The King of Colored Town
Page 20
I could not afford to anticipate any future further away than Florida State.
The bus dropped me off at school where I found Miss Chandler waiting. She was dressed nice. A kind of taffeta dress with lots of fabric on the shoulders fell below her calves. She had a hat fit for a revival.
“Morning Miss Cilla,” she beamed.
I put a hand on my stomach. “I feel funny.”
Miss Chandler took my instrument. “It’s just butterflies.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, glad to hear it wasn’t buzzards.
We took a Greyhound to Tallahassee. A bus ride is different than a car or truck; it rolls on its long axis like a rocking chair, only more ponderously. The engines labors behind you. The cadende of a massive transmission rises and falls. It was soothing to hear.
The landscape was soothing, too, the frost fallen from the previous night thrown like some magnificent, sparkling cloak to follow the topography in gentle undulations on either side of the highway. Copses of hickory and oak and pecan trees stuck like buttons onto that fabric. Fence lines running like seams or zippers. A rising sun plotted to diminish my imagined garment. Roadside ditches steamed like cauldrons. The frozen precipitation clinging to lily pads and cattails melted away like drying tears. It wasn’t like the drive to Jacksonville at all. Even in winter I saw a much wider variety of plant life on our route to Tallahassee than I had driving to J-ville. Thickets of crepe myrtle still in bloom competed with mimosa and oak and hickory trees. Topiaries of kudzu vines draped in fantastic profundity over the metal skeletons of power lines.
“Look here, Cilla.”
A forest had been burned for new ground, every tree cut to expose the rich and torn earth beneath, their stumps cleared and piled, every vine and bramble ripped by the roots and pyred—except for the dogwood trees. Every dogwood had been spared. Those trees, sown wild, were distributed stochastically about the riven ground, scattered survivors standing between smoldering piles of stumps and vine.
It would be a nuisance, come planting time, to have to steer your plough or harrow around those dogwood trees, to break the uniform rows of your corn or peanuts or tobacco in deference to a wild tree. But someone was willing to put up with that aggravation, all for the sake of a pearl-white blossom. I had never seen anything quite like that before—labor consciously hampered for a love of beauty.
It took about two hours to reach Tallahassee. We disembarked from the bus and immediately piled into a cab, my first.
“One-thirty-two North Copeland,” Miss Chandler directed the driver and I heard the meter tick.
Even the homes in the slums of Tallahassee were nicer than anything in Colored Town, but as we moved away from the bus station and toward the university I saw vistas of architecture that promised comforts and space I had never even imagined. Quaint frame houses gave way to sprawling brick homes. Front porches became Colonial facades. There were other changes in the landscape, too. At some point, probably along Tennessee Street, I realized I was not seeing any black people.
“Here’s our turnoff,” Miss Chandler prompted the driver and I saw him frown at the unprompted instruction.
“Cilla, don’t forget your horn.”
We got out of the cab on Copeland and approached the university’s music building on an angled sidewalk, dodging the traffic of students who seemed headed either for fires or funerals, racing like horses or else slow as snails. I saw no mode of perambulation between those extremes. They looked older than students ought to look, more sophisticated. And all white. I saw no Negroes in that throng and found my eyes drawn to my feet on the sidewalk.
“Nuh uh,” Miss Chandler chided. “You’re as good as anyone here, Miss Cilla. You be proud.”
I lifted my head to follow my teacher to a building I would have described as a castle. The Kuersteiner Music Building is still one of the most elegant pieces of architecture on Florida State’s campus, its arched, almost Gothic entry flanked by heavy-paned windows framed in brick and hardwood. The foyer before Kuersteiner’s oaken doors reminded me of a throne, broad stone arms thrust out to either side of wide-slabbed steps. On the right hand side of that royal portal were two magnificent specimens of palm tree. I recognized hedges of japonica and pittosporum.
“Looks nice, doesn’t it?” Miss Chandler prompted.
I shifted my cardboard case to my other hand.
“What say we go on inside?”
We passed from a layer of icy air into an interior cozy as a boot.
“Lord!” I exclaimed. “It’s warm!”
“And come summer they’ve got air-conditioning, too,” Miss Chandler supplied.
Air-conditioning? For an entire building? It did not seem possible. Unfortunately, I would later be disappointed to learn that Kuersteiner’s were the only centrally cooled classrooms on Florida State’s steaming campus.
We passed a long marble bench on our way into the Music Building’s cavelike interior. It had the smell of a seldom-used closet, but I didn’t mind. It was warm, but not the least bit damp. The walls, cool as lime. Polished tiles of marble, clean and cool. Made you want to walk barefoot. And I liked the doors that punched regular intervals into the hall. They were heavy, oaken and well worn.
Students were dashing to unknown destinations in an apparent rush to make some class or another, but I heard no bell. Then I saw something that made me reach out with my free hand to take Miss Chandler’s ample arm.
“Cilla?”
“Over there!”
He strolled in spit-polished shoes near a stairway, a white man in a tan uniform, a handgun holstered prominently.
“That’s campus police, I imagine.” Miss Chandler extricated herself from my panicked clutch. “Just for security. He won’t bother you. Now, where is our room? Remind me.”
“Two Oh Nine,” I replied.
“Right,” Miss Chandler reaffirmed our destination. “That means it will be room number nine on the second floor.”
I hung on her hip like a calf as we skirted the guard to find the stairs. Turning up the generous stairwell I almost ran into a student gliding down. She was African American, tall, as I, dressed in a simple black pleated skirt with a white blouse. She had a sweater slung over her shoulders like a movie star. Her hair was straight but did not look processed. Her skin looked like coffee mixed with cream, and just as smooth.
I felt crude in her presence, out of place, but if she sensed my discomfort she didn’t show it. In fact she didn’t appear to have noticed that Miss Chandler and I were the only black people, besides her, in the building. Not even a glance to acknowledge us on her leisurely glissade down the stairs. I looked back briefly, looking at the figure beneath her blouse, her skirt, and was astounded to see the holstered lawman defer to her line of travel. She had not altered her path to accommodate the armed white man at the bottom of the stairs, had not even acknowledged his presence, and I was intimidated by her confidence, her sophistication. How had I ever talked myself into believing I could walk with people like these?
“Cilla?”
“Yes, ma’am, coming.”
“Just keep your mind on your music.”
We were right about on time or about two minutes late, depending on whose watch you used. The recital was set up in an ordinary classroom. Ordinary for a music school, that is. There was a piano, an upright Baldwin, set before rows of seats that ascended in gentle terraces to form part of a circle. A man whom I took to be in his thirties looked up when we entered the room. He seemed preoccupied, grinding a ballpoint pen over a letter in his lap as though intending to shred it. There were glasses stuck in the thatch of unruly hair above his forehead.
He wore the same button-down shirts and slacks that were ubiquitous on campus. And penny loafers. Running shoes were not yet the assigned footwear for students at university. “Dr. Ransom—” Miss Chandler stepped forward to offer her hand.
He looked at the pale underside of her palm for a moment as if he wasn’t sure what to do.
“Actually, Dr. Ransom has been detained.” The apology seemed perfunctory. “I’m, ah, Jeremy Highsmith. Ah, Dr. Ransom’s assistant. And I am to begin the, ah…what is this? Early recruitment. Yes. Assessment for early recruitment for—
“Handsom,” Miss Chandler replied with stern civility. “Miss Priscilla Handsom.”
“Right. So hi, Priscilla.”
I did not know how to reply.
“I see, well. Why don’t you get out your instrument?”
“A moment, Cilla.”
I stood like a tree.
“Mr. Highsmith…”
“Yes?”
“Our appointment is with Dr. Ransom. In our conversation I was told there would be at least two faculty in attendance—”
“We are so unorganized—”
“Then you need to get organized, Mr. Highsmith.”
He quit scribbling on the letter in his lap. He pulled the glasses from his thatch of hair.
“Excuse me?”
“You need to recheck your schedule and alert Dr. Ransom that Miss Eunice Chandler and Miss Cilla Handsom are waiting for him. As arranged.”
I saw his larynx travel once to clear the frog from his throat.
“Why don’t I go do that?” he agreed. “Excuse me.”
He stuck his pen behind his ear and bustled from the room.
“Don’t worry,” Miss Chandler anticipated my question. “He’ll be back.”
About five minutes passed.
“I need to pee.”
The restroom was bland and institutional, not unlike the loos I would later see in hospitals, in prisons. I rushed to a stall and threw up. Then I relieved myself and cleaned up. I had never experimented with hot and cold water taps, so elected to remain with the cold. The soap came out of what looked like a milk carton, pink and fluid and viscous as molasses. I washed my hands and splashed water on my face. When I raised my head from the sink I saw myself in the mirror. A broad face, black as mud. Bulging lips. Protuberant brow. Deepset eyes. I turned up the collar on my field jacket, ran a hand uselessly through the wire of my hair.
I hoped I didn’t look too country.
I got back to Miss Chandler just ahead of Master Highsmith. He returned with two other people in tow. The woman I liked right off the bat. She was a pale thing, pale as a sheet, in a wool suit and black shoes. Her hair was the color of straw. Her hands looked like tallow. You couldn’t get much whiter than this woman. But there was something about the way she walked in. She just took a bee-line straight through the door, straight as a string, and looked right at me with eyes blue as buttons and smiled hello. Some people can do that. They don’t have to say a thing; they can just smile and you know they’re saying hello.
“You two ladies are the only two people on this campus who know how to keep an appointment. I’m Dr. Weintraub.”
“Hello, Doctor,” Miss Chandler immediately accepted her offered hand.
“And this must be Cilla.”
Dr. Weintraub stuck out her hand. I took it tentatively. She kept it a moment.
“I really am sorry we’re late. Auditions are hard enough without adding uncertainty.”
“It’s all right,” I swallowed. “I had Miss Chandler.”
“Yes. A formidable accomplishment in itself, I imagine.”
The man stepped forward in a more measured, uncertain way. He was dressed in a wrinkled suit. Shirt, no tie. And his shoes, I noticed, were unlaced.
“I am Dr. Ransom, Miss Handsom. It was really entirely our fault. We had you down for another time…” He glared pointedly at his graduate assistant. “I would dearly love to blame someone else, but in the end the responsibility is mine. Please accept my apology, both of you ladies.”
“Your shoes are untied,” was my reply.
That caught him offguard. “My shoes? Why, yes. I suppose they are.”
“I saw a man this summer? In Jacksonsville? His name is Alex McBride; he ’tole me he always unties his shoes. Said it makes for a better feel on the pedals.”
“Not sure I can use that excuse.”
“Then you need to be careful,” I admonished. “You could get tangled up an’ fall down.”
Dr. Weintraub laughed at that. I could tell it was genuine, not brittle or jaded. Certainly not sarcastic. Her laughter was gentle as the rain.
“Well,” Dr. Ransom regarded his lace-ups a moment. “If introductions are complete I suppose we should get started. I understand you are interested in the marching band, Miss Handsom?”
I took a deep breath.
“No, sir.”
“Cilla—” a hint of alarm rippled in my teacher’s face.
“It’s all right,” Dr. Weintraub raised her hand. “Cilla, would you like to clarify what you mean for us?”
“I mean that I am not interested in marching,” I replied. “Miss Chandler, she said the scholarship dudn’t have nuthin’ to do with the marching band.”
“Does not have anything to do with it, that’s correct. I think Dr. Ransom is probably working off your band director’s recommendation. Mister…?”
“Pellicore,” Miss Chandler inserted.
“Mr. Pellicore, yes. His recommendation seemed to imply you could be an asset to the university’s Marching Chiefs.”
“I march if I have to. I’ll march or hoe weeds or anything you tell me. But I have other things that I am interest’ in.”
Dr. Ransom tapped his thumbnail onto the enamel of his teeth. Like a tiny snare drum. Tap. Tap.
“What do you have prepared for the horn?” he asked finally.
“What Mr. Pellicore told me,” I replied.
“And that would be?”
“‘Oklahoma’ and ‘The Impossible Dream.’”
“Those are good to start.”
“Yes, sir.” I tried to think about that girl on the stairwell. “But it ain’t all.”
“I see. Well. What else do you have for us, then?”
“I have a chunk of ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ by Mr. Mozart. From Act iv, I can play that. An’ I have some of Mr. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, I can play. From the last movement?”
“The ‘Ode to Joy’?” Dr. Weintraub asked, and I wished Mr. Pellicore had been there to hear it.
“Yes, ma’am. And I made a part for the piano, too.”
“You made a part?” Dr. Weintraub arched a pale brow.
“Yes, ma’am. I had it pretty well worked out, but then Mr. MacBride, he plays real good, he gave me some ideas, so I been workin’ on some very-ations.”
“Variations? For Beethoven?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Master Highsmith did not bother to hide a smirk. But like Miss Hattie says, you might as well hang for dogs as cats.
“And then I have just one other thing.”
Dr. Ransom seemed intent on an inspection of his errant laces. “And that would be?”
I fumbled open my case to retrieve the music. “It’s kind of jazz,” I supplied.
“‘Kind of’?”
“Something I wrote myself,” I ploughed ahead. “The beginnings of something, anyway. I call it ‘The Dirty Guitar’. I just have it for the piano. Haven’t worked out the horn, yet.”
“May I see the score, please?”
I gave it to him.
“And you have your reduction? Your piano, Cilla. For ‘Ode to Joy’?”
So I handed him that.
“Lord, Lord,” Miss Chandler seemed more astounded than distressed.
Dr. Ransom passed my sheeted scores after what seemed an impossibly casual inspection to his colleague. Dr. Weintraub brushed a straw of hair from her face as she scanned my penciled notation.
“Your teacher tells us you are an autodidact.”
“Auto…?”
“Self-taught. You taught yourself to read music, to compose.”