There were many times when the mood and atmosphere in our house resembled an undertaker’s parlor. I call it morgue silence because to me everyone who is infected with it seems to be imitating the dead. I’ve been to funerals where people sit in the presence of the corpse and keep their eyes so still and empty, I imagined they have just deposited the shell of their bodies in the funeral hall for a while and then have gone off to kill some time at some livelier place.
However, when the singing started, it was always like everyone had turned into Lazarus and risen from the grave. As a little girl, I was so impressed with the energy and the emotion some people exhibited at these wakes that I often wondered if they wouldn’t revive the dead man or woman whose eyes would suddenly snap open and then sit up in the coffin and begin to join in the singing. Once, I imagined it so vividly, I thought it actually had happened. Mama saw me sitting there with my eyes so wide and full of amazement, it made her nervous. She insisted on taking me home because she thought the funeral was making me crazy.
“And she’s crazy enough with her elective mutism,” she told Daddy. She loved using that term ever since she had first heard Mrs. Waite use it at the parent-teacher conference.
Everyone was an elective mute in my home the morning after Mama’s late night out. We had morgue silence. Mama didn’t rise from her bed, but she wasn’t asleep. I looked in and saw her staring up at the ceiling, her lips tightly drawn like a slash across her face. Daddy sipped his coffee and stared at the wall. I felt as if I had to tiptoe about the apartment, getting ready for school. He didn’t say anything until I was ready to leave.
“I’ve got a double shift today,” he told me. “Training two new men. I won’t be back until late, but don’t fix me any dinner. I’ll have enough to eat this time,” he said, his voice trembling with anger and disgust. “She might put poison in my food anyway,” he muttered glaring in Mama’s direction. “Blaming everyone but herself for her unhappiness.”
“I can make you something, Daddy.”
“No, it’s all right,” he said. “I might be later than usual. Don’t worry about me,” he ordered. He was wound so tight this morning, I was already feeling sorry for anyone who crossed him at work.
I nodded and finished my breakfast without another word and left for school.
The moment I arrived, I sensed something different. I knew from the way other students (especially some of the girls in my class) looked at me; hid smiles behind their fingers, spread like Japanese geisha-girl fans; or deposited whispers into each other’s ears that I was once again the object of some ugly joke. Usually, having a thick skin came naturally to me. Whatever darts of ridicule they shot from their condescending eyes or spewed from their twisted, vicious lips bounced off the back of my neck and fell at their own feet like broken arrows. Most of the time, ignoring them as well as I did brought an end to their little games. They grew bored trying to get any sort of reaction from me, and when I looked at them with a blank stare, a face that could easily be lifted and used as a mask of indifference at a Stoic’s convention, they retreated and searched for a more satisfying target.
Today was different because I could feel their determination and their satisfaction growing with every passing minute—from homeroom to my first class of the day—despite my apparent disinterest. I was confused by it and couldn’t help being curious. Was it something my mother had done? Or had said? Were they all just learning about my blind date and laughing at the results? What could possibly be the reason for all this whispering and laughing behind my back? It followed me from room to room like a string of empty cans tied to some poor dog’s tail. The faster I walked, the louder the whispering and laughter became. When I sat in my classes, I merely had to turn slightly to the right or the left to see all eyes were on me, girls and boys mumbling over desks, making such a thick underlying flow of chatter that our teachers had to reprimand them a number of times and threaten to keep the whole class after school.
Their persistence began to make me nervous, but I was able to keep the lid on my emotions, walk with my eyes focused straight ahead, behaving as if there was no one else in the world. Finally, just before lunch, Thelma Williams and Carla Thompson stepped in front of me as I walked to the cafeteria. They wore identical wry smiles and with their books in their arms, their shoulders touching, presented themselves like a wall thrown up to block my way.
“What?” I demanded when they continued to just stand there, grinning.
“We were wondering if you and your boyfriend Balwin would like to come to a party at Carla’s house this weekend?” Thelma asked in a phony sweet tone of voice.
“What?”
“We’ve never invited you to anything because you never showed any interest in boys before,” Carla said.
“Some of the girls were worried you might be gay, you know. They don’t like undressing in front of you in the locker room,” Thelma emphasized.
I shook my head and started to go around them.
“How long have you been secretly seeing Balwin?” Carla asked as they stepped to the right to keep me blocked.
I stared at them. Balwin? Could Balwin have said something to someone about me? It seemed unlikely.
A small crowd began to gather behind them.
“What we were wondering is how does he make love with that big belly of his in the way,” Thelma said. The others were starting to giggle. “I told Carla you would always have to be on top, right?”
“You’re disgusting,” I said.
“There’s nothing wrong about being on top,” Carla said. “As long as there’s something to be on top of.”
That brought a loud laugh. Some boys passing nearby stopped to listen.
“I’ve got to go to lunch,” I muttered and stepped forward again, but they didn’t part to make room for me.
“Well, are you coming to the party or not?” Thelma asked. “We’ll have Carla’s bed reinforced to handle the extra weight.”
She turned to the appreciative crowd and smiled before turning back to me.
I fixed my glare on her.
“You must be very sexually frustrated,” I said. That drew a loud howl from the boys on the rim of the circle.
“Not so frustrated that I’d be going to Balwin Noble’s house. You’ve got to find his thing with a tweezer.”
Laughter rolled like thunder down the hallway and over me. My heart pounded. Rage rose in my blood.
“You’ve got that wrong, Thelma,” I said so calmly I could have been talking about a problem in biology. “It’s your brain that has to be found with a tweezer.”
I forced my way between her and Carla as the boys roared with laughter, most of them now turning to tease Thelma. She cursed them. Before I made it to the cafeteria doors, I felt her books slam against my back. She had heaved them after me. They fell to the floor. I paused, took a deep breath and then just walked on, passing Mr. Denning, the cafeteria’s teacher monitor, who nodded and smiled at me. He heard the commotion continuing outside and turned his attention to it, ordering the crowd to disperse.
They did, but shortly afterward, there was a great deal more noise in the hallway and Mr. Denning had to rush out again. A group of students gathered at the doors to watch and then everyone scattered to his table when three other teachers appeared.
What was going on now?
I was shaking in the lunch line and still trembling when I finally sat down with my tray of food. Arlene Martin and Betty Lipkowski, two white girls who had always been pleasant and friendly, were already seated at the table. They were in the chorus, too.
“I guess Mr. Glenn’s going to be accompanying us on the piano today,” Betty said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Didn’t you see what was going on out there just now?” Arlene asked me.
“I saw enough out there,” I muttered.
“Balwin got into a bad fight.”
“What?”
“He and Joey Adamson had to be pulled apart by Mr. Denning. He took them both to the principal and you know fighting is an automatic three-day suspension, no matter who’s to blame,” Betty said.
“How does it feel?” Arlene asked.
I stared at her.
“What?”
“You know, to have a boy get into a fight over you?”
I looked down at my food. I had to keep swallowing to stop what I had already eaten from coming back up.
“Sick,” I finally said.
“What?” Betty asked.
“Sick. It makes me sick,” I said, rose and walked out of the cafeteria.
The remainder of the day passed in a blur. My teachers’ voices ran into each other in my mind. I moved like a robot, unaware of how I went from one room to another. When Miss Huba called on me in my last class of the day, Business Math, I didn’t even hear her. I guess I was staring so blankly and sitting so stiffly, I frightened her. She came to my desk and shook my shoulder.
“Ice? Are you all right?”
I gazed up at her, and then looked at the rest of the class. Everyone stared, all looking like they were holding their collective breath, waiting to see if I would scream or cry or laugh madly.
“Yes,” I said softly. Her previous math question entered my brain as if it had been waiting at the door. I rattled off the answer. She smiled.
“That’s correct. Okay, let’s turn to the next chapter, class,” she said.
When I looked at the others again, their expressions varied from amazement to disappointment. After Miss Huba made the assignment and gave the class the last ten minutes to begin, a silence thickened around me. Then, Thelma Williams, who sat in the last seat in the third row, loudly muttered, “Give her a tweezer.” The whole class roared. Miss Huba looked up confused. And I…I felt as if each syllable of laughter was like a pebble thrown at my face.
Finally, I gave them what they wanted so desperately.
I covered my face with my hands, rose and ran from the classroom. Miss Huba’s amazed voice was shut off by the door I slammed behind me.
I didn’t go to chorus rehearsal. I went straight home. I was glad for once that Mama wasn’t there to greet me. I dreaded her questions, her demands to know exactly why I had cut my chorus rehearsal, especially with the concert coming up in a little over a month. She would dig and scratch until she got all of it out of me.
Of course, I felt terrible. Balwin had only tried to do me a favor, had only tried to help me with my future and now found himself not only the target of ridicule, but in trouble at school, probably for the first time. I shivered thinking of what his father might do to him.
About an hour later, I heard Mama come home. She was mumbling to herself, not realizing I was already home. I let her go to her room and then I came out of mine, expecting to see her any moment and gearing myself up for her cross-examination. She didn’t come out. I waited and waited and finally went to her door and peered in. She was in bed again and fast asleep with an opened bottle of aspirins on her night table. I decided it was best not to wake her.
When I started making some supper, I heard her call to me and I returned to her room. She had risen and gotten herself a cold washcloth, which she had over her forehead.
“This has been the worst hangover of my life,” she moaned. “I’ll never drink cheap gin again. Don’t you ever do it, Ice. If you drink, insist your man buys you the best,” she advised.
“I don’t drink, Mama.”
“Yeah, yeah, but you will someday,” she insisted.
“Are you hungry?”
“Not with my stomach,” she complained. “I tried to eat some lunch today and it nearly came up as soon as I swallowed. Just make me some coffee, will you, honey?” she asked.
I nodded and did so. I gave her a steaming mug of black coffee, which she sipped, closed her eyes, and sipped again. Then she looked up at me sharply.
“Where’s your hardworking father?” she asked.
“He’s doing a double shift today, Mama.”
“Figures. The day I need him around here, he’s babysitting some department store.”
She dropped her head to the pillow as if her head was a solid chunk of granite and closed her eyes.
“Get me two more aspirins,” she ordered.
After she swallowed them, she said she wanted to just sleep until next week.
I returned to the kitchen and continued making myself some supper. Before I sat down, however, there was a loud, strong knock on our front door. I listened and heard the knocking again.
“Yes?” I asked with the door closed.
“I’d like to speak to you, Miss Goodman,” I heard. The voice was strangely familiar. I churned through my memory desperately, trying to recall where I had heard it before and then realized. It was Balwin’s father!
I looked back toward Mama’s room, waiting to hear her ask who it was, but she didn’t call out to me.
“I’ll just take up a few minutes of your time,” I heard Balwin’s father say.
With trembling fingers, I opened the door and stepped back to let him in.
He stood there gaping in at me. Dressed in his dark gray pin-striped three-piece suit and his tie with his gold cuff links visible, he looked almost as alien in this building as someone from outer space. His lips were pressed tightly shut, which drew the skin on his chin into a small fold.
“Thank you,” he said stepping forward. He gazed around as he closed the door behind him, nodding softly as if what he saw confirmed what he believed and expected.
“What do you want, Mr. Noble?” I asked.
I had already made up my mind to stay away from Balwin and would agree to it immediately as soon as he demanded it. I expected to hear his complaint, how I had caused his perfect student son to misbehave seriously for the first time ever, proving I was a bad influence on him.
“I’m here to ask for a favor,” he began, “but not a favor I expect to be gratis,” he quickly added.
He gazed at the doorway to the living room.
“Are your parents at home?”
“My mother is, but she isn’t feeling well and she is in bed,” I said.
He nodded.
“Well, can we sit down for a moment?” he asked.
I led him into the living room. He looked over every possible seat as if he wanted to be sure to choose one that wouldn’t leave a smudge on his immaculate suit. Our apartment was far from dirty. The furniture might look worn, but there wasn’t any dust nor were there any stains. He chose to sit in Daddy’s chair. I remained standing.
“Well, now,” he began, his fingers touching at the tips, “I suppose you’re aware of what went on today.”
I nodded.
He tilted his head and almost smiled.
“I was obviously quite taken by surprise when I received the phone call from the principal. My Balwin? Fighting? I remember girls on the playground pushing and kicking him around and him not lifting a finger to defend himself—or even to voice a complaint, for that matter. I thought he was without any self-respect. Other children his age could wipe their shoes on him and he would stand there obediently as if he were a living rug. I can tell you how much that bothered me, and when he began to gain weight, I thought it was just a logical consequence of the softness in his spine. He has no pride.”
“That’s not true,” I cried.
He snapped his hands apart as if I had driven mine through them.
“No,” he said nodding, “I realize now that there are some things that will motivate him to stand up for himself, to care about his self-image and the image he presents to others. One thing at least, I should say,” he concluded, gazing up at me and nodding.
I waited, my arms now wrapped around my body, under my breasts.
“You know I’m referring to you. This fight today was over you, as I understand it. He was defending your honor. Of course, he received three days’ suspension at just the wrong time of his high-school life, when he’s expected to do well on his exams and prepare to enter a prestigious institution. He’s got his heart set on this Juilliard, but I have gotten him to at least apply to Yale and Harvard.”
“Mr. Noble—” I began, but he put up his hand to stop the traffic of my words.
“How, I asked myself, how can I take advantage of this rather embarrassing situation so it won’t be a complete loss? I make my living doing that for others in a sense, so I should be able to do it for myself, don’t you think?
“For the longest time, I have tried without much success, to get Balwin to look at himself in the mirror and see what everyone else sees. I have tried to explain, to demonstrate, to emphasize just how important appearance is in this world. People, for better or for worse, most often judge others on the basis of their looks, the image they present. Clothes do make the man, Miss Goodman, and so does your personal hygiene and your physical self.
“In Balwin’s case it’s deplorable. He has nice clothes to wear and he takes good care of his wardrobe, but you can’t turn a pig into a swan merely by dressing it in pretty feathers.”
“Balwin is not a pig,” I blurted.
He stared at me and then closed his eyes for a moment, as if he had to seize control of his raging emotions.
“No,” he said opening his eyes again. “He’s not a pig in spirit even though someone looking at him might think he overindulges, as do pigs.”
“What do you want from me?” I demanded, growing tired of listening to Balwin’s father tearing him down.
“I want you to get him to lose weight,” he said.
“What?”
“You heard me. I want you to get him to shape up, to improve his self-image. I know you can motivate him now because of what’s happened. That shows some commitment to something other than his music.
“Of course, I don’t expect you to do this without receiving some compensation so I am prepared to make this offer…I’ll give you ten dollars for every pound you get him to shed from now until the end of the school year,” he stated.
I simply stared at him.
“Twenty pounds gets you a quick two hundred dollars. I’m sure you could use it,” he said, glancing around the living room. “No,” he said after another moment of my silence and my famous penetrating stare, “I should improve this offer. Tell you what. I’ll increase the dollars per pound with every five pounds so that pounds one to five, you’ll get fifty dollars, but pounds six to ten, you’ll get double that, a hundred dollars, and then pounds ten to fifteen, we’ll make triple and quadruple the amount for fifteen to twenty. Anything more than twenty, I’ll give you fifty dollars a pound. How’s that sound?”
“Stupid,” I said. “Insulting. Depressing, disgusting and insensitive,” I concluded. “Balwin will lose weight when he wants to lose it and not because I tell him to lose it.”
Mr. Noble smiled.
“Please, Miss Goodman. We both know that a boy who has a crush on a girl, as Balwin has on you, will do almost anything the girl asks him to do. All I’m asking is you…lead him on a bit. I don’t have to tell you how to get a boy to do your bidding, I’m sure. Only this time, you can earn some good money for it.
“I might even be inclined to throw in a bonus if you succeed in making a difference in a few months. It will be a nice graduation present and what harm will you have done? Nothing. But you will have helped Balwin immensely. Wouldn’t you like to do something good for someone and make money doing that as well?”
“I don’t need to be paid to do something good for someone,” I said.
I heard Mama’s distinct groan and looked toward her bedroom, expecting her to make an appearance and be shocked at the sight of Mr. Noble. It grew silent again, however, so I turned back to him.
“My mother’s not well, Mr. Noble. I’m sorry, but you should leave.”
“Fine,” he said, standing. “Think over my offer and get back to me. You can continue to come to the house to practice your music, of course, and benefit that way, too.”
He walked to the front door, opened it, and stood there a moment.
“Don’t be so quick to condemn a father for trying to help his son,” he added and then slipped out gracefully, closing the door softly behind him.
I stood there for a moment staring after him. Then I heard Mama behind me. I turned and saw her shaking her head.
“I raised a fool,” she said. “I heard all that. You just went and threw out hundreds of easy dollars.”
“I couldn’t take money from Balwin’s father for something like that, Mama. I’d feel like a traitor or something,” I said and started for the kitchen.
“Why? Who you betraying? Some fat boy? Believe me, Ice, you don’t get a chance to take advantage of men much in this world. It’s usually the other way around. Think of that Shawn Carter. Didn’t he try to take advantage of us? Of you? It just comes natural to men, so why shouldn’t you benefit from an opportunity, huh?”
I started to shake my head.
“If you don’t want the money, take it and give it to me, for godsakes.”
“I can’t, Mama,” I said.
She smirked and nodded.
“Right, you can’t. And what have you been doing over that boy’s house anyway, huh? C’mon, tell me all of it.”
“We’ve been practicing music for my audition,” I revealed.
“Thought so. Your father know about this?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
She pulled herself up.
“Well, that figures, too. Secrets. You and him keep secrets.”
“No, Mama,” I cried. “He didn’t find out until last night when I came home. I would have told you, too, but you didn’t come home until very late…”
“Sure, blame it on that. He blames everything on me, too,” she said.
She took a deep breath, turned and went back to her bedroom. I wanted to follow her and explain more, but I thought she would only close her ears as tightly as she closed her eyes. Later, I tried to get her to eat something and she finally relented and had some toast and jam.
“You take that money,” she told me when I brought it into her. “Don’t be the fool I’ve been. Take whatever you can while you can. It doesn’t last long. Before you know it, they’re looking at younger women and you might as well be invisible,” she complained.
I went to my room to finish my homework. Just before ten, Balwin called.
“I guess you heard what happened,” he began.
“I’m sorry, Balwin. I never wanted to get you into any trouble,” I told him.
“It’s not your fault. Jeez, Ice, you can’t blame yourself for what those idiots do. I shouldn’t have let him get to me,” he said, “but I wouldn’t let him say those things about you.”
“I know,” I said. I wondered if he had any idea his father had been to my house. “Was your father very angry?” I asked.
“Not as angry as I expected he would be. He didn’t even ask about the cause of the fight and he hasn’t said a bad word about you, Ice. I don’t mind the days off. I’ll work on my music. I’ll finish your song, too,” he vowed.
“Balwin…”
“You’ll come over after dinner tomorrow night, won’t you? Please? I’ll feel like a total idiot if you don’t,” he explained. “Like it’s all been for nothing, a waste.”
I smiled to myself.
“Are you sure, Balwin? It won’t stop at school, you know.”
“I know. I don’t care. Matter of fact,” he said, his voice deepening, “I think I’m going to start to enjoy it. They’re just jealous, that’s all.
“Here, the prettiest girl in the school and the most talented, too, is friends with me, coming to my house,” he bragged. “I guess they just don’t understand the power of music as well as we do, right, Ice?”
He waited.
“Right?”
“Right, Balwin,” I said.
“Okay. Same time, okay?”
“All right, Balwin,” I said.
“I can’t think of anyone I would rather get in trouble over than you, Ice,” he said. Then he quickly said, “Good night,” and hung up.
It was just like before when I felt he had stolen a kiss.
It brought a deeper smile to my face.
Music is powerful, I thought. It can make you feel so much better about yourself and your life, it can help you visualize your dreams, it can give you hope and strength. Just like Daddy, Balwin and I would wrap our music about ourselves snugly and shut out the nasty world.
Let them curse and laugh, ridicule until they’re blue in the face.
All we’ll hear is the rhythm and the blues or the melody of Birdland.
I’ll sing louder, better and longer.
And I’ll drown them all out.