The Raggedy Ann was almost as tall as Tug, who looked not at the doll but at the hand of the man who had flung it on the couch. The man—Mr. Not, as Tug always referred to him, silently—reached up to pat an imaginary loose strand on his head, then looked around the room, as if to survey his property.
“Where’d you find that?” said Tug’s mother Velma. “And what’s that smell? Ray Harold, I thought you hated Tug having Marguerite. Now you bring him home another doll?”
“Oh, Vee, quit yapping. I got it at a toy shop over on Broad Street. The owner sprays everything to keep it fresh.” Ray Harold tore at the plastic bag the doll was wrapped in. When he had liberated the thing, he smiled a small, mean smile and thrust the doll at the boy.
“Go ahead, take it, Harold. I told you if you acted like a sissy, I’d treat you like one. You’re nine years old. Stop peeing in your bed and maybe I’ll buy you something for big boys.” Ray Harold bent down and stared into Tug’s eyes. The boy stiffened like a miniature soldier at the sour smell of liquor on Mr. Not’s breath, but he picked up Raggedy Ann from the couch.
“Thank you,” said Tug.
“Thank you, Uncle Ray,” corrected Velma. “Where’re your manners?”
“Thank you … Mr. Vermeer,” said Tug.
Ray Harold snorted in disgust. “Vee, pour me a drink. I need to sit down and catch my breath. Regina was at it again tonight, threatening to come over here and break all the windows.”
“Why don’t that woman take care of her own household and quit trying to interfere in mine?” said Velma while she poured her longtime lover a glass of Johnnie Walker. “Tug, this is grown folks’ talk. Take your doll to your room. You can watch that new Batman movie I bought you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Tug dragged Raggedy Ann by its stitched foot along the hardwood floor. He propped it in a child-size chair in the farthest corner of his bedroom, then inserted The Dark Knight into his DVD player and undressed for bed. He kept the sound low, so he could listen to the voices at the other end of the hall. Whenever Mr. Not came around, it was always the same routine. Tug, go play. Tug, go to your room. Tug, go downstairs. Tug, go next door. His mother had wanted him to call his godfather Uncle Ray, but Tug refused to call him anything to his face when he could get away with it, and when he couldn’t, he called him Mr. Vermeer. The name sounded to Tug like a cat howling to be let in at night. Vermeer. He thought it suited the man whose very presence in the house on East Leigh Street spoke no and not.
Ordinarily, Tug would become engrossed quickly in a movie, but he couldn’t concentrate with Mr. Not there. He never knew what was going to happen. Mr. Not changed the way his mother acted. When she wasn’t at work in the dining room office downstairs, she spent time doing things with Tug, playing checkers, playing cards, reading to him, taking him skateboarding. But whenever Mr. Not was in the house, her voice changed from being calm and almost musical to sounding whiny and high-pitched. Sometimes, when Mr. Not was around, she even called Tug “Harold,” despite the fact that she’d given him the nickname herself.
“Shhh,” Tug said to Marguerite. She was a bisque brown porcelain doll in a gingham dress, and he held her close to his chest and tiptoed to his hiding place behind the window drapery on the second-floor landing, midway down the hall from his bedroom. It was an excellent place to listen to his mother and Mr. Not …
Velma went to the refrigerator, removed a can of beer, and sat down at the kitchen table.
“Regina says she wants you and Harold out of this house by the end of the summer,” said Ray Harold, already on his third drink.
“I never asked to live here. I never did. I used to think you put me and Tug in this house because you loved me, but I now think it was just cheaper than paying rent on an apartment.” Velma popped the can’s top for punctuation.
“This house is the property of the Vermeer family. We have owned it—”
“For over fifty years,” finished Velma, wiping beer foam from her lip. “I know.” She glared at Ray Harold, then she laughed.
“The thing about you, Velma? You don’t have any class!”
“No, Ray Harold, I don’t. I wasn’t born the illegitimate great-great-grandson of a Confederate captain. I didn’t graduate from Hampton University. I didn’t grow up on Quality Row. And my grandfather didn’t work for Charles T. Russell, the famous black architect.” Velma sat down and faced him across the table. “I don’t have any class, but I do have you, may God have mercy on my soul!” She stood up again. “I’m tired and I’m going to bed. I want to take Tug skateboarding tomorrow, and later on I have some paperwork to do … for you!” She turned off the kitchen light and climbed the stairs to the master bedroom.
“For me,” said Ray Harold. “That’s right. The cancellation of that bid to renovate the Eggleston. And make sure you do it correctly.” He sighed and stared into the bottom of his empty glass.
“Don’t you worry about it. I always do,” replied Velma from the top of the stairs, dragging out the last three words to register her disgust.
Ray Harold was now climbing the stairs behind her. “Yes, you always do, you always do. But in return I let you live here in luxury. I paid for this house—”
“And now I’m paying for it.” Velma moved around her bedroom, finally settling at the vanity to wipe off her makeup.
“Don’t start that shit!” barked Ray Harold, stomping into the room.
“Start what? I don’t know how you treat Regina. I only know how you treat me. And sometimes it takes me months to recover from your brand of loving.” She rubbed her jaw as she checked her reflection in the mirror.
“Then why do you stay?” Strolling over to his mistress, he massaged her neck and shoulders with a gentleness that also declared his ownership.
“Good question.”
“Baby, let’s not fight. I’m going to go home soon and get this mess straightened out.”
“Uh-huh.”
Except for the rustle of sheets and some low groans of pleasure, things were quiet now. Tug guessed they had made up, so he tiptoed back to his room. He left the DVD playing and got into bed, holding his hand over Marguerite’s mouth to keep her from screaming out, Go home, Mr. Not! It took awhile before he fell asleep.
In his sleigh bed, Tug flew in living color. He was Mr. Spock looking down at a huge bright planet from his starship in space, a great wizard scanning a shining magic world below. He swooped down and surveyed blue pinetops and green grass that grew into a thick jungle right before his eyes. Then, as he floated in the quiet of dreamtime, clouds started to gather behind and above him, below him, all around him, and the air took on a strange smell with the sweetness of synthesized flowers. Uh oh! Was that a zig-zag? Was the Sandman near? The phone rang. Tug could see Mr. Not’s clown face and smeary smile when he talked. “Regina, I told you to stop calling here. I’ll see you when I get home.” Then Batman sat on Tug’s bed. I see what I have to become to stop men like him.
Tug woke to the feeling of a draft on his bottom. The odor of pee and sweat and sleep stuck in his nose. He got up and stripped the sheets from his bed.
When his mother met him coming out of his room, Tug didn’t bother telling her how the zig-zags had wrapped around his legs and squeezed his stomach until he had to land, and she didn’t ask him why he’d wet the bed again. She took the soggy sheets from him.
“Your breakfast is ready, Tug,” she said as she headed to the washing machine in the basement.
“Can we still go to the cemetery?” he called after her, afraid she might not allow him to go skateboarding in the parking lot anymore.
“I don’t see why not,” she answered, her voice calm and even.
Nearly every weekend in good weather, the two of them, and Marguerite, made the trip to the cemetery parking lot on 15th and Broad. Tug’s mother told him it was a sacred space where the ancestors slept below the streets.
“Will they ever wake up?” he’d asked her once.
“Not till Judgment Day, I expect, but they won’t hurt us. This place is special, because most all the people buried under here lived way back, during slavery. Gabriel the Blacksmith is buried here, and he led a slave revolt two hundred years ago. They caught him and hung him on the gallows, but he was a hero to the people.”
“We’re not slaves, Mommy.”
“No, Tug, we’re free, we’ve been free for over 140 years now.”
“Then why does Mr. Not try to own you?”
His mother opened her mouth, then shut it again. “Your godfather loves us, honey. If he seems a little gruff, that’s just his way. I love your … him, maybe too much,” she finally said.
“Gabriel was a blacksmith? Does that mean he worked in a forge, like the black god you showed me in that big book on Africa?” “Like Ogun,” said Tug’s mother, surprised he remembered their conversation about the Yoruba god.
“Yeah, Ogun was a god and a ninja too.” Tug thought of the comics he read at night in bed with Marguerite by his side.
According to their usual Saturday routine, Tug helped his mother make the beds, dust, restack magazines, place books back on their shelves. He did it not simply because it meant they would get to the parking lot sooner, but also because he liked being in the house with nice furniture, clean linen. He enjoyed the rhythms of domesticity.
Skateboarding was the only outdoor activity Tug enjoyed. He looked forward to sailing over the concrete, arms out, knees bent, with open space and no cars to dodge, while his mother and Marguerite watched him fly. Somehow knowing that the parking lot was also a cemetery comforted him. His mother once told him that ever since he was three years old, he’d always had a special affinity for graveyards, turning to look and point whenever they passed one in a car. Now he imagined the graves as a city below the ground, with Gabriel Ogun presiding.
As they were finally preparing to leave for the parking lot, Tug heard the front door open and close. Mr. Not was back. He didn’t usually come around until nighttime.
“Vee, I have to talk to you. Regina threw my clothes and my good shoes outside this morning, and now she’s threatening to come over here and run you out of this house. Harold, go and play while I talk to your mama. And take your sissy doll with you.” Mr. Not grabbed Marguerite and flung her at the boy.
“Go on, it’s okay,” said Tug’s mother. “When we finish discussing business, I’ll take you to the parking lot. Okay?”
Tug backed out the door with his eyes fixed on Mr. Not.
He went and sat in the swing, humming to Marguerite and rubbing her back the way his mother sometimes affectionately rubbed his.
“Go ahead, Marguerite, you can hum too. I lost you last night when I hit the zig-zags. Next time, hold my hand tight, so the Sandman and the zig-zags won’t get us.” Tug had brought his skateboard and backpack with him, and now he rolled the board underfoot back and forth.
He continued to hum while he listened to the escalating discussion in the kitchen. Suddenly, his song was interrupted by the Raggedy Ann doll sailing out the back door, head first, landing in a heap on the ground. The doll had lost its green cap and lay there with legs splayed, its smiling face kissing the grass. Tug left the swing and walked past Raggedy Ann to see who had thrown it out. At first, he thought it was Glenda the Good Witch, but when she said his name he realized it had been his mother. With her silk dressing gown streaming behind her, she strode over to Tug and grabbed him by the hand. Tendrils of hair had come loose from her long ponytail.
“I’m going to bring you next door to Mrs. Richardson’s house, and you stay there until I come get you.”
“But you said you were going to take me skateboarding.”
“I am, I will, but just wait there until I come get you.”
Mrs. Richardson was accustomed to her friend and neighbor Velma Holloway sometimes arriving unannounced with her son. Tug’s mother told him to sit down in the family room, then walked with Mrs. Richardson into the kitchen. When they returned from their brief conference, his mother said, “You mind Mrs. Richardson. I’ll be back in a few minutes, then we’ll go to the parking lot. Let me go get my business straight. Thanks, Betty.”
Tug folded his arms and looked away when she tried to kiss his cheek. After she left, Mrs. Richardson inserted a DVD of Tug’s favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz. “Call me when it gets to the part with the lollipop kids. That cracks me up,” she said. Then she returned to the kitchen to finish chopping vegetables while listening to Smokey Robinson croon, “Ooo baby, babeee … I did you wrong,” on Power 92, oldies-but-goodies radio.
The witch’s feet shriveled up and disappeared under the house, but Tug wasn’t thrilled the way he usually was. “Marguerite, do you think Mr. Not’s going to make Mommy cry again?” He looked around for Marguerite, only to realize he’d left her and the skateboard by the swing.
Going out the side door, Tug ran from Mrs. Richardson’s yard directly into his own. There was no fence dividing the two row houses. He gently lifted Marguerite and patted her head.
“I didn’t mean to leave you. It’s just that Mommy was rushing me.” As he turned to go back the way he came, Tug heard raised voices from the second floor of his house.
With Marguerite in tow, he ran inside and crept up the carpeted stairs. He walked past the bathroom and glimpsed Mr. Not shaving at the mirror that hung over the sink. Then Tug rounded the corner and saw his mother sitting on her bed, arms crossed, smoking a cigarette. He took a few quiet steps back and watched as Mr. Not turned his head at odd angles, like a bird trying to see behind itself, as he delicately pressed blade to skin to get the last bit of stubble from his lower jaw. Silence had overtaken the bickering couple. Tug thought he heard the faint music of an ice cream truck, but didn’t run to his mother. He went and hid with Marguerite behind the long velvet drapes on the second-floor landing, where he could observe. He listened for something he could not know he was listening for, a prelude to a kind of dance. Velma’s shaking foot kept time …
Ray Harold Vermeer studied himself in the mirror, touched a hand to his temple. The phone rang and Velma got up to see who was calling; when she saw Betty Richardson’s number on the caller ID she didn’t answer, but let it go to voice mail.
“Vee, I swear, Regina’s just bluffing.”
Velma placed her cigarette in the ashtray, rose from the bed, and walked toward the bathroom, as if she had been summoned. “Then why did you come over here this morning? You say this is my house, but when you and Regina argue, she threatens to fly on over here and act a fool, same way she did the time we moved in, calling me a slut in front of my neighbors.” Pulling another cigarette and matches out of her robe, Velma lit up with trembling hands.
“Will you forget about her for one minute! Why can’t we just spend a little time together like we used to before Harold came into the picture and Regina went on the warpath? Take off that bathrobe. Daddy wants to show you something when he comes out the bathroom.”
“Ray Harold, I’m tired of you thinking you can show up here any time you feel like it and disrupt my plans, just so you can get some and then go on about your business.”
“Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t come here just to bed you, woman. I got good news!” Ray met Velma in the hall and stood there in his undershirt. The phone rang again. Neither made a move to answer, until finally Velma could stand it no longer. She went and picked up the receiver.
“Regina, stop calling my house.” She listened. “Well, bring it on, then!” She slammed the phone down. “That’s it. We’re moving! As soon as I can get my things together, me and my son are leaving this house. I don’t care if it’s in the historical register, it’s never going to be mine!”
“Wait a minute, Vee. Look, I was going to surprise you, but I guess I’ll go on and tell you. I think we’re close to getting a contract to start work. You remember I told you the mayor knew my daddy and my granddaddy? Well, he put me in touch with some people I need to know. People who matter. I want you to be cool until I get this contract on the old Hippodrome. Vee, we’re going to—”
“Ray Harold.” She called his name as if it were a command to be quiet. “I’m not interested. When are you going to acknowledge to everyone, including Tug, that he is a Vermeer, that he is your son, your only son? And when are you going to stop belittling him? I’m tired of being laughed at by my enemies, pitied by my friends, and scorned by my family, all because I haven’t figured out how to leave you.” Velma walked past Ray Harold and into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.
Ray Harold banged on it.
“Velma, come on out so we can talk this over. I don’t have much time before—” “Before what?” said Velma through the closed door.
“Before you have to go home to that witch? You know, I used to be impressed with you, how you were a man of position in the community, one of the top black contractors in Richmond and from a good family. I didn’t think you wasn’t honorable the time one of your schemes to be a major player in the renovation of down-town fell through.” Velma opened the door to the bathroom with tears in her eyes. “You remember that night? You buried your head in my lap and cried like a baby. I had a boyfriend who wanted to marry me, but I gave him up for you, and when I had your son, you didn’t even claim him until you saw he looked just like you. That’s when you moved us into your daddy’s house. Your daddy’s house. This isn’t my house or yours!”
Ray Harold slapped Velma so hard she stumbled backward into the bathroom. He followed her inside and shut the door.
Why did they go in there? What are they doing? Tug couldn’t see them, so he left his position on the landing and lay on his side in the hallway inhaling dust as he peered under the door. Mr. Not’s feet flanked the toilet bowl. His pants aren’t falling around his legs like mine do when I’m sitting down so he must not be using it. What’s he doing? A few inches away, his mother’s feet faced the toilet bowl.
“You told me I made you feel brand new. You told me you were getting a divorce. You didn’t tell me I’d have to share you with your wife, and you won’t even tell our son you’re his father, acting like you’re some kind of white man and I’m your concubine.”
Tug bit his underlip till it hurt, then kept biting it.
“You can’t leave well enough alone. I brought you from nothing. You and that little faggot live in a fine house, you wear the best clothes money can buy. You use my credit card and it says Vermeer. People know that boy’s my son. And you know I’m still trying to work things out with Regina so that things can be divided—”
“You go ahead and divide whatever you want to. I’m taking Tug back to Charles City.”
Mr. Not’s shoes tapped the floor three times. The second tap made the fine mahogany floorboards ring as the door rattled and bounced in its frame. Startled, Tug rolled back, then returned to the same spot, desperate to see what was happening. It didn’t occur to him that the door might fly open at any second. All he knew was that he had to get closer to see as much as he could.
“You’re not leaving me or taking my son anywhere!” shouted Mr. Not. Then Tug heard a rattle-bang of flesh against metal. His mother’s feet stumbled, and he moved even closer, sticking his nose as far under the door as he could. He saw two knees on the bathroom floor—hers.
“Ray Harold, please! Don’t do this!”
What’s happening in there? Marguerite, we have to help Mommy! Somebody! Mrs. Richardson! Batman! Gabriel Ogun!
He cried out, “Mommy!” and the door opened suddenly, and sunlight beaming through the stained-glass bathroom window put Mr. Not’s face in deep shadow. He stood with his legs wide apart, his face a mask of anger when he looked down and saw Tug on the floor.
“Go play”—he inhaled all the air around him—“son. Your mama and I have to discuss some things.”
“You’re not my daddy,” said Tug. “You’re Mr. Not!”
“Go play, Tug. It’s all right,” said his mother, but she didn’t look him in his eyes. Instead, she stared at the back of Mr. Not’s head.
Something heavy, a zag, wrapped around Tug’s stomach and squeezed and squeezed and wouldn’t let go until it released itself down his legs. He was awake and the blue zig-zags were marching across his wide-open eyes.
“Go change your underwear, sissy,” said Mr. Not. Then he stepped back into the bathroom and closed the door in Tug’s face. When Tug’s head cleared, he knew the zig-zags were really drops of blood on the tiled floor. He knew Mr. Not wouldn’t disappear under the house like the Wicked Witch. What would Mr. Spock or Batman do? What would Gabriel Ogun do?
Tug grabbed Marguerite and dashed downstairs to the dining room where Mr. Not kept a glass-paned bookcase. Some shelves held books and building models, but on one shelf there was a set of fancy long knives, glinting in their velvet exhibit covers. Tug had always admired them for their beauty. They made the bookcase look royal and mysterious. Tug gazed now at the array of knives, not knowing an East African panga from a Malaysian golok, but he went into the drawer of the antique desk across the room and got the big key and picked a panga from the case.
Holding Marguerite in one hand and the panga in the other, Tug climbed the stairs to the hallway bathroom. Then he set Marguerite on the floor and slowly opened the door. His mother sat with her back pressed against the tub. Mr. Not was kneeling down with his hand wrapped around her silk bathrobe, the one he had given her as a Valentine’s Day gift. Her nose was bleeding, and she was staring at the floor.
Tug heard the rhythm of a hammer crashing down on an anvil with the force of a black god. With both hands on the long knife, Tug raised it high above his head and plunged it deep into Mr. Not’s back. The man straightened with a sharp intake of breath and looked up at the ceiling. He reached behind him to remove the knife, which had pierced his kidney. Then he turned around to face his attacker and peered into Tug’s eyes, but his mouth couldn’t register surprise. Mr. Not had only enough strength left to slump down next to Velma, who did not glance up until he was sitting beside her, leaning his head on her shoulder.
Tug jumped back into the hallway, picked up Marguerite, stuffed her in his backpack, continued out to the swing set, grabbed his skateboard, and ran and ran and ran. He didn’t know where he was headed as he sprinted down East Leigh with its manicured lawns behind wrought-iron fences. When he got to Broad Street, he stopped and just stood there, looking neither left nor right. A wiry man of average height sidled up to him.
“Look lively, son. Where you headed?”
Tug glanced up at the Tin Man. “To the cemetery. I mean, to the parking lot.”
“Well, you’re on the wrong side of the street. Cross here and catch the Riverview or the Churchill bus. That’ll get you where you want to go. What’s your name, son?”
“Harold Holloway. Are you the Tin Man?”
“No, they call me Dumptruck. Be safe, son.” The man smiled him on his way.
Tug caught the Riverview and the driver let him ride without paying a fare. He got off the bus when he recognized 12th Street and Broad and walked the rest of the way to the overpass with the historical marker that told of the exploits of Gabriel the Blacksmith, who was hung on the gallows and buried in the Burial Ground for Negroes. Tug followed the cobblestone path that led to the empty parking lot with numbered spaces and overgrown grass in the medians.
After setting his backpack down, he took Marguerite out and leaned her against some tall weeds. “Marguerite,” he said, “don’t think about it. Don’t talk about it. Don’t want to.” He jumped on his skateboard and rode it as best he could on the expanse of concrete. He glided back and forth over the blacktop for hours.
The lights of the city started winking on. MCV Medical Center glowed on the hill. Tug wanted to go home. He wanted to see his mother, but didn’t know if she would be angry with him. He remembered once when Mr. Not had slapped her and Tug tried to come between them, his mother had swatted him firmly on his buttocks and sent him to his room with the warning to stay out of grown folks’ business. Where could he go? Back to Mrs. Richardson’s house?
There were places to hide under the old tracks, but he was afraid to go into the dark wooden enclosures that looked like they’d once kept slaves penned up. Tug wanted to be headed home on the Starship Enterprise with Mr. Spock or in the Batmobile with the Dark Knight. He wanted to be in the house on East Leigh Street with his mother, watching Dorothy click her heels. He turned to the stone arch under the freeway. There, the concrete parking lot gave way to dirt. What had his mother told him about those black ancestors who slept below the ground? She had said they wouldn’t hurt him. Gabriel, where are you? Will they hang me on the gallows? Tug found a place under the freeway. Exhausted, with his back against the wall, he sat Marguerite on his lap to comfort her.
The sun shone brightly down on the parking lot. As Tug flew over it, he watched brawny black men and strong black women holding down the Sandman so he couldn’t get away. When Tug drew closer, he saw that it was Mr. Not they all held fast. His face was chalk-white and his lips were smeared in a grotesque smile. Bury him, said Gabriel Ogun.
Yes, said the people, dig a deep hole!
After explaining to the police how Ray Harold Vermeer came to be sitting lifeless on the bathroom floor, Velma enlisted their aid in finding her son. The police questioned people up and down East Leigh Street. The answers they got led them to Broad Street, where they talked to shopkeepers and bystanders, including a little man named Dumptruck, who confirmed Velma’s suspicions. The police drove her out to the Burial Ground for Negroes, where she found Tug under the overpass. With Marguerite sitting beside him, spotless in her gingham gown, the boy was asleep on his knees. In front of him was a hole three feet deep and a foot and a half wide. Tug’s fists were filled with red soil. On his lips were the words of the people:“Bury him deep! Bury him deep!”