Marietta turned on her hands and knees and saw the feet in the crack of dim light under the door. A clicking scrape, a knife rasped beside the lock. She felt for her own knife, beside the box, and crawled silently to the door. At the side, she saw the dull knife tip and the shadow of the hand. She waited until the tip slid in and then she jabbed her own knife forward, into the shadow. It hit the web of palm and she heard a cry of pain. “Come on,” she said. “Come on.”
The feet ran toward the stairs and down. Marietta looked at the knife blade in the light from the window, but she saw no blood. Her heart beat so fast that she felt her shoulders, her cheeks, pounding, and she sat on a crate by the window until gray morning.
“Oh Lord, you so tall-tall. I beena forget. Ain see no gal tall-so since I child.” Miss Pat and her nephew Michael stood in the doorway of the fish market. He picked up a crate of corn, and Marietta picked one up, too, following him into the store.
“In the back,” Frank called, and the nephew told her, “I get it.” He looked at Marietta until she put down the crate.
“Tall-tall, mmm-hmm,” Miss Pat sang, and then she said, “Look, Sinbad, she see you face fe true, better than little girl you de sweetmouth. She look right in you eye.”
Marietta turned and felt breath puffing above her eyebrows. “Sorry,” he said, going around her to the swinging door beside the counter. A middle-aged woman stood in front of the counter and said, “That all you got today?” She frowned at the half-empty ice.
“Right now,” he smiled. “Come back in a hour—we slow this morning.”
“Humph, y’all is slow,” she said, leaving.
“Hey, Miss Pat,” he said. “You looking fine this morning.” He tilted his head exaggeratedly and blinked at her.
Marietta watched his face. He had sharp angles, hollows under thin cheeks. Straight black eyebrows, and a faint line of mustache. He was carp-gold, and when he smiled, a thin gap showed between his front teeth.
“I know, I know, you want your money,” he said to Miss Pat, counting.
“I too glad this girl see me today cause she de look fe job, Sinbad,” Miss Pat said. “And I beena hear last week Frank look fe help.”
“She from the island?” he said absently, not looking up from his hands.
Marietta felt Miss Pat’s hand on her arm. “No, no, she Hurriah niece. You know, Hurriah always sing and carry on. She come fe look he, and need work.” Miss Pat’s small, slanted eyes smiled up into Marietta’s.
“Where you from?” he said to the counter.
“Pine Garden.”
“That don help me. Sinbad ain know nothing bout here.” Miss Pat looked at Sinbad again. “She from by the water, she know how cook a fish.” She put the money in her dress.
Sinbad closed the drawer and gave her his attention. “We don’t need nobody cookin. We need a cat to do the nasty work, cuttin and cleanin.”
“A cat?” Marietta looked at Miss Pat.
“He mean a man. He from De-troit, that how he talk. And sweetmouth—every woman put she foot inside this door. You safe long as he don out the light and whisper fe you ear.”
A shout came from the double doors behind the counter. “Sinbad—get back here if nobody ain’t buying,” Frank yelled.
“Excuse me, ladies, I gotta clean some fish. And I hate to do that instead of talk to you.” He pushed through the doors, letting out the strong, fresh-fish air.
Marietta watched Miss Pat, her red headscarf and eyes long and half-closed. Miss Pat took ten dollars from her dress and pressed it into Marietta’s hand. She lifted her nostrils toward the swinging doors and raised her brows. “Go on. You de pay me back.”
Marietta pushed into the dock smell from back home. Frank saw her and shouted, “Sinbad, what the hell going on? I been told you don’t let your lady friends come in back.”
“I don’t know her—she just in off the street.”
“No, I know who she is.” He frowned at Marietta. “That don’t mean you ain’t already made friends with her.”
“Naw, she want a job.”
Marietta took her fish knife from the boot and grabbed the shrimp.
She stood at the sink, ran her sharp thumbnail up the curled back of a shrimp, pulled out his dark-gritted vein. Faster with her nail—so fast the heap of grayish curves rose next to her quick as Frank could take them away.
Their backs winged out when they were dipped in cornmeal and fried, pink inside, and Sinbad put them on plates with boiled corn, rice, coleslaw. She cooked the rice now, too, setting the pots on the back of the huge stove to steam perfect. From early morning, she wiped the red vinyl seat bottoms, the round table tops, and then she stayed in the back, boning, cutting, cleaning the fish that slid through her hands. All Frank had said was “Get some shoes.” And when he paid her the second week, he gave her ten extra dollars. “Pay me back,” he said. “But get some damn shoes.”
She went to King Street, where Sinbad said colored people shopped, and faced the store windows. The women’s shoes were narrow, pointed, like the ones she had always watched stepping out of car doors when she lay in the sand. Or their soles were thick and rubbery, black or white shoes like the maids and cooks wore when they came by the market on their way from work. She didn’t touch any of those. She went to the men’s store and tried on a pair of black leather slip-ons, ignoring the face of the light-skinned man with the knot of his tie kissing his Adam’s apple who had handed her the shoes. They were like the ones she had worn at her mother’s burying, but long enough so that her heel didn’t crush the back. She asked the man for black socks.
In the men’s section of the department store, she looked straight into the faces of the salesmen in the mirror behind her while she held to her hips a pair of black pants, slim and narrow at the ankles, like Johnny used to wear. A white shirt, long-sleeved. She wasn’t going to look like an old woman this winter, like Aint Sister and the rest with four skirts piled on to keep warm. She would come back in a few months and buy a coat.
Happy birthday, she said to herself. She was fifteen that day.
In the mornings when she left the dim room, she held the muscles between her legs and walked quickly down the steps. She was afraid of the dark, pee-wet floor and tight walls of the hallway toilet, more afraid than she had ever been of the outhouse at home. Rosie and all of them talked about “indoor plumbing” and Laha always said, “I love fe flush that water at Miz Briggs;” and everyone told tales about snakes in the outhouse. Marietta had sprinkled lime and turpentine around the edges of the clearing, the way Aint Sister said would keep snakes away, and she kept a heavy stick inside the outhouse just in case.
But flushing—this gurgle of water wasn’t worth the trembling she felt while she sat, vulnerable, in that dark closet while feet waited outside to burst in and corner her, and the instant gleam of water from the tap was a dribble compared to the strong rush from the faucet at Frank’s.
She saw the light from the glass door when she hurried down the still-dark street. If the truck was running good, Miss Pat and her nephew would be unloading crates at the curb, and Marietta ran inside to the back room, hoping Frank and Sinbad were still in the alley or at the register so she could use the tiny bathroom near the supply closet. She took off her blouse, smelling the air near the sink, like Sinbad’s cologne sometimes, and splashed water everywhere. Then she went back outside to help Miss Pat.
The day was long, and customers came in past dark, but she was glad not to spend time in the dim room, where she rarely slept, just listened. The landlord and his friends sat with their shoes up, and when they saw her enter the yard, dime drops of spit sailed onto the dirt. “Man clothes don’t make nobody no man. A bitch is a bitch. Some bitches need to learn.” But she dropped her eyelids and handed him money, silently, the first few times, and his palms were smooth pink, unscarred, when he took it. She wondered why he didn’t take his key and go into the room, throw her things out over the railing, but nothing was ever touched. Sometime
s she thought it had been a haint at her door that night—did haints and hags roam in the Charleston dark like they did in Pine Gardens? But she had sliced a real hand, and she knew he had told someone to try her.
At night, she read the magazines people left at Frank’s, or the newspaper ads from the trash. It was noisy in the yard and the street, with sparkling showers of breaking glass against the walls and sidewalks. She lay on the mattress she had covered with a heavy cloth and pushed to the window, watching the silver moonlight or yellow street light, listening for footsteps. She imagined her Uncle Hurriah’s guitar, his hands, his face, and after a few weeks had passed and the landlord took her money, cursed her back, but didn’t touch her, she thought maybe Uncle Hurriah had something the man wanted, or something he didn’t want.
Frank would know, but she couldn’t talk to Frank yet. She didn’t know how. She sharpened her knife in the back room after Miss Pat and her nephew were gone, after the fish had been picked up, and the shrimp slid through her fingers, the flesh of fish, but Frank and Sinbad stayed out front. Frank hollered and grumbled, paying for things and ordering others, looking in the back room at the boxes of napkins and salt, until midmorning, when the first rush of customers slowed and some of the older men came in to pass the time with him. They sat at the corner booth, arguing, sucking their teeth, laughing.
And people came in and out all day, stayed, hung at the counter, draped over chair backs, to talk to Sinbad.
She heard the boys and younger men joking with him about Detroit and basketball. He had played one year in college, and he always snorted at the boys his age, “Y’all niggers can’t play no decent basketball. Shit, you can’t even go to college in Charleston. Shit.”
“Shut up, man, we got Claflin, we got South Carolina State,” one of the college students would say.
“Uh, yeah, and ain’t that way the hell up in the country? And ain’t summer near bout over?” Sinbad would say. “Time for your ass to get on the bus, right? Unless you taking that black ass to the Citadel this year.” He laughed.
“So?” another student said. Marietta wiped a table nearby, watching. How had she learned to tell the students from the others? she wondered. They had neat tags of sideburn hair over their ears, no mustaches, and their necks were straight inside their collars. They sat at the tables near the window and talked for hours. This boy said to Sinbad, “I don’t see you in college.”
“I done did that. Too boring,” Sinbad said. “Don’t know why I stay here, y’all so backward.”
“Cause he probably got hisself in trouble with some woman in Detroit,” a man called from near the counter, where Frank sold him coffee. “Or her mama.” Everybody laughed, Sinbad, too.
Because the women came, too, all day. College girls Marietta could tell by their skirts and sweaters and the way they held their heads and hands. Sometimes they stacked books beside their chairs, laughing with the boys and leaning hair close to talk to Sinbad. And the two girls who were waitresses at a restaurant, who came in to paint each other’s fingernails and smile at him. Girls came in to buy two pounds of shrimp, two pounds of spots, and they stood, shifting from foot to foot, for an hour near the doorway while Marietta tried to get close enough to hear what he said to them.
Night came and customers came to get plates filled. Sinbad whispered far in the corner, or in the street. She washed pots and dishes while Frank counted the money and straightened the counter his way; then she took her warm covered plate of dinner into the corner booth and ate, smelling the men’s cigarette smoke and pants and coffee in the vinyl. Before she left, she ducked into the back room again to splash water on herself.
When she said, “Evening,” to Frank and he nodded, she went slowly toward the glass front door, where she could see Sinbad’s elbows at the edge. It was dark, and a girl was pressed against the brick at the corner of the building, Sinbad’s hands on either side of her face. Marietta closed the door carefully, straining to hear. He said, “Why you wanna take the bus, baby? Leave them shrimp here, I’ll put em in the freezer, and you can get em when you come off work tomorrow. You can take the Gray Line home, you get the best ride you ever had. I promise.”
Sinbad Gray—he whispered to them, and sometimes his murmurs were the last voice she heard before she went back to the room, where all the night sounds were blended into the dark.
The sweater girls, she called them in her head, with their round shoulders and bangs in rolls over their eyebrows, had a whole table of people around them one day near the end of summer. Marietta and Sinbad were busy serving all afternoon, because it was Saturday and Frank was out, but Sinbad called over to the group frequently, “You better not let them girls leave before I get to say goodbye.”
The students were all leaving for college, and the boy named Stan who often argued and laughed with Sinbad said, “I thought you wanted to kiss me goodbye, man.”
“Shit, I’ll be glad when your serious ass is gone,” Sinbad said.
“But I’ll be back sooner than you think, cause we got big plans for Christmas break. Plans that might even interest you, Sinbad.”
“If they party plans, I’ll be interested.”
Stan, with his molasses skin and mouth wide and thin as a new moon, always curled up or down at the corners, said, “Kind of party we need. We gon party downtown, past Calhoun.”
“What you talking about, Stan?” one of the girls said.
“We got a movement started, and I can’t talk about it too much, but some guys at Fisk and North Carolina A and T are talking about what we have to do to get the message across.”
“Stan love to talk in riddles,” another girl said.
“I ain’t saying nothing,” Stan said then, ducking. “Y’all have to wait till Christmas break. But we have to get everybody involved, not just students. You too, Sinbad, and you,” he turned to Marietta. “What’s your name?”
She froze when they all stared at her, and one of the sweater girls said something low to her friend. They smiled and bit the red on their lips.
“You’ll have to come down with us, too,” Stan said, still looking at her. “Even old Frank needs to listen up.”
Marietta was glad when Sinbad snorted and went around the counter. They all watched him push his tongue into the loose skin above his chin, making bumps ripple back and forth like Frank did when he was upset. “Naw, you ain’t getting Frank mad for days, uh-uh,” Sinbad laughed. “Me and her gotta be with the man long after you out the door.” Stan glanced back at Marietta, and she stared at the counter so she wouldn’t have to see the sweater girls.
The afternoons were quieter when they were all gone, but the evenings were just as busy with women getting off work, men in their boots muddy from the rain, and still the girls who ducked into Sinbad’s whispers.
He had a car now, and everyone wanted to see it; she knew he lived in the apartment above the fish market because sometimes he told Frank, “I gotta run upstairs and get me another shirt.” He parked the car, with its pointy fins, on the street, and all the men admired every inch. Most people walked in Charleston, but Sinbad said, “Man, I come from Detroit, I can’t walk. It’s against the law. Signed away that privilege on my birth certificate. I’m a Ford man.”
But during the half hours when no one came in, and only the fan and slipping ice made sounds, he didn’t say anything to Marietta. Frank was gruff and short with her, like he was with everyone, but Sinbad was just businesslike, quick. Maybe Frank had told him not to talk to her too much while they were working, but maybe her height and face were too much even for him, though he curved his lips and moved them close to ears of every color—pink and brown and black. If no one lingered for him at closing time, he would say, “See you in the morning,” to her before he got into the car. He wasn’t going home, though, because she rarely saw lights behind his shades. Most often it was dark, and she knew he slept in someone else’s bed. She lay below the window, imagining what he was saying.
At the end of September,
she woke one morning to feel the heat pressing down too hard; the air was heavy and quiet, and she dressed, tied on a clean white headscarf. Only old women wore white ones at home, but she liked her two white shirts and white scarves; she soaked them in a pail, swirling bleach cloudy through the water.
She could smell the wind in the air, and remembered that they had heard hurricane warnings on the radio at Frank’s the night before. When she went inside the store, Sinbad was waiting for her.
“Frank said hurricane’s on the way,” he said.
“Where Frank?” she asked. The tables were empty.
“I guess the hurricane already messed up his brother’s farm down south or something. He called me this morning and said he was going down there, so we have to watch the store. He said if people come in, tell em ain’t no deliveries today, so ain’t no plates.”
Marietta thought of Miss Pat. “Probably them island people wait for storm pass,” she said.
“Gracie. Why they name hurricanes after women? Yeah, I wonder,” he said, but he looked nervous. Nobody for stay and talk today, she thought. He ain’t custom for that.
A few people came by for fish, but then the sky darkened and the wind picked up. Marietta and Sinbad wiped everything down, and he sat at a table drinking beer, watching her. She began to wash the windows, although they would have to be covered with plywood Frank kept in the back room. She liked the idea of washing them on the inside and protecting the outside from the wind and water. But when she looked at the color of the air between the buildings, she thought, I stay right here. I ain’t gon sit in Uncle Hurriah room and water come for rush. She saw Aint Sister and the others, shutters nailed tight, around fires, telling stories, drinking coffee, listening, and she saw her mother’s house, empty of breath and maybe full of floodwaters. Her palm circling the rag around the glass, she stared at the street, remembering the times the water had risen, and the bodies had floated from the bury ground.
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