Africaville

by Jeffrey Colvin

  “I’m going to see a lawyer when I leave here,” Warner tells Icarus, as they sit down at the table to eat. “He’s going to help me get visitation rights to see Zera.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re trying to get her paroled.”

  “Everyone’s been asking me that. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

  “If you see her, you’ll try to help her,” Icarus says. “You wouldn’t be the first person to fall into that rabbit hole. A whole mess of pro bono lawyers have tried to get that gal paroled. But Zera is still incarcerated. You get what you pay for, I reckon.”

  “Will you come with me to see her?”

  “Gussie told me that was what you wanted.”

  “Don’t you want to hear what Zera has to say?”

  Icarus’s lips tighten and his shoulders slump. “Me and Gussie will feed you, nephew,” he says, pushing the platter of chicken closer to Warner. “But we don’t want to hear any foolishness Zera might be talking.”

  Across town, a secretary escorts Warner into a corner office on the tenth floor of a gleaming building in downtown Jackson. The lawyer he is here to see, Eldridge Littlejohn, stands at his desk with the telephone pressed to his ear. Eldridge nods and directs Warner to a seating area with two burgundy wing chairs and a cherry coffee table. Seated, Warner looks around at the walls, which hold framed replicas of gold records; NCAA championship plaques; and pictures of men posing in suits inside sports arenas, jazz clubs, and theaters. Eldridge Littlejohn is in every picture.

  “Heard you’ve been poking around over at the prison,” Eldridge says, after hanging up the phone. “Handling the paperwork over there for Zera will be my job from now on. Have you found me a family member here in Mississippi?”

  “Well, I’ve told you about my uncle Icarus Platt and his wife, Gussie.”

  “Are they willing to talk to me?”

  “Working on that.”

  Eldridge sits in the armchair facing Warner. He is as dark as Gerrick Gilroy but probably twenty pounds heavier. He has a fresh military haircut. “If we don’t find a cooperative local family soon,” he says, “I’ll have to hand off the case to an associate.”

  “You said you were the lawyer to help.”

  “But I have to argue the benefit to the firm to keep me on the case pro bono.”

  “Getting Zera paroled will get your name in the newspaper,” Warner says. “My uncle says you’re always in the newspaper.”

  “Why didn’t you bring your uncle?”

  “His wife won’t let him come.” Warner glances at the crystal paperweight shaped like a football on the corner of Eldridge’s desk. “My cousin is Byron Edgecomb.”

  “The tennis boy?”

  Warner nods. “Though I don’t imagine he wants this kind of publicity.”

  From a pocket of his double-breasted suit, Eldridge takes out a small notebook with a tiny pen attached. Several times as he and Warner talk, he chuckles to himself as he makes a note.

  “We need the warm body of one Mississippi relative,” Eldridge says later, shaking Warner’s hand at the elevator. “I’ll be in touch to talk about incentives to get your uncle on board.”

  On the long drive back to Alabama, Warner feels good about his recent accomplishments. Midterm grades will not be posted until the end of March. But he is certain he did well. And tomorrow, despite the nonsense Millicent has said about Udall not wanting to hire a colored fella, he will be offered the position of assistant manager at the Kwik Mart.

  Still, his mind is heavy the next morning as he unlocks the back door to the store. This is the first morning he has arrived to work not planning a way to steal time at the counter to study. Instead he is thinking about Pinky. It was a mistake during the first months of the school term to believe that cramming for exams and taking trips to Mississippi would keep his mind off her. Walking the dim aisle of the Kwik Mart, he recalls how his chest swelled two nights ago, when he heard her approaching in her father’s Ford on the gravel road behind Moffet ball field. He climbed into the Ford and the temperature seemed to rise twenty degrees as Pinky undid her blouse. He knew the risk. But by the time Pinky slid naked underneath him, his desire had grown well beyond his ability to resist.

  Despite the lapse with Pinky, Warner feels he has made some effort to be a good husband, a good father. A few weeks ago, he skipped a class to take his daughter to the pediatrician. And last Saturday, after he fed Jennifer a small jar of creamed carrots, the two of them dozed for several hours on a blanket in the backyard.

  At the counter later, Warner studies a page in his marketing textbook, determined to put Pinky out of his mind. But thoughts of Zera take her place. Every newspaper article he has read brings up new questions. As do the letters he shared with Icarus. He has read each letter several times. Yet he still does not know if Zera ever laid eyes on her son, Omar, after she sent him to Canada. And what will Zera think of him?

  He is halfway through his second can of soda, but no sugar rush has arrived to boost his concentration. At the kitchen table last night he was also unable to keep his mind from thinking about the sex with Pinky. Before he knew it, midnight was on him. Minerva was snoring lightly when he climbed into bed. He placed a hand on her hip, and, to his surprise, she turned toward him. When he rubbed her back, she came in closer. After a few minutes of holding each other, they began to kiss.

  The orgasm was even more intense than the one he’d had the previous night with Pinky. This morning when he reached for Minerva again, she stroked his arm for a while and then slipped out of bed. But Pinky was there—at least the thought of her. It felt good to take off the briefs cramping his stiff penis. He pumped his hard penis for less than a minute before he spattered all over his stomach.

  Warner’s the one I’m promoting to supervisor,” Udall tells the three clerks assembled in the back office. “Now this meeting’s over, and I don’t want to hear nothing more about that.”

  While the other two clerks leave the office looking none too happy, Warner remains behind, feeling a bit disappointed. He expected a better title.

  Udall is wheezing as he closes the door. “Gerrick’s outside on the phone again,” he says, his face in a cloud of smoke as he lowers his seventy-year-old body into the desk chair. “That is some nerve, given how many days the boy’s called in absent.”

  “His granddaddy is not doing well,” Warner says.

  “Oh, I am well aware of that,” Udall says. “But I got a business to run. I got kids who’ll do the stocking for half of what I’m paying Gerrick. Somebody’s got to give Gerrick the news that we have to let him go.”

  “That’s a job for somebody with a big title,” Warner says. “Like assistant manager.”

  Udall puts out his nub of a cigarette in the ashtray and picks up his pouch of Prince Albert tobacco and rolling papers. “I made you a supervisor,” he says as he starts to roll another cigarette. “I need to see how you do that job before promoting you higher.”

  “Gerrick’s car is back in the shop.”

  “That piece of junk always is.”

  “He’s put in a job application at the paper plant.”

  “Hell’s liable to freeze over before them foreigners decide who they want to hire. From what I hear, even for one of them no-account, low-paying jobs Gerrick would be qualified for, hiring’s going as slow as molasses.”

  Warner imagines his own job application stuck in a bucket of molasses. “Do you have to let him go right away?”

  Udall chuckles. “Are the two of you buddies now?”

  “I’m just saying it might be a nice gesture to keep him on until that piece-of-crap car of his is fixed.”

  After lighting his cigarette, Udall places two checks on the edge of the desk. “I believe there’s enough here for Gerrick to get a start on fixing his vehicle.”

  Warner stands, without reaching for the checks. He looks down at the check with his name on it. He likes what he sees. Gerrick’s check is for twice as much.

 
“If you don’t want to tell Gerrick he’s being let go,” Udall says, “say so and I’ll see if one of the other clerks wants the extra responsibility.”

  Warner picks up the checks and walks out. Back at the counter he wishes people would stop asking if he and Gerrick are buddies. He’s not upset that Gerrick is being laid off. The boy has been absent a lot. But there are more decent ways to handle the task.

  “If Udall don’t have the money to keep paying me,” Gerrick says later, “then how come he’s paying his grandsons to come to the store and do nothing?”

  “Search me,” Warner says. “I’m just delivering the news.”

  Warner sets a carton of cigarettes on the counter next to Gerrick’s check. Gerrick picks up the check, and at first Warner is afraid he is about to tear it in half. But he puts the check into his pocket. If the money has appeased him, he does not show it as he grabs the cigarettes off the counter and heads for the front door.

  Two days later Millicent calls in sick, forcing Warner to work a double shift. The next day, Thaddeus, the other clerk, does the same. This need to work extra hours could not have come at a worse time for Warner. He is behind in his assignments and needs to begin studying for his final exams. Several days later, halfway through yet another double shift, he looks up from reading a handout from his behavioral science class to see one of the contractors coming through the front door.

  “What’re you gonna do with all the time off?” the contractor asks Warner at the counter.

  “Udall’s not giving us time off,” Warner says.

  “He’ll have to,” the man says. “For the renovations—the place will have to close for at least several months.”

  Warner spends the rest of the day barely able to contain his anger. He had believed Udall’s story that he was only threatening to do renovations to be in a better bargaining position with Platinum Paper, to show he is not pressed to sell. But why didn’t he mention that the store would have to close?

  “Will there be any work for us during the months they’re doing the renovations?” Warner asks Udall in the hallway the next day, even before Udall has unlocked the door to his office.

  “If I can find some,” Udall says. “And I’m going to try.”

  On Monday, Millicent calls in sick again, forcing Warner to work another double shift. On Wednesday, the contractor arrives with a note from Udall asking Warner to hand over his key to the back door. Driving off the lot, Warner sees two workers install a steel cage over the front windows of the store.

  I wonder if Millicent was right, Warner considers on the drive home. Was he indeed colored enough for Udall—colored enough for Udall to have no intentions of keeping him on at the store? He starts to recall the Platinum Paper job application and the box in the section that asked about race, the box he left unchecked, but he pushes the thought out of his head. Is that how his mind will work now, always vexing about some situation involving his being colored?

  He recalls the day he first heard the term passing. It was in his freshman sociology class. For several days afterward he would look around the room, trying to see if he could guess which of the other students was colored. It never occurred to him that the other students were doing that, too. Did any of them guess right about him?

  This pleasant April afternoon, Minerva places a large bottle of ibuprofen on the checkout counter at the Rexall, thinking the headache she has had all morning is now jumbling her mind, causing her to see things that are not there. Through the front window, there is no mistaking the red-and-gold golf shirt she sees. It is one of the shirts she gave Warner last month as a pregraduation present. Could that be him way over there on the other covered walkway?

  Minerva is certain that Warner told her that he had to drive like a madman after his class today to make his visitation meeting at the correctional facility in Mississippi. What is he doing here at the Plaza? And why is he standing so close to Pinky?

  Minerva exits the Rexall noticing that Warner and Pinky have reached a green-and-white van parked next to the Photo Hut. Pinky’s ponytail is swinging as she climbs into the van. After glancing around, Warner steps around the door and leans in. The flash from a passing station wagon interrupts Minerva’s sight. But that was most certainly a kiss.

  “That filthy bastard,” Minerva says on the road home. “I’m going to put a real hurting on him.” Thank goodness Jennifer is in the crib at her parents’ house, she thinks, and not in the car with her now.

  Later, back at the house, Minerva begins packing several suitcases. She will not be here when Warner gets home from Mississippi. Seeing him working hard to prepare his Wednesday night meal of runny corned-beef sandwiches or warming up another soggy apple pie from the upright freezer at the Kwik Mart might stop her from confronting him. Or worse, she might believe his lame story that what she saw was not a kiss.

  Having dragged her suitcases to the car, Minerva sits at the kitchen table and goes through the mail. She first looks over the bank statement. When Warner suggested they ask her father, Clayton, for a line of credit to redo the floors, cabinets, and countertops, she thought, Why not? Now she wonders if it was a good idea.

  Another bill from the lawyer? Minerva reads the front of the envelope, wondering about the several hundred dollars Warner took from their line of credit to settle the last bill. So what is this? She thought the lawyer was doing the work pro bono. Minerva rips open the envelope with a ballpoint pen, sorry that she did not confront Warner about the previous bill as soon as it arrived last month. But she had come into the bedroom with the bill to find him on the bed, studying hard. Before today, she believed that he missed none of his classes. Come to think of it, when she’d seen him with Pinky he was supposed to be still on campus. Had the scheming bastard lied about everything?

  When Minerva was upset with Warner back in high school, she didn’t bother to confront him to his face. She simply stopped taking his phone calls. A few weeks after one particular argument, when they were speaking again, she said she wasn’t sure the two of them wanted the same things. Does Warner want the same things she does now? Minerva wonders, dropping the bill onto the table. She wants to buy another house. He seems content in this one. She dreams of living in the arid Southwest, like her cousin. He sounds as if he wants to move to Vermont. He admitted as much in a family counseling session several weeks ago at the church. When he said he had set aside his desire to move up north, his voice had the same earnestness it had a few weeks back, when he explained why he had given Pinky a ride home from the Lucky Lounge. It was a favor for Millicent, he said.

  Her stomach a bit queasy, Minerva goes in search of the bag of items she purchased at the Plaza. Ibuprofen and antacids were not the only things Minerva had gone searching for at the Rexall. The checkout girl told Minerva the store didn’t yet stock the new home pregnancy tests. This evening, however, Minerva does not need any confirmation. She is certain she is pregnant. Warner had taken a while to embrace the child they have. Despite wanting to see his face when he learns another baby is coming, she will not stick around for the experience.

  Lucky Peace

  Warner’s great-grandmother Zera Platt did not believe in apparitions—at least not until she got to college.

  In September of 1915, the year Zera Bradenburg began her first term at Payne-Oglethorpe in Jackson, Mississippi, her roommate dropped onto her bed in the dormitory room one evening, claiming that she had seen a strange woman leaning against the window in the dining hall. A month later, Ava-Marie Sessions—the richest and most popular girl at the school—said she had also seen the woman. With each passing week, more girls reported having seen her. During November, the woman was spotted on the stairs humming and eating a slice of peach-chester cake. During winter exams, she was seen on the lawn putting new laces in a pair of ice-skating boots. Later, someone said they had seen the woman in the choir room practicing the alto parts to the popular song “Two-Step Girlie.”

  Someone said the woman’s name was Ruth, but by sprin
g everyone agreed with Ava-Marie Sessions that the woman’s name was Gertrice, that her singing voice was mezzo-soprano, that she wore nice hats but her jewelry wasn’t ladylike, that she kept her own key to the powder room on the ground floor of Norwood Hall, that her curls fell down to her slender brown neck—and that Gertrice never carried a Bible but could recite Nehemiah 8 or Ephesians 4 almost as quickly as Reverend Graham.

  When Zera went home to Sunflower and sat on the porch, listening to the creek that flowed down to the river, she knew better than to admit that she, too, believed she had seen Gertrice. Danger comes in the flesh for us women, her grandmother Althea had taught Zera. No need to worry about spirits. Althea had waited at the house years earlier with baby Zera while her son-in-law, Floyd, carried Zera’s mother, Patience, in the wagon to find a doctor to stop the bleeding from childbirth. When Floyd returned in the afternoon, he carried the remains of Zera’s mother in the wagon with a blanket laid over the body. That evening Althea sat next to the cooling board for hours, reading the Bible and talking to her daughter’s lifeless body.

  When Zera went off to college, Althea helped Floyd pay the cost for one of the better dormitory rooms and for nice shoes and undergarments. Zera’s deceased mother had wanted to be a teacher, and if Zera wasn’t going to be a teacher herself, the least she should do at Payne-Oglethorpe was concentrate on getting a good husband. When Zera came home from college, Althea wanted no talk about movie theaters with organ players in them or about fashionable ladies’ scarves. And she certainly was not working two jobs so that Zera could waste her time discussing foolish things like a darkie walking the dormitory halls. What potential husband would put up with that kind of talk?

  Zera didn’t tell her suitor, Matthew Platt, about the apparition until her last year at Payne-Oglethorpe—and only after Matthew had invited her to the second spring dance. A month before the wedding, when Matthew told his parents Zera’s story about the apparition, they didn’t comment on it, mainly because anything they said about Matthew’s choice of a bride seemed to lead to arguments. Matthew’s mother, Adelle, thought Zera was the right color—light enough to pass—but Zera was from too small a town. Matthew’s father, Stetson, who taught at the colored high school on Farish Street, where Zera had been a summer activities counselor, said the problem was that Zera had a mouth on her: strong opinions from a future wife were not something a Platt man was obligated to put up with.