Fiction from The Literary Review

Listening for Carl

KATHLEEN CROWLEY

It's Carl again, just over my left shoulder, always my left shoulder. "Watch out for that truck, Mama," he say, like I can't see nothing for myself. He's always there, everyday when I walk. Sometimes at night, too, when I turn over and can't sleep. His voice is like the wind in the summer time, a whiskery sound like a paper bag on the sidewalk, a boy's voice that has started to turn. My other one, Luke, I don't hear him as much. "He's playing, Ma," Carl says, "don't worry, we fine."
     Grey sunshine on the streets today. Boys everywhere just waiting, standing on the corners, thinking like they invisible, like everyone don't know. I used to talk to them, walk right up, tell them to stop. "My sons," I'd say, "they got killed doing that, the both of them," but those boys never listen, only shuffle their feet, look away, shy, scared almost. One day a tall thin one, fifteen maybe, he said to me, "Miss Troya, I know about them boys of yours. I'm real sorry." And then he walked away, cigarette, falling down jeans, half-bearded boy-face. I saw him dying. I saw him dead. Not a gift I asked for, not something a person wants to know.
     Marcel told me once to stop bothering with the street kids. "Troya, you got to take care of yourself. You got to get over what happened with Carl and Luke," but that was a long time ago and I guess he seen that I didn't get over it the way he had in mind.
     "Carl and Luke is with me, always," I told him again yesterday. "They okay."
     He looked at me, wiped his t-shirt over his work-sweated face. "I know. I know they okay." Marcel always working, always thinking that working can fix things. His people, they from the islands, that's why. He don't know what I know: some things they can't be fixed. These boys here on the corners, they can't be fixed. The big thing that eats them it can't be fixed. I gave up fixing them already.
     Along the main road, Walnut, the sun is too white and the tar sucks me dry so I walk over to Locust Street. I pass the lady with that piss-poor spot of dirt she treat like a garden. She take care of it, every day I see her. She nod at me. She knew me before. "Morning Troya," she say, and then "Afternoon, Troya," when I pass again. Past her house, down around 48th Street the trees rise up from the sidewalks, break through the concrete, and I know any day now they will sing, they will come free and sing. I can see that, I can hear them almost.
     Today when I get to the next block I see the police taking more boys, shouting, slamming them up against the car, hands spread out and brown like dying leaves against that bright blue car. While I'm stopped and watching another car pulls up and a man gets out. White man in a suit, pink skin dripping over his collar, eyes sagging like a dog. I recognize him, I know him from when Luke and Carl died.
     One of the young cops, he's black, he say, "We caught them just over there, Detective," he points to the corner, "and they got it right on them."
     The Detective starts to walk around to talk to the boys but then he stop when he see me. "Mrs. Lafontaine," he say slowly, as though I might not understand my own name. "Everything alright, Mrs. Lafontaine?" They dead almost four years, but I guess he still know me. Everybody know me it seem like.
      "Yes," I say, real quiet. Just more children going away. I write it down in my book, the little leather book I keep with me, in my pocket-they the ones I'll pray for today. Marcel gave me this little book, after the boys died. The gold lettering almost gone-"Blessings" it said, days of the year with a prayer for each one. I stopped reading them prayers a long time ago, I know them all.
     He stand another minute then nods and moves on to the boys with their hands spread out against the car.
     Another six blocks, all the way down to the University Hospital. Every day I walk there. It's a place I worked for a long time, a long time ago, the place they brought my boys when they found them. They were dead already. Nothing no one could do about that.
     I always go to the back lot where the ambulances are parked and count them. Some days there's a whole batch, some days only a few. Today there's nine. I take out my little leather book again and write this down, too, just like I do everyday.
     I never go around the front side. I don't want to see nobody from before. Everyone know me, know my story, or think they do. While I'm standing still a hot wind comes up with the soot, fills the lot, the ambulances they hazy like dusk, and I turn round and head back.
     Today when I leave the ambulances Carl ask me, "Mama, why don't you never go in and see nobody? Maybe Marta's still there, or Henrietta."
     "No Carl," I say, "I can't see them no more. They all think I'm crazy, that's how they talk to me. Slow and careful like I'm crazy."
     "Why everyone think you crazy, Ma?"
     "Because I only see what's real now," I say, "and I can't see all the other things that ain't real. And it's the things that ain't real that people spend their lives on, that they like to talk about." And it's true. I see people and can tell when they're dying, see their edges wilting, curling up. Or I see them all tied up, caught like rabbits in a snare. I wish I could have seen my own boys better, how they were caught in a snare that was my fault, too, and all I did was make it worse.
     "You didn't mean it," Carl says, "You trying to help us, we know that now."
     I know that, too.
     While I'm walking up Spruce Street, one of them appears, those sad-ass addicts that come looking for my money every month when my check come in. Bobby, that's this one's name, and he don't just use, he sell, too. Tease is what he sell-heroin, H they called it when I was young and running around-but ice is what he do. Half the time crazy high on that stuff.
      "I ain't got nothing for you today, Bobby," I tell him, walking on past. "I don't want none of my money going for that shit."
     "Miss Troya help me," he say, coming up right behind, "I just need a little bit. I got nothing, no food-"
     "Shh, I can't hear my boy when you're talking at me," I say, waving him off, because Carl is saying something to me. No, Luke, this time it's Luke. My chest cracks open whenever I hear Luke, open like a cold ache of wind.
     "Luke?"
     Nothing.
     "Luke, baby, what is it?" But he's gone again and I hear Carl. "He okay, Mama. It's just hard for him to talk." I rub my forehead, thinking somehow that I can bring him back, but I hear nothing, just Bobby.
     "A little bit of cash, Miss Troya, that's all I need, get something to eat-"
      One day when Bobby come after me I turned on him real quick and said, "You know my boy Carl? He died selling that shit. You know him? You ever buy anything from him?"
     Bobby didn't say nothing for a long minute, then he say, "I never saw no one Miss Troya, just give them my money through the slot in the door. I never seen him."
     Carl hear me remembering and comes in quick,"Ma, it was only a few weeks that I did it, that's all. And I didn't use, I just wanted some money."
     "A few weeks too many. A few weeks and you dead."
     "You should have listened to me, Ma. Even Daddy knew it was the right thing to give it back to me."
     "The right thing? Carl, how can you say that? The right thing. I did the right thing but the world is wrong."
     Carl says nothing more. He knows how I shake, how I close my eyes and cannot move when I remember it. Sad shit bags. Rat shit, but white. I put my hand in one of the bags once to feel them-whiskery and white, like moth balls, and they left dust on my fingers that burned my skin. That's how it felt to me. Like fire, not like ice at all.
     
     It was winter time when they died, Luke and Carl. Down by the river they found them under the bridge in that grey snow and mud. My boys.
      I know who killed them. The police they never could prove it but I know, and it don't matter no more. I was angry for a long time, burnt dark anger like a strong cup of drink, something that ate me through and left me hollow. I hated him and wanted him dead. I didn't go to church almost two years because I was so full of hate, and can't no one go to church with a heart like that. But then one day I forgave him, two summers ago now when I seen him hanging back behind the Seven Eleven on Walnut Street. I seen him all the time, that part wasn't no different, but this time he look strange to me. I seen his edges weak and giving out, his self just folding down, and I knew that he'd be gone soon, too. I walked up to him and he start moving away quick, watching me like I was some kind of a ghost.
     "Stop Kevin," I said. "Stop and listen to me."
     His face had those same curves, like Carl, boy on the edge but still a boy. "Kevin, I know what you done. It was wrong to take my boys, only the Lord know why you strike them down, two children, only the Lord and you. But now I have to . . ." I stopped in the middle, my hollowness making me so light, almost as though I'd blow away, "forgive you, because there ain't no other way for me to keep living." And that was the truth. I was killing myself with hating him.
     He stood very still and closed his eyes and I left him there. He gone too now, a year, maybe more.
     Carl was looking to make money, I know that. We had it pretty good with my job and Marcel working all the time, but not enough to go around for the kind of nonsense a teenage boy want. Kevin got him into it. He was the local boss. Only thing I won't never understand is why he took Luke, too.
     Luke, my baby. Ten years old. Just a little boy.
     "Whole different breed of human being, Mr. and Mrs. Lafontaine, people on drugs or people hungry for drug money," the dog-eyed detective told us the night they found Luke and Carl.
      "Can I get you folks anything?" he asked me and Marcel, sitting on the bench in his office, night buzzing loud and terrible around us. He was drinking coffee from a mug that said "Philadelphia's Police Officer's Ball, 1985."
     We didn't answer. Marcel shook his head.
     We told them what we knew, not like it mattered, not like it made one shred of difference.
     It was after Christmas and I was on the 3-11, going around, taking everybody's blood. Busy time at work. All kinds of pneumonia, car accidents, fights, fires. I never checked on Carl at night, ever since he was a teenager. Needs his privacy, needs respect, that's what I thought. And every morning he was there at breakfast. That night, though, after I got home from work I opened his door to put some laundry inside. Dark and warm but the bed was empty. No Carl.
     Luke was sound asleep on the little cot in my room, his smooth self like a crescent moon under the covers. Marcel, too. I waited in the dark on the edge of the bed next to Marcel until I heard Carl come in, so quiet. I said nothing but I watched him after that, I watched that boy. A few nights later the same thing. And one morning, one weekday morning, Kevin called looking for Carl.
     I never thought about drug running. Not until then, not until that moment. "What you want with Carl?" I asked him. "Carl's at school, where you ought to be. Why you after him?" I was angry that I had been so stupid.
     Kevin was quiet for a minute and then he said, "Just tell him that I need to see him. Soon."
     
     Halfway back I see the Little Bracelet Girl. I know her. I pass her house everyday, 48th and Spruce. She in a stroller today, her rows of gold bracelets, her hair braided with colored ribbons. Her mother push her to the corner where we both stand and wait for the light. The Little Bracelet Girl turn to me and I see that she want me to take her, to take care of her. Troya, she say, you have to help me.
     "Why?" I say, pretending not to know, but it hurts me. Everyday it gets worse, grey shiny lines across her, tighter and tighter. The bracelets she always wear, they like handcuffs now. I look away. I don't want her to see me start to cry. "You have a mother," I say, "ask her to help you. I have too many people to help."
     No, no, she shakes her head. My mother she doesn't know, she can't help.
     And I can see that she is right about that. Her mother glances at me and smiles but doesn't seem to notice anything. She bends down to the Little Bracelet Girl, hands her a cup of water, then she stares out at the traffic, waiting for it to stop. She is blacker than tar, from Africa, and she speak English real formal, soft and light, like a rich person. I wonder always what she doing here.
     "I'm sorry," I say to the Little Bracelet Girl. "I can't help you now."
     The Little Bracelet Girl begins to cry as the light changes and we all start across the street. I go on ahead and she lean herself forward. She reach her hand out toward me, trying to shake it free. The little gold bracelets shine in the sun and wind like stars.
     Carl says, "I think you ought to help her, Mama."
     "Why?" I say. "She alright."
     "Yeah, but she alone. Her Mama don't know what it's like here. She black but she ain't real black, she trying to make that girl white. She don't know, she won't never understand."
     I shake my head, wave my hand as though to push him away. "Color ain't everything, Carl. You boys, you and your friends, you think everything about being black or white. Maybe you just didn't live long enough to see that ain't so."
     He's quiet and I listen hard. "Carl? You there, Carl?"
     "Yes, Mama. I'm still here."
     
     That night when we found out everything Marcel said, "What you thinking, Carl? You want to get yourself killed?"
     Carl didn't tell us nothing that night. Marcel scared, wiping his head where his hair used to be. Me, I was spitting. Never been so angry, never before and never again. And I remember the Little Bracelet Girl, and how her mother think she is doing the right thing. Raising her like a white girl, not listening to the hard things. Why couldn't I hear it before? Now I listen to the babies, now I can hear the hard things they are saying.
     No one said nothing for a long time, Marcel wiping his forehead, looking out at the street, almost like he was watching for trouble to come right in through the window. Carl sat across from him, head down, not looking at either of us. I was standing with my hands pressed together tight, staring down at Carl.
     "What you need money for? Why didn't you ask us instead of selling that shit, getting all tied up with those crazy people? We got money, Carl. We ain't poor."
     It scared Luke, how angry I was. Luke, poor Luke. He looked from me to Carl. He stood still in the corner, barely breathing.
     Marcel said, "Luke, you should get to bed."
     Luke didn't even argue with him, just walked out of the room. We all heard him getting changed, heard him in the bathroom brushing his teeth, then the creak as he climbed onto that little cot. It's good that it was so quiet, it's good that we heard it so clear that night, because that was the last time.
     "You got homework to do?" I asked Carl. He said nothing, didn't even lift his head.
     "Carl, I'm speaking to you."
     He took a breath, shuffled his feet a minute and then stood up. "No. I done it already." He didn't say anything for another minute, then, "But I got to go bring the stuff over to the house and sell it tonight."
     Marcel turned away from the window to stare at Carl. "What?" he asked, sharp and sudden but quiet.
     "Carl," I said, "if you think you are leaving this house tonight, you are crazier even than I thought you were."
     He seemed surprised and looked up at me. "Ma, I got to go, I got to. I'll be in big trouble if I don't sell that stuff."
     "Carl," I said, "you listening to me? You are in big trouble. Right now. All me and your father got to decide is whether we need to call the police or not."
     Marcel was shaking his head. "No Troya, we get the police involved, they'll send him to jail."
     "Well, I don't know. Maybe they let him off if he report on Kevin."
     "No!" Carl said, throwing his arms up. "You crazy, I rat on Kevin and they'll kill me for sure."
     I knew that, I knew all that. I don't know what I was thinking, just looking at that shit, little plastic bags full of trouble and money. "All I know Carl is that you going to bed, now. And I'm staying up all night to make sure you don't go creeping out of here."
     "Ma!" Carl whispered. "Please let me go and sell it. They'll come after me if I don't. Then I won't do it anymore, ever again, I swear to you."
     But he knew already that I wasn't going to change my mind. Marcel locked that stuff up in the little fire safe box in the closet where he keep the deed to our house and his green card. And I sat up. I watched out the window all night like I was seeing the street for the first time, like it was some other world that I never been to before. Men walked by, two or three together, quick and quiet. A boy I know from across the street out with that nasty dog of his. A woman I seen at church before come walking up past Mamie's stoop next door and sit down on the step right in front of our house, just before sunrise. She sit a little while, not doing nothing, then stood up and walked on by the window. She looked up just as she passed and she seen me staring out, I know that for sure. She waved her hand, and even through the closed windows, even in that cold winter air I heard her say, "Praise the Lord."
     
     We live just past 52nd and Spruce. Marcel isn't home yet so I go and sit on the step, like I always do, the step where the woman sat. Just after she passed by that early morning, just as it was starting to get light, me still locked in the chair staring out, I heard a noise behind me. It was a footstep, and then a hand on my left shoulder. I didn't even look up. I knew who it was.
     "I'm so sorry, Mama." I could hear in his voice that he'd been crying. I turned to see him and he look it too, his face old and tired. Carl got his whole dose of the hard, grown world all at once, all at the end.
     I took his hand off my shoulder. I kissed it and pressed it against my cheek. "I know you sorry. You my son. You a good boy." And I always been so glad I did that. Only halfway smart thing I did the whole time. Sometimes now when I hear his voice I reach up to that shoulder thinking that maybe his hand will be there, that I will get to touch it one more time.
     Luke was real quiet in the morning. Usually he be talking, telling us about the dreams he'd had, who he like or didn't like at school, asking Marcel or me for a dollar to get a snack from the Seven Eleven on his way home. He ate his breakfast, but I could see he didn't even want to do that.
     Carl said, "Can't I have the stuff just to give back to them?"
     Marcel looked at me and neither of us answered right away. I was broken already, I think, gone from sitting up all night.
     Finally I said, "Just leave it here for now, till your father and me figure this out." That's all I wanted, an hour with Marcel alone.
     I seen tears in Carl's eyes, but then I seen something worse, something that sit with me every day, something so awful, so sad. I seen that he trust me, that somewhere he believe that what I said would be the right thing, the thing that would make us safe again.
     I kissed those boys, I held them tight before Marcel took them off to school, and when he came home he sat down with me, just like I wanted, took my hand.
     "We got to get rid of it," Marcel said, and he was right.
     "I know." And all I wanted to do was get rid of it, flush it down the toilet, throw it in the sewer. I knew better, though.
     "I'm going to bring it to the school," he said. "I'm going to give it to Carl as soon as he comes out and I'll go with him to get it back to them."
     I nodded.
     Marcel went to the shop for a few hours but left early so that he could meet Carl and Luke at school, give Carl the bags, walk them home. We was trying to be safe, to take care. Marcel waited. I can imagine him even now, standing on that corner by the school yard, in that dim grey chilliness, those bags like lead in his pockets. Kids came and came, but no Carl, no Luke. Those boys never came, only a police officer, early in the evening, his shadowy dark shape in our door like Death himself. That time ran like one long strip, and it ruined me. My life broken up like an icicle dropping from the roof, spinning down, crashing down on the hard dirt. My boys, gone, beautiful brown selves thrown like trash by the river, a policeman telling us then wanting us to come and look at their torn empty bodies and claim them back.
     "Stop Mama, stop thinking about it, we okay now," Carl says but he is crying, too, I can hear it. "We okay. It's over now." And then, suddenly, I feel his hand on my shoulder, just like before, just like that morning. I reach up and hold it, tight. This is everything I want, to touch him again. I keep my eyes closed as long as I can, because I know he will be gone when I open them.
     The hand squeezes back, shifts again, becomes something different, cool, damp, a little wrinkling sound like rain. When I open my eyes it isn't Carl that I see, it is the Little Bracelet Girl sitting before me in her stroller, her mother's hand on my shoulder. I look up. The lady's skin shine so black, even now with the day all faded out and gone. She wear bracelets, too, beads, cloth wrap around her head.
     "Are you well?" she asks after a minute in that soft voice. I nod.
     "You dropped something back there and we've been trying to catch up with you." The woman reaches over to The Little Bracelet Girl and tries to take what she is holding out of her hands. But the girl will not let go.
     "Claire, please give that back to the lady."
     The Little Bracelet Girl says nothing, only stares at me, serious, quiet. I lean over closer and in the last sun, tiny bits of lettering shine out, the cover worn like the back of my hand. My book. I keep expecting her to say something to me, but she doesn't, just stare like she never seen me before.
     "Claire, can you give the lady her book?"
     Finally she hand it to me, still serious. She lean back in her stroller then, real straight and still, and I see from how she sit that she just like her mother after all, just the same.
     "Thank you," I say, and the woman nod, but she don't smile. The stroller turns around and they melt away, into the color and dust.
     "Carl," I say, quiet, barely out loud, "that little girl, I think she be okay." I reach to my shoulder again, just in case his hand is there, hoping, but it's gone and he don't answer. Sometimes I think it's too much for him, listening to me. Maybe he tired of following me around all the time, trying to make things right. Maybe it's time to leave him be.
     When I lift the book it feel light to me, empty, and I flip through and see why that is. All those numbers and words must have blowed out onto the street somewhere, gone, away from me. A little girl like her, she wouldn't know any better, and it ain't the worst thing, after all. I close the book and hold it up against my face, shut my eyes. The leather on my cheek is like my own skin, just the same.