Four Spirits

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  Jonathan is playing beautifully now, big and ringing, triumphant, not angry, all over the keyboard. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

  Mr. Parrish shouts Praise the Lord over the music, and everyone shouts Praise, praise the Lord, and all stamp their feet to let out the last of what needs to go. The retreating rumble of their feet is like dying thunder, and Stella recognizes the establishment of vacancy, and the calm approaching to fill it.

  Finally Mr. Parrish raises his bandaged hand and speaks again in a voice that signals it is finishing. His voice goes ordinary. He soothes and seals then for the closing words.

  From the platform, Gloria looks down for a moment into Stella’s eyes. What Stella sees in Gloria’s green eyes is peace. And more. The glitter of strength. Mr. Parrish has done his work. Something passes between Stella and Gloria. They sip the common cup.

  “And so,” Mr. Parrish continues in his ordinary voice, “we go from the place of the skull, we go from the foot of the mountain, we go up from the fiery furnace, we leave the steel mills burning in the valley, we climbing up Red Mountain, we going to the top of the mountain. Flesh and blood, bone and skin of humanity take the place of the Iron Man.” He sounds again like a normal man, speaking in sensible tones. “We lift up our hand in compassion for all. All Birmingham. Black and white.” He takes a breath.

  “We look down at sorrow—we left sorrow behind—we look down at injustice—we left injustice behind—and we look up at Love. Yes, my people, we look up at love and justice and mercy. Beyond Vulcan’s iron arm, beyond the high-sailing clouds, and even beyond the starry firmament.”

  Amen, amen.

  “Lift your hand and bow your heads,” Mr. Parrish exhorts. “O Lord,” he begs, “be merciful to me, a sinner.” His knee thumps down on the floor. Never has Stella heard such an anguished cry as that of Mr. Parrish opening his heart. And she loves him, naked in his repentance, for whatever guilt and need he here acknowledges. “Forgive those who have murdered,” he prays fervently. “Take those to your kindly bosom who have suffered and died, and whom here we mourn. You are the resurrection and the life. And whosoever believeth in you shall not perish but have everlasting life.

  “And those dearly departed, they shall live in our hearts—not just these, Lord, but the others—those four others, those hundreds others, those thousands others who be lost to our memory but not to our imagination, all those who died or suffered for the cause of human dignity.”

  AT THE END OF the service, young Edmund Powers crosses in front of Stella to go to Gloria.

  Still a young boy, but he moves slowly, gravely, as though he were an old man. He’s all done with crying. Without the preaching and praying, Stella becomes heavy. The words buoyed her up, but now she slips under the tide of grief. She wonders if she can move at all. No, she can only sink. In spite of the heat, she becomes cold and numb. Helplessly, she can only see and hear.

  As Stella watches, Edmund looks up at Gloria and says, “I feel sent to tell you.” He speaks solemnly.

  Gloria is all crisp vivacity. She swiftly hugs the little boy and says, “What’s that?” His head tucks just under her bosom. The top of his head curves like the shoulder of a cello against Gloria’s breast. Stella remembers her own cello, how it sang in the throaty timbre of Yiddish.

  Pressed against Gloria’s body, Edmund murmurs, “God say we must keep music in our soul. ‘Make a joyful noise, all ye lands.’ ”

  In amazement, Gloria releases him, as though she realizes that in this child, there is a preacher, an evangelist, a burning coal, and she must treat him more circumspectly.

  Released, Edmund approaches Stella. He is shy, but he looks up in her eyes and utters his prophetic message. Stella sees his lips move, but she feels that she is looking at him from the bottom of the sea, through a lid of ice.

  “Ma’am, God say we to take love to our hearts. That’s all he say.”

  Jonathan

  “I CAN’T DO THAT ANYMORE,” STELLA SAID TO JONATHAN after the funeral. By that, she meant teach at the H.O.P.E. night school. “I can do something else.”

  She looked at him as though she couldn’t see him. The hand he held was icy, but her face had a hectic to it (the Shakespearian term came sadly to his mind), the flush of red hysteria Jonathan had seen on the faces of pale female students at Juilliard before they broke. But Stella surprised him by not crumbling, by going on to say, “Instead, I’ll help people practice for voter registration.”

  Later he heard that the whole stifling week in early September after the funeral, she’d stayed in her bedroom. She’d told everyone I have to grieve my way. I have to grieve it out.

  He had thought of Bach’s cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden—Christ lay in the bonds of death. Though he didn’t know her well, he pictured her on an austere bed, dressed in Sunday clothes, her hands clasped, waiting for the agony to pass. He imagined the bed to be neatly made, spread with a white candlewick coverlet. The bed like a bier with Stella decorously centered on it almost filled the room he had never seen where temperature did not exist. It was unlikely, but he hoped sometimes she thought of him, found minor comfort in the idea that beyond her walls were friends.

  She would see only her aunts, people said, her old friend Nancy, her college friend Ellie, and Cat’s brother. Later Jonathan had heard that Stella and Don had broken off their engagement. “We’re like brother and sister now,” they had told everyone.

  Jonathan felt a small flame kindle in his heart.

  IN OCTOBER, STELLA did begin to work with voter registration. She remarked to Jonathan, “It’s easier to deal with older people. One at a time.”

  BY NOVEMBER, JONATHAN and Stella were going together to concerts, movies, organizational meetings, lectures, dances (she was a poor dancer); she asked to listen to him practice, and she invited him home to meet her old aunts, both of whom he adored. Eventually he took her back to Dale’s Cellar for a full dinner. They had lobster, and she said that she’d never eaten lobster before.

  After the Veterans Day parade, at Twentieth Street and First Avenue in downtown Birmingham, she introduced him to a short, freckle-faced man named Darl.

  Rather awkwardly, she asked Darl if he’d enjoyed the parade. He responded that there ought to be at least one float honoring those who’d died in the struggle for civil rights. “They’ve served their country and given their lives. Just as much as any soldier,” he said. Suddenly Stella reached up and hugged him, then she turned, took Jonathan’s hand, and guided them through the dispersing crowd.

  As they walked away, Jonathan remarked, “You certainly were glad to see him,” and she told Jonathan that Darl was the man to whom she was first engaged.

  “He’s changed,” she said. “I’m glad.”

  Wordless, Jonathan put his arm across her shoulders.

  “I used to love to hear him play,” she said. “Especially Bach.”

  He watched as the streets cleared of people who had witnessed the parade. “I remember,” Jonathan said. “Drove a motor scooter.”

  She told Jonathan that she had broken up with Darl, “about this same season, late November last year, when Kennedy was assassinated.” She seemed distracted, as though her mind had moved away from Darl and their engagement.

  Jonathan felt jealousy flare from the pit of his stomach. He knew he didn’t want her to ever say of himself, casually, I used to go out with him.

  He felt surrounded by strangers, noticed the day was gray and dreary. These people moved slowly; none of the quick, businesslike movement of a New York street. He thought of Kabita and the last date they’d had, a visit to the Metropolitan Museum to see fashions based on cubist art.

  “You’re a survivor, aren’t you?” Jonathan said to Stella. “Twice engaged.”

  She said gravely, “That’s nothing to feel guilty about.” Then she pointed to the emblem of the department store beside them. “Fair and square,” she said. “I used to think justice and beauty could save the world.”

  He asked her
what she thought could save it now.

  “Nothing,” she answered. “Personal strength and luck.”

  CHRISTMAS EVE, THEY parked in front of the aunts’ house under the dim illumination of the streetlamp. The Thunderbird was cold because the heater was broken, and the ragtop provided no insulation. Suddenly she turned to him and he to her, kissing and kissing, and touching each other till they were panting and enveloped in a mist of their own breath. Their teeth were chattering so much that they began to laugh.

  “We could go to my apartment,” he said. “I’m sorry the heater’s on the f-f-fritz.”

  “I want to,” she said. “Not yet though.”

  “When you’re ready.”

  He walked her to the front door, where they kissed tenderly.

  “Soon,” she said.

  He knew she meant it. He knew after several months she would go home with him. That was what a southerner meant by soon, said in that eager, promising, reassuring tone, the ultimate flirtation.

  New Year’s Party, 1965

  SO MUCH HAS BEEN WON, JENNY PARRISH THOUGHT AS SHE handed up a twist of crepe paper—black and white twirled together—to her husband on the stepladder. Lionel had bought six bottles of champagne and had them on ice in the big washtub. Pregnant again, Jenny put her hand on her belly. And you be the very best part of it, she thought. Lyndon Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964. On that night Shuttlesworth had tested the waters, gone to the dining room of the Parliament House Hotel. He was seated. But violence and killing were still going on all over the South. Lionel wanted to go down to Selma, work with King, who was planning to come back to Alabama in January for mass meetings. It was still difficult to register to vote. Jenny knew that lives would be lost in Selma.

  “Heard on the radio,” Lionel said, “it just might snow.” He stretched to fasten the streamer to the light fixture.

  “Don’t tell the children,” Jenny said. “They wild enough already.”

  At that moment, she saw Agnes and TJ and their three standing on the porch. Agnes was older than Jenny had thought she would be—kind of old to be herding three children. When Jenny opened the front door, Diane burst in, all a-jangle. She had a jingle bell sewn in the crown of her stocking cap. “It’s gonna snow,” Diane announced. “I caught a snowflake on my tongue.”

  Jenny’s four came piling into the room. George walked right up to Diane, held out his hand like a grown person, and said, “Howdy-do, I’m George Parrish.”

  “And I’m Miss Diane Taylor.”

  “Whew!” both Agnes and Jenny exclaimed together.

  “This must be Buckingham Palace,” Jenny said.

  Lionel climbed down from the stepladder and held out his hand to TJ.

  “Help me move all this furniture against the wall, Brother TJ,” he said. “We might want to dance tonight.”

  “Agnes said some white folks due to come.”

  “Said they was. Stella and Jonathan, from the night school. And they’re bringing a friend, Miss Ellie.”

  “I saw the police cruising,” TJ answered.

  “Let ’em cruise. This here a private party.”

  “Lookie there at the window!” Agnes said.

  They all looked. Thick as feathers from a ripped pillow, snow was drifting down.

  THROUGH THE WINDOW of the Thunderbird, Stella watched the snow pelt the red hood and melt. “The only question is—will it stick?” Stella said.

  “Stick?”

  She was wearing a red scarf Jonathan had given her for Christmas. She looked like one of those delicate, hand-tinted postcards from the 1940s—with her blond hair curling up from the red wool.

  “Accumulate,” she explained. “That’s what southern children always ask. Is it cold enough for snow to stick?”

  “In about ten minutes the sky will open full scale and we’ll be ankle deep in snow.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve only seen it snow about two hundred times in New York,” he said.

  Once, she had told him that she loved him best while he was playing the piano, and he had said that every day he loved her more than the day before. She had laughed and said that he must be thinking about writing a country-western song. For a while, he’d tried to get her to take up the cello again, but she’d said for him to accompany Gloria on the cello. She enjoyed listening, she had said, and he accepted that.

  “What’s your favorite piano piece now?” he asked.

  “ ‘Jingle Bells,’ ” she said and laughed. “No, the Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition. Especially ‘The Great Gate of Kiev.’ All that grand clanging.”

  He reached across and stroked her cheek with his knuckle. “Maybe someday we’ll go there. To Russia. To Kiev.”

  “If the world doesn’t blow up,” she answered.

  “Stella,” he said lightly. “Do you want to talk about getting married?”

  She glanced back through the rear window. “Maybe you should slow down. Ellie’s almost a block behind.”

  “Not used to driving in the snow. She should have ridden with us.”

  “She’s fine. And, Jonathan, dear heart, I’m happy the way we are.”

  Nothing she said ever made him doubt their connection. She had said they had the trust beyond trust.

  “What way?” he asked. He recalled that Ellie was wearing the sexy red sheath dress.

  “Less naive.”

  He reached over and pressed her knee. “I’ve never been naive.”

  “I have,” she answered. “Stubbornly so.” Snow was beginning to pile up in people’s yards, in the sprays of pine needles and also on the broad, flat leaves of the magnolias. “Has it already snowed in New York this winter?”

  “My mother said it snowed for Thanksgiving.”

  She tucked her feet up under her and asked, “Will they like me?”

  “Your mother was Jewish, so as far as they’re concerned, you’re Jewish. And college educated. That’s all that matters.” But he knew they would adore Stella. “You’re presentable,” he teased. They’d be surprised by her careful tact and extreme politeness. To them, she would seem ever so slightly exotic, as she did to him. Suddenly he lusted after her. There was no other term for it.

  “Let’s do get married,” he said.

  She smiled. “May we listen to the forecast?”

  He flipped on the radio.

  “Folks, it is snowing in Birmingham! Look out your window, and y’all’ll see, snow is coming down, believe you me! Joe Rumore, here, Alabama’s only Eye-talian redneck. Predictions are for an inch accumulation in the next half hour! Up to six inches tonight, New Year’s Eve, 1965! You ought to head for home early, folks. Be careful after those late-night parties. We don’t want to see Vulcan’s light turning red tonight, folks.”

  IN HER OWN CAR, Ellie turned up the heater. She’d forgotten her coat. Buford had called from out of town just when Stella and Jonathan drove up and honked in front of the apartment. I have to go, she’d said. I’m going to a party. He was irate that she would party on New Year’s without him. She started to tell him she was going with another couple, but she changed her mind. She had the right to make her own choices. He ought to trust her. When he protested, she had slammed down the phone and run outside, clutching her car keys.

  She moved her head so she could see her eyes in the rearview mirror. Mascara and eye shadow were perfect, slightly theatrical. She looked wonderful. She smiled. Though she couldn’t see her mouth, the light in her eyes intensified. She’d not been to an integrated party before, but she’d always loved dark skin. Aesthetically, it was her favorite color for skin.

  If there was a piano, maybe she’d sing and Jonathan would play.

  AGNES PUT HER COAT back on and stationed herself on the porch to watch the children play in the yard. She had gained weight since the children came. “Happy weight,” TJ called it. The children were mostly running around with their tongues stuck out catching snowflakes, or trying to gather up enough snow
to make miniature snowballs. They were talking about building a snowman and a snow fort. She loved seeing their three play with the Parrish four.

  When she stepped inside every fifteen minutes or so to get warm, Agnes watched the children through the glass door. Sometimes TJ or Jenny Parrish came to chat while she watched. Jenny had told her that Lionel wanted to name the new baby Charles if it was a boy and Christine or Matilda if it was a girl. “It’s not my business,” Agnes said, “but I’d love to see you give this baby your name, Jenny.” Jenny had hugged her. Agnes loved the way Jenny’s round belly pushed up against her, held her close to life.

  WHEN A MEAN WIND gusted hard and mythic snow flew horizontally, every child stopped playing.

  Diane saw that the wind was strong enough to stick snow against the window screens, and TJ’s face behind the window, helping Agnes watch them, became a white cloud.

  Eddie knew that he must be strong and stand against it. He closed his eyes and thrust his face into the wind.

  Little Henry-Honey looked for Agnes and saw her standing on the porch, drawing her coat collar close against her throat. He remembered the soft warmth of her body and decided to go to her.

  George thought of the moment when the church blew up, when his soul had tried to leave his body, when it had hidden in the marrow of his bones. When his mother’s voice had tethered him and kept him from seeing the rubble, from helping his father.

  Lizzie and Vicky Parrish worried about their mother. Suppose the baby in her tummy got cold? But their mother was inside; they could see the golden light, where surely it was warm. They would go inside now and help their mother. With the points of the scissors, they would pierce cellophane and take it off the paper plates. They would shake salty nuts into glass dishes.