Pathways to Ambiguity

By the middle of April 2006, after sitting in my study for twenty three hours, I felt I had seen and done enough to come to the conclusion that the best thing in the world is to be mad and not know it. Before that, I had seen people as a bridge to something better — a higher type of human perhaps — but the obvious implications of my little theory were lost on me, circling above my head like crows over some sort of prey.

It was finally spring on the avenue, the trees had green scattered here and there. Just a few weeks ago, they looked like skeletons, the driest kind. With the leaves returned terror, aerial torment. In a rare moment of clarity when Ginsby could remember who he was, he had referred to them as “judgement from above.”

One flew down to a clay flower pot on my patio. It had pupils that looked like blackberries, so dark they were almost purple. It peered back into my eyes, behind my pupils were things that I wanted to brag about but really shouldn’t. For example, 7 years ago when Ronald Freeman said my services were no longer needed after 15 years of earnestness and discipline, I didn’t say a thing but simply laughed and winked in his general direction. The business had shut down in fine fashion, before news crews and journalists, two months after. Someone had written a detailed letter to the powers that are describing the business’ long but latent history of fraud and tax impropriety. Or in 2004, when James Radley tried to take me to court for purposely backing my car into his fence and refusing to pay anything in damages, I had laughed then too. Both his couch and brown dog went missing a day before trial. To this day, the police are yet to say how.

The creature skipped till I could only see its shadow behind the pot of petunias. It’s black wings fluttered, then off it flew. On its wings, were what appeared to be spots the color of blood, its signature. It settled down further south in the Sassafras where its flock had built a nest. Black parents made sure to warn their black children to walk opposite it. Just like how they educated them to walk as far as possible from my 1900 Ford Model T, one of the first cars ever in rotation. A symbol of family nonsense was what my wife called it.

Along came a little white boy and his mother smiling and walking behind enemy lines. Ignorance was no excuse. Judgement swooped down. Like lightening, the boy let go of his ice cream and mother’s hand and sprinted, taking the entire right lane of 35th ave for himself. His little legs gave all. There was a black ’97 Civic coming, it had dashed around the corner like a horse at a derby, galloping over potholes, heeding nothing. The boy was still paying attention to the ‘judgement” over his head when the driver slammed on his breaks a little too late. All four tires went skrr and that’s when I heard the boy’s mother scream. The little boy was thrown as high as ten feet.

My wife said “oh my God!” and pushed herself beside me against the glass door. I looked at her and immediately looked away. Along with her arms and calves, her belly had ballooned, it showed through her grey sun dress. It was one of the reasons I was seeing Cindy who, as if she knew a secret pathway to my inner world, did all the things I liked.

She said “oh my God!” again and again. Her eyes got wet. She had never seen sorrow so close — a body spread out on tar.

I looked at her again and without knowing it, I was grinning. Poor God, he can’t change a thing.

The dark man and woman who came out of the ambulance had to push to get through the crowd. Some of whom had their hands over their mouths, a few were on their knees over the body, getting their jeans dirty on the hot tar, making cars have to turn around. More than once, the dark woman screamed “move!” at them. A man who the others called “Tom” stayed longer than everybody else. He was very pale and every now and then he would look at the boy’s mother’s breasts. She was still sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, rocking back and forth. She looked as though she were in a rocking chair. When he saw that she didn’t know herself, Tom moved and the dark man placed a cast on the little boy’s neck. He was still moaning, which the dark man said was good. The dark woman told the rocking woman that she should get in the ambulance with them. By then, the black civic had long driven off into the sunset with the Mexican flag on its radio pole forever flapping in the wind. I remember Tom specifically because he had shouted something like “those damn Mexicans.”

My wife said “oh my God!” again. It was mumbled, two little streams came down her face. Her cheeks had become so round.

I kept smiling and left for the store. Before the boy ran into street, I had spent all afternoon being reminded of “my duty as man.” Apparently real men would sell a car that had been in their family for generations if it was the only way to pay the bills. And, inspired by a thing called spontaneity, they would bring home fresh red roses too. The minute I tried to tell my wife that a feminist should do away schoolgirl fantasies was when her cheeks flushed with blood and then the yelling in my study really began.

Past the corner store on 47th and Ashland where Ginsby and his friends usually inhaled white powder and played with needles, I saw my neighbor, a “big-boned” woman with big circular black eyes (I never got her name). who spent the better part of her day shouting at her children: “I’m going to break your neck, Tyshawn,” “put it down, Dominique” “I’m going to squeeze the life outta you, Malik!” More than once I’ve considered calling child services on her but just never got around to it.

“Did you see what happened today?” I asked her when we stood together at the stop light.

“Yeah, some boy got hit.” Her eyes had bags under them and she was breathing hard. She seemed to be looking for Ginsby too. He always had headphones and DVD players for a third of what they were going for in Walmart or Walgreens. I’d never buy any but I’d always pass by with the change I got from the shop and slip him a three, five or even a ten for food, which in hindsight is the last thing I should have done.

The pipes and the needles were on the ground, but Ginsby and his friends weren’t around. “Probably in jail again,” my neighbor said. And turned and headed north in the direction of the apartment, her Nike air maxes with the backs broken down went plop plop. I followed.

Tick, Tick. The sound of second hand on my watch drew my attention like never before, I knew exactly when 13 minutes had past. She said nothing, I said nothing. She continued to wheeze and I did my best to keep three steps behind. Coming up to the door with her walking before me, I noticed a sign that said “Floors just coated. Do not walk on it for four hours.” She looked at it, then looked back at me, then looked at it again it and then finally yanked it down with both her hands and said “I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

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