Glorious (6 page)
T
he “getting to know you” part was easy. Coffee at a luncheonette accompanied by a shared slice of pie. Their forks became interlocked and they grinned sheepishly at each other over the calamity. A stroll through the park presented an opportunity for Colin to pluck a dandelion from its roots and fix it gently into her hair.
He slowly introduced her to his world, which was pinched into the tight corners of Harlem. In his world green bananas sunned on windowsills and cornmeal was turned with okra and dressed with a whole fish, whose dead eye glared accusingly up at Easter as she sunk her fork into the underside of its belly.
In his Harlem people sucked sugar straight from the cane, drank water from coconuts, mixed rice with peas, and doused everything with pepper sauce, even fried eggs. The people in his Harlem did not speak, they sang their way through conversations and disagreements, and it was there where she first heard the words
Junkanoo
and
Jouve
, enjoyed the fleshy sweetness of a mango, and became drunk from one too many cups of rum punch.
The people in that part of Harlem preferred dominoes to dice and could not for the life of them understand why football was called football when the feet had virtually no contact with the ball. Men and women in the part of Harlem that Colin claimed as his own greeted each other after six with
Good night
instead of
Good evening
and expressed their anger, disgust, and irritation by sucking their teeth.
Their music did not rely on piano or guitar, but instead put its trust in empty oil drums, frying pans, the lids of trash cans, and dried, hollowed-out bamboo reeds. They danced as if possessed. Spineless and sinful, they moved like Mama Rain.
“What kind of dancing do you call that?” Easter asked one night, already excited.
“
Wutless,
” Colin said, taking her by the hands and leading her onto the dance floor.
He schooled her body in the art of his dance, resting his large palms on her slim hips, guiding them gently into the musical surf. Over time her inhibitions took shelter in the corner of the room and Easter allowed the music to swallow her, and so she did not blush when he pulled her into him and she felt his hardness pressing against her belly.
And oh, joy to the world—he was a book lover! Who had worn and well-read copies of
War of the Worlds
,
Dracula,
and
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The two of them spent hours trolling through the stacks of books at the Aguilar Free Library on 110th and Third. Colin preferred hair-raising stories, while Easter fancied works that spoke less to the fantastic and more to the familiar—
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
and
The Scarlet Letter.
They’d take their books to Central Park, spread a blanket, and read to one another until the light vanished from the sky. Then they would go to his place—a tiny room located over a luncheonette. The air was always stale with the scents of grilled cheese and bitter coffee. It contained just two pieces of furniture—a bed and a stool. He kept his undergarments and socks draped over a hanger in the closet alongside his shirts and trousers.
When they made love the springs squealed loudly beneath the thin, hard mattress and they couldn’t help but laugh. Afterwards they would whisper their pasts into each other’s ears, and Colin cried when she told him about Rlizbeth. His tears touched her deep down in the soft, pink center of her soul.
Over time his name became a lump of sugar on her tongue that rolled off like syrup when she called out to him. When they were apart, he marched all through her mind and she found herself doing childish things like scrawling
Colin and Easter 4EVER
in the margins of her notebooks. Mattie Mae—now-Madeline almost died from laughter when she walked in on Easter posing in front of the mirror with the bed pillow stuffed beneath her dress.
“What you doing, girl?”
“Nothing,” Easter responded in a huff, quickly tossing the pillow aside. She had woken up that morning a heartbeat away from hungover—she was so drunk with love for Colin. Later that same day she did something she never thought she’d ever do: she asked Colin for his hand in marriage.
“If you say no, I might have to kill myself,” she joked, but there was a grave seriousness beneath the laughter. Colin was surprised and flustered and looked around for someone to tell him what to do or say, but it was just the two of them in his room. The sound of his beating heart filled the tiny space with the ferocity of a hundred drums.
He returned his gaze to Easter’s waiting eyes and said the only thing that had come to mind: “Yes.”
They were married on a Sunday in the parlor of number 17. Easter wore a cream dress with tiny blue silk flowers around the neckline and Colin, a gray sack coat, which he paired with black trousers because the moths had eaten holes in the gray ones.
T
he store owners spotted spring’s flouncing, flowered skirt way off in the distance and in preparation for her arrival sent their boys out with bucket and brush to scrub the pavement clean. Massive pots of lavender were set to boil and then poured out into the street to wash away the stench of stool and piss left behind by the police horses and stray canines. The fruit and vegetable vendors added a little extra shine to their apples and stacked them pyramid-style. Work rags popped and snapped against leather in a way they hadn’t all winter long, and the shoeblacks sang in that ancient, mysterious way.
On the street those little boys whose first steps were a ball tap or step-heel tap were expert hoofers by the time they reached the age of five and they could roll, cramp, and Broadway shuffle with the best of them. Their jaw-dropping finales were aided by the fatback grease they slathered onto their knees, which allowed them to glide effortlessly across the cobblestone streets, hands thrust high above their heads and fingers fanned out like plumes.
If Easter could have planned it, she wouldn’t have picked that day or that place. She had been on her feet for hours and reeked of pomade and fried hair. The day had warmed enough to leave the door open, allowing the sounds of the clanging bells of the trolleys that traveled along Lenox Avenue to seep into the shop and entwine with the women’s incessant chatter.
Madeline was out front puffing on a cigarette and lollygagging with that broad-necked piano player called Fats Waller who played Chappo’s monthly rent parties and had taken a liking to Madeline. Now he made it his business to come around a few times a week to slip a five-spot under her bra strap. Easter had asked her how many five-spots she thought he would give her before he demanded something in return. And Mattie Mae—now-Madeline had blinked stupidly at the question as if she didn’t know that men always expected something in return—even if they hadn’t given you a damn thing.
Mattie Mae—now-Madeline was playing with fire; it seemed that everyone except her knew that a season earlier, the boss’s sister, Lumpkin Banks, had dropped her drawers for the musician, who had taken his fill and never returned, but left his specter behind to keep her warm for him, because sleep or wake Lumpkin could still feel him lying on top of her.
On that day that Easter would not have picked, and in that place she would not have chosen, Lumpkin stood in the doorway glaring at Mattie Mae and Fats Waller and so was completely oblivious to the woman waiting for her attention.
Sleek and luminous, the woman had caused a ruckus for three blocks prior to her arrival and two of the men who’d been especially struck by her good looks had followed her all the way to the threshold of the shop. Inside a hush settled over the women who were at various stages of beautification. Her arrival turned their expressions curious, then smug.
Who the hell does she think she is looking like that, dressing like that, with that good hair? Is she here to mock us?
One by one they reached up and shamefully touched the rough hair at the base of their necks and urged their hairdressers to get on with the slaying of the incorrigible curls.
“You Bibb?” the sleek woman asked for the second time.
Lumpkin responded without eye contact, “No, I’m Bibb’s sister.”
The woman waited a moment, sighed, looked down at her cuticles, and then said, “Need my hair done, I hear this is the place.”
“Sink closest to the back wall.”
Dark eyes followed the woman as she sashayed past them. Someone made a slanderous comment about the silk wrapped around her neck, but no one dared laugh. Easter was busy screwing a lid onto a jar when she happened to look up. Surely she was seeing an illusion. Rain was walking toward her, moving like an apparition through the rippling drapes of steam that rose from heads of hair being hot-combed into submission.
Easter couldn’t believe her eyes, and she brought the back of her hand to her forehead to check for fever. It couldn’t be her, Easter reasoned. She would have known Rain was in town. The earth would have moved, buildings would have crumbled—
“R-Rain?”
Rain gave her a flat look.
Had her appearance changed that much? Easter quickly wiped the oil and perspiration from her face and snatched the hair cap from her head.
A spark flashed in Rain’s eyes and then she offered a slight smile. “Easter?”
Throw yourself at me, girl, wrap those arms around me, kiss me full on the lips—I don’t care who sees!
But that didn’t happen. In the time they had been apart, it seemed that Rain had turned prim. Her lips curled and she said, “Imagine running into you here in Harlem.”
Rain said this as if Harlem was the last place Easter should have been. Easter’s jaw went slack and the women gazed indifferently at one another.
“You going to wash me or what?”
The matter-of-fact air of the statement struck Easter across her face. The flashback that followed caught her off guard—Rain’s lips pressed against the lips of the girl—the memory lit a fire around her heart, and she saw herself lunging forward, catching Rain by her throat, and squeezing until her green eyes went dead.
“Easy now,” Rain grinned and raised a cautious hand. “Can’t you take a joke?”
Easter was still glaring at her.
“Girl, you look mad enough to kill!” Rain slapped her thigh and laughed.
Easter’s face crumbled—a joke?—
“Serves you right,” Rain said, “you sneaking off in the middle of the night without even a ‘Goodbye, dog.’”
I would never call you a dog, not ever.
Rain took a step forward, her voice turned petal soft. “How do you think that made me feel?”
One tear, as big as a raindrop, dribbled from the corner of Easter’s eye.
“Don’t you start boo-hooing up in here, girl!” Rain’s voice quivered with emotion. But it was already too late; both of their faces were wet when they finally embraced.
In the luncheonette the buzz of conversation competed with the sizzle of hamburgers and cheese sandwiches on the cook’s grill. But Easter heard none of that and saw less. Her senses were devoted to Rain and Rain alone.
They’d taken a seat up front near the large window. “Tell me,” Easter said, as the waitress set a cup of coffee down before her. She wanted to hear only those things that directly involved Rain. The minor characters were of no consequence to her. Rain could have simply fixed her green eyes on her and babbled
Me-me-me-me-me-me
for all eternity and Easter would have died a happy death.
So she began, her eyes swinging between Easter’s intent gaze and the ceaseless stream of people that moved up and down the sidewalk.
Easter barely heard the story about the mob of white men with bad teeth and crazed eyes, wielding bats and shotguns, which raided Slocum’s camp.
“Got the whole till.” Rain shook her head. “Broke Slocum’s arm and sliced the tip of his ear off.”
Rain took a sip of her coffee and swirled the hot liquid around in her mouth. When she reached for her cigarette, Easter saw that her hand was shaking.
“That was it for me.” Rain’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. She leaned back into the pillowed leather backing of the booth, turned her head, and blew a thin stream of smoke into the aproned hip of a passing waitress. “They smacked me around some,” she said, her eyes finding Easter’s again. “Coulda been worse I guess. Coulda been dead, ’stead of sitting here talking to you.” She fiddled with the knot in the silk scarf she wore around her neck.
Rain dead? Easter couldn’t bear the thought of it.
“I left, went to Philly. Got some people there, you know …” She trailed off, snubbed the cigarette out, and quickly lit another one. She took a puff, licked her lips, and Easter almost died.
“Pie?”
“Here,” Easter said irritably and pointed to the empty space on the table before dismissing the waitress with a sweep of her hand.
The waitress gave Easter a cruel look and walked away, grumbling to herself.
“You were saying.” Easter used her fork to scoop up a large portion of pie.
Rain smoked and talked. There was a stop back home in New Orleans, a horrible fight with her sister, and an accusation made by a neighbor that cast Rain in a very bad light with the married women in her town.
“You know I don’t care none about no niggers, Easter, you know niggers ain’t got nothing to offer but a swinging dick!”
The last part was said in chorus; Easter, familiar with the bawdy phrase, had happily chimed in and they broke down with laughter until tears clung to their eyelashes.
A stint in Houston followed. “Crackers worse there than anywhere I ever been!”
Easter laughed so hard that water ran from her nose.
“I hightailed it back to New Orleans, stayed with an uncle and his family. While I was there, my uncle told me that my son was living over in Covington.”
She said “son” with a softness Easter didn’t think Rain capable of.
“I ain’t seen that boy since he was a tot,” Rain spoke slowly. “Well you know, I told you all about that.”
Easter nodded her head.
“My uncle said it was only right that I go see the boy. Said children need to look on their parents even if they don’t know they’re parents. He said the boy will have a better footing in the world. Good luck and all.” She sighed and waved her hand. “Just some ole backwoods hoo-doo stuff.
“So me and my uncle go to Covington and can’t for the life of us find the house. And we stop some folks and they say we not too far off, just down the road from where we headed. We get there and it’s this shabby blue house with lace curtains in the window and a picket fence.
“I always wanted a house with a picket fence … Anyway, we walked up to the door and knocked and my stomach started to flutter cause I didn’t know what I was gonna say to my child—my very own child—or what I was gonna do. I felt faint, Easter, I thought I was gonna drop down right there on that porch!”
Rain reached across the table and squeezed Easter’s hands.
“The woman of the house opened the door and she wasn’t the wife I remembered. She smiled and said hello and my Uncle Cleavus—did I tell you his name was Cleavus? Well, Cleavus took off his hat and asked if Charlie Youngblood lived there and the woman said, ‘Yeah he live here, he my husband.’
“She looked us up and down and I guess we seemed harmless so she invited us on in. And then Cleavus pointed at me and said, ‘This is my niece, Beulah—’”
Easter’s jaw dropped and she coughed in surprise, “Beulah?”
Rain’s eyes narrowed and she wagged her index finger in Easter’s face. “And if you ever call me that I’ll cut you,” she hissed. “Anyway, we walked in and there was old Charlie, sitting in the parlor in his slacks and suspenders, no undershirt, mind you, and his gut was as big and as round as I don’t know what! I look on him and saw that he wasn’t even a shadow of what I’d known him to be.
“Charlie smiled when he saw my uncle and jumped up and said, ‘Cleavus, you old dog you! What’s it been, ten, twelve years? What you doing here in Covington?’
“They hugged and slapped one another on the backs and then Charlie looked over at me, and I could tell he didn’t know me from a hole in the wall. But the wife got to looking at me hard and then something clicked in her head and her expression curdled just like sour milk.
“I stepped a little closer to Charlie, smiled real sweet, and said, ‘Charlie, I’m hurt, you don’t remember me.’ He looked like he was staring down the throat of the devil and stepped back so quickly he knocked up against the china cabinet and sent all those ceramic figurines to rattling. The wife was by his side lickety-split, fussing over him and hollering
Baby this
and
Baby that
.” Rain laughed. “He said, ‘Sure I remember you, Beulah.’ He looked at his wife and lied, ‘I ain’t seen her since she was a little itty-bitty thing,’ and my uncle Cleavus nodded and went along with the lie.
“Then we all just stood there quiet and since no one seemed like they were gonna mention it, I said: ‘So how your kids doing?’ And the wife hopped straight up like something had bit her on the bottom of her feet.”
Easter rubbed her hands together.
“Charlie grunted and said that the kids were fine, just fine. He say, ‘Vaughn, my youngest boy, he helping me around the place, but he talking about following his brother, joining the army to serve his country. And me and my wife here, Lizzie, we got us a little girl name Corrine, she six years old.’”
Rain wiped at her mouth and then looked down at her hands. When she looked up again her eyes were wet and she had a dreamy look on her face. “My son’s name is Vaughn … Right then their front door swung open and he walked in. I swear, Easter, I heard trumpets. Trumpets!”
Rain smacked the table with her hand.
“It wasn’t no mistakin’ that he was mine, ya hear me? That boy look like I spit him out. He look just like ME!” She wiped at her eyes and lit another cigarette. “Do you think every mother hears trumpets when their babies are around?” Her eyes blinked wildly, but Easter could tell from her tone that she was serious.
“I dunno, Rain, maybe.”
“Well, I heard them as sure as I am a child of God, I heard trumpets! That boy of mine is so handsome. So tall and so handsome!” Her voice was filled with music. “Lord,” she breathed. “Charlie, the old snake, told my boy that we were some folk he knew from back home. Had my child calling me Miss Beulah!”
Rain clapped her hands together and swayed to music only she could hear.
“I just couldn’t stop staring at him and all I wanted to do was throw my arms around him.”
Easter used the pad of her index finger to trace figure eights on the table. “So why didn’t you?”
Rain’s response was somber. “Cause if I had, I never would have let him go.”
Rain used the napkin to dab at the corners of her eyes, and then retrieved her compact and lipstick from her purse. When she was done retouching her face she closed the compact with a sharp snap and Easter saw that only a residue of the softness remained.
“Well, ain’t no use in crying over spilled milk, right? I went on to Gary, Indiana,” Rain continued, “and after a week or so I fell ill.” She shook her head in wonder. “It was like something had jumped on me and wouldn’t turn loose. I thought I was going to check out of this life for sure.”