Nigger in the Window

African American Review, Spring, 1996 by David Wright

Darryl had absolutely no idea what he would do.

He wanted to meet his father, his real father, but that didn't even matter anymore. Darryl just wanted to be in control again.

He got off the bus in Des Moines and bought a Coke in the station. The cold, burning carbonation helped to calm him. From the station window, he looked at the bus, the silver-and-red vehicle of this nightmare. Darryl looked and was not sure if he should board again. If he stayed there in the station, then he might be able to regain control.

"What a stupid thought," Darryl said aloud to himself. Of course he was in control. He didn't have to see his father in Kansas City. He didn't even have to get off the bus. Darryl felt embarrassed inside himself and laughed out loud, and he was glad that no one could hear his thoughts. Still anxious but no longer afraid, Darryl got back on board. Making his mind an empty screen, no thoughts could project themselves onto it. He sipped his Coke and looked at the pictures in an old Sports Illustrated, and soon the bus entered Kansas City, Missouri.

Kansas City, Missouri. This was Darryl's birthplace, and it was nothing like Darryl had imagined it would be. Where reality is animated, imagination is like a still life: vivid but static. The longer Darryl looked though, the more he realized that this Kansas City wasn't shockingly different from the Kansas City of his imagination. In fact, this Kansas City, the real one, was a still-life. The tall buildings in the downtown area cast the streets in shadows, but despite the big-city look, life here seemed hardly to shift or shimmer. There was a mute trickle of traffic, and the few people out moved as if they had no real destination and were in no hurry to get there.

The bus wheeled into the Greyhound station and the driver announced that all passengers were obliged to change busses. Darryl entered the station to check the departure board. The first southbound to Tulsa would leave at 7:10. It was 4:35. That left roughly three hours, Darryl figured, which should be plenty of time to get anywhere he wanted to in the city and back again.

He walked out the front door to one of the waiting cabs.

"Where to?" the driver, a graying Black man in a Chicago White Sox cap, asked as Darryl slid onto the back seat.

"I need to go to Locust Avenue, 1013. Is it far?"

"Shit man, you practically on top of it."

"What?"

"That's it right there. 1013, that's the Hotel Thatcher."

"Oh," Darryl said. "Sorry." He climbed out and crossed the vacant lot toward the tenement that the cabby, who was now laughing with the other drivers behind him, had pointed out.

Downtown Kansas City, now that Darryl was actually in it, no longer seemed slow, but instead decadent. This section of inner-Kansas City where the bus station was located, the section of inner-cities where bus stations were always located, seemed to run in retrograde motion. A heavy heat swelled around buildings and over people. It seemed like all life would sweat to a stagnant standstill from staying in these streets too long. At least Darryl's life would. Or so it seemed to Darryl. He walked briskly through the heat, although inside himself he knew that he should be hesitant. Three hours could be an eternity to stay here in Kansas City with his father. His real father.