by Pearl Cleage
“What kind of stuff?”
“Things she’ll need to tell whoever replaces her. Everything from history to services offered to job descriptions.”
“You’re going to help her do all that?”
“It won’t take long,” I said. “That’s what I used to do before the politics. It’s mostly just helping her organize her thinking about what comes next.”
She looked at me admiringly and I realized she had probably never known exactly what I did before the campaigns. “I like Flora.”
“Me, too. What time does Mr. Charles’s train get in?”
“Not until eight o’clock. He’ll call me.” She sighed a little. “I hate to admit it, but the truth is that man has made himself such a permanent place in my days, from the way I eat to what side of the bed I sleep on. Two weeks without him seems like a very long time.”
“You’re my role model,” I said. “Whenever I think I might never find the right one, I think about how long it took for you and Mr. Charles to get together.”
She laughed. “That wasn’t because I was being picky. He had a wife and I had a beau. We weren’t looking for anybody.”
Miss Iona’s love affair with the late Louis Adams, founding editor of The Sentinel, was the stuff of West End legend. She had been a close friend of his beloved wife who died young after giving birth to their son. Out of loyalty to her memory, they never formalized their decades-long union, and to my knowledge, never apologized for it to anyone either.
“Now you’re just bragging,” I said. “I can’t find one good man and you’ve had two.”
“Are you looking?” She sounded surprised.
I was in the habit of thinking I was, but was I? Looking for a job. Looking for a man. That was what women my age were supposed to do, weren’t we? The trees were bare and the branches were stark against the bright blue February sky. I hooked my arm through Miss Iona’s.
“I think I’ve given up looking.” That was the truth, but it sounded weird to hear it out loud.
“You’re too young to give up on anything,” she said, patting my arm encouragingly.
“It’s just hard to meet any good men,” I said, echoing the lament of a whole generation of smart, high-achieving black women. At the corner, we headed down Oglethorpe. The route we were taking was a quieter walk than cutting over to Abernathy, which was fast becoming West End’s noisy up South version of Harlem’s famed 125th Street. It was hard to have a private conversation in the middle of so much sidewalk commerce and vendor sweet talk.
“Sister, sister, I got lovely incense today! Guaranteed to keep your man at home!”
“Sister, sister, I got Obama tees, two for one!”
On Oglethorpe, you could hear yourself think.
“Good for sex or good for life?” Miss Iona said.
I laughed. “Do I have to choose?”
“Of course you have to choose.” She bumped her cart gently over a giant tree root pushing up through the concrete. “Almost nobody is good at both and a pitiful few can lay legitimate claim to either one.”
Two fat squirrels chased each other around a big tree and I tried to answer honestly. “I know I’m supposed to say for life, but …”
“Truth is the light, girl. If you’re looking for a life partner, I’d suggest you go see Abbie. She’ll be able to tell you about your past lives and your next lives and whether your true love is headed this way or dawdling somewhere down the cosmic road.”
That sounded a little mystical for me. “What if I’m looking for sex?”
“Then I can help you,” she said, smiling. “There is just one simple thing you must do to ensure that offers of sex will present themselves faster than you can decide yea or nay.”
Just one thing? I thought. What could it be? A Brazilian wax? A huge inheritance? A voice like Mary J. and a body like Beyoncé?
“What is it?”
“All you have to do,” she said as we turned left at Peeples Street, “is take a vow of celibacy.”
Either Miss Iona was losing her hearing or I had not made myself clear. “I’m already celibate.”
She shook her head. “No, sweetie. You’re deprived, the unfortunate result of forces that are almost always beyond our control. Celibacy, on the other hand, is a conscious choice to close up shop for a while so you can take inventory.”
I liked the sound of that. It sounded so industrious. “So making the choice not to have sex is going to allow me to have sex?”
“Not allow you, but present you with an unexpected option or two.”
“Just because I’m not supposed to be interested?”
“Exactly.”
That sounded like a strange way to address the situation, but I had nothing to lose. My history with Wes notwithstanding, masturbation can only go so far. What does that Johnny Cash song say: Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood?
“How long does it take to work?”
“From my experience, pretty fast. I’d say, within a month.”
“You tried this?”
“Right before me and my Charlie got together.”
“Can I count the time I’ve already been …” I couldn’t bring myself to say deprived. “Alone?”
“Sort of like time served?”
I nodded.
“How long has it been?”
“Nothing since election night.” And I really shouldn’t have counted that one. Anybody who couldn’t get laid the night Barack Obama won the presidency just wasn’t trying.
Miss Iona thought for a minute. “No, I don’t think you can. First of all, if you do, my within a month prediction is immediately shot to hell, and second, because you still haven’t made the choice, so the clock isn’t even running.”
Why was Wes Harper’s face floating around in my mind’s eye like he was waiting for his cue?
“But if it works and I do have some options presented to me, I’m allowed to change my mind, right?”
She slowed down and looked at me, cocking her head like a bird. “We’re not talking about Wes Harper, are we?”
“I’m not,” I said, as if he was the furthest thing from my mind.
She didn’t believe me for a second. “Well, there’s nobody keeping score, sweetie, but I would venture to speculate that if you go into it with the intention of not following through, it probably defeats the whole thing. Changes the energy or something.”
I knew she was probably right. Besides, why was I looking for a loophole? There weren’t any real prospects remotely on the horizon, unless I counted Wes, which I was not prepared to do. Not in front of Miss Iona anyway. Who knew how deeply she was into the mind-reading portion of her psychic training under the tutelage of the West End visionary amazons?
We turned onto Abernathy and suddenly the smell of Krispy Kremes filled the air with sweetness. In the store window, the famous sign was flashing: “Hot Donuts.”
“All right,” I said. “For the next month, I’m substituting sugar for sex, starting right now.”
She laughed. “I like a woman with the courage of her convictions!”
TWENTY
A Fair Shake
THE REV HAD BEEN ACTING FUNNY ALL DAY. DISTRACTED, IRRITABLE, impatient. Mr. Eddie clocked it, but didn’t comment until they had finished a late dinner and retired to the Rev’s room for a nightcap. At home, they had both resigned themselves to red wine and a beer every now and then, but on the road, they allowed themselves a little more leeway. For those moments, Mr. Eddie always carried a small silver flask with just enough cognac to taste it, but not enough to get themselves into trouble.
The Rev took off his jacket and sat down on the edge of one of the room’s two double beds without loosening his tie. Mr. Eddie, who had his own room right next door, poured them each a splash in the paper cups the Best Western provided and pulled out the desk chair. Neither one reached for the remote control, and the room was quiet. They often sat this way, comfortable in each other’s silences. Everything couldn’t be put i
nto words easy. Sometimes even the Rev needed a minute to find the right ones. Eddie wasn’t worried.
Words were what the Rev did best. He looked over at his friend and poured himself another shot.
“So what’s on your mind, Rev?”
The Rev held his cup out for a refill, too. “I need to tell you something, and you’re not going to like it.”
Something in the Rev’s voice made Mr. Eddie know that what he had suspected but hadn’t said to a living soul was true. A father knows his child. He stood up and walked over to the window, pulled back the curtains. The parking lot had filled up quickly, including two Georgia state patrol cars. There was a time when that would have given him pause, but not anymore. He turned back to his oratorically gifted friend who suddenly seemed lost for words.
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
They didn’t know how to lie to each other. After all these years, what was the point?
The Rev nodded. “Yes.”
They just looked at each other for a minute and then Mr. Eddie came back and sat down.
“That motherfucker,” he said softly, almost as if he was talking to himself. “That motherfucker.”
“He’s still your son,” the Rev said quietly.
Mr. Eddie looked at his friend. “You think it’s because I let him go up there with those white folks when he wasn’t nothin’ but a kid?”
“He wanted to go. You know that.”
Of course he knew that. He remembered the night he told them he was leaving.
“Let him go,” his wife said. “He’s not like us. Let him find his own.”
Driving back home from the train station, she took his hand and held it tight like she knew their son was never coming back. But he did come back. Like a thief in the night. Working against his own people. Betraying his own family.
“When it all goes down, are they going to arrest him?”
“I don’t know,” the Rev said. “We just have to let things run their course. The Justice Department will decide who gets charged with what.”
“There’s a brother over that, too, isn’t there?” Mr. Eddie poured the last of the cognac, wishing he’d brought a bigger flask.
“Yes. Eric Holder is the attorney general.”
“Then he’ll get a fair shake, I guess.”
“He hasn’t committed any crimes yet,” the Rev said, going over to where his suitcase sat unopened on the luggage rack. He unzipped it, and as if hearing his friend’s unspoken request, pulled out a flask of his own. “Maybe he won’t go through with it.”
Mr. Eddie allowed the Rev to top him off, and felt the beginnings of a buzz. “He’ll go through with it.”
The Rev didn’t argue. They both knew there were only two choices: warn Wes and blow the whole operation or keep quiet and let the chips fall where they may.
“Does Hank know?”
The Rev nodded. “There could be jail time coming out of this, Ed. Nobody can blame you if you need to step away. He’s still your son.”
Mr. Eddie rolled the cup gently back and forth between his palms. The sweetness of the familiar smell was as comforting as the warmth that was slowly spreading through his veins.
“Remember when Mrs. Hamer came up to Atlanta, sixty-three I think it was?”
The Rev knew he was talking about Fannie Lou Hamer, the fearless civil rights pioneer and founder of The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. “I remember.”
“She had just gotten out of jail and she didn’t want her family to see her ‘cause she looked so terrible. She was beat up so bad she couldn’t hardly walk. Her face and her arms were still all swollen and there were so many bruises on her I thought she had on some dark stockings, but it was just from where they had abused her so.”
The story she told of having to endure brutal beatings at the hands of black male prisoners, who themselves were being threatened with beatings by the white guards if they refused to obey, had brought tears to the eyes of the small group that had come together to offer her whatever support they could.
“I remember,” the Rev said softly. “She was a brave woman.”
Mr. Eddie nodded. “None braver. I remember speaking to her afterward and telling her I couldn’t think of nothin’ anybody could do to make me beat her like that, but she wouldn’t say a bad word about those men. She said nobody knew the conditions they were livin’ in and that they just didn’t have no choice.”
He swallowed the last of his cognac. “Now, I didn’t argue with her. Lord knows I didn’t have the right or even the inclination, but I always thought she was wrong about that.” He looked up then to meet his friend’s eyes. “Everybody always got a choice.”
THIRTY-ONE
Do the Math
TONI GOT IN AT NOON. WES BOOKED HER A ROOM AT THE FOUR SEAsons and told her to call him from the hotel. She was ordering room service when he arrived and she came to the door with the phone in her hand. She was wearing beautifully cut navy blue pants and a white silk shirt. Her jacket was flung across the bed, but she was still wearing her pumps and a double strand of pearls. She looked good and smelled even better. Anybody who thought a man could work with a woman fine as Toni and not think about fucking her was a faggot or a fool.
“Do you have Pellegrino?” she was saying. “Yes, the big one. And some lime. How long will it be? Fine. Thank you.”
She closed the door behind him and put the phone down, wagging a reprimanding finger.
“What?” he said, smiling back. Five minutes to flirt and then they had to get down to business. Oscar was being a hard-ass about time all of a sudden and Wes didn’t want any shit.
“I’m here to save the day,” she said. “I thought you’d meet me at the gate with an armload of roses and a marriage proposal.”
“I told you I’m not a marrying man,” he said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. But he had to admit, if he was, she would definitely have been in the running for wife number three. “You look great.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “But I plan to clean up real nice later.”
She walked over to the small couch, sat down, and crossed her legs. “Now tell me what’s going on.”
That’s one of the things he liked about this woman. She could tell the difference between work and play time.
“We’ve got permission to go by and take a look at the Rev’s closet tomorrow.”
“The closet at his house?”
“That’s what he said. Floor to ceiling. Nothing but cards.”
“Would it be rude for me to ask him what century he’s livin’ in?”
“You have to wait until Monday. Right now he’s in Albany with my dad.”
She wrinkled her nose slightly and did his favorite movie star hair toss. “Is that really a place? It sounds like the fuzz that grows on top of old Chinese takeout.”
“Don’t be so bourgie. Your folks haven’t been in Connecticut that long.”
She grinned at him. “Four generations long enough for you?”
Wes let that slide. He wasn’t in any position to win the whose family’s been free the longest contest. His ancestors probably greeted the news of their emancipation with deep panic. Who was going to look out for them now?
“His daughter’s going to let us in so we can get a better idea of what we’re up against.”
She looked at him. “Why are you tripping on this so hard? It’s time-consuming, sure, but otherwise it’s nothing but data input. Straight up typing, okay?”
“How long you figure it will take?”
She shrugged. “Can’t say until we actually see the cards. Are they written in pen or pencil?”
“What the hell difference does it make?”
“Pencil is a lot harder to read, especially if these are old people. They don’t press down hard enough.”
Out the window, he could see traffic snaking down 14th Street. There was a siren in the distance, getting closer. He sighed. “I don’t know what they’re written in, okay? All I know is Oscar’s
all up in my ass about getting everything done by the first of March instead of the first of April.”
“That still gives us a little more than two weeks, right? Hand me a piece of paper.”
Wes passed her a legal pad and a pen. She started scribbling numbers. “Okay. Let’s say we get twenty girls.”
“Twenty girls from where?”
“From a reputable secretarial service. Where do you think? We’re not transcribing military secrets, Wes. It’s not illegal.”
“Go on.”
“Twenty girls and one hundred thousand cards. That’s five thousand cards per girl. Let’s say they work eight hours a day, give or take …”
Wes took that to mean Toni would allow them a few minutes for lunch. She scribbled a little more.
“They could probably do five hundred a day easy.” She drew a line and turned the scribbles in his direction triumphantly. “We should be able to have it all done in ten days, leaving you plenty of time to meet your deadline even if some of the typists are a little slow.”
He was impressed. Sometimes Toni’s fineness made him forget how good she was at her job. She could, of course, be counted upon to remind him. He felt his stress level receding.
“What if we get more girls?”
“More girls, more cards per hour. Do the math, Einstein.”
“So how long will it take you to put together the secretarial pool?”
“I’ll line it up this afternoon.”
“Get a price on round-the-clock security while the cards are in our possession, too, will you?”
“Nice touch, boss,” she said, made another quick note and tossed the legal pad aside. “Feel better?”
“I’m getting there.”
“Good,” she said. “Now can we have sex?”
Before he could answer, there was a light tap on the door. “Room service.”
He grinned at her and stood up. “No time, babe. I’m having drinks with Oscar’s contact in the registrar’s office. I’ll call you later.”
“My offer to christen your boyhood rec room is still good,” she said, standing up, too.