Where you goin?
He’s my brother.
She snatched up the phone.
Gracie, where’s Lucifer?
Sheila.
Where’s Lucifer? If necessary, she would bleed the meaning out of Gracie.
He was here.
Is that all?
I don’t know. I told him about John.
She said nothing.
Don’t worry, Gracie said. Blood is thicker than love.
25
PORSHA SHUT THE DOOR FIRMLY against sticking layers of old paint and floated out into the open flower of the night. Will Inez even remember that I visited? Know this: I won’t visit her again. Millions of fireflies—fireflies? this time of year?—supplemented the blackness with gold light and winking rhythm. Silent music. But sound also laced through the night. Shimmering crickets. A passing car, muffler firing and fender clattering chainlike.
You called a cab, ma’m? The driver’s face bloomed in the night light.
Yes.
The driver held the door open for her.
Thank you. She ducked into the cab and sat back by the open window. The driver shut her door, floated on a lake of shadows to his own door, and placed himself behind the wheel.
Where to, ma’m?
The Ship of Beauty on—
I know the place. In Woodlawn right?
Yes.
Enjoy your ride, ma’m. The driver put the car in motion even before he had shut his door. Service is rare these days. She would be sure to give him a nice tip. A dangerous profession. To be driving at this time of night in this neighborhood. She had phoned the dispatch certain that no cab would answer her call. I shoulda called Uncle John and had him pick me up. Ain’t seen or heard from him in so long.
The long afternoon had left the night luminous. Light and shade were so mingled that the houses looked transparent.
The driver eased the cab onto the expressway, then kicked it into life to duplicate the motion of passing vehicles.
The speed saturated her with a soft relaxed feeling. She was taking a chance on going to the Ship of Beauty. She had not phoned first. (Nia kept her ear tuned to gossip. And she could talk. Bend your ear until daybreak.) What if Nia was at home? Well, she’d take a cab to Hombreck Park. What if Nia was home in bed, with a friend? That she had no answer to. Truth to tell, she much preferred the Ship of Beauty to Nia’s home. (Nia knew a thing or two about keeping a comfortable home. She had found Porsha’s loft at Hundred Gates—Girl, you gon be large, so live large—and helped her decorate and refurnish it.) Nia kept a clean house, at least to the unsuspecting eye. Nice and clean everywhere but the bathroom and kitchen, areas where guests never visited, with the exception of Porsha. (If you had to go, she would direct you to her next-door neighbor’s toilet.) Nia didn’t even allow Mrs. Charles, her own mother, to enter these rooms. Roaches had invaded them. Small wonder. For days at a time, dirty dishes lay like sunken ships at the bottom of the kitchen sink. (Nia would rather buy a new set than wash the old.) And dirty bars of Popesoapontherope censer-swung from the bathroom faucets.
Nia, girl, look at this mess. You ought to be ashamed.
I ain’t got time to worry about no dishes. Life is too short.
Can’t you get a maid?
What for?
Porsha grabs up the loose socks, towels, and garments lying about on the mattress and stuffs them down the laundry chute. She arranges the dishes in the dishwasher. Empties the smelling garbage. Scrubs away the old dirt that lassos the tub.
House clean, she and Nia relax on the bed, eat popcorn—with plenty of butter, salt, and hot sauce—and laugh at gruesome movies.
She needed to see Nia tonight. The need burned upriver to her heart. Their friendship held strong and unabated across twenty years’ time. The thought circled about her mind. She urged the cab forward. Ah, it had already entered South Shore. She saw the buildings of her childhood, realized that the cab was taking her both backward and forward in space.
Chitty chitty bang bang
Sitting on a fence
Trying to make a dollar
Outa fifteen cents
She missed, she missed, she missed like this.
She missed, she missed, she missed like this.
Two motion-chasing loops, one loop traveling to where the other had already been. Two girls turned the rope, while a third girl, turkey-short and round, jumped.
A dollar to school
A dollar to church
The fat girl lifted and wiggled her meaty legs and butt. Hopped on one foot, hands on hips. Bent over, skirt raised and naked butt high in the air, a huge moon shining through the yellow-shimmering branches of the jump rope. And switching from side to side firm as a tree branch. Now, she was actually twirling between the two ropes, a hog on a spit.
The bottom half of the rope slapped the ground while the upper turned a lazy loop in the air.
Hey, new girl, the fat girl said. You know how to jump double Dutch? The fat girl’s jaws were like two biscuits on her face.
Sure.
You do?
Porsha nodded. They had just moved from Kenwood to South Shore.
Well, if you don’t, you turn, you know how to turn don’t you, like this, you turn and I jump.
Porsha did as instructed.
What’s yo name?
Porsha.
My name is Tanzania.
Tanzania?
Tanzania nodded.
What kinda name is that?
It come from Africa.
Yeah, you big as Africa too, a boy said. His grin glinted like his glasses, thick cloudy lenses held on his face by an elastic strap that pinched his slick-bean head.
Shut up, old four eyes.
Least I ain’t got four stomachs.
Yo mamma.
Yo greasy grandmamma.
Curtains blew in tall windows, white to mute the sun. Sunlight formed a lattice from garden to roof. Roses shivered like birds in a bath. Roses—yellow, white, red—were Mrs. Charles’s obsession, every object in the house as fragrant as her garden. She kept her garden body-clean. Clean enough to lie down and sleep in, which she often did. Her neat rake patterned paths—ah, soothing to the eyes—leading to pure air. The garden involved constant preparation for a secret something.
Mrs. Charles, the shape and size of her daughter, and Nia ate at an infinitely long table covered with huge pots and plates, the centerpiece of an equally long room in the large house they shared. They worked their knives and forks with the force of the most ancient, stable habits of etiquette, and they enjoyed a glass of red or white wine as the meal required.
The backyard was off-limits to everyone but Nia and Porsha. Their private green haven. This is our skyscraper dollhouse. Mrs. Charles had constructed a farseeing tree house with fireplace kinder. Converted old tires into swings. The neighborhood double Dutch champion, Nia taught Porsha all her moves. Porsha taught Nia everything she knew about maps and globes. They would lie on their bellies in the grass, the whole world spread out before them. They would tickle their tongues with bladed leaves and assemble countries, piece by cardboard piece.
Porsha came to prefer the Charles home to her own.
NIA NEVER ALLOWED FAT TO SLOW HER DOWN. She was fast. She would organize the neighborhood girls into a Soul Train Line, seeing who could dance the nastiest. Porsha tried to be fast—she told her first boyfriend, Let’s kiss with our clothes off; wide-eyed with fear, he refused—but she couldn’t keep up with Nia. Nia knew all the latest dances, the Bump, the Dog, the Bone, the Superfreak, the Heart Attack. When boys rubbed up against her, she would rub back. I don’t want you. Ole fat girl.
One day, M&M—Malcolm Martin—bumped up against her booty. Nia turned around, ready to slap the taste out of his mouth. Sorry. He smiled, teeth big and even and white.
Yo mamma sorry.
I ain’t say nothing bout yo mamma.
Yo greasy ass granmamma.
Why you want to be like that?
Yo fat greasy-ass sumo-wrestler combat-boot-wearin great-granmamma.
Later that day, M&M flashed Porsha a sign—smeared red crayon against lined notebook paper—from his desk on the other side of the room: I LIKE YOU PLEASE GIVE ME SOME PUSSY.
In the after-school playground, M&M greeted Porsha with his energetic pelvis. I’m all dick.
You nasty buzzard, she said.
Boy, Nia said, why you always actin so mannish?
Ain’t nobody said nothing to you, fat and black.
Nia kicked him in the nuts. A short explosive grunt parted his lips. Damn. She broke his balls. How you like that, poot butt?
Yo mamma.
Nia slapped him upside the head.
Excuse me, but I don’t fight girls.
Nia slapped him again.
You jus mad cause I don’t want none of yo fat stuff, stank ho.
Nia slapped him yet again. M&M put up his guard.
They squared off. Nia floated on her toes, belly-buoyant, bee-stinging with her jab, trying to draw the blood of honey from his face. He crouched, his glasses—he was blind without them—level with her moving belly. Classmates cheered them on, put octane in their blood. M&M roundhoused a blow, his lunging body throwing him into empty space. Then Nia let go with her own punch. M&M felt—cause you could see it and hear it—her whole body against him, just above his glasses. I speak severely to my boy, Nia said, I beat him when he sneezes, so he won’t thoroughly enjoy the pepper when he pleases. M&M recovered, landed two blows to her stomach. It went on like that, Nia impacting a heavy blow and M&M connecting to the stomach. They took a break here and there over the course of the battle and fought on until they shook hands from sheer exhaustion.
NIA AND PORSHA TOGETHER were guilty of what each did alone. Mamma whipped them both.
Once, Mamma caught them rolling a joint in the bathroom. Nia looked up, the joint pinched between her fingers and held before her mouth like corn on the cob. Hi, Mrs. Jones, she said. We jus tryin this experiment we learned in science class.
Mamma laughed a full ten minutes. Then she wore out the girls’ behinds.
Why you whip me, Mrs. Jones? Nia said. You ain’t my mamma.
Well, Mamma said, tell yo mamma that I whipped you, so she can whip you too.
ONE DAY MRS. CHARLES sat Porsha and Nia down at the kitchen table. You girls are almost grown, she said. Will be women soon. Bodywise. It’s time to teach you girls about the birds and the bees.
Porsha’s stomach tightened in anticipation. Nia grinned.
When you use a toilet away from home, be sure to raise yourself a few inches above the stool. Don’t let your rear end touch the seat.
Nia looked at Porsha.
And if you sleep with a man, in the morning you shall wake and find a baby under your pillow.
MRS. CHARLES CLEANED NIA’S ROOM with the force of habit. You just keep doing well in school, she said. That’s your job. Mrs. Charles allowed boys to sleep over since Nia said that it was the only way she could study.
Saturdays, Nia and Porsha would gather up Hatch, Jesus, and Abu and take them to the museum, circus, or rodeo.
Men like women wit kids, Nia said. Why you think they always be callin you Mamma?
THIS IS FINE.
Are you sure? The cab followed the downward slope of the street.
Yes.
The shop is—
I know.
Whatever you say, ma’m.
The street was well lit. People were about. Yes, she would get out here and walk a block. She needed the extra time to gather herself.
Thank you. She paid the driver—the fare in one hand, a heavy tip in the other—and exited the cab.
Thank you, ma’m. Have a pleasant evening.
You too.
The driver pulled away with a smile on his lips.
She walked down the lean yellow street. Trees bloomed in the dark and smelled like someplace far away. Church Street. Woodlawn. The old hood. (Well, not quite. The old hood was both Woodlawn and South Shore.) The Ship of Beauty, Nia’s all-night hair/nail salon, travel agency, and tax referral service, was dry-docked in such an unattractive part of the city where all the streets were named after foreigners. Euclid. Galileo. Vincennes. Racine. Not to mention the people. That’s why she had bought a car, to go directly from home or work and avoid streets besieged with beggars, bums, hoodlums, and swaggering seeking youth.
Give me a dime, baby, and I’ll tell you a golden story.
No, thanks. She felt her hair tightening. This affliction always began the moment the Ship of Beauty floated into sight. Moon shadows speckled the two-story building. Hard to believe this building had once housed Uncle John’s garage (lounge?). John used to bring her here often. Nia purchased it from the same bank that had foreclosed on John. Those Jews foreclosed on him, Mamma said. That musta been the winter of ’67, when we had that bad snowstorm. Nobody went outside for two or three days. John came out and couldn’t find the lounge, then he realized that it was buried under all the snow. Then Dallas came back from ’Sippi with that pee-hot wine. When the snow melted, the Jews foreclosed. If only John possessed Nia’s money smarts. Nia had reaped and sown. Ambition (desire) was her biggest crop. She was not one to stand still and contemplate her accomplishments. She planned to open an upscale salon-agency downtown. She wanted Porsha to invest, become an equal partner.
Porsha could see lights and shadows moving about on the upper floor of the salon. Good. Nia was here. She tried to spot Nia’s face in the window. Sometimes you could see her there in her office perch, where she leaned her elbows on the sill and sneered down into the street. Come on. This is mine. Start something. Please start some shit. It was the only window you could look in or out of. Nia had installed stained glass—shipped from the cathedral at Chutreaux (or Chartres or Notre Dame, one of them French places)—everywhere else. (Nothing about Nia was cheap.) You got to spend to earn, she liked to say. One day, she would retire and buy a beach house, a window opening on the ocean like an oyster, palm trees—full of fresh green coconut balls cuming white milk into her breakfast bowl—rising above egg-white sand, a yard with a dock, and a shed with two yachts.
The glass doors parted without Porsha having to touch them. Welcome aboard. The captain will be with you shortly. French tile formed a compass rose on the floor. A fountain threw a high musical rush of silvery water that fell in a constant spray into a marble basin fringed with violets and lilies. Copper and silver fish shimmered beneath the silver surface. The ceiling hummed music. Eastern? Caribbean? African?—Porsha couldn’t say which. The walls carried the smell of Dallas’s gasoline-laced ‘Sippi moonshine. Nia had papered them with jungle scenes. Potted palms lined the halls. Nia had crowded the shop with objects from her travels around the world. Full-sized sculptures cast full-sized shadows: A puppy-sized jade bitch with mother-of-pearl teats and crystal eyes that she’d picked up in Mexico. An iron-rusted elephant from India. The swami sold me some holy water from the Ganges River. He put a drop on my forehead and a drop on my tongue. You will have two sons, he said. Slanted silver divi-divi trees (with the one hairstyle) pointing west from Aruba. Follow the divi-divi and you’ll never be lost. It will circle you back to your original departure. Departure is destination. African masks followed you with hollow eyes. A framed encyclical (purchased from the Vatican) darted gilded light. Silk prayer rugs branched over the room. Japanese rice-paper paintings floated like flowers on water, shifting place and position even as you looked.
This lil Jap guy called me a coon, Nia said.
What?
A coon.
You fo real?
Yeah. He said, So glad to neet you, Nia-coon. So I told him, You shortslanteyedjapmotherfucker, who you callin a coon? Don’t you know that I’ll kick yo puny ass? Then he said it again. Ah, Nia-coon. I’m sorry. Did I offend you?
Spiral-legged tables held up bird-shaped Etruscan vases and Tunisian amphorae that erupted with roses so radiant and fresh they seemed
artificial. Each reading table was centered with a handmade Navaho tablecloth from Santa Fe. Bubble-shaped hair dryers rumbled like space capsules, rockets. And a full bar where you could enjoy two drinks free on the house. (The third cost.)
Each beautician attended her client in a transparent receptacle, the cool shade of a hidden grove. The base of each chair was a genuine redwood stump. One client flipped through the latest issue of Uplift, hair done up like the Bride of Frankenstein. Porsha took the beauticians in at a single glance, without distinguishing one from the other. Tangiers, Archangel, Algiers, Baltimore, Tunis, Tripoli, London, Carthage, Mombasa, Fez, New York, Benghazi, Dublin, Suakin, Seville, Port-au-Prince, Seattle, Guinea, Messawa, Bahia, Zela, Kilwa, Hong Kong, Newport, Brava, Aden, Mina, San Francisco, Muscat, Cardiff, and Cape. Like one woman repeated many times. Each wore tiger-skin hot pants, halter, and sandals. Hair rose two feet above their heads and curved out into a huge anchor. For Nia’s last birthday, they had all, Porsha included, chipped in and bought Nia a cake—the last thing she needed—a strawberry (her favorite) spaceship on a chocolate launching pad under a sprinkling of cherry stars.
Hey, Porsha.
She received a concert of glad welcomes and perfumed laughter from the beauticians. She answered them in chorus.
Porsha.
The sight of the beauticians and adornments made her eyes feel full.
How life treatin you?
Good.
I saw your mother today, Shaneequa, the captain, said.
The words flew behind her. She watched the pretty girl under a sailor’s cap. Red cravat twisted in sailor fashion. Pen poised over the log. A butterfly fluttered over her back. Oh yeah? Nia in?
Shaneequa closed the log over the pen. You know where to find her.
Porsha nodded. She took the upward-rising stairs—the beak of a ship on a wave—two at a time.
The office door was parted. She would knock before she entered. Once she had thrown the door open to surprise Nia and caught her kneeling before some good-lookin brown. The Bible say, Nia later said, Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth. Men liked her. She often went the whole mile on the first date. And she had an educated pussy.
Rails Under My Back Page 35