Mamie was the one who’d introduced them. Before she left for San Francisco, Jennie told her how she wanted to buy the shop but didn’t have enough money to pay for it and couldn’t get a loan because she was a woman. Mamie told her not to give up, said she knew somebody she thought might be willing to help if Jennie was willing to offer him a little money in return. She said this man was someone Jennie could trust, someone she was almost 100 percent certain would never try to cheat her. She said that the only reason she wasn’t 100 percent was on account of she’d been so wrong about the Rib King.
She’d arranged a meeting at a local diner and Jennie was introduced to a tall, handsome man who owned his own store. He hadn’t talked much, answered most of Mamie’s questions with a simple yes or no and spent most of that first meeting staring down at a cup of coffee on the table between them. Jenny knew she was taking a chance by trusting him, but the only other option was trying to get money from Dewey Jenkins, the man who ran Bosswell’s cash and loan business. That was where most people went when they needed money and needed it fast. Jennie was not yet convinced she was that desperate and so, largely on the strength of Mamie’s having vouched for each of them as good, honorable people, neither of whom had any interest in taking unfair advantage of the other, she and Tony had gone down to the courthouse and gotten married. Jennie had vowed to make all her loan payments on time as well as pay Tony a small monthly fee for the duration of their marriage. Tony had vowed to be satisfied with this fee and otherwise stay out of her business.
In that sense, it had been a happy marriage. Their arrangement worked well, but she didn’t know much about Tony’s life outside of it. Harperism and the Doctrine Tony lived by were part of a philosophy and a movement she barely understood. It made sense in the broad strokes of slogans Harper’s followers were fond of shouting on crowded corners: Buy Black. Love Your Community. Stay Awake. But anytime she asked Tony to explain what those slogans actually meant, she wound up feeling more confused as opposed to less.
When she got to Tony’s shop an elderly man in a gray coat was standing in front of the store, gluing a sign to the window. He stopped what he was doing when he saw her walk past him on her way to Tony’s apartment.
“You going up to see Tony? Mind giving him this?” He held out a small cardboard box. Inside it was a roll of tape and stack of index cards with the word “UNORTHODOXY” written on one side of each. It was the same word spelled out on the sign he was gluing to the window.
“What are these?”
“Buyer bewares. Need to be affixed to all products not officially sanctioned for sale by leadership decree.”
She looked down at the cards. It was a large stack.
“Tony knows which ones to put these on?”
“He should. All of them.”
“All of them?”
A man in a delivery uniform walked by. “‘He who claims to know confusion best be careful lest confusion claim him,’” he said.
“You got that right,” the old man called back and smiled.
He looked at Jennie. “The beware is not so much for the product being sold as the man doing the selling. You see, Tony has been talking a little crazy lately. Someone asks him a question about something he’s selling in that store, all kinds of crazy talk liable to come out of his mouth. Can’t actually shut him down until the end of the month, when the elders meet. Until then I’m hoping this will be enough.”
“Shut him down?”
A woman in a green frock coat walked by, brow furrowed and muttering to herself as she headed into the store. The old man tipped his hat.
“Afternoon.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” the woman said. “Doing that poor boy like this. ‘The root of confusion is fear.’” She stomped inside the store.
The man sighed and looked back at Jennie. “Memetic device.”
“What?”
“The cards. Just as much for Tony as for any potential customers. I’m hoping that when he looks at them he will think about what he’s doing, reflect on his so-called choices.”
Jennie shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s why Tony needs to post the cards.”
“You’re saying he did something crazy, something unorthodox, and now you want him to close the shop?”
“Not what I want. Not what I want at all. But this is not about me. Not about Tony either. It’s about what is.”
“What?”
The man frowned. “You should come to a meeting sometime, girl. If you did, you’d know that the Doctrine teaches us what is. It is only through study and reflection upon what is that we come to understand what should be. Tony is out there confusing people, talking about some other mess altogether, something he calls ‘what could be.’ Which by definition is a heresy predicated on delusion.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“How could you? You don’t even know your own name.”
“It’s Jennie. Jennie Williams.”
“Exactly.” The man shook his head. “That’s alright, girl. Nobody is coming to you for understanding anyhow. That’s what the Doctrine is for. Tony just needs to affix the cards.”
The woman in the frock coat walked back out of the store. She took a deep breath and in a loud voice said, “‘He who knows what is will be held accountable for it.’”
To which the man responded, “And ‘he who knows what’s not is going to be held accountable for that too.’”
The woman put a hand on her hip. “‘I am the bulwark against darkness,’ fool. ‘That is the beauty of the I.’”
“‘Whereas you is the way of indifference,’” the man responded. “‘Not only are you fighting the wrong war, you not even on the right battlefield.’”
Jennie listened to them go back and forth like that for a moment, shouting passages from the Doctrine at each other, getting increasingly angry as they did. Confused, she took the cards and walked up the staircase that led to Tony’s apartment.
She knocked on the door, still confused when a woman pulled it open, looked Jennie up and down, and said, “The answer is no.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You are not welcome here. We’re going to vote when the elders meet and until then, nobody wants to hear it. So just turn around and take your stupid cards with you.”
Jennie looked down at the cards in her hand. “Oh, no, these are not mine. You don’t understand—”
“I do though. When the elders meet you will get your chance to speak. And I’ll get mine. Until then you’ve got no business bothering the man in his home.”
Jennie frowned. The woman was half a foot taller than Jennie and just the way she stood there, blocking the doorway with her arms folded across her chest, made Jennie bristle.
“I’m not here to see you. Here to see Tony.”
“Well, you can’t.”
“Who says?”
“I do.”
“And who are you?”
“Someone who actually believes in the future of the movement. Someone not so stuck in the past they can’t see when it’s time to make a change. That’s who I am. Who are you?”
“I’m Tony’s wife.”
“Wife?”
That shut her up. She shrank away from the door.
“Oh. I’m sorry. . . . I didn’t realize Tony was married.”
“Well, now you do,” Jennie said and pushed past her into the house.
She walked through the front room, one wall of which was covered with a large portrait of Winston Harper. The other sides of the room were lined with books: great stacks of them sitting on homemade shelves made of planks of wood separated by cinder blocks that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. There were still more books lining the hallway that led to the kitchen, where she found Tony sitting slumped at a small wooden table while a large man in a blue suit stood over him with his hands clasped behind his back.
Tony sat up straight as soon as he saw her pass through the door.
“What are you doing here?”
“Hello, Tony. Nice to see you too.”
Tony shook his head. “Not a good time, Jennie. I’m in a meeting. Didn’t Mary Jane tell you now was not a good time?”
“Mary Jane? Is that her name?”
“Who is this, Tony?” the man asked.
“That’s his wife,” Mary Jane said. She was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, watching them, lips pursed together as she frowned.
“Wife?” The man smiled. “Why, Tony. You didn’t tell me you were married.”
“That’s because I’m not. What are you doing here, Jennie? Can’t you see I’m busy right now?”
“Oh, it’s alright, Tony. I don’t mind the interruption,” the man said. “Seemed like our conversation was starting to get a little off track anyhow.”
He put out his hand. “I’m Roderick Peters. Pleasure to meet you.” He squinted. “Wait a minute. I know you. You work in that beauty shop on Thirty-Seventh, don’t you? Just a couple blocks from Bosswell’s Pool Hall? I took my sister there a couple of times.”
“I don’t work there,” Jennie said. “I own it. That’s my shop.”
“You don’t say?”
“Your shop, yeah, if you want to call it that,” Tony said. “Really it’s just a storefront. Seem like all somebody got to do these days is put a couple chairs in their parlor room and people will call it a shop.”
Jennie blinked.
“Now, Tony, that’s no way to talk about your wife’s business,” Roderick said.
“I told you, she’s not my wife,” Tony said. “We got a little arrangement going on, but we’re not really married. The truth is, I barely know the woman.” He looked at Jennie. “What do you want anyhow?”
“A divorce,” Jennie said. She dropped the envelope on the table in front of him.
Tony looked at the envelope, then back at Jennie. His hands were shaking as he reached inside and pulled the annulment papers out.
“Mary Jane? Bring me a pen.”
Mary Jane disappeared down the hall and came back with a pen. Tony signed the paper then handed it to Jennie.
“There you are, Jennie. Happy?”
“I guess.” Jennie frowned. Somehow she’d been expecting something more from him, although when she thought about it, she wasn’t sure what.
“Alright then. So it’s settled. We’re not married, just like I said. Why don’t you go home, will you? I was right in the middle of discussing an urgent matter with this gentleman.”
Jennie looked at Roderick. “Nice to meet you anyhow. Tell your sister to come back anytime.”
She turned to Mary Jane. “You too, if you decide you want to do something about that acne. I got something for women like you, just so you know. You don’t have to walk around looking like that if you don’t want to.”
“Bye-bye, Jennie,” Tony said.
Jennie snatched her envelope from the table and stomped out. As she moved down the hall, she could hear them still talking about her.
“Well now, Tony, you’re just full of surprises, aren’t you? Why didn’t you tell me you were married?”
“Because I’m not. Not really. Just trying to help a woman in need is all. Probably can’t tell by looking at her, but that woman has had a hard life. Born on some dirt farm in Alabama. Mama married her off to some old man when she was eleven. Had a baby by him by the time she was twelve. Had to join the damn circus just to get away from that man and she’s been hustling and struggling to take care of herself and that child ever since. Now here she comes wanting to open her little storefront, have some stability for once in her life. And all it took to make that possible was a man signing his name on a piece of paper. So that’s what I did.”
Jennie’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, that that was how Tony saw her, how he talked about her when she wasn’t around. And the worst part about it was it was all true. Jennie’s mama had married her off to a man who’d had nothing to recommend him but a house with indoor plumbing. She’d lived in that house for four years, until Cutie Pie was finally old enough to run away with her. They’d joined a circus, then hooked up with Happy Hillman and spent the next eight years singing and dancing as the Dancing Darling Williams Sisters. But how did Tony know that? She’d never told him. Her past was something she didn’t like to think about, much less discuss with other people.
She felt dizzy all of a sudden, a queasiness rolling up from the pit of her stomach, but somehow found the strength to keep walking. When she reached the door she realized she was still holding the box of cards and set it on the floor before she stumbled down the stairs and back onto the sidewalk where the man and the woman in the frock coat were still shouting passages from the Doctrine at each other.
“‘I am always with you, the bulwark against fear. I am the reason you never walk alone. . . .’”
It wasn’t until she was back at the shop, one of her customers already sitting in her chair, that she remembered there was someone she had told: Mamie. When Mamie first came to visit her in the hospital, she hadn’t been doing well. Still in shock from Mr. Sitwell’s violence, laid up in bed with a broken ankle, staring at the walls, and crying all the time. All kinds of crazy nonsense had probably come out of her mouth while Mamie just sat there, listening to it. But she’d been so out of it at the time she couldn’t really remember what she’d said.
Apparently, Mamie remembered. Jennie figured Mamie must have told Tony at least some of it when she was trying to convince him to marry her.
“Something wrong?” the woman in her chair said. She was watching Jennie scowl in the mirror in front of them.
Jennie nodded and tried to smile. “No, you’re alright. Just keep your head down.”
She looked around her shop. On one side of the room a teenaged beauty queen sat admiring her reflection while Lala crouched behind her and whispered compliments in her ear. On the other side, Irene was holding a curling iron over the head of a woman with a book balanced on her lap. While the woman read her book, Irene pivoted around her chair and stopped periodically to squint at both her handiwork and her own reflection in the mirror. That was how Irene worked: slowly and methodically, observing her client’s hair from all possible angles, somehow managing to assume a series of dramatic poses as she did.
Tony had had no cause to disrespect her shop. As mad as she was about the things he’d said about her, she was more offended by his trying to downgrade her place of business. She was proud of her salon, proud of the work they did there, knew for a fact that the three of them together were up to the standard of any salon in the city. They each had different styles that complemented one another; they appealed to different types of customers and were capable of serving a wide variety of needs. Lala got a lot of requests from women who wanted to be pampered and petted, while Irene tended to attract serious, professional women, women who knew they were judged by their appearances but were no longer impressed by that fact. They were immune to Lala’s flattery, didn’t want their time and money wasted, and so preferred the cold, tight professionalism with which Irene carried herself, a performance they understood and respected all the more, Jennie suspected, because of the scar.
Jennie took care of what was left. Her beauty treatments were expensive, and so the women who requested her tended to be either the ones who could most afford it or the ones so harried and harassed by their daily lives that they hadn’t been able to do anything about a problem until it got so bad they didn’t have a choice but to see an expert.
“Everything alright?” The woman in her chair was staring in the mirror again, trying to intuit meaning from the expression on Jennie’s face.
Jennie smiled. “Will be.” She looked down at the woman’s scalp. The woman had two jobs, five children, and a husband who was never home. She’d been using lye to smooth out her hair for years, not realizing how much damage she was doing until it started falling out in patches.
“Just relax.”
Jennie dipped her finger into a small vial of Mamie’s Brand. She massaged it into the woman’s scalp and tried to think of the best way to tell her that sometimes things seemed to get worse before they got better.
* * *
After they closed for the night Jennie went upstairs to the apartment she shared with Cutie Pie. Despite her best efforts, she was still thinking about the things Tony had said. It seemed like the good feeling she’d had before giving him those annulment papers was long gone and she was having a hard time getting it back.
She went to the kitchen. She knew what her past might have looked like to other people. That’s why she didn’t like to talk about it. It was also why she would always be grateful to Mamie. When she’d gone to Mamie all those years ago needing a job, she’d never even worked in a house before. She’d spent eight years on the road doing whatever seemed necessary to survive. Instead of judging her for it, Mamie had considered her background and assessed it for what it actually meant: smart enough to train.
She opened the icebox, where a pound of ground beef had spent the day sitting in a marinade of one of Mamie’s unmarketable sauces. As she set it in a pan she remembered the way Mamie had fussed at her while she was teaching her to make it. She hadn’t minded because she’d recognized that Mamie’s impatience had less to do with anger than a determination that Jennie get it right, a belief that she was more than capable of that. This determination and faith in her basic abilities had touched Jennie because no one else had ever taken the time to teach her much of anything.
She lit the oven. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Her first husband, Cutie Pie’s father, was the one who had taught her to read. He had owned a small store that sold livestock feed and had it in his mind that one day she would work there with him, not seeming to realize that she spent most of their marriage thinking up ways to kill him.
She placed the pan in the oven and set the timer for thirty minutes. That was how Jennie spent her childhood. Before she started performing with Cutie Pie she’d spent four years trapped in a small house trying to think up ways to kill her husband. And maybe that sounded pitiful but it was how she’d survived being married to him. How she’d learned not to complain, not to fuss, not to fight and above all, how to survive. It might have looked like acceptance, but in truth it was the opposite. She’d done her chores, studied her lessons, let him climb into bed with her at night. All the while convinced that one of them was about to die, that either she would kill him or he would kill her for daring to try. Either way, it would all be over soon.
Then she found out she was having a baby.
“Mama? Are you alright?”
She looked up from the stove and saw Cutie Pie coming in through the front door.
“Did something happen at the shop?”
“No, Cutie, everything is fine,” Jennie said and wiped her eyes. “Just got a little upset on account of something with Tony.”
“Tony?”
“I had to go see him today. He was talking about my past, acting like he knows me when of course he’s wrong. Bunch of old-timey stuff I don’t even remember anyhow.”
“Well, if you don’t remember, how do you know he was wrong?” Cutie said as she hung up her coat.
“Because I know me,” Jennie said. “I know who I am.”
She smiled as Cutie came and took a seat at the table. Every time Jennie looked at her daughter she couldn’t help but realize that whatever she’d been through in this life, it was all worth it if that’s what it took to get Cutie Pie born.
“What are you doing home so early anyhow? I thought you were having dinner with your beau, Theodore, tonight.”
Cutie Pie had been dating the son of a doctor for the past three years, one of her fellow students at the private high school Jennie had insisted she attend. They’d gone without dinner sometimes just to cover the girl’s tuition, in part because Jennie wanted to make sure that if her daughter was going to take up with a boy it would be one of the affluent students she was now surrounded by. If there was one thing her childhood had taught her it was that she would never allow her daughter to sell herself cheap. When Cutie Pie got married it would be to someone who had a lot more going for him than a house with indoor plumbing.
“Not tonight. Honestly, Mama? We had a little argument.”
“You did?” Jennie was surprised. She couldn’t imagine what the two of them could possibly have to argue about. Cutie Pie was beautiful and brilliant, Theodore was rich and easygoing. They were a perfect match.
“What were you arguing about?”
“Oh, it was stupid, really. Believe it or not it started with a James Johnson song.”
“What?”
“Remember the other night, when he took me to that reception for his friend Reggie’s engagement? Remember? I told you about that.”
“That’s right. I remember.”
“Well, somehow we started arguing about a poem by James Weldon Johnson. Theodore’s friends didn’t even know it was a song. I told them I knew for a fact it was a song because I used to sing it.”
“That’s right. You did. You sang it beautifully too.” Jennie squinted. “Did one of those stuck-up people say something about you being on the stage?”
“No, Mama. They just didn’t know. Reggie asked to hear it, so they’d know the tune. I sang it. Well, Theodore got mad about that. He said he didn’t like me singing for other people, that he preferred to think my singing was just for him.”
“Oh. Well, I can see how that’s kind of annoying.” She couldn’t, really, but she nodded anyway. “But also kind of sweet. Don’t you think? Just one of those sweet, annoying things boys do when they fancy you.”
“But I don’t sing for him, Mama. I sing for myself. It’s not our thing. It’s my thing. He’s got nothing to do with it,” Cutie Pie said. She shook her head. “It bothers me, Mama. I know we’ve been together for a long time. But it seems like he has a way of doing things that I know is supposed to be nice, but it doesn’t actually feel nice at all. Honestly? They just make him seem simpleminded.”
“Simpleminded?”
Jennie had to think about that. She was having a hard time understanding why Cutie Pie was so upset. But she tried.
“Well, maybe he is simpleminded. But I’ll tell you something, Cutie. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. You don’t want no complicated man anyhow.”
“No?”
“No. Too much work. Trust me on that. The simpler the better when it comes to men.”
The timer went off. Jennie walked to the oven.
Cutie Pie looked down at the envelope on the table.
“What’s this?”
“Tony signed the divorce papers.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good news, right?”
“Yes. It’s good news,” Jennie said. “Means I’m finally free. Means I don’t have to worry about some man waking up one day and deciding he wants to cheat me. And that’s not all.” She smiled. “Someone wants to buy my healing salve. Somebody who works for a big company wants to start selling Mamie in all the stores.”
“For real?”
“That’s right. Starlight. They sell products all over the country.”
Cutie Pie squinted. “Really?”
“Really,” Jennie said.
She set a pan of meatloaf on the table.