C H A P T E R • 30
By Friday morning I was feeling the effects of not having had a good night’s sleep in a couple of days. And it felt like Bobby’s fist broke through my protective layer of busyness and denial. And it was also Friday when some of the details came together. Looking back, I wonder how I missed it.
It was early, but I had already discovered that Elizabeth had gone out, and I wasn’t getting any better at this death business. Daddy’s seemed almost part of the natural order of things when compared to these latest losses. And I could only visualize Ceel dead. I had a whole gallery of living images of her laughing, busy, dancing. But now, I only had the vision of her lying on the street.
First, I called Viola and waited while I got a little Phyllis Hyman and a request to speak slowly and leave a detailed message with a time and a phone number. And the wish for a blessed day.
“Viola, I’m thinking I might want to see a plastic surgeon. When you get back from Chicago, let me know how to get in touch with your person.” When I hung up, it occurred to me I’d never heard her say she had one, although she obviously did.
Then I called Adrianne. “Where’d you go? You left me with that mad man.”
“You said you wanted to look around and I had no idea the murderer would come back. You told the police I was at Al’s. I was up half the night dealing with their accusations. I suppose they wanted to see if our stories jived. And, by the way, they asked me again where I was the night before when Obsidian was shot since I have keys to the office.”
She was indignant, and then not.
“But, girl, you are all over the news this morning. At the scene of a murder last night, and at the precinct being arrested, looking like a movie star. Are you okay? Is your nose broken or anything?”
“It’s not broken but I need to have someone look at it. My fans won’t like it if it turns into a bump or something. Do you know a plastic surgeon?”
“I do. But, you know, forgive me, but you can’t pay for that kind of publicity.”
“Except a young man died and I got punched in the face.”
∗ ∗ ∗
When I got outside, the morning remains of the day before spoke to the activities that had taken up the time of my neighbors. The leftovers from meals at the fish place had spilled or been dumped from garbage bags. What looked like someone’s entire belongings were piled in front of the single-room occupancy hotel aptly named Stop Inn. And empty crack vials and their absurdly innocuous pastel tops studded the pavement on the next block.
Stores were doing a good business on Lenox Avenue in Harlem in 1990 and long stretches of them beckoned with the names of their owners: Majester’s, Virginia’s, Lucille’s, Bernice’s, Vernon’s. Others lured more seductively: Welcome Restaurant, Friendly Vegetable Market, Community Grocery.
And then there was simply: Eats, Fruits and Liquor. Liquor had been open since the crack of 8 and the early birds were already heading back down the boulevard in ones or twos with their morning hits in hand.
I navigated through my neighbors who caught up with each other on corners and stoops.
The herds of cars and trucks stampeded at the pedestrians strolling across the crosswalk. Twice on the way, I gasped, once when one very old woman couldn’t, and once for an adolescent who wouldn’t, hurry to move out of the way. It’s a wonder.
The several men who swept in front of the stores barely paused for pedestrians. But when they paused, they spoke: “Mornin.”
“Morning to you too,” I said.
At 125th Street in front of the fenced empty lot where the bazaar begins, the once and present Africans were setting up tables in their allotted reserved spaces.
“Good morning, my sister.” A brother’s smile stopped me.
“Do you have Universal Love?” I asked him, standing in front of his table full of incense and oils and brass and wooden things to burn them in.
“No. But I have musk, kickass, strawberry and pussy.”
“Never mind.” I put a tiny incense burner back on the table.
“Use this on your wrists and you’ll have a bountiful day.”
I barely dodged his out-stretched finger. Patchouli wafted after me.
Other business people were laying out bolts of fabric and hanging garments on the fence. Hats covered a table in color-matched piles and adorned Styrofoam heads on sticks clipped all around the table’s edges. Dolls and dresses and carved wooden animals filled the next table. And tapes and beads and belts and jewelry were arranged in the prime spot just at the corner next to the IRT subway station.
It was a good time of morning before the demands of one of my long days kicked in.
“Braid your hair?”
The trio of Senegalese beauties took up more than half the sidewalk as they tried to stop people trying to walk by.
“No thank you,” I said to the first one and only shook my head when the next two asked.
Before it got too crowded, the avenue could have been Tombstone. The hunks of hair that escaped out the doors blew down the boulevard like tumbleweed.
But now the day was starting.
Beyond the women, three tour buses were setting loose a crowd of white tourists in front of the Apollo to get their pictures taken. They would probably be Germans and Japanese, or out-of-towners from the Midwest. White New Yorkers usually didn’t come uptown unless they worked in a state office, needed to renew their licenses, were headed for Metro North trains or were driving though on the way to the Triboro Bridge.
But I have to admit that I couldn’t be sure because I didn’t get close enough to hear them speak.
And the persistent part of the city that was Harlem had pulled me back for another day.