“Patrick says he doesn’t like to call her, because it upsets her.”
“It do kind of upset her when he talk to her. I’m glad she work on the weekends, ’cause then she don’t have to go up there and see him. One weekend she didn’t have to work, we went up together. She cry a lot. She even go to crying when she talk to him on the phone.” He tapped his cigarette again. “Truth is, I think she feel bad because she told him to go and look for his sister. I think she hate she had said that. It do weigh on her.”
Meanwhile, Jamaal had wandered to the front door, ready to step out. “Stop it, J-ball!” James yelled. Jamaal turned to look at us, returned. His grandfather opened his arms to the boy, bounced him up on his lap.
“Me,” he continued, “I was going up there every weekend the first year, you know, when he first was locked up. Then he told me I didn’t need to. Matter of fact, I don’t think he wanted me to go up there too much.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he don’t want me to see him locked up. He call, I send him things when he need it. Soap, stuff like that. You know.”
Now he released Jamaal from his lap.
“I wasn’t good to be around, you know, when he was growing up. I don’t know what my son saw—’cause, you know, I kept him with me a lot. We went to a lot of places together. I don’t know if he really remember. He was like three or four years old. He might have saw me doing some stuff that I don’t want him to see. Kids remember things you think they don’t.”
“Like what?” I asked.
Now his father looked me squarely in the eye, as if he suspected I was playing stupid. But in truth, I had no idea what he was talking about.
“I don’t want to get into that,” he said decisively. He bent his head down to light the next cigarette, then stopped. “My younger days, I spent time locked up. Drugs. I wasn’t around for some years. When I went in, I went as a certain type of person. You know. I didn’t care. I didn’t care if I went to jail or not. I didn’t want to go, but it wasn’t like it was a big deal for me.
“What went down…” He made a sound. “I wish I could take his place. I know this all new to him. It’s hard for people that feel for others the way he feel to be locked up like that, away from family. Me, I’m not a very emotional man. I think I lost my emotions a long time ago.”
Now James held his unlit cigarette, the lighter still burning. He was thinking. “I just want my son to be…to not think of me as wrong as I was. In a lot of ways I wish I could have been better. I don’t know. If I went to school, I could’ve gotten a job, even with my handicap. I don’t know.” Now he inhaled. “Like I said, he was a good kid. A lot better than me.” He repeated, “A lot better than me.”
—
I STARTED TO go to the jail everyday.
“Deplorable.”
“Is it wicked?”
“Yep. Example?”
“Jail be a deplorable place.”
“Perfect.” I nodded briskly. “Inquisitive.”
“Lucy,” he said immediately. “Because she be curious, looking inside the closet.”
“One more.”
“Cherish. How she be looking at everything, touching everything, like she want to know what it be.”
“Sarcastic.”
“If Ms. Kuo ask me how was my day yesterday, and I say, Great.” His tone suddenly became exaggerated, imitating bitterness.
“Awesome,” I replied. “And we’re done. Let’s see how you did. How do you think you did?”
“Probably missed a couple,” he said casually.
“Better than that,” I said. “That’s an A in Ms. Kuo’s personalized school.”
Then we opened up The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and started to read.
—
IN THE SNOWY place Lucy had come upon, she met the Faun. The Faun was half-man, half-goat. The Faun was so surprised to see a little girl that he dropped the parcels he was carrying.
“?‘Delighted, delighted,’ it went on. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tumnus.’
“?‘I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Tumnus,’ said Lucy.”
At this Patrick laughed. “He a goat but she calling him Mister.” I laughed, too.
It was cold outside and Mr. Tumnus invited Lucy to tea. He told her she was in Narnia. “Lucy thought she had never been in a nicer place,” Patrick read. His voice adopted a strange, singsong tone, exaggerating certain words, as if he was imitating someone he had once heard reading aloud—perhaps me.
Patrick continued, reading about how they ate “buttered toast, and then toast with honey, and then a sugar-topped cake.”
He stopped at cake and I gave him a look; we were both hungry.
Then the Faun’s brown eyes filled with tears. They trickled down his cheeks and soon were dribbling off the end of his nose.
“?‘Mr. Tumnus! Mr. Tumnus!’ said Lucy in great distress. ‘Don’t! Don’t! What is the matter? Aren’t you well? Dear Mr. Tumnus, do tell me what is wrong.’ But the Faun continued sobbing as if its heart would break. And even when Lucy went over and put her arms round him and lent him her handkerchief, he did not stop—”
“Sobbing mean crying, don’t it?” Patrick interrupted. I said that was exactly right.
Patrick leaned his head toward the page. He was studying the illustration of the Faun, who laid his head in his hands and slumped back in his chair, with his tail in a loop on the floor.
“That him crying, ain’t it?” Patrick said. “That the Faun.”
I said it was.
Then Patrick resumed reading.
The Faun confessed to Lucy: He was a kidnapper for the White Witch. The Witch, he explained, was the reason it was always winter in Narnia.
“?‘Always winter and never Christmas,’?” Patrick read, his tone as forlorn as that of a self-loathing faun.
The Witch had threatened the Faun. If he didn’t obey her, she would cut off his tail, saw off his horns, and pluck out his beard.
Patrick read, “?‘And if she is extra and specially angry she’ll turn me into stone and I shall be only a statue of a Faun in her horrible house.’?”
He gave his head a baleful shake.
“It’s awful, isn’t it?” I said. We grimaced in unison. “What do you think he’ll do with Lucy?”
“I think…” His fingers touched his chin. “I think he be letting her go.”
“Why?”
“Because he a good man. Or goat. Or whatever he is. And he crying. He want to do the right thing.”
Patrick read on and saw that the Faun did indeed let Lucy go. “?‘Then be off home as quick as you can,’ said the Faun, ‘and—c-can you ever forgive me for what I meant to do?’
“?‘Why, of course I can,’ said Lucy, shaking him heartily by the hand.”
Patrick, now deeply absorbed, pressed on.
The Faun asked Lucy whether he could keep the handkerchief that she had lent him. She told him yes. And there the chapter ended.
“Your prediction came true,” I said.
He glowed, then looked away.
“Why do you think the Faun wanted the handkerchief?”
“Because he know she special,” he said. “So he want to remember her.” His fingers tapped his chin in thought. “And I think…I think he know he did the right thing, letting her go like that. So the handkerchief”—he said the word slowly, so as to not stumble over it—“it be like a good memory.”