NAN MOVED TO Philadelphia in an exodus north from Albany, Georgia, in 1947. Followed cousins here who were prospering; Nan prospered as well working two jobs: one for the government where she sewed sleeves to army dress blues; the other for a dress shop in West Philadelphia where she made dresses and suits and blouses that the owner then claimed to have imported from France. Nan even embroidered the label, MIMI, that was affixed to the garments she whipped up. She was instructed to come and go through the back alley, to say that she was the girl should anybody ask. Drastically reduce the salability of the clothes she made if the customers knew they’d been created from concept to final hem by the colored. Nan acquiesced because she was paid handsomely for her talent, her complicity. Made almost as much there from six in the morning until noon on Saturday as she did working all week her nine to five for the government. Able to grow the savings account she kept at the post office to the point that her dream house was almost in reach: a brick-faced double-wide row home with a hedged-in garden and sit-down-a-spell-type porch on a shady broom-swept street. She’d see versions of that house every Saturday as she walked through West Philadelphia on her way to and from her second job. Prayed fervently for such a house; prayed too to fill the house with a husband’s loving arms in the main bedroom under the triple bay window that would surely attract the silver beams when the moon was full; prayed also for a child to play under her feet afternoons in the backyard while she hung clothes on the line. The times weren’t in her favor though because the section of West Philly where she wanted to buy was all white. But she was a young woman, not even twenty, her youth helping her to see possibilities over obstacles. Saw signs of the possibilities when she stopped one day in front of the store on the corner of Chestnut to wait for the bus in the shade, Sam’s Delicatessen where the canned goods in the front window were arranged in an equilateral triangle.
Nan was drawn inside the store by the contrasting aromas pushing through the screen door, the soft brown pumpernickel breads and mammoth dill pickles swimming in the barrel and the jug of fresh made lemonade conjured up no doubt by the colored help, Goldie she said her name was. Though Nan perceived immediately that Goldie was more than the help. Could tell by the way she propped herself on the stool behind the counter with her big legs crossed, sandals dangling from her pretty brown feet, toenails painted bright red, lips bright red too. Hair hard-pressed and pinned up in a French roll, slightly bored expression when Sam brushed past her to pull a box of Carolina Rice from the shelf above her head. The way she turned and looked out the window it was as if he worked for her and not the other way around, as if it was his job to satisfy her and keep her attention on this side of the storefront window. She did, though, pour the lemonade from the jug and handed the plastic cup to Nan as they waited for Sam to assemble Nan’s order: liverwurst, cheese, two tomatoes, half a loaf of Jewish rye, and a quarter pound of sweet butter.
“You work near?” she asked Nan as she wrote on a brown paper bag the prices of the items Nan had asked for.
“Do a little day’s work around the corner,” Nan said, lying per her boss’s instructions. “My main job though is at the Quarter Master, seamstress.”
“You got you a good job. They hiring?” Goldie asked throwing her voice in Sam’s direction. “I might be looking.”
“Not so much right about now,” Nan said as she looked at Goldie in a girl, are you crazy kind of way.
Goldie winked at Nan. “They’ll probably be hiring directly,” she said, “once they get another war started. That white man will keep something going, won’t he now? Son of a bitch.”
Sam let out an Ah shit, goddamn slicer, and then pounded the liverwurst he’d been cutting back into the chilled display case. “Goldie, I need you to get the guy out here about this got damn slicer. Got damn machine trying to take my goddamn thumb off.”
“Sure thing, Sam,” Goldie said, a yawn to her voice, then put the eraser end of the pencil to the figures she’d jotted on the brown paper bag and told Nan her lemonade was on the house. “Your whole order gonna be on the house in a minute if Sam don’t hurry up. You fixing to catch the D bus, right?”
“Sure ’nuff,” Nan said.
“Where abouts you live?”
“Downtown, Mole Street. Though I do love this part of Philadelphia. Want to buy in this part but it, you know, they wouldn’t, what I mean is, nothing selling right now, you know, to me.” She let her eyes go in Sam’s direction signaling to Goldie that she really couldn’t say what she wanted to say.
“Yeah well, you just hold on a little while longer,” Goldie said. “Change coming to this part of Philadelphia too. Hear tell a colored man looking to buy right around the corner, on Spruce. Hear tell the owner actually considering it. And you know all it takes is one of us. You know white folks gonna be like crabs trying to get out of a basket, stepping all on top of one another, underselling their own mamas to get the hell outta here. You know that white man ain’t letting no colored folk get but too close, not close in that way anyhow. Son of a bitch. Ain’t it so Sam.”
“You know what, Goldie, don’t talk to me,” Sam said as he cut orange cheese in thick slices with a mile-long serrated knife. “I’m trying to concentrate on what I’m doing, please. Plus I treat you too good to have to listen to your bullshit.”
“You get good too, baby,” she said. And Nan couldn’t believe she was hearing what she was hearing. She knew such relationships existed, but she’d never seen one up close. “Plus you used to could take a joke,” Goldie went on. “You not going crotchety on me, are you?”
Sam tore a sheet of wax paper from the roll, cursing under his breath as he did, wrapped the liverwurst, then the cheese, then the butter, and slammed them on the counter in front of Goldie. Goldie laughed. Then pointed out the window at a suited-down man standing in front of the store. “There he go. That’s the one trying to buy around here. Negro likely lost again. Once a week he end up outside there trying to get downtown. Came in here one day asking directions. At first I thought he was trying to ask me for a date. I told you ’bout him, didn’t I, Sam?” Sam didn’t answer as he threw things around in the display case to get to the tomatoes. “I said to him, ‘Baby, right now the man I got is more ’n enough man for me. Almost too much for me.’ I didn’t tell you that part, Sam, did I? Can’t have you ’round here getting no big head on me.”
Neena couldn’t believe Goldie was making this white man blush as his face turned as red as the tomatoes he dropped into a small-sized brown paper bag. “These are on the house today,” he said as he placed the bag on the counter. Placed it softly compared to how he’d slammed the meat down. Allowed the side of his arm to rub up against Goldie as he did. Then asked Nan if she wanted a piece of dry ice to keep her things fresh until she got where she was going. Nan barely heard him though. The heat building up in the store between Goldie and Sam made Nan desire some kindling of her own. Made her swallow hard to get rid of the saliva accumulating in her mouth as her attention turned to the man on the other side of the window and their eyes met through the window and he smiled at Nan and tipped his hat. He had the softest eyes she’d ever seen on a man, a sandy-toned complexion, a stevedore’s muscle-bound upper body that showed even through his suit jacket, a good-quality seersucker. Plus he had black silky straight hair, meant she’d be spared the torture of the pressing comb should they be blessed to have a girl. She chided herself for letting her thoughts skip across seams that hadn’t been attached. Even as she felt such a swoon in her stomach that she had to put her hand to the counter to steady herself. Here were two signs at once, that this neighborhood might be getting ready to change over, that the man looking to help the change along, fine man, was outside smiling at her.
“You courtin’?” Goldie asked her then. “’Cause that Negro look like he could use some direction in life.”
“Aw Goldie, you and the matchmaking. A real Cupid this one thinks she is,” Sam said as he squeezed the back of Goldie’s neck and she let out a little moan and bent her neck and said, “Right there, Sam, it’s stiff right there where your thumb is pressing, mnh, you really know how to do.”
Nan hurried into the bottom of her vinyl bag for her purse. Such a scene down home would mean a brick coming through the window with a stick of dynamite attached. Then Goldie said, “Uh oh, that Negro look like he getting away. He fixing to cross the street and I didn’t even finish totaling you. Let her pay next week, Sam.”
“Yeah, yeah, next Saturday’s fine.” Sam rushed his words as he ushered Nan to the door, then closed the door, locked it, and before Nan could turn around to thank him he’d flipped the door sign from the side that read COME IN, to the one with the clock that indicated BACK IN 30 MINUTES. Nan said glory be, to herself as she half ran across the street. Wanting to ponder the differences between the mixing of the races up here and down home. But she was on the other side of the street now and the man was tipping his hat again and asking her if the bus stopped there that would take him near to Fourth and Kater.
She looked at his left hand to confirm that the wedding band finger was clean of a circled imprint though he was wearing a pinky ring, a tarnished silver something. He seemed to sway as he stood there the way a drunk man would and she sighed, ready to release all expectations that he might be the one she’d been praying for as she listened to him explain that he’d gotten turned around. “Just finished my shift down on the waterfront where I been since before daybreak,” he said. “And my sugar must have gone too high, or too low, because my head started spinning and my mouth went dry, even my eyesight doubled up on me. Next thing I knew I was on the wrong bus though surely it must have been the right time because it led to this pleasure for me of beholding you. Alfred, Miss Lady, my name’s Alfred.”
Nan blushed as she told him her name. She was rarely complimented so. Her looks she knew were mild rather than impressive. She was short with a high waist and straight hips, had neither big legs nor a remarkable chest, small wary eyes, blunted nose, round face with no cheekbones showing. Though she did have a pretty mouth, thick and formed and looked like a heart opening up when she smiled. Now she reclaimed the hope that he could be her answered prayer. High sugar, that was his problem, not inebriation. She told him that to get to Fourth and Kater he needed to be stepping up on the same bus that was squealing to a stop where they stood. He extended his hand for Nan to go first though the steps turned into a sliding board on him as he followed her up and he ended up sprawled out right at the bus driver’s feet. The bus driver, a silver-haired fat white man, shook his head in disgust as gasps and then ripples of laughter moved through the bus from the front to the back.
“Well, somebody help the man. He’s got sugar diabetes for goodness sake,” Nan said as she leaned and tried to hoist him up from under his arms. The bus driver shifted the bus into a rough neutral and the sudden back and forth caused Nan to fall on top of Alfred; her mouth kissed the shoulder of his tan and bone seersucker jacket and left her heart-shaped lip print. A half dozen people got up then to help Nan. She dusted the front of her pale blue cotton dress and said to the driver that he was doing Satan’s bidding jerking the bus like that though she could scarcely be heard over the sounds of Alfred’s grunting as he was helped to standing. Nan guided Alfred through the bus, “high sugar,” she said feeling the need to defend him each time she caught the eye of a woman who looked like her in age and situation, feeling somewhat exalted right now because she was leading this good-looking, straight-haired man by the arm.
When they came to an open double seat Alfred said, “Beautiful ladies must go first,” though Nan insisted that he take the window. She was beginning to pick up the traces of alcohol hanging to his breath so she told him that the breeze might help his disorientation.
Alfred slid first into the seat and tried to keep his head up. He didn’t want to pass out on this bus. The part about him being diabetic was true enough, and he really had gotten to work before dawn, he was a hard worker. He was also pissy drunk right now, and embarrassed because drunkenness had not been his goal when he’d ordered a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser to wash down his stewed fish platter. Getting drunk was never his goal. A soothing buzz was all he was ever after. Just something to smooth out the choppy situations in his life that often had to do with a beautiful woman breaking his heart. Like the one he was trying to get to now on Kater Street. Signs were that she was running on him the way the last two had and he was determined to catch her in the act. The motion of the bus though lulled him to that state that passes back and forth between nausea and euphoria. He let his head have its way and it fell like a sack of rocks and twigs against Nan’s shoulder, thinking on the way into oblivion that this woman with the unremarkable features and stubby figure had the most pliant shoulder upon which he’d ever had the pleasure of passing out.
Nan thought a similar thing about the weight of his head as she gently slid his hat from his head so that the nice quality straw wouldn’t be crushed, thought how bearable the weight of his head was. Wanted to slow the pace of the bus that it seemed to her had never reached Fourth Street so quickly, though she did have enough time to pull a pen and a small tablet from her white patent leather purse. Wrote what a pleasure sharing the bus ride with him was, and to please call so that he could arrange to get his jacket to her so that she might clean the lipstick stain that happened when they fell. She signed her name and the telephone number of the store up the street from her apartment where most people on the block took their calls. She slipped the note into his lapel pocket, then touched the sleeve of his seersucker jacket to rouse him. He was dead to the world so she put her entire hand around as much of his arm as she could, his arm so thick and solid and warm, the thought of that arm holding her turned her insides to liquid. He sat all the way up then and immediately she missed the weight of his head against her shoulder. She put his hat in his lap, told him she was getting off here, the next stop was his.
Though Nan had left Alfred on the bus, he was with her constantly in her daydreams. Her daydreams were usually accompanied by her humming some worldly music; Johnny Hartmann singing “You Are Too Beautiful” seemed stuck in her head. Sometimes her daydreams expanded to include the daughter they would have, assuredly a pretty girl given Alfred’s good looks, a piano-player Nan thought, seeing the dresses with crinolines attached she’d make for the child’s recitals. And when Alfred wasn’t with her in her daydreams, he was present in her conversation as she chattered about the bus episode to her church lady friends, the women who sat at sewing machines on either side of her at the Quarter Master where they attached sleeves to the Dress Blues, her neighbors up and down Catherine Street, Goldie who’d she’d visit with every Saturday after she left her second job.
But after a month of not having heard from Alfred, Goldie told Nan to stop talking about him. Cautioned Nan that people might become envious seeing how happy the telling of the story made Nan, people might commence to wishing her hard luck.
It was a stormy Saturday and Nan doubled the length of her visit with Goldie to try to wait out the rain. Sam had gone in the back of the store to take his nap and Nan and Goldie ate egg salad sandwiches and sipped iced tea and Goldie asked Nan to describe the ring again that Alfred was wearing.
Nan smiled in spite of herself as she pictured Alfred’s strong-looking manly hands, imagined those hands tilting her face for him to kiss until Goldie’s voice pulled her back.
“The ring, Nan. Tell me again about the ring.”
“Oh, it was just a silver something, not at all garish—”
“Tarnished though, right. Didn’t you say it was tarnished?”
“Well, I did, but what—?”
“Was it tarnished to black or bluish, or did it have a hint of red around it.”
“Near as I can recollect it had a hint of red,” Nan said, face caught up in a worry frown over Goldie’s line of questioning.
“See, I don’t like that.”
“What? What you talking ’bout, Goldie?”
“The ring. I don’t like your description of that Negro’s pinky ring.”
Sam stuck his head in from the back room and told Goldie, “Don’t try to use the slicer. If anybody needed a cut something, come wake me.”
“Go count your money, Sam,” she said on a laugh. “I know when to call you.”
She turned her attention back to Nan and explained to Nan that when the metal’s worn against the body turn color, usually silver goes to red, it means somebody has put something on that person.
“Put something on him? You mean like roots.”
Goldie came from behind the counter and stood right in front of where Nan sat and adjusted Nan’s pearls that had latched around the collar of her polka-dot blouse. She talked right into Nan’s eyes as she did. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, baby. Somebody done already rooted your man. And whatever they put on him is fixing to work because his silver is turning red. Wasn’t you, was it? You didn’t fix him, did you?”
“Come on, Goldie, I don’t know nothing about working no roots. You know I’m in the church.”
“Well, in the church or outta the church, you still got to fight fire with fire. You got to work fast to counteract whatever somebody else is already doing. The first thing you got to do is get a strand or two of that Negro’s hair—”
“No way, Goldie, I don’t dabble in that mess. And if I did, I sure don’t know him good enough to be pulling on his hair.”
“Suit yourself then. But I guarantee you the most you gonna get from that Negro from here on out is a tipped hat, and a howdy do Miss Lady, if you even get that.”
“See Goldie, that’s where we differ. I believe that the Lord delivers the desires of the heart in His own time and His own way.”
“The Lord also helps those who help themselves. And the lady I used is from Virginia, and my mother used to say people from Virginia can cause you to crawl on your belly.”
“Why would I want someone to crawl on their belly?”
“That’s just an expression, Nan. You know, just to describe how potent—I’ll tell you how potent,” Goldie said as she walked to the window and looked out on the rain falling in slanted squares. “Sam and me started out the typical way, me doing days work, cooking and cleaning and ironing. Him showing up in the middle of the day when the wife and the kids were outta the house making no mistake about his intentions. I was young, about the age you are now. I denied him for the most part. Then Miss Eule who worked two doors down from me, would come and sit on the back steps and smoke her pipe when we took our break after hanging the wash on the line, told me how she handled her lady’s husband. Said her auntie from Virginia fixed him so good that his mind went blank to her. Said she became part of the woodwork to him and he left her ’lone from then on. So I told Miss Eule I didn’t know if I wanted to fade into the woodworks far as Sam was concerned, I wanted to be seen, but not seen as just some faceless body for him to take his pleasures with, shit, see me as a total woman same way you see your wife.
“I remember Miss Eule laughed so hard her pipe fell from between her teeth. I remember her digging her toe into the dirt below where we sat on the steps making a hole to bury her pipe ash. She told me I was young to the ways of the world, but give her a strand of my hair and his hair and two dollars as soon as I could come up with it and as much as possible put my bare feet inside of his shoes. Then she went to visit her aunt and came back with a special solution for me to mop down the floors with, gave me special bath crystals, gave me candles to light, I ’clare it wasn’t a month later before Sam started bringing me ladylike gifts, perfumes, a charm bracelet. Bought me a weekend in Atlantic City, then strutted himself over to Kentucky Avenue where I was staying as if he was colored himself. Came loaded down with stuffed animals and toy windmills and chocolate-covered cherries and saltwater taffies. Lord have mercy, Nan. You talking about gentle. That man more concerned with giving me pleasure than taking his own. Mnh, mnh, mnh. Treated me like I was the most precious specimen he’d ever beheld. Still do. He talk gruff, but it’s all for show, Lord have mercy.”
“So maybe he just felt it anyhow, maybe the roots didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
“I have wondered about that. Though I had my final convincing when Miss Eule gave me a special soap for washing the bedsheets where Sam and his wife slept. A week later that woman packed up her and her kids and said she was moving back to Brooklyn. Said she hated Philadelphia, hated working in the store, missed her own people too much. So what are the chances of such a thing happening unprovoked like that?”
She stopped talking then because Sam stuck his head in from the back. “You okay, Goldie?”
“Fine, Sam, thought you was taking a nap.”
“Can’t sleep. Close up for a half hour when it gets empty out there.”
“See what I’m talking ’bout. He can’t get comfortable if I ain’t close by.”
“And what about you, Goldie? You comfortable when he not near? Seem like they put something on you too.”
Goldie laughed as Nan gathered her things to leave. Nan could still hear her laugh when she crossed the street and saw the sign in the window turned to BACK IN 30 MINUTES.
Goldie’s musing on the power of a love potion wore Nan down. The circumstances helped. Alfred had not called and Nan’s preoccupation with the why not had ballooned so that she imagined him killed in his sleep by a leaky gas stove, or unable to move his neck after eating half-cooked pork. She dragged through her well-ordered days burdened with the weight of missing him as if they’d been attached for decades. She finally yielded when she spotted Alfred on Fourth Street where she’d gone for zippers and a new bobbin head and there was Alfred strolling down the street. Nan waved and he looked at her as if she was part of the blue and yellow of the summertime air. She cleared her throat then and called his name and when his eyes focused on her he asked, “Yes, Miss Lady? I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” She was too devastated to remind him about his fall up the bus steps, her lip print on his seersucker jacket, her shoulder that became his pillow.
“See they made his mind go blank,” Goldie insisted when Nan related the details of the encounter. And though Nan refused to go see the lady Goldie used herself because she was afraid of the devil and what the Lord might do to her for going to such a place, she did provide personal items for Goldie to take so that the lady could work with the essence of Nan, provided her hair brush, a handkerchief that she’d recently cried into, and her signature written three times in red.
Goldie returned with instructions and candles and powders. Told Nan how to sweep her house daily from front to back, gave her the contents to mix a solution for mopping her floors, a dime to wear against her ankle, and when Alfred still didn’t come around she told Nan that they were dealing with some strong mess that required a direct approach. Alfred needed to drink a special concoction, Nan had to be the one to get it down him.
They were sitting in the dining room of Nan’s two-bedroom apartment. Sam had gone to the dock to buy spices in bulk and he’d dropped Goldie off. Nan had just finished making dress pants for Sam that Goldie was giving him for his birthday. She was cleaning up the scraps of gray all-weather wool from around the sewing machine. She wished she’d treated Alfred the way she treated most everything else she’d ever wanted. Picture it, claim it in the name of the Lord and if it wasn’t delivered, then it wasn’t to be, just that simple. Wished now that she’d followed her mother’s approach about things: “Don’t start nothing, won’t be nothing,” her mother always said. But she’d started something for real, an obsession the likes of which she’d never experienced. She’d directed her own hand to paint the outcome she desired. Her desires, though, had spilled outside of the margins, bled on off the entire page, and sprouted hands and feet, a bear-sized body that she couldn’t see beyond, couldn’t think beyond; could barely breathe because of its hot, heavy presence in her face moving with her from side to side, up and back so there was no getting around it. Nothing to do but feed it. Feed it or watch it come after her with its big bear paws and tear the skin from her short cube of frame, crush her bones to the gristle, all the way to her soul that she didn’t even know who owned these days. Devil himself might own it by now. No sense in even thinking it preposterous what Goldie was suggesting. Goldie suggesting that Nan perch next to Alfred on a bar stool where the lights were low and his logic likely faltering. Goldie even producing the situation: the boyfriend of one of her cousins, who used to work as a stevedore before a hundred-pound can crushed his foot and he ended up losing the foot, had just settled his insurance case and was throwing himself a scotch and chitterlings birthday party at the bar on Bainbridge Street. “I know your Negro gonna be there, Nan.”
Nan protested that she’d never even been inside a beer garden. Wouldn’t know what to say or do or even think inside of one. Goldie told her she would go with her; she’d have to think of a nice-like lie to tell Sam to explain her leaving the house dressed up on a Saturday, but she would do it for Nan.
Nan had no choice but to relent. The bear-sized obsession stood in front of her with its thick immovability and dared her not to, then stroked her hair with its oversized claws as she thought about the dress she’d make from the red satin fabric she’d bought when she’d seen Alfred that first time. She’d give the dress a wide sash and a low open back to replicate a waist line that would also create the illusion of curved hips. She’d edge the hem of the dress with black lace and wear black silk stockings with seams up the back. She’d never worn seamed stockings before, black either, never went darker that Puff-of-Smoke though cinnamon was her main shade.
She put the cloudy-colored liquid concoction per Goldie’s instructions in an empty vanilla extract bottle, was supposed to add a single drop of her own sweat though she wasn’t sure whether her sweat went in the bottle or ran down the side. She hadn’t asked Goldie what made up the contents otherwise. She didn’t want to know. From minute to minute didn’t even believe this was her, Nan, good-raised southern Christian girl going to these lengths to get the man of her obsessions with whom to make the daughter she was desperate for.
But here she was in her red belted dress and black seamed stockings, her hair in loose longer curls and not the tiny ones rolled tight to her scalp that she usually wore. Here she was getting out of the Yellow Cab as Goldie pulled her toward the door marked LADY’S ENTRANCE on the side of the Bainbridge Street bar. Here she was dizzy from the low-hanging blue lights and the smell of whiskey and chicken and pork. The crowded room revolved on her as the drum beats from the live band thumped in her chest. The laughter was strong and sad and drifted in wafts like the steam rising from the bowls of chitterlings and rice. She tried not to look around and gawk like a country girl in New York mesmerized by the city’s bigness. But she was mesmerized. And she was repulsed too. Had the simultaneous urges to both giggle and vomit as she followed Goldie past women in painted-on clothes—that’s how tight their apparel—and men with shiny processed hair and suits cut too loud to wear to church. Then Goldie turned abruptly; her mouth formed in a wide OO. And when Nan said, What? Goldie said she didn’t believe what she was seeing but there was Sam’s brother playing the keyboard with the band. “Lord Jesus,” Goldie said, “what they doing bringing in a white boy from New York. Shit. That’s all Sam needs, he’ll swear I’m running on him. God. Sam don’t deserve that. Damn. I got to go, Nan, I’m sorry baby. Shit.” She hesitated, looked at Nan as if Nan was her child and she was leaving her for the first day of school in a bad neighborhood.
“Damn,” Goldie said again, and Nan could see the tussle over whether to leave or to stay play out on Goldie’s face. Saw the leaving win out as Goldie blew Nan a kiss and said, “You gonna do just fine, baby,” then moved farther and farther toward the door where they’d come in. Nan tried to follow Goldie, determined not to stay by herself, but then the room stood still for Nan because there he was. Alfred.
His stool was turned away from the bar and looked out on the center of the room where big butts and balloons and blue and white crepe paper wiggled to the beat. His face had an intensity about it that shocked Nan; in all of day-dreaming over him she’d only pictured his smile. Plus he’d cut his hair, though the remnant strands were still silky and black, still charmed Nan. His whole presence charmed her, from the width of his shoulders under the gray pin-striped jacket, to the way his leathers matched on his belt and his shoes, both burgundy with a lizard cut, even the way he swayed, almost imperceptibly from his waist to the beat of the drums. She had the thought then that she would go to any lengths to make him hers. She’d dance with the devil if that’s what it took. She put her hand to her mouth at the image that conjured. Thought the smell of drink so pervasive in here that it was sifting into her pores and she was getting drunk just standing here, just watching Alfred, wanting him, Lord Jesus did she want him. Pushed past her temerity in this bar with her support, Goldie vanished and said, “Good evening, Alfred, do you remember me? Can I sit with you a minute and tell you how we know each other?”
Alfred was drinking hard. Didn’t know any other way to drink once he got started. Envied his peers who could stop at two or three or while they could still make their hands and feet behave. Had promised himself he was walking, not staggering out of here tonight, that he would wake in his own bed in normal sleep-garb of boxer shorts and T-shirt, not in his clothes where he’d pissed himself, or worse in an alley with his pants pockets turned inside out, stripped of his watch and wallet and his emergency half pint with no recollection of how he’d gotten there. But he was to that no-stopping serious stage, and now it appeared that somebody was ready to start some shit. Fighting in bars was not uncommon for Alfred. Sometimes he’d catch a saucy lady sneaking peaks at him, and out of respect he’d wink back and garner the wrath of her man. Other times it was all a misunderstanding because of what he did with his eyes. He had a feel-things-deeply nature that he kept to himself because such a quality in men he thought sappy. He’d perfected a hardened look with his eyes to disguise how emotional he was but with his pretty-boy eyes, if you didn’t know him, you’d swear he was glaring at you; a problem in places where liquor was being poured and men with diminished judgment mistook his practiced tough-eyes as calling them out for a fight. His own diminished judgment, though, was the real problem tonight as he eyed Frank who worked first shift at the dock. He’d suspected Frank of carousing with his last woman even while Alfred was still giving her half his pay. Another woman sat on Frank’s lap right now whispering in his ear and Alfred watched Frank throw his head back and laugh with an open mouth. At that moment Nan appeared in front of Alfred and blocked his view. Her lips, their heart shape vaguely familiar, were moving but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. “What? I can’t hear you, what?” he said, shouting so loudly that even with the high volume of foot stomping and laughter and music, the people in his vicinity turned around to look at him, and at Nan.
Nan rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms, reacting first to Alfred’s unfocused stare then to his booming voice telling her to speak up and now the sense that all eyes were on her. She felt threatened by the sudden attention. Felt naked. Wished right now that she’d used the leftover red satin fabric to make a cape so that at least her back could be covered. Torn between repeating what she’d just said, or mumbling out never mind and scurrying through the smell of chitterlings and rye to get the hell on out of here. Except that Alfred was up from the bar stool, now his hand was on her back, his hand thick and warm, and she had to steady herself as he leaned in to whisper in her ear. “You’re right Miss Lady, I ain’t got to take that disrespect from Frank, I’m do just what you suggesting. I’ma put my foot up his—’scuse my French, Miss Lady—his ass.”
Nan tried to respond that she hadn’t suggested anything like that but there was a disconnect between her brain and her vocal cords, all her neurons it seemed crowded in that space on her back where he had his hand, and jumping then to her ear, his breath pushing in her ear as she felt his spit droplets against her cheek, wished she could capture the drops, preserve them for Goldie’s lady to use, forgot all about Goldie then, her lady, could barely remember her own name as she listened to Alfred tell her to take his seat at the bar. “Pretty that area up a bit with your red dress, Miss Lady,” he said.
She didn’t know what was happening anymore as she lifted herself up on the bar stool. Disoriented first over the fact that she was actually sitting on a bar stool, then over what Alfred had just said about some Frank? Kicking Frank’s ass? That she’d suggested he do it?! She tried to piece through the crowd to follow Alfred’s pin-striped suit jacket. Stopped herself suddenly, then swiveled around ever so slowly to see if it was there. It was. Brown-colored liquid in a short glass, no ice. His drink. She was staring down at his drink.
She pulled back the clasp on her satin clutch purse and fingered the warm smooth glass of the vanilla extract bottle thinking this is too easy. She looked around her; the man on one side of her thoroughly engaged in loud talking about how a building had collapsed on him and he’d walked away unscathed, the man on the other side of her speaking love to the bowl of chitterlings he was gobbling. She put both her hands inside the purse to unscrew the lid but then she heard a voice say, Choose your poison, and she jumped and almost screamed. It was the bartender. “Whiskey sour’s on the birthday boy tonight. You want that or something more’n that?”
“What’s on the birthday boy is fine,” she said as she closed her purse and thought it made a sound like a gun going off, then opened it again when the bartender walked away, hurrying to remove the bottle cap. She fitted the bottle in the palm of her hand and brought her hand up to scratch her cheek and in one quick motion lowered her hand and dumped the contents of the bottle into Alfred’s drink. She dropped the empty bottle back into her clutch purse. Alfred’s drink was now to the rim of the glass. It was too full. He would notice. She leaned her head in and gently raised the glass to soup up a bit. Her heartbeat was competing with the drums in here as she swallowed and then breathed deeply to try to settle herself though she felt the need suddenly to gag. The bartender returned and slid her drink down in the space next to Alfred’s. She almost drained her own drink in several swallows, trying to douse the urge to spit up. She was surprised at how easily the drink went down. She felt warm suddenly, and pretty. Stifled the impulse to giggle as she angled herself on the bar stool and crossed her legs and looked out on the party time glad that she’d added the touch of black lace to the hem of her dress. Dresses worn by half of the women in here could have benefited from a redesign, she thought. Smiling now that Alfred had told her to pretty up the area. She did giggle now and let out a small belch that made her laugh even harder. Saw Alfred walking back in her direction. Was certain his eyes went soft for her as she lowered her lashes Josephine Baker–style and when he was standing right over her she let go with, “Hey, good looking, what you got cooking?”
“That depends, Miss Lady, what you wanting to be served?” he said as he reached in behind her and took his drink and held it in his hand.
She leaned in close to him the way she imagined Dorothy Dandridge might do. She liked the feel of him standing over her, so strong and sturdy, the sense of mutual proprietorship as she told herself that he didn’t even need whatever were the contents of that vanilla extract bottle; hadn’t his eyes just gone soft for her just like they had the day she peered into his eyes through the window of Sam’s Delicatessen. She hadn’t done any hocus-pocus that day. He turned the glass up to his lips and she held her breath while he swallowed, despite what she’d just told herself about not needing for him to drink it; she felt her whole chest open up when he put down his glass, his glass empty. But now he grimaced and motioned for the bartender.
“Why you watering down my Southern Comfort?” he barked at the bartender. “That’s right. And don’t look at me like I’m crazy. You the one crazy if you think I don’t know my own Southern Comfort.”
Nan pulled at his arm. “You know, Alfred, it just occurred to me, I might have drank yours by mistake and you, well maybe you just drank mine.”
The bartender slammed another short glass of brown-colored liquid in front of Alfred. He glared at Alfred, then said, “Just to keep the peace, my man,” and walked away.
“Now you see, Miss Lady, that’s no respect.” Alfred talked in Nan’s ear. “Like Frank over there showing me no respect. I’m glad you called me back over here though, ’cause Frank ain’t worth me bruising my knuckles over. Though I did promise him he’s got an open invitation to meet my fist. What’s your name, sugar?”
“Nan,” she said, confused again about him saying she’d called him back over as she watched him empty this drink too and then motion for another one. “You might remember me from a few Saturdays ago at the bus stop on Spruce. Your sugar was high and well, I got lipstick on your jacket.”
He smiled. “Yeah? Lipstick on my jacket. What? Were we dancing?”
“Yeah,” she said. “We were dancing. I’m sorry you don’t remember. You a good dancer, Alfred.”
“Well, dance with me now. I swear on my dead momma’s grave I won’t forget this one.”
He extended his hand to help Nan down from the bar stool. His hand, its vastness swallowed hers up and she felt dizzy from the heat of his hand, the heat of his entire large self as he covered her in his arms. He moved into her and then away, then back into her and she picked up his rhythm and followed him as if she’d been born doing this. The small space of a dance floor was crowded and they were jostled about but Nan barely noticed, so caught up in the feel of Alfred’s arms caging her like this. She understood the nature of sin right now, thought sin nothing more than pure pleasure stretched to its extreme. This dance with Alfred, she thought, the purest, most pleasing thing she’d ever done. She let her head press against his chest, her head swimming, her equilibrium nonexistent, her ability to stand up straight right now totally dependent on Alfred’s arms. She let herself go completely against him, was about to tell him that the room was spinning and she thought she might faint. Or fall. She was falling. She screamed and tried to hold on to Alfred but he was being pulled away and she ended up grabbing for the red and blue air. The air let her down. She hit the floor that pulsed like prairie land beneath a stampede. This was a stampede, she thought as she covered her face from the high heels and the thick leather soles coming down from all directions. Screaming coming down too practically doused by the heavy grunting sounds of men fighting, the umphs and ows and mother-fuck-shit-you-bast-I’ma-kick-your-ass sounds. A bar fight this was. She’d heard of such things from her unchurched cousins. Never imagined that she’d be caught up in one herself, praying for her life as she was now. Praying for Alfred too, hollering out his name. The floor quaked for real then. Alfred landed on his back next to Nan. A white balloon fell on top of him and bounced along his chest. It burst and Nan clutched at her heart and whispered, “Mercy Jesus.” Alfred stared up at the ceiling. He made a laughing sound and then he was out.
Two ox-sized men dragged Alfred out of the bar by his feet. Nan followed behind yelling for them to watch his head, don’t bang his head. He had high sugar anyhow and the whole thing with Frank, she was sure, was a misunderstanding. They left him on the ground on the corner of the Bainbridge Street bar. The ground intermittently red and blue from the flashing neon lights of the bar. Nan sat down on the ground next to him and put his head in her lap. She loosened his tie and fanned him and called his name. She pulled her lacey handkerchief from her purse and wiped at the trickle of blood under his nose. His lips were busted, his eyes on the way to swelling shut. She needed ice, witch hazel. The Sun Ray across the street long since closed this late on a Saturday night. She thought about trying to hail down a red car but that could get him arrested for public drunkenness. A trolley pulled to a stop on the corner. Its squealing brakes sounded like silver pellets hitting the pavement all around them, then the rumble as it rolled away leaving people like tree branches shaken loose after a storm. The people walking past them now feeling the need to comment and Nan wondered what gave them the nerve as they said things like: One too many, huh? and I’d send that nigger back where he came from, and Damn, somebody got their natural ass kicked tonight.
She rubbed his hair and kissed his forehead as if he was already the acknowledged love of her life. He started coming to then, squinted up at Nan. “Hey there, sugar, what’s your name?” he asked.
She just shook her head back and forth. Didn’t even matter that he didn’t remember her name. She believed he knew her name. Could almost hear him calling her name from some nonintoxicated place burrowed deep inside of him and covered over with so many layers that even if whatever she’d poured into his drink had any power, it was impotent in the face of what Nan believed to be his goodness. That’s what she thought she heard calling her name right now. His goodness.
“Doesn’t matter what my name is,” she said. “What matters is why I’m here.”
“Why you here, sugar?”
“To help you change your ways.”
“My ways are mine. Don’t concern nobody but me.”
“Your ways gonna be the death of you, Alfred. I can help you. I can save you, I know I can. Me and Jesus can save you.”
Through the slits his punched-out eyes were becoming he took in Nan, remembering the image of her on the bar stool, the scarlet-colored backless dress that formed her hips, the black seamed hose, the heart-shaped mouth, her hair unloosed around her face, and she bore, he thought, a striking resemblance to Lena Home. Looked like Lena Horne now with the blue and red light flashing down on her. No way he could deny Lena. No way he could continue on the route he was traveling either. She was right about that, it was killing him the hard way, over and over, every night a new awful death; every morning a head-in-the-toilet resurrection. He started to cry then. “Save me, Lena, please baby, save me.”
Nan flagged down a cab and took him home to her apartment on Catherine Street that smelled to him of bleach and cake batter. She put ice to his lips, salve to his eyes, washed down the open cuts with peroxide. Then spooned him up the pot liquor from her mustard greens to help him fight off infection. No alcohol though. In the morning she left him a cup of strong black coffee on the end table next to the couch where he’d slept. Told him she was on her way to church, she’d be pleased to fry him a mess of eggs, when she returned, and layer it between buttered toast and salt pork, though she doubted he’d be able to keep it down. He confirmed that he wouldn’t by clutching his stomach and she hurried for a pot for him to vomit in. Though he could barely lift his head because of the feel of hammers falling alternating from the front to the back, he managed to motion for her to come closer, whispered out that he was thirsty, please, please, could she leave him something to drink. She produced a pitcher of ice water, pulpy orange juice in a glass bottle. No alcohol though. He touched his head, his barely opened eyes, his cheekbone that throbbed to the beat of the hammers in his head. Gasped out that he was in pain, could she leave a little taste of something for pain. She said of course, what was she thinking, of course he needed something for the pain. Promptly offered Anacin tablets in a tin, the tin opened to make it easy for him. No alcohol though. When she returned from church she fussed over him, checked his forehead for a fever one minute, brought him ice chips sprinkled with ginger the next. Even whipped up two pair of pajamas from leftover blue fabric from the choir robes she’d made so that when he sweated through one, there was a crisp clean pair for him to change into. No alcohol though.
The second dry day at Nan’s, Alfred was sure he would go into the shakes and end up in a sanitarium as he maneuvered the hallway to enter the healing parlor she had set up for him in the back bedroom where he took to the four-poster bed and collapsed all over again. It was a cozy room the color of cream from the ribbed bedspread to the lacy coverlet to the tuxedo-striped wallpaper to the velvet fainting chair to the boxy victrola for playing LPs. The coziness was lost on him at first but by the third day his eyesight had cleared and his stomach had settled and his senses opened to the rhythms of the house, the clean and quiet order of things, the smell of bleach early morning as she washed down the concrete of the backyard, the early morning rumba sounds her sewing machine made. He became accustomed to her sweet comings and her goings when before she left for work she’d offer him a Bible to thumb through, a Tribune to read. In the evenings she’d prop on the edge of the fainting couch across from the bed as he ate the meal she’d prepared that had progressed through the week from clear brothy renderings to stewed chicken and dumplings with homemade applesauce on the side.
She’d tell him about her day, how many sleeves she attached, the spats between coworkers. She’d relate the headlines, pieces of dropped gossip she’d picked up as she tunneled through the block home. Had only pieces to relate, not whole stories because she didn’t tarry as was her usual custom from house to house. Didn’t get her daily updates about the progression of this one’s pregnancy, that one’s mother-in-law travails, the other one with the bad-seed son. She was in too much of a hurry to get in her own front door. Enthralled as she was by the feel of opening her door in the afternoon knowing he was up here, the house seeming to know too the way the air sighed so contentedly from the living room to the kitchen, and especially as she’d move through the hallway and approach the back bedroom where he was tucked away, the pink pansies on the hallway wallpaper winking at her because his being here was a secret after all, not even Goldie knew that he was here.
By Friday Alfred’s true coloring had returned and his robustness, Nan noticed as she sat on the edge of the fainting couch and chattered in a soft voice and watched Alfred enjoy the butterfish and rice. She was telling him about a dog she’d seen on her way to work. Described the black and white dog that she said had spooked her. Something about the dog’s stance, the way he tilted his head reminded her of her dead uncle. The dog even tried to follow her onto the bus and when she called the dog by her uncle’s name, said Uncle Latch, stay, stay, the dog put his head down, his tail between his legs, and slithered on around the corner. She said she practically cried the whole ride to work missing her uncle suddenly.
What Nan didn’t say as she looked up at the frosted glass of the window with the hand-stained diamond in the center, keeping her focus on the sky-blue colored diamond instead of on him sitting up in the bed, his pleasing features having returned as the swelling went down, his manliness bursting through the hastily made pajamas, is how many times of the day she thought of him here, wanting to take her foot from the sewing machine pedal and rush home even as her workday was just beginning. Nor did she say right now that she guessed he’d be feeling his own strength soon enough and would leave here and head on home. Hoping as she thought it that he wasn’t strong enough, not that she wanted him weak, she just wanted him here.
Alfred listened to the dog story; he was touched by the story. So much about Nan touched him since he’d been here. Strengthened him too. He even thought he might be able to tolerate a little jazz music this evening though he couldn’t remember enjoying music without a drink in his hand. Thought this would be his test of making it as an on-the-wagon man, his ability to enjoy his music through undiluted ears. He cleared his throat and asked what kind of music did she have around the house, and if she had none at all that was fine. Wanted to say that her voice was music enough though he didn’t say it; this too was something he was unaccustomed to doing without benefit of strong drink, acting on his impulse with a woman. Though he felt moved to be impulsive with Nan right now. That she wasn’t beautiful moved him most of all, the purity of that. No having to question a beguiling smile for authenticity, no distracting nymph-like frame all up in his face clouding his logic as his pants pocket were emptied of his substantial end-of-the-week wages, no knock on the door followed by a guilty expression because she’d gotten her times with her men mixed up. Not that there weren’t beautiful women who were honest and true, just that they had not been part of Alfred’s repertoire. Thought how calming it would be to spend man-woman type time with someone of Nan’s leanings as she left the room and returned shortly with half a dozen long-playing albums. The Dixie Hummingbirds was expected, Mahalia Jackson too, but glory, glory she had the Billie’s, Billie Holiday, Billy Eckstine. She put on “Everything I Have Is Yours” and Alfred drummed his fingers and craved a closeness with Nan. Though right now he also felt the craving for drink as an ant crawling up his throat trying to reach his tongue to incite his taste buds into a revolt. He swallowed hard to get rid of the craving but it caught in his throat and gagged him. Nan ran to get the pot that he’d used earlier in the week when he was in the throwing-up stage. He didn’t throw up now as Nan leaned over him with the pot. She was wearing a white cottony housedress trimmed in pink eyelet lace. Her innocence astounded him as he allowed her nearness, the effect her nearness was having on him to grow larger than the craving for drink. He stroked her arm. “I don’t need that,” he said motioning to the pot. “All I need is you.”
“Well, well now, is that so?” Nan said as she stood straight up wondering suddenly what to do with the pot. The whole week he’d been here she’d imagined herself ripping through her handiwork of the blue pajama top to get to the broad thickness of his bared upper body, to rub big circles on his chest, to slide her mouth along his collarbone, to pull the pajama bottoms down and straddle him. And here he was stroking her arm, turning the skin on her arm to butter, melting her arm to cream with just the back and forth of his hands; his eyes were focused and starved for her; his manhood rising for her beneath the blue fabric. Here was the essence of her imaginings as she’d hit the pedal at work to start the sewing machine and twice almost lost a thumb, her concentration so fully on him. Here were the imaginings come to life, gathering sight and sound, smell and touch and taste for the culmination in real life and Nan was stymied. Though it wasn’t her religion stopping her right now, nor was it that the window was open to halfway and anyone happening to be sitting on the back steps of houses on either side of her might be privy to the Lawd, Lawd, Lawd sounds; she wasn’t even stopped by the fact that she had no diaphragm, no jelly, no rubbers; stopped right now by the simplest thing, the got-damned pot. Its speckled oversized circumference caught between the bed and the wall. She tried to keep her movements subtle to nudge it up or down and finally used her knee to pop it up, almost said Fucking pot, though she wasn’t the cursing kind as she flung it to the other side of the room. She never heard the cymbal-like sound as it clanged against the wall because Alfred took over once she was free of the pot.
He was both gentle and ferocious as he lifted her short self onto the bed and slipped his hands under her housedress and squeezed her to him. He told her that he needed her but she was so pure and he had blotches all up and down his soul, the things he’d done, but oh did he need her. His hands were hot against her back and then he moved his hands in big sweeps and started a fire wherever he touched her. Made her cry, made her holler Mercy in ways that redefined the word. Felt herself opening in places that she didn’t even know were places. Pictured suddenly a maple tree with its startling crown in full leaf, its trunk so wide she couldn’t get her arms all the way around, its bark coarse and layered all the way through to the pith, to the core to where the sap was rising so full of itself that it needed just a tap, some pressure on insertion, then the gushing could come, thick, so sweet, shaking the forest floor with its coming, or was that the bed shaking, the cream-colored coverlet tossed high and caught on the bedpost waving like a flag signaling surrender, yielding then, giving in.
“My, my, my,” she said as she collapsed against him and rubbed her fingers through his hair that was thin and fine. “Mercy. Mnh, mercy, mercy, me.”
Saturday, a week to the day of his arrival, Alfred was dressed to leave. His pin-striped suit pressed to Nan’s high standards, his shirt crisply starched, a shine to his shoes. He was going to pick up his paycheck, he said, make sure he still had a job to go to come Monday given that he’d been absent for a week. Would she like barbecue ribs for dinner? he asked, fried fish? a quart of something from Chinatown. Just name whatever she had an appetite for and he’d make it appear; he swore he would.
Just you walking your strong, fine self back through my door will satisfy what I got an appetite for, Nan said, blushing, unaccustomed as she was to talking like this. She’d talked like this at the Bainbridge Street bar when she had whiskey sours swimming through her head, though again she pushed the details of that night from her mind because she did not choose to think again about the potion she’d slipped in his drink, did not want to wonder whether the fact that he’d slurped down the contents of that vanilla extract bottle had everything to do with him being here. Told herself again that whatever he’d drunk that night had come out from both ends in his massive excretion of bodily fluids. She never believed in the power of root-working anyhow. Still the thought that she now owed the devil for delivering to her Alfred hung in her mind, swayed there like a hem coming undone on a curtain valance, the threads dropping, no longer holding the billowy bottom in place.