Virgin Soul (10 page)

C
ool carried me all the way through the wedding, with Aunt Ola Ray promenading every ounce of her doctor's mother status. From the front of the church, I saw Ola fluttering in her seat, dabbing at her silk lace hanky like she was grieving a heavy loss. A body would've thought she was losing her Jesus instead of her only son. But I could forgive Aunt Ola Ray her whole bag of airs when she sang. And she sang magnificently for Buddy and Andrea. She got to that line—
He's wonderful
/
wonderful
/
wonderful
/
wonderfulwonderful
/
wonderf
ul
/
wonderful
/
wonderful—
and before she let it go, Aunt Ola Ray could have turned out the Cow Palace
.
I didn't know what Reverend White had planned for his “Meditation,” which was how the wedding program printed it:

Solo . . . Mrs. Ola Ray Hightower

Meditation . . . Officiating Elder

He couldn't ignore “Wonderful,” though. It was ringing throughout the entire sanctuary, floor to ceiling, stained-glass wall to stained-glass wall. My scalp tingled, as much from the tightness of my hair drawn back as from Aunt Ola Ray's contralto oscillations.

Reverend White's deep voice took over:

What God hath put together, let no man put asunder. Don't let no woman other than your to-be-wife tickle your fancy.

I looked over at Buddy, my big brother of a cousin. I caught his eye, and he twitched his ears like a puppy's, something he'd taught me to do.

Don't pick up the telephone and call your father.

With everyone else I looked at Uncle Boy-Boy beaming.

No offense to Dr. Hightower, but please don't call your father. Neither your mother. You are a team now. Hold on to each other.

Andrea looked like she'd stepped out of a pre-Raphaelite painting, daisies garlanding her hair. In the sanctuary, Reverend White's voice echoed from the rafters.

When gray skies open up and fill up your cup, turn to God. If you keep Jesus at the head of your companionship, you will never lose this sacredness.

As I stood there, my stomach rumbled, empty as a washed pot. I hoped no one heard, although as clear as “Wonderful” I could hear Zenobia fussing at Aunt Ola Ray the night before at the wedding dinner that Zenobia had catered at her house.

“Somebody gonna have to get up off some money,” Zenobia had said, sitting in her blue brocade Louis-the-umpteenth chair. “Colored folks need to learn etiquette. The bride's people supposed to pay for the whole show. Doctors and dentists on both sides, Buddy's and Andrea's. Somebody need to show Miss Zenobia some appreciation.”

“Now, Zenobia, don't get so out of sorts,” Aunt Ola Ray had said.

“I'm not sick. I'm mad.” Zenobia wanted money. Uncle Boy-Boy grumbled as he left to go get the greenbacks she wanted to see slapping her palm.

Reverend White's stentorian voice reaching to the rafters kept pulling my thoughts back to the church.

Don't hug your mother. Don't call your other counselors. When gray skies open up and fall upon your cap, turn to the counselor above all.

I'd worn my own hair but let Earleatha straighten it to a fare-thee-well and pull it back into a chignon, my gift that felt like a brick on my neck. I thought of Allwood. If he had come, would he have worn those combat boots?

At the wedding dinner Zenobia cornered me. I had gone outside on her front porch with Buddy and his old friends, Herbie and Phillip, who were holding:
Man, who's got the weed. . . . I ain't holding nothing but my pride. . . . And your dick forever, man. . . . Aw, man, you walk around with a joint in your wallet. . . . Don't hold out on us, not at a moment like this. . . . Yeah, I need to be high to be here.
Flicking ashes into Zenobia's thigh-high blue vase, the one she put out in front so we could find her house whenever she moved, we got high as kites. I went back in. Zenobia sat down and started on me, about as high off her J&B
as I was off my stuff.

“Now see, if your father was here, wouldn't be no running out of here and paying for her share. Her folks have money. Jimmy would have called up the doctor proper and said it real nice, now, but he would've said it.”

Said what? What would my father have said, the great absentee? Would people talk about me like this if I up and left?
The great Geniece, we could always count on little Niecy when we couldn't see shit from shinola.
Even high as a kite, I didn't hold illusions about my father. Gone is gone.

“Zenobia, whatever you say, I'm going to attribute it to the occasion, the scotch, and your hard work in laying out this magnificent dinner.”

Reverend White's voice boomed through, “You are a team, hold on to each other,”
but Zenobia's hand on my arm dragged me out of the wedding. Our pressed skins looked like vanilla fudge and dark chocolate fudge. She squeezed my arm that night before the wedding as if she thought I was about to pull away, holding me between her plump fingers the way I'd hold a chicken leg to bite into the juiciest part.

“You know your father had to leave.”

“Oh yeah, Zenobia. White folks ran him out of Oakland. Out of California on a rail, right?” I started to laugh. She tightened her grip.

“He had to leave once your mother died. He did everything that a man was expected to do for a woman.”

Reverend White's voice pulled me into the present, into the room full of people in fancy dresses and suits: “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave . . .” But Zenobia's voice with its cigarette rasp held my head as tight as her grip on my arm. It held me at the dinner as tightly as Reverend White's held me in the church.

“Jimmy Hightower was a dutiful, faithful, attentive husband. And father,” she said.

I saw Buddy grinning at Andrea. I had tears in my eyes.
Dammit, was I crying?

“My big brother worked hard, he brought his money home, he remembered all the special occasions, the birthdays.”
Shut up, Zenobia.

Standing in the church, feeling my satiny underwear and slip—my present from Aunt Ola—I glanced over pews until I found the back of Zenobia's head. She always wore her hair up to show her wispy-like-white-folks nape. I'd left her side at the dinner to refill my plate, but Zenobia was tenacious. She clutched me by the arm.

“When your poor mother got sick and died, he lost the will to live.”

The reverend was going on like he was in church, which we were, but it wasn't Sunday. It was a wedding, for heaven's sake: “Lean not on thine own understanding.”

Zenobia looked at me as if she were seeing one of my baby pictures. “You looked so much like her, even as a baby. Your mother was so precious to him that when she died he couldn't bear to look at you.”

I knew I looked like my mother's side of the family, but Zenobia, tipsy with the wedding hullabaloo, was exaggerating—a family trait, lying for emphasis, no malice intended. Reverend White's voice cut through: “You are held to fulfill the perfect circle of trust.”
I tried to imagine a perfect circle of trust. The wedding ring symbolized a perfect circle of trust. Was the family the perfect circle all gathered around the new couple? The family, blood tight and hungry for the big meal, the cake, the festivities, partying, the
Hey man, I ain't seen you since way back.
The oak pews were a family tree all decked out in satin and silk and Sunday-go-to-meeting. I wanted to rest against Zenobia's neck and breathe some of her exactitude.

“The way that man left, he had to. Jimmy would have wasted into a heap of a man. Working on the waterfront, pulling down that long green, unloading all kinds of stuff. Shipments of toilet paper. Can you see that, a ship full of toilet paper? But they always called him in when they had a shipment for the zoo. Your father loved him some animals. That's why he loved the track. The horses.”

She let go of my hand, and smiled as she talked. But it was a smile for something in her. “You know, if somebody had ever helped him the way he helped us, he would have been a vegetarian.” She was strong and drunk, all over the place.

“Veterinarian, Zenobia?” She looked at me like I had slapped her.

“You never did call me Aunt, did you, Niecy?” I never had. “They get a shipment for Fleischacker Zoo, they call up Jimmy Hightower.” Fleischacker came out of Zenobia's throat sounding like fly-swacker instead of fly-shacker.

“They said your father and the other men tried, for hours, to get this one elephant off the ship. It was pregnant.” Zenobia got up and demonstrated. “A pregnant elephant in a corral and some longshoremen trying to lift her up from the ship to the truck. They tried everything and they almost made it.”

“Were you there, Zenobia? How did you hear about it?”

“It was payday and your father called me to meet him in Frisco and get my money he owed me. That's the way he was; he owed you, he paid you, right out his check. Ain't no thief up in this family.”

Reverend White clutched the microphone at the pulpit with a flourish befitting a minister of his long standing and spoke with finality: “If you keep Jesus at the head of your companionship you will never lose this sacredness.”

Zenobia's voice deepened. “The men finally got the elephant up off the ship. But the poor thing was just too big to reach the dock. I think it was the corral or a railing on the corral.” She looked like she was about to drift right into the past.

“Zenobia, what happened?”

“They couldn't hold on to her. The railing broke and the corral dropped. The elephant fell into the harbor. The whole thing sank. If you could see the look on his face. Sadder than a saint.”

No one had told me this one.

“I worried if he had to bear any more. Next thing Jimmy's gone. That's all.”

“I wish he was here,” I said.

“You will never be Andrea or Corliss. And you can't strut Black Power down the aisle. Leave it alone.”

There it was again: Stay in my place, dark girl. “Leave what alone? Black Power, drunk Auntie?”

She grabbed my shoulder. “I'm not that drunk. Be who you is cuz you ain't who you isn't. We all have our limits. Our natural limits.”

“Unnatural limits, I'd say.”

“No, no, no.” Her painted talons dug into my bare arm. “How you born is God's way of setting limits. You think you'd carry on this way if you weren't that dark-skinned baby, so dark you shocked everybody?”

Parents are supposed to nurture their children, not the old drunk auntie. Zenobia let go of my arm and snarled. “You just like me. Too dark, too light. Same difference. I came in high yellow calling my own tune. It's why I never married. No man got to rule over me because he worshipped my skin color. Nothing you do surprises me, Niecy. Not Black Power. Not nothing.”

Zenobia sat down with an inexorable cross of her legs, like she might sit forever. “You not walking this aisle. You have a whole world else to go.”

Be who you is cuz you ain't who you isn't.

It was a license to push away from it all. My license. Drunk Auntie gave it to me.

I
went to have my natural shaped at Original Bros. Hairstyling Salon on San Pablo Ave. The young barber, with his sculpted beard and Afro, kept to the task, commenting on my hair just above a whisper:

you need to come every week to keep your fro up

There were brothers in the shop who had googobs of hair. I knew they weren't coming every week. Barbershop orators, they held forth. Ladies, cool and silent, flipped through
EBONY
and
Jet
.

your hair grows fast so you know you have to keep it trimmed

Someone asked a loud-talking brother in army green fatigues if he had gotten his clothes at a thrift shop. “This is what I wore in 'nam, before they dishonorably discharged me,” he said.

“Yeah, but you ain't in 'nam. You in Oakland, bro,” someone said.

“'Nam. People need to look this in the face. Yeah,” he said.

“Mack,” someone said, “I catch it on the box.”

“TV! White folk world,” he said, sucking his teeth.

keep it neat keep it trimmed

“So what's the real deal, Mack?” someone said.

They looked at him scornfully. His hair was unkempt, and he didn't have that Grove Street Marxist rhetoric down.

“I wore this for three months in 'nam, didn't bathe or shave, rinsed my teeth with water from a fucking stream.”

One of the women customers frowned and flipped even faster through
EBONY
. He noticed.

“That's the way it was, sweetheart.”

“You ain't hitting on nothing,” one man said. “Sound like
Hogan's Heroes
to me.” Everyone cracked up, even the
EBONY
reader. My barber kept talking low:

you got that African bump back here, your hair would look good real short

The vet spoke. “How many brothers you know coming back in boxes?”

People started murmuring: “Alphonse . . .” “Terence . . .” “Yeah, man, Larry ran the 440. . . .” “Couldn't outrun the 'cong, could he?”

“That's just it. Splibs being put on the front lines. Only they ain't getting shot by the 'cong. They getting it right in the back from white paddies from Georgia and Texas.”

“Aw, man, that's ridiculous,” a brother in a front chair said.

Another said, “Do the Vietnamese got prostitutes with razor blades in their pussies only for brothers? Like in Germany in World War II when they said we had tails.”

even if you don't get a cut, keep your line together

The vet lowered his voice. People paid more attention once he lowered his voice.

“It's different, I'm telling you. We got more in common with the yellow man than your so-called fellow white Americans.”

He looked around and picked up a coffee cup.

“It's all different and we can't even see it. With our eyes wide open. Man, Dow Chemical makes this stuff—polystyrene. This shit you drinking from makes napalm stick to the skin when the bomb explodes. 'Nam's strictly business for Dow. This shit ain't about no democracy. Napalm is some terrifying shit.”

His voice got loud. “Man, going in there was terrifying. Would you like your baby sister roasted alive? To make a big corporation bigger? Fuck that. Not with God as my witness. Uncle Sam gave me a dishonorable discharge. Shit, give me another one. Hit me two times. Hit me three times.”

keep the shape that's what you want

My barber raised his voice and directly addressed the vet. “That's why your broke self needs a j-o-b.”

“Wake up, wake the fuck up,” the vet said, easing in the front chair. For the next twenty minutes I looked at the floor watching his black tufts build in piles, then hills, then rows of hills, until it all became a landscape of hair.

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

T
he Original Bros. barbershop and Earleatha's beauty shop were two of a kind. Because my hair grew so fast and I was used to Goosey or Earleatha doing it, I found having a natural took just as much time as a perm or press. But it was a black halo of flowers that had burst open atop my head after a long freezing winter. It stopped traffic and I loved that.