by Jabari Asim
Look at this face. It’s a wonder this mirror doesn’t crack. Orville used to say that my smile could launch a thousand ships. He loved the perfume I used to splash on before we went out. Soap and water will have to do today. Hope I don’t scare anybody.
Walk with me, Lord.
When Orville gets ready to take me home, I tell him to go by himself. Orville says his mother will never forgive him if he lets something happen to me. I tell him that’s his problem. I figure I can get a cab if I walk down to Vandeventer. It’s a warm spring night and the sky is full of stars. I’d just crossed Sarah Street when the Devil dragged me off the road and took me from behind. Tore me open and left me unconscious in back of the Comet Theatre. I felt the force of his anger and his hot breath on my neck, but I never saw his face.
I didn’t let Orville come see me, not in the hospital, not when I went back home. Not even before he went off to school. I was proud and covetous, and God punished me for it. Orville didn’t have nothing to do with it. If he’s so smart, then he knows that without me saying so.
There’s that house shoe. Will Roderick mind if I’m still wearing my robe? I just have to put it on over this outfit. Maybe it will comfort him since he’s seldom seen me in anything else. Even when it’s hot I can’t help holding it close to me, wrapping it tight to keep the Devil out. I like the feel of that familiar cloth between my fingers.
I spent nine months thinking bad thoughts—the Devil had my mind, you see—but the Lord was stronger, and He had plans beyond my understanding. See, Roderick came from God, I know that, but that doesn’t make him safe from the Devil. Satan never gets tired. He just says, Okay, Lord, you won that round. The next one’s mine.
I could hardly look at him when he was born. Sometimes I got to trembling with joy just looking into his sweet brown eyes. Other times—well, my mom handled him more than I did. She was always telling me that he was different, that God must have touched him. She reads him stories, says she thinks he’s following along. At first I don’t pay her no mind, but as he grows I can’t ignore he’s special. He was reading before other babies could speak, counting before their milk teeth came in. I still didn’t rejoice because I was too busy looking out for the Devil. He found me once and he could find me again. I heard him sometimes, tiptoeing around my yard, fiddling with the windows in the dark of night.
My mother used to tell me every time Orville came back from school. She’d come back from Big Mama’s full of talk about all the things he was learning. “Yes, ma’am, I’m majoring in chemistry. Yes, ma’am, I made the honor roll again. No, ma’am, I don’t have a girlfriend yet.”
Mama used to beg me to do little things. “Can’t you just sit on the front porch for a little while? How about the back porch then? Can I at least tell Orville that you said hello?” I said no and stayed inside. Even when she told me that Janice Compton had run off to New York with a sharp-dressed gambler.
Orville wrote me regularly, just like he promised. His letters went unopened.
He tried to come see me when Mama died, God rest her soul. I didn’t go to the funeral. Graveyard’s got too many places for the Devil to hide. I convinced myself that Mama would have understood. Orville came by later and knocked and knocked. I got a good look at him through the curtains in the living room, but I didn’t answer. He left me some flowers on the porch.
Big Mama promised my mother she’d look after me, and she has. She’s the truest Christian I’ve ever known.
Jesus, hold my hand.
Come on and hold my hand.
Come on and walk with me.
God sent me the first sign when I was moving some things in the attic. A box overturned. A photo of Orville and me slid onto the floor, followed by a heap of envelopes. They had Orville’s letters in them. I had never opened a single one. We posed for that photo at the dance before the troubles began. Orville looked so handsome, and I wasn’t too shabby either. That picture should have had fourteen years of dust on it, but it was clean as the day it was made.
Big Mama says Orville’s been waiting all these years for me, that the picture is as pure and eternal as his love. That’s why no dust can cling to it, she says. Orville hasn’t exactly said as much, but Big Mama’s figured it out. She tells me Orville’s behavior isn’t natural, that I should put the man out of his misery. I tell her it’s not that easy. She says nothing ever is.
She lights up a Viceroy and says, “You so busy blaming the Devil when maybe you should be giving credit to God.”
I ask her what she means, and she says the worst thing that ever happened to me gave me Roderick, the best thing that ever happened to me. I tell her that has already occurred to me, but she acts like she doesn’t hear me. Big Mama’s like that. “God knew what He was doing and still does,” she says. “Maybe the Devil didn’t have anything to do with it.”
I look over my shoulder to make sure the Devil isn’t listening. “Why would God hurt me in order to help me?”
I think I got her cornered, but she snorts and blows smoke. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” she says.
Later I reflected on her words, and I admitted to myself that I found some wisdom in them. Then when Roderick got beat by those awful kids—it made me sick to my stomach to see all that hurt in his sweet brown eyes—Big Mama’s meaning became even clearer. At first I wanted to say that Roderick suffered at the hands of the Devil, that in a moment of weakness my watchfulness had failed. Now I know that it was God after all, giving us a way to get Roderick and Orville together. That was the second sign.
Roderick doesn’t say much about his time with Orville, but I’ve noticed the way he looks forward to it. Big Mama says it does Orville a heap of good to talk science with a young colored man for a change. She says Orville looks renewed after meeting with my son. And Roderick’s steady blooming, like the flowers in Big Mama’s yard.
Oh, the song is ending. Time to rise up like Lazarus and leave my cave. Lord, You have given me signs. Now I am asking You for strength.
I feel You, Lord. The Holy Spirit sparks my limbs. I have love in my heart. I have fire in my bones. I will cross this threshold. I will set foot on this porch. I will not be swayed by the brightness and confusion. I will make my way in this tedious world. My son needs me.
I will be as strong as my son’s voice, strong as faith.
I love you, Son. Hold on. Mama’s on her way.
You’re listening to Tent Meeting with the Lord’s faithful servant Rev. Josiah Banks. You just heard the Swan Silvertones, who have testified of God’s goodness—praise Him! Now it’s time for the portion of our service devoted to the devout who find themselves—amen!—unable to walk with the Lord in the light of this day. We will walk for you, saints—hallelujah!—in Jesus’ name.
We send out blessings to the sick and the shut in.
Brother Coolidge, we are praying on that heart attack.
Sister Morris, we are praying on that arthritis.
Sister Joan Dear got the sugar, we remember you today.
Sister Gloria Bates, child of God, we couldn’t ever forget about you …
We know that you all are looking for a healing.
We pray that each and every one will be blessed of God.
He’s a healer—umm—when you need a healer.
He’s a way maker—hah!—when you need to make a way.
God said come unto me who are weary—well!—and I will give you rest …
Drunk on History
there was plenty of room for signs in the modern world, and few believed it as fervently as Reuben Edward Jones Sr.
As Reuben saw it, each day our lives became more crowded and confused; highways and hallways alike were so packed with people, twists, turns, and distractions that it was getting harder and harder to find the path that would take you where you needed to go. What better way to help folks navigate than a perfectly placed, beautifully painted sign? Reuben had painted them since he was a child. His first, in bold crayon, had hung above the ent
rance to his bedroom and warned everyone to Keep Out. It was nicely done, with cleanly executed block letters easily seen from a distance. It was also a sign that no one in his family was inclined to notice or obey. But their hard-headedness cramped neither his enthusiasm nor his style, and by high school he was first choice to design campaign posters for student council candidates, banners to be hung up in gymnasiums-turned-ballrooms, love letters skillfully rendered with pen, ink, and a steady hand.
He loved the mobility of the sign painter’s life. You threw your supplies in the back of your Rambler, strapped your ladders to the roof, and away you went. It was blissful: To be up on a scaffold in the open air with the sun on your face and the wind on your back surely beat being cooped up in a building somewhere, staring at the same four walls, sharing the same stale air with a bunch of equally bored pencil pushers and paper shufflers. He realized that kind of work was still rare for black men outside the post office, and plenty of them would be happy to have it.
But not Reuben Jones. So after college he put his diploma in a bureau drawer and hung up a shingle on Gateway’s North Side: Black Swan Sign Shop. He’d never get rich, but he’d never get bored either. And business was brisk. He quickly built a reputation for fairness and good work, and he had a lot of repeat customers. Every time the cost of a hot link or a haircut went up, new signs were required. Every time inventory needed to be slashed and clearance tables emptied, more signs. Every time a man died in a confrontation with police, Reuben’s reliable hands were called into service. 50% Off. Try Our Fries. Teenie’s Lounge. Curly’s Candy. Off the Pigs.
Not that he didn’t like “fine” art. To the contrary. He’d taken his bachelor’s in studio art, aced his finals in drawing, painting, and sculpture. He just didn’t see much purpose in pursuing a distinction between one kind of playing in paint and another. As word of his talent continued to spread, portraits became part of his bread and butter. Every self-respecting minister, he discovered, needed a dignified likeness of himself to decorate the lobby of his church. Ananias Goode was talking about sitting for him. Reuben didn’t see a need to draw any lines between portraits and posters, gangsters and pastors. All of them stood to benefit from a bit of carefully applied color, an elegant hint of shadow or shading to give them added dimension. If they could coexist in the world at large, who was he to grumble?
Tomorrow he’d work one of the last outside jobs of the season. He and his best friend, Lucius Monday, would stencil a couple of cabs for Marcella Taxi, then they’d head over to Franklin and Easton to take a look at a wall. There was talk of a mural going up there in the spring of ’68, with the men of the Black Swan handling the job.
Tonight, though, he is inside his studio. The weather is mild, and his house is quiet. Earlier, he could hear Ed through the thin wall, grunting as he lifted weights in the little corner he’d carved out of the furnace room. He pictured Ed stretched out on the weight bench they had made together from scraps of wood, straining against the iron while a trio of Mr. Universes—Sergio Oliva, Dave Draper, Frank Zane—stared down at him from the walls.
Now, flights above Reuben on the top floor, Ed, having cooled down and bathed, reclines in an old kitchen chair. He listens to Trane and rubs charcoal across his sketch pad. Working from memory, he strokes the soft jawline of Charlotte onto his paper, the cottony sweep of hair above her delicate ear, the soft curve of her lip. Down one flight of stairs, Pristine watches TV and munches pumpkin seeds while thumbing through Jet magazine. “The Week’s Best Photos” features Huey Newton, Mahalia Jackson, and Sammy Davis Jr. A small mound of discarded shells fills the ashtray on her nightstand. In the room next to Pristine, Shom and Crisp debate the relative merits of Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific before falling asleep and dreaming, respectively, of ice cream and baseball.
The humble wooden door leading to Reuben’s studio gives no hint of the uproarious jumble inside. Running along the entire length of the far wall is a homemade drafting table, spacious enough to accommodate a man carefully stenciling a price sign to hang over the cash register at Pioneer Barber Shop, or designing a pair of praying hands à la Albrecht Dürer for the pediment above Angelus Funeral Home. There is even room for a rambunctious boy or two to stand on upended milk crates and “work” beside their father when the mood suits them all. Next to the table stands a thick chunk of wood nearly four feet tall, from which a half-formed figure of a man struggles to emerge, his shoulders and torso pocked with chisel marks.
All about are brushes, maulsticks, brushes, cans of thinner. Brushes. Tubes of tempera. Acrylic. Oils. Charcoal. Brushes. A large magnifying lamp, clamped to the edge of a smaller drafting table mounted on wheels. Empty, paint-stained coffee cups from White Castle. Boxes of broken pastels, a big, comfortable, shabby chair. Brushes. Pipes, tobacco, cigar stumps in an ashtray made from pennies welded together. Price placards for Ardell’s Beauty Parlor; rough sketches of the enormous pig that will hang, illuminated, above Q-King Barbecue. A half-finished portrait of Big Mama that neither artist nor subject was particularly enchanted with. Ads torn from Ebony, Sepia, Jet. Old signs for Pierre Record Shop, Cashmere Cleaners. Construction-paper Christmas trees, made by his kids. A fortieth birthday card from his wife. Lining the crowded windowsill, cans that once held frozen lemonade from Kroger and coffee from Maxwell House, now crammed with more brushes.
These are only some of the things that clutter Reuben’s room of wonders. He sits in the middle of it all in that shabby chair, nose buried in a book he occasionally lowers to glare at the blank canvas perched on the easel, taunting him. Somewhere in that blankness lurk the innocent features of Cheryl Grimes, a young girl whose portrait he has agreed to paint. After meeting with her father, Reuben had come as close to melodrama as he ever did. “That man made me feel like painting his little girl was a matter of life and death,” he had told Pristine, “for all concerned.”
Muttering, he lowers the book to his lap and squints at the canvas, willing the illuminating contours—the eyes, cheekbones, the forehead, the chin—to emerge and reveal themselves. So far, nothing.
He calls his space a studio. Pristine calls it a firetrap.
Some nights, this intimate environment is where Reuben gets closest to thinking seriously about heaven, enjoying the silence, pondering life and art while all his favorite people are under his roof.
On such nights, sitting still can be as fulfilling as when the Surge seizes hold of him and he rises to its call. Soon he is happily lost, wiping away the foggy expanse of canvas to magically expose what’s been hidden in it all along. Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough, and oh, how he loves painting—especially when he’s in the thick of it, his mind following the motion of his hand rather than guiding it, fingers and colors joined in a wondrous dance, dipping and twirling, daubing and dappling, again and again. It was as if the bristles disappeared and his hand became the brush. Meanwhile, the paint flowed effortlessly from somewhere deep inside him. The Surge didn’t save itself for divine or elevated purposes; it could arrive while he sketched his own children or tried to capture the light of inspiration in Rev. King’s eyes, but it could just as easily come when he was painting “Chitlins, Chicken, and Chops” on the side of Dempsey Wynne’s Rib Hut. Nothing was beneath the spirit of Art.
He was content to bathe in this sweet, mysterious energy; he had been fortunate to know it before he even knew what painting was. He felt no need to explore its origins or to give it a human face. He’d leave the cosmic questions to Pristine. He knew she felt the same Surge when she stood and swayed in church or pressed her fingers to the soil while tending her flower beds. He knew Rose Whittier, so mousy and unsmiling on those rare occasions when her crazy husband let her leave the house, felt it when she opened her lovely lips and let all that raucous glory out; he knew Talk Much had at least some of it inside him when his mumbling changed from something vaguely disturbing to something vaguely melodious; he knew Lucius felt it when he painted, lost it when he stopped, and spe
nt many restless hours of each day looking for it in the bottom of a bottle of Rosie O’Grady. Heaven is more than just a notion on such nights.
Tonight, stillness won’t do. Tonight he needs the Surge. In the stubborn recesses of his memory, the young girl’s smile hovers, teasingly indistinct.
On evenings when the Surge didn’t visit his home studio, Reuben took comfort in the barely controlled chaos of his surroundings. With the furnace roaring in the other room and all the other noises of the house stilled, he could pretend he was a prehistoric man, one of the first to apply pigment to the yielding dusty rock of his cave, scratching out crude outlines of mastodons and arrows. Or he could be Scipio Moorhead in the eighteenth century, preserving Phillis Wheatley’s ebony profile for the ages. Henry Tanner taking the measure of Paris, Horace Pippin doing his thing in Pennsylvania.
He’d imitated those men on the way to finding his own style. He all but prayed to them now: Pippin, guide my hand. Tanner, give me some of that grace. Above all, help me find those pictures. Sigh.
He pulls out his handkerchief, holds it to his nose and blows. His bad foot throbs. His tooth aches and his scalp itches. All of these minor maladies, he is sure, will improve as soon as he finds those photos.
Tanner’s art and supplies had been tossed on the street in Philly; his classmates called him a nigger. Still he painted. So why was he, Reuben Jones, splendidly alone and free from such insults, staring at a blank canvas?
He supposed he could get up and go through his things again, turn everything over until those pictures popped out. But first he’d have to put down his battered, well-thumbed copy of Notable Negroes, a gift from his sister and the best book he’d ever read. Summoning his resolve, he lifts it from his lap and places it on the table.