As he lay with his face in the dirt, his left shoulder throbbing with pain, he realized that his eyes were closed.  When he slowly, carefully opened them, it took a few seconds for his vision to clear.  As it did he found himself looking diagonally down rows of neatly hilled tomato plants.  He could feel the dampness of the rich soil being absorbed by his clothes.  The smell of the tomato vines filled his nostrils, and he wondered what he was doing sprawled in his garden.  Then he remembered the fall and the kids in his yard.

From ground level he could see through his garden and onto St. Mary’s Avenue, and what he saw astounded him.  Coming down the Avenue beyond the gang of kids fighting over his cane was a Black girl about nine years old.  Her hair that day had been combed out with a pic into an Afro, the tiny, tight curls softly framing her young face.  The way the late afternoon sun shone golden through it made her appear as if she had a halo.  But as remarkable as seeing a Black angel may have been to him at that moment, that wasn’t what astounded him.  It was the way she moved.  Her body was so full of life she could barely contain it.  She didn’t just walk down that Avenue, she danced down it.

He saw her stop, a perplexed look appearing on her face as she noticed the kids in the street.  When she spotted the cane being yanked back and forth between them, she immediately turned toward the Russo yard where she saw him lying on the ground.  Anger rose up in her and her eyes grew round and wide.  For a moment she seemed to lift up on her toes, to grow larger somehow, then she was off and running down the Avenue at tremendous speed, running directly toward that gang of kids.  When she reached them she put her hands on her hips and glared at them, her nostrils flaring and her eyes flashing.  All the kids turned to face her when she demanded, “You give me that cane!”

Every one of those kids was bigger than her and badder than her, but the righteousness with which she demanded the cane both rebuked and shocked them.  For a moment they saw themselves through her eyes, saw what they had done and knew that they had better make amends.  So they gave her the cane.  Then, retribution made, they ran off down the Avenue, shouting back obscenities at her and the old man.

With the cane safely in hand she ignored them and ran to Mr. Russo, slipping slightly on the smashed tomatoes that covered the sidewalk leading into the yard.  When she reached him she knelt down by his side and began to lift him off the ground.  So thin and fragile was he at seventy-five that this nine-year-old child was able to heft him to his feet.  As she did so she gently wiped away the dirt on the side of his face, saying all the while, “I help you.  It’s okay now.  They ain’t bad kids really, they jus don know no better.  C’mon, I help you up on the porch where you sit down and rest some.  You be okay.  Here, here’s your cane.  They wouldna give that back if they was really bad.”  All the slow way up the steps and into the rocker she kept up that soft, excited patter of hers.  Once the old man was seated, his cane back in his hand, she sat down in the rocker next to his and commenced silently rocking with a quick, even rhythm, staring at him with big eyes full of concern.

Mr. Russo sat in his rocker, his head weaving back and forth as his mind reeled.  His shoulder ached and he still felt dizzy.  He had been attacked without provocation in his own yard, and he had been helped by this young Black child who was rocking next to him as though she now had a claim on him.  He wanted it to have not happened, he wanted it all to simply to away, especially her; but he knew he owed her something, so he decided to acknowledge her quickly and then send her on her way.

As he lowered his forehead to massage it with the fingers of both hands, he stumbled for words.  “Uh . . . uh, what’s . . . what’s your name?”  His gravelly voice was even rougher than usual, harsh and grating, but the child didn’t seem to notice.

Her face lit up. It was as though he had thrown a switch.  Energy exuded from her with an intensity that made him flinch.  “My name’s Russo,” she said, smiling expectantly.

“Russo?”  He was perplexed.  “But that’s my name . . . .”

“I know, Mr. Russo.  Hey, maybe we related!”

“I don’t think so,” he said gruffly, almost indignantly.

“No, really, Mr. Russo, maybe we related.”

“I don’t think so,” he repeated even more firmly.

Then she studied the skin tones of their arms, which rested side-by-side on the rocking chairs.  Her face grew solemn as she said, “Oh, I see whatch you mean, Mr. Russo.”  Then she grinned wryly and said, “But you know you are kinda dark for a White man.”

“Whadda you gettin fresh?” Mr. Russo snapped at her.

“Naw, I jus jokin you, Mr. Russo, tryin to make you laff.”  She grinned good-naturedly at him.  “My mama say my mouf gonna introduce me to Trouble some day.”

“Your mother’s right,” he said, somewhat mollified.  They rocked in silence a few moments before he gave her a sideways glance and asked, “Your name really Russo?”

“Naw, my name Evans.  Kenya Evans.”  When she saw Mr. Russo raise an eyebrow and smirk at her first name, she added quickly, “I got me a whole country in Africa named after me.”  She said this proudly, then asked, “What’s your first name, Mr. Russo?”

“Uh . . . ,” he wasn’t sure he would tell her, that she even had any business asking.  He was thinking about all the kids at the neighborhood school where he had worked for thirty-eight years. Not once in all that time had any of them dared ask my first name. Why there had been hundreds of them, no, thousands of them—

“Whadya forget?”

At first he suspected she was taunting him, but when he looked at her he saw that she was serious.

“Of course I didn’t forget.  It’s Gaetano.”

“Gaetano?”  She raised an eyebrow and smirked in exactly the same way he had only moments before.  Then she said, “What kinda name is that?  Ain’t American.”

“Whadda you mean—it’s a beautiful name—it’s an Italian name.”  He suddenly felt very defensive, which made him mad.  “You gettin fresh again?”

“Naw, I jus foolin with ya, Mr. Russo.”

Again they fell into silent rocking.  He thought she might leave now, but when he glanced at her it was obvious that she was content.  He wasn’t, so he asked her, “You live here on St. Mary’s Avenue?”

“I live round the corner on Berkman Street right next to the Hamiltons.”

“Who you live with, your grandmother?”

“My grandmother?”  Now it was Kenya’s turn to be perplexed.  “Naw, my grandma live in South Carolina.”

“Well who you live with then?”  Mr. Russo thought she might be in foster care if she didn’t live with her grandmother.  He had seen a report on television about the breakdown of Black families in America and had assumed it was true.

“I live with my mother and father and two baby brothers.  Who else I gonna live with?”  Kenya was exasperated with this line of questioning.  She suspected she were being insulted, but she didn’t understand how.

“Your mother work?”

“My mama don’t work.  She say her work is takin care of her babies and that she ain’t gettin no outside job till her inside one done finished and all through.”

“Oh,” Mr. Russo said smugly, “so you on welfare then.”

“Welfare!” she spat out the word.  “My daddy say, ‘Welfare is the opiate of the masses.’”

“Your father says that?”  Mr. Russo was impressed.

“Yeah,” Kenya said as she nodded her head.

“What’s he do for work?”

“He work down at the school.”

“Oh, he’s a teacher?”

“No, he’s a man of the cloth.”

“A man of the cloth?  You mean he’s a minister?”

“No, he’s a janitor!”  Kenya laughed out loud at her joke.

Mr. Russo couldn’t help smiling a little himself.  He appreciated the clever way she had caught him.  “I usta work down at that school.”

“I know,” she said, turning very serious.  “My daddy say you the best janitor the school ever had.”

“Your father sounds like an intelligent man,“ he said, very pleased.

“He is, he is,” she said, also very pleased.

They rocked once more in silence, this time both content.

Then Kenya turned to him and, lightly placing her hand on his arm, said, “Mr. Russo, tell me a story.”

“I don know any stories.”

“Course you know stories.  Everybody know stories.  Tell me a story?”

“I ain’t everybody and I don’t know any stories, I’m tellin you.”  He was starting to get annoyed again when he realized that he actually did know a story.  When he had lived with Christine his two grandsons had repeated a story so often that he’d forbidden them to tell it in his presence.  He thought the story was senseless and annoying, but he remembered how they had laughed every time they’d told it.  He now thought to himself, They’re kids, she’s a kid, they laughed, she’ll laugh . . . then I’ll send her home.

So when she said again, “Tell me a story,” he said, “Okay.”

With both hands he pushed back the hair on top of his head.  When he did this he flinched a bit, then realized that the pain in his shoulder was subsiding.  He cleared his throat and settled himself before leaning forward in the rocker.  He took a deep breath and said, his voice stentorian:

“It was a dark and stormy night.  And the captain shouted, ‘Jack!  Tell us a story!’  And this is the story that Jack told:

“It was a dark and stormy night.  And the captain shouted, ‘Jack!  Tell us a story!’  And this is the story that Jack told:

“It was a dark and stormy—”

He had been expecting her to laugh, and when she hadn’t by the start of the third repetition, he stopped abruptly and turned to face her.  Glaring, he demanded, “Why ain’t you laughin?”

Kenya was staring directly at him.  Her chin rested on the palm of her left hand, her knuckles against her lips, while her elbow was propped on the arm of the rocker.  She had a disgruntled and critical look on her face.  “That’s the dumbest story I ever heard,” she told him.

“Oh yeah?”  Mr. Russo was insulted despite the fact that he agreed with her.  “Well lemme hear you tell a better one.”

“Okay!”  She accepted the challenge eagerly as though she’d been waiting for him to make it.  She jumped out of the rocker before he could change his mind.  Kenya pushed the rocker out of the way and stood squarely before him.  He could tell she was enjoying herself immensely.  Mimicking him again, she used both hands to push back the hair on top of her head, then she cleared her throat noisily before taking a deep breath and speaking as loudly as he had, “Do you know what gravity is?”

“Of course I know what gravity is.  Whadda you think I’m stupid?  And by the way, you don’t have to shout.  I’m old, not deaf.”

“What is it then?”

“Well . . . it’s, uh . . . it’s the power that holds everything down to the ground.”

“Right.  Now do you know where it comes from?”

“Whadda you mean, where it comes from?”

“How it’s made.”

“Of course I know how gravity’s made.”  Actually he had no idea how gravity is made, but he wasn’t going to admit this to a nine-year-old.

“How?” she demanded, a sly look on her face.

“Well, uh, . . . it’s your story.  You tell it!”  From the way he folded his arms over his chest she could tell he’d say no more.

“Okay,” she said.  “This here’s the story called ‘Gravity’:  One day I was takin a walk and I come up against this here huge old mountain.”  She used both hands to make an inverted V, her symbol for a mountain.  At the same time she gazed intently at him to make sure that he saw what she was seeing, using her face—her eyes, her mouth, the angle of her head—to augment the subtle intonations of her voice.  Thus the single word “huge” was a look, a sound, and a precise posture all at the same time.  It took on a complete context that Mr. Russo found captivating.  He secretly marveled at her ability to communicate so much, so well.

“At the foot of the mountain was a sign that said it was called Mt. Kenya.  I thought, Now that’s a surprise cause I didn know I had a mountain named after me, too. But if it’s my mountain, I can climb it.  An that’s jus what I did.

“Took me seben days.”  She held up seven fingers and pointed seven times with her chin as she rhythmically counted “one, two, three, . . . ,” transforming this numerical detail into a ritualistic chant that successfully conveyed her exhaustion by the seventh day.  “When I got to the top of Mt. Kenya I stood there lookin out over the whole world.”

The way she said this last phrase conjured images in Mr. Russo’s mind of the entire blue-green planet, perhaps as it might have been on its very first day, still swirling in the primordial mists. He settled back into his rocker, realizing that he was enjoying this moment.  He also recognized that her way of telling it was as important as the story itself, maybe even more important.

“I could see everywhere, Mr. Russo!  Why I could even see all the way to South Philly where my cousins live. I waved to them but they didn wave back cause they was inside their apartment watchin TV.

“I was just about to come back down offa my mountain when suddenly I hear a low, rumblin voice, sound somethin jus like yours, Mr. Russo,  callin, ‘Kenya!  Kenya!’

“I froze stiff as a naked dummy in Tepper’s Department Store window in downtown Plainfield, Mr. Russo!

“‘Who’s that callin my name?’ I call back.  But they don answer, jus keep rumblin over ’n over, ‘Kenya!  Kenya!’  It sounds to me like it’s comin from all these boulders at the very peak of my mountain.  I pretends to head back down the trail but doubles back slick as could be like Bill Cosby on the  I Spy reruns.  I come out on top of those rocks from the back side.

“When I look round the top boulder I see there’s a little mouf to a cave I didn notice before.  So I stay there awhile till I hear it again — ‘Kenya!’ — and it’s comin out the mouf of the cave.  ‘Humph!’ I say to the sky, ‘I got to investigate.’  So I walk over to the mouf and peek inside, spectin to see bats’ eyes and cobwebs.

“Surprise, Mr. Russo!  Inside the cave I finds me a flight of gold stairs headin straight down the inside of my mountain.  When I hear them callin my name again from jus beyond where I can see, I know I sposed to follow.

“My grandma told me bout Jacob’s Ladder goin up to Heaven, but this here stairway headin the other way, so I hopin it ain’t Kenya’s Ladder goin you know where!

“First step I touch, it light up with bright yellow light so I could see farther down the way.  I curious to know if the next step do the same.  It does, and the next one, too.  Soon I can’t even see the cave mouf no more.  Next thing I know I’m runnin down them golden steps cause it too late to turn back and besides I always got to know who it is callin my name in the dark.

“For seben days I run down them steps—one, two , three . . . seben!  Then I know from the markings on the cave walls that I just at where everybody else in the world is, cept I inside my mountain and they ain’t.  I stop then and take a breath.  The cave walls are jus like that greazy tile inside the Lincoln Tunnel, only it don smell so bad in my mountain as all that.  Smell good.  Smell just the way a broken rock does—kinda flinty and clean.

“When I done restin I start runnin again, this time for six more days. That’s right—thirteen altogether cause it’s a lucky number.  Everything reversed inside Mt. Kenya: what unlucky outside is pure magic inside!  So at the end of the thirteenth day I see the las step in front of me.

“I stop, then jump up offa that las step and land on bof feets at the same time.  ‘Phew,’ I says, ‘that was some run!’

“Then I hears it, Mr. Russo!

“I hear the sounds of drums!

“Boom, boom-boom, boom, boom-boom . . . boom-boom-boom, boom!

“I open my eyes wide and look down this skinny corridor that gots a rainbow ceiling.

“At the end of the rainbow is this huge cavern all made outta blue rock. Inside the cavern I can see these huge drums, Mr. Russo, the biggest, baddest Mama drums you ever seen!”

“And they playin themselves, Mr. Russo!

“I so scared my feets start walkin backwards while the rest of me standin still.  Then I think maybe them drums been callin my name, but I ain’t sure.  So I slides down the corridor and sneak up behind one of them Mama drums.  Crouchin down on my knees, I peek around the drum to see what I can see.

“Oh, what I saw!

“There’s the biggest bonfire in the whole world jus blazin away in the center of that cavern.  And dancin round that huge fire is all these hairy monsters, Mr. Russo!  The hair look like long strands of thick yellow straw, and it go from the tops of their heads all the way down to their feets. They got three toes on each feet and each toe got a toenail so long it curl back up onto itself.

“Oh they got feets, alright, but they ain’t got any arms and they ain’t got no faces neither!

“Instead of a face they got these big snozzolas, look like the horn of a trombone or a plunger for a toilet. You know what I mean, Mr. Russo, a plunger for a toilet?”  As Kenya asked this she made a plunging motion with her arms.  The old man nodded his head to let her know he understood.  As he did so he smiled ever so slightly.  He pictured the hairy, faceless creatures with plungers instead of noses, and the image made him chuckle to himself.  When Kenya saw this, she continued with even greater animation.

“All them monsters start dancin round the fire.  Goin faster and faster, wilder and wilder.  The drums gettin louder, too, and the monsters gettin so crazy till one of them jumps right up offa the ground, jumps way up towards the rock ceilin.  Soon as the first one done it, another seen it and try jumpin higher. Then a third one try outdoin the second, till pretty soon all them reachin up and stretchin out their snozzolas, tryin to grab onto that ceilin.

“Now they all goin so crazy I know they gonna grab that ceilin, and next moment they do!  They all throw back them hairy heads and go—”

Kenya threw back her own head in a frenzy.  She opened her mouth and, like someone snoring desperately, made a loud, sucking sound through her nose.

“—until their plunger noses stick to the ceilin and they suckin down with all their mights on that blue rock.

“And that’s gravity, Mr. Russo!”

She looked eagerly, expectantly at him to see if he’d gotten it.  Her face was flushed with the wild, exuberant exertion of the climax of her story. Her heart was pounding, pounding with the excitement of the performance and with the hope that she’d gotten through the brittle shell of her new, cantankerous friend.

That old man stared at her for one long, silent moment. Then he laughed out loud.  He actually guffawed, his deep man-voice booming off that porch and onto the Avenue. He couldn’t help himself:  the cleverness of her tale mixed with its wildly exaggerated telling had tickled him in a way he hadn’t experienced in more years than he could remember.  So his heart had opened and the stifled laughter of years came pouring out.

Kenya laughed, too, the laughter of relief and the laughter of joy.  Her high, bubbling laughter wove in and out of his, amplifying it, making it richer and longer lasting, carrying it beyond its solitary source. The two of them faced each other on the porch and roared until their eyes glistened.

When finally they stopped for a moment to get their breaths, Mr. Russo asked, “Where’d you hear that story?”

Kenya beamed, “I made it up!”

“You made up that story?” He said it in a way that let her know how impressed he was.  “Why’d you make up that story?”

“Cause the storyteller say it good to make up stories.  Good to make them and tell them.”    Suddenly she froze as if remembering something important.  “Oh, Mr. Russo!  What time is it?”

The abrupt change confused him.  “Whadda you mean, what time is it?”

“You know what I mean:  What-time-is-it?”  She said each word deliberately and paused slightly before going on to the next word.

He turned to look at the watch on his wrist and said, “It’s ten minutes to four.  So what?”

“Ten of four!  Come on, Mr. Russo.  We gotta hurry!”  She grabbed at his hands to pull him out of his rocker.

“Wait a minute, stop, stop.  Whadda ya doin?  Where you tryin to get me to go?”

“No time to explain, Mr. Russo. Storyteller gonna tell stories at four o’clock down at Seidler’s Field. That’s where I wanted to go after school but then I saw you layin down the ground.”  Then she paused for a second, considering.  “You feeling okay now?”

Actually he was feeling much better.  While he knew his shoulder would be stiff and sore for a long time, nothing was broken and the throbbing pain had passed. The dizziness also had disappeared.  In fact he felt unexpectedly good.  Yet the last thing Mr. Russo wanted to do was to be seen walking down St. Mary’s Avenue with a nine-year-old Black girl.

“I say, you feelin okay?”

He didn’t want to reply, and when she noticed this Kenya stared directly at him, a confused and hurt look on her face.  She was so close to him that he found himself looking directly into her eyes.  During her story those eyes had been everywhere, looming large and expressive.  Now he noticed how big and brown they were, how they welcomed him in.  It was as if he could see all the way to her soul, which was filled with joy and a little bit of sorrow, too.  As he saw this about her, he remembered how she had helped him and even made him laugh.  Was it then that he first thought of Jeannette, or had he been seeing her all along?  Mr. Russo’s eyes wandered off the porch and to the graveyard across the street.  For a moment he thought he could hear singing in a soft breeze that wafted over him.

The next thing he knew he was walking down St. Mary’s Avenue hand-in-hand with Kenya.  He was walking just as fast as he could, which was quite slow, and she was walking just as slowly as she could, which was quite fast.  Mr. Russo didn’t fully understand why he was taking this walk, yet holding the child’s warm hand made him feel connected to a force he recognized as irresistible as gravity.  So he walked as quickly as he could, and together they made their way down the Avenue, their shadows shimmering before them in the brilliant sunlight of the dying day.