by Jabari Asim
For her part, allowing Brady his secrets enabled her to keep her own cards close to her vest. Ultimately, that involved less about improvising and more about avoiding a destiny she’d strived so hard to elude. As much as she loved her mother, as much as she was grateful for her uncomplaining sacrifice and her patient tutelage, she could not shake the enduring memory of Sadie stumbling to her feet, white-haired and delirious, helpless as a newborn babe. She would never fall to earth for any man, not even one as wonderful as Luther Noel. So she stuck to her books and kept her distance. No matter how much she grew to crave Brady’s scent or marvel at the way he easily spanned an octave with his long, sensitive fingers, their couplings would be just a pleasant diversion. They could never be more than that.
It seemed a plausible philosophy until she got pregnant.
She saw herself stepping off the train at the Honey Springs depot, dragging an overstuffed suitcase and groaning behind a bulging belly. She saw herself trudging up the dirt path to the shanty where she first drew air. Then she woke up sweating.
What she felt for Brady Ross couldn’t in any way be twisted into the shape of love. She didn’t want to be the wife of an aspiring composer. Still, a life of improvisation was, she conceded, far more stable than any kind of life in Honey Springs.
On the day she planned to tell him, she arrived early. She wanted to see him as others saw him, thinking perhaps that a different perspective might reveal in him some unforeseen quality that suggested genius, longevity, a grander design. An odd compulsion led her to the partially open window, where she stood and watched Brady lean over his student, the man with twinkling eyes. Later she decided she wasn’t even surprised when Brady put his hands over the man’s hands and kissed him on the side of his head. At the moment, though, she found herself frozen until Brady lowered his lips to the back of the man’s slim, handsome neck. “I whom sun-dabbled streams have washed…” she heard him say. Artinces threw up in the flowerbed outside the window and promptly left.
She had cried at her father’s funeral, and then vowed she would never do so again. She had managed to hold to her promise through myriad minor disappointments. But, as she lay on an iron bed in a dim room far from the sterile corridors of Freedmen’s Hospital, across several miles and train tracks, tears flowed in rivulets so thick they blinded her while a disgraced former doctor, reeking of booze and foreboding, scraped at her insides. She remembered a sudden, limitless agony, a brutal tearing that made her mother and father appear in brief, frenetic visions, lightning flashes amid the ambient thunder of pain. She sweated, endured, and tried to think of other things, anything, focusing on the crucifix hanging on the wall overhead. Christ, with his own trials to suffer, hung bound and tortured in the shadows while she stretched and yelled and tugged on the headboard until the bars bent.
She was no longer sure about the details—whether there actually had been a crucifix, or whether it was a discarded army cot instead of an iron bed. But she could still vouch for the pain, the delirious stagger home in the relentless heat, and the shuddering collapse when she crossed the threshold. Waking up in Freedmen’s with Kozetta at her side, face damp with despair. Kozetta, who had warned her, “Girl, don’t do anything stupid.” The litany of questions, the evidence of infected instruments, the irreversible wreckage of her womb. Those facts had followed her to the present, along with the cold realization that she had fed the Hunger, had offered herself in sacrifice, knowing all the while that it could never be satisfied.
The magic of Irene Monday’s pies was undeniable. By early afternoon, her stand had become the most popular concession in the park. The line of patrons had begun to curve, obscuring Artinces’s booth. The pie seekers shuffled slightly to accommodate two men as they pushed their way through and approached the doctor.
One, dignified and wearing a straw hat with a gold band, looked to be in his late sixties. The other, tall, lean, and nervous, was of indeterminate age. His unlined face was a deep chocolate color and his mustache was sprinkled with gray. He carried a rolled-up newspaper in one hand.
“Good afternoon, Doctor,” he began. “My name’s Oliver and this here’s Shadrach. I guess you could call him my friend.”
“Pleased to meet you both,” Artinces said.
“Same here, ma’am,” Shadrach said. He looked slightly embarrassed.
“I’ve been telling him to get himself checked out,” Oliver continued. “But you can’t drag a mule where he doesn’t want to go.”
Shadrach snorted and rolled his eyes.
“We saw you over here and he told me he’d be willing to have you check him out,” Oliver continued. “I told him that you were a children’s doctor. Hard as it is for him to admit it, it’s been a loooong time since he’s been a child. Childish maybe, but that’s a dog of a different stripe.”
“You mean a horse of a different color,” Shadrach said.
Oliver stared at him in disbelief. “Who’s talking, you or me?”
“I am a pediatrician,” Artinces said, “but today I’m seeing everybody.”
“See, I told you,” Shadrach said. “One day you’ll listen to me.”
“How about you sit down right here, sir,” Artinces suggested.
Shadrach complied.
As she wrapped his arm in the blood-pressure sleeve, Artinces took note of his dignity and grace.
“You look familiar to me,” she said.
Shadrach looked embarrassed again. “We were on hand when you had your accident, ma’am. At the cabstand.”
“Were you? Yes, of course. But I meant some other place, some other time. What do you do for a living, Mr. Shadrach?”
“Just Shadrach will do. I’ve been retired for a good while.”
“And that’s a good thing,” Oliver cut in. “He’s half blind, half deaf and, as you can see, he’s not too swift.”
“That’s Oliver,” Shadrach said with a sigh. “I guess you could call him my friend. What was I saying before I was so rudely interrupted? Oh yeah, I used to have a hat shop on Easton.”
Artinces smiled. “That’s where I’ve seen you.”
Before moving her practice to Kingshighway, she’d kept an office on Easton Avenue, the hub of the black community when she first came to town. She had breakfast nearly every morning at the Nat-Han, and just as often she’d get off the streetcar and see a nattily dressed man, always wearing an up-to-the-minute hat, step out and briskly sweep the walk in front of his establishment. He was regular as clockwork, this man, and for a while, Artinces kept her schedule by minding his. If he ducked out in front of his awning to whisk the night’s debris to the curb, she knew she was on time. If his walk was already swept, she needed to get a move on.
Many of her patients shopped up and down Easton and so did she. But she also liked to spend a dollar on a service car and ride downtown to shop at the Stix or Famous department stores or to pay her bills. Scooping up bargains on Dollar Day was another dependable diversion. Usually near the end of the month, the stores moved merchandise that hadn’t sold down to their basements and happily handed it over in exchange for a buck, as long as Negro shoppers understood that they couldn’t try on clothes on that floor or any other. The Famous store had a restaurant that featured world-acclaimed onion soup. The restaurant was on the second floor, but its tantalizing aroma penetrated every nook and cranny except the perfume counter. Artinces loved the smell of the soup, but never tasted it because Negroes weren’t allowed to dine there. You could stand up and eat in the back of Kresge’s, but you couldn’t sit down. Aldo’s had yet to admit black customers, so even someone like Artinces, who had money in her pocketbook, had to take what she could get.
She was already something of a name by then, having established a well-baby clinic at Abram H. that lowered the death rate of premature infants from 80 percent to 20 percent in two years. She all but lived on the premises after taking over as chief resident, proving to be as skillful at bureaucratic tussling as she was at healing. She wrote stinging
letters to newspaper editors and legislators and camped out in the offices of unresponsive agency directors, forgoing sleep to secure supplies of bananas and ice cream for her sick children. She increased access to vital fluids for the diarrhea sufferers and Gordon Armstrong incubators for the preemies.
She continued to oversee the pediatrics ward, even after hanging out her own shingle. Parents who had seen her work miracles at Abram H. followed her to the little office on Easton, where she made sure they always felt welcome. North Siders had been resigned to their children receiving care on a catch-as-catch-can basis, totally dependent on the whims of indifferent white pediatricians. Some outright refused to treat black children; others had “black days,” during which black youngsters could be admitted (always at peculiar hours) without contaminating the waiting room or white patients with their presence.
Artinces had been so sickened and outraged by the tradition that she made “Every day is black day” a slogan of sorts. She had it painted on a placard, which she placed on the front desk to greet every newcomer. It was on every brochure, including those she’d made available at Afro Day. Shadrach picked one up from her counter after she pronounced his blood pressure well within the normal range. He was a good deal older than Ananias Goode, but something about him seemed similar. There was the rakish angle of his hat, but something else beyond that. He seemed strong, masculine in an old-fashioned way, yet gentle and patient at the same time. The brochure rested lightly in his weathered palm.
Her fondness for rough lovemaking aside, Artinces had grown to appreciate and encourage the gentle side of Goode. She invited him to join the volunteers who came into Abram H. to hold babies who had no one else to comfort them. “You’d be surprised how good it feels,” she told him. But he wanted no part of it.
“The last baby I held is long gone,” he said. “I ain’t held one since.” She added his name to the list anyway, and told him so.
“I have a daughter,” Shadrach said. “And she has a daughter. They live across the river, but I’m going to tell her to come see you. I’m going to recommend it.”
“I appreciate it,” Artinces said. Shadrach opened his mouth to say more, but at that moment Rose Patterson stepped to the center of the bandstand. And she opened her mouth too.
“Oh, happy day,” she sang.
Oh, happy day
Oh, happy day
Shadrach removed his hat and placed it over his heart. Irene Monday had promised that Rose was the real thing, but Artinces was still surprised. She looked over at Irene, who smiled and nodded.
When Jesus washed
Oh, when he washed
Rose reminded Artinces of the women she’d heard growing up, singing in the cotton fields. They sang strongly but without effort, devoting the bulk of their strength to the labors at hand. Rose’s voice contained that same grit formed of earth and sweat, but she was more polished, as if she knew the city demanded something different, something redolent of factory floors, rush-hour traffic, church bells, and concrete. Her melodies took Artinces back to pleasurable days, to her father walking with her arm in arm.
When Jesus washed
When Jesus washed
He washed my sins away!
All across the park, Rose’s listeners indulged in similar journeys. Children paused in their games of tag and devil-and-the-pitchfork; some of them stood still under the sprinklers. Women on picnic blankets halted their conversations in the middle of sentences and just listened, holding cans of beer and sauce-drenched ribs in midair. Men looked up from their grills and let the burgers sizzle. On the bridge, Lucius stopped his sketching and stared. Next to him, Reuben closed his eyes and continued to draw, letting the music guide his hand.
Artinces believed that Jesus could wash her sins away as much as she believed the world was flat. But while Rose sang, Artinces found herself yearning for absolution, hoping that somewhere, on some glad morning, people could indeed be made new. If she could make herself over, who would she become?
Rose sank from a crescendo to a sigh, and then her knees buckled. Gabe, hovering in the shadows behind her, caught her before she fell. Gently, he lowered her to the ground. The Man in the Red Vest was as quick as he was smooth. He rushed to the mike. “Put your hands together for Rose Patterson,” he said. “One more thing: is there a doctor in the park?”
Minutes later, Artinces squatted by Rose’s side. “Give them room,” the Man in the Red Vest urged the growing crowd. Lucius and Reuben had grabbed an Afro Day banner and stretched it between them, forming a privacy curtain around the scene. Rose was sweating heavily. Artinces could see that her water had broken. Stretched out on her back, Rose rested her head and upper shoulders against Gabe. She bit her lip and moaned. Gabe dabbed her forehead with a handkerchief and leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “It’s going to be fine,” he said. “You and the baby will both be fine.”
Rose smiled in the midst of her pain. Artinces saw the fear and confusion wiped away. She could tell Rose really trusted her man.
“Now, I’m going to have remove your underpants,” Artinces said softly. She took a look. The baby was already crowning.
“Dad, you’re going to have to help me,” she said to Gabe. “She believes in you. Let’s make her glad she does.”
Leaning against his Eldorado just outside the gates, Sharps had a clear view of the proceedings. Alone among Rose’s rapt audience, Sharps had kept a safe emotional distance throughout her performance. He never stopped smirking when she slumped to the stage floor. He waited patiently for PeeWee to return with the two pies he’d filched in the confusion. All the world’s a stage, Sharps thought, and it’s time for the final act.
His family had greased the right palms in sweet home Chicago, and twisted a few limbs besides. Armed with a rigged recommendation and fake credentials, he’d come to town and gotten as close to Ananias Goode as anyone ever had, including that fat fool Guts Tolliver. His reports home had included the suspicion that Goode, who was turning into “a melancholy nigger,” aimed to disappear after draining the sporting life dry. “I’m no fool,” Sharps had reported, “I can see what he’s up to. Buying up legit shingles left and right. He has to be laundering loads and loads of cash.” He figured the doctor—“the avenging angel in a lab coat,” as one newspaper breathlessly described her—was Goode’s bank. He’d almost proved it for himself when he followed Goode one Wednesday, but Detective Grimes, that spooky bastard, had stopped him on a humble and prevented him from tailing their two cars across the bridge. Couldn’t be nothing else going on, Sharps had concluded later. No way a bitch wound up that tight would fuck a gangster. Not that Goode was much of a gangster anymore, the way he sat around feeling sorry for himself. True, Goode was a general, not a soldier. His job was to give orders and plot strategy while his lieutenants carried out his plans. Julius Caesar was a general, Sharps knew, and that motherfucker got his in the end.
Sharps fetched his gold toothpick from his breast pocket and slid it between his teeth. Shortly after his arrival, he’d sworn on the grave of his cousin Ike Allen that he would avenge his name and make things right. The time was near, he decided. But first he was going to get Goode’s money.
PeeWee had returned while Sharps was ruminating. Earlier, using the power of the ring, he’d disabled the doctor’s car according to his business partner’s instructions. That task accomplished, stealing from the Pie Lady’s booth was almost beneath his dignity. He raised both pies and smiled proudly. “Lemon meringue and sweet potato,” he said. “Just like taking candy from a baby.” Startled, Sharps nearly choked on his toothpick. When he recovered, he glared at PeeWee. “For the last time,” he warned, “if you keep on interrupting me when I’m thinking, I’ll slice you from stem to stern. That’s a nautical phrase, motherfucker. You know, nautical. Ships and shit.”
Inside his house on Lewis Place, Ananias Goode sat and watched his wife. Lawrence had been given the day off so that he could enjoy the festivities in the park. The day was growi
ng old. Goode made no move to turn on a light. The gloom suited his mood. He sat listening to the wheeze and hum of the machines while clutching a pillow on his lap. Occasionally he snuck a glance at the still form in the bed, the limp swirl of wispy strands barely visible beyond the edge of the blanket. Finally he got up, leaving the pillow on his chair, and went to a table in the corner of the room. He picked up the phone sitting on it and dialed a number.
“Miles? It’s me. Yeah, I know. Half of the North Side’s in the park. I decided to sit it out and apparently so did you. I called you because…I want you to pray for me.”
Miles Washington’s voice was as sonorous over the phone as it was when issuing thunderous sermons from his pulpit. “I pray for you every day. You know that. Why the special request? Has something happened?”
“No,” Goode replied.
“Is something going to happen?”
“Just do that for me,” Goode pleaded, his voice nearly soft as a whisper. “Just pray.”
He hung up the phone and stared at his hands. He stood like that, unmoving, for several long minutes. Then, sighing, he grabbed the pillow from the chair and stepped toward the bed.
Artinces sat on a park bench staring at the water. Behind her, Park District employees dismantled the booths and began to cart them away. The drama of the afternoon had played to a satisfying climax. Rose’s baby boy made his entrance into her reliable hands, with the joyful outcome dutifully recorded by a Citizen photographer. Now she sat waiting for the three women to emerge through the curtain of shadows formed by the gathering dusk. They’d return to the dock where she’d seen them earlier, she figured, and once again try to stare her down. She planned to confront them, ask them why they were taunting her and why they wanted her to suffer. She had once considered the possibility that they were her, variants of former selves, or phantom images of women she could have been. But she’d come to doubt that: everything about them—their wardrobe, the expressions on their faces—bore the marks of an earlier time. She attacked the mystery as she would any complex case, and her investigations had at last borne fruit: she was now certain she knew who they were. She felt them watching her while she worked on Rose. She’d even cast a hurried glance around the crowd and though it turned up nothing, she knew they’d been there, looking over her shoulder—close enough, perhaps, to touch her, as they had in her dream.