Page 63 of Hanging and Burning

“About aftershave and alfalfa?”

“I was with a man for a while there.”

I would hope that the little jab of pain I felt didn’t show on my face, but Leaf has a keen eye to go along with the rest of her eight or nine senses.

“You been gone a long time,” I said.

“Have you been with other women?”

“Yes,” I lied. I couldn’t help it. I was my father’s son no matter how much I wanted to deny it. For me, a man without women had no way to measure his manhood.

I was pretty sure she knew that what I said wasn’t true but, regardless, she asked, “You in love with one’a them?”

“Are you in love with him?”

There was something heartbreaking and exquisite about the half a beat of hesitation in her response.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“Then why are you here?”

“You want me to go?”

“I wanna pick you up and throw you out that window.”

The severity on her face, pressed up against my empty threat, shoved us back into our language of silence.

Then she laughed. What I remember most about her mirth is that it had no masculine or feminine markers. It somehow said that we were more than just a man and a woman, more than confessions and threats, that what she was doing there with me was completing a circuit, making something whole.

And even though it was already stated and obvious, she said, “I liked him. He was nice and real strong like one’a them lumberjacks.”

“Black man?”

“No. But for some reason after I went up there, I stopped thinkin’ shit like that for a while. Anyway… I came back here to you because this is where I belong, at least for right now.”

Co-op City is on the far side of the Bronx, consisting of thirty-five high-rises and a few clusters of town houses. It was designed to have a dense population with the maximum of natural surroundings, such as parks and promenades. It’s a working-class neighborhood, predominantly Black and with a multigenerational population.

I went to one of the buildings, pressed a buzzer that had a red circle scrawled around it, and waited.

“Yeah?” a woman’s voice said without inflection.

“Fracas?”

“Joe?” she said happily. “Is that you?”

“It was when I got up this mornin’.”

“Brawl!” the woman shouted, calling to another friend of mine. “Brawl!”

“What?” came a man’s deep voice, which had always reminded me of a bear’s friendly growl.

“It’s Joe!”

“Joe who?”

“The Joe that threw your ass in jail.”

“Oh no it ain’t!” the man warned from behind what sounded like a grin. “No, no.”