by Louise Welsh
Once they were seated in the restaurant he felt familiar, as Aurelia had, and Gilda relaxed into the comfort. He ordered a cappuccino before saying, “Tell me something.”
“Yes, what?”
“Anything. Like where you’re from. What you want to do. How’d we end up working our asses off for this little white theater company when we’re supposed to be about nation-building?” He laughed wryly at the wilted sound of the rhetoric.
“In my father’s house there are many mansions.”
“Oh god, a Baptist!”
The young, white waiter didn’t bother to look at them as he delivered their order. He sniffed sharply at the sound of their laughter, then turned on his heel, looking like an eager actor. It was amazing to Gilda how they all seemed to struggle to achieve the same trim body, coiffured hair, and characterless movement, yet still hoped to be different from each other. Since her arrival in the City she had watched them auditioning for each of the three shows she’d worked on – young, stunning, transitory good looks full of edgy ambition. They, more than anyone else, reminded her of the difference between herself and mortals.
She almost laughed when she thought of that word – mortals. It had taken many years before she was able to make the distinction in her thoughts, and the demarcation still felt fussy at times, not quite uncrossable.
“I was hoping for something a little more specific.”
“What’s to know?” came her sharp response. “I come from a small town in Mississippi no one has ever heard of and doesn’t even exist anymore. Not even as a bus stop. I love the theater. I write songs. The world is the world. That’s why we’re here. When we get tired of it, we’ll do something else.”
“That cuts the conversation, doesn’t it.”
Gilda immediately regretted being so abrupt. But looking across the table she found it hard to really see him. His separateness as mortal felt like an impenetrable curtain between them, one she wished didn’t exist.
“Not really, it’s only the variations that make the human story interesting, right?” She strained across the table trying to reignite his enthusiasm. “I mean, it’s the same ones over and over again. But the specifics are what make Baldwin different from Hemingway or Shakespeare or Hansberry. Why do you feel uncomfortable being with a white company?” she asked with genuine curiosity.
“I made all the sit-ins for the movement. While I was in college, protest was practically a credit course! Suddenly I look up and find all my dashikis folded at the bottom of a trunk and I’m helping to manage money for a group of middle-class white kids who want to play theater.”
Gilda sensed there was more, so she let the rattling noises of other customers fill the air as Julius shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with the casual way white patrons coming in tried to size them up. Dangerous? Noisy? Exotic?
“I decided to leave off reading the papers ’til the end of the day. I get so P.O.’d I can’t get my feet under me, you know? And then I go there and I like it – the work, most of the folks. But shit, man…”
Gilda understood: Attica filled the headlines. She, too, tried to push the news of death out of her mind. She’d seen the pictures of inmates killing and being killed, lined up in the prison yard, and the image was always the same as her memories of the slave quarters: dark men with eyes full of submission and rage. Their bodies plumped with bullets were the same ashen color as those fallen beside the trees to which they had been tied as punishment. She understood his restless anxiety.
“I know people from other companies, black companies. The New Lafayette folks are still around.”
“Whoa! You know the New Lafayette?” he asked incredulously.
“Of course. They were the reason I first came to the City. I thought those guys were going to change the world. The rituals, the spirit. They held black life in their hands; they reached inside me in a way…”
Julius was eager to pursue. “Did you see To Raise the Dead and –…”
“Foretell the Future!” Gilda broke in and they finished in unison, excited by their memories.
“So what happened to those guys?” Julius continued. “I mean, not all of them could be dying to go to Hollywood. It’s like they just evaporated.”
“They wanted to work like everybody else, I suppose. And white people stopped feeling guilty and donating money. Most of the men we marched with ran out of liberation ideas. They had a big dream about black men being free, but that’s as far as it went. They really didn’t have a full vision – you know, women being free, Puerto Ricans being free, homosexuals being free. So things kind of folded in on top of themselves.”
“Shit, who the hell’s got time for all that…”
“Ask the folks you don’t hang out with after run-throughs who’s got time for all that. You think these companies breeze through life on righteousness? I had a friend, a brilliant woman who devoted her life to a little black company, doing the scut work, the kind that’s just got to get done and nobody’s willing to pay for it. She figured the brothers would be ready when nation time came. She worked like crazy: grant applications, giving advice backstage when directors got stuck, and housecleaning when they said they were too busy to get to the theater on time. But when nation time came she might as well have been wearing a sheet! Grant money went to every brother in the place but not to her. A row of cotton is a row of cotton, so if you think she felt any different from how you feel, you haven’t really been thinking.” Gilda was surprised at the depth of her own feelings, about the disappointment she had seen on the faces of black women over the years.
“Damn, hold up. I get it. I ain’t hardly trying to say that.”
Gilda didn’t really hear Julius. She struggled to keep herself from slipping backward into the past. The hot rows, their leafy stalks licking at her legs, the heavy sun overhead. Her sisters moved quickly down the rows, making it into a game. She tried to keep up but never could. And the first time she fell into the dirt, face down, almost smothering, she waited for the lash she was accustomed to hearing around her. But her sister’s hand had lifted her effortlessly and dragged her along as if she were just another burden like the sack of white cotton.
Looking into Julius’ eyes Gilda remembered he could not see these things, and her words felt too sharp. She didn’t want to go back into the past; it was too far away, and they were all dead now.
“As long as you, me, and Irene stick with this company it won’t just be a group of white kids playing games. Irene is supposed to direct a play next season,” Gilda added.
“Yeah, I know. I guess I wasn’t prepared. Fisk is a far throw from Manhattan and I miss it. You know how it is, you fall into a groove and the roll is long.”
“You better catch a new groove!” She thought for a moment she had been too sharp again.
But then he laughed and said, “Power to the people!” and the past was in its proper place.
“I suppose you want to go somewhere they can pay you a living wage. A bourgeois wage. What do you want to do with all this experience?”
“Right now I want to just hang with you.” Gilda looked at Julius, taking in all that made him who he was. There was a calm assurance in his manner. Also a tentative nature about him that could be read as aloofness. His eyes told her he was lonely in the City. Being with her now was something he had wanted for a long while. And something else she couldn’t yet decipher.
“Julius, I don’t think it would work. I like you, but let’s not ruin a good friendship.”
She saw pain flicker across his face for an instant before evaporating. Gilda hated the way men shifted gears to protect themselves from humiliation.
“Hey, it was just an idea,” he said as if she’d just turned down tickets to a basketball game. He started to pick up his cup, but Gilda held his eyes, probing to see exactly what he felt. The camouflage and subterfuge were sometimes too exhausting for her.
Her gaze caught him up short and revealed his sadness. She saw how alone he really was. Hi
s parents were dead; he had no close relatives. Having nothing to keep him in the South, he had come to New York City. Gilda was the first person he’d reached out to in the two years since his arrival. In spite of his cynicism about working with a white theater company, Julius was eager, just as Aurelia had been. He sustained a vision of the world made better in part by his efforts and those of people he respected. Gilda shuffled back through her memories of his interactions with the company, the director and actors. She recalled his swift expertise and grace. He was young yet not easily intimidated. His sense of self was strong, but for the moment he was adrift, needing a friend more than a lover.
She slipped back, releasing the gentle hold she’d had on him and letting him regather his thoughts, then said, “I’ve got a great and longtime friend who owns a bar in Soho. Will you go with me sometime? We can collect old actor stories and drink fine wine. You tell me your problems, I’ll tell you mine.”
“Did you know it, you’re a poet?” Julius responded with a wide smile, as eager as Gilda not to lose the friendship they were building.
She said good night to him on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street. Gilda walked north to her small garden apartment in Chelsea, wondering how Julius had survived the harshness of the city. The relationship he fantasized between them could never be, yet his loneliness drew her. It mirrored Aurelia’s melancholy in some ways, but was more profound; somehow it suited him in spite of his struggle against it.
As she got to her door she put Julius out of her thoughts. She resisted the confusion he stirred in her, deciding he was best considered when she was among friends. Once out of her workshirt and square-cut painter’s pants, she curled up in the large overstuffed armchair that sat in her small living room. Heavy velvet curtains shut out the drafts and what light there was outside. She pulled out her old copy of the Tao Te Ching. Lao-Tsu’s laconic writings lay gracefully before her. She took comfort in knowing that she could read the calligraphy characters as easily now as did contemporaries of Confucius in the sixth century B.C. The pen strokes were warm and familiar: The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
The delicate figures did not soothe her restlessness. She looked at the clock: it was only 2:00 A.M. Gilda did not have to be at the theater again until six in the evening; the hours yawned before her. So much time. She considered dressing once more and going over to Sorel’s club. There were sure to be a couple of her friends there about this time, others like herself who slept through the day and lived at night. The disparate, tiny group who formed a makeshift family were always there.
But she had little patience for idle conversation and was uncertain whether she was ready to discuss her feelings with Anthony and Sorel. The urge to simply escape, to leave and forget the world here for a while, hovered over her. But the play was opening in a couple of weeks. She couldn’t go away for at least two months.
She expelled a sharp breath of frustration. How good it would feel to go to San Francisco, she thought. She missed walking the streets of the city, feeling its age and newness, the history curled around her there. It was as far into the past as she ever ventured. And there was an ease among the people. One that Sorel, during his decade here, had not yet been successful in transplanting to the east.
Here she felt smothered by ambition. Recognizing the absence of that in Julius made Gilda smile. She closed the book and went out into the postage-stamp garden. Because most of the businesses closed up shop at dinnertime, and there were few habitable apartment buildings, the area was quiet at night. Gilda’s tenement, owned by her holding company, in turn owned by her investment company, was similiar to those around it, except the heat and hot water always worked and the sidewalk was clean. It contained a mix of Americana: Francisco, a Dominican cab driver; Danny, an Irish man who had been the building’s superintendent for fifteen years, his wife Tillie, and their stream of grandchildren; Rodney, the black actor who went off to his job at the Transit Authority every morning and returned in the evening with his dance bag over his shoulder; and Marcie, a young Puerto Rican who lived just above Gilda. He was the only actual friend she had in the building. Marcie had invited her up a couple of times and she’d accepted without thinking twice. When she sat on his studio couch, enveloped in the Indian bedspread and fluffy pillows, she realized how difficult his charade was. During the day he was Marc at his job at the telephone company. He had been one of the first male operators and wore it like a badge of honor. But what he wore best were sable eyelashes and capri pants.
“I’m a free man. What I wear is my business!” she heard him shout after slamming his door behind a quickly departing relative. He and Gilda had been on good terms ever since then.
Except for his younger sister who slipped downtown to visit him on holidays, his family had generally stopped speaking to him years before. Gilda knew he welcomed neighborly intimacy as much as she did.
Gilda gazed up at the stars and then turned to look at Marcie’s window. The shades were drawn, but she could see a glimmer of red light underneath. He must have company, she thought, and dropped the idea of visiting him. He always went out by himself at the beginning of the evening but inevitably had someone with him when he returned home. In the morning, by choice, he was usually alone again. They had spent many mornings together over the coffee whose aroma enticed Gilda even though she never drank it.
She considered Marcie for a long time when thinking who might want to join her in her life. He was strong, directed, devoted. But Gilda saw him, like Aurelia, too tied to the life of the present. His world was now, not the expanse of time between now and the future. She tried to envision Julius against such a horizon.
Gilda felt impatient with her self-indulgence. Either use the time or leave it alone, she demanded of herself. She couldn’t understand why Julius upset her so much. It was certainly not the first time a man had propositioned her. She passed off their suggestions so easily, though, that they usually never remembered they had made them. What was upsetting her then? Gilda found her comfort with women. That was just the way it was. Julius was full of the manufactured responses that men somehow inherit from their dead mothers and fathers. Damn! He still reached out to her through the night air.
Gilda went back inside and slipped into her jeans and T-shirt. She pulled a sweater over her head, relocked her front door, and started walking south. She was seated in Sorel’s rear booth before she realized she was going there. Anthony stood formally beside the table looking much as he had when they first met – somewhat pale, wiry, his large hands preternaturally still at his sides. He looked like a student, yet Gilda felt as if she had returned home to her teacher.
“I’m afraid you’ve arrived much before Sorel. He will not be back with us for a week, perhaps two.”
“I know, Anthony. I just wanted to be here. To see you.”
“Splendid. May I bring you a bottle then? Sorel has been hoarding things for you to try since you’ve not been to visit us in so long.”
“Only if you’ll sit with me for a while.”
Anthony nodded, then turned to the tall door at the back of the pub where Sorel kept his personal favorites stored. As often happened Gilda was comforted by the ease with which Anthony, Sorel, and she had become accustomed to the new manners the world had to offer.
In many ways the mores of this time were much more complex, obscure – there was a great deal of room for surprise. She looked around her. Here she was not an object of curiosity as she had been long ago. Some of those present she knew and nodded to; but they, sensing her desire to be alone with Anthony, remained at their own tables. The sound of the room was much softer than the one in which she first sat with Sorel. Few mortals came here, and there was no gambling room – only a long bar, a few booths, and a billiard table. The bartender raised his glass in her direction, and she smiled in easy camaraderie. Anthony returned and opened a bottle of wine, a burgundy, and described how Sorel had expanded hi
s wine holdings in that region.
“What, no champagne tonight?”
“I’ve tried to make Sorel understand it’s an overrated drink. For years he’s humored me, but still he loves those bubbles. I, myself, prefer a hearty drink that stays with you through the chill of night.” With that Anthony poured the dark red wine into wide-mouthed glasses, then sat across from Gilda in the high-backed booth.
They sipped silently, with Anthony only muttering a small sound of appreciation. Gilda spoke before she knew exactly what was going to be said, in much the same way as she had unwittingly discovered herself in front of the club. “I have a friend, a young man, I think I’d like to bring with me to Sorel’s homecoming gathering.”
Anthony did not rush in with words but waited for Gilda to continue. She reached across the table and poured more wine for them both.
“I really look forward to Sorel’s report from New Zealand. I expect he and Bird have caused quite a stir among the landowners there. I wish Bird were returning with him. Anyway, my friend is a young man a bit at odds with himself right now, but I would really like you to meet him.” Her voice trailed off to a whisper. Then she said, “And I’m afraid. I can’t have another loss like Aurelia or Eleanor.”
Anthony reached across the polished wood of the table and rubbed one finger across Gilda’s hand, whose fingers were wound tightly around the bowl of her glass.
“And this friend has a name?”
“Julius.”
“He takes a place in your heart?”
“As a friend, yes. I feel none of the overwhelming rush of desire that blurred my vision with Eleanor. Nor much of the foreboding that stifled me with Aurelia. But I’m still uncertain. It would be so easy to make a mistake, to cause such horror. I won’t do that.” She could feel the fear rise in her throat and knew that Anthony sensed it.
“Did you know that before the end, Eleanor came to see Sorel almost every evening? It was quite sweet, actually. She would sit at his table after you moved east and simply look out with him at the many people who visited the salon. They spoke often of her childhood when they first met. And he talked with her of Europe. She developed a consuming desire to visit just from those conversations. It seemed a refreshing change had set in, for a few years at least. Sorel thought she was trying to find peace. Your stay with us forced her to face something none of us had been able to. Her creation was a mistake, and she continued to contribute to the bitterness that surrounded her. She took no responsibility for her life. I think Eleanor came to see what a waste that was. Sorel was really very happy to spend that time with her.”