The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey - By Walter Mosley Page 0,21
top of his bald head.
“Shhh,” she whispered.
He realized then that he was crying.
“It’s all right, baby,” Robyn said. “I can clean up all’a this mess in a week or two. I could have your whole house set up for you. Don’t you want your house clean and neat? Don’t you want a nice bathroom and a bed to sleep in?”
“No.”
Robyn moved back a few inches, still holding on with her face there close to his.
“Why not?”
“My things,” he whined.
“But most of this stuff is just old junk an’ trash.”
Ptolemy lifted up his hands, resting them on the girl’s chest beseechingly.
“In between the garbage and the trash is all the things I have. Keys and lockets, pictures and money . . . treasure. One time Reggie tried to clean up but he just took a armful’a stuff an’ th’owed in the thrash. There coulda been anything in the middle’a that.”
“I won’t do that,” Robyn said with the solemnity of a much older woman. “We will go through every newspaper and rag, lookin’ for all your li’l trinkets. Okay? I won’t th’ow away nuthin’ before we go through it.”
Ptolemy realized where his hands were and pulled them back to his own chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Grey. I know you don’t mean no harm.”
“Really?”
“Of course I do,” she said. “You a sweet old man. There used to be a man like you lived next do’ to me and my mama before my mama died. He used to give me peaches in the season. He said that I was a smart little girl and I needed peaches to make me smarter. It didn’t mean nuthin’ but it was nice.
“You still got that money Hilly got you, Mr. Grey?”
He nodded and smiled, feeling gratitude for no reason he could have explained.
“Well then, get your wallet and show me where the sto’ is. We gonna get you some soap and steel wool and a mop an’ broom. We gonna get a big box of trash bags an’ shake out ev’ry newspaper, rag, and old shirt until we done emptied out the whole bathroom.”
On the walk to the market Ptolemy swiveled his head from side to side again and again.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Grey?” Robyn asked him. “You lookin’ for somebody?”
“Melinda Hogarth.”
“Who’s that? Your girlfriend?”
“She the one gonna rob me if she sees me.”
“Rob you? You mean you think she gonna try an’ take yo’ money?”
Ptolemy nodded, feeling disgraced by what felt like a lifetime of weakness and fear.
“Don’t you worry, Mr. Grey,” Robyn said. “I got me a six-inch knife in my purse and I know to use it. My mama told me that I always had to have a li’l sumpin’ extra ’cause I’m short and a girl. You know I stick a mothahfuckah in a minute they try and mess with either one’a us.”
It was her grimness that gave Ptolemy confidence. He glanced up at the sky, thinking, This is everybody’s ceiling. This blue roof belongs to me just as much as anyone else. They were words he’d heard along the way somewhere. He remembered them, and they held him like an anchor, like that young girl, that Robyn, held his hand.
They didn’t see Melinda Hogarth that day. Robyn spent seventy-three dollars of Ptolemy’s retirement check on cleaning supplies. They stopped by a McDonald’s hamburger place and had french fries and chicken salads. After two cups of black coffee Ptolemy spent half an hour in the restaurant’s men’s room.
All afternoon Robyn cleared out, scrubbed, and rinsed off Ptolemy’s bathroom. She brought out every rag, box, towel, and doodad, showing it to her guardian’s great-uncle before throwing it almost all away in big black garbage bags. There were stains on her little black dress, and her hair was getting wild. But she laughed a lot and seemed to enjoy reporting to Ptolemy.
“Do you want this old toothbrush, sir?” she asked with a knowing smile.
He had to study everything she brought to him. At first he didn’t know what it was he was looking at, and then, when he identified the object, he’d get lost trying to remember where it came from.
“That bresh was Sensie’s, I’m pretty sure,” he said. “She got it at the Woolworth’s . . . No. Maybe not. I don’t know where she got it at.”
“But do you want to keep it?” Robyn asked again.
“I guess not. No. You can th’ow it away . . . I guess.”
Hours and hours Robyn cleaned, taking breaks now and then to discuss bits of