Chances Read online

  Gino was ready for action. He picked up some scissors lying on a worktop and followed.

  Opening the door, he saw Costa bent across a table, his trousers and shorts around his ankles, and Brother Philippe, fly undone, poised for another thrust at the skinny child’s ass. The bastard did not even bother to look up, so intent was he on his own pleasure. He entered the boy, plunging and tearing at his insides. And Costa screamed in uncontrollable pain.

  Gino acted unthinkingly, lunging at Brother Philippe. The scissors tore through the big man’s jacket, stabbing him in the arm, “Get off him, y’stinkin’ bastard, leave him alone!” he yelled.

  Brother Philippe, taken by surprise and on the point of coming, tried to shake him off. It was a mistake. Gino’s temper was out of control. Suddenly it was his father he was attacking. In a black haze he blamed his father for everything: His mother walking out. The beatings. The lousy foster homes. The rotten one-room apartments that had been the only homes he had ever known.

  As he yelled so the scissors stabbed. He did not stop until the dirty son-of-a-bitch slumped to the ground. Then the haze lifted and he could see clearly again, and what he saw didn’t look too good.

  Carrie

  1913-1926

  It had been a long hot summer in Philadelphia. Lureen Jones sat on the bed she shared with her six-year-old brother, Leroy, and the tears rolled down her pretty black face. She was thirteen years old and seven and a half months pregnant. No one knew, and there was no one she could turn to. She had no father, no money, and her mother, Ella, a thin wracked woman, sold her body for drugs.

  Leroy whined and Lureen lay down on the bed. Sleep did not come easily. Downstairs her mother’s “friends” arrived, and loud music drifted up the stairs. After a while came the noises. Pantings and groanings. Muffled screams and the sound of flesh being hit.

  She stuffed cotton wool into her ears and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. It took a long time, but at last sleep came.

  She was having a nightmare… felt like she was suffocating… wanted to scream… could hear herself screaming.

  Abruptly she opened her eyes. There was screaming. She jumped out of bed and smelled the smoke before she opened the bedroom door and it came piling in.

  She began to choke and forced herself out of the room, realizing that the house was on fire. The flames were already licking at the top of the stairs, and the screams coming from below were blood-curdling in their intensity.

  Funny, but she didn’t panic. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she knew exactly what to do.

  She went back in the bedroom, closed the door, opened the window, and yelled at the people milling around outside to catch Leroy. She dragged him from the bed and threw him out of the window.

  The flames blew the bedroom door off and were behind her by the time she jumped. She landed with a sharp crack on the sidewalk and lay there in a pool of blood just long enough to mutter to the ambulance man, “Save my baby…. Oh, God, please save my baby.”

  By the time she reached the hospital she was dead.

  The ambulance man reported to a young intern in emergency that she was pregnant, and the intern—fresh and enthusiastic—listened for the baby’s heartbeat. It was there, faintly audible. He cornered a doctor, who agreed to perform an emergency cesarean section on the dead girl. Baby Carrie entered the world less than an hour later.

  Her chances of survival were slight. She was tiny, hardly able to breathe, and the doctor who delivered her pronounced that she was unlikely to live for more than twenty-four hours.

  But Carrie—named by the nurses—was tough. She had survived her mother’s fall, cushioned by the water in the amniotic bag that had served as a shock absorber, and she would survive a premature entry into the world.

  Week by week she amazed everyone by hanging on. And as the weeks grew into months she gained in strength and became a normal robust baby—so healthy, in fact, that soon it was time for her to leave the loving care of the hospital. There was only one problem—nobody wanted her.

  The only relatives she possessed in the world were her grandmother, Ella, pulled from the fire in a drunken stupor, and Leroy, her six-year-old uncle.

  Ella did not take kindly to the thought of another mouth to feed. In fact, she screamed long and loud at the hospital that the baby was nothing to do with her. The nurses were shocked that the tiny baby they had nurtured and loved was to be handed over to such a woman. One nurse in particular—a kindly woman called Sonny, with three children of her own—said she would take Carrie.

  Ella agreed immediately, so Sonny took the baby home with her and from that day on brought Carrie up as her own, never bothering to tell her the tragic beginnings of her life. They were a poor family, but what they lacked in dollars they made up for in love. Carrie soon became one of the family.

  The day she was thirteen Ella swooped back into her life, and her young existence was shattered.

  Who was this stranger, this withered, scarred woman with sunken eyes and falling hair? Things had not gone well for Ella since the fire. Who wanted a whore with a scarred body and disfigured face? She made it for a while but soon drifted into petty thieving to come up with the money she needed for her drugs. Leroy was her only salvation. He was young and strong, so Ella took him out of school and made him work for her. By the time he was twelve he was the family breadwinner. Ella lounged in the one-room walk-up they rented, stoned and morose, while Leroy worked his ass off. When he reached eighteen he took off fast. Ella was left alone, a weak slothful woman in poor health, with no money.

  It was then she had thought for the first time of her granddaughter—what was the kid’s name? Carey—Carrie—yes, Carrie. If Leroy could work for her, why couldn’t Lureen’s kid? After all, she was a blood relative, wasn’t she?

  Ella had set about finding her.

  They arrived in New York at the end of the summer of 1926, the thirteen-year-old girl and her grandmother. Ella had decided there was more money to be made there, and what the hell, she wanted to be in the big city where it was all happening.

  What happened for them was a filthy room and a job for Carrie scrubbing floors in a restaurant kitchen. She looked older than her years, tall, with large breasts, sleek black hair, and limpid eyes.

  Ella, now racked by a bad cough, thought the child had good possibilities—and scrubbing floors wasn’t one of them. But she had to wait, bide her time. The girl was difficult… angry, even. You would have thought she would appreciate the fact that her own grandma had come to find her. But no, it had been a devil of a job getting her away from the family who had looked after her. Police had been summoned, but Ella soon established her rights. Carrie had to go with her. God almighty, she was the girl’s grandma, her only true blood relative, and no amount of argument in the world could change that fact.

  “How old are you?” the pudgy chef demanded.

  Carrie, on her knees scrubbing the filthy kitchen floor, glanced up nervously.

  “I bet my ass you ain’t sixteen,” the fat man sneered.

  Every day the same conversation. Twenty times she had told him she was sixteen, and he never believed her.

  “So?” He licked his wormy lips, “What we gonna do about it?”

  “Huh?” she replied listlessly.

  “What we gonna do? I mean the manager find out you too young an’ he’ll sling your pretty black ass outa here quicker than a whore suck cock.”

  Carrie concentrated on scrubbing the floor. Maybe if she ignored him he would go away.

  “Nigger, I am tawkin’ to ya.” He bent down beside her. “I don’t hafta tell no one nothin’—not if you’re nice to me, I don’t.”

  Before she could move, his fat hand was exploring under her skirt.

  She leaped up, knocking the bucket of soapy water over. “Don’t you dare touch me!”

  He backed off, his pudgy face reddening.

  The kitchen manager appeared, a thin miserable man who hated coloreds anyway. His cold e
yes surveyed the mess of spilled water. “Clear it up,” he said to Carrie, his eyes staring at the wall behind her as if she didn’t even exist. “Then get the hell out of here and don’t come back.”

  The fat chef explored the contents of his left ear. “Silly girly,” he said. “I wouldn’t have hurt ya.”

  Slowly she mopped up the spilled water, not believing what her life had become. She wanted to cry but had no tears left. When the woman who called herself her grandma had come and taken her she had cried enough to last for years. And then New York—no more school—and working her hands raw scrubbing floors. “You bin spoiled,” grandma Ella had told her. “Well, no more, my girl. You hear me? Your momma always worked. She cleaned the house an’ took care of her brother, an’ she loved every minute of it.”

  Carrie hated every minute of it. She hated her grandma, and New York, and working. She just wanted to go home to what she considered her real family in Philadelphia.

  Now she was fired from her job, and grandma Ella would be steaming, and no more would she be able to hide away the odd cent here and there that she found on the floors she scrubbed. It just wasn’t fair.

  She left the restaurant after clearing up, and stood on the sidewalk in a daze, wondering what to do. Maybe she should look for another job before grandma Ella found out about her getting fired.

  Winter was beginning to take root. It was cold, and she had no coat. Shivering, she walked along, passing the five-and-dime and sniffing hungrily at the smell of sizzling hot dogs. A sniff was all she could afford; besides, they didn’t allow negroes to eat in the store.

  In New York Carrie had learned about being black. She had heard the word nigger for the first time and taught herself to shut her ears when she was taunted about her color. In Philadelphia it was the whites who were the outsiders. She had lived in a colored neighborhood, gone to a colored school. Whites. What made them think they were better anyway?

  Men looked at her as she hurried by. Lately men were always looking at her. She kept her sweater pulled firmly around her breasts. She hated the way they jiggled. Mama Sonny had promised her a brassiere, but when she had mentioned it to Ella, her grandmother had looked her over with a sharp eye and said, “Strut your stuff, honey. Show ’em your titties. Give those ofays a hard-on an’ you’ll always have a job.”

  It wasn’t true, was it? If that big fat chef had kept his eyes to himself she would still be working.

  She passed by an Italian restaurant that looked warm and inviting. Standing outside she shivered. The wind was biting now, turning her skin to gooseflesh. She clutched at her sweater and wondered what to do. A hobo skirted by her, and the stench of stale liquor reminded her of grandma Ella. Carrie knew she must make a move. If she marched in through the front entrance and asked for work, what was the worst that could happen to her? They couldn’t eat her, only insult her. And in New York you soon got used to that.

  Gathering her courage she slid inside, suddenly wishing she hadn’t. It seemed as if she stood there for hours with every eye upon her, but it was only a matter of seconds before a huge man descended on her. She braced herself, ready to be thrown out.

  “Eh!” he asked. “You wanna table?”

  She couldn’t believe her ears. A table! Her? A colored girl in a white restaurant! Was the man mad?

  “I’m looking for work,” she mumbled, “scrubbing, washing dishes… anything.”

  “Ah!” he exclaimed. “You want a job? We go to the kitchen. I don’t know we have anything, but we talk about it. You like the hot pasta?”

  Carrie had no idea what pasta was, but anything hot sounded good, and anyway she couldn’t believe her luck at the man’s friendliness. She nodded her head and he put his arm around her and swept her through the restaurant. In the kitchen she met his wife, Luisa, and discovered that his name was Vincenzo. They fussed around her as if it didn’t matter what color she was.

  “She’s so young,” Luisa crooned, “just a baby.”

  “I’m sixteen,” Carrie lied, but from the glances they exchanged she knew they didn’t believe her. She wanted to be truthful, but grandma Ella had instilled in her a horrible fear. “You tell anyone your real age,” she threatened, “an’ they’ll throw you in a home for bad girls who skip out of school.” It was so unfair. Grandma Ella was the one who had pulled her out of school and ruined her life.

  Vincenzo and Luisa had no job for her in the restaurant; their kitchen was small, and they already had three assistants. But Vincenzo asked around and returned with the good news that Mr. Bernard Dimes, a regular patron of theirs, needed a cleaner at his house, and if she wanted the job it was hers. If she wanted it indeed!

  Vincenzo took her into the restaurant and introduced her to Mr. Dimes, who looked her over with steady brown eyes. “Can you start on Monday?” he asked.

  She nodded, too scared to speak.

  When she left the restaurant, she was in a daze, stunned by her good fortune. What should she tell grandma Ella? The truth, that she would be working in a private house and making more money? Or a lie, that she was still scrubbing kitchen floors?

  Much as it went against her nature, a lie seemed more sensible. That way she could save the extra money for herself and still hand over the same amount.

  It worked for a month. Every day Carrie left the run-down room she shared with her grandma and traveled downtown to Mr. Dimes’s imposing Park Avenue house. A housekeeper supervised her duties. Carrie only caught sight of Mr. Dimes twice, and on both occasions he smiled and inquired after her welfare.

  She felt she knew him well. She made his bed every day, changed his silk sheets, scrubbed his bathroom, polished his shoes, did his washing and ironing, and dusted his study, where she sometimes lingered over the silver photo frames filled with celebrities.

  Mr. Dimes was a theatrical producer. There was no Mrs. Dimes, only a series of well-groomed blond women who accompanied him on his social rounds. They never stayed over—Carrie was sure of that. She thought he was the most handsome and impressive man she had ever seen. He was thirty-three years old, she discovered, and very rich.

  One day the housekeeper suggested to Carrie that she might care to live in the Park Avenue house. “There’s a small room in the basement, and it would certainly make it easier for you without all that travelin’.”

  Carrie thought it was a wonderful idea. “I’d love to,” she replied.

  “Settled then,” said the housekeeper. “Bring your things and move in on Monday.”

  Carrie’s mind was racing. She would do it! How could grandma Ella ever find her? She knew nothing of the job, and she would never summon the energy to track her down.

  To live in the Park Avenue house would be a dream come true. Her own room! Five dollars a week! In no time at all she would be able to save enough money to get back to Philadelphia and her real family.

  It was Friday, so there was only the weekend to get through. She hurried home, planning her escape. Grandma Ella was waiting for the money Carrie brought home on a Friday night, and, grabbing it, she went out.

  Carrie settled on her bed. She was too tired even to drag herself down to the corner restaurant and buy a greasy piece of chicken or some grits. Loud jazz music drifted into the room from down the street somewhere. All she wanted to do was squeeze her eyes shut and fall asleep as soon as possible. The sooner she fell asleep, the sooner it would be Saturday and then Sunday and then…

  A hand woke her two hours later. A rough shoving hand that had her by the shoulder.

  She came awake slowly, rubbing her eyes, saying, “What is it, grandma? Whassamatter?”

  But it wasn’t her grandma. It was a very tall black boy with wide eyes and shaggy hair.

  “Who are you?” she shrieked.

  “Don’ get frightened now,” the boy said with a big grin. “I’m Leroy. I’m jest lookin’ for my mama.”

  “How’d you get in?” she started to say. But then she saw that he had kicked his way in. The thin moldy door kept
nobody out.

  “I guess you-all are Lureen’s kid. Someone tole me mama bin kind enough to take you in.”

  Carrie sat up in bed. She had heard about Leroy. Grandma Ella mentioned him often. “That mothafuckin’ slimy little rat, runnin’ out on his own mama. I ever see that little turd agin I’m gonna crack his head!”

  “She’s out. You’d best come back tomorrow.”

  Leroy planted himself firmly on the end of her bed. “Girl! I ain’t movin’. I am one tired person. You got any food around here?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Aw, shee-it. Just like my dear ole mama.” His wild eyes looked her over. “I suppose she got you haulin’ ass for her jest like I did.” His eyes lingered on her breasts, which were not covered much by the thin slip she had on. “You a pretty little thing. Mama got you sellin’ your tail, I bet.”

  Carrie pulled the cover up around her. “I work as a maid,” she said primly, wishing he would go away.

  “A maid, huh? For some big fat whitey, huh?”

  “In a restaurant.”

  “A restaurant. Shee-it!” He bit at a hangnail and studied her through narrowed eyes. “You wanna sell tail, I’m the daddy can arrange it for you.”

  Suddenly she was very very nervous. It was as if a warning system started going off in her head: Danger. Danger. Danger.

  She moved at the same time as he did. But he was bigger and stronger and he had her arms pinned to the bed in no time at all. “Don’t tell me ya don’ sell ass,” he sneered, and he pinned her wrists with one hand while the other roamed over her body.

  “Just you leave me alone,” she gasped.

  “Why should I?” He laughed. “I ain’t buying. I get it for free. I am your uncle—girl.”

  With one vicious tear he had the slip ripped off her. She arched her body in a vain attempt to shake him off, but he just slammed her down on the bed, pried her legs apart, and entered her.

  The pain was intense. But it wasn’t the pain that made her scream. It was the frustration, the fury, the sheer helplessness of what was happening.