The Salt Eaters (32 page)

Squad cars pull into the park, sprawl all over the grass, an officer tells the Festival Committee that the permits have been revoked and there are questions too about the licenses to sell food, especially booze in City Park. She gets there too late to understand what is happening but sees the cops seeing a rioting horde of nigger-niggers and other-type niggers racing from the park green, abandoning their litter, rushing for the hill back of the vacant lot where only gods know what weapons might be stashed, grappling up the hill, uprooting shrubs and bushes in the climb to the main street lined with boutiques, cafés and travel agencies, stampeding the tourists and racing down the block toward the Hill to the Heights for the shortcut to Transchemical.
And they call in for reinforcements. The vigilante on the airwaves moving out.

The people who’ve already bid carne vale, following a different calendar, turn in the street and see a disciplined army or a mob, a shaming reminder of things best forgotten, or an interesting bit of theatre rained out, too bad, or thank goodness cause everybody’s nerves are shot, the whole town on edge.

She is in the park around the bonfire singing. Minnie is there, M’Dear, Doc Serge and some older man she doesn’t know by name, the face faintly familiar, but the green uniform throwing her off. And Obie is there, Mama Mae, Palma and Lil James called Jabari now and Marcus and. And someone or something hovering near daring her to look, to recognize. Not an old friend but someone she hasn’t met but ought to know but dare not look at. A taboo glance, formidable, ancient, locking her jaws, her thighs, keeping her head down. Medusa, Lot’s Wife, Eurydice, Noah, she will not look. She keeps her eyes on her feet, swollen from stomping. They are all stomping, agitating the ground, agitating an idea, calling up something or someone, and the idea clusters in the image centers and settles there. She will not look at that either. It is taking all of her to concentrate on not looking.

She would not have cut Medusa’s head off, she is thinking, watching the mud come up worms between her toes. She would simply have told the sister to go and comb her hair. Or gotten a stick to drive the serpents out. Serpents or snakes? She draws a line in the dirt with her big toe.

Different remedies for snakebite and the bite of the serpent, she’d been hearing for a lifetime. Daddy Dolphy had told her too in the woods that time. M’Dear had dropped her basket and slit his shirt with her shears before Velma knew what had happened. Had pushed him on the ground and taken his knife from him and slit open his shoulder before Velma could cry
out. “Quick, salt.” And she’d managed to find it in the gathering basket and knew somehow it was salt and not some other odd thing to be bringing along to the woods. Daddy Dolphy had gulped some, held some in his mouth and was ripping off his sleeve when M’Dear snatched a fistful of leaves from a bush and packed a salt poultice into the wound and tied up his shoulder tightly with the sleeve tourniquet. “Helps neutralize the venom,” M’Dear explained, her voice calm, as if certain the twisting of the sleeve would do the rest. “To neutralize the serpent’s another matter,” Daddy Dolphy had winked, taking deep breaths.

She thought she knew that. At some point in her life she was sure Douglass, Tubman, the slave narratives, the songs, the fables, Delaney, Ida Wells, Blyden, DuBois, Garvey, the singers, her parents, Malcolm, Coltrane, the poets, her comrades, her godmother, her neighbors, had taught her that. Thought she knew how to build immunity to the sting of the serpent that turned would-be cells, could-be cadres into cargo cults. Thought she knew how to build resistance, make the journey to the center of the circle, stay poised and centered in the work and not fly off, stay centered in the best of her people’s traditions and not be available to madness, not become intoxicated by the heady brew of degrees and career and congratulations for nothing done, not become anesthetized by dazzling performances with somebody else’s aesthetic, not go under. Thought the workers of the sixties had pulled the Family safely out of range of the serpent’s fangs so the workers of the seventies could drain the poisons, repair damaged tissues, retrain the heartworks, realign the spine. Thought the vaccine offered by all the theorists and activists and clear thinkers and doers of the warrior clan would take. But amnesia had set in anyhow. Heart/brain/gut muscles atrophied anyhow. Time was running out anyhow. And the folks didn’t even have a party, a
consistent domestic and foreign policy much less a way to govern. Something crucial had been missing from the political/economic / social / cultural / aesthetic / military / psychosocial / psychosexual mix. And what could it be? And what should she do? She’d been asking it aloud one morning combing her hair, and the answer had almost come tumbling out of the mirror naked and tatooed with serrated teeth and hair alive, birds and insects peeping out at her from the mud-heavy hanks of the ancient mothers’ hair. And she had fled feverish and agitated from the room, flopped languid and dissolved at Jamahl’s, lest she be caught up and entrapped in glass, fled lest she be ensorceled, fled finally into a sharp and piercing world, fled into the carbon cave.

And now, standing there barefoot on the ground in the park, she still could not face up, would not lift her head to look at anything but her own swollen feet. She might steal a glance sideways at the woman next to her and study the elegant shoes, the red and gold and white sequined ruffles at the hem of the extravagant gown, the hands clasped with three wedding bands shining on the ring finger—before she wrenched her eyes back to the safety of her swollen feet. There might be an answer. But she would not look up from her feet.

It was a woman all right next to her, trying to get familiar. She used the same brand of sandalwood soap too. She felt her more than anything else. A glow, as if she were beaming at her, not daring now but inviting her to look. She didn’t risk it.

What was her name? M’Dear never used a name. The mailbox probably read Mr. and Mrs. Lot. Period. Surely she’d gotten the flyers, she was on the mailing list. Seen the posters, read the papers, knew what they were trying to do to effect change. Maybe the thing to do was invite the self by for coffee and a chat. Share with her how she herself had learned to believe in ordinary folks’ capacity to change the self and transform
society. What in hell could anybody do with a saltlick in the middle of the LaSalle projects anyway? There were no cows in Claybourne anymore. She drew another line in the dirt.

I was out of town, she would explain to the silent bride. Sorry I missed the wedding. Heard the cops turned the reception out and nabbed Bubba Orph. Now, if Leadbelly could turn a heart-of-stone judge around with a strum or two, surely there’s no need for you to be laid out on a slab in the Infirmary. We can redeem Orph’s guitar. Where the pawn tickets?

“Sweetheart?”

Some kind of wife, some kind of mother you turned out to be. Your children hanging in the bedroom doorway snickering at their daddy. My mother would have knocked us clean across the room. And then the lecture, her cooking spoon raised and her eyes slit warning no back talk and you better not roll your eyes or suck your teeth. “So long as you are in this house, you will respect your father, who puts food in your mouth and clothes on your back.”

“Sweetheart?”

They called her Sweetpea. Her name was Barbara Watson. She’d come down from Syracuse to work with SNCC and find a husband. “Those niggers up there have no politics.” Came down from D.C. a full decade later for something Velma was not sure she had to give.

“Driving to West Palm Beach to see my in-laws. Ex in-laws. Still friendly. Thought I’d drop by and see how you all are making out, pay my respects. Heard you and Smitty never did hook up. Should’ve grabbed him myself.”

“Well … we’re still here,” intimidated by a look that said anything but respect.

“You seem the same, Velma. Crazy as ever.” Looking at the tables tumbled down with leaflets and pamphlets, the boxes of rolled-up posters, the mimeo machine in the middle of the
living room. “Same o same o, hunh?” touching her hair, a color Velma couldn’t remember. She didn’t know what the sister wanted, sitting there smoking one after another, describing her latest march down the butt- and spit-spattered aisle of City Hall, talking on and on, bits and snatches of jailhouse anecdotes and back-road remembrances, as if all that had happened a century ago and the war was over. Asking after everyone but not listening to Velma’s answers. And that smile that was anything but a smile.

“We’re all still here” was all Velma could think to say.

“And still into the same idealistic nonsense, I gather,” sounding edgy, irritable. “You honestly think you can change anything in this country?” Her anger flaring now, bewildering.

“I try to live,” Velma said, surprised at her evenness, “so it doesn’t change me too much.”

“You’ll learn,” she snapped back and seemed to be getting up to go, except she wasn’t, just changing positions. And Velma was waiting for the bedroom clock to go off so she could announce she had a meeting to attend.

“You’ll learn,” she said again.

“I want to learn to grow, to become …” no longer talking to Barbara Sweetpea Watson. Her lips soft against each other, Velma was searching for a way to finish the sentence, wondering if indeed it was already complete.

“Well,” she said, and this time she was dumping cigarette case, lighter, address book and pen into her bag and rising to go. “Just thought I’d come by and see how everybody’s doing. Like being in a time capsule, ya know?” She was trying to exit on a big note. “Thank god I got out of here in time.” She was trying to slam a swinging door. She sounded tired.

“We’re still here.” Velma shrugged, not at all tired. There seemed to be so much more to say. She shook out the glad-you-stopped-by
the way Mama Mae would, upending her bag, but no grits left.

“I wish you well, Sweetpea.”

“So long.”

“Shove over, Old Wife, while I put this music on. Whatcha think, something low down and nasty or something upbeat and inspiring? The Henry gal is coming through. Now which?”

“It’s immaterial to me, Min.”

“You hear yourself? You’re a blip if there ever was one.”

“Takes one to know one, Min. You gonna dismiss them haints? Seems like they plenty folks calling on em.”

“They’re free to go wherever and that’s no lie.”

“Hmph.”

Strains of some sassy twenties singer crackling low and indistinct grazed Velma’s ears with “Wiiiild women doan worrreeee, wild women doan have no bluuuzzzzzz.” Like the hissing of the primus stove in M’Dear and Daddy Dolphy’s oceanfront cottage, like the zzing of the zimbi gourds, the snakes in sister’s hair, the buzzing of them spooky trees outdoors where no bees ever were no matter how hard you looked. She thought she heard some singing, something about being no angel chile. She was about to suck her teeth when the voice urged her to get real wild, was about to suck her teeth and mutter “signifyin sister,” meaning the singer and the healer too. She moved to wrap Minnie’s shawl more tightly around her. She could be coming apart, totally losing her self. That woman in the park, who was that but another her, a part?

But then, clear and bold, stopping her in mid-act, her arms in an arc, clear and bold as if recorded fresh that minute, as if incarnate and not a wave, not a spirit captured by an electric tongue come back to speak, blasting new and not from her long-ago little-girl days hanging out in Palma’s growing-up-girl
days, came an alto sax loud and insistent taking over the air, jarring her out of her fear of splintering, blaring through her head. Not the hucklebuck as in do-the-hucklebuck, do-the-hucklebuck in some five watt blue bulb stomp down street alley dance hall place and she with too much make-up on getting maneuvered into a dark corner thigh on thigh and nothing romantic and nice about it. But Charlie Parker doing “Now Is the Time,” coaxing from her something muscular and daring, something borrowed first from books and imaginings then later from Palma’s giggly narratives in the dark sharing a pillow, borrowed till she earned it for herself on that first piano in the church and learned to listen to linears and verticals at the same time, new time, rhythm bam.

Y’Bird so bold and urgent and the Hawk doing something to the soles of her feet, she all but pushed off from the floor to fling herself out of the window, out of the window and into the dark socket of the tree knocking on the inside as if eager to be a drum or join the chorus of voices speaking to her as from a dream, into the socket and seeing the baby bird that crashed there crumpled now and calling to the air, fluttering around Minnie’s govi and zin and dream for sure cause how could she know what to call the jugs and bowls but in a dream? Out of the window, stepping nimbly over the pitchers and pots and twirling in the yard, dancing round the perimeter of the tabby wall to the front of the building to count off the Infirmary’s pillars like her teacher M’Dear had taught her to do: first pillar, God is; two, God is all and all is One; three, there are spirits; four, there are prophets; five, there’ll be a day of Restoration; six … But the pillar M’Dear had saved till she came through religion and came of age was no longer there, had been struck by lightning years before and removed. But still the archway held.

Day of Restoration, Velma muttered, feeling the warm
breath of Minnie Ransom on her, lending her something to work the bellows of her lungs with. To keep on dancing like the sassy singer said. Dancing on toward the busy streets alive with winti, coyote and cunnie rabbit and turtle and caribou as if heading for the Ark in the new tidal wave, racing in the direction of resurrection as should be and she had a choice running running in the streets naming things—cunnie rabbit called impala called little deer called trickster called brother called change—naming things amidst the rush and dash of tires, feet, damp dresses swishing by, the Spirits of Blessing way outrunning disaster, outrunning jinns, shetnoi, soubaka, succubi, innocuii, incubi, nefarii, the demons midwifed, suckled and fathered by the one in ten Mama warned about who come to earth for the express purpose of making trouble for the other nine. Demons running the streets defying Earth Mother and Heavenly Father and defiling the universe in a stampede rush, rending, tearing creature ideas jumping through billboards and screw-thy-neighbor paperbacks, the modern grimoires of the passing age.