Read Online What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day by Pearl Cleage - Free Book Online Page A

pulled up into the yard and stopped. A tall, slender young man who looked to be about sixteen years old swung the door open slowly, unfolded his lanky frame a section at a time, and looked around. In spite of, or in defiance of, the warm weather, he was wearing a hooded black sweatshirt, amazingly low-slung blue jeans, spotless white designer sports shoes, unlaced, a Chicago Bulls cap, and a bored expression. He looked as out of place in Joyce’s yard as a Siberian tiger.
    He sauntered around the car and opened the door for the woman waiting patiently inside. The woman didn’t move until he leaned down and extended his hand in a way that looked strange and old-fashioned, given the boy’s urban-warrior outfit. She grasped his hand firmly and raised herself regally out of the car like Coretta Scott King arriving for the martyr’s annual birthday celebration. Although I’ll never forget that car, I had never seen either one of its occupants before in my life.
    The woman looked to be in her late fifties and was a lot more dressed up than people usually get around here in the middle of the week. She was wearing a pale blue polyester pantsuit and white sandals with stockings. Her hair, which was pressed and hot-curled within an inch of its life, was elaborately styled and piled like Mahalia Jackson’s when she sang her solo at the end of
Imitation of Life.
Hardly anybody asks for that kind of hard press anymore. Sister seems to have missed the moment when we decided it was okay for the hair to
move.
    A thin white scarf was loosely tied under her chin to protect this well-sprayed helmet of hair from even the possibility of a breeze. She smoothed the pants suit over her well-girdled hips and turned to the boy, who was leaning against the car with his hands in his pockets, dragging the jeans down even further. I could see and hear them clearly through the screen door, but neither one had noticed me.
    “I’ll just be a few minutes,” the woman said, starting toward the back steps. Joyce’s car was sitting in the yard waiting for Eddie to finish repairing its fuel pump, so they must have assumed she was home.
    “How about I go and come back for you?” the boy said without looking in her direction.
    She stopped, turned toward him, held out her hand. He didn’t move.
    “Tyrone Harris Anderson, what did you promise your grandfather?”
    The boy mumbled something.
    “I can’t hear you, son,” she said.
    “To cooperate,” he said, louder, sounding like a stubborn first grader.
    “That’s right. So hand me the keys.”
    He slouched over and dropped them in her hand.
    “Thank you,” she said. “And don’t sit there in that hot car either. Go walk down to the lake and enjoy the sunshine.”
    He looked at her like she had completely lost her mind.
    “Go on now!” Her voice carried the sharp edge of someone who was used to having her way.
    “All right, all right,” he said, pulling his cap down over his eyes and squeezing the bill until the break satisfied him. “Don’t take all day,” he muttered, strolling down to the dock, my favorite peaceful place, although I would be willing to bet the tranquil beauty of the scene was lost on him. His misery was self-contained, able to bloom anywhere.
    She didn’t see me until she reached up to knock and there I was. She jumped back about a foot and gasped.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, opening the screen. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Joyce’s sister, Ava.”
    “Oh,” she said, smiling with everything but her eyes. “I didn’t even know Joyce had a sister.”
    “I’m visiting from Atlanta for the summer,” I said.
    “How lovely. Family is so important, especially in these terrible times.” She looked at me, still with that fishy, too bright smile, and then clapped her palm to her forehead the way people do on television when they’ve forgotten something. “Where are my manners?”
    She held out her hand with the complete confidence of an incumbent