Xavier's mother appeared to be studying Radix for the first time ̶
looking him up and down, immensely curious about his association with
this white woman.
Radix shifted from one foot to the next. "So when will they let us see
Xavier?" he asked. This was enough to snap him back into the
conversation. Judy Wiener explained, seemingly just for his benefit,
that Xavier's condition needed round the clock observation.
Xavier's mother looked at her watch. "O, my goodness!" she declared,
still ladylike in manner; she had to catch the train to Manhattan. She
worked at a bank, from 6.00pm to 2.00am ̶ "the graveyard shift", she
smiled knowingly. In fact, Xavier was on his way to her bank to get her
house key (he couldn't find his) when the incident with the police
officer occurred.
Outside Radix was determined not to seem disinterested right at the
point of taking leave. Xavier's mother was buttoning up her coat and
explaining more about her son. And for the first time he heard the
anguish of a mother whose child lay in a hospital bed "in critical but
stable" condition.
"I have to contact the lawyer, let him know 'bout the way they have
him handcuffed to the bed. Treating him like a common criminal!" This
brought them to a halt on the sidewalk. Judy Wiener folded her arms
and shook her head, firmly allied with Xavier's mother on this issue.
Did she have far to go, Radix asked. Did she need a lift? No, the
subway stop was two blocks away; she could manage.
She reached in her bag, took out a pack of spearmint gum and offered
it around. In the cold afternoon light she presented the image of an
indomitable island woman, up from island poverty; getting little sleep
these days, but not about to give in to self-pity and fatigue. A mother
relieved of the aggravation in her marriage, living only for her son
now handcuffed to a hospital bed.
And as if to reinforce the idea of how resourceful she was, she
explained, speaking now for Radix' benefit, that she had tried to enroll
Xavier in a high school on Long Island. They'd told her she would need
a referral from a school counselor. "Like he was a delinquent or some-
thing!"
Turned away, her aspirations denied, she had no choice but to send
him to his zoned school, John Wayne Cotter H.S.
She spoke as if she wanted Radix to understand this, before they went
their separate ways bearing half-finished portraits of each other.
Whatever he thought about her, he should know this about her son ̶
Xavier was a good boy, a smart, decent boy.
"Him used to sing in the church choir." (The "him" gave her island
origins away, and as she went on she seemed to drop her speech
affectations.) His father was a strict man. When they came to New
York he picked up the notion of raising a "straight A student". He
insisted the boy's report be free of blemish. "Him get blows all 'bout
him head if his father see even one stray B on the report card."
Judy Wiener nodded, though Radix couldn't tell if she'd heard the story
before and was simply confirming its truth.
Xavier's father spoke too harshly and lifted his hands once too often to
the boy. She couldn't stand aside and witness the "child abuse" any
longer. She separated from him taking Xavier with her. It was at this
point that Xavier started going down.
"Him kind of feel like freedom, you know, since his father wasn't
around anymore. So him lose the discipline. Him get into some kind
of trouble with the teachers so they put him in Special Education. But
Mrs. Wiener here is a good teacher, so I have nothing to worry about,
right Mrs. Wiener?"
It was a good moment to say goodbye, on a note of sweet optimism,
after the disappointment at not seeing Xavier. And so after a farewell
embrace and handshakes, Xavier's mother went off to catch her
train.
"Isn't it terrible?" Judy Wiener was saying, searching her bags for her
car keys as she walked beside Radix.
He wasn't sure what she meant but he agreed: life was indeed
terrible. Black boys handcuffed to hospital beds, that gold-chained
man lounging at the street corner with his pitbull ̶ in the Bronx life
was a terrible, fragmented thing. With frothy rapids through which
they all navigated; staying closer to this bank or that bank; isolated
souls meeting and sharing distress, then pushing out and away again.
(from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 