The last night I saw him
alive, he had
coffee grounds spread across
his bald
head. He was sitting at the
wooden
kitchen table. It had a lot
of cigarette
burns in it. Mainly because
my grandma
would balance burning
cigarettes on the
edge of the table as she was
cooking.
Anyway, as he was sitting
there alone,
there was something very
formal in the
straightness of his back,
also in the
off his person onto the
brightly colored
yellow linoleum floor.
"What happened?" I asked.
He gestured with his thumb
toward
grandma's room. He didn't say
anything.
He didn't need to. He sat
there looking
at me, knocking grounds off
his shirt.
We could hear the clock
ticking in the
front room. I knew grandma
had
smacked him in the head with
a pot full
of hot coffee. He made a wry
face,
smiled at me, and then like
he was
getting even with grandma, he
crushed
the grounds under the heel of
his shoe.
We both laughed. Soon he got
up, put his
jacket on, and then, slammed
the back
door on his way out.
Later that night, two
policemen pounded
on our front door until my
mother opened
up. I remember waking to
strange voices.
The door banging closed. My
mother
crying. And then, a shriek
from my
grandmother. Now we were all
up.
Everybody grabbing onto
everybody.
Crying. Nobody knowing what
to do.
I wasn't sure why I was
crying. But I
new something awful had
happened.
We didn't own a car or a
phone.
Together we went to the
phone-booth in
front of Lucky Market &
called the
hospital. He'd been hit
crossing the street.
He died on the way to the
hospital.
We walked back across the
street.
We sat up in the kitchen &
cried until daylight.
And only later that morning
did my grandmother
clean the coffee grounds from
the floor.