Chapter 35
OZZIE
The train station’s waiting area overflowed with men clutching briefcases, travelers checking timetables, and families reuniting.
Ozzie crossed the station in his formal uniform, his garrison cap pulled to his temples, despite the way the hat made his head sweat.
His uniform lent him an air of importance that he knew was infectious.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted three women dressed in summer blouses admiring him.
There was no one at the station to meet him in the middle of the day. Uncle Millard was the only family member with a car anyhow, and shortly after Ozzie had arrived in Germany, he had moved up to Harlem with a woman named Tootsie.
Ozzie exited onto Twelfth Street to the sounds of horns honking and a stubby man with a pushcart shouting, “Peanuts, get your fresh peeee-nuuutts.”
The pavement and cars were damp, and as Ozzie walked west, he could smell that he had just missed a summer rainstorm.
He paused to take in the familiar thirty-seven-foot bronze statue of William Penn atop City Hall.
He walked past Gimbels and Wanamaker’s department stores, still with mannequins dressed in patriotic red, white, and blue for the Fourth of July.
Ozzie had missed his neighborhood block party by three days.
Ozzie continued down the steps into the cave of the subway station just as the southbound train rattled to a stop.
He sat next to the window and noticed appreciative glances from two teenage boys with thick hair, wearing white sneakers with red laces.
One even saluted him. Yes, he had served his country well.
Ozzie got off the subway at Tasker and Morris.
When he didn’t see the Tasker Street bus, he decided to walk.
At the square where he used to play basketball with his friends, four teenage boys in cutoff shorts were playing two-on-two basketball, and he could hear the shit talk between them.
When he turned onto Ringgold Street, the pavement was meticulously swept and all the front steps were scrubbed clean, but the block looked smaller than he had remembered it.
Had the street shrunk, or was it that he had grown bigger?
On the corner, Ms. Millie’s front door was open, and he could hear the soaps she listened to through her screen door.
Pigeons pecked the curb for insects as a light breeze caressed the back of his neck. He was home.
“Ozzie, that you?” his mother, Nettie, called from the kitchen.
“Mama.” He dropped his bag and gobbled up the distance between them. They met in the small space between the front room and the dining room, and she smashed herself into his chest.
“Glad you made it home in one piece, son. Let me look at you.” She touched his collar. “Dressed sharp as a tack. Just as handsome as the day you was born.”
The fragrance of butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, and something else sweet wafted from the kitchen.
“What you cooking smelling all good?”
“My son’s favorite dessert.” She beamed.
“Sweet-potato pie?” His mouth watered.
“Even though it’s way too hot to be in the house with the oven on, I done it for you.
” She put her arms around his waist and hugged him again, and he kissed the top of her head.
“Gotta let it cool some. Come on back and sit awhile. Fixed some fresh lemonade for you and saved you a few pieces of fried chicken.” Nettie turned, placed the food on a plate, and slid it across the wooden table to Ozzie.
He bit into the crispy skin and moaned. “Don’t nobody make it like you, Mama,” he said.
She smiled. “What can I say?”
Ozzie took another bite and then asked, “Where’s everybody?”
“Sissy still working at the department store, they done made her a manager, paying her an extra fifty cents an hour.”
“Ain’t that something,” Ozzie said, mouth full. His sister Sissy was the one person in his family light-skinned enough for a job in management. The rest of his family could only clean up the store after hours.
“Fannie finished beauty school. Got a job at a shop over on Wharton Street. Jonas, he working down at Mr. Timmy’s tailor shop. Boy can cut a suit just as fine as them ones Millard wearing up in Harlem.”
“What about John-John?”
Nettie sighed. “Running the streets with them hoodlums over on Oakford Street. You need to talk some sense in that boy. Else he’ll be dead or in jail.”
“I’ll get him right.” Ozzie pushed away his plate. Nettie kept up a steady flow of neighborhood gossip while she moved around the tiny kitchen, wiping down the stovetop and putting away the dishes.
“Big Otis been here?” Ozzie asked, hating the longing in his voice. He had heard only once from his father in the four years he had been gone. A letter asking Ozzie to wire him some money.
“I ain’t seen him for a few weeks. Last I heard, he was staying over in the Black Bottom.” Nettie cut him a slice of pie and put it in front of him. Then she grabbed a piece for herself and sat on the other side of the table.
“What about you, son? How was living in Germany? You ain’t fall in love with no white woman, did you?” She looked at him pointedly.
Ozzie hoped his face was as blank as he urged it to be when he shook his head. “Naw, Mama.”
“Good. ’Cause Melba’s son just got back from England, bringing pictures of two white-looking kids. Talking ’bout trying to get married and bring them here. She got the whole church praying for her son’s safety.”
Ozzie gulped. He would have done the same thing for Katja if he could have. The hole in his heart burned as he opened his mouth to confess it all to his mother, but she cut him off.
“You ain’t hot, dressed in that?” Nettie waved her hand over his uniform.
“No.”
She cocked her fork at him. “Bet you wanting to stay all dressed up for Rita.”
Ozzie blushed at Rita’s name.
“After all this time, you still holding a torch for her?” She chuckled.
“You seen her? How’s she doing?”
“Just fine. Got a fancy job now. Walk out of her house every morning looking like money.” She chuckled again. “She’ll be home ’round five. She come up the street like clockwork.”
Ozzie was hot in his uniform. He could feel the sweat beads gathering across his chest, but he wanted to look important when Rita laid eyes on him.
“You right, I’ma go sit outside.”
Ozzie plucked his well-worn copy of Native Son by Richard Wright from the bookshelf in the front room and opened the screen door.
As he took a seat on the top step, he heard a shrill, wailing meow from a stray cat coming from up the block.
It sounded like the cat was in heat. Ozzie could understand the cat’s pain.
He could barely keep his eyes on the book; each noise made his eyes dart up the street in search of Rita.
Then, like an apparition on the breeze, Ozzie saw Rita dressed in a white-and-blue gingham button-down dress cinched at the waist. Her hair was twisted off her neck, and she wore silver at her ears and throat.
The few pictures she had sent him over the years had not done her justice.
Man, she was fine enough to make a blind man cry.
“Ozzie?” she called, fanning herself. “That you?”
Ozzie was up and down the steps, and they moved toward each other like magnets. He nuzzled his nose in her neck, and she smelled like the same honeysuckle scent that had fragranced her letters.
“It’s good to see you, girl.” She was light in his arms as he lifted her off her feet and spun her, then he pulled her tight against his chest.
With her feet on the ground again, Rita took a step back while eyeing him. “You lookin’ damn good in that uniform. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
She palmed his chest. “Well, I wish I had known. I would have fried you up some pork chops.”
“There will be plenty of time for that.”
“Have you seen your mama?”
He nodded. “Got the sweet-potato pie in my belly to prove it.”
They stopped in front of her row house. “Why don’t you go home and get me a slice. That’ll give me time to freshen up. I sweat like a pig at work.”
Twenty minutes later, Ozzie was sitting inside Rita’s mint-green kitchen with floral wallpaper above the cabinets and behind the stove. Rita had changed into a pair of Bermuda shorts and a V-neck tee, and she padded around in her bare feet. Her toenails were painted a bright pink.
“I got some iced tea. ’Less you want something stronger.”
“Iced tea is fine,” he said, undoing the first few buttons of his uniform shirt.
Ozzie hadn’t had a drop of liquor since he’d gotten back into the States three months ago.
He had been stationed in a rural town southwest of Little Rock, Arkansas, taking part in field maneuvers with the Second Army.
The only way to stay sharp and alive during the maneuvers was with a clear head.
The house was quiet except for Rita pouring the tea over ice cubes and the wood mantel clock ticking in the front room.
“Where’s Great-aunt Reese?”
“She hasn’t been feeling well. Complaining of headaches. Doctor gave her something, but it makes her sleep too much, if you ask me.” Rita placed a glass in front of Ozzie and then sat down.
“I got you something.”
“Really?”
Ozzie reached into his pants pocket. “I was hoping to make it here in time for your graduation. It ’bout killed me to miss it.”
Rita ran her fingers through her hair. “That’s all right. Wasn’t for you, I would have never made it. Thank you for sending me that money. I will repay you every penny.”
“That’s not necessary.” Ozzie handed her a blue satin box.
Rita looked at him with big eyes and then slid the box open. Inside was a gold necklace with a square emerald pendant.
“Oh, Oz. It’s beautiful.”
“It’s your birthstone. Found it in a little shop on a stop through Lancashire, England.”