The soothing notes of an alto flute filled the emotionally-charged air of the Rec Center as the storyteller played “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” bringing the tale full-circle.  This time no one sang the words, though most swayed in time to the music and many quietly hummed the melody.  Here and there sat children on the brink of tears, deeply moved by the story’s melodramatic ending and Xanthar’s unexpected transformation.

When the song ended there was a brief moment of total silence.  It was as if no one were quite ready to leave the world of the story.

Slowly at first, then in larger and larger arcs, the storyteller began to swing the flute back and forth in a graceful figure that might have been the symbol for infinity.  Once again the shiny metal caught the powerful beams from the spotlights and sent back wave upon wave of sparkling stars.  They shot out over the still sea of the audience, waking it up bit by bit, star by star, until it rose up again into its storm-tossed, turbulent state.

Then with his arms fully extended the storyteller opened his cape wide, as if inviting them all into the magic cosmos he wore wrapped about him.  He put the giant flute into its hidden fold, bowed low one time, then disappeared into the wings off-stage.  The children rose to their feet, then pushed and shoved their way out the many doors, leaving the huge gym empty except for two people.

Seated on a folding chair in the middle of the gym was a seventy-five-year-old Italian man.  By his side on the floor sat a nine-year-old Black girl, still holding onto one of his hands.

Kenya looked up at Mr. Russo and saw at once that he was disturbed, troubled in a way that she didn’t understand but recognized nonetheless.  All color had disappeared from his face.  His eyelids were closed tightly, but they kept twitching, as did a muscle along his jaw line.  She thought of the story, the part where the angry young man’s face revealed the struggle going on inside him.  Mr. Russo’s face was like that now, and while she didn’t understand what he was experiencing or why, she knew to sit quietly for awhile.

Several minutes passed in complete silence, which was a long time for Kenya to be still.  She started looking around the gym for diversion when she noticed Miss Marjorie observing them from the stage, a concerned expression on her face.  Neither of them spoke, but they exchanged a look that said more than their words could have conveyed.  Then Miss Marjorie nodded to Kenya and smiled reassuringly, as if to say, “It’ll be alright.  He just needs some time.  Take him home where he feels safe.”  So that’s what she did.

Slowly she rose to her feet, all the while holding onto his hand.  Then tenderly she tugged.  Mr. Russo’s eyes opened and took in the empty gymnasium.  He, too, rose to his feet and began to follow Kenya as she led him out of the building.  He walked slowly as if it pained him to move, scuffing the soles of his shoes against the ground.  They crossed all three ball fields without seeing anyone.  It was nearly dinnertime, and while a few families with young children lingered on the children’s playground, Seidler’s Field was becalmed.  No rhythmic pounding of basketballs echoed off the handball wall, for the courts were empty except for two young kids quietly playing ’round-the-world.  They walked by the concession stand, which was closed, though the muffled sounds of the radio could be heard from behind the shuttered serving windows.

They walked out the Garfield Avenue gate and headed down St. Mary’s Avenue in silence.  The sun, now low in the sky, glowed an eerie orange, tinting in bright shades of rose and pink the huge, billowing clouds that were building in the sky over St. Mary’s Cemetery.  Kenya thought she heard the rumble of thunder. She noticed that the clouds were darkening, growing ever more mountainous, forming giant towers that peaked into the shape of anvils.

When they reached Mr. Russo’s gate she unlatched it for him, but a strong gust of wind tore the gate from her hand and sent it smashing against the post.  The sun disappeared behind a black cloud.  Just then a bolt of lightning severed the sky, and thunder boomed around them as if a cannon had been fired right next to them.

“C’mon, Mr. Russo, we better get up on the porch fore it storms.”

It was as though he hadn’t heard her.  He was standing stiffly at his gate, staring into the cemetery, his eyes deep pools of inexpressible sorrow.  One huge splotch of a raindrop landed on the sidewalk next to them, then another, then another.  Steam rose where the raindrops splattered.  Kenya turned Mr. Russo away from the cemetery and led him to the porch where she sat him down in his rocker.  She sat down next to him and waited for the storm.  But it held off, and the sun actually shone through a thinning layer of clouds, lacquering the world with a lavender glaze.

Kenya looked at Mr. Russo.  He was rocking very slowly and rubbing his forehead with the fingers of his left hand.  His eyes were half-opened and his lips were moving, though Kenya couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“Whadya say, Mr. Russo?” she asked.

He shook his head back and forth and mumbled what Kenya thought was, “Nothin.”

Now that he had communicated something, she didn’t want him to stop, to retreat back inside himself, so she asked him, “How’d you like the story?”

“I . . . I . . . ,” he stumbled as though lost in a deep wood where light couldn’t penetrate through the thick foliage.  “I . . . I didn’t know.”

His answer, such as it was, confused Kenya.  “You didn’t know what, Mr. Russo?”

“I . . . I didn’t know . . . ,” he was fighting to find words to answer her.  His whole body trembled.  “I didn’t know . . . about . . .about war!”

“About war?  What didn’t you know about war?” Kenya didn’t understand at all, but she desperately wanted to.

Mr. Russo hesitated, as if to answer this question might be more than he could bear.  Kenya stared at his lips, which seemed to be trying to form words:  “I didn’t know . . . I didn’t know  . . . ,” his voice wavered as if ready to break with suppressed emotion, “I didn’t know . . . you had a choice!  Oh God!  I swear I didn’t know you had a choice about war! My babies, my babies, . . . .”

Mr. Russo sobbed.  His body shook and heaved, and his eyes filled to overflowing.  He cried for Jeannette and Carl and Dominic and the lives they never got to live.  He cried for his own children and for all children who have been lost, are being lost, will ever be lost to war.  He saw their terrified faces and writhing bodies, heard their screams and the wailing of their families.  He heard Carmela’s wailing, and suddenly he was back to that moment in time when he’d first been told about Jeannette.  The door that had clanged shut in that instant came flying open with a storm behind it.  He felt in one agonizing blow of unrestrained emotion the intolerable suffering of war.  And with it he felt a crippling responsibility for the deaths of his own children because, in the end, he had let them go off to war.  He covered his face with his hands to hide himself from the world.  He wove violently back and forth in the rocker, filled with more raw emotion than he’d ever experienced.  His body was wracked with convulsions of shame and sorrow and grief too long suppressed.

Kenya had never seen a grown man cry before, nor had she seen anyone sob uncontrollably.  She felt tears well up in her own eyes, and she reached out a hand to touch Mr. Russo’s arm.  Just then the lavender sunlight was blotted out of the sky as the rain came pouring down in thick, heavy sheets.  The roar the rain made on the porch roof was deafening, and they were getting wet as the rain began to blow through the open porch.

Kenya looked at Mr. Russo and, despite the rain, waited.  They sat there in the rain, the old man sobbing while the young girl wept and gently stroked his arm, the darkened sky grieving with them.

When at last his shoulders stopped heaving, Kenya said, “C’mon, Mr. Russo, we got to go inside.”  She doubted he could hear her above the din the rain made on the roof, so she took him by the arm to help him out of the rocker, then led him inside the house.

In the hallway she could see a flight of carpeted stairs leading to the second floor, a kitchen at the back of the house, and a small living room with a couch.  She led him into the living room and helped him lie down on the couch, then she glanced around the small room.  Besides the couch there was a recliner in one corner facing a small television.  Next to it was a stereo console with sliding doors in front.  One of the doors was slid back slightly, and Kenya could see record albums stacked inside the cabinet.  She read some of the names on the sleeves—Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Connie Francis, Perry Como—but she didn’t recognize any of them.  Above the stereo she noticed Carl’s framed medals and wondered about them.  Next to the medals were photographs, some very old, most black and white or even brown with age.  She thought she recognized Mr. Russo as a young man in one photo; in another he was all dressed up with a wide-eyed woman who had on a bridal veil.  There also was a photo of two boys sitting on the front steps.  Underneath it were two school pictures of girls, one of whom Kenya immediately liked because of the exuberant way she smiled her toothless grin.  There were more photos in frames on top of the stereo, including another wedding picture, this one obviously more recent and in color.  Next to it was a mesh bag filled with colorful jordan almonds; it was sitting in a gold-plated ashtray with fancy matches that had names and a date embossed on the cover.

On the wall behind the couch, hung between the two front windows, was a framed picture of Jesus.  His pale face, which was thin and almost frail, was framed by a scraggly beard and long straight hair that was perfectly parted in the middle.  His eyes were a piercing blue, and he had one hand raised in the act of blessing.  The other was folded over his brownish-grey robe, in the middle of which, right in the center of his chest, was an exposed heart with flames burning brightly all around it.  Kenya couldn’t take her eyes off the flaming heart even though it scared her and made her uneasy.  Finally, she forced herself to look elsewhere.

On the other side of the farthest window was a clock in the shape of a star.  Attached to one point of the star were palms that someone had woven into a cross.  Beyond that, there wasn’t anything else on the floral-patterned wallpaper.  On the recliner was a peach-colored afghan that Carmela had made years ago.  Kenya got it now and spread it over Mr. Russo, who lay stiffly on the couch, his eyes shut tightly, his arms along the side of his body.

Kenya sat down on a small, three-legged stool right next to the couch.  She tried to get Mr. Russo to talk again, saying things like, “You got a nice house here, Mr. Russo; you lived here long?” and when that didn’t work, “I didn’t know that about war neither.”  But no matter what she said or asked, he simply lay there unmoving, still as a corpse.

A nerve at his temple twitched repeatedly.  His forehead looked so tense that she started to rub her hand over it.  The light touch of her small, cool fingers began to ease the ridges that had formed on his brow.  As she stroked his forehead she began to hum to herself.  Then, and she was never quite sure what made her do it, she began to sing to him.  She didn’t sing the songs she knew by heart from the radio, though she could have.  She sang, instead, the kind of songs she had sung as a much younger child, songs she’d sung to her dolls and to her baby brothers before they could speak, or songs she’d sung on the sidewalk in front of her own home when she was alone and unaware of anyone or anything else in her universe.

She sang to him for a long time these simple songs without rhyme, stroking his head and swaying gently to the rhythm of the falling rain.

When she couldn’t stay any longer, the star clock telling her she already was late for dinner, she told him, “I got to go home now, Mr. Russo, but I be back right after school tomorrow.  You be okay?”  She waited a long time for an answer, but none came.  She finally gave up and reluctantly backed out of the room, saying, “I be back tomorrow, I promise.  I won’t forget.  I’m your friend.”

THE NEXT DAY, as soon as the three o’clock bell had rung, Kenya tore out the back door of the school and raced toward St. Mary’s Avenue.  When she got close to the house she hoped to see Mr. Russo standing by the gate, with the scowling look on his face, or at the very least sitting on his porch in the rocker.  When he was in neither place she began to worry.  She rushed through the gate and up the porch steps.  The front door remained closed as she had left it the evening before, despite the fact that it again had been a hot day.  She never hesitated for a moment.  Knocking lightly, she opened the door and walked in, calling out, “Mr. Russo!  Hey Mr. Russo!  It’s me, your old friend, Kenya Evans.  I come to see you like I said.

The house had a musty smell to it as though it had been closed up too long.  Kenya rushed into the living room, then froze when she saw him.  He was still on the couch in the same position, in the same clothes.  His face was ashen, a yellowish grey color that spoke of death.

Kenya thought he was dead.

For what seemed like a long time she stood there, frozen with dread and filled with regret for what she’d done or not done, she wasn’t sure which, but she did blame herself for the old man’s death.  The sound of her own breathing and the ticking of the star clock were the only sounds that she heard.

Then she noticed that vein on the side of his head pulsing and saw the slight rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.  Kenya ran to the three-legged stool by the couch, and a rush of babble came pouring out of her, so relieved was she to know that her beloved new friend was alive, that she had not killed him as she had feared:  “Hey Mr. Russo, I come back jus like I told you. It’s a hot day again, but I don think it gonna rain like yesterday.  I didn get too wet goin home las night cause the storm mostly gone by then.  My mama mad, though, cause I late for dinner.  ‘Where you been, Kenya Star Evans?’  That’s my middle name—Star—cause just after I was born my daddy seen a shootin star that he say was my spirit flyin down from heaven into my baby body.  ‘Late as usual,’ he says.  That’s what I told my mama las night.  ‘Mama, you know I always late.  And today I got me a new friend named Mr. Russo.’  She said, ‘Don you go botherin that man.’  But I told her, ‘We friends, Mama, jus like we knowed each other forever.’  Ain’t that the way it is, Mr. Russo?”

When he didn’t respond she noticed the creases in his forehead had come back, so she began to stroke them away again.  For a long time she sat quietly rubbing his head.  Then, like the day before, she began to hum and, after a while, to sing.  She sang her day to him, telling the news of her nine-year-old life in those simple songs.

Slowly the star clock ticked away the time, and Kenya went on in rhythm to its measured beat.  The sunlight, which had blazed brightly against the flowered wallpaper, began to fade from brilliant white to gold to rose.  When at last she could stay no longer, “I best not be late tonight, Mr. Russo,” she again promised to return the next afternoon.  “I won’t forget you, Mr. Russo.  You my friend.”  He hadn’t said a word the entire time, and his face still had the color of death to it, but the lines of worry and suffering had been soothed away from his brow, so Kenya believed she could leave him.  “See you tomorrow, Mr. Russo!”  He did not answer, so she quietly slipped out the door.

THAT NIGHT KENYA had feverish dreams.  They were filled with Mr. Russo and Jesus, but not the White Jesus in the picture over his couch, no, this was the Jesus in the painting her cousin Mufti from South Philadelphia had hanging on his bedroom wall.  This Jesus was brawny and very Black, with a huge Afro and a full, kinky beard that made his face round and friendly.  His dark eyes were piercing, too, but he held both arms out wide, as if embracing the world, and he smiled so broadly he seemed to be laughing with joy.  Yet this Black Jesus in her dream, just like the White Jesus in Mr. Russo’s house, had a flaming heart in the middle of his dashiki, and Kenya could not stop staring at it.  She tried and tried to move her eyes away, but the burning heart captivated her as much as it scared her.  Jesus was standing over Mr. Russo, and she was sitting on the three-legged stool singing to him.  Then Jesus bent over and picked up Mr. Russo in his arms.  When they began to ascend, Kenya screamed, “No!”

Just then she felt her mother’s hand on her forehead.  Her mother said, “Sshh, Kenya, it’s alright, you just got a fever and you’re dreamin.  You’ll be okay, baby.  But  no school for you tomorrow.”

In the morning Kenya was up and dressed even though she felt weak and light-headed.  When she came down the stairs into the kitchen, her mother said, “Kenya Evans, you march yourself right back up those stairs and into bed this minute!”

“I got to go to school, Mama,” Kenya pleaded.

“No child of mine is goin to school sick!  Now you get back to bed.”

Kenya knew better than to argue with her mother, so she went back up the stairs, undressed, and climbed into the comfort of her still warm bed.  Before she knew it, she was asleep.  She must have slept for hours, but when she finally did wake up she felt much better.  What had awakened her was the sound of the front door closing.  Kenya got up and walked over to the window.  When she looked out she saw her mother walking down Berkman Street toward the stores on South Avenue.  Her mother always went to the store in the early afternoon to buy whatever they needed for dinner.

Kenya remembered her dream then, how Jesus had been taking Mr. Russo away.  She didn’t know whether it were true or not.  “I got to know.  I got to see my friend again.”

Quickly she dressed and ran down the stairs and out the front door.  She kept running down Berkman Street, around the corner onto St. Mary’s Avenue, and all the way to the Russo house.  At the gate she paused to get her breath, but when she saw the empty rocker and the closed front door she sprinted onto the porch and into the house.

Only he was gone.  The couch was empty, and Mr. Russo was not there.

“Oh my god,” thought Kenya, “he’s dead!”  She began to cry out, her young heart breaking inside her, “Oh please don’t be dead, Mr. Russo!  We jus got to be friends and I never even said goodbye.”

Then she remembered the cemetery across the street.  “Maybe they buryin you right now!”  She rushed out of the house, down the steps, across the walk and through the gate.

When she reached the curb she was about to run across the street when suddenly she stopped.

There, on the other side of St. Mary’s Avenue, stood a seventy-five-year-old Italian man, bent and stooped with age, leaning heavily on his cane, his skin sallow and grey, but alive.

He looked at her across the Avenue.  She could see he’d been crying again, but not in the same way.  She knew this, though she couldn’t say how.  There was something different about him, too, though she didn’t know what it was.  Then their eyes met and, in one sweet moment that she would remember her whole life, embraced.

The old man nodded his head ever so slightly, then called out to her, his gravelly voice quavering with emotion:  “Kenya!  Kenya with a heart as big as a whole country in Africa . . . c’mere, I got stories I wanna tell you!”

She ran across the street and threw her arms about him, laughing and crying and talking all at once, “Mr. Russo, I thought you was dead!  But you ain’t dead at all!”

“No, Kenya, I ain’t dead, and I don wanna be, either.  Let’s go home.”  Taking her hand, he led her across the street and up onto the porch where they sat in their rockers.  Then he began to tell her the stories of his life.

I USED TO see them there every day on my way home from work at the bakery.  He’d tell her a story, then she’d tell him one.  Or she would sing to him, usually the latest pop or soul tunes, snapping her fingers and even dancing on the porch as he listened and watched enthralled.  Then it was his turn, and he would sing to her, in Italian no less.  Or sometimes they’d just rock silently as they looked out over the tomatoes, beyond the Avenue, above the Cemetery, and into the big sky overhead.

What they might have been thinking at those quiet moments I don’t really know, but I do know that I’ll never forget them sitting there on St. Mary’s Avenue.

St. Mary’s Avenue—it’s a place and a people I’ll always remember, just like in the song:

There are places I’ll remember, all my life, though some have changed;

Some forever, not for better, some have gone and some remain.

All these places have their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall.