The Salt Eaters (29 page)

“Testing my tolerance before you come clean?”

They walked in silence to the corner and Velma noted how different things looked and felt now that it had been said. A subtle rearrangement of the world. For a while she had begun to doubt her perception of everything. There were trying enough shifts in her perceptions as it was. She needed all the clarity she could get. And she would have it.

“I’ve always taken you at your word, Obie.” And now there was no trust. Not like before. Things would never be the same. She marveled at how profoundly disturbing “simple shit” can be, an accumulation of fissures in the fabric of what was her sense of things, how things were, what statements meant, how they stood.

“And I’ve always taken you at your word,” he said quietly, reaching for her hand. “Why didn’t you tell me, tell us, about the new job? You just sprang it on us.”

“Can we settle on one theme for this dialogue before the variations get too cumbersome?”

“We’re talking about trust, the loss of trust, breakdowns on the afrophone, misleadings and misreadings. Baby. I’m sorry.”

He kissed her before the light changed but it didn’t help any. It was too late for anything but war. And then retreat. And then a stupid affair with a man she wasn’t certain she even liked, certainly didn’t trust. She called it “interesting for the moment,” and avoided the word “revenge.” That tampered too much with the image she held of herself.

“Train,” someone said. The word was being passed around the café the way news of food, fuel, medical supplies might be relayed in the days of change-over ahead. Diners on the side street facing the avenue could peer between the pots of Swedish ivy, peer between the cars and trucks, between the post
office and the motel and see the gray, rust, orange, smudged and sooty cars of the train rumbling by.

“I thought it was thunder for sure that time,” Piltdown Pete said, and several of his colleagues nodded or murmured in agreement. Rising Sun ran a finger back and forth from the base of his throat to his chin and smiled knowingly.

“A lie,” he said quite distinctly. Piltdown Pete did not ask the Asian for an explanation; he was staring across at the vacant lot where he still half expected an army of savages with their thumping drums to come swarming up over the mounds of bottles and cans to engulf the whole street. Grim Reaper was quietly measuring the pace, intensity and color of the smoke streams that poured from the Transchemical stacks in the distance and simply did not hear the remark, the challenge. Krupp’s Kreep had snapped his plastic stirrer in half and, satisfied the rumble was not a sneak attack, looked directly at Rising Sun as if about to challenge him, his memory of ’41 so evident on his face, it drew a smile from the man in the bronze shirt. But only momentarily. For Krupp’s face now registered Hiroshima, and, Rising Sun put out his cigarette and swung his gaze again across the aisle at the woman—Eurasian, Cambodian, Nisei, Sansei?

Now that the “thunder” had been identified as the train it sounded like nothing else but. Locals at the café laughed at themselves, that they had failed to recognize so familiar, so ordinary a sound. And yet, several locals did use the rest rooms as an excuse to check the side street and be sure. It had sounded so loud, so ominous.

“This place so ramjam with people, how can I work out without an elbow in my neighbor’s ribs?” Cecile was studying the menu, wondering whether the oysters could be trusted.

“Speaking of trains,” Iris said, eager to assist Cecile in breaking
the mood, “is the John Henry-Kwan Cheong piece pulled together?”

Nilda was waiting for someone to answer; no one did. She was caught up in the animated pictures in her mind. Jackrabbits. A speaker at the Barnwell rally had explained that the rabbits, having built their warrens in the contaminated soil, were spreading danger. Luminescent jackrabbits lighting up the night. Railroad trains traveling across the prairie, tourists shooting glowing rabbits from the window. The carcasses piled high at the trading posts. Pelts shipped east for coats, rugs, handbags. Phosphorescent corruption. Nilda changed position, dug her hands in the pockets of her denim skirt, dissatisfied with the pictures. She had been aiming for something else, something to reconnect her to that moment on the bus. She reached toward her feather and found her hands instead on straw and remembered she was wearing Cecile’s hat. She dug in her hair for the thunderbird barrette and held it tight.

“What do you think, Nilda?” Iris was asking her something.

The buffalo treaties should be part of the railroad piece, no doubt. But it was peaceful with her eyes closed, her hand in her hair clutching the turquoise, the tiny figurines of Cecile’s hat creating little breezes, tinkling tunes, helping her to reconnect.

Down the street, noisy but harmonious, strolled three of Jan’s former students, the one in the middle in a lime-green suit, the two flanking him in blue jeans and 7 Arts satin jackets. The one singing bass was bent over, popping his fingers as he snapped his knees in a modified cakewalk, laying down the baroomph dit dit diir bottom. The tenor, his head thrown back, was stabbing the air in front of him with a crooked finger as though testing the resiliency of cellophane. The baritone was in the middle, one minute his arms wide so that the lining of his lime jacket revealed itself as cut from the same bolt as
his tie, the next squinching his whole body together to cup the invisible mike to his mouth. It was clear to all who turned their way that the trio was doing one of his originals; he was the only one who knew the lyrics. They were drowning out the musicians onstage inside the café who had just started up again.

“And when my baby says, it’s too late, sorree …” In unison they crossed their arms over their chests and dropped their heads sorrowfully. “It just backs me up and turns me rrrrround.” They crossed their legs over and turned with a back leg hop-slide that drew a trickle of applause from some of the audience, who didn’t know the best was yet to come. “But I keep on coming, just keep on coming on strong.” The three, in precisioned timing, spun as if on ball bearings, then, hands at waist like Baptist preachers, they shuffled one-leg, hopped, then strode boldly to the railing, gliding on the last beat. “Cause that’s the kind of man I am.”

Ruby was enjoying the serenade. But as she looked from the 7 Arts stencil to Jan, thinking about the rumor and Jan’s close connection with the cowboy fringe at the Academy, she buried her mouth in her hands and frowned. She could actually picture her friend passing out rifles like so many report cards: “Be sure to get these signed, boys, and bring them back as clean as you got them.”

Jan, smiling, a little embarrassed by the attention, was looking from the brothers to Ruby, thinking about the rumor and Ruby’s association with the more militaristic hotheads. She imagined them lined up at her shop—and Ruby outfitting the youths in chest plates and shields—“And the rat-teeth muthafucka that dulls the shine on my masterpieces better not come back here without his own chamois cloth.”

The whole café on that side broke into enthusiastic applause, Rising Sun banging his ivory holder against the side of his wine glass, capturing Iris’ attention if not Mai’s. The boys stepped
back in unison, spun, snapped out a bow from the waist, and continued on down the street, slapping five.

The two women avoided each other’s eyes for a moment until the singing dimmed and the trio crossed over toward Gaylord, heading for the Academy. Jan and Ruby watched, bobbing their heads and smiling rather than trusting themselves to comment on the talent, the youth, anything. Both fished amongst the objects on the table, hunting for the thread of the conversation that had been interrupted.

“Velma’s predisposed to strife and conflict and crises. It’s how she learns, by struggling through. One of the things about her chart—”

“Janice, please. None of that dharma, karma, brahma stuff. I’m up to here. Getting so I can’t get a decent conversation nowhere in this city. Don’t anybody talk political anymore, talk Black anymore? If it ain’t degree degree, it’s job job, boogie boogie, or some esoteric off-the-wall sun/moon shit. Look, the main thing I wish you’d get serious about is the next election. You really must.”

“You know, Ruby, you ought to settle down and have babies. Can’t leave it to the kids and fools, ya know,” Jan said, browsing through the wine list.

“You’re not funny, but I’ll get off your case.” There was still the rest of the night to get done what the group’d assigned her; it really was a serious matter. And Janice was such an excellent worker. Ruby reared back in her chair and gazed about. “Speaking of kids and fools, there goes my cousin Buster up the way. Developing into a first-class ass. Was bugging everybody at the Academy this morning trying to find out what the Brotherhood’s up to for the procession. It’s embarrassing, cool as I am, having a jerk for a relative.”

“And what is the Brotherhood up to?”

“You know better than me.” Ruby shrugged and once again their eyes bounced away.

“Your cousin looks pregnant, Ruby.”

“You’re sharp. He is. His body’s taken on the weight his mind still refuses to accept. Very young the girl. Fifteen or something and none too swift. There ought to be a workshop at the Manhood Conference on pregnant fathers, a much-neglected topic. When’s the last time you heard a decent discussion of pregnant men and male menopause and male moon cycles and the like?”

“Last time us sisters got together.”

“I mean in an official way?”

“Ain’t sisters’ rapping official enough for you?”

“Jot some notes on the subject on the back of that questionnaire.”

“I wish I could say I was too busy enjoying the music to be bothered.”

The musicians in the café were attempting Latin. The speakers were hung over the espresso machine and music wafted out of doors on the aroma of espresso. Iris dropped out of the conversation long enough to calculate the months since she’d strolled up Broadway in the afternoon, checking the prices of avocados, mangoes, sugar cane along the way to her favorite China y Latina near the Olympia movie house. And how long it would be before she’d hear again Yorican spoken unself-consciously as opposed to the way she composed her pieces. How long it would be before she would have rice and squid again at El Mundial with loudmouths who knew how to eat, or something fancy at Victor’s with Paco, go to the mercado under the viaduct and shop for the old woman who ran the
botánica
on the first floor of her apartment building, dance with Popi in the street while his cronies kept time bongoing
on the checkerboard or beer-can timbale-ing or slamming down dominoes singing with their eyes closed and always
corazón, corazón
and love ever
siempre
and passion
caliente
, and a high-note
esperanza
lifting the old men from the chairs and their pants baggy but the singing magnificent.

Easier to feel the distance from New York—pain, than from home—vague. The old streetcar sheds of Piedras, the casino on the hill behind the firehouse in Ponce, the resort Paco had taken her to in Rincón for their honeymoon. It was dim, a lot less vibrant than the New York memories. She could barely remember anything about home, for home had really begun with the Mobilization for Youth theatre project, the St. Mark’s poetry group, the committees of defense for Carlos Feliciano, the Puerto Rican Student Union at City College, and then the Young Lords. She’d written faithfully to compañeros of CAFU, a feminist action group that had sent expressions of solidarity to the Young Lords in the early seventies when she’d been correspondence secretary. She’d kept up communications over the years with most of the Independentistas, FUPI, JIU, MPI, who had direct and immediate links with groups in New York. But she’d gotten cut off in a way traveling with the troupe: transplants all, Inez from farm valley country, Chezia from the Tupercuin hills, Nilda from the contested Black Hills, Mai from the hills of San Francisco they liked to joke, or the paddy fields of Berkeley, Cecile from a maroon community in the hills of Jamaica. Only Palma was at home, and not even, she said it herself. Home was with them or in the studio or with her main man. But “eventually we all come to the hills,” like in the poem. And they had to evoke it with music, dance and
encantados
.

Iris had ordered a fruit salad, a bowl of plantain chips, a sweet roll or bun if they had, and coffee, explaining carefully to the waiter that she wanted the coffee in a bowl and wanted
the milk scalded. She was trying to stay awake till it got there. She had toyed with the idea of taking a leave and making a quick run to New York, but the group had dwindled so fast. And she’d promised. There was a Black Women’s Conference in New Orleans to start with. A major reading sponsored by the Before Columbus Book Project to end with, just days before she was due in Mayagüez for the start of summer session, not even enough time to lock herself up with the Berlitz long players. The kind of Spanish demanded at U. of Mayagüez she wasn’t putting down at all,
nada nada
. But in between New Orleans and the Bay area were several campus appearances, a benefit for the farm workers’ union, some kind of Black and Indian thing that was jumping off right after the Tuskegee air show, and two visits to the joint. Iris got weary just thinking about it all. But that was always the way. The minute they got to setting up, though, it was all beautiful again, things popped, and she cooked.

“I think they’re friends of Palma and Velma’s, yes?” Mai was jabbing her pen in the direction of two women by the railing clinking glasses of white wine. “Maybe they know where Velma is. We should ask?”

Iris nodded yeh maybe, noticing how dragged out they all were. It seemed an effort for Chezia to turn her head. Cecile was bent over her plate, shrugging. Nilda had opened her eyes long enough to notice only half her order had come and now seemed fast asleep. Iris said nothing further, just smiled as Mai smiled when the two women looked their way. She was content to sit there and listen to the music. She listened for all of eight bars, hunting up under the trumpet for the congas. She had seen the musicians go by and knew not to expect much. Ersatz salsa. She thought of the last time she’d caught Ray Baretta. It had been too long. La Lupe. She could cry, it had been that long. La Lupe, La Lupe, La Lupe. The thought of recruiting
La Lupe as the next Sister of the Plantain woke her up. It was wild. It was perfect. La Lupe, her replacement.