Something She Can Feel

by Grace Octavia

  “Just not right now. I’m kind of taking a break,” I answered.

  “We can’t have that. Man, if you’d only seen yourself when you sang. I didn’t like going to church, but whenever you sang, I’d sit and just shake my head in amazement at how pretty you sounded. Even with my eyes closed and my ears covered, I could hear that voice. And other people could, too. They’d be talking and passing notes throughout the sermon, but when you got up, it was like a light was in the room. People would be like, ‘There’s that Journey. Y’all listen now.’ I was stuck wanting to be a thug, but I’d listen. I’d sit up and listen.”

  “I’m happy I had that effect.”

  “It was more than an effect. It was like magic that somebody could sound like that. I was thinking, man, if she goes into the industry, Whitney, Mariah, even Aretha and Patti—they can just hang it up and go on home.” He looked at me, and I squinted my eyes to show that I knew I in no way compared to any of the names on that list. I had a church voice. A homegrown church voice that no one outside of Tuscaloosa needed to hear. “I’m serious,” he continued. “You never thought of that?”

  “I did a few times, but everything I need is right here. Why go out there and deal with the industry you hate so much when I can just sing for the Lord in my daddy’s church?”

  “Well, you just said you’re not singing right now anyway. What are you doing?”

  “You know, to be honest, I don’t know sometimes. I ...”

  “Just say it,” he pushed.

  “I ...” I hesitated again and looked out the window. “Sometimes I think I’m ready to just get out there. I even got this passport I keep in my purse.” I tapped my purse. “I thought someday I’d get out and see the world. Maybe sing. Maybe even write some songs. Who knows.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “Well, I don’t have any stamps yet. It just never seems like it’s the right time. There’s always something else going on.” I ran my hand over the bulging part of my purse where my empty writing pad was hidden and thought of Evan and the possibility of a baby.

  “The world is waiting,” Dame said softly.

  “What?” I turned to look at him.

  “It’s just waiting for you to return. Maybe you’ll start singing again when you do.”

  “Maybe,” I replied somberly, thinking it sounded silly for me to return to a place I’d hardly ever known or explored. And feeling foolish that it was true.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice suddenly filled with an enthusiasm to break the mood. “You know where they have some great music tonight?”

  “Where?”

  “Fat Albert’s!”

  “You mean that old shack in the woods?”

  “There’s only one.” He smiled at me and it was clear he was inviting me to go over there with him. “It’ll cheer you up.”

  “Oh, I can’t do that.” I looked at my watch. It was going on 10 p.m. “Evan’s home by now. He’s got to be waiting for me. And I have to teach in the morning.”

  “It’s early,” he said. “And we won’t stay long. Just a little while.”

  “But I need to go. I have work to do and—”

  “You need to get out to hear some music.” He cut me off. “You need to be close to the art, so you can create it.”

  “Art at Fat Albert’s?” I looked at him cross.

  “Look, I’m trying to sell this to you,” he said jokingly. “I just want you to come. Be out with me. Aren’t you having a good time?” He groaned. “Ain’t nothing really going on over there right now anyway.”

  I looked at my watch again. I probably should’ve called home, but I knew if I did, Evan would just insist on my not going. It was still a little early. I could listen to some music and be home by 11. I lied to myself.

  Fat Albert’s was in the back of the forests surrounding Black Warrior River. It was an old, windowless, rickety shack that somebody should’ve forgotten about in 1930 or something, but people still managed to tiptoe through at night or during the earliest hours of the morning to rub shoulders. And getting there did require some tiptoeing. Either that or a pickup truck, which we weren’t at a shortage of in Alabama. The place had actually been built by a black bootlegger named Albert during prohibition in the early twenties. I heard people say he built it so far back in the forest so the police couldn’t get their cars there to bust up the party. But my grandfather said no one who wasn’t rich really had cars back then and the police had only one car which was always broken. So someone was wrong.

  Either way, the place’s out-of-the-way location made it a magnet for drunkards and hot-and-heavy adults for decades. It had been a part of the old chittlin’ circuit and any black singer or band who wanted to make it in the Deep South had to pass through Fat Albert’s. And after all that time, while lots of popular clubs downtown had come and gone, Fat Albert’s with its cheap liquor, loose women, and looser rules seemed to be here to stay.

  I’d learned all of this listening to other people’s conversations. Justin whispering with his buddies when they slipped back in after slipping out after bedtime, my grandfather remembering when so-and-so got cut for speaking to so-and-so’s woman, and even my parents, giggling and slapping each other on the hand as they told short, short stories about what they did there before they got saved.

  All this, but I’d never actually been inside the place. Billie and I had tried once. It was right after college graduation and I was tired of everybody expecting me to be good and ordering me not to go places I shouldn’t be seen. Feeling grown, we climbed into Billie’s car because we were going to get down and dirty at Fat Albert’s! We drove out there and parked the car and trekked down a winding dirt trail, etched out through the woods until we got to the front door. Billie handed the woman at the front door, who looked like she’d had a bit too much of the grain liquor already, our two dollars to get in and just as we were about to walk inside, another woman, with balding temples and cornrows that started at the back of her head, ran up and said, “Das de passtas doughta.”

  “Who?” the drunk woman asked as the one with the cornrows pointed to me. “Oh, you can’t come in here. Albert, Jr will beat my ass for sure.”

  I sucked my teeth and looked at Billie, who clearly wanted to go inside. “Why can’t I?” I asked the woman.

  “Chile, it’s Friday night,” she said. “Half your deacon board’s supposed to be in here. Ain’t nobody gonna be able to party right knowing the pastor’s daughter’s right here.”

  “Fine,” Billie said, reaching for her money.

  “Oh, no, girls. No refunds. We take tithes, too!”

  We heard them laughing as we followed the little dirt trail back to the car. That was the last I ever saw of Fat Albert’s. It wasn’t the kind of place where Evan was gambling to be seen.

  Dame’s big blue pickup truck was hopping through the forest like a rabbit. In the front seat next to Dame, I was holding on to the dashboard, the door, and seat, and sometimes Dame’s arm to stay in the car. Dame just laughed and pushed on the gas, following a circus of colorful lights ahead.

  “You’re a country girl. You can take a ride in a pickup truck,” he said after we made the clearing into the small lot in front of Fat Albert’s. I could already hear the bass of loud music booming through the walls.

  “I’m not that country. I thought the truck was gonna just split in two if we hit one more bump,” I said, fixing my hair as he parked.

  “Don’t fix it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your hair.” Dame took a soft hold of my hand with his and pulled it down from my head.

  “But it’s all messed up.” I could feel it falling down toward my shoulders, out of the twisted bun I’d made with one bobby pin. The middle was curling up and crinkling from the sweat on my scalp.

  “You have beautiful hair. Why do you always hide it in those buns now? You should wear it down. It looks sexy.”

  “Sexy? I don’t think you’re supposed to tell your old
teacher she looks sexy.”

  Dame said nothing, but he shot me a brief look with a smirk on his face. He jumped out of the truck, and I was surprised when he actually walked around to open my door and help me out of the truck.

  “Now, these are my people,” he went on as we walked toward the door before the glances of a few odd couples standing out front. Fat Albert’s was the kind of place where people could be seen but not acknowledged. For everybody’s protection, what happened back in the woods, stayed back in the woods. “Don’t come in here trying to bless folks and stuff,” Dame added. “It’s bad enough you have on that suit.”

  “You think I’m overdressed?” I asked, pulling my shirt out from my skirt.

  “I was just joking,” he said. “You look fine. Half the people in here are gonna have on work clothes ...”

  When we walked in the doors, one of which was hardly holding on, the same two women, I swear, who’d been at the door ten years ago when Billie and I tried to get in, were still there—they looked exactly the same, only it was clear that the years in the back of the woods hadn’t been so kind.

  “The same Dame!” the drunk one taking the money said, dancing around and shaking when she saw Dame.

  “Dame!” The other one came limping over. “Wuh yah bin, baybe?”

  “I should’ve known you were coming in here; Benji been here all night.” She pointed over to Benji, who was posted at a table with a group of girls.

  They both jumped on Dame and he just grinned and hugged them back, tighter and more sincere, though, than he did the women at the restaurant the other night.

  “Ms. Albertina and Ms. Essie!” Dame said. “My people. Damn, I miss y’all.” He hugged them both again and then turned back toward me.

  “Ladies, I want ya’ll to meet my old”—he paused in anticipation—“friend.”

  He looked directly at me when he said it and I just smiled pleasantly. I didn’t know if I wanted to be his “old teacher” in the moment anyway. It was my first time being inside of a place I’d imagined in my mind so many times as a girl.

  “Das de passtas doughta,” the one with the same old cornrows, which were now gray, said.

  I exhaled and waited for them to take my two dollars again.

  “And you wit’ Dame?” the other one said cheerfully. “Well, that’s all right. Go on in, chile. Have some drinks and send one over here for me.” She laughed and smacked her hip, but I could tell she was serious. Dame later sent two drinks over.

  Inside Fat Albert’s, it was dark and only a few spots had dim blue and red lights to show people’s feet where they were supposed to go and let the bartender and DJ see their hands. The crowd was a mix of some old people and some young, some couples, and some singles, and a whole heap of people I never expected to see inside. But I did. Only I knew not to say hello. I just nodded and kept on moving; the unstated agreement was, “You didn’t see me here.”

  The DJ was playing a mix of old-school R&B and some hip-hop and every space on the dance floor was occupied. Even in the heat, they danced and danced, sweating until their skin had a slick sheen. After opening two more of the buttons on my shirt and feeling my hair completely curl up, I wondered which dancer would faint first.

  “You having fun?” Dame asked, sliding an empty bottle of beer on the table.

  “Sure,” I said. “The music is wonderful.”

  I’d been watching Dame and noticed he drank a lot of beer and had on a plain white T-shirt that looked just like the one he’d had on at the school. And this was weird to me. It was so simple and nothing like what I would’ve expected it would be like to hang out with a rapper. He just seemed really ... cool. I caught myself smiling with my eyes on him and quickly turned the other way.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said nervously. “I think I need to go to the bathroom.”

  “It’s to the back.”

  He pointed across the dark dance floor to a red light hanging over a doorway.

  “Great. I’ll be right back.”

  I excused myself through the crowd, seeing more faces I knew along the way, and sometimes getting caught up in between partners, who moved me from side to side in an effort to make me join in. One man slid his hand around my waist and breathed heavily in my ear before passing me along and another pushed me toward his partner, who stepped closer to me as I fell back into her arms.

  “Excuse me,” I said, looking at her heavy eyes. Only it wasn’t clear if she wanted me to keep going.

  “What are you doing here?” I said to my reflection in the cracked and water-stained mirror above the sink in the bathroom. No one else was inside, but I didn’t bother to go into one of the stalls. I didn’t really have to pee. I just wanted to look at myself and get away from looking at Dame. I pat my hot face with a damp piece of toilet paper—there were no napkins—and dabbed on a bit of lip gloss. “Get it together and tell him to take you home,” I sternly demanded of my reflection. I nodded to myself in agreement and picked up my purse to return to the bar with that intention. But when I got to the door, a familiar face met me.

  “Kayla?” I said. My body went from hot to cold very quickly. She might as well have been my mother walking in on me—an immediate witness to something I wasn’t even sure of. The situation had just gone from merely being odd to dramatically complicated. What could I say to her?

  “Journey!” She smiled and opened her arms excitedly as if we were in the hallway at school. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  As we embraced I could smell alcohol on her breath, but when I backed up and looked into her eyes, I could see that she wasn’t drunk. Just a little tipsy. She was wearing dark-colored skinny jeans and a form-fitting T-shirt. Her hair was loose and wild, hanging in tendrils down her back. She looked more like a student than a teacher. More like a carefree girl in a nightclub than a sophisticated lady from New York City.

  “Richard has been dragging me to this place almost every night since I got here.” She giggled like a little girl. “I love it. Makes me feel bad, especially when we get home. Why don’t you come have a drink with us?”

  “I’m actually leaving now.” I pushed my shirt back into my skirt.

  “Oh.” She stepped back and looked me over as if she was noticing something. “I didn’t see ...” she started slowly.

  “Evan’s not with me. I’m here for ... some work thing.”

  “I see.” She looked at me. And without saying a word, it was clear that neither of us needed to say anything else. I hated this gag, how it cloaked my goings-on in a shroud of guilt, but it was what I needed to stop Kayla from pushing.

  Another pair came into the bathroom. Their clanking bracelets and laughter broke the silence.

  “I’ll see you in school tomorrow,” Kayla said earnestly.

  I just nodded and returned to the maze of the gyrating crowd. The music was different now. It was slow oldies and the couples were closer and some were even standing still in an embrace. I wormed my way through, trying to get out of there. I had to get home.

  When I neared the edge of the dance floor, I didn’t see Dame standing in the same spot where I’d left him sipping on his third beer.

  “Shit,” I cursed and looked along all of the crowds lining the rest of the short bar.

  “Looking for me?” I heard over my shoulder.

  I turned and right in front of me, close enough to kiss me, was Dame. I could smell him, feel his presence swallowing up my space, and as I took a deep breath to settle myself, I felt his breath come into mine. I flinched and forced myself to stand erect.

  “Yes, I was looking for you,” I stuttered, suddenly feeling all at once the reason I hadn’t called Evan at home. I didn’t need to be there, but I wanted to. “I need to go home,” I said. And I knew it sounded slight. I didn’t even believe it.

  “I want to dance with you,” he said.

  “I can’t,” I whispered.

  “Ain’t nobody here watching us.”
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  I looked back toward the bathroom door. It was ridiculous that I was even considering dancing with him.

  “I just can’t.”

  “Come on,” he begged. “One dance and then I’ll take you right back to your car at the school.” He pushed his face into the mass of curls now crowding the front of my ears and whispered softly, “You ain’t gonna make a brother beg, right?”

  Whenever I’m nervous or afraid, I feel a need to swallow the saliva gathering at the back of my throat. While I suppose it just goes down easily other times, whenever I’m afraid or nervous, it goes down in an audible swallow that I’d prefer to hide.

  Just as I did when Dame walked into the school, I couldn’t hide that swallow now on the dance floor. His words, his breath, sent tingles around the back of my ears and I went quickly from being afraid of Dame’s closeness to being afraid of what I’d do.

  I didn’t even say anything. Neither of us did. Dame just pushed his arms around my waist and we moved in a difficult closeness to the slow beat. Playing was this old Prince single I used to like to hear when they played slow songs at night on the radio when I was young. “Adore.”

  The hypnotic, raunchy beat, Prince’s arrestingly sensuous voice, the words, all engaged inside of me, plucking each of the bones up my spine until I unfolded into Dame’s chest.

  I’ll give you my heart.

  I’ll give you my mind.

  I’ll give you my body.

  I’ll give you my time.

  Prince crooned and I believed him. He was sexy and strong, whispering and just nearly screaming the most intimate needs I felt deep inside. I could feel my heart racing down in my stomach. I wanted to move, but this was the closest I’d felt to music in so long. I needed it. This honesty. It was controlling me. Reminding me of what music could do. And it wasn’t even about Dame. It was about being there and hearing the sound of emotion coming from someone else.

  And then, without knowing what I was going to say, I opened my mouth just as the song ended and Dame’s hands slid to my lower back.