On Saturday mornings, the children would wander through the Brookville Gardens Housing Project, congregate on my stoop, and wait. I wanted to make them long for, talk about, wonder what happened inside 11-C before I granted them entrance to my home—ritual is good for the children. But ritual could never compete with the muffled giggle outside my sheet-metal door, so I gave, and they flooded my home. I like to think they came because they liked me, their white Moses. Maybe so. But I know that they came because they liked the my kitchen, devoid of adults and pouring forth chips and pop: a river of energy, mighty, eternal. It was my peace offering, a taste of reconciliation, I hoped.
When they finished the chips I fed them Bible stories, after which they would offer up prayers for granmamas and no more fighting in the world, amen, burp, giggle, and leave. And 11-C became my sanctuary again—curtains fingered with grease, pop puddled on the linoleum. But I didn't mind. It was their ritual, their benediction to me.
After the curtains were degreased and the linoleum dried up, I entertained my own ritual: sit in my rocking chair and quietly eat a banana. It was not glorious, but it was my own. And, usually, it was all that was left unmangled—one holy bunch of bananas on top of the refrigerator.
On one of those Saturdays, soon after the children returned home, and during the last bite of banana, my door rattled (It would rattle at the slightest breeze until I opened it and re-jammed the wad of napkin in the top-left corner.) This rattle, though, was not a breeze—it was Lamarcus, a four-foot-three bundle of Africa in my doorway.
“Lamarcus, hey, man, what up?” (Maybe he didn’t get a pop earlier; the bigger kids were not afraid to cash in on their bigness.)
“Chillin’.”
“Chillin’? You wanna come in?”
“A’ight.”
He stepped in, and I squatted eye-level with him and scrunched my nose, thinking maybe he had come for the Bible I promised that morning, preparing to tell him that he needed to wait until next week for that, and I would see him then.
Lamarcus hadn’t come for the Bible. Lamarcus had come for the kitchen. At least that’s where he went. So I returned to the den, sat slowly, exhaled audibly, and practiced smiling, pretending to be glad for his presence. During the third smile, he came in, sat, hands empty, lips slightly closed, and fixed his eyes somewhere between the brown-shagged floor and my chin.
“So, Lamarcus . . . what’s up?” (Maybe he just needed a little prodding. Some prodding is good for the children.)
“Nuttin’.”
“Me, neither. Wutcha’ wanna’ do, Lamarcus?”
“Nuttin’.”
“Me, neither.”
I felt bad, but if he wasn’t talking, then neither was I. So we sat in silence for seven minutes, like ghetto monks observing the rule. He began rocking, deliberately and deeply, as if moved by some beautiful ancient rhythm. But I was just annoyed.
Then they changed—his eyes—they turned down like the peel in my hand, brows curved like questions, aimed at my banana.
He broke the silence.
“You know . . . sometimes . . . people be sayin’ I like bananas.”
“Lamarcus, do you want a banana?”
“Ooh, you got some bananas?”
Lamarcus. Beautiful, seven-year-old, four-foot-three Lamarcus. How you mortified your desires then so that I could rest seven more minutes. Such sacrifice for a child.
Lamarcus stopped coming with the rest of the kids. He began coming on his own, sometimes at 6:00 in the morning, waiting for the bus, sometimes late at night, wearing a ski mask, hoping to scare the white man in the project. But faithfully he came, often just to sit, always to eat our bananas.
He came for his promised Bible. A rattle at the door.
“Lamarcus. What’s up, man?”
“Chillin’. I could have my Bible now?”
“Yeah, Lamarcus. Come on in for a few minutes.”
He sat and fingered the pages of his Bible as if the black-and-white of it were alive. Then he raised his eyes to meet mine, and his lips split like the Red Sea as he pronounced his benediction: “Tight. Dat’s tight.”
You know . . . sometimes . . . people be sayin’ I like Lamarcus. I loved him, and I love him: Lamarcus of the ashen skin and sacrificial heart. He would be twelve now, and one day soon, I’ll look over Jordan and see him—glorious, skin burnished bright black, asking Jesus for a banana.
(originally published in Re:Generation Quarterly)