by Libba Bray
“There you are!” Lupe called, coming out of the lodge with her snare drum. Only now did Jericho and Ling realize that the Haymakers’ set had ended.
“Mr. Smith, could you be a lamb and help me with this?” Lupe asked.
“Of course,” Jericho said, moving to help Lupe even though it was obvious to everyone else she didn’t need it. She was just inventing ways to be around him.
“You are just the sweetest,” Lupe said, smiling.
“It’s no trouble,” Jericho said, oblivious, and Ling could see the disappointment on Lupe’s face as he carried the drum to the bus without so much as a backward glance.
“Why are you sweet on Evie?” Ling asked the next night when it was just the two of them backstage.
Jericho looked up from his book. “Who said I was—”
“You’re nothing alike. Nothing.”
“You’re the scientist. Isn’t it ‘opposites attract’?” Jericho challenged and turned the page.
“Sometimes forces repel, too.”
“You don’t think much of Evie, do you?”
“I don’t always feel that she’s a serious person.”
“Neither is Henry. And you seem to like him just fine.”
“I’m not jealous, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I didn’t say that. You judge her differently because she’s a girl.”
“I’m a girl!” Ling protested.
“Henry goes to parties. Henry comes home late. Or stays out all night. He makes jokes all the time. But it doesn’t seem to bother you. Why can’t Evie do the same?”
“I…” Ling started, but there was nothing else to add.
Jericho shrugged and went back to reading.
Ling did judge Evie differently. And part of it was that Evie was a girl, Ling realized with great discomfort. She also didn’t like Evie all that much. The two of them had little in common. If not for this mission, they would not have known each other, or ever spent time together. Ling thought of Evie as frivolous and a little reckless. Also brave and daring. And selfish.
“Evie couldn’t see that Mabel was ripe for joining up with anarchists. I just don’t understand how a person who reads objects and collects so much about people and who they are could choose to be so blind,” Ling said.
“If you knew all those things about people, wouldn’t you want to be blind sometimes? Going to parties and living fast is Evie’s revenge on a cruel world. She looks it in the eye and says, ‘You will not break me.’” Jericho let out a long exhale. “And then she usually gets drunk.”
“So she’s pretending all the time.”
“Not all the time.”
“Did she pretend with you?”
Jericho’s jaw tightened. “Now, see here—you aren’t invited to comment on everything in my life.”
“She’s never going to be with you. She loves Sam. Stop pining for her, Heathcliff!” Ling clapped a hand over her mouth, embarrassed by her sudden outburst. “I’m sorry,” she said from behind her fingers. “I didn’t mean to be so…”
“Honest?” Jericho finished.
Ling dropped her hand, letting it rest on her crutch again. “I want better for you. You deserve happiness.”
“No one’s ever said that to me before.”
“Well. Now someone has.”
Jericho had not experienced much happiness since he was a kid working his parents’ farm. That was one of the reasons he’d clung to Evie. Being with her was such a big ride that it didn’t leave room for all the feelings Jericho pushed down. What did happiness look like when you didn’t know?
“What makes you happy?” Jericho asked.
“Oh,” Ling said, surprised by the question. “Um, science. The beauty of it, especially physics. My father’s soup dumplings—taking that first bite and the soup squirts into your mouth, hot and savory. Chinese New Year. This one dress my mother sewed for me that’s my favorite color of blue. Thinking.” Alma, Alma, Alma. “You?”
Jericho thought long and hard. “Reading, especially philosophy. Also thinking.” He let out a long breath. What he wanted to add to his list was the time he and Evie had been up at the top of the Ferris wheel, when he realized for the first time that he might be in love with her. “Ferris wheels,” he said. “The farm.”
“Which farm?”
“My family’s farm in Pennsylvania. It’s—it was—really beautiful. And there’s a satisfaction you get from planting a seed or a cutting deep in the ground and watching it grow. Knowing you had a hand in it.”
“Oh. Then why did you leave?”
“I caught infantile paralysis.”
Their shared affliction. But Jericho had escaped its ravages, it seemed.
“After that, I became a ward of the state. I spent a long time in one of Marlowe’s inventions, something he called an iron lung. It breathed for me. All I could do was stare up at the ceiling or look out the window at the changing seasons. I thought about what my family would be doing, whether it was planting or harvesting time. If there’d been a wedding or a barn raising. If my mother was pickling or canning. It was Marlowe who saved me.”
“This must be hard for you, then.”
“Not really,” Jericho said. “I wasn’t a real person to him.”
Ling could scarcely catch her breath. There were layers to Jericho she had not considered. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
Jericho shrugged it off. “You’ve had your share of hard luck, too.”
Ling cleared her throat. “Lupe likes you, you know.”
Jericho’s brow furrowed into a V. “Lupe who plays the drums?”
“No. Lupe the Pope. Yes. That Lupe.”
“Oh,” Jericho said. Then: “Ohhh. How can you tell?”
Ling wanted to resist making another sarcastic comment, because she was pretty sure that Jericho was sincere about not being able to tell. “I know through a magical radio wave only girls can hear and understand. I’m breaking my oath to tell you. I’ll probably be excommunicated,” she said, losing her battle against sarcasm. “Honestly, Jericho, anyone with eyes can tell.”
Lupe liked him. Jericho rolled it over in his mind as he watched her tapping out a steady rhythm on the high hat from his spot in the wings. She was smiling like she was having the time of her life. Guadalupe de la Rosa. Even her name sounded like music. Like Evie, she was outgoing. But Lupe wasn’t Evie, and that, Jericho knew, was Ling’s point.
His palms got a little sweaty thinking about it all. Jericho didn’t have a lot of experience with women. Not like Sam. He didn’t want to be like Sam, going from girl to girl. Then again, Sam had won over Evie. But Jericho knew he could never be something he wasn’t. He would never be Sam.
Guadalupe de la Rosa wasn’t afraid to travel the country and make her own way. That was very brave, Jericho thought. And she played the drums. What if she thought he was boring—a brooder? And what would she think if she knew about all he’d been through? If she knew about the things Marlowe had done to him, about the machinery keeping him alive?
“What do I do?” Jericho asked.
“You’re asking me for romantic advice?” Ling said.
“I suppose I am.”
“Just talk to her,” Ling said.
“What should I say?”
“You read a lot. You’ll think of something,” Ling said.
Jericho spent the next two songs, the band’s last, watching Lupe and working up the courage to approach her. What if Ling was wrong about Lupe being interested in him? Maybe she was just friendly to everyone.
The set ended.
“Thank you so much! You’ve been the berries!” Alma said and blew kisses to the audience.
Jericho licked his hand and smoothed back his hair. He looked to Ling, whose lips turned down in distaste. “Did you just spit into your hair?”
The band was headed for the wings. They were full of high spirits and beautiful noise.
“Lupe!” Jericho said, a little louder than he’d int
ended, as she came offstage.
“Yes?”
“You were really good tonight,” Jericho said. I shouldn’t have spit in my hair, he thought. He handed her a towel so she could mop her brow and then looked quickly to Ling, who pinched her lips shut and tried to pretend she was interested in the state of her nails.
“Why, thank you, Mr. Smith,” Lupe said with exaggerated politeness.
“Just Freddy,” he said. She didn’t even know his real name. Was it doomed?
Lupe smiled. “Okay, Just Freddy.”
“Fred!” Doc called. “You gotta clear the stage so Snub Wilson and his Troubadours can go on!”
“Be right there,” Jericho answered.
“No time for flirting. We got a schedule to keep!” Doc snapped.
Jericho blushed so hard he was afraid he’d turned purple. “I, ah, I’d better do as the man says.”
“Well, you know where to find me,” Lupe said coyly, and played a tiny riff against a wood beam.
Lupe watched Jericho march onto the stage and pick up the bass drum with one hand as if it weighed nothing. “Whoo! He is really strong. And handsome. Don’t you think he’s handsome?” She nudged Ling.
Ling regarded Jericho briefly. It was like trying to get excited about her cousin. “I suppose he’s all right.” She remembered she was supposed to be helping Jericho. “That is, I’ve heard lots of girls say so.”
“Oh, are you and he…?” Lupe motioned between Jericho and Ling.
“No! No,” Ling said.
“Definitely not,” Alma muttered under her breath.
Lupe leaned her head against the side of the stage and heaved a tiny sigh. “Yes, ma’am. Verrry handsome.”
“For a brooder,” Ling said under her breath.
Alma looped an arm across Lupe’s shoulder, singing: “I feel so blue, can’t get over you…”
Lupe slapped at her arm. “Would you quit it, Countess Cut-Up?”
“Every day I cry, why, Daddy, oh why,” Alma sang, louder, and even Ling couldn’t help giggling.
“To hell with you!” Lupe said.
Alma put a hand to her chest in mock-umbrage. “How unladylike!”
“Level with me, Alma—does the Big Six have a sweetheart?”
“Don’t ask me, ask Li—that is, ask Miss Chang.”
Lupe looked hopefully to Ling. “How’s about it, Mary?”
Ling watched Jericho packing up the Harlem Haymakers’ instruments. She thought about his tragic start in life, and about his unrequited love for a girl he’d never have. Maybe Ling couldn’t make up for what he’d been through. But she could help that stubborn boy face the future.
“Well?” Lupe asked and bit her lip.
Ling let loose one of her rare, goofy grins. “No, Lupe. He does not.”
Night after night, Jericho and Ling watched the Harlem Haymakers turn the clubs, barns, lodges, and dance halls of America’s black vaudeville circuit into a sweaty, happy, stomping-and-clapping party. Some of the male territory bands and promoters wouldn’t take the all-girl orchestra seriously—until the Haymakers started to wail. And boy, could they wail! Lupe would keep perfect, can’t-stay-in-your-seat time while Dorothy let loose on the keys and Emmaline strummed the banjo. By the time Babe stood to take her sax solo and Sadie and Sally Mae joined in on trumpet, the whole place would be shaking. And, of course, there was Alma, who burned so brightly onstage. She was the perfect bandleader, singing and dancing and working the crowd into a joyful frenzy.
In the wings, Jericho tapped his foot in time to the music. He was a little off-beat, Ling noted, but he was so serious all the time that it was nice to see him loosen up. She found she was starting to warm to him. Being on the road together brought a forced intimacy. When you had to ride for hours on a bus together through all sorts of weather, experiences good and bad, when you had to share uncomfortable accommodations or withstand the stares of strangers, when there was time to notice the small things about a person, like how they came alive when passing a sun-drenched stretch of pastureland and you realized they saw that same beauty you did—these things opened that person for you. It made you see them.
On the dance floor of a barn-turned-nightclub on the outskirts of Yet-Another-Town, Arkansas, the Saturday-night patrons shimmied and Charlestoned and Black Bottomed, trying to shake off the cares of the week and the everyday blues of a nation that couldn’t ever seem to hold up its end of the bargain. Ling was jealous of the dancing. There was rarely a moment when she wasn’t having to work around the limitations of her body. Discomfort was a daily fact of life. Sometimes the ache was a nuisance. Other times, it was a storm that clawed and pulled and made it hard to concentrate on anything else. Mostly, Ling resented pain because it kept her from thinking, and thinking was what Ling did best.
And she needed to think just now. How were they going to stop the King of Crows? She and Jericho hadn’t been able to enter the land of the dead again after that one surprise night in Tennessee. Nor had she been able to find Henry in a dream since the last time. She wondered if he and Memphis had made it off the levee. She wished she could talk to Henry. He always made her feel better somehow with his corny jokes and spontaneous musical numbers.
I miss you, Henry, you annoying boy, she thought.
Nearby, Jericho watched Lupe, who, between numbers, would glance in his direction, a playful smile on her lips when she caught his eye. Jericho hadn’t said anything to Ling—nor did she want to know the details—but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that their romance was under way. Just that morning, Jericho had entered the bus whistling. Jericho. Whistling. It was as unfathomable as a talking giraffe. But she was glad that he had stopped moping and found some happiness at last.
Now if only Ling could figure out her own love life.
She’d thought being on the road with Alma would bring them closer together. Instead, they’d never seemed farther apart. Alma was polite enough, but that was just it—she was cordial to Ling in the same way she would be to any stranger. It hurt deeply. And who did she have to ask about it? Of the Haymakers, only Sally Mae liked girls, as far as Ling could tell, and she only knew that because she’d accidentally walked in on Sally Mae petting hotsy-totsy with a half-dressed chorine on the bus behind the Royal Theatre in Baltimore. “Knock next time,” was all Sally Mae said later.
And anyway, Sally Mae clearly had no trouble with sex.
Ling loved Alma, but when she thought of making that love sexual, it was like a wire that didn’t quite connect to a battery. It was more theoretical than actual. She liked kissing and cuddling, but she knew that alone wasn’t sufficient for Alma.
From the church Ling had received the message that sex was shameful. Over time and with much thought, Ling had come to see this indoctrination as unscientific and not in keeping with nature. It wasn’t shame Ling felt with Alma; it was frustration. Ling was alive in her mind and in her heart and even inside the multiple, swirling universes of dreams. Why wasn’t that enough?
Onstage, Alma crooned a heartfelt torch song about a woman who just couldn’t get over her man, no matter what he did. She sang the number with such conviction that it made Ling a little dizzy. She wasn’t the only one. A few women in the audience looked up at Alma with stars in their eyes. Ling tried not to be jealous but, just like the woman in the song, it was no use. How on earth was she going to help stop the King of Crows when she couldn’t even fathom her own heart?
After the show, the girls and Jericho boarded the bus. Doc had secured the Haymakers a night’s lodging at a motel friendly to folks on the circuit, according to word of mouth. The show had gone well and the Haymakers were in good spirits as they rehashed the evening’s best moments, with Alma leading the charge. Jericho sat with Lupe and Babe, smiling as he listened. Ling sat alone, staring out at all that dark.
As they exited the bus, Alma called Ling over. She held up a motel key. “I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just gonna come out with it. Got us our own room. If you
want to share it with me,” she said. “But you don’t have to.”
Ling’s stomach knotted. She knew what that meant. “No. I want to.”
Alma’s face brightened. “Okay, then.”
They lay in the small bed in the anonymous motel. It was the first chance they’d had since they’d been on the road to really be alone. Most nights, they shared a room with all the girls.
“Did you like tonight’s show?” Alma said, facing Ling.
“Yes. You were swell,” Ling said, happy to be beside Alma.
Alma brushed a strand of hair from Ling’s forehead. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed us.”
“Me, too,” Ling whispered.
Alma draped a muscular arm across Ling’s belly. She kissed Ling’s neck. Ling tensed. She wanted to be held by Alma, only held, and Alma’s kiss was an announcement of wanting more. Alma’s mouth moved to Ling’s shoulder. Ling stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to get back to the moment they’d just shared. With a finger, Alma turned Ling’s face toward her own and kissed her with real passion. Ling liked the kiss very much, but she was afraid of what more might be expected. How could she make herself feel something she didn’t?
“I-I’m… I’m awfully tired,” Ling lied.
Ling saw the light dim in Alma’s eyes, and then Alma flopped onto her back and let out a sigh. Disappointment lived in the new space between them. Two hot tears leaked down Ling’s face and tickled her ears.
“I can’t b-be what you w-want,” Ling said, struggling to find the words. “I can’t be something that I’m not.”
“Well, neither can I,” Alma said tearfully.
Ling shut her eyes tightly and wondered why the world, with all of its glorious possibilities, had decided to narrow itself so rigidly: this way or that way, yes or no, feminine or masculine. Where were the maybes, the strange and beautiful variants, the deeply personal in-betweens? As a scientist, Ling had to keep an open and curious mind, to explore all sorts of permutations. It seemed to her that there were endless variations for love, too, if only people would allow their minds to consider them.