Louise Doughty - Black Water

They caught a bus, then a Red Car, then waited for more than half an hour at another bus stop before Anika approached a man in a trilby hat who took them to a different stop around the corner and said, ‘You sure this address is right, young lady?’ as he looked at the piece of paper she had shown him, a crease of concern on his face. Anika patted her forehead with her embroidered hankie before tucking it back inside the edge of her glove and smiling up at the man, saying, ‘Why yes, sir, I’m quite sure, but thank you so much for your assistance.’ Harper wondered if that meant they were going to an area like the run-down tenement block where their boarding house was but instead, when they got off the final bus, they found themselves in the middle of a grid of streets with individual houses, the pastel-coloured paint on them a little shabby-looking, it was true, but big places with steps leading up to verandas and porches.

Black people sat on the porches, some elderly women in chairs, talking, knitting or shelling peas. Girls played skipping games in front of the houses. Nobody paid Harper or his mother any attention as they walked up the hill, but for one old lady who watched them as they passed with her fingers still flicking over her embroidery job as though they worked all on their own whether she paid attention or not.

Harper and Anika held hands as they walked up the steep incline to number 2246, set back a little and with a huge cactus plant growing in the front. A vine of some sort corkscrewed around the porch support. The front door was freshly painted in a shiny cream colour. ‘ Well. . ’ his mother murmured approvingly.

Michael was sitting on the top step but rose as they approached — and kept on rising. He was immensely tall it seemed, with rangy shoulders and close-cut hair. He was dressed in baggy pants with an immaculate crease and a shirt buttoned up to the neck with long points to the collar. A jacket was folded neatly over the veranda balcony.

Harper and his mother stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up at Michael, the tall man standing above them. Harper’s mother lifted her hand to shield her eyes from the sun — she had lost her sunglasses the previous week and had cried bitterly that she couldn’t possibly afford another pair, not with a child to feed.

Michael looked down at Harper’s mother and then he smiled, and it was the slowest smile that Harper had ever seen, beginning with the corners of his mouth rising, as they normally did when people smiled, and then suddenly the whole of his face lifted and his eyes shone and he seemed like the nicest man in the world — less handsome, perhaps, than when his face was in repose, but a whole lot nicer. Harper glanced up at his mother who was staring up at Michael and smiling too. In their locked gazes he glimpsed a future where, yes, they lived in California and were Americans and had a house and a dog.

‘Hey, May-on-naise . .’ said Michael, and shifted his gaze to Harper. ‘So this is the little guy, the one I’ve been hearing so much about?’

‘Nicolaas,’ murmured his mother.

‘Pleased to meet you, sir,’ said Harper, extending his hand upwards, as high and as firm as if he was reaching for cookies on a top shelf.

Inside the house, in a narrow hallway with another cactus-type plant in a pot, they met Michael’s parents. Michael’s father turned out to be an older version of his son — more portly, a little stooped, steel-rimmed glasses. There was a woman called Nina in a plain beige dress with hair swept up in a bun. Her status in the house wasn’t immediately apparent — he was just told to call her Nina.

Michael’s father did not give slow smiles like his son. He regarded Harper from his great height with a stern and steady gaze.

After the introductions were over, Anika knelt in front of Harper and smoothed his hair and said, ‘Now, Nicolaas, you are to be very, very good, the best you’ve ever been, do you understand?’

Michael had shrugged on his jacket and turned to the mirror to shake out his sleeves and check his cuffs.

‘You’re going already?’ Harper said quietly.

His mother gave a false little laugh. ‘Of course, Michael is taking me to, well, a place where they do music, it’s a kind of supper club. Now, you’ll be very well looked after.’ She hadn’t mentioned supper for him. And there was no sign of a dog. What kind of house this size didn’t have a dog?

The woman called Nina took him by the hand and they and Michael’s father saw his mother and Michael off from the front step. As the two of them walked back down the incline, a black woman holding a little girl by the hand and walking on the other side of the street stared at Anika and Michael with a hot look and Anika lifted her chin, set her shoulders back and slipped her hand into the crook of Michael’s arm.

As they stepped back inside the house, Michael’s father said to him in a grave voice, ‘Now young man, in the kitchen. There is something you and I have to discuss.’

Nina dropped Harper’s hand and went into the sitting room and he and Michael’s father walked together through to a small kitchen with windows that overlooked a short, steep backyard. Miraculously, at the bottom of the backyard, with a collar and a long rope lead that was tied to a stake, was a large white dog.

Nina had disappeared. Harper looked about him. Michael’s father instructed him to sit at the kitchen table while he remained standing, his large arms folded and held high up above his chest.

‘Now young man,’ he repeated.

‘Yes, sir,’ Harper replied.

Michael’s father lifted his finger. ‘For the rest of this evening, or in fact for as long as you and I turn out to be acquainted, you will call me Poppa, you understand that?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Good. Well, there is something I need explaining to me right away before you and I can be friends. Your name is Nicolaas.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Poppa.’

‘Yes, Poppa.’

‘Good, now is it true, can it be true, that your name is Nicolaas but when they gave it you they gave you an extra a ?’

Harper pulled both lips inwards, the same way he would as if he was making an mmm. . sound, and looked at the ceiling. Then he said, ‘I believe they did, sir.’

‘You believe they did?’

‘Yes, sir, they must have done.’

Michael’s father shook his head from side to side, very slowly. ‘I thought as much. Well young man, there are only two rules in this house, one is that you always call me Poppa and drop that sir business and the other is,’ he turned and opened the fridge door, ‘that when Nina is out of the room, anybody who has an extra a gets to choose what flavour syrup we put in the milkshake. That understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He looked back. ‘Any questions?’

Harper hesitated.

‘Don’t be shy, young man, rule number three. I just made that up on the spot on account of how it suddenly seemed to be necessary. Speak up. I didn’t get where I am without speaking up, believe me, but that’s an awfully long story and it can wait until after milkshake.’

‘Later, perhaps, after milkshake, after the story, would it be possible for me to go and visit the dog?’

*

Later, after he and the dog had made friends, there was a supper consisting of some sort of stew. The stew was placed on the table alongside dishes of vegetables and Harper folded his hands in his lap politely, waiting to be served, but his hosts put their elbows on the table, knitted their fingers and lowered their heads.

‘Dear Lord,’ Poppa began, ‘thank you for the gift of good food, for family and nourishment, and please Lord bless your servant Wesley A. Brown and send him Godspeed for all his sailings on those High Seas of yours and thank you of course for new guests who come into our home. Amen.’