Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush Read online

  Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush

  Virginia Hamilton

  For my family

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  A Biography of Virginia Hamilton

  Chapter 1

  THE FIRST TIME Teresa saw Brother was the way she would think of him ever after. Tree fell head over heels for him. It was love at first sight in a wild beating of her heart that took her breath. But it was a dark Friday three weeks later when it rained, hard and wicked, before she knew Brother Rush was a ghost.

  That first time Tree didn’t notice that it was odd the way Brother happened to be there. He had been standing on a corner of Race Street the way the dudes will do after school, whether they went to school or not. He was standing cool, waiting for whatever would happen to happen, just the way all the dudes did. Tree had come swinging around the corner of Race Street at Detroit Avenue on her way home. She was holding her books tight to her chest, hiding herself from the dudes. She had begun growing into a woman, which was the reason the dudes had started to catcall to her.

  “Hey, little girl, when you going to let me take you out?”

  “Sweet Tree, I’ll walk you home, bay-buh. Do Dab know you walkin by these shifless clowns alone? Do your brother leave you in the house by you-sef?”

  “Shu-man, you know Dab n’goin nowhere, and Tree comin home from schoo.”

  “I’ll brang you home, Teresa, since you gone and grown so fine.”

  Tree felt so ashamed of them, ashamed they had to go pick on her. One or two of them were quick to understand she wasn’t ready for them.

  “Stop it, yo’w,” they told the others. “She ain cooked good yet.” And laughed about it.

  Tree knew they weren’t bad dudes.

  Be never having nothing to do and nowhere to do it, she had thought.

  They laughed and joked so much to keep back that fear look—Tree had seen it—from showing through the hard glinting of their hungry eyes.

  It was when Tree was almost by them and they had stopped their calling after her that she had spied Brother Rush. He had been leaning on a stoop of an apartment building. She didn’t have time to think about the fact that he was off by himself, although she made note of it. The other dudes didn’t so much ignore him as they seemed to have forgotten about him. They acted like they didn’t even know him or hadn’t paid attention that he had come to lean there.

  Tree saw him at once. It was the way you see something that has been there all of the time, but you never had eyes open wide enough to see. It was like the figure of him jumped right out of space at her. Brother Rush hit her in one never-to-be-forgotten impression:

  His suit was good enough for a funeral or a wedding.

  Better than a suit for Sunday church or one for Thanksgiving. It was just too dressy for a school concert when you have the main solo. You have been paid thirty-five bills to sing because you are a home boy, a graduate of the school who has done all right and has come on back as an example for the rest of the dudes. Dudes who will not yet admit that they will never leave Race Street or Detroit Avenue, either, although they know they won’t. They do know, now.

  The suit was dark and rich-looking, pinstripe perfection. The shirt was ivory with a shiny sword design that gave it more class than any shirt Tree had ever seen. The collar was uncrushed around Brother Rush’s neck, but not so tight so that it bothered his Adam’s apple. His tie was deep wine-dark, and silky. The belt he wore was black and the buckle was silver, and spelled “Jazz” in the prettiest script. That convinced Tree he was a musician, and she decided he was a piano player. Brother’s shoes were black patent leather dress shoes with a high gloss, which he wore over gray silk socks.

  As far as Tree could tell that first time, Brother Rush’s clothes were picture perfect. She imagined his underwear. He’d have on a snow-white undershirt with short sleeves; soft-cottony shorts. Nothing like her brother Dab’s Fruit-of-the-Loom with ratty tears. Brother’s underwear would have no worn-through places.

  She hadn’t realized that it was the message out of Brother’s eyes that had caught her, had captured her. It had all happened too fast. She had the impression of unbelievable good looks—tallness, slimness, those funeral clothes she’d never seen on any dude. Not even the ones into criminality dressed like Brother Rush, the ones who strutted flash-smart and pimp-fine, as her Muh Vy said, upper lip curling.

  Tree understood that the way Brother Rush was dressed expressed his style as well as his melancholy. She made fleeting notice that Brother’s skin was a pale brown with a good sprinkling of reddish freckles. He had refined features and full lips. His large nose was long, straight, with flared nostrils. His hair had the same reddish tint of the freckles, soft and tightly curled. And he wore suede gloves. She summed up her impression of him as absolutely handsome. His was an appearance of trim, muscular maleness, including his eyes. She denied the message that was there in his eyes. It had gone too deeply inside her for her to fathom it at once. Even so, his eyes had taken her prisoner.

  Rush stood on the corner against a stoop with his legs crossed at the ankles. His right hand was cupped around his ear, as if he’d been singing along with some tough do-wahs of an outta-sight 1950s reissue and getting the background whisperings right in tune as well. Or else he had the whole record in his head and was using his hand to his ear to close out street sounds while he hummed the tune. Tree was certain she heard him whispering. His left hand was propped under his right elbow.

  The stone finest dude Tree had ever seen in her short life of going-on fifteen years. She didn’t say anything to him. What was there to say? He knew he was fine. She knew it. She held her books and looked straight on as she went by him. Brother Rush seemed not to notice her passing by right before his eyes. His head never moved; he stared steadily into Race Street. She knew he had to be scoping on her the way she had scoped on him as she passed. Her insides had performed a wild screeching at her, like a girl swooning in some fifties movie clip she had seen on TV. Brother Rush had to belong to her. She belonged to him the moment she saw him.

  Him standing in the street was Tree’s very first sighting of Brother. She didn’t tell anyone about him. Not her mother, who was Viola, whom they called Muh Vy. Muh Vy, spoken M’Vy, with the softest sighing to mean, Miss you, Mama; Love you, Mama. All the tenderness and grief she and her brother Dab felt at the thought of her when they were so alone sometimes without her. Sighing in their minds, M’Vy! M’Vy!, a stirring of memories, like leaves lifting, swirling on a hot, sudden breeze.

  Tree didn’t tell Dab about Brother Rush. There were days when Dab was home for her when she got home. He liked being home for her. He’d walk out of school early. There were times when they locked up the school so nobody could walk out. But her brother, Dab, would grow restless enough to find ways to get out. It was best for him that he get out of there when he felt he had to leave. But she didn’t tell him.

  Don’t really know if he home cause he like being home for me, she thought. Think he home cause he don’t have no place else to go, Dab don’t, the same as me. He wouldn’t know where else to go. He do care about me, probably, but that ain’t why he come home.

  His name was Dabney and everybody called him Dab. Dab this and Dab that. There was not a soul who had anything aga
inst Dab. No one in school, including the teachers, thought mean of him. Being almost fifteen, she knew why. Her brother wasn’t a basketball star, or the smartest person. No way was Dab the smartest dude around. He never got in any trouble. He never woofed on other dudes or anybody. He would never open his mouth in classes. Dab didn’t bring home report cards. Tree and M’Vy wouldn’t expect him to.

  “Be happy he off the streets,” M’Vy say. “Streets n’got nothin to tell a brother, him.”

  Dab could no more deal with the hype of the street corners than he could work with opening his mouth in school.

  It was all right between her and Dab. He was seventeen and he wasn’t smart. There. She’d thought it. Some days his head hurt him so bad, he never got off the couch in the living room, lying there in his ratty robe, curled in a ball. Saying that whenever light gets on certain places on his arms, it made him feel like he would jump out of his skin.

  “Dab ain’t smart. No way,” Tree would say when she was by herself in her room or taking off her boots in the foyer. She wouldn’t say it to anyone else. But she and Dab knew. She helped him with the countries out of his world history book. Dab had no trouble understanding continents, but all those little countries gave him a headache. Tree helped him with math work. He had taken math for two years, the easiest, commercial math, and it hadn’t done him any good. She gave him a calculator she talked M’Vy into buying him one Christmas. Gave the little thing to him as a present, hoping desperately it would help him. It just upset him. He couldn’t find the figures that had to go into it to get the answers out.

  But Tree loved Dab. When she felt something was missing and she didn’t know what it was, she’d go by Dab where he sat to lean on his shoulder. He’d move his head until their foreheads touched. That would last a minute. Then he would put his hands on his forehead and then hold them over his eyes.

  There they’d be in the house, so quiet. She’d take a deep breath and feel Dab breathe out in short bursts, like gasps of hurt. She would feel something missing from the house. Dab wouldn’t mind her leaning on him. Sometimes he’d take hold of her hand and pat it in some kind of formal, gentlemanly way. Most of the time, though, when it was too quiet, he would have his hands over his eyes. But Tree didn’t tell him about Brother Rush the first time she had seen him.

  The next time Tree saw Brother, she fell more in love with him. He was standing on the avenue; and again, she did not speak to him. This time she noticed that his standing position might be out of the ordinary. Yet the bold sight of him swept away any worry. He was just there. Not every day; he seemed to be there one day one week and one day the next. Finally she did tell Dab and Dab smiled about it, not saying much. Dab had been busy right then. She could have picked a better time to tell him, instead of all of a sudden saying, “Dab, there’s this guy I know—I like him fine.”

  That didn’t tell the whole truth, the loving truth, about how she felt at all. Dab had had this new girl with him. He had lots of girls he brought home. To look at him, he was good-looking almost too pretty. Some girls liked that. But none of them lasted long. Or else Dab didn’t last long with them. Whichever way it was, he would bring one home, and another and another after them.

  Tree didn’t see him bring girls home because he got home early when he left school early, or he would go out and bring them in at night after supper when she had gone to her room. When they didn’t watch television, she and Dab had a habit of going off to their separate rooms. If Dab wasn’t up in the morning by the time she was ready for school, she would have to go in and wake him up.

  Knock on his door and then go in and say, “Dab. Dab.” Wake him up and never scare him, either.

  If she said Dab too loud as she would do if she forgot, it could get awful in that room. It could scare Dab half to death. He’d jump a foot up off the bed. It didn’t matter whether a girl was there. Still asleep, he would start swinging. Running. Once he almost ran out the window. And when she had grabbed his arm to save him, he had swung on her and knocked her off her feet. Didn’t hurt her, but it scared her.

  The only time Dab was ready to fight with you was when you woke him up too fast. If Tree had to go in and wake him, she was likely to find one of his girls there in the bed with him. And she would say to him, “Dab. Dab,” very quietly.

  Dab would open his eyes just when she thought he wasn’t going to hear her. Opening his eyes all of a sudden, staring at her, cold and alert. “Yeah, I hear you, baby Tree.” Then the sweet emptiness would swim in a bright stream back into his eyes again, and he would say to the girl, “Bay-buh, bay-buh, tam to go. Uh-huh.”

  The girl would be awake. When you are not familiar with a place, you wake up as soon as somebody steps into the room. Tree could tell the girl, the woman, was awake with her eyes closed by the way she held herself board stiff and still under the covers. This one was older than Dab and liked him because of that sweet, empty look that could take over his eyes, and because he was young and so pretty.

  Tree would leave the room and get ready to go to school. Then Dab would get up. He’d miss the first period of the morning two or three times a week because there would be someone overnight with him. And when Tree got home from school again, the girl might still be there.

  Once in a great while, Dab would bring one home after a regular schoolday. Tree would get home first Then the girl would come in the house with Dab and see Tree, and Tree would hear them talking off in the kitchen.

  Hear the girl saying to Dab, “Why you baby-sittin her for? She can stay by her sel, shu, she almost fifteen years old. You don’t have to hold her han. That not your job, man. That be her mama’s job. She got a mama, hasn’t she?”

  Dab wouldn’t say much. Looking at the girl with his sad, simple eyes. Smile at her, and knowing Tree had heard it all. That would be the last time Tree would see that particular girl. After saying something like that, Dab got rid of them. Always.

  So it was Tree and Dab, together most of the time. M’Vy was away for a lot of reasons. She worked; she lived in at people’s houses. She was into practical nursing. She made side bets on the street having to do with the daily lottery. Vy loved the Dream Book Almanac: Numerology Encyclopedia. Sometimes, she dreamed lucky. M’Vy lived in a patient’s house—Tree didn’t know how many different patients and houses—and might be gone for weeks at a time. She would come by to Tree and Dab on a Saturday. She’d have money.

  And say, “Come on, Tree. Dab, you stay still, we gone brang you back a goody.”

  They’d get on the bus and buy enough food and goodies to last a month. Store it. Every kitchen cupboard full to the brim with food and goodies.

  Tree must have said to M’Vy when she was younger, “Whyn’t you home?”

  And probably cried about that. But she didn’t really remember. She didn’t cry now because she was used to the way things were and knew they were the way they had to be. M’Vy had to be somewhere else so she and Dab and M’Vy, too, could have all the things they had to have. She supposed that M’Vy was gone some of the time for her own pleasure. But Tree didn’t think too much about that. She accepted M’Vy as mood and background of her life. Muh was the color and shade of shadows that were always in the house. Tree could depend on the background. It was she and Dab who were alone together.

  Chapter 2

  TREE WOULDN’T HAVE ever known Brother Rush was a ghost if there hadn’t been a little room in the house. The little room was no bigger than a walk-in closet. They couldn’t get a bunk bed in the room, it was so small. She and Dab had rooms with big double beds. They weren’t great, large rooms but they were very comfortable. She would never call the closet room a room. You wouldn’t want to show it to somebody as a room. It was more like the end of a room. Like an alcove made too small, with a folding door across it to hide the mistake.

  Dab said once that the little room could be a walk-in closet. What did that mean? Tree didn’t know; she had somehow missed that bit of knowledge. She couldn’t get it that you cou
ld walk inside a closet to get your clothes out; then, you walked out of it again. It just didn’t make any sense to her.

  The walk-in closet-room was small. They stored stuff in it. They put what they didn’t need there or the things they would someday have fixed.

  “M’Vy be havin some extra time and we gone get that stuff fixed,” Tree would say.

  There was a wide, round table in the little room. It held all kinds of things—a broken television, pieces of things. Magazines from ages ago that no one had thrown away. Tree discovered coloring books that she had colored in when she was quite a small child. Now when she had nothing to do, she would go in the room and have a relaxed look-see through some of the magazines. Six months might go by before M’Vy would think to buy new magazines. Then Tree would tell her to buy Seventeen and Ebony. From Seventeen, she found out how the best kind of girls were supposed to dress, act and think. She read Ebony because it had lots of pictures and she loved to see gorgeous-looking black folks doing well.

  The table was stacked with about everything you could think of. Magazines, dusty comic books. There was the television; part of a chair, its soiled canvas seat ripped. Half of a black telephone. A cardboard box of old, tired-out shoes. Tree would handle her old shoes one time and marvel at how small they’d become. Knowing they hadn’t become small but that was always the way she thought about them in relation to herself. They had become small. A lot of junk stuff. And some nice, tiny football players from some toy game in wonderful poses of running and tackling; a few quarterbacks throwing, and a kicker kicking. Some of the players had their faces and hands painted white; some were painted black. They had belonged to Dab at one time, probably.

  Who you belong to now? Tree wondered at them. She was fond of tiny them. Likely she had played with them, too. She felt she knew them, but she didn’t remember.

  One day she and Dab had a mind to clean off the big, round table in the little room. They did it one weekend, taking their time. It was done for her, so the table would be her play table and the room her playroom. She needed the private space better than her bedroom, different, because she had what was called a ream of white paper—more than four hundred separate sheets. And she liked to draw. She could draw two to six pictures a day using the paper from the ream. Now she could draw at the table.