They had breakfast at a diner. Their waitress was a buxom blonde matron with a starched-lace handkerchief popping out of her right breast pocket with a name tag that read HAZEL B. pinned to it. Mickey Moe asked her how to get to Orange Mound.
Hazel B. raised thick, penciled eyebrows and pursed orange-stained lips at the inquiry. Are you all sure that’s where you want to go? She jabbed her order pencil in Laura Anne’s direction. It’s not a neighborhood you want to take that nice young lady, boy. When Mickey Moe assured her it was exactly where he wanted to take her, Hazel B. tsked her tongue and gave him the most direct route.
Once they entered Orange Mound, they understood Hazel B.’s caution. There was not a white face in sight. Everyone gave the young couple suspicious looks, some of them downright hostile. Not a one had the shy, subservient gaze they were accustomed to. Mickey Moe reached for his girl’s hand and found it trembling. Are you alright, honey? he asked.
Her chin went up. Of course I am, darlin’. Her tone was confident, brave despite the damp, quivering palm. His eyes went moist and his puffed-up chest nearly burst his buttons with pride.
They drove down dirt streets ’til they came to Carnes. Three cross streets down from Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church they arrived at an unassuming storefront on a corner lot with living quarters in the back. The curtains of the store were drawn, there was nothing to indicate what type of business was conducted within. A sign hung from a post by a short iron gate, but its script, THE LENAKA, meant nothing to them. They parked across the street to steel themselves for what was to come and watched Negroes enter and exit the place more or less rapidly. Whatever went on in there didn’t take long. Mickey Moe brought his girl’s hand to his lips and kissed it.
You ready?
Yes, I am.
Then let’s do this thing.
They opened their doors and slammed them for courage. They crossed the street arm in arm, firm of stride, jaws set, their eyes straight ahead to ignore the passersby who slowed down or stopped to stare at them. Every stare shouted out, What are you all doin’ here, in the very heart of negritude? When it became obvious where they were headed, Laura Anne saw from the corner of her eye that people shrugged or smiled. They pushed open The Lenaka’s door. Entry bells chimed. Vibrant colors and scents assaulted them.
Why, it’s an apothecary of some kind, Laura Anne said. Look.
Inside were floor to ceiling shelves on three walls, and all of them were covered with bottles of colored liquids in varied sizes. There were tables supporting honeycombs of open wooden boxes in which fragrant herbs released their perfumes making the air heady and thick. A glass case with a cash register on the countertop displayed rows of vials filled with powders underneath. Another table held packets of bandages in a rainbow of colors. To the rear of the store was a curtain made of strung glass beads, which cast prisms all over the walls. Its valance was made of dangling chicken bones knit together with multicolored yarn.
Laura Anne picked up a yellow bundle of braided cloth from the bandage table and held it to her nose. This one has witch hazel, she said. She picked up a puce one, then a blue. And this one, this one’s sage, I just know it. And the other I believe is garlic and mustard. And that one there that’s got green bits stuck to it. Looks like slippery elm to me.
The beaded curtain jingle-jangled. Prisms shimmied up the ceiling and back down again. A deep feminine voice said, You know quite a bit for a white gal. Your people mountain people, dear? Or were you cared for by a woman from the islands as a child?
A huge shadow cast itself over the wall, and a person emerged sideways from the beaded-glass doorway. It was herself, Aurora Mae, in all her enormity. She was everything Mickey Moe remembered only more so: impossibly tall, broad, even her face seemed out of human scale with its huge widespread black eyes, its nostrils like caves, its mouth a red wellspring at the center of the earth. She wore a turban made up of bands of red, gold, and green cloth. They crisscrossed over her brow and were bound by a starched coxcomb in the back. Her dress was a plain black tent with a V-neck, and she wore long ropes of periwinkles over that.
Laura Anne took color. She was not accustomed to being questioned by a Negro in such a tone, let alone a Negro of majestic proportion.
The latter, she said with difficulty.
Aurora Mae’s lower lip jutted out, and she nodded. Alright. Well, what can I do for you two? What has brought you to such a far-flung place in a foreign land?
She laughed at her own joke. The bottles on shelves vibrated and knocked together. Mickey Moe coughed to gain control of the anxiety and excitement carousing through his blood. He asked his question in one breath without a hint of the turmoil troubling him.
Are you not Aurora Mae Stanton, sister to Bald Horace of Guilford, Mississippi?
Aurora Mae tilted her head back, narrowed her eyes to study him. This made her appearance more disturbing as there seemed to be threat in her posture as well as the power to carry it out.
Who wants to know?
He squared his shoulders, took a step forward so that Laura Anne was behind him, protected.
Mickey Moe Levy, son of Bernard.
Aurora Mae lowered her head, tucked in her chin, opened her eyes, and grinned. She clapped her hands in delight. Her voice boomed. Why, sweet Jesus, so it is! I been expectin’ you. I should’ve known who you were, but no one told me you’d have a pretty little gal with you.
She pulled back the beaded curtain, gesturing for them to enter her inner sanctum. They shared a certain trepidation, but they walked through. She followed behind, reaching up and tapping the row of valance chicken bones lightly with her fingertips as she did. The beads made a soprano music, the bones a baritone. Mickey Moe wondered what kind of outlandish home lay beyond. He expected wooden masks, drums, straw mats, whatever he’d seen of Africa or the Caribbean in the movies. Instead he found a quotidian 1962 kitchen with linoleum of a tiny yellow-flower design, a chrome and Formica table with chrome, leather-seated chairs on three sides and a chrome leather-seated bench on the fourth. The refrigerator and oven were newer than his mama’s. The wallpaper was fairly plain except for its border of crowing red roosters with bright green tail feathers. The white lace curtains on the windows were drawn but billowed gently in a cool breeze that floated in, accelerated by a reed-and-wood ceiling fan.
Sweet tea? Aurora Mae asked, motioning for them to sit. They took opposing chairs, leaving her the bench, a wise move considering it was the only seating where she might fit. She huffed around the kitchen, getting their refreshments, tall iced glasses of sweet tea and a plate of homemade ginger cookies. They waited for her to settle down, which she did with an exhalation of breath, as if the act of serving them had about done her in.
Oof.
She took off her turban and plopped it on the table. The hair beneath was gray, wiry, and cut close to her head like a man’s. She twisted her head from one to the other, waiting for someone to speak.
Well, children. Why are you here?
It’s my daddy.
She leaned away, gave him that slit-eyed look again.
What about him.
I need to know who he was, why everything he told my mama was a lie. Most of all, I need to know who his people were so that this very fine young lady and I may marry with her parents’ blessing, a blessing they will withhold from us ’til doomsday itself if they cannot be convinced my lineage is a righteous one. One day when I was a child, you said you knew my daddy better than anyone else, so I am hopeful you can put an end to the miserable mystery that is my origins. Please, m’am, he said, since he knew no other way to address a female he was required to beseech, can you tell me that? Were you truthful all those years ago when you spoke to a young orphan befriended by your brother? Were you?
Aurora Mae heaved a great sigh, which fluttered the pile of paper napkins she’d set in the center of the table when she’d brought in the tea. You need to hear that old story. Mmm-mm, children. I’m not sure I’m go
in’ to tell it.
Mickey Moe reached forward and grabbed one of her colossal hands with two of his own. Calling upon the spirit of his daddy—help me out here, you lying son of a gun, help me out if ever you loved me—he gave Aurora Mae the sales pitch of his life. While he did, he squeezed. He squeezed then raised the hand off the table and placed it down again repeatedly, making emphatic thumps.
Have you never loved someone? he asked. Has no one ever loved you? Do you know the torment of love denied, whether by sickness, by death, or the slow cruel tortures of fate? I have seen with my own eyes and have felt with my own heart what such has done to my mama, for she is a mean, withered tyrant to my sisters and a spiny, clingin’ vine to me.
Look at this gal beside me. Look at her! She is as pure and lovin’ a miss as a man could dream of, one who has risked her life to be at my side this moment—and I do mean that literally, Miss Aurora Mae—yes! risked her life and her honor. Would you see her denied? Would you see her turned into my mama? That is what your refusal will do to her.
And me. Doesn’t a man have the right to know who his father is? As much as he has the right to breathe, the right to stand up to the world and say, I am here, and this is who I am?
He went on for some time, abandoning his code of ethics by stretching the truth wherever it occurred to him it might be helpful. He threw every argument he could at her, even if they contradicted themselves, principally because her impassive flesh gave no clue to his effect. According to him, Laura Anne was at first a victim of unreasonable parents who could be rescued from them only by the truth and later a virago who would not and never had taken no for an answer. He was by turns a humble supplicant and next a righteous inquisitor. He told stories, just as he might in the backwoods at the derelict home of a sharecropper he sought to woo out of a dollar fifty a week in premiums. He told her about his childhood, of following big Roland about with the toolbox in hand, of traipsing after her brother, Bald Horace, and learning from him the ways of earth and the river. Thinking that all women had a maternal streak and that she’d warm to his need somehow, he gave her a tough little boy who struggled against the chasm of loneliness that inhabited his riven soul, but still Aurora Mae’s expression did not change. It remained flat, curious for just an instant maybe, or amused about as long by some pitiful revelation before her features returned to deadpan in the blink of an eye. At last, Mickey Moe ran out of story or knew he would compromise himself if he went too far. He stopped, heaving hot breath. A tear ran down his cheek, which he did not move to wipe away as that tear was his last ditch, his final hope to reach her hard, iced-up heart.
She studied him and snorted.
Man, oh man, she said. You think you know what sufferin’ is? Well, you do not. Let me tell you, your daddy was an orphan, too, with his daddy disappeared downriver when he was hardly more than a baby and his mama no kind of mama at all. That man knew how to work cold, hungry, and out of luck for a crust of bread, and that’s just the beginnin’ of it. He knew how to love, too. He knew how to love, come hell or high water, and I can testify to that. A li’l thing like you all are worryin’ about, her people, my Lord, her people! wouldn’t have made him lose a wink. Try havin’ the whole damn world against you and nature, too.
Her speech perplexed him. What was she talking about? As far as Mickey Moe knew, his mama and daddy were lovebirds and never had so much as a bump in their road until World War II. His brow knit while he tried to puzzle it out. He looked over to Laura Anne for help. She stared straight ahead, bug-eyed. Slowly, her hand went up. She pointed with a rude, straight finger to a small table in the corner holding a telephone and a single gilt-framed photograph. She tugged on Mickey Moe’s shirt and pulled him over to him to whisper as if Aurora Mae had her back turned or was incapacitated in some manner and could not hear her.
Eudora Jean showed me pictures, honey. Isn’t that your daddy there? Next to that tall black woman? There. Three people down on the right-hand side of the bride.
Mickey Moe got up and took the photograph in two hands. It was antique, tinted sepia, apparently a family portrait of about forty individuals sitting on the front steps of an old plantation house and spilling out over the front lawn. A bride and a groom stood in the middle. Everyone was dressed in Sunday clothes. They were all Negroes but one. His daddy. His daddy stood down some from the bridal couple, shoulders back, chest out, proud as punch, with a smile of pure delight over his face. Next to him was a magnificent Negro woman with a head of hair like a black Rapunzel’s, thick, curled, long, luxurious. She was as tall as Bernard Levy was short, as beautiful as he was funny looking. Bernard was the only subject in the photograph who was not staring straight ahead at the cameraman. Instead, he gazed adoringly at the creature beside him. Mickey Moe studied Aurora Mae. He studied the woman next to his daddy. Realization crept over him. By the time it was done, his throat was so dry he could barely get the question out.
Is this . . . is this some relative of yours? he asked.
Aurora Mae laughed. She laughed as if she’d invented laughter, that is in a dozen ways, all of them big, hearty, loud. Everything in the room felt electrified by the sound of it.
No!
Laura Anne’s and Mickey Moe’s scalps tingled. Their hair stiffened at the roots.
It’s me!
She leaned forward with her mouth open, ready to join with them in a second round of mirth, but they were plain dumbstruck with disbelief.
Me. It’s me.
She pointed to the woman in the photograph and then to her own chest.
Me.
Because they continued to sit there immobile, wondering if she was crazy or they were themselves, she relented and told them most of what they’d come to find out, at first hesitantly, then as she warmed up to her task, in a rush. She told them about herself and Bernard Levy, about their time together with her brother Horace up near Saint Louis on the family compound. She told them how happy they were, how close. To prove it, she told them everything Bernard ever told her about his background. She told them things even Horace did not know. She did not tell them about the night the kluckers came and abused her and took her away. To cover that episode, she made up a story, told them Bernard and Horace were conscripted by a landowner who transported them downriver by force. In this tale, she left the family farm soon after to search for them. She had many adventures, she said, most unpleasant. After a time, she gave up the search. She was alone, heartbroken. She wanted nothing of men, having experienced more than she wanted of them out in the world without her brother’s protection. In the course of avoiding them, she discovered the best way to rid herself of their attentions was to become, well, this! she said, slapping her thighs, and this! her breasts, and this! her close-cropped hair. One by one, I shed the things that made them go after me. I found other pursuits until all by accident, or you might say by an act of God, after nearly two year, in a wet season, I landed at a plantation close by here, a place called Ghost Tree. Your daddy and my brother worked there, too, only we did not find one another on its grounds for quite a while.
When she told them about the flood, she told as much of the truth as she remembered, which was everything. She told them how Bernard was a hero that day, who saved a hundred souls and murdered a monster bent on killing her along with all the black men on the levee. He was a brave man, your daddy, she finished. With the heart of a titan. He was a saint. A saint.
She stopped. Mickey Moe frowned, trying to absorb her narrative. Laura Anne, knowing he was expecting a different kind of story, stroked his back in comfort.
So. My daddy was a poor river rat who murdered an evil man to save the love of his life, which would be you, not my mama, and together with Bald Horace, you stole all the victim’s gold and went, where? Your separate ways? After all that?
Aurora Mae clammed up.
Not at first. Later on.
Well, what happened? What?
She put her two hands on the table and raised herself up.
I ain’t talkin’ about that. I have no desire to revisit that particular piece of time. You don’t know what the world was like after the flood. So much destroyed. So many dead. The ones alive were homeless. Negroes were mostly stuck in labor camps where they got paid in food if they were lucky. If you tried escapin’ and were caught, they just killed you. No questions asked. Life belonged to those with a gun and those with gold. We had both. Then there were things happened it’s not my place to tell. Let’s just say for now that I came here. The men went elsewhere.
But you were in Guilford that time when I was a boy. You lived there.
No. I didn’t. I was visitin’. I’d do that from time to time, startin’ with that occasion I showed up a mess at your mama’s house while she was havin’ a party. You couldn’t have been more than a baby that time. Oh yes. That was some occasion. But that’s her story to tell, not mine. You want to know that story, you ask your mama. Tell her I told you to ask her. Yes, you tell her I told you.
It was as if she’d punched him in the gut with all her considerable might. He could not speak. He sat open-mouthed, crumpled over, a hand holding his belly. Laura Anne spoke for him.
His mama knows about you?
Oh yes. You ask her. You ask her about Aurora Mae Stanton. You’ll see.
Stunned, shaken, Mickey Moe got up. He felt caged by all this knowledge, as if the truth were pressing in on him from every side. He had to get out of there or be squeezed to death.
Thank you, m’am, he said. I need to go absorb what you’ve been tellin’ me. I confess it’s been a shock.
Aurora Mae rose also. Of course, she said. It’s a lot to take in. I understand that, son.
They said their good-byes, which to Mickey Moe sounded hollow, as if he lived inside a great bell and the words he spoke reverberated back at him through still air. Laura Anne put her arm around him and guided him out as she might an invalid.
One More River Page 19