Johnson got to Sage’s party first. Before Posie who had whisked Sage out of the house early and taken her to an Easter-egg hunt at church and then to Strawbridge’s to try to find an old-fashioned crinoline slip for Sage to wear under the dress she’d bought for her; before people on the block who didn’t want to be the first ones in so they were waiting until they saw some cars parked out front; even before Sage’s classmates who lived in all different parts of the city and had to suffer through the bump and grind of Easter Saturday traffic tie-ups wherever there was a mall. So Johnson was the first to ring the bell, the first to step into the scrubbed-clean ambience of Kitt’s enclosed porch, the first to smell cloves mixed with the sweet and salty aroma of baking ham, the first to hand Kitt a colorfully wrapped box for Sage, a tissue-wrapped bottle in a bag for Kitt, the first to grab her in a hug that was so generous in its unconditionality that he didn’t want to let go.
He did, though. They both let go as they stared at each other laughing excitedly, and then not knowing what to do with all the energy between them, all the years, they hugged again. Johnson kissed her cheek then. Told her how good she looked, tugged at her locks pushed back with a yellow-and-green-swirled headband. “Told you you were still political.” He laughed. “When a sister lets her hair lock she’s doing more than making a fashion statement.”
“Well what about you, Mr. Johnson? Let’s check you out. My, my, my, aren’t you the dapper one in your chenille sweater.” She took a pensive, analytical stance: hand on her chin, head tilted slightly, eyes squinted. “Let me see now, you still got the mustache, still got that little goatee, of course there’s much less hair, you didn’t get any taller, not much wider either, which is unusual for someone over fifty.”
“Fifty!” he blurted. “Watch yourself, Kitt, if you gonna make me over fifty, then that puts you up there too.”
“Okay, stay forty-one, Johnson. But I do have to give you the head-to-toe look-over. You pass, Johnson. Still our Johnson.”
“Well, speaking of passing tests, where’s Posie, and the birthday girl, where’s Sage?”
“Mama took her out to find her a slip. You know Mama and trying to dress people up, like the world’s gonna end if Sage doesn’t have the exact kind of slip under her dress.”
They just stood and looked at each other some more, smiled, and finally Kitt cleared her throat and pulled a bottle of sparkling cider from the bag handed her by Johnson. “Well, I’m just gonna crack this seal and pull out my best flutes and you and I shall toast to you being back in Philly, and back in our home.”
“That’s sweet of you, Kitt,” he said as he followed her into the dining room, and she held the bottle of sparkling cider up in front of her as if it were a trophy, he could see even from the back that she was grinning that ear-to-ear grin that she and her mother were famous for, and her cousin. He cleared his throat, didn’t want to think about her cousin right now.
The table was set with a yellow-and-green party cloth that matched the balloons bobbing along the ceiling and her headband and the blouse that she had on, opened as if it were a jacket, hiding the print of her hips. He’d always wondered why she always kept herself shielded under a long shirt, or wide jacket, or loose-fitting dress, built as she was. He’d asked her once. Drunk, and back in town after having been gone for two years and crying on Kitt’s shoulder because Verdi wouldn’t see him. And he had exasperated Kitt’s patience acting like a little puppy, which is what she’d told him, if he wasn’t lapping up that cheap wine like a thirsty puppy, and then shitting and pissing like some unhousebroken pet, maybe Verdi would at least meet him somewhere for coffee. And he was so intoxicated, so dented and bruised, that he grabbed Kitt around the collar of her shirt, told her that if she wasn’t always covering her ass up she’d have a steady man in her life. “Why you do that, Kitt? Why?” he’d asked with all the melodrama of one who’d gone a full liter of wine past the point when his vision and logic blurred. “You got a beautiful ass and you always hiding it like you ashamed of it or something. Stop doing it, Kitt. Please, please, stop hiding your beautiful ass.” He sobbed and shook and implored as if he were asking his mother not to die. Kitt pushed him away. Told him to leave her house right then and go somewhere and pray that he’d wake up the next morning with his memory erased. He did. At least he pretended that he’d forgotten. Called her the next morning and said that he had the taste for pancakes, why didn’t they get together at Broadway’s for breakfast. Met her hesitant tone with an apology for not stopping by there the night before. Said he must have passed out in his room because he’d come to around dawn dressed to go out but knew he hadn’t been anywhere. He had to pretend. No way would he have been to look at her again having treated her with such base disrespect.
She was handing him a flute filled with cider and they clinked glasses and sipped and smiled honest smiles.
“My God it’s so, so good to see you, Kitt,” he said as he drained his glass and she refilled it. “Makes it feel like I’m really visiting home seeing you.”
She asked then if he’d been back to the street where he’d grown up. Chancellor Street. And when he shook his head slowly, hunched his shoulders, and said that since his mother’s death, and the scattering of his homeboys from Yale to jail, there was no cause really for him to return.
She told him maybe it was for the best. If he was inclined to cry in his increasing years, he might cry if he rode through there now. “Block looks like a war zone,” she said.
“I see you not letting that happen on your block.”
“Oh hell no. Our block committee is strong, legal too, we can impose fines if someone’s hedges get out of control, or they go too many Saturdays without getting their asses out and sweeping in front of their doors, and don’t even let the exterior paint start chipping.”
“Kitt, I’m surprised at you. Didn’t you used to champion freedom from government intervention.”
“This isn’t the government, baby, this is communal, this is about a damned-near-perfect block determined to survive. Shit, if the government hadn’t hooked generation after generation on welfare, then cut them all off cold turkey without peripheral support like basic medical care, decent schools, an occasional cop to cruise through and at least pretend to be a deterrent to crime, you know, West Philly wouldn’t look nearly as bad as it does.”
“See you haven’t changed, still raising hell like you used to.” He laughed when he said it.
“And you have changed,” she said as she raised her glass in salute. “It’s all good too.” She wanted to tell him that she hoped Verdi could appreciate the changed him. But didn’t want to break it to him that she’d tricked Verdi there under the pretense of having ice cream and birthday cake in honor of Sage. Just a few of us, she’d told Verdi so that she wouldn’t get suspicious, just you and me and Sage and Mama, and Doreen and Nicole and Patrick from school she’d said, nonchalantly. And now she was getting fidgety over what she’d done. Suppose it backfired? Suppose Verdi did something utterly uncharacteristic like convince Rowe to come with her? Or suppose Verdi went so furious that she stormed out, that would damn near devastate Johnson. Now she felt sorry for Johnson standing there, grinning like a choirboy who hit the high note. She imagined how his face would look all contorted with hurt pride if Verdi did such a thing as storm out on him.
She took his empty glass and walked back into the kitchen. He followed her back and said, “Whoa,” when the yellow of the kitchen hit his eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s bright, I know,” she said, half laughing as she squeezed a drop of Joy dishwashing liquid into each glass and commenced washing them out. “Has that effect on everyone who steps in here for the first time. Specially my new customers, I got to hurry and get them into that back room where I do the massage therapy before they get tired of squinting and turn around and leave.”
“How’s that going?” he asked as he put his hand to the knob of her therapy room. “Can I peep in?”
“Sure thing, I’ll give you a guided tour.” She finished washing the glasses and laid them upside down on a dish towel to drain and Johnson opened the door to her therapy room and she walked in first.
“It’s small, really small,” she said as she clicked on the light.
“Not all that small,” he said as his eyes bounced around the room. “Nice color to these walls, really toned down after being in the kitchen.”
“Yeah, it’s like a mauve. Usually I’m not even a pink person, you know that’s more Mama, all lacy and feminine, but mauve has a lot of brown in it, and brown is stabilizing to the flightiness of pink and well, my customers seem to like it.”
“What’s not to like, looking at these walls, while your fingers hit all the tight spots?” he said, his eyes following Kitt’s fingers as she pointed around the room, first to the matching hurricane lamps on the sideboard against the wall that held folded towels and sheets.
“I usually have candles going,” she said instructively. “You know candles make a small room cozy and open it up at the same time, plus the way the flames dance makes for a dreamy effect, especially with what they do to shadows against the wall and all of that.”
“Mnh, vanilla,” Johnson said as he tilted his head and closed his eyes and took in the scent. And now Kitt was explaining how the different parts of the brain were affected by different aromas. “Vanilla is powerfully calming,” she said. And then she showed him her table, folded now, and explained how she’d leave a sheet at the foot of the table and walk out of the room while they changed. “I tell them that they can take off as much or as little as they like but that they should be covered up when I come back into the room. Some are incredibly shy, you’d be surprised,” she half laughed, “until I get going and then they’re tossing off the sheet pointing out the spots that need it most.”
“Oh, I can believe that,” Johnson said, and then went into an imitation in an exaggerated voice, “Oh Miss Kitt, I’m really tight right here, oh oh ah.”
Kitt laughed so hard she almost tripped over the specially designed chair, prompting Johnson to ask what the hell it was. “I know my girl don’t be doing no freaky stuff up in here.”
She laughed some more and then explained how the chair was configured so that they knelt into it if they were only getting a neck-and-back as opposed to stretching out on the table for a full-body. She got instructive again. Described the music she played while she worked. “I prefer jazz, but I’ll oblige their taste, so long as it’s not hard rock or something like that that would go against the grain of the mood.” Her words came in a rush and she flexed her fingers as if she were about to sink them into some needy back.
Johnson got serious too as he studied Kitt. How competent she appeared now as she pointed out the science behind this and the reasoning to that in the arrangement of her massage-therapy room. She was always smart, he thought, and focused, more focused than he’d ever been, more focused even than her cousin. He shrugged off thoughts of her cousin right now. “I’m proud of you, Kitt,” he said, his voice so clear, so absent its infamous joke-making chuckle that Kitt was momentarily startled. “You should have had the opportunities that a lot of us squandered, you know, you just should have.”
“Huh, where’d that come from?” she asked as she put the face rest back into the clamps of the folded massage table.
Johnson didn’t say anything, just stared at her with a look that was halfway between amazement and affection.
Kitt cleared her throat when she noticed Johnson’s eyes locked on her with such intensity. She felt suddenly cloaked in a shyness about being in this tight, vanilla-scented room with Johnson, and Johnson no longer tossing around one-liners to make her laugh. She cleared her throat again and then scratched the inside of her throat because it was really dry, really didn’t need clearing, needed some water instead, needed to douse the fire that was trying to edge up her throat. “I should make sure the party favors are in ample supply,” she said as she motioned toward the door.
“Good move,” Johnson said, laughing, his laugh forced this time. “’Cause if we stay in here much longer I’m just gonna have to come outta my shirt, Sister Kitt, you know, and you gonna have to demonstrate your technique and show as well as tell.” That was risky, he knew. Trying to make a joke out of something that he felt so intensely at this moment he couldn’t even look at her. He subverted the thought. Pressed it down with his thumb and didn’t even realize that he was pinching the skin on the heel of his palm until he was momentarily riveted by the pain.
They were back in the bright sun of the kitchen walls and Verdi felt her extroversion reemerge. “Well, stay in town long enough and I might oblige,” she said as she reached behind him into her therapy room to click off the light, knowing with the honesty with which she knew most things that Johnson’s back was off-limits, she knew him too well. Much too well.
And since they were in the kitchen now, and their closeness had space to spread out and thin and blur against the yellow walls and become nonthreatening again, just an innocent affection between friends, Johnson was able to ask if there was a special man in her life.
“No.” She said it with finality, thinking now about Bruce, the new client with the wide back who Posie had been trying to persuade her to agree to date. She’d refused his advances again the night before when he called to make another appointment. She’d been denying to herself though how the man had nudged open that flap she kept securely covering that part of herself reserved for romance. Plus she didn’t like the idea that her mother was pushing her so, couldn’t stand seeing someone else’s hands stirring around in the brew, mixing ingredients before their time. Almost gasped when she thought this as she looked at Johnson’s face and realized with a searing illumination that her efforts to put Johnson and Verdi together might be mixing wrong too, putting together flavors that shouldn’t even be in the same pot.
“Well, what about Sage’s daddy?” Johnson cut in on her thoughts.
“The best thing he did was let go the DNA that gave me my little heart.” She turned the glasses right side up that she’d just washed and then filled them with water, she swallowed hers in large gulps while she handed him his. She went to the oven and peeped in, though everything was done, just on warmer, the macaroni and cheese, the smoked turkey breast, even the miniature pizza squares for the children. She opened the refrigerator next and stared at her container of Caesar salad trying to decide whether to grate the cheese over it now, or wait until she was about to set it out. She knew that the cheese could wait, felt foolish for keeping her back to Johnson like this. “Anyhow, no, nobody else, really nobody since.” She turned around then, could tell by the sad look that washed over Johnson’s face that he understood that kind of loneliness.
“Well, do I have to step to that Negro? Is he doing all right by Sage?”
“Does what I let him do.”
“Well, he better treat my girl right, that’s all I got to say. You tell him your best buddy Johnson is back in town and he accepts no foolishness when it comes to his Kitt.”
She nodded an embrace. Didn’t run to him with her arms open and let her circle him in hers; her face did it though. And he acknowledged it with an embraceable nod of his own, and since things had gotten so pure between them, he almost asked her about Verdi. And Kitt braced herself because she could feel it coming, could see it welling up from his stomach that he held in now. And she was about to beat him to it, about to confess that yes, Verdi was on her way there, that his being there would be a shock to Verdi because she was emphatic that she didn’t want to see him; she was ready to apologize to Johnson now because she felt even more strongly that having Johnson and Verdi meet like this was a mistake. But right then the doorbell rang and they both jumped, both relieved really, especially Kitt because she knew that it wasn’t Verdi, expected Verdi to be at least a half hour late according to what she’d said earlier. And Kitt said, “All right now, a party’s getting ready to start over here,” and she rushed to get into the living room, with Johnson following behind her.
In groups they came. One mother bringing three of Sage’s friends, Doreen and Nicole and Patrick, and another bringing Bretta and Lou; two sets of parents came with the attention-demanding Hawkins twins, then Leeanne, Kitt’s next-door neighbor inched in, and the Tilleys from farther down the block, and two of her clients from the precinct came with somebody’s child they’d borrowed for the afternoon just so that they could come and socialize with Kitt, maybe meet some of the single women who’d be there, and the three girls related to Penda were there, though they weren’t different learners, Kitt had invited them because they were patient and caring with Sage, plus she knew that their mother wouldn’t come, she was so polite with the distance she kept. And most everybody carried vibrantly wrapped boxes and Kitt started a tower of gifts atop the dining-room buffet, and Johnson helped her hang the coats, and pour the punch, and people were mingling and nibbling on roasted salted nuts and the crepe paper was hanging in streamers and tickling people’s faces and it really was starting to feel like a party in there. Then Kitt wondered aloud where the heck Posie was, she was making Sage late for her own birthday celebration.
As if on cue Posie and Sage rushed in, Sage stood in the middle of the room and twirled around and around to show off her party dress, green and yellow like the crepe paper and balloons and other party ware. She made deep throaty laughing sounds and put her hands to her mouth so happy was she to see all of her friends. Posie almost did the same as Sage. Not actually twirling, but she did spin around once as if to show off her own brand of a party dress, waist-cinching, ruffles around the low-cut neckline. She turned from one corner of the room to the next smiling and batting her eyes and patting her chest lightly as if all these people were here to see her and she was very excited and flattered and careful to give them all a proper greeting.
Kitt and Johnson watched from the dining room, Kitt sucking her teeth and saying, see, told you Mama hasn’t changed, still the little girl she was when you left here twenty years ago. And Johnson was about to burst he was so thrilled to lay eyes on Posie again, and he melted over the sight of Sage. “My God, Kitt, she’s beautiful, Sage is such a beautiful little girl.”
Kitt gushed. “God she is, isn’t she? You know, I took one look at her when she was born, and I saw this wisdom in her eyes, and her name came to me in a flash. Sage.”
Then Kitt called out to Sage and she barreled toward the sound of her mother’s voice, almost knocked Johnson over to get to her, and Kitt braced herself and took her daughter’s head against her womb, said, “Johnson, meet my slice of sunshine, my brilliant baby girl, Sage.”
Johnson patted the top of Sage’s head and she jerked back from her mother to look at him. Her directness as she stared at him, her lips pursed, her head tilted, her fists balled, made Johnson clear his throat and pat his feet back and forth and squirm. She extended her fist and Johnson made a quick move as if dodging a punch from this little girl. Kitt laughed, said, “She’s trying to shake hands with you, Johnson. It takes a lot of effort for her to extend her fingers, I think she likes to reserve her fine motor skills for wrapping around her crayons.”
“Oh, well, in that case.” Johnson tried to shrug off his mild embarrassment. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance.” He stooped to Sage’s eye level and took her fist in his hands and began gently unfurling her fingers and then just held on to her wide-open hand. “Miss Kitt,” he said, “I’d like permission to give this little Miss Sage a kiss on the cheek.”
He did and Sage smiled at the feel of his mustache against her cheek. Blue. That’s what she thought she saw around him and now she was sure as he stood back up and tugged lightly on the barrette holding her cornrow in place. A blue that rose up like the inside of the biggest waves she’d seen last summer from the boardwalk at Wildwood that were also mixed with purple and black. She liked colors that moved and showed themselves from every side.
Johnson felt a tap on his shoulder as he continued to smile at Sage and marvel at the intensity in her stare. “Where’s mine?” an Estée Lauder–scented voice hit his ear and his nose at the same time and there Posie was, a grown-up version—at least in looks—of the child who’d just stared at him so.
“Posie, baby,” he said as he rushed to hug her and squeezed her so tightly until he could feel her giggling against him, until he realized when she didn’t let go that she wasn’t giggling, she was crying, and he rubbed her back in wide circles and held her some more and felt as if he wanted to cry too.
Kitt pulled Sage away, back into the living room where her friends were transfixed by Beauty and the Beast playing on television. And Johnson walked Posie in the opposite direction into the sunshine pouring off of the kitchen walls. “I’m sorry to be making such a spectacle out of myself,” she said as she nudged back from Johnson and dabbed at the corners of her eyes and patted her chest. “But I prayed, I mean I prayed so hard for you, Johnson. Only people in my life I ever prayed as hard for were my chile and my grandbaby and my only niece.” Johnson stiffened when she made reference to her niece. “And I’m not a regular churchgoer, but I do have a personal relationship with the Lord and He said, fast and pray, and I have done that on your behalf so many times and I’m just so overwhelmed with pride and joy to see you standing here, looking good, Johnson baby, you look sooo good.”
“No, you look good, Posie,” he said as he tried to keep the tremble from his voice, tried to keep the lumps accumulating in the corners of his eyes from liquefying and drizzling down his face.
“Complexion looks healthy, nice tone to it.”
“Posie, you’re the one with the flawless skin—”
“Hair got a rich luster means you’re eating right.” She reached up and rubbed her fingers along his neat fade of a haircut, then walked around to his back pretending not to notice the moistness around his eyes.
“God, Posie, so much I want to say to you. So many apologies I owe you for letting you down the way that I did.”
She jabbed at his shoulders. “Nice muscle mass for a young man getting into middle age. You been working out too.”
“I mean the disappointment in your face the last time I saw you when I was leaving Philly finally after I’d destroyed everything I ever cared about—I mean Kitt and I have at least communicated often and I feel as though I’ve really, you know, like our friendship is sound—”
“You been getting regular checkups, I hope. Especially your blood pressure, you know about black men and high blood pressure, and get your diabetes screening, and let’s not even talk about your colon, you make sure you keep up with your health, you’re getting to the age group that really takes its toll on a black man.”
“Posie, please, let me apologize, I have to—need to do this for me.”
“All you have to do for you is keep on doing what you been doing, ’cause it’s working, baby.”
“No—Posie, I have to say it—”
“It can wait, Johnson, it can wait.”
“It can’t. Now. I have to do this now.” He took both of her hands in his and squeezed them to emphasize what he was saying. “I just have to allow the words to hit your ears. I swore to myself that as soon as I saw you, I didn’t care how many years it took, that this is the first thing I had to do before we could even move any further.”
“Okay, Johnson,” she sighed, “if you insist on it.”
“I apologize, Posie, if I caused you any discomfort, leaving the way I did, living the way I was, you know, strung out—”
“I accept it,” she said as she pulled her hands from his and swiped at his sweater to the rhythm of her words, “but only on the condition that you accept my apology too.”
“Your apology?”
“Yes, baby.” She rolled the ends of his sweater up in neat folds over his wrists. “I overburdened you.”
“What are you talking about, Posie?”
“With expectations,” she said matter-of-factly as if he should have known that. “You couldn’t have let me down if I hadn’t first placed you on a pedestal that was too high for you to stand on all by yourself.” She unrolled his sweater sleeves now and pushed them up in bunches instead. “And when I criticized you, actually I did a lot more than criticize you, I truly hated you for running off and leaving us the way you did so that it was months before we even knew whether you were alive or dead, when I criticized you for that it was because I judged you.” She pulled the sleeves back to the way he had them in the first place and then stared directly at him. “Now look at me, who on this Earth am I equipped to judge, Johnson, who is any of us equipped to judge when you get right down to it. So I had to come to the realization that whether you let me down, or Kitt, or Verdi, or your mama, or your friends from school, whoever, all you did was the best that you could do for who you were during that time when you were doing it.”
“Posie—I—” Johnson didn’t know what to say really, so he just stammered around searching for something.
“Just hush and listen.” She cut his nonwords off. “So all I’m saying is that I need to beg your pardon too. I propped you up so unfairly, and then I had the nerve to hate you when you misstepped and fell.”
She reached up and pinched his cheek and Johnson’s incredulous look just hung on his face, shocked at her level of grace and wisdom. No wonder he was able to love her in ways that he hadn’t been able to even love his own mother. She enabled his feelings to have a levity not possible when a relationship is so steeped in guilt and anger and resentment. He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “It’s settled, then,” he said, and for the first time in years felt as if it really was.
“Okay.” She patted her chest and batted her eyes. “Now what had you started saying? You know, after I told you how good you looked, you were starting to tell me how good I looked and I cut you off, I didn’t mean to cut you off. So go ahead, finish.” She hit him playfully on his chest.
Johnson laughed so hard then, with all of him, the way he hadn’t laughed in what felt like decades. He serenaded Posie with superlatives like magnificent, divine, and she feigned a demure “oh hush” stance and they walked arm in arm back into the dining room where the lights had been dimmed and the adults sipped wine or cider and naturally designated among them whose turn it was to be in the living room to supervise the children now watching Sesame Street videos, or beating drums on the carpet, or marching around the coffee table, or smearing themselves with jelly eggs.
And Kitt pulled Posie back into the kitchen to help her start getting food set up and in between slicing the ham and turkey and arranging them on her oval-shaped platter and separating them with sections of tangerine, and spooning up the potato salad in her gold-rimmed bowl lined with spinach leaves, and putting the macaroni in a chafing dish, the Caresser in her white Mikasa salad server, she said, “Mama, I’m scared, I think I did something terrible.”
And as Posie handed Kitt the cheese grater, and went in the refrigerator for cheese, and recapped and re-covered all the containers once Kitt was done spooning up from them, she listened to the quivering in Kitt’s voice as she told her that Verdi was on the way.
“What you mean on the way? On the way here? I thought you said she put up a powerful refusal over seeing Johnson.”
“She did.” Kitt’s voice had a whine running through it. “She doesn’t know that he’ll be here, and Johnson doesn’t know that she’s coming. Neither of them know, Mama. You know, Verdi Mae and Johnson aren’t expecting to see each other, not at all, Mama. I don’t know what made me do such an indiscreet thing. And Verdi Mae was so adamant that she didn’t want to see him, you know, I should have respected that. I have no right to play with their lives like that just because I think that they should be together. Shoot, damn shoot, damn,” she said to the beat of the sound of the spoon that she tapped against the grater to loosen the slithers of cheese that hadn’t fallen. “I need to just tell Johnson that maybe he should go, you know, he’ll understand if I explain what I did and that Verdi really doesn’t want to see him. You know, he’ll leave for Verdi’s sake.”
Posie just stared at Kitt blankly at first finding it difficult to believe that her organized, calculating, must-know-the-outcome-before-she-makes-a-move daughter had actually gone and for once done something frivolous. “Well, what’s the worst that could happen, Kitt?” she asked, trying to make her voice sound reassuring as she handed her the pepper mill, and not wanting to discourage what she saw as Kitt’s attempt at throwing caution to the wind.
“Don’t you see, Mama?” Kitt said as she turned the head on the mill and sprinkled black specks over the salad. “It’s not fair to have them shock each other like that. I mean, suppose they shouldn’t see each other. My stomach is jumping, Mama, and I’m afraid something bad’s gonna happen because of what I’ve done.”
“Well, maybe we shouldn’t just, you know, put him out like that, baby,” Posie said, hating the thought of watching Johnson’s shoulders slump in disappointment. And even though she did trust Kitt’s instincts, through it all, she knew that Kitt had a strong stomach, that her stomach rarely jumped for no reason, she trusted the power of true love more. “How about it if we tell Johnson that Verdi Mae is on her way here and we’ll let him decide what to do. We’ll be honest and say that she’d turned you down when you offered to arrange a meeting for them. And we’ll tell him how much it’s bothering you now. How about that? Because personally I think Verdi Mae will be thrilled to see Johnson looking good as he looks in there right now. Does that settle your stomach some?”
Kitt nodded and sighed and put the salad fork and spoon in their slots on the white Mikasa set and handed it to Posie. “This should go out first, I already have place mats set where the food should go, leave room in the center for the turkey and the ham, and tell Johnson we need to talk to him in the kitchen, Verdi’s gonna be walking through that door any minute. You got to help me tell him, Mama, you got to.”
There were two parties going on now as Posie emerged from the kitchen. The children’s was happening in the living room under the glare of the television and the noise of balloons bursting, and clapping sounds as they tried to catch imaginary butterflies, and foot stomping as they marched in a parade organized by the girls from the church. And the adults’ party was in the dining room where the living-room stereo speakers had been rerouted by the music-thirsty father of the Hawkins twins and the dining room ballooned with the sounds of soulful oldies and vintage jazz. Posie giggled when Kitt’s client from the precinct grabbed the salad server from her and put it on the buffet and took her hand and started to bop. She almost forgot about needing to talk to Johnson and when she remembered she called out to him and he excused himself from the jovial conversation he’d been having with Leeanne from next door and Mrs. Tilley from down the street and the oldest of the Carson girls, Penda’s relative, had just finished telling her to tell Penda that her favorite, though under-achieved former student, Johnson, said hello. He was still laughing when he got to Posie and she told him that Kitt needed his help in the kitchen.
“Oh, so that’s how it goes,” he joked. “You come out of the kitchen to party and send me in there to work, un-huh.”
“I’ll be in there, directly,” Posie said, doing a little spin in her hip-hugging dress. “As soon as I can tear myself away from this handsome young man, I will.”
She winked at Johnson and Johnson said he’d be right in too as soon as he went up to the bathroom and washed his hands.
And Posie tore herself away from her dance partner and she and Kitt commenced to setting the food out and Johnson walked down the stairs from the bathroom on his way into the kitchen to help Posie and Kitt, and both parties were in full swing, the children enjoying themselves either in their own worlds, or those who could, engaged by the games the girls from church made up; the adults chatting, and flirting, and blushing, and patting their feet and enjoying intermittent bursts of laughter, and a cha-cha here and there, and now the titillating aroma of the food Posie and Kitt set down. And nobody even heard Verdi come in because the volume in both rooms was on high now, especially in the dining room where the music from the rerouted speakers sifted all the way to the front door. And Verdi walked inside from the enclosed porch and just stood there taking in the scene going on in Kitt’s house thinking that she must have misunderstood Kitt, Kitt had emphasized that this gathering was to be small, so she just stood and allowed her eyes to adjust to this unexpected crowd of people and nobody much noticed her at first, weighed down with bags where she’d bought twice more than what she’d intended once she got inside of that Imagineering store.
But suddenly Sage looked up from the card tricks the church girls were doing, prompted by a new hue that was coloring the air in the room. And she saw Verdi and she jumped up and barreled right for Verdi, squealing as she went, and that started a parade of children squealing and running to greet Verdi too. And then Johnson looked for the source of the commotion as he walked down the stairs, and he had a clear view to what was happening by the door, to who had just come in from the enclosed porch. And he hadn’t felt so flush, so dizzy, so light-headed since his get-high days as he did right now looking down the stairs at Verdi, his Verdi, and he wanted to laugh and cry at the same time because she was so beautiful, so sweetly poised as the children gathered around her and pulled at her arms and bags and she laughed and said, “Wait, wait, let me get out of my jacket, I have enough surprises for everybody, be patient, children, please.” And she looked around to see who could help peel some of the children away and Johnson stepped back up the stairs, one, two, almost to the top of the stairs from where he could look down on Verdi without her seeing him, he didn’t want her to see him, not right now, not until he could tell his hands to be still because they were shaking now, because they just wanted to grab onto Verdi, just grab her and hold her and never let her go.
And the overly exuberant children half pulled, half pushed Verdi toward the dining room and she almost stumbled over the one or two in front of her as they clumsily made it to the buffet where the gifts were stacked. Except for Sage who hung back to look up at Johnson standing near the top of the stairs, so mesmerized was she by the way the color blue splashed all around him, turning itself inside out in huge waves that looked so beautiful to her.
And Kitt moved like lightning trying to get to Verdi as she stood in the dining room, trying to warn her that Johnson was here, my God, how could she have done this, she asked herself, how could she have maneuvered this situation so that these former lovers would meet unaware like this after twenty years?
But right now Verdi was being helped out of her jacket by her students’ mothers who rarely got the opportunity to be out with their children’s principal in a social setting. And they were taking full advantage as one folded Verdi’s coat over her arm, and another relieved her of her bag, and another pulled up a chair and told her to sit as they went right into questions about their child’s progress, and was such and such a teacher going to retire, and what about that unqualified aide who ran the extended day? And Verdi was eager to oblige since this was her first year in this position and she was still in prove-herself mode. And Kitt tried not to be rude as she said, “Oh, can y’all excuse me and my cousin for two minutes, please?”
And she pulled Verdi up out of the chair, away from her clingy audience, and Verdi kissed Kitt on the cheek, said, “Hey, cuz, you misled me big time, I didn’t know you were throwing a birthday party for Sage and a cabaret for yourself.”
“Did you see him?” is all Kitt said, breathless, perspiration forming as a glaze along her forehead and her cheeks.
“See who?” Verdi asked, feeling so light inside just being here with her cousin and her aunt and Sage and the other little ones from her school, even their parents. She was feeling so unburdened, so unfettered having escaped earlier from the shroud of Rowe’s affection that had been too opaque, too tight and constricting for her today.
“Who, Kitty Kat?” she asked again. “Did I see who?”
They were standing under the molded archway between the living room and the dining room right next to the heavy cast-iron pole lamp with the cut-glass Tiffany-style shade. And at first Verdi thought it was the diffusion of light that made Kitt’s face appear so scattered, as if she were midway between an apology and a moanful expression of pain but with a soft wiftiness about it that was so unlike Kitt. “What’s wrong with you, Kitt?” she asked her again.
“I—I guess you didn’t see—”
“Who? Who? Who?” Verdi asked, getting irritated, getting ready to look around for her auntie so she could explain what Kitt was talking about, or look around to see who the cause of Kitt’s stupor was. And just as she was about to turn exasperated and scan the room, she heard the voice: “Me.” That’s all he said, but just the touch of that mono-syllable against her ear and she more than heard it, she felt it as a jolt that went straight to heart and then as a burst of flames like spontaneous combustion that seems to happen out of nowhere, but only happens really because the elements are in place, ready: some kindling, oxidation, stillness over time, and someone opens a door and air rushes in and a massive fire lives again.
“Me, Verdi. She’s talking about me, Verdi, baby, it’s Johnson, it’s me.”