The Gilda Stories

by Jewelle Gomez

  Not only was it less personally consuming than doing theater work, but there were so many small nightclubs and cabarets along the East Coast that Gilda could perform regularly without having too much attention focused on her. And unlike working in the beauty parlor, moving around from club to club assured her the distance she reluctantly understood she needed between herself and others. She enjoyed shaping her own life, even though it rarely meshed with others.

  Bird continued to see each continent as a challenge, although she did maintain communication much better now than she had in the past. Sorel, Anthony, and Julius were never away from the City for long, nor were they long in it. Sorel spoke often of closing his place and moving north to Canada. He had yet to make any real plans though. Each year Gilda noticed how much more difficult it was to keep the world away from her door. The small amenities that communities historically observed had fallen away; electronics made communication so swift that intimacy was expected at every turn. With increasing frequency Gilda considered living away from people. For the moment, however, the clubs suited her.

  She walked to the side of the bandstand for the group’s last number and saw the women sitting out in the audience, attentive but impatient for her to appear. In her head she heard Bird’s voice, just as she had the first night at Woodard’s. It was low and inviting yet full of the precision wrought by respect for the performance—Minta singing in her high, clear voice, or Fanny and Sarah’s duets. The sound of voices and music from Bernice’s kitchen had captured Gilda’s imagination forever.

  There was Kaaren the sleek, with her red nail polish and high-heeled shoes, sitting next to her lover, Chris, whose stern face was softened by the curls falling over her forehead. Ayeesha sat slightly apart, her thick dreadlocks tied up in a richly colored strip of Ghanaian Kente cloth. When she opened her mouth in a smile the light played off the tantalizing gap in her teeth. Cynthia, next to her, was tiny and brown, like an exquisite museum miniature of a Nigerian work of art. Laverne sat tall, looking slightly apologetic as her long legs sprawled into the narrow aisle between the tiny tables pushed together for them. Gilda was pleased to see the shy Alberta out with the group.

  “Good for her,” Gilda thought as she listened to the applause for the musicians. Her friends were a responsive audience: most of them were clapping and stomping their feet. Only Marianne applauded with reserve, reluctant to give a man anything. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for danger or an exit. But the others reveled in their anticipation of Gilda and let their excitement spill over onto the trio. Leading the applause was Effie, leaning forward at the edge of her chair.

  Gilda heard the pianist introduce her before he left the bandstand. She blinked several times, drawing her face into the open-eyed smile her fans expected from her. She climbed to the stage, stood looking down into the audience, and sang a cappella, “I love you for sentimental reasons. I hope you do believe me. I’ve given you my heart.”

  For a moment they were hushed by the ringing quality of her solo voice, then they applauded wildly. When she sat down at the piano it was only she and the women—as it had so often been before.

  Gilda looked out into the room, unable to see them clearly over the lights shining into her eyes. “I want to sing a song I wrote that I haven’t sung for anyone before tonight. It’s dedicated to someone, of course, but I’m not sure who yet,” she announced wryly.

  Her long fingers danced over the keys, gathering the rhythms and melodies of many ancient worlds. The notes cut through the smoky air, silencing the random conversation. Her voice came out softly when she sang, caressing the air before slipping into the microphone.

  “My love is the blood that enriches this ground.

  The sun is a star denied you and me.

  But you are the life I’ve searched for and found

  And the moon is our half of the dream.

  No day is too long nor night too free.

  Just come, be here with me.”

  The applause engulfed her. Each song brought her closer to the audience. It was in these moments that she felt most at peace with the mortal world at whose edge she lived. She kissed the air around her before stepping down from the bandstand. Even as she eagerly absorbed her success, she calculated how she could weaken the tide of their adoration. It was the only way she’d be able to go on luxuriating in the pleasure the singing gave her and still avoid the focused attention that could bring her life under suspicion. She must soon again become one of those many singers who blazed brilliantly then disappeared—Shirley Austin, Margo Sylvia, Ronnie Dyson–names most never quite remembered.

  Now she joined her friends at their table, signaling the bartender to send over the bottles of champagne she had ordered. The waiter poured freely as the women congratulated Gilda.

  “Your new song is too good, girl. Why’ve you been keeping it to yourself?” Ayeesha said, barely concealing her penchant for organizing and promoting.

  The women basked in Gilda’s success and the adoration of the strangers who approached to greet her. Gilda wondered at the wealth of stories the women told as they filled the room with their voices. Effie sat opposite Gilda, adding occasional comments but not initiating any story herself and never speaking directly to Gilda. As the conversation moved around the tables, Gilda tried to remember everything she knew about Effie. She used to live in a cabin in New Hampshire. She wrote for a magazine. She had no relatives on the East Coast. She was expecting to take a new job, according to Ayeesha, and move south within the year.

  Effie gave little away about herself, and Gilda had consciously avoided probing. Small-boned but tall, her hair was cut close to her head, making her resemble a gangly bird about to leave its adolescence. She was the youngest of the group around the table, yet smiled sagely at each tale. She watched Gilda’s movements and listened to the sound of her voice. When their eyes met, the exchange was a spark as sharp as flint on steel.

  As the evening lengthened, Ayeesha began to encourage them to gather their things and start back to the City. For Gilda, the moment of leaving was unrehearsed but as sure in its script as any closing curtain: the amplifiers and microphones were unplugged and the tips collected. They invited. Gilda demurred. The usual engagement she relied upon as a proper excuse to disappear sprung to her lips and hung its shadow over the crowd.

  She felt resistance from someone who strained her energy. Gilda turned it back on her, breathing outward in a long sigh that was imperceptible outside the circle of the women’s table. Her breath was sweet, like rosewater. The scent of it wiped their minds clear for less than a second. None of the women resisted. They accepted her need to pass the night alone. Only Effie dug her hands into her jacket pockets and moved away stiffly. Her hard gait as she walked out to the parking lot was a startling contrast to her usual girlishness. Gilda watched in puzzlement as they departed.

  She left soon after, driving the small car she used simply for crossing the Hudson River through the tunnels. She drove to the top tier of the long-term parking lot located on the Manhattan pier and locked the doors. She listened for a moment to the purity of the sound of the wind blowing off the river. Her head snapped around as she thought she felt someone in the shadows. A subtle aura surrounding her usually kept troublemakers at a distance so she rarely experienced the harassment that befell most women on city streets. It was one level of anxiety Gilda was grateful to avoid. Still, she peered into the late-night darkness with a sharp eye—all was quiet. Gilda descended quickly to the ground level and waved to the watchman as she left. He tweaked his bristly mustache as he waved back, just as he always did. Even this simple exchange had meaning for her now: he knew her, accepted her in this world.

  Gilda sat in her backyard garden and looked up at the tenements rising around her, listening to the noises that lay in the air above: babies sleeping in their cribs, Ismael Miranda singing through the speakers of budget stereo components, the low sounds of lovers.

  She reached out into the night expectin
g to feel Effie somewhere, but instead there was nothing. Stretching her senses in all directions, the city night swept over her, but Effie was not to be found. Gilda felt the hairs raise on her arms. She pushed her puzzlement away, retreating from the desire she felt gnawing at her, and withdrew from the night, returning to her rooms. She sat before her mirror bathed in candlelight, watching her own eyes for some resolution to her confusion. The evening hung in the air around her, but Gilda pushed further into her past.

  There had certainly been other friends, friends whose love she had shared, whose graves she’d adorned with flowers. She thought of the bouquet she sent to Sorel when she learned of Eleanor’s death. There was no funeral, no grave, yet she’d sent the flowers so Sorel would know she still thought of Eleanor. The electricity of her red hair, the urgency of her kiss burned inside Gilda even now, making thoughts of Effie more unsettling. She pinched out the candle and crawled beneath the silken comforter, finding no comfort there. The ceiling remained a blank space above her. Gilda was unable to project any images except the face of the girl who hummed the tunes as if she knew them all.

  She turned over onto her side, unused to having rest elude her. Gilda drew her knees up close to her chest and curled her toes, vaguely recalling what it had been like to be a child. Shortly before the first rays of morning sun began to touch her painted windows, she slept.

  She dreamed she was back at Woodard’s where there were many rooms. Sorel, Anthony, Bird, Julius each had their own and moved about the house as if it were a hotel, locking the doors and unlocking them frequently. She felt at ease because Woodard’s seemed to be much further from the city than it had actually been. Gilda walked from room to room checking, she thought, to be certain all her guests were accommodated. She soon realized she was searching for someone. She opened doors endlessly through the day, until late afternoon when she awakened from the dream that had held her.

  Before she dressed that evening, Gilda sat at her piano in the corner nearest the window playing the shadow game. The sun stole through the sky falling past the Hudson into the west. As it passed across an open alley opposite her rooms the fading yellow rays reflected through the opaque gold on her windowpane. The painted Eiffel Tower turned into a beacon, and the refracted light cast shadows on the floor. She watched from the piano bench, poised like a cat, taut and confident, unseen by its prey. She tried to spin a world from that drop of light. She imagined it bathing a park, children sweating as they played beneath it. She listened for the sound of their high-pitched voices and sniffed at the air for the scent of their childish perspiration. She imagined the light’s glare dancing on the river, making thousands of tiny mirrors. Before she could fix the pictures in her mind the light was gone and evening had begun.

  That night she sang in a Queens nightclub, a place that welcomed local homeowners and winners from the racetrack at Belmont. The songs came easily but did not wipe the horrible memory from her mind: the blood she took this evening had almost cost a life.

  As she had walked downtown earlier, through the streets teeming with trucks during the day, she’d come upon a man, black and sure, smoking in a car parked on the now-empty street. Through the window she could see that he was strong, so she had no fear he would miss the few ounces of life she would drain from him.

  She slipped into his mind, holding him immobile as she eased his car door open and put her arm around him. The terror in his eyes was quelled by her tranquilizing stare. She sliced a small opening behind his ear and drank slowly. Unable to focus on his thoughts, she held him to her breast as if they were lovers. His blood, warm and soothing, flowed into her; the spark that is all life rekindled in her veins. She closed her eyes for a moment and was distracted. All her thoughts closed in upon themselves. Where ordinarily there was a spectacle of color and sound for Gilda during the exchange, now there was nothing except the sensation of drowning in a vacuum. She felt the man’s flesh at her mouth, heard the sound made as she took the blood, but it was all beyond her conscious reach.

  Panic rose inside her as she forced herself to return, to search his mind to make the exchange. She found only quiet. His consciousness was too still. She had taken too much.

  His lids fluttered over unseeing eyes, shocking her. Anger at her indulgence and carelessness flooded through her, then mystification. In the many years of making the exchange, she had never committed such an error. Others enjoyed the moment of their victim’s death, reveling in satiation, but Gilda didn’t need to kill, nor did she want to enjoy it. She held him close and felt desperately for his pulse.

  Gilda resisted the impulse to give him her own blood, to make a quick exchange that would assure his life. Bringing a stranger into their life with no preparation was a more grave offense than letting him die. She sealed the wound and waited. When his pulse steadied she raised his lids to see if the focus had returned to his pupils. She sat him up, resting his head on the car seat. His face was smooth and dark, the nose classically African. She had not left him with anything in exchange and felt like a thief. But she experienced relief at not having to add his face to that sad, private place where the dead resided. When his breathing was closer to normal she stepped out of the car quickly and ran her tongue over her un-painted mouth, clearing the last vestige of red, searching for her performance smile. Her skin felt flushed and cool, not warm as it should. She had a prickling sensation at the base of her spine that unsettled her. Looking down the dark street she saw nothing unusual, no one watching, so she continued on her way.

  Her songs that night were sung savagely, filled with the anger she felt at her carelessness. She spit them out at the smiling faces, and somehow they took her pain as excitement and applauded her anguish. Through her second set she still could not clear the incident from her mind, could not find a reason for such a thing to have happened.

  The unmistakable weight of death had made his body sag in her arms, and the memory of it filled her with a revulsion she could not dispel. She assured herself of his survival, although the contours of his face in her mind seemed set in death rather than sleep. When the evening was over she hurried from the club, leaving through the back door. The rancid odor of garbage and decay filled the alley, as did the sound of scurrying animals. Her footsteps were silent among them. She returned to the street and walked past the place where his car had been. He was gone. There were no police barricades or other lingering signs of anything particularly eventful.

  The City was alive with people who, during the day, were locked into their own coffins—offices, shops, factories—each one waiting for release into the freedom of night. Gilda walked briskly toward Houston Street and Sorel’s, anxious to talk to someone who might understand what had happened. Anthony was not in sight when she stepped inside the dimly lit room, but the bartender waved to her with familiarity. She nodded in his direction as she sat in Sorel’s rear booth. Within moments Anthony appeared beside the table. Gilda wasn’t certain what she wanted, but as always, Anthony was prepared when he sensed her confusion.

  “I’m pleased you’ve come tonight. I had planned to send a message later this evening. Sorel and Julius will return soon.”

  “And Bird? Has she said if she’ll come back with them?”

  “Bird? No, she says nothing. Although Sorel indicates she has made somewhat of a home for herself. If she were to come, you would know before any of us, I’m sure.”

  Anthony turned back toward the door that led to the rooms holding Sorel’s private stock and his office. Gilda relaxed against the leather-covered cushions and resisted the desire to rest her head on her arms. She looked about the room instead. Three others sat at the bar. One clearly had stopped in, unaware what establishment it was. The bartender was carrying on an animated conversation with him, carefully learning if the visit was indeed happenstance, planting the seed of forgetfulness so the patron would not be able to deliberately find Sorel’s again. The other two were familiar customers she knew to be as she was, as they all were, sharers of the bl
ood.

  Anthony reappeared with a teapot and cups. He looked much the same as he had when Gilda first met him in the West almost one hundred years before. Instead of tying his plain brown hair back in a ponytail, he now wore it loose so that it fell forward, making him seem somewhat younger.

  The aromatic blend was soothing. Gilda sipped at her cup appreciatively. She was quiet for a moment, thinking how to describe what had happened, but Anthony began to speak before she could formulate her questions.

  “I’m afraid I must tell you some news that is not altogether joyous. As you know, the grief of Eleanor’s leaving us still sits heavily on Sorel. He understands Eleanor’s need to take the true death, nevertheless her loss affects him deeply. You’re a great solace for him since you, too, understand the depth of feelings one might have as far as Eleanor was concerned.”

  The neutrality of Anthony’s voice was carefully modulated. But as he continued, Gilda sensed the tension behind his words. “It was some time after her loss that I was able to persuade Sorel that coming East was our best course. And I believe this has been a good choice. We don’t encounter many from those days. And everything about this city is so different from the cities of our past that Sorel is totally absorbed in learning of this new life.”

  “He hardly seems able to learn of this city with the world traveling he’s done in the past years!” Gilda said, laughter in her voice. She repressed the giggles that the image of Sorel and Julius globe trotting stirred in her.

  “Well, that’s as it will be. Although he speaks of moving back to the West or exploring the north country, he truly loves it here. But I’m afraid that joy may not last long.”

  Gilda heard the uncertainty in Anthony’s voice and felt the anxiety gather around them.

  “Samuel is here.”

  The statement was made simply, with little inflection, yet its weight was unmistakable. The chill at the base of Gilda’s spine returned.