Strivers Row (5 page)

Their marriage had been a shock. She a chorus girl from Connie's Inn and the Cotton Club, already divorced and the mother of a little boy—and a Catholic at that. Adam, meanwhile, was church royalty, heir to his father's pulpit at the Abyssinian Baptist, the biggest church north of 110th Street. The women of his congregation called him “Mr. Jesus,” Jonah knew, and they all but fainted when he walked up to the altar in his robes, or his gorgeous tweed suits. Before the wedding, so many death threats had been received against Isabel that detectives had been hired to sit in the aisle seats. Isabel herself had been more worried about Adam Senior, when he put his hands on her shoulders, and pressed her firmly down into the baptismal font for the ritual that officially freed her from the clutches of the Church of Rome.

“Oh, my goodness,” she had confided to Amanda with a giggle, “I thought, ‘This old man is going to get rid of me now!' ”

Three different ministers had presided over the ceremony, including Jonah's father. The mobs of people spilling out of the church and onto the sidewalk, more still renting out apartments across 138th Street for the day, just to get a glimpse of the handsome couple. Isabel's mother had made a gigantic seven-layer wedding cake, and at the reception Isabel had personally handed out over two thousand pieces of it, each one in its own box and tied with its own individual ribbon, and shaken hands until her knuckles were bleeding through her long, white wedding gloves.

From that day on, over ten years ago now, she had been the perfect minister's wife. She had lowered her dress hems, and relegated herself to singing spirituals in the Abyssinian's choir. She took part in the women's Bible classes, and the reading and sewing and cooking classes, and all the dozens of other ambitious programs the Abyssinian ran, and that Jonah could only look upon with envy. She had even won over Adam's mother, and his father, the abdicating king, to the point where Jonah thought that sometimes they seemed more enamored of Isabel than Adam was himself.

It was nothing very definite. It was just that at times, during their two weeks on the island, he thought he detected a certain detachment beneath all the clowning. The way Adam's face looked strangely hard, and remote, sometimes when he thought there was no one watching—

Most likely he was only weighing his options, Jonah had told himself. For Adam, everyone knew, was a man on the verge. Over the last two years alone, he had become the first Negro ever elected to the New York City Council, and started his own newspaper,
The People's Voice
. Fearlessly flaying everyone in his “Soap Box” column, even taking time out from the beach to peck out the latest one in the cottage living room. He was considering a run for the new Harlem seat in Congress that would be created next year, and neither Jonah nor anyone else he knew doubted that it was his for the taking.
All he had to do was decide what it was he wanted.
Jonah had never seen a more charismatic man, or a more natural leader. He looked at him leaning back in his wicker chair now, his eyes spinning, obviously considering some new mischief.

“Did I tell you I got my draft form from the army, wondering if I was claiming conscientious objector status?” Adam asked them.

“No, you didn't.”

Jonah shifted uncomfortably in his seat, thinking of his own form. It was basically an automatic waiver for established clergymen, but he had wrestled with it anyway. Taking great pains with his argument for why, as a Christian minister, he objected to killing anyone—and all the while thinking,
But why not? They won't stop unless they are killed. And wouldn't I be better off there—anywhere—doing some good?

“I haven't fully made up my mind yet,” Adam announced. “Adam!”

“I haven't!” he told them, chuckling, having achieved just the affect he wanted.

“Why do I have to explain why I shouldn't have to fight for this country? They should have to explain to
me
why I
should
. Maybe I should make them throw me in jail, as a protest!”

There were more peals of protest and laughter from Isabel and Hycie—all of them knowing full well that the congregation of the Abyssinian would never permit its minister to go either into the armed forces or to jail. But Amanda pursued the subject, her lovely dark eyes serious again—still hurting a little over how Adam had teased her before, Jonah knew.

“But why wouldn't you fight? Theoretically, I mean? Are you a pacifist?”

“No, madam, I can't say that I am.”

He gave her a little, playful bow of his head.

“So why not, then?”

“Fight whom? For what?”

“Why, for democracy.”

“What democracy? Where? Not here! I can't truthfully say that the black man has done any better in this country than he would have under Stalin, or Hitler.”

“Oh, Adam, you know that's not true!” Isabel objected. “You're just leading Amanda along!”

“I am not. America keeps talking about the creation of a new world, but her own conscience is still full of guilt—”

“For Christianity, then,” Amanda interjected. “Would you fight for that? At least America is a Christian country.”

“Oh, America is
not
a Christian country!” Powell told her, waving her declaration away good-naturedly. “It is a country of
church– ianity
, full of
anti
-Christian doctrines of pure, Jim Crow racism. The only truly Christian churches in this country are those that welcome
all
the sons of man.”

“Like the ones in Harlem?”

Adam snorted.

“You can count on your fingers all of
those
worth keeping open. Bunch of spiritual sissies. Theological twisters. Pulpit pounders and clerical clowns,” he said, working himself up. “All of these high-and-mighty Negroes, holding themselves above the masses because their skins are a little bit lighter, or they can trace their family trees back a few generations!”

He shook his head ruefully.

“Hell, most of the time you move any of our family trees six inches, we're right back in a cotton patch, or among the mangrove trees. All this big mystical talk of heaven from the pulpit, pouring it on for the poor grandmothers in the pews! What the masses want is men who'll teach them how to lead a just life, right now.”

“Don't you believe in the afterlife then, Reverend Powell?” Amanda persisted, her voice icy.

“No, sister, I don't,” he told her more soberly now. “There is no afterlife. At least, I don't believe that there is any heaven or hell. No other place that we're going to go to after we die.”

“So the Holy Bible is a lie, then?”

“Oh, the Bible's a great book. But, outside of the Gospels, maybe, it's too filled with contradictions to possibly be the revealed word of any coherent god.”

“Adam!”

“How about the New Jerusalem, Adam?” Jonah interrupted, before he could shock his wife any more—and because he could not stop himself. “Is that worth keeping open?”

Adam smiled and reached over to him, squeezing his shoulder.

“Of course, Jonah. You do a real good job over there,” he said, his voice sincere—and despite himself Jonah felt suffused with relief.

“I always thought so,” Adam went on. “You and your father before you. How's the Reverend doing these days?”

“Oh, you know, he doesn't get out much anymore,” Jonah told him, picturing his father in the little apartment behind the church where he insisted on living.
His
church, right to the end—

“But his mind is still good. He still remembers you, I know.”

Adam looked very pleased—and Jonah suddenly understood what he was doing in Oak Bluffs.

“Well, that's great. That's just great, Jonah!” Powell was booming again, slapping his knee. “Please give him my best.”

Jonah nodded and turned away, looking down to the beach. Watching as the last few bathers toweled off and made their way up from the Ink Well. They were little more than silhouettes now, blackness merging into blackness.

What a splendid place this is
, he thought, regretting fiercely that they would have to leave it the next day—even if he did know the real reason, now, why they had been invited. He was suddenly, deeply moved by the beauty of everything around him—the long-legged women on their hurricane chairs, the shimmering glass in his hand. The lace curtains of Adam's cottage blowing gently in the breeze. The elegant piano music from the phonograph, drifting out from the front parlor.

“Say, what's that you got on there?” he asked Adam, trying to change the conversation again. “I've never heard anything quite like it.”

The music really was extraordinary—what sounded like very complicated jazz riffs, played on classical themes.

“That's Hazel Scott, she's terrific,” Adam said casually, bouncing up off his chair and going inside. “Here, let me turn it up for you!”

“Oh, now don't be doing that, sugar, I believe Preston went to sleep already!” Isabel called after him, but it was too late—the music flaring up, drawing the smoky blare of a Village nightclub suddenly out onto the porch with them. Making Jonah think of what Sophia was doing these days.
His lost sister
—

“She's down at Café Society,” Adam told them as he sat back down. “You and Amanda ever been? It's about the only place outside of Harlem where people of all colors can sit down together and enjoy a little music! We'll have to take you some night, after we get back to the City.”

“Well, I don't know,” Jonah said too quickly.
Afraid that he would discover Sophie there, and what that would mean.

“I hear the place is a front for the Communists—”

“So what if it is?” Adam scoffed, snapping his fingers. “Political party days are coming to a close. It's not going to matter anymore whether you're Democrat, Republican, Communist—just so long as you're marching black.”

“Well, perhaps, perhaps,” Jonah mumbled, wanting to drop the whole subject as quickly as he had brought it up.

He was saved by the appearance of Preston in the doorway, rubbing his eyes. Jonah had been surprised to see how big he'd gotten—nearly a teenager now, though still a boy, his thick mop of hair turned almost blond by the summer sun. He was wearing a pair of Adam's old fishing trunks, one of his T-shirts hanging baggily down over his waist, and when he stretched his arms and yawned all the adults on the porch smiled. Jonah knew without looking that Amanda's eyes were on him again. Wondering the same old question, when they were going to have theirs—

And what would be the purpose of that? To bring them into this world?

“Somethin' woke me up,” Preston mumbled.

“Mmm, that would be your Daddy,” Isabel said, pretending to cast a stern look at Adam. “Him and Hazel Scott.”

“I had bad dreams,” Preston said, a small frown crossing his smooth, innocent face.

“Aw, that's too bad,” Adam said gently, getting up and taking him by the hand. “C'mon, let's get you back to bed so you can have some good ones and wipe 'em out.”

They all followed Adam and the boy back into the cottage, the mosquitoes and the blackflies beginning to bite now. Isabel turned off the record, the rest of them resettling themselves around the living room while Adam took Preston up to bed.

His acceptance of the boy had been the crowning grace of their marriage, Jonah knew. There had been much speculation about what would happen if he and Isabel had their own child—another heir to the throne!—but they never had, and Adam had formally adopted Preston as his own son.

It was more than just an adoption, though—Adam truly seemed to love the boy. Here on the island he was always teaching him things. In the afternoons he would take him out on the sailboat, schooling him in how to tack and to jibe, and to clam and crab and fish. They would tromp back along South Circuit Avenue together, grinning like a couple of maniacs in their shorts and sandals, Adam insisting on showing off their catch to everyone they passed.

Back at the Abyssinian he let Preston run the camera that captured Adam's every sermon, and the sound system that projected his voice out on the street, to all the faithful who couldn't get a seat inside. The boy would go dashing back and forth down the block, making sure everything was working—watching as the windows went up, and men and women leaned outside to hear the voice of his adopted father rolling up and down West 138th Street. Sometimes, in one of his more histrionic moods, Adam would charge down from the pulpit and right out onto Seventh Avenue. Plunging into the crowds there, Preston grinning and holding on to his hand, just as Jonah knew that Adam had held on to his own father's hand, walking the streets of San Juan Hill years before.

To have a child. A son, to pass something on to. What, exactly?

He didn't want Amanda looking at him just now—knowing what they would both be thinking about. He stood up abruptly, announcing that he would help Adam put Preston back to bed even though he half-expected to hear them whispering about him when he left the room, making his way slowly upstairs and along the second-floor hall of the house.

The cottage was just as stylish and outrageous as everything else about Adam. Most of the other colored homes in Oak Bluffs were austere and understated. Tasteful old houses that looked as if they were trying their best to melt into the background, more Yankee than the Yankees. Adam's house, by contrast, was a loud, green, gingerbread cottage, just like the white folks' houses by the old Methodist Campground. The fishing tackle he used every day hung proudly along the wall, much as—and precisely because—it would have appalled the most proper members of the Abyssinian.

That was Adam, too. Poking fun at the pretensions of white people and his own congregation, all at the same time.