restaurant had access to cars. A twenty-four-hour surveillance of the parking lot revealed that it was rarely used except at night when local males bought beer at the convenience store and sat on their cars drinking it until they were ready to pass out or get in fights over whose wrench was the biggest. It was clear that the parking lot had to be reclaimed for the true purpose of the mall—shopping. Shopping in the sense of constructing life.
First I had a low cement-block wall built around the lot, which claimed the space from the street. Then it and all the mall shop facades were painted a pale mauve, just pink enough to identify the structure’s function as essentially feminine without deterring entrance by individual males on legitimate business. An extension of the wall into the parking lot created a small courtyard adjacent to the convenience store and beauty salon. A place for talking. This area was covered during the day by a rollout awning for shade over conversational groupings of green plastic chairs around small tables. A number of flowering plants on casters completed the experiment. The plants, furniture, and awning were removed and stored in one of the empty shops at five o’clock each day.
There were a few disasters at first, involving trash left in the courtyard, competing music from the beauty salon (black) and the take-out restaurant (Asian) and several attempts by warring gangs of adolescent males to claim the courtyard for afternoon beer drinking and drug deals. The latter problem was addressed by a combination of classical music blasted alternately from the salon and restaurant, and some serious pressure on the convenience store owner to stop selling beer to minors. The alternative involved his explaining the practice to an Alcoholic Beverage Control agent whose name and number were taped to the window of each storefront, facing out. But it wasn’t enough.
Incidentally, I don’t know why adolescent males in gangs hate classical music, but they do. It actually seems to hurt them. My own research into primate behavior involves a time before there was music, so I can add nothing to the puzzle. Except that gangs are probably a regression to male primate social organization and the complexity of the music reminds them that they’re supposed to have evolved. I remember wondering at the time why David, who played French horn in our high school band, had become a criminal. David liked classical music. But then David was never in a gang. Until now.
That first mall conversion was eventually so successful that the owner began touting my services to his friends, all of whom seemed to own and lease retail property. I got gigs planning layouts for lingerie departments and security for sidewalk sales. A Japanese-run convenience store chain put me on retainer just to determine from store diagrams the optimal placement of feminine personal items. (Across from canned goods in an aisle which does not lead to the beer cooler.) I began to accumulate money. When I realized that the thousands in my savings account were at a number more than half my age, it felt sort of good. Nothing like holding Misha, feeling her birdlike heart, but good. We take what we can get.
Still, the project should never have worked. There were too many problems in the area. Charles Dickens named them—poverty, ignorance, disease. Even the life-building spirit of women is broken by these. But I found a secret weapon. When I tacked up an announcement for a part-time minimum wage job “managing” the first little mall at a community center up the street, the ad was answered by a large black woman in a conservative business suit. Her hair was in about a hundred and fifty looped braids woven with tortoiseshell beads. She wore cowboy boots. The beads made a pleasant clacking sound as she threw her substantial frame into a chair in the mall courtyard.
“Rox Bouchie,” she introduced herself, carefully pronouncing her surname “Boo-she” so I’d get it. It would have helped if she’d given the same attention to her first name, which I thought was “Rocks” for the initial half hour of our acquaintance. I also thought she was either the director of the community center or a social worker as she questioned me about my work at the mall. When I explained that the part-time job I’d advertised would involve keeping the courtyard area clean and alerting the police about drug deals and illegal drinking, she lowered gold-shadowed lids over coffee-brown eyes and shook her head. The beads rattled. She just said, “Girl. . .”
The way black women say “girl” can be magical. Frankly, I have no solid beliefs about the survival of consciousness after physical death. But if it’s going to happen I know what I want to see after my trek toward the light. I want to see a black woman who will smile and say, “Girl . . .”
The word’s resonance is utterly female, the opening syllable of a story that will explain what’s really going on. It says, “You don’t have a clue, but I’m going to give you the inside scoop.” The sound is hypnotic, like an audio version of that top-of-the-Ferris-wheel moment just before the downward rush. At that moment after my death I would like to be told exactly what the universe is, and why. I would like to see the point. And in my fantasy the story will begin with that word on the tongue of a black woman.
“Um, do you know of anyone, a woman from the neighborhood preferably, who might be interested in—”
“No,” she interrupted. “Nobody in this neighborhood is that dumb. The job you’re offering is suicide. But I like the way your mind works. I might be able to help.”
A client of hers, she said, was looking for a small storefront in which to open a used-clothing boutique. Skilled with sewing machine and serger, he enjoyed redesigning clothes. He also created wall hangings and fabric art. For six months’ free rent against a year’s lease on one of the empty storefronts, he might be willing to clean the courtyard and police the mall.
“He sounds promising,” I said. “Why don’t you run the idea by him, and I’ll talk to the mall’s owner. But why would he want the job if it’s so dangerous?”
“He learned to sew in prison and can handle anything that drifts in here,” Rox Bouchie said, watching for my reaction. “Got a problem with hiring ex-cons?”
“My twin brother’s in prison. In Missouri.”
I felt that the response established my credentials as a savvy, street-wise person. The twin sister of an incarcerated felon. Way cool.
“How often do you get back to the Midwest to see your brother?” Rox asked while frowning at something stuck to the bottom of her left boot.
“Um, actually I haven’t had a chance to visit him, uh, there,” I answered, giving similar attention to the removal of a shipping label from the table leg.
“I see.”
So much for cool. And the finesse with which Rox Bouchie unmasked my distance from David should have suggested that I was dealing with a pro in the unmasking field, but it didn’t. I was too ashamed of what I’d just said to notice.
“What’s this guy’s name?” I asked, changing the subject.
“BB. BB the Punk.”
“Uh, strange name.”
Rox shook her head again, slowly. The beads made a sound like acorns falling on dry ground as I noticed a smattering of freckles over her broad nose.
“His real name is Bernard Berryman. Do you know what ‘punk’ means in prison?”
I sensed that I was already a million points behind. Why lie?
“Probably not,” I said. “So just tell me.”
“It means ‘turned out,’ as in ‘whore.’ It means being beaten close to death, repeatedly gang-raped, permitted to remain alive only in the role of slave to a group of predators or, if you’re lucky, to one ‘daddy’ who protects you from the others. It’s done to the young, the weak, the naive. BB has a flair for the dramatic. He saved his life by getting into the role. He got out of prison two months ago. He’ll never get out of the role.”
David had been twenty-eight when he went to prison. Was that young? And had he been weak and naive? I felt a crippling wave of nausea. A need to run away.
“Girl, you’re turning green,” Rox Bouchie pointed out. “Never seen anybody so homophobic.”
“I’m not homophobic,” I yelled at her and an additional