George Pelecanos - DC Noir

Mom made peas and rice, cornbread, potato salad, greens, curry chicken, and fried chicken. We’d start taking the food to Mrs. Billops’s by 10 o’clock, and people would be coming into the neighborhood and double-parking all afternoon. In the evening, all my father’s buddies would start arriving for their weekly dominos games. Every week it was at a different house — this week it was ours. My father and his friends also worked “serving parties” in rich white households or embassies; you could tell when they had one of those jobs cause when they came over, everyone’s arms would be filled with trays of hors d’oeuvres and bottles of scotch, rum, ginger ale, beer, and all kinds of expensive-looking stuff.

Mr. Christian, Mr. O’Connor, Mr. Palmer, Daddy Shaw, and my father would go to the basement to play “cards,” as they called dominos. Upstairs in the kitchen, my sisters, cousins Ivy and June, my mom, and whoever else dropped by would heat up hot combs and turn the radio to WOL while they pressed each others’ hair. The air in the house filled with the smells of “My Knight” hair pomade and curry chicken, and with laughter from the kitchen, the booming voices from downstairs, and Martha Reeves singing “Jimmy Mack.”

I was in the living room watching Saturday night movies on TV when the screen door to the house swung open. It was Doris, who lived in the front room upstairs with her common-law husband Tommy, and you could tell she was drunk. Everybody in the kitchen went quiet.

“Hello, Miz Wizzdom, I’ma, I’ma… You fixin’ Valda’s hair? You shoulda waited for me, I’ll do it. Hey, suga…” She was getting ready to squeeze my little sister’s cheeks.

“Doris, gwan upstairs and sleep,” my mother coaxed.

“Ah, Miz Wizzdom, y’all think I’m drunk, but I ain’t been drinkin’. Where Tommy? He come back in yet?” She was slurring and thoughts were running from her mind to her mouth, getting her in deeper shit with the women in the kitchen. I was peeking out from my chair in the living room.

“Come here, Bobby, take this upstairs for me, will ya, hon?”

“No.” Mom didn’t allow any of the tenants to tell us what to do. “No, you take your things upstairs yourself. Bobby, gwan back to your TV.”

“Shit. Y’all bein’ like that, thinkin’ y’all something special. Y’all ain’t nuthin’ but some black nigger Jamaicans.”

Mom’s hand was on cousin Ivy’s arm. She was ready to jump.

“That’s enough, Doris.” The name was spoken in a way that said this was the last bit of politeness coming. “You don’t cuss me in front of me children. If you want food, there’s food—”

“I ain’t hungry.” She was trailing a shirt or something on the floor behind her.

Doris was a big-boned woman, maybe in her thirties, from South Carolina. Black-skinned and thick. She wore red lipstick and nail polish and loved to party. She already had false teeth and sometimes pushed the bridge out when she talked. She was always smoothing her beehive — “I got good hair,” she would say.

But tonight you could feel everybody was tight-jawed. From downstairs came the rumble of men’s voices; they couldn’t hear what was going on since the door to the basement was closed. Mom had always felt sorry for Doris and tried to help pull her life together. Mom had to put her out once already, then Doris came back and promised that she on a good track. But this was the second weekend she had come in drunk. By now, everybody knew that when she had been drinking, it meant she and Tommy were gonna fight.

“Tommy, you up there…?!” she shouted to nobody.

I walked around to the dining room and saw my mother staring at Doris with that red-hot comb in her hands. “Don’t you dare talk fresh in my house!”

That was it. Even drunk Doris knew better than to push this woman.

“You tek yourself upsteers and don’t bother comin’ back down ’ere” — each word slow and quiet, with no fear. Doris went upstairs and we heard her door slam.

“She gon’ have to go, Miss Inie, cause she nuttin’ but trouble. You can’t keep feelin’ sorry for sumtin’ like dat…”

Doris stayed up in her room, but the mood in the kitchen changed. Everybody spoke in hushes. “Lawd have mercy,” was my mother. “I know, I know,” was cousin Ivy. “You should tell Daddy…” from my sisters. “No…” from both older women.

This went on for half an hour until Ivy took June home. The game was breaking up downstairs, and we were pulling out the bed to get ready for sleep, then Slam!

Booming footsteps rolled across the ceiling above us, furniture was pushed, a body shoved… voices muffled, a man and a woman… My sisters and I looked wide-eyed at the ceiling and the swinging chandelier. The glass pieces were tinkling, catching some light from the streetlamps outside and making strange dancing patterns across the ceiling and walls.

BOOM Two bodies fell together, like Bruno San Martino and Bobo Brazil, and it was as if we were watching from underwater.

Then the door upstairs opened and sound came rushing out.

“I’MA KILL YOU, MUTHAFUCKA!!” Doris banshee-screamed.

My father was up from the basement and in the hallway shouting. Tommy pushed past him, muttering, “She crazy, Mr. Wisdom, crazy and drunk. I’m through—”

Doris was running down the steps. “I’ma get you! You ain’t no good, I know you been seein’ that bitch!”

Tommy was out the door.

“Doris—” my father started to say.

“I ain’t talkin’ to you, you on his side. Where he at?!” Doris screamed.

My mother huddled us into a corner. “Unna just stay pon the floor… Elly, come back in, let that fool ’oman go.”

Blam!

“Omigodalmighty!” My mother was on top of us. I was on the bottom, holding my little sister but wanting to look out of the window that we were now under.

Blam! Blam!

I could hear Tommy far off, shouting, “Woman, you crazy, you done shot that man!”

For a tornado of minutes there was more shouting, crying. I was straining to look out the window. My mother was yelling at me to get down, then yanked me away.

“What’d I do?” I demanded. “I didn’t do nuthin’… Doris shot him!!”

“Don’t say nuthin’! Just shut you mouth…” She was crying.

I could see that Miss Lucy, the other American tenant, had made it to the middle of the stairs and was humming and mumbling to herself: “…You let me see, hmmhuhp, those people are trouble, you know…”

My father was out front. “Ya nah come back in my ’ouse.”

My mother: “Elly, don’t let har back in.”

By now, all the neighbors were out and we could hear police sirens coming down Georgia Avenue and around 9th Street. Doris was out front crying, “I’m sorry, I’msosorry, I’msorry… Tell Tommy don’t leave me…”

My mother and older sister moved out to the door.

“Miz Wizdom, don’t let the police take me. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”

To get my little sister to stop crying, we started jumping up and down on the bed, trying to reach the chandelier. Trying to make it start swinging again.

A little while later, I was falling asleep while the police stood in the hall talking to my mother and father. Miss Lucy was sitting on the steps picking at her feet and minding everybody’s business. My sisters and I were in a heap on the bed. I heard Tommy come in to get some things. “Say goodbye to the kids for me.”

A fresh breeze blew across my face. I opened my eyes to find that the sun was up. My mother came in to wake us at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, August 23.

“Mom, is Doris in jail?” was the first thing I thought to say. I wanted to know if that room would be empty. If I could finally move up there and have my own room. It was the dead-center of the mid-Atlantic summer. Already the air was wet and heavy. The cool night breeze was all but gone and we would slowly drown the rest of the day in the sweltering summer heat. My older sister went upstairs to the bathroom. My little sister rolled up in her pillow for the last few minutes she could steal. I sat in the window. The street was quiet. I saw Reverend Gilmore come onto his front porch with his Bible under his arm and head to his car with his wife.