Chocolate Sangria

CHAPTER 1 BROOKLYN, NEW YORK JULY 1983 That thar boy's got half a bag of sugar in his tank," Herbie Lucas declared upon setting eyes on Socrates for the very first time. He and his sister, Hattie, watched from their fifth-floor window as their neighbors Jeo and Dorothea Morrison stepped out of a camel-colored Brougham with their five-year-old grandson and his small cardboard suitcase in tow. "Herbie, hush!" Hattie glanced over her shoulder and snapped her fingers twice. "You see Miss Nita setting over there pretending to fuss with that doll baby's hair when she really listening at us. You know she repeat everything she hear! Besides"she tucked a strand of graying hair behind her ear, then turned back to the window and nodded toward the slender boy who shuffled down the pathway nestled between his grandparents"the poor chile just saw his mama slit his daddy from neckbone to navel, then they make him ride all the way from Alabama to Brooklyn with that crazy-ass Jeo when everybody knows he's blind in one eye and can't see out the othern." She grunted. "And all you can talk about is how sweet he look." "Ah-yeah." Herbie coughed and touched the corners of a starched white handkerchief to his lips. "I reckon old J.J. did go out and get hisself gutted like a fish, and I'm glad Jeo and that old struggle buggy didn't tear up the road none too bad, but that thar boy is sweet. Mark my words." Hattie peered closely as the trio approached the entrance to the building. She studied Scooter's willowy walk and the way his lean body seemed to move naturally against the soft summer wind. "Ain't sweet," she determined. "He small for his age is all. Look a bit like Diana Ross to me. With all that pretty peanut-brittle skin and them big ol' eyes, I thank he kinda cute. Plus, Nita got her somebody to play with now. Be good for her to be around another chile." Herbie coughed again, this time hacking up a thick wad of phlegm. Leaning out the open window he pressed his index finger to the opening in his throat and hock-spit down into the littered grass below. He rasped, "Don't know 'bout that. They say the boy mute, too. Jeo say the po-lice found him sucking his fanger and settin' in four days' wurf of his own mess. I bet that's why he cain't talk. Stuff like that gotta do somethin' to a boy. Make him turn 'round inside hisself and ball up in his own shit." Hattie stepped away from the window and loosened the tails of her apron. She draped it over the back of a kitchen chair before shaking her head. "You can set there and stare all you want, but I'ma go meet them at the elevator. After all that driving, they gots to be wore out." She lifted a tin pan from a cooling rack and covered it with a glimmering sheet of foil. Despite herself, she moved back to the window for another peek. "C'mon, Nita." She looked down at the pigtailed little girl who had squeezed herself between the two adults and now stood watching the new arrival in silence. "Let's carry one of these-here pecan pies to Sister Dot and help her put on some tea." When the elevator opened its doors, Hattie stumbled against Juanita's small shoulder and nearly cried out. Dorothea Morrison had gone down home a spry woman of sixty who made regular visits to the salon to maintain her ebony hive of spiral-curled hair. The woman who stepped off the elevator clutching the hand of a thin boy with miles of eyelashes and a blank stare was stooped in the back and had a hePrice-Thompson, Tracy is the author of 'Chocolate Sangria' with ISBN 9780375506512 and ISBN 0375506519.