that I wouldn’t tell Tammy something that I knew I had to keep from Freddie too, ’cause although he’s ready to turn a blind eye to most of what folks get up to, being a good Christian, he ain’t ready to tolerate things that is well and truly wrong. Like the time Joy was s’posed to go to her eighth grade picnic, and I discovered she was hiding down the hall in Artie What’s-his-name’s apartment.
He was a ex-sailor that Freddie B didn’t want to rent to no way, ’cause he was white. But like I told Freddie, Mr Houseman who owned the building was white, and it didn’t make no sense that we’d work for white but not let ’em rent. But Freddie B is from New Orleans, same as me, and it took him a long time to trust white folk, and at that time we hadn’t long been out the South.
Anyway, that morning of Joy’s eighth grade picnic, I’d seen the girls off to school like usual, ’cause their mama was off to work before them, and I was setting in my place watching The Heartline on the TV when I smelled something burning. I got a real good nose, and no apartment house I’m managing will ever burn to the ground, ’cause when I get a whiff of something I don’t wait a minute to check things. Soon as I opened my door, I knew the smell was coming from down Artie’s ’cause his apartment was the onliest one down that end of the ‘L’ shaped hall. And like I thought, it was coming from his place, but when I knocked loud on his door, didn’t nobody answer. And being as me and Freddie B was in charge of the building, I didn’t have no choice but to open it with my spare key, ’cause I couldn’t let the place burn down to the ground. But to my open-mouthed surprise I found Artie, bold as day, sprawled across his put-you-up in a nanky looking undershirt and puffing on a cigarette as nonchalant as if he couldn’t smell nothing.
I could tell once I was inside the room that it wasn’t nothing but some toast that had burned, but at least, like I said to him, he should have opened the window to let the smell out. Warm as it was that morning, he needed to let some air in anyways, which is what I was fixing to do when I marched over the other side of the room to his window.
That’s how I spotted Joy’s feet in her old red tennis sneakers peeking out from behind a brocade curtain in the corner of Artie’s room where he kept his clothes hanging on a rail.
The shock of discovering that Joy was in there nearly give me a heart attack, and I felt a hot flush come over me so fast that I didn’t know where I was and was rendered speechless with my mouth hanging wide open. But something told me to go and lay in wait outside the door instead of causing a ruckus right then and there in that white boy’s room.
I couldn’t hear nothing but myself breathing once I got outside his door, and I was standing there for what seemed like an hour ’fore Joy came creeping out on her tippy-toes shutting Artie’s door real quiet behind her.
She had her hair in a chignon on top of her head with a red ribbon tied round it, and from the back she looked grown though she wasn’t but thirteen.
I let her get ten paces away before I called out in a harsh whisper, ‘Tipping ain’t gon’ help you none, Madam.’
Dim as it was in the hall with no window and no light on, I could still see she was so scared that she jumped a pace and looked ready to pee herself. The whites of her eyes was practically glowing, ’cause they had popped out so from fear of what I was gonna do to her, I reckon.
‘What on God’s name was you doing in that white boy’s room?’ I hissed at her like a alley cat. ‘It wasn’t but two hours ago I waved you off with your packed lunch and them cupcakes I baked for your picnic. So what on earth is you doing back here? And in there with Artie of all people!’
That day is the closest I ever came to hitting Joy, ’cause I was so mad she’d done something to leave me feeling like I didn’t know her. Far as I knew, she hadn’t taken no notice of Artie except to mention that she didn’t understand why he never came to my place for the cups of coffee I offered him from time to time when we bumped into him. But standing there fussing at her in the hallway, it seemed I may just as well have been talking to a stranger though I’d known her ’bout five years by then.
She said, ‘Don’t get in a temper. I was just trying to help Artie.’
‘Help him do what, pray tell!’ I almost shouted though I was trying hard not to raise my voice.
She didn’t answer right away which made me suspect she didn’t have nothing reasonable to say and then she broke out crying by the time I’d escorted her ’round to our end of the passage.
‘Don’t tell Mama, will you?’ she begged, falling down on her knees with her hands clasped together like somebody praying.
‘That’s supposed to mean something?’ I asked her. ‘Any ol’ body can do that. I ain’t fooled.’
‘Please don’t tell Mama,’ she said like a four year old expecting a whipping.
‘Joy, I can’t keep something like this back from Tammy,’ I said. But no sooner than I said it, I knew that there wasn’t no way I could tell Tammy that I’d found Joy in Artie’s room, ’cause Tammy had grown short of temper back in those days, and there wasn’t no telling what she would of done.
‘You know that Mama won’t let me go to church with you anymore if you tell. And that’ll be the end of choir practice and Sunday school and everything!’ Joy cried.
I knew she was right, ’cause whenever Brenda did anything wrong, which was regular, the first thing Tammy would threaten was, ‘That’s it! Now I put my foot down. It’s all that shit you’re being taught in that damn backward ass church of Baby’s that has you so you don’t want to listen to me anymore. Well, damn the church! I’ll keep you home, if you can’t behave like a human being!’
I was the one that got the three girls inside a church for the first time, ’cause Tammy didn’t believe in nothing and would have been happy if they didn’t. My baby sister said Tammy wouldn’t of let them girls of her’n go to Sunday meeting with me and Freddie at all, except Tammy was so happy to get some quiet and the apartment to herself on Sundays.
That morning of the Artie episode, I looked down at poor Joy, still pleading on her knees. ‘Don’t tell Mama, Baby Palatine? Please? Please? Pretty please!’ She oozed them pleases out, spreading them on thick as molasses.
But I wasn’t in the mood to sympathize when I asked, ‘I want to know first off what you was doing up in Artie’s. Don’t you know it’s dangerous to be in a man’s apartment like that?’
Artie wasn’t really a man. Wasn’t but nineteen, but he was way too old for Joy to be keeping company with, no matter if it was only eleven o’clock in the morning.
‘I wasn’t doing anything bad,’ Joy said before I made her get off her knees and go into my apartment. ‘Artie’s dying from cancer, so I said I’d make his breakfast this morning.’ I thought I caught her crack a smile for a split second while she was wringing her hands and looking down at her feet, though I couldn’t see her face ail that good until I got her inside my apartment, ’cause there wasn’t but one small window around our end of the hall and a couple of the light bulbs in the ceiling fixture was out that give off a decent light. She looked a mess with her red and white checked shirt half out her cotton skirt which was creased. Not nowheres near neat as I was used to seeing her.
‘Stop all that crying, anyway,’ I said to her pushing her away when she went to try to hug on me. ‘That ain’t gonna save you.’
I didn’t know what to think. Joy didn’t never step out of line that I knew of, and being kind hearted like she was and always ready to help folks, it didn’t seem all that strange that if Artie was dying from cancer that she wouldn’t have wanted to do something for him.
But the onliest problem I had believing her was that he looked strong as a ox. Artie was a big strapping blond thing from Idaho who had been a year in the navy ’fore he got discharged. ’Cause of having something wrong with his knee, he’d told Freddie B.
‘Is it knee cancer?’ I asked Joy. She had tears smeared across her