Strivers Row (43 page)

That had been the last, good day. The last day they had together, before Jonah had had to take the train back through the wet new greenery and the rushing spring streams of upstate. Making his way back down to the City for Holy Week—when he planned to first break it to his parents that he would be going to Europe that summer. Rehearsing how he would tell them so, the whole trip down, without revealing
everything.

He knew it would not be easy. He had never been very good at withholding anything from his father, and he thought that the simplest plan would be the best—just tell them, straight out, that his roommate had invited him to go with his family to Europe.
But maybe he should leave out the family.
That was bound to raise questions, he knew. His parents wondering at just who these enlightened white folks would be.
Wanting to avoid that, above all.
An exchange of happy phone calls, and letters—maybe even an invitation to the church, or to come up to Strivers Row for a meal before they sailed from the West Side docks—

No. Better to mention only his friend. And that he would meet him there, over in France.
Bring it all up on Easter Sunday night, just before he left to go back to the college. Say he had this opportunity, that it wasn't even definite yet. Then, as the date got much closer, he could say his friend and his family had already left, that they had booked his passage, left him his steamship ticket. There would be no need even to see him down to the docks, though he didn't suppose he could quite get away with
that
.

It still had plenty of holes, but he thought it could work. Jonah both pleased and appalled at his newfound ability to deceive. He knew that his parents would want to believe it, which was his main advantage—that they would
want
to think that he had made plenty of close new white friends.
Off to Europe for the summer with his college roommate
—that would be just the sort of thing they would love telling the congregation.

By the time the train reached Penn Station he was ebullient, and they had greeted him rapturously. His father, it seemed to him, was especially overjoyed to see him. Lonely for his presence, their daily talks up in the vestry, he had thumped Jonah's back and hugged him impulsively all the way up to Harlem.

From nearly the moment he got off the train, too, his father was after him to deliver his first sermon from the pulpit. It was an ambition for his son that he had first brought up when Jonah was still a junior in high school—and one that he had always resisted. Jonah unsure that he really wanted to follow his father in the pulpit, and not wanting to give the old man any false hope. He was less convinced than ever that it was his destiny when he had stepped down off the train from Utica—but so giddy at the prospect of sailing to Europe in less than two months' time with Howard Marsden (and his family!) that he had finally agreed. Thinking of it as a final gift to the old man, letting him coach him throughout the whole week, suggesting familiar texts and approaches. Going over the very rudiments of the sermon, its rhythm, and the different twists and catches, that would snare the congregation—a better practical education in preaching in one week, he would realize later, than he would receive in two years at the Angel Factory down in Pennsylvania.

For all that Jonah thought of it as a gesture, a propitiary offering to him, he knew that his father dreamed of more. He was already trying to make his debut as auspicious as possible, scheduling it for the ten o'clock service on Easter Sunday itself—the grand culmination of the whole sacred year. Even Jonah recognized a coup when he saw it, the old man obviously hoping to overwhelm any lingering reservations of the diaconate over his successor through the sheer passion, and rapture of the event.

Jonah went along with it, nevertheless. Sure as he was that he was through with the whole life they led, a life up in Harlem. That he would be—
what?
A professor, perhaps. Maybe even at a great European university, in Heidelberg, or at the Sorbonne. Teaching whatever he wished, making a name for
himself
. Doing whatever the big, serious thing was that Howard Marsden had thought he could do.

So he had gone along with his father. Trying to make it one great, last present to him, to them both. The theme they had agreed upon was a familiar one, working off a text from the Psalms, 68:31:
“Princes shall come out of Egypt, and Ethiopia shall hasten to stretch forth her hands unto God”
—a verse daring, but direct, in its blatant ambition. His father keeping it short, for his first effort, carefully gauging what he can handle. No more than twenty minutes, at the outside—provided he did as his father asked and built slowly, powerfully to his climax.

For Jonah was the prince—there was to be no doubt about that. It was his claim to the pulpit, made in his own words. Before college, Jonah would have been too unsure to make any such claim, even for a morning. But now, knowing the real destiny that awaited him, he joined in willingly, lovingly, savoring the time alone with his father again.

And when the day came it had been as splendid and sunny an Easter morning as anyone could remember, his father nearly dancing with delight at this augury. The church overflowing with lilies and gladiolas, the windows flung open against the unseasonable warmth. Every seat was taken, with people standing at the back of the balconies. The pews dotted with the church mothers' spectacular new Easter hats of every possible color, and elegance, and jaw-dropping gaudiness. The choir sharp and joyous—their voices, too, seemingly buoyed by the glorious day, the yellow sunlight streaming in through the open windows.

And then, after his father had spoken powerfully and briefly in introduction, Jonah had strode up to the pulpit for the first time. Dressed in his white and purple-trimmed Easter robe, his best black suit underneath, his hair carefully cropped the day before. His father waiting until he got to the very foot of the pulpit—and only then, very slowly and significantly, climbing down and making sure to grasp his son's hand at the bottom of the stairs. A flashbulb went off at that moment, startling him. Another camera or two clicking—the photographers from the church newsletter, and the
Amsterdam Star-News
and the
New York Age
all carefully, brazenly capturing the moment for posterity, his father having let the news of the new prince leak out.

Yet even that had only amused Jonah, as remote as he now was from it all. He had climbed up to the pulpit, to what suddenly seemed like a great height to him, even as often as he had sneaked up into his father's spot as a child. He was aware, now, of all the eyes upon him, the heads and backs leaning forward. Aware of his father watching intently from one side, down by the altar, his mother in the front row in her best purple skirt and vest, and the fine, frilly white blouse, tears already rolling from her eyes. Once ascended, he had dramatically pulled the text of his sermon out of his robe—and dropped it back on the chair behind him. An old trick of his father's, and Jonah had to smile as he pulled it off—for looking down on the pulpit lectern he saw another copy of the sermon, typed up in duplicate by Delphine and carefully planted there, just in case.

The whole church was silent, the short interlude played by the organist dying away. The tension was palpable in the sanctuary, but he had to struggle to suppress a laugh. Determined to do it right, as a final gift for his father and mother—all of their careful planning that he knew he would soon betray.

He had them in his hand, he knew, right from the first word. It was the most confident he had ever felt in a pulpit, even to this day. His timing was perfect, following his father's instructions in every detail. The congregation rising and falling on cue with his every inflection, every change of pace.

He knew they were taken aback, at first, by the sheer audacity of the sermon, the claiming of the throne, he could hear their sharp intakes of breath, and murmured confusion. But as he proceeded their testimony rose steadily. At first only the reliable, repetitive old-lady responses, echoing from the back pews—
“Mmm-hmmm.” “Well. Welllll.” “Make it plain! Make it plain!”
Then building steadily, beginning to grow in volume and intensity.
“That's right, that's right!”

“Praise Jesus! Praise Him!”
The rhythm growing, that old Baptist whine of his father's spilling out through his own mouth, until Jonah had to hold himself rigid to keep from physically slapping the great Bible in time. His words picking up the beat instead, pounding it out, until there was no difference between the words and the music, the music and the message. The people standing in the pews, swaying and clapping and moaning as he surged to his crescendo, shouting out, almost insensible:

“And the princes
shall
come out of Egypt! And Ethiopia
shall
stretch out her hands to
God
, and God will hear her at last and re
deem
her!” The organist and the choir bursting in right on cue, one delirious beat after his last word.

Then Jonah was walking down the pulpit steps again, through the pure yellow sunlight that poured from the windows. His father embracing him at the foot of the pulpit again, hugging him ecstatically as more flashbulbs popped; his mother sobbing openly. The waves of cheering and stamping of feet washing over him, even over the organ music.

He had stood and sung the hymn with the rest of them, then sat down in his place by the side of the altar. He was unable to keep from smiling there, still overwhelmed by what he had done, and the response he had received. The church still buzzing from the sermon, a sense of jubilation all around him. For all the years since, he had wondered if, in the end, that response would have swayed him—if, in the end, it would have maneuvered him into his father's pulpit, and convinced him to throw over all his other, wild dreams of Europe, and professor-ships, and big things. The question, forever rendered moot, of course, by the fact that at that moment—at the very end of his first sermon in his father's pulpit—Jonah had looked down the center aisle, and seen his roommate, Howard Marsden, and all his other friends from school standing in the church-house door.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MALCOLM

He had barely been able to wait until that Friday, when he would see her again. He had run more quickly than ever through his rounds, raggedly jotting down his betting slips. He even wondered if he should buy her something, though he had no idea what. But when he called her that afternoon, as instructed, she told him to bring her flowers.

“Sure, baby, that's what I was thinkin',” he crooned into the phone, but she interrupted him.

“That's not what I mean,” she said sharply. “Go to Cellupica Florists, on Christopher Street, and buy two dozen false jasmine. You got that?”

“What? Baby—”

“Have them put in a box. A long box. With a ribbon on it, and a note,” she cut him off. “Have them write on it, ‘From your greatest admirer.' Signed, ‘Jonah.' You got that?”

“Sure, baby, sure. False jasmine. Who's Jonah?”

“Never mind. Just see that you do it. Exactly that way,” she said, telling him the address on Cornelia Street—then warning him again:

“Remember—you don't bring those flowers, you're not getting in.”

He did as she told him, going first to the narrow, green-awninged flower shop, in the first floor of a slouching Italian tenement. He walked into the silver-glazed lobby of her apartment house with the box in plain sight, balanced awkwardly over one arm, but he had not taken two steps into the lobby when the uniformed doorman was on him—leaping up from his stool behind the front desk, striding forward. Holding up one big, white-gloved hand to stop Malcolm in his tracks.

“Whoe-ho! Where you think you're goin', bub?” he asked, gesturing impatiently at the box. “Who those for?”

“Uh, for Miranda—” he started to say, then stopped abruptly, realizing that he didn't even know her last name.

“Uh-huh,” the doorman said, nodding his head knowingly. “Lemme guess. I bet it's from Jonah again,” he smirked. “Yeah, he got it bad for her.”

He was a beefy, barrel-chested man, his pungent body odor soaking through the thick green doorman's uniform in the summer heat. He had very pale skin, and bristling red-and-gray hair that stuck out from under his cap, and from his nostrils, and that reminded Malcolm of Mr. Kaminska, back in Michigan.

“All right, it's 5C,” the doorman told him, jerking his head toward the equally shiny silver-coated elevators. Scrutinizing him more closely as he did.

“You're a new one, ain't ya? You can go up through here this time, but from now on you come an' go through the service entrance, in the basement. Got it, Mac?”

“Uh-huh.”

The doorman stared at him sharply for any sign of suspected insolence. Only then did he move aside, Malcolm having all he could do to keep hold of himself as he proceeded to the elevator, deliberately not looking back.

“Hey, you guys really should wear a uniform,” he heard the doorman call after him. “So we'd know.”

She greeted him at the door, wearing a long, yellow dressing gown. Letting him stand there while she looked him over, the big white box of flowers crooked in his arm.

“So now you know how it is,” she said, her face expressionless.

She pushed the door open wider and he stepped inside, throwing the box down on a chair. Pacing around the room, barely able to speak.

“A
delivery
boy? That how you make me come up here?” Malcolm said, unable to contain himself any longer.

“Did you bring the false jasmine?” was all she said. Pushing the door open wider so he could step inside, where he hurled the box down on a chair. She picked it up, and slid the bright red ribbon off it, pulling out the long-stemmed, star-shaped flowers—white-budded on the outside, yellow at their heart—while he paced around her living room, sulking.

“Do you know what the rent is here? Do you think they would let somebody like you just come on up in the elevator?” she told him coolly. Her whole demeanor as hard as it had been before she'd agreed to see him—her face as hard as she showed it to the other men who ogled her when she was out with West Indian Archie.

“Someone like me? God
damn
, girl! The way you talk—”

“Yes,” she said, cutting him off. Saying the words simply, without any obvious irony or emotion of any kind: “Someone like you. A colored boy.”

“If that's the way you feel about it—” he said, taking a step toward the door. But she only scoffed at him.

“Don't play the fool. You know that's not the way
I
feel about it. And you know what they would think. So why do I have to paint you a goddamned picture?”

“Man!” he said, shaking his head. Trying to act as if he were leaving again, but unable to keep from smiling and shaking his head. “You're a killer, you know that?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, turning her back on him and attending to her flowers.

Not sure of what to say or do, he walked around her apartment again. Really taking it in for the first time, running his hands over the plush, blue and peach furniture, perusing its tasteful fixtures, the RCA Victor phonograph, and the sleek, wood-covered Emerson radio in the corner; the jackal-headed ashtray that looked as if it were in mid-run. He remembered what Sammy the Pimp had told him about how you could turn a woman out, by just taking all the things she owned.

And what would keep a woman like this from just getting more?
he thought.
What would ever keep her from having something to fall back on?

He was most impressed with the rows of bookshelves that ran all the way across one wall, from the floor to the ceiling. They made him feel almost giddy, the way he had back in the Pleasant Cove School library, or in Prof. Toussaint's store—like finding a treasure trove. He squinted through the dim light to read the titles, and the names of so many authors he had never heard of: DuBois, Washington, Douglass—His eyes lighting at last upon a shelf full of holy books—a Talmud, the Bible; the Holy Koran. The last title making him feel both excited and guilty, remembering his books about the mysterious brown man, left neglected in his room these weeks since he had been working for Archie. Prof. Toussaint had called it the greatest book in the world, the Koran, but he had never read it, had never gone back to any of the great things he was going to do since he had been given the chance to see her again—

“What are these?” Miranda asked, frowning, pulling out the violets from where they lay beneath the false jasmine.

“Those are from
me
, baby,” he told her, looking away, embarrassed now to see them in comparison with the graceful, longboughed, white-and-yellow flowers.

“I told them to put 'em in for
me
, not any Jonah. Who
is
this Jonah, anyway? What's he got to do wit' you?” he asked, his voice rising defensively.

“He's nobody,” she said quickly, picking up the bunch of violets. “It's just a little joke. Who would ever name their child Jonah, anyhow?”

She put her cigarette down in the jackal ashtray, still staring at the violets in her hand. To his surprise, he saw that she was blinking back tears.

“Oh, you boy,” she said, shaking her head. “You did this on your own?”

“I could buy you a dozen a those, every day,” he told her, his enthusiasm rising as he saw how she looked at them. “I could get you five dozen. I'm makin' good money now. Once I hit the numbers I can get a little stake, set up my own bank, or buy a club. You could come sing in it, too, an—”

He realized he was talking more and more rapidly, but he couldn't help it, swinging his arms around as he told her all the things he was going to do, and acquire.

“I could get us a short, too, so we could go out drivin'. Maybe I could take you out to Hollywood in it, take a screen test. They got lotta singers out there—”

He noticed then that she was walking slowly toward him, across the room. Trying to smile her small, amused smile, but not succeeding, the tears still in her eyes. She went right up to him as he continued to talk—taking hold of his arms, pulling them in around herself.

“Tell me that you love me, Red,” she said, her body against his, looking up at him and making herself smile again.

“I told you—”

He was momentarily confused, interrupted in the middle of his splendid dreams spilling out in the middle of her living room.

“You don't have to mean it. Just tell me that you love me, and that you never met anyone like me.”

“I never did,” he said quickly, then speaking more slowly, his voice strained but serious. Glad that they were alone now, in her cool, dark apartment, where he could speak more freely to her than he had to anyone in his life.

“I told you already,” he said. “I never met any girl like you—”

“Any white girl, you mean,” she said, her face still smiling and teasing, but her words serious.

“I mean, any girl at
all
,” he said, firmly but not belligerently. Sensing her sudden vulnerability. Feeling headily in charge for the first time since he had met her. Continuing to talk, choosing his words slowly as he gently pulled his arms away and hugged her all the way to him now, caressing her back and thighs and bottom with his hands, swaying back and forth with her as if they were moving to a slow song.

“There's no one like you nowhere,” he told her, carefully brushing her hair back from her ear and speaking quietly to her. Following his words with small kisses down her neck that he could feel made her shudder, and lean in closer to him. One part of his mind still unbelieving and ecstatic that he could be moving so smoothly, even as he continued to make her tremble in his arms. And as he did, every moment of his exclusion and his hopelessness came back to him.
Smiling as his third-grade class jeered at him, standing on the porch, unseen, as his mother and father flew out the screen door, cursing each other. Looking into other people's homes with the newspaper bag under his arm, watching his breath come up in small white puffs, the only sign he existed. Forced back along the gym wall at the dance by that wall of boys
—All of those thoughts and images, every one of them banished now, dissolved in her acceptance.

“There's no one like you at all. You're the first person I ever met, made me feel like I wasn't alone—”

“That's good, Red. That's real good,” she said at last, and slowly pulled herself away from him.

“It's not hypin' you, baby,” he said truthfully, but she had already strode over to the door of her bedroom. Standing there, waiting for him. Looking back at him with another one of those sad half smiles on her face that he never would be able to figure out.

“I'm
not
—”

“I know you're not, baby. That's why I feel the way I do,” she said, and hushed him when he tried to question her again. Still posing at the entrance to her bedroom, needling him, tempting him.

“What do you want, Red? Just tell me what you want.”

“Show me,” he breathed, looking at her there.

“What?”

“Show me all of yourself. Right there.”

“All right,” she said, and grinned happily now, carefully turning off the lamp next to her first. Malcolm realizing for the first time why it was so dark, the shades in her apartment all half drawn— the world at dusk inside.

But he kept his eyes on her. Still grinning, she had untied the sash of her dressing gown, letting it slide to the floor—and all at once she was naked there before him. She wore nothing at all underneath save for a thin silver chain with a dime on it—a child's charm—hooked around one ankle. Half-turning demurely, teasingly, in the doorway, so he saw her right breast there in profile, the slight, soft swell of her stomach, and her swayed back. Her long, curvy legs, leading up to the surprisingly dark hair of her sex, half-concealed—

He went to her again. Holding her in his arms, feeling the whole smooth sweep of her body against him, somehow more exciting because he was still clothed. Kissing her on the mouth, again and again, moving his hands up and down her—and she let him. Free to roam as he would, over every inch of her, taking his time, until her breath became short and hurried.

“Let's go inside,” she said, in between his kisses. She led him into another, dusky room that seemed even plusher, and smelled deeply of the scent she wore. Miranda unbuttoning his shirt as she did, sliding out his belt, and kissing him still, all over his face and head and neck.

“Come here,” she said to him, sitting back on the shiny satin bedcover. Beckoning to him, her legs sliding back and forth over each other, reaching out a hand for him when he hesitated. But he waited, just wanting to watch her there for a moment, still happy to be in control, at least a little.

“Why? What you want me to do?” he asked, teasing her, but knowing that he really did just want to watch her there for a while more. Still amazed that he could have her, the most beautiful thing he had ever known, there on the bed before him. He wanted to do everything he could for her, to chase that sad little smile from her face—to see through all her mysteriousness, her hidden moods, and rescue her from Archie and anything else in her life that made her this way.
Before it was too late. To help her before it was too late, the way it had been with her.

“Come here!”

“Why? What you gonna do to me?” he pretended to tease, savoring that one more moment, looking at her.

“You might call the cops, if the lights turn blue.
Come here
.”

They made love, and dozed on each other, and made love again, all through the sweltering late afternoon, and early evening. When she finally turned on the light by her bed, he felt as though he might be drunk, or at least hungover. His head was groggy, his body weightless, right down to his toes. Miranda was lying with her head on his chest, her face turned away from him; only the top of her lovely, straight brown hair visible. He stroked her head, and then her body. Feeling himself readying again, but not rushing it; as eye-opening as their first time had been, this was so much better.