George and Clarissa’s House, Chicago, 1912
After falling down a studio canyon all day, Aidan’s muscles throbbed and his stomach hollered to beat the band. He stumbled over George’s mail and dry-cleaning receipts stacked in the vestibule. The prince gripped his arm and broke the fall. Iris got the papers in order while Akhtar ushered everyone to the mysterious meal she’d been making for hours, days actually. The delicious aroma of spices and herbs was familiar, but Aidan only recognized one dish he’d eaten on the prince’s train car. The table looked like a tapestry that should hang in a museum.
“In my country we do not have the same custom of surnames as you do here,” the prince explained to Clarissa.
“Oh dear. I am ignorant of your ways.” She flushed. “I don’t want to be rude, sir.”
“Mokhalafat.” Akhtar pointed to plates of fresh herbs, flatbreads, and white cheese and yogurt. “Khoresht sabsi.” She had thrown kidney beans, green onions, dried limes, and lamb into a pot with all sorts of herbs, spinach, and parsley, and then served it on top of rice. “Tah-digh … Iris.”
“The sweet bottom of the rice pot is for Iris,” the prince translated.
Akhtar brought out skewers of meat for each plate. “Kabab koobideh.”
“That is good.” Aidan had taken a bite in the kitchen—beef ground up with onion and fragrant herbs.
“Everybody help yourself. That’s how they do in Persia.” George filled his plate.
The dinner party was in the dining room, despite the early winter chill. George was burning a fortune, heating every room in the house to impress his guests, business associates Dr. Harris, Mr. Powell, and their wives, women from Clarissa’s club, one a doctor her ownself. They were very fair-skinned colored people who exchanged nervous looks over the food. George presided at the head of the table near his colleagues. Clarissa sat at the opposite end. Saeed, the prince, Farah, Akhtar, and Abbaseh sat close to her. Redwood and Aidan were in the middle.
Akhtar poured Aidan pomegranate juice, and George lifted a glass of Persian wine. “To Miz Akhtar’s fine food.” Everyone drank to the cook, who blushed. George raised his glass to the women. “You ladies look good enough to eat too.”
Iris was the only one to giggle at this. She also wore a fancy dress and lurked in the hallway, listening in on the grown-ups, too old to be in bed and yet too young to be at this table, according to Clarissa. Aidan would’ve had her sit next to him.
“You’ve traveled all over, sir,” Clarissa said when the meal was pleasantly underway. “I’m glad you and your family stopped in Chicago before going home.”
“Abbaseh’s English is very good now. She can converse with you.” He turned to his third wife, the musician, poetess, and his boldest companion. “Speak.”
Everyone stopped eating to look at her. Embarrassed, she picked at her vegetables.
“Won’t you say something?” Clarissa said sweetly.
After a moment Abbaseh spoke with only the faintest Farsi accent. “Did you know my name means lioness?”
“It suits you,” Aidan said as Redwood smiled.
“Tell us about your moving picture project.” Abbaseh turned to Redwood.
“Iris is helping us write a scenario,” Redwood replied.
“Don’t get her started on that.” George stuffed lamb and kidney beans in his mouth.
“Poetry’s good for the spirit,” Mrs. Powell said. “We can stand tall with poetry in us.”
“A motion picture is quite an undertaking for a colored woman,” Dr. Harris said.
“Hope is always a guest at our table,” Clarissa said. “We have high hopes for the colored woman.”
Dr. Harris scrunched up his mouth and nodded politely.
The prince nibbled olives. “Yes, this is a young nation.”
“And a flawed one,” Mr. Powell said.
“But with great potential,” the prince said quickly.
“Redwood need to do a picture to uplift the white race.” George chewed a piece of flatbread. “She need to take all that talent and power and do something worthwhile! They burned down Reginald Jones’s grocery and the colored bank standing next to it.”
“I saw it.” Aidan was seeing it again. “That Chinese laundry’s gone too.” He closed his eyes on images he’d rather not conjure up and focused on speaking the prince’s name right. “Anoushiravan and I were there.”
“Seeing it, that’s nothing.” George waved his hand at Aidan. His voice hardened. “Think of burning alive, your breath on fire and your heart sizzling away.”
Aidan shuddered.
“George, please, we’re eating,” Clarissa said.
“Think of colored lives ruined. Hardworking people losing everything they got.”
“It was a bitter sight.” The prince drank down his wine.
“Something like that is happening to a colored business every time you turn ’round.” George poured more wine.
“I’ve made a wonderful dessert.” Clarissa smiled at everyone.
“I know ’bout losing everything you got,” Aidan said, “the old times, the future, just living on the run, moment to moment.”
George nodded. “Exactly, but you’d think the colored man had nothing better to do than go see my sister cut the fool in—”
“It’s not the same ole story they make us do,” Redwood said.
Aidan squeezed her hand under the table. “We goin’ make a picture nobody seen yet.”
“Wonderful,” Clarissa and the clubwomen said as a chorus.
“I gave some money,” Mrs. Harris said.
“I was against it.” Dr. Harris chuckled. “Bessie is always doing good deeds behind my back.”
Saeed turned to Dr. Harris’s skeptical face. “I play a pirate and Aidan is a wise—”
“Did he graduate from the coon academy too?” George sneered. “Or do Injuns get their own schooling?”
“George!” Clarissa was so flustered she couldn’t say anything more.
“What, my dear?” George’s lips were drawn in a tight smile.
In the awkward silence, Farah worried over the teapot. Aidan picked at the last of his Kabab koobideh, but his hands were shaking so, he dropped the fork into saffron rice. He stood up slowly, feeling like a wounded bear, cornered into fighting.
Redwood almost threw her knife at George but stabbed a fat fig instead. “Don’t make fun of who I am, Brother, of who I try to be, of the people I love.” Everybody looked uncomfortable ’cept for George. He wanted this fight. “I know you and what you do. Even so, I stand by you.” Redwood laced her fingers through Aidan’s trembling ones. George smacked a fly buzzing near his plate. Redwood jumped at the impact. “Don’t push me away.”
Aidan looked her in the eye. “You stay and finish. The food is delicious. The company is grand, but I’m feeling poorly. If you ladies will excuse me.”
Redwood started to protest, but Abbaseh grabbed her other hand. Aidan slipped away into the hallway, shaking with rage.
Iris snagged him and whispered, “You can’t pay Brother no mind.”
Aidan whispered as well. “When he jab at Redwood, I could just go wild.”
“But you won’t.” She sure had faith in him.
In the dining room as Farah poured tea, Abbaseh talked again. “My husband will not give money for moving pictures, but I give this to you.” She offered a ring to Redwood. Precious stones sparkled against gold. Iris stifled a squeal. Aidan fell on his butt. Farah and Akhtar murmured in Farsi. They seemed as shocked as everyone else.
Redwood gently folded Abbaseh’s hands over the ring. “I can’t take your ring.”
“Of course you can,” the prince said. “It’s hers to give. Isn’t this a free nation?”
“Indeed it is.” Clarissa set down her napkin and stood up. All the men stood quickly. She headed for the kitchen. “I need your help, George.”
“In the kitchen?” George asked. “Why you send that gal home early if you need help?” She did not reply. He muttered something and after a moment followed behind her. The men sat back down.
“Come on.” Iris dragged Aidan down the hallway to the kitchen door. “Don’t want to miss this.” She crouched to the side in dim shadows and peered through a crack.
“You listen in on everything, don’t you?” Aidan hissed.
Iris put a finger to her lips, then his.
In the kitchen, George paced. “This is my house. I’ll say what I want.”
Clarissa stood over a large chocolate confection, holding a knife. “The moving picture is the medicine I need to help your sister … be a full woman.”
Aidan winced and hung his head.
George sighed. “Since when you going to a conjure woman?”
Aidan looked over to Iris, who shrugged at this.
George wagged a finger at Clarissa. “You been throwing my money away on that Mambo Dupree?”
“We have to believe in Redwood,” Clarissa said. “With money—”
“Sis live in a dreamworld. I love her, but—”
“Are you going to let that Persian prince outdo you in your own country?” She sliced through the cake. “Hand me my mother’s silver platter.”
“What?” George screwed up his face.
“It’s on the third shelf.” Clarissa pointed.
“He ain’t no prince. He’s a rug merchant. Iris made that up.” George stood on a stool.
Clarissa counted the slices. “They’ve raised most of the money.”
George retrieved a brightly colored bundle from the top of the cupboard. “Here. Redwood and Aidan make more money than me.”
“I know that’s a lie.” Clarissa unwrapped the platter and laid the chocolate pieces on it. “Redwood is ambitious, like you, and Mr. Wildfire believes in her.”
“He laying up in her bed, ain’t he?” George licked chocolate from her finger. “Hoodooed like the rest of ’em.”
“Don’t be so crude. He has his own magic too.” She wiped George’s mouth with a cloth. “People don’t know it’s a scandal unless we tell them.”
“Who don’t know that cracker be up in her bed?”
“I deny vicious gossip.” Clarissa kissed the chocolate on George’s lips. “Besides, Mr. Wildfire’s an Indian.”
“He wasn’t Indian when we was growing up. You always take his side.”
“I do not. You’re just unreasonable.” Clarissa cleaned the knife.
“Tribes down home in Georgia—Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole—owned us, lived off our sweat, just like white folk. All them Indians claim when God made the races, when he cooked them up from fine clay, the black man came out burnt and foolish and good for nothing but slaving.”
Iris stared at Aidan with wounded eyes.
“Mr. Wildfire doesn’t believe such nonsense any more than you believe tales of pagan savages scalping innocent people!”
“Aidan Cooper was an Irish redneck when they raped my mama and hung her from a tree to burn.”
Iris’s fingers dug into Aidan’s flesh.
Clarissa’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Are we just the horrible things that happen to us? Is that all we are, George?” She wiped her eyes on the cloth from the platter. “Investing in a motion picture is better than fooling ignorant white folks out of their homes and charging poor Negroes five times what they can pay.”
George’s face fell. “Red tell you ’bout that?”
“What do you mean to do, George?” Clarissa picked up the platter and walked toward the dining room. “Your sister needs a loan from you, that’s all.”
George followed her. “I can’t take it when you both gang up on me.”
“So say yes.”
In a cold attic room under the eaves, Aidan tucked Iris into warm blankets.
She pulled him onto the bed. “Three girls jumped me on the way home.”
“What you do?”
“’Stead of whipping them good, I ran all the way to the prince’s railroad car.”
“Now, you shouldn’t go bothering them…”
“Miz Abbaseh say I can come anytime. We talk about everything.”
“I didn’t know she spoke English till tonight.”
“Miz Abbaseh’s teaching me how to hide in plain sight.”
“That’s a good trick.” He kissed her forehead. “You go to sleep now.”
“I’m not one bit tired.” Iris clutched him. “I want a story. Like when I was little.”
“I thought you was too old, too sophisticated, for Georgia tales.”
“Not if it’s good.” She tugged his sleeve. “You know lots of good stories.”
“Didn’t sleep much and I’ve been scalping white folk all day. I’m tired, honey bun.”
She put her head in his lap. “It’s not you. Brother George just don’t like white folks.”
“Good reason not to.”
“But you ain’t like—”
“Good sense not to trust a stranger right off. Color of the skin tell you a lot.”
“Don’t tell you nothing for certain. Look at you.”
Aidan sagged. “If you look too hard, you might not like what you see.”
Iris sat up, startled. “What you goin’ do?” She threw her arms ’round his neck. “Take me with you.” She knew what he was thinking before he did. “Please don’t go off and leave me here. Aunt Clarissa and Brother George want to turn me away from myself.”
Aidan pulled her off his chest and looked into her eyes. “I don’t know where I’m going just yet, but when I get somewhere, I’ll come back for you.”
“And Redwood too?”
Aidan sputtered. His eyes darted ’round his head.
“Seminole farmer in the motion picture was her idea. She figured you wouldn’t argue if you thought it was my idea.”
“What you say?”
“You can marry Sis if you can’t wait for me. I know you love her.”
Aidan stood up and shook his head.
“I was jealous at first. Where am I ever goin’ find someone who’ll love me just how I am? But I talked it over with Miz Abbaseh. She say, love is generous.”
“She’s right, but—”
“You can’t pull your own pain,” Iris said. “I ain’t a hoodoo yet, but Aunt Subie say a good conjurer should help lead people back to themselves when they be lost.” She sighed. “Redwood’s so worried you might just give up on her.”
“How you know that?” He hunched under the eaves.
“Iris got her nose in everything.” Redwood stood behind Aidan with a candle. He would have jumped at her coming out of nowhere like that if he wasn’t so weary. “She be chasing through dark nights snooping behind me.”
“You won’t tell me nothing.” Iris tried to pout. “So I have to find out for myself.”
Downstairs Aidan shivered by the drafty window seat. He packed clothes and books in his battered traveling bag. Too sad for words, he set a row of wooden aeroplanes on the bed and then watched Redwood swaying in the breeze.
“Say something. Don’t just burn a hole in my skin, staring,” she said.
Aidan shrugged and wrapped his banjo in an old blanket.
“You ain’t goin’ take the case I give you?” She fingered her mama’s music box. “More than half this money is yours.”
“That money is for the moving picture.” His eyes swept the room. “George is right.”
“George is an ornery cuss. It runs in the family. He takes a mountain of patience.”
“I’m a coward,” Aidan said simply. “Don’t argue.”
Redwood bit her lip, hard.
“I been meaning to give Iris this.” He handed her Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self by Pauline Hopkins. “That was a good story.”
She set the book on her desk. “Nicolai thinks we can start on the film next week, after Thanksgiving for sure.”
“That’s good news.” Aidan gathered his things.
“Money might run out ’fore we’re done.”
“I suspect we’ll just keep on going.” He trudged to the door. “I think maybe Walter will let me stay with him, while we do the picture.”
“He’s a good friend to you.”
“What you thinking?” Aidan said just out the door. “Talk to me.”
“I want to tell you don’t go. I want to hold you here. But I love you too much.”
Aidan wanted to shout, come with me. “The aeroplane with the lady pilot is for Iris.” He headed over the soft Persian carpet and out the front door.
The moon was a sliver on the horizon. Aidan pressed his lips together against the snowy air. He put one foot in front of another, his mind so blank he didn’t notice which direction he headed till twenty minutes from George’s house.
Even so far, he felt Redwood’s sad eyes stabbing at his back.