Till You Hear From Me: A Novel

by Pearl Cleage

  The Rev snorted. “Thorough? She’s got no kids, no household employees, no back taxes. It doesn’t have anything to do with Ida B. It’s about me.”

  “You still worryin’ about that Jeremiah Wright business?”

  “I’m not worried about it. I’m conscious of it. I know how vindictive these Chicago Negroes can be.”

  “You think they’re not going to give Ida B a job because you’re her father?”

  “It’s not outside the realm of possibility.”

  Mr. Eddie passed a truck with a camel painted on the side, running so fast its big pink tongue was hanging out and trailing behind it and the words “Humpin’ to please!”

  “I can’t argue that, Rev,” he said, calmly, “but I will say that if they didn’t trust you, why would they have asked for your assistance in a matter that we know means a whole lot to them?”

  The Rev considered the question, but unable to still his worried mind, he changed horses in midstream.

  “You don’t think they sent Ida B here to keep an eye on me, do you?”

  Mr. Eddie just grinned and turned up the music. “Shoot, man, they already got me. How many eyes you need on you at one time anyway?”

  EIGHTEEN

  The Old Neighborhood

  IT WAS ONLY SEVEN THIRTY AND OUR STREET WAS STILL QUIET WHEN I stepped outside to take a look at the old neighborhood, so I turned toward West End’s main commercial drag, where the day had already officially begun. I grew up here and even with all the changes, the things that defined this neighborhood for me are still intact. The five colleges of the Atlanta University Center anchoring things at one end and the Wren’s Nest, Victorian Home of Joel Chandler Harris of Brer Rabbit fame, holding down the other. In between, the churches, from St. Anthony of Padua to the Shrine of the Black Madonna, the bookstore, the park, the tattoo parlor next to the braid salon.

  There was Watkins Funeral Home; the twenty-four-hour beauty salon; the flower shop that stays open until midnight; the gardens every couple of hundred feet; Miss Iona’s house; Mr. Eddie’s backyard; and all those bright blue front doors that had sprouted after I left. Aretha had painted them because she had read that turquoise on the front door was supposed to ward off all manner of evil spirits. Maybe I’ll see if I can get some of that paint to take back to D.C. with me.

  I turned off Peeples Street and onto Abernathy on my way to the West End News, hoping to score a Washington Post and maybe a cappuccino. I knew I’d already had two cups of coffee, but there are worse ways to die than an overdose of caffeine. I remembered in the pre-Blue Hamilton days when the West End News was a dingy little storefront that sold a few newspapers, but specialized in dream books for lottery plays and porno magazines so foul that patrons had to go into little cubicles to make their selections. I went in there once as a young girl looking for a copy of Jet magazine because there was a picture of my father in it. I remember the heads of the men in the little penlike enclosures all swiveled from whatever giant breasts or welcoming vaginas they had been contemplating for purchase, to see me suddenly standing in their midst. The man behind the counter handed me the Jet and showed me the door.

  When Blue rescued the neighborhood, one of the first things he did was buy the place, gut it, and turn it into a real newsstand and coffee shop, featuring over one hundred international publications and a gleaming antique cappuccino machine that looked like a prop from The Godfather. The place was always crowded in the morning with equal numbers of students on their way to class and commuters on their way to the MARTA rapid rail station a block away. When I stepped inside, careful not to let in any cold air, there were two young women ahead of me, and one man standing at the counter, clutching a five-dollar bill and waiting patiently for his order.

  I took my place in line and inhaled deeply. The place smelled great. Coffee and newspapers, my two drugs of choice. When it comes to newspapers, I’m old-fashioned. I read lots of stuff online, but I like to hold my newspapers in my hand. I picked up The Washington Post from a rack beside the door and reached for The New York Times. That’s when I saw Flora waving from a tiny corner table. I waved back. She grabbed her coat off the back of the chair and headed toward me.

  The West End Grower’s Association was two doors down the street and I had planned to stop in before I went home. That’s the other thing about this neighborhood. You don’t have to look for anybody. All you have to do is step out the front door.

  “You’re up early,” Flora said.

  “The Rev and Mr. Eddie hit the ground running before the sun came up,” I said. “They didn’t come by your house, too, did they?”

  She laughed. The large man behind the counter had finished the cappuccino order and was now pouring two cups of the house blend for the two girls in front of me, who were giggling over a text message and pushing a neatly folded dollar bill into the tip jar.

  “If they did, they missed me,” she said.

  “Actually, I was planning to stop by your place a little later.”

  “I was hoping you would say that,” she said, sounding genuinely pleased as the texting twins got their coffee and stepped aside, rolling their eyes at each other over the response they’d just received. “Hey, again, Henry!”

  “You need one to go?”

  “I do,” I told Henry, deciding to forgo the cappuccino for a faster option. “How about a large coffee, cream and sugar?”

  Flora held up her hand. “I’ve had my limit.”

  “Just the coffee and the papers,” I said. “Oh! And let me get a Constitution and a Sentinel.”

  She smiled. “You and Hank and your newspapers.”

  “I’m addicted,” I said, paying for the order and leaving a tip in the jar. “But I’m trying to cut back.”

  “You all need an organization,” she said, walking beside me to her headquarters, “like alcoholics or dope fiends. Hi, I’m Ida Dunbar. I’m a news junkie.”

  I liked Flora. She took everything seriously except herself. We had only met the night before, but she already felt like an old friend.

  The West End Grower’s Association boasted the most colorful front window on the block. It featured a brightly painted scene of a community garden filled with impossibly red tomatoes, dark purple eggplants, a few tall stalks of pale yellow sweet corn, and double wide rows of dark green collards. In the center of the garden stood a man and a woman, two little kids, and a grandfatherly guy who looked a little like Mr. Eddie to me. In big red letters painted in sort of a semicircle around the garden were the words “West End Grower’s Association, Est. 2000.”

  “I didn’t know you’d been here ten years,” I said, following her into the storefront and looking around while she flipped on the lights.

  “Well, we’ve existed for almost ten years,” she said, “but we’ve only been in this spot since 2004. Before that, I just sort of ran it out of our apartment. I think you were already away at school then. When did you move to D.C.?”

  “Well, I went to Smith first, in Northampton. That was in ninety-two. After that, I went to graduate school and then I started doing some consulting and working with campaigns. It’s actually been seventeen, eighteen years since I lived here.”

  The number startled me. Eighteen years? How was that possible?

  “All right,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me about these famous gardens?”

  NINETEEN

  No Surprises

  THE HOUSE HADN’T CHANGED AT ALL. OR IF IT HAD, THE CHANGES were so minimal as to be invisible to all but the most careful observer. Wes had no interest in the details. He knew every inch of this house. There were no surprises here. The carefully arranged living room suite, his mother’s pride and joy, was still holding court in front of the fireplace. The badly framed photographs documenting his youth and later successes still covered the wall just inside the front door, along with pictures of his parents at all manner of dances, picnics, house parties, community gatherings, and a wedding or two. The Rev was well represented in this ga
llery, including one photo with Wes on the day he left for Phillips Exeter, leaving the world he’d been born into and stepping into the one he’d chosen. And not a moment too soon, he thought.

  Wes took his bag upstairs to his old room and quickly unpacked. Unlike some people who enjoy the nostalgia of spending a few nights in a former bedroom, Wes regarded the space as he would a hotel room. The artifacts of his adolescence held no more fascination than a brochure welcoming him to one more Holiday Inn. He had already hung up two suits and a week’s worth of shirts before he noticed the paper taped to the center of the mirror above his dresser.

  “Welcome, son,” it said in his father’s spidery hand. “I’ll be back around five. Rev and Ida B coming for dinner. Make yourself at home because you are.”

  He had known the Rev would show up fairly quickly, but Ida B. Dunbar? He sat down on the edge of the bed. The house had fooled him. This was a surprise all right. He hadn’t expected to find her here. Not that she was working necessarily, but he didn’t believe in coincidences and if his guys were after the list, the Obama people probably had it, or had sent the Rev’s baby girl down here to get it. Wes smiled to himself. He loved a challenge and this shit was about to get interesting.

  There had been a couple of times when he’d come across her name during the campaign. The first time, she was looking into some shit he and Oscar had done in Santa Fe and she got too close for comfort. They had to shut it down fast or risk big exposure. The next time, same thing in Pennsylvania. She was good, but his cover was so deep that he doubted she even knew he’d been involved at all.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket and Toni’s voice greeted him on the other end.

  “So how does it feel to be playing in the big leagues?”

  “The eagle has landed,” he said. “All systems are go.”

  “You’re mixing your metaphors, aren’t you?”

  “Probably, but guess what? I think the Obama people have already got somebody down here.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Same thing I’m doing, probably. Trying to get hold of that list.”

  “Which is where all those years of singing in the boys choir are going to come in handy, right?”

  “She’s closer than that.”

  “It’s a woman?”

  “The Rev’s daughter.”

  She laughed. “You’re kidding. You know her?”

  “All my life. She used to have a big crush on me, as I recall.”

  “You think everybody has a crush on you,” Toni said. “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to charm her with my winning ways.”

  Toni laughed and he could imagine her running her fingers through her hair. “Works for me,” she said. “Go get ’em, tiger!”

  TWENTY

  Two Birds with One Stone

  BETWEEN THE TIME I WALKED IN, AND THREE HOURS LATER WHEN I walked out, Flora told me everything about her gardens. I say “her gardens” because it was very clear that her vision had shaped the thing, from the very first rows of collards and tomatoes that she and a few volunteers had planted on a couple of empty lots, to the multifaceted organization she was now overseeing. Way more than just a few neighborhood plots, the Association, which Flora sometimes called WEGA, included a network of almost a hundred gardens, including fifty of the Coretta and Martin Luther King Peace Gardens, which, she said, focus on flowers instead of vegetables and are located across the country; the school garden project, which Mr. Eddie sort of ushered in by allowing himself to be drafted into Lu’s dream of growing tomatoes for her high school cafeteria; and a distribution operation that not only supplies the neighborhood’s amazing well-stocked grocery store that could give Whole Foods a run for the money, but all the restaurants in West End.

  She also ran a website, responded to inquires from urban gardeners all over the place, and maintained a free library, offering an eclectic selection of books where gardens or gardening or farming play some role in the lives of the people, including a complete set of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie series, the usual seed catalogues, and a bunch of “how to grow it better” books.

  While I was there, a steady stream of people trooped in and out, and to each one, she offered her full, calm, attention. As we talked, I could see that WEGA was standing at that classic make or break crossroads that all small, nonprofit organizations reach one day. Their founding charismatic was leaving at a moment of growth, innovation, and increased national visibility. The question was, would they continue to thrive without her? As we talked, I could see how passionate she was about the project, but I knew the question that was keeping Flora up at night was not could the organization survive without her, but could she survive without the organization. I thought I could probably help her on both counts, but first I had a bone to pick with Miss Iona.

  When I stepped up on her porch, I could hear the vacuum cleaner. She came to the door wearing a pair of brown slacks, an orange sweater, and a pair of brown leather flats. Her hair was covered with a brightly colored silk scarf and gold hoops were swaying in her ears. This was as casual as Miss Iona ever got.

  “I’ve been calling you for hours,” she said. “I thought all you big-time professional women had cell phones permanently attached to your ears.”

  “I went over to the Grower’s Association,” I said. “Flora wanted to show me what they’re doing.”

  “She’s a jewel,” Miss Iona said, closing the door behind me and pushing the vacuum cleaner over to one side. “I don’t know how they’re going to survive without her.”

  “That’s what she’s worried about, too.”

  She cocked her head at me. “Now, there’s a thought. Why don’t you take it?”

  I looked at her. “I’m not here looking for a job, remember? I’m here to respond to an SOS from someone who said my dad was going off the deep end.”

  She smiled and took my arm, guiding me over to the couch. She had a little fire going and the room was cozy. “And so he was,” she said, poking the fire gently, before taking a seat next to me.

  “And now?”

  She spread her hands and smiled brightly. “And now he’s back. Aren’t you glad?”

  “Of course I am, but I just need to know if you were really worried about him or if you were just trying to get us back together.”

  She looked disappointed. “You saw that video.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  “Of course I did.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “And?”

  “He said it was all Mom’s fault.”

  She looked at me for a second like maybe she hadn’t heard me right and then she burst out laughing. “Oh, Lord! Those two are going to be the death of me!”

  “If they don’t kill each other first!”

  “You don’t need to worry about that. They’re going to grow old together.”

  Now she was the one with the obvious mental lapse. “What are you talking about? At this very moment, they’re not even speaking to each other.”

  “Mark my words,” she said. “This is all foreplay.”

  “So can I go home now?”

  “You are home, darlin’. That’s what I keep trying to tell you.”

  A timer dinged in the kitchen and Miss Iona glanced at her watch. “I’ve got a pound cake in the oven,” she said. “Want a piece?”

  “I haven’t had my lunch yet,” I said.

  “Good. Then come on in the kitchen. I’ll make us a couple of sandwiches. Then you can have a piece.”

  I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I bit into the leftover turkey sandwich Miss Iona put in front of me. She poured us each a glass of ice tea and sat down, nibbling her own sandwich delicately around the edges.

  “Listen, Ida B,” she said. “I need to tell you something.”

  Her voice was so serious. I swallowed hard. Here we go.

  “I was telling the truth about being worried about the Rev
, but it wasn’t just that video that made me call you.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “A couple of weeks ago,” she said, “one of the reporters down at The Sentinel started working on a story about how the Republican party never shut down their dirty tricks operation after the election. They just sort of went underground.”

  I put the uneaten part of my sandwich down and took a sip of ice tea. “Go on.”

  “Somebody told this guy that they’ve got a plan to use the old Civil Rights warriors to attack the president so they can begin to erode his support in the community.”

  “That will never work,” I said. “Black folks haven’t loved anybody like we love Barack Obama since Dr. King died.”

  “They think it will. They plan to target the ones they know already feel left out after the whole Jeremiah Wright thing. Even they recognize Alan Keys and that crowd don’t have any credibility, but if they can get some of the guys who actually walked with Dr. King, some of the icons, like your dad …” She looked at me and shook her head impatiently. “And with the Rev they’d be getting two birds with one stone because of that damn list.”

  “The Rev would never do anything like that,” I said.

  She shook her head and frowned. “I never thought he would either, and I don’t think he would now, if he was thinking straight.”

  “What makes you think he’s not?”

  She raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “Tacos and sangria?”

  There was no denying he had behaved badly, but the idea that the Rev would ever sell out the race, for any reason, was simply not within the realm of possibility.

  “Did you tell him what you heard?”

  “He practically bit my head off. Accused me of being disloyal, paranoid, not trusting him. All sorts of good things.”

  It was hard for me to imagine the Rev accusing Miss Iona of anything. She and Mr. Eddie had been the ones who always had his back, through good times and bad. They were always there.