Jazz

Sth, I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too. He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deep down, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going. When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and to cut her dead face they threw her to the floor and out of the church. She ran, then, through all that snow, and when she got back to her apartment she took the birds from their cages and set them out the windows to freeze or fly, including the parrot that said, “I love you.”

Part of why they loved it was the specter they left behind. The slumped spines of the veterans of the 27th Battalion betrayed by the commander for whom they had fought like lunatics. The eyes of thousands, stupefied with disgust at having been imported by Mr. Armour, Mr. Swift, Mr. Montgomery Ward to break strikes then dismissed for having done so. The broken shoes of two thousand Galveston longshoremen that Mr. Mallory would never pay fifty cents an hour like the white ones. The praying palms, the raspy breathing, the quiet children of the ones who had escaped from Springfield Ohio, Springfield Indiana, Greensburg Indiana, Wilmington Delaware, New Orleans Louisiana, after raving whites had foamed all over the lanes and yards at home.

So why is it on Thursday that the men look satisfied? Perhaps it’s the artificial rhythm of the week—perhaps there is something so phony about the seven-day cycle the body pays no attention to it, preferring triplets, duets, quartets, anything but a cycle of seven that has to be broken into human parts and the break comes on Thursday. Irresistible. The outrageous expectations and inflexible demands of the weekend are null on Thursday. People look forward to weekends for connections, revisions and separations even though many of these activities are accompanied by bruises and even a spot of blood, for excitement runs high on Friday or Saturday.

But for satisfaction pure and deep, for balance and pleasure and comfort, Thursday can’t be beat.

The brothers turn up the wattage of their smiles. The right record is on the turntable now; [Dorcas] can hear its preparatory hiss as the needle slides through its first groove. The brothers smiles brilliantly; one leans a fraction of an inch toward the other and, never losing eye contact with Dorcas, whispers something. […] Then, just as the music, slow and smoky, loads up the air, his smile bright as ever, he wrinkles his nose and turns away.

Dorcas has been acknowledged, appraised and dismissed in the time it takes for a needle to find its opening groove. The stomach jump of possible love is nothing compared to the ice flows that block upper veins now. The body she inhabits is unworthy. […]

So by the time Joe Trace whispered to her through the crack of a closing door her life had become almost unbearable.

Everyone needs a pile of newspapers: to peel potatoes on, serve bathroom needs, wrap garbage. But not like Alice Manfred. She must have read them over and over else why would she keep them? And if she read anything in the newspaper twice she knew too little about too much. If you have secrets you want kept or want to figure out those other people have, a newspaper can turn your mind. The best thing to find out what’s going on is to watch how people maneuver themselves in the streets […]

But Alice Manfred wasn’t the kind to give herself reasons to be in the streets. […] If she had come out more often, sat on the stoop or gossiped in front of the beauty shop, she would have known more than what the paper said she might have known what was happening under her nose.

What did she see, young girl like that, barely out of high school, with unbraided hair, lip rouge for the first time and high-heeled shoes? And also what did he? A young me with high-yellow skin instead of black? A young me with long wave hair instead of short? Or a not me at all. A me he was loving in Virginia because that girl Dorcas wasn’t around there anywhere. Was that it? […] Is that what happened? Standing in the cane, he was trying to catch a girl he was yet to see, but his heart knew all about, and me, holding on to him but wishing he was the golden boy I never saw either. Which means from the very beginning I was a substitute and so was he.

Who lay there asleep in that coffin? Who posed there awake in the photograph? The scheming bitch who had not considered Violet’s feelings one tiniest bit, who came into her life, took what she wanted and damn the consequences? Or Mama’s dumpling girl? Was she the woman who took the man, or the daughter who fled her womb? Washed away on a tide of soap, salt and castor oil. Terrified, perhaps, of so violent a home. Unaware that, had it failed, had she braved mammy-made poisons and mammy’s urgent fists, she could have had the best dressed hair in the city.

“Oh shoot! Where the grown people? Is it us?”

“Oh, Mama.” Alice Manfred blurted it out and then covered her mouth.

Violet had the same thought: Mama. Mama? Is this where you got to and couldn't do it no more? The place of shade without trees where you know you are not and never again will be loved by anybody who can choose to do it? Where everything is over about the talking? They looked away from each other then. The silence went on and on until Alice Manfred said, “Give me that coat. I can’t look at that lining another minute.”

I tracked my mother in Virginia and it led me right to her, and I tracked Dorcas from borough to borough. I didn't even have to work at it. Didn't even have to think. Something else takes over when the track begins to talk to you, give out its signs so strong you hardly have to look […] If the trail speaks, no matter what’s in the way, you can find yourself in a crowded room aiming a bullet at her heart, never mind it’s the heart you can't live without […]

I wasn't looking for the trail. It was looking for me and when it started talking at first I couldn’t hear it. I was rambling, just rambling all through the city. I had the gun but it was not the gun—it was my hand I wanted to touch you with.

What was I thinking of? How could I have imagined him so poorly? Not notice the hurt that was not linked to the color of his skin, or the blood that beat beneath it. But to some other thing that longed for authenticity, for a right to be in this place, effortlessly without needing to acquire a false face, a laughless grin, a talking posture. I have been careless and stupid and it infuriates me to discover (again) how unreliable I am.

Had she run away, escaped? Or had she been overtaken by smoke, fire, panic, helplessness? […] Immediately Joe fell to his hands and knees, whispering: “Is it you? Just say it. Say anything.” Someone near him was breathing. Turning around he examined the place he had just exited. Every movement and leaf shift seemed to be her. “Give me a sign, then you don’t have to say nothing. Let me see your hand. Just stick it out someplace and I’ll go; I promise. A sign.” He begged, pleaded for her hand until the light grew even smaller. “You my mother?” Yes. No. Both. Either. But not this nothing.

Although it was a private place, with an opening closed to the public, once inside you could do what you pleased: disrupt things, rummage, touch and move. Change it all to a way it was never meant to be. The color of the stone walls had changed from gold to fishkill blue by the time he left. [Joe] had seen what there was. A green dress. A rocking chair without an arm. A circle of stones for cooking. […] Also. Also, a pair of man’s trousers with buttons of bone. Carefully folded, a silk shirt, faded pale and creamy—except at the seams. There, both thread and fabric were fresh and sunny yellow.

But where is she?

They agree on everything above the waist and below: muscle, tendon, bone joint and marrow cooperate. And if the dancers hesitate, have a moment of doubt, the music will solve and dissolve any question.

Dorcas is happy. Happier than she has ever been any time. No white strands grow in her partner’s mustache. He is up and coming. Hawk-eyed, tireless and a little cruel. He has never given her a present or even thought about it. Sometimes he is where he says he will be; sometimes not. Other women want him—badly—and he has been selective. What they want and the prize it is his to give is his savvy self. What could a pair of silk stockings be compared to him? No contest. Dorcas is lucky. Knows it. And is as happy as she has ever been any time.

I want to sleep, but it is clear now. So clear the dark bowl the pile of oranges. Just oranges. Bright. Listen. I don’t know who is that woman singing but I know the words by heart.

The way she said it. Not like the ‘me’ was some tough somebody, or somebody she had put together for show. But like, like somebody she favored and could count on. A secret somebody you didn’t have to feel sorry for or have to fight for. Somebody who wouldn’t have to steal a ring to get back at white people and then lie and say it was a present from them. I wanted the ring back not just because my mother asks me have I found it yet. It’s beautiful. But although it belongs to me, it’s not mine. I love it, but there’s a trick in it and I have to agree to the trick to say it’s mine. Reminds me of the tricky blonde kid living inside Mrs. Trace’s head. A present taken from white folks, given to me when I was too young to say No thank you.

Somebody in the house across the alley put a record on and the music floated into us through the open window. Mr. Trace moved his head to the rhythm and his wife snapped her fingers in time. She did a little step in front of him and he smiled. By and by they were dancing. Funny, like old people do, and I laughed for real. Not because of how funny they looked. Something in it made me feel I shouldn’t be there. Shouldn't be looking at them doing that.

[…] When they finished and I asked for my sweater, Mrs. Trace said, ‘Come back anytime. I want to do your hair for you anyway. Free. Your ends need clipping.’

Mr. Trace sat down and stretched. ‘This place needs birds.’

So I missed it altogether. I was sure one would kill the other. I waited for it so I could describe it. I was so sure it would happen. That the past was an abused record with no choice but to repeat itself at the crack and no power on earth could lift the arm that held the needle. I was so sure, and they danced and walked all over me. Busy, they were, busy being original, complicated, changeable—human, I guess you’d say, while I was the predictable one, confused in my solitude into arrogance, thinking my space, my view, was the only one that was or that mattered. I got so aroused while meddling, well finger-shaping, I overreached and missed the obvious.

But I can’t say that aloud; I can’t tell anyone that I have been waiting for this all my life and that being chosen to wait is the reason I can. If I were able I’d say it. Say make me, remake me. You are free to do it and I am free to let you because look, look. Look where your hands are. Now.