I was tired, so got in, slid my book bag off.

  Where have you been, boy?

  Tashia sounded like she had been searching for a long time. I reached between the front seats and grabbed her arm, started to explain everything. But then I began to cry and decided to just do that for a little while.

  You knew I was gonna pick you up, Scooter. Daddy used the same tone he always used when I did something he thought ridiculous, like when I claimed there was gold in the rocks outside our apartment in Columbus—gold and other precious stones in all the rocks of the earth, actually. He laughed and sighed and said, with just enough mockery, Scooter, there in’t any gold in those rocks. Then he walked through the front door and closed it behind him. Of course he had been right that time, but times had changed and he
had changed and I had changed even though he did not notice, and so to him I was still the crazy one. Maybe so.

  It is fitting, then, that at this very time, I came under the supervision from eight a.m. to three p.m. each weekday, of the only woman ever to escape the North Texas insane asylum, according to her.

  * * *

  —

  Little children! Gwendolyn Davis, my fifth-grade teacher, speaking. Shrieking, you could say. Do you all know what is in Terrell, Texas? Nobody answered. The insane asylum! That is where I am from. I . . . am the one . . . who got away!

  You didn’t doubt it, watching Ms. Davis stand at that giant wood-and-iron desk strewn with manila folders and uncapped pens and other chaos, her lashes fluttering behind the small glasses pinched on her nose, red fingernails flashing, always long and her own, freshly painted, tips never dull—perfect for tapping her desktop, your sternum, her temple when she wanted you to think. She especially wanted us to think about the consequences of not turning in her assignments.

  Oh!

  Another shriek. This time after classwork was passed, student by student, thirty sheets in all, to Ms. Davis. She held the full stack as though it were contaminated, scowled the way she always did when she believed there was a sheet missing. Never even counted to be sure.

  You all must think that I am Willie Foo Foo, just jumped off the turnip truck last night. I know you do. Must! She had a sinister snicker that made you snicker, too, till you remembered what the snicker was for. But if you do, baby loves, then you have made one of the biggest mistakes of your natural-born lives. That’s all right. She’d smile, such a wonderful little smile, often a smudge of lipstick on one tooth—for effect, I bet—and Betsy Sue, her paddle, now clutched between those red fingernails. That is alllll right. You can turn in my assignment today, or you can turn it in next year. Because I, Gwendolyn Davis, will be here. And you, whoeeeever you are, will be right here with me. Same bat time, same bat station, same bat assignment.

  Betsy Sue was not for effect. The paddle was made for times such as these when some poor student mistook Ms. Davis for Willie Foo Foo, whoever that was, or did anything else she had already explicitly told us not to do or expected us to know we shouldn’t do unless we were also Willie Foo Foo, in which case we should have stayed home instead of coming to her class. And yet for all the fear she put into the hearts of many of her students, I never was afraid. I mean it when I say I’d changed.

  While the adults went off and lost their goddamn minds, I’d taken on the task of fixing myself. Gone was the courage of my conviction that rocks were full of gold. Gone the threats to die for freedom. The kind of carelessness that helped me drive my mother’s car into the Drug Emporium, gone, and the guts to pass a note in class or, if pushed, to smash a classmate’s face with a Little Golden Book. I had once been the kind of boy who protested when my parents refused to let me wear my overalls backward, in the days of Kris Kross. I just won’t wear ’em, then! I cried. And did not wear them. That was the old me, though.

  The new me did not speak in protest if at all. Was glad that Thornton required uniforms. Damn near impossible to get a uniform wrong, and getting things wrong made the new me sick, a queasy feeling that first appeared during my jihad against the times tables—mistake after mistake, torn flashcards, aborted worksheets, tears. No Tums, no ginger ale, just work, keep working boy, and soon enough I could proclaim that twelve times twelve is a hundred forty four and folks would think I’d known this since I was born.

  I didn’t care about perfection for perfection’s sake. Was still a messy boy in my head or in whatever private space I had or made. But I had learned that the authorities loved nothing more than obedience, submission . . . or at least if I submitted they would not bother me too much. Even Granny cooled her jets once I kept my mouth shut and vacuumed the carpet like she requested: twice in each direction, no crooked lines, no footprint tracks. Came to my defense once after that, if you can believe it, when my sister kept trying to convince me that drawing dresses was for girls. Let that boy alone! Let him draw a dress if he want to! And yet the best solution, I found, was to stop drawing dresses and attention, and that worked just fine. It was simple, really: identify who was in charge, find out what they want, give it to them immediately.

  We ain’t seen nothing like it. Ms. Davis’s sidekick, Demorris Vance, recalled first meeting me. Davis and I said when we first got you . . . Where did this boy come from? I mean, boy, you would just sit there and watch us, them big ole eyes . . . Wherever we walked there them eyes were, watchin’ us. Wouldn’t say nothin’, just watch. Didn’t wanna miss nothing.

  And you did not miss a thing, Casey Gerald, Ms. Davis caboosed. Not one single solitary thing.

  I did miss one thing: some day in fall ’97 I missed Ms. Davis’s exact instructions for a homework assignment. I knew she’d ordered us to write a speech. Topic: I’m the Mayor Now and This Is My New Plan. But I couldn’t remember whether she’d said we had to recite these speeches from memory, so I assumed the worst. It was bad enough that I’d never written a speech before—not even sure I’d ever heard one except for that same snippet of “I Have a Dream” we’ve been pacified with for a half century, and those thirty-second spots we learned for Easter Sunday. But I also had not given any thought to what the mayor should be doing. So by the time I got home I was desperate enough to ask for help and found it thanks to my sister, who was still magnetic and so retained a retinue of clever, attractive high school friends, some of whom were at our house in my time of need and who, contrary to what was said about them in the papers, had damn good ideas for the mayor’s new plan.

  There was nothing special about what happened that evening. I transcribed some teenagers’ ideas and, when that was finished, read what I’d written again and again until I could say it without reading it. Then the day of reciting arrived. I watched, horrified on their behalf, as idontknowhowmany kids walked to the front and held big sheets of paper and proved that they had no problem staying in fifth grade forever. Another delinquent, another read speech, so many read speeches that I grew ashamed, figured I had the problem. But I didn’t have time for too much shame because I was next. I walked to the front, empty-handed. Stared at the clock on the back wall (I hated looking people in the face and had heard that audiences couldn’t tell whether you’re looking at them or at the wall behind them). Began to say the words that, by this point, I could see in my head, enough to make it all the way to thank you. Stood there and looked at Ms. Davis. Considered saying sorry. Then she shrieked—

  Oh! You are IT, Casey Gerald!

  I didn’t know what I was so just walked back to my desk, head down, hoping it would all end soon. But she was still staring at me, red fingernails on her hips, smiling.

  My my . . . I cannot wait to see you on that stage, baby love.

  Turns out I had gotten myself in a big mess. This homework assignment was actually an audition for the annual oratorical contest, in which I had no particular interest but for which Ms. Davis decided, because of my misunderstanding, I had the right skills—and her decisions did not require consent from child nor parent. I was it, and until she saw me on the stage for real she wanted to see me in rehearsal, with the talented and gifted teacher, whose qualifications for such a role I can’t put my finger on, aside from the fact that she seemed to have a lot of free time.

  All I remember is one of those rehearsals (not even the contest, by which time I had other things to worry about, which we’ll get to). We gathered in the auditorium. My name was called. I walked onto the stage, to the X that had been taped at center. Stood there and looked at the clock on the back wall. Said my first line and, at some point, said thank you. I went back to my seat, next to Ms. Talented-and-Gifted. Looked at her with that did I do all right? face that even some famous people make after television interviews.

  She put her incredibly wrinkled hand on my arm. Well, honey, you forgot to say half
your speech. I hadn’t even noticed.

  That was just how far down the road to perdition I had been up until that time—so carefree that I could stand onstage and not even realize that I was forgetting my speech and ruining my reputation, and not even mind until someone notified me. Maybe that’s what childhood is supposed to be like, I don’t know. All I know is that I have not forgotten a single line of a single speech since that woman’s intervention—that from that moment on I spent untold hours picking words that people would like and saying those words again and again and again and again until, at some point, I could lower my eyes from the clock and look folks in the face and give them what they wanted, a little thrill; and with a bit more work I could also move my hands with purpose, gesticulate, a finger pointed here, a clasped fist there, a pause, a smile, and thank you. To give a speech was to walk a minefield but, boy, to get it right . . . to get it right made the terror feel, sometimes, like real great fun, especially when the people clapped and took your picture and hugged you like they were your kin or at least something more than strangers. And it’s only now, all these years later, that I’ve realized it is possible, if not likely, that deep down I despise the act of standing in front of anybody saying anything. But when I was a child I did not speak much and then, one night, in slavish fear, I got my homework so wrong that it was perfect. And that made all the difference. Or enough.