They ate at the kitchen bar because David had no dining table. The conversation moved on. They talked about how she used to play the flute, his early aspirations to play basketball, and how everyone would be better off when they had a new mayor and a new president. They shared their guarded optimism that Barack Obama might be the next president, like an expectant couple talking about the health of a baby doctors told them they could never conceive. After dinner they had sex in his bedroom. Missionary, slow and close.
“You ever bring any of the dudes you dated around your daughter?” David asked. They lay on their backs on top of his sheets. He moved his arm behind her neck and snaked it around so that his hand rested in the hollow between her breasts, where there was surely sweat, as well as direct access to the accelerated thump of her heartbeat.
“Mmm, not really,” Lelah said. “No, actually there was one guy when Brianne was around ten or eleven. Named Damien. Security guard at the airport, back when I used to work at the airport. He never lived with us, but I let him take me and Brianne out. Didn’t work out though.”
Damien, with the big, adorable, Will Smith–looking ears and an accent that didn’t bother with the last consonant of most words. He’d wanted to marry her, Lelah explained, move her and Brianne down to Atlanta where he was from. She pictured him cheering Brianne on as she went down the giant slide on Belle Isle by herself for the first time one summer. Brianne’s nervous, eager-to-please grin.
“I didn’t wanna take Brianne that far away from her dad,” Lelah said now. “I still thought he might get his stuff together and start coming around. Plus, my own dad had passed and I didn’t wanna leave my mom up here.”
A catalog of past relationships was inevitable if she and David were to do more than hook up, Lelah knew, and she’d likely opened the door for it by quizzing him about his meditating. Still, she was unable to tell the full truth. There were other factors in her refusal of Damien’s proposal: fear of being far away and alone with a man again, as she had been in Missouri with Vernon. Her having already ruined her credit gambling at Caesars and not wanting Damien or anyone else to find out. Smaller, seemingly insignificant things, like the way Damien immediately reached to put his boxers back on after they had sex, as if he could only stand to be that vulnerable around her for the shortest time necessary.
“Atlanta’s a cool city,” David said. “Got a lot more business and stuff goin on since it had the Olympics . . . I mean, it’s not no Detroit, though.”
“Not even close,” Lelah said. She couldn’t tell if he was joking or serious, but having never been to Atlanta herself, she still felt confident the cities had little do with each other.
Save for Damien, whom she dated for three years, Lelah had had no relationships more serious than sporadic sex partners and preliminary dates for more than ten years. Either she stopped calling the men or they her, the mutual interest petering out like the last few seconds of a song. What she’d said earlier about the inevitability of ending up alone had transpired in her own life without much fanfare. The time had passed, and one day not being with someone began to feel like the norm.
“What about you?” Lelah said. “You ever start coming around one of your girlfriends’ kids?”
No answer. Judging from the slow rise and fall of his chest, David had fallen asleep. Lelah turned over and watched the river outside of the window.
A Life to Get on With
WINTER 1945
By the fifth month of Francis’s absence, the chances of him and Viola reconciling and having one more child, let alone twelve, were quite low. Viola no longer believed he would return for her. She started saving money to leave Arkansas as soon as she could. She might have considered staying Down South, living in the shotgun house for the foreseeable future, had she not worked for the Joggetses. The work itself was not the problem; it was the commute. The bus ride began jovial enough, with her, Olivia, and Lucille cracking jokes and gossiping. Once they were on board there was a light, communal feeling among the other colored passengers. But as the distance to Pine Bluff shrank, faces closed in on themselves; eyes dulled and jaws tightened. Viola imagined the indignities that others—maids, nannies, cooks, drivers, gardeners, construction workers, waiters—faced at their respective destinations. She would not let Cha-Cha grow up and face such indignities himself.
On one ride to work Viola caught Barry Stuttle staring at her. Twenty-five-year-old Barry Stuttle, son of Deacon Stuttle, one of the three old deacons at Reverend Tufts’s church, must have had no clerical aspirations himself, because he wore a white chef’s coat and cradled a tall paper chef’s hat in his lap. He smiled when they finally met eyes. He had an underbite but was not terrible-looking. Viola did not smile back.
Lucille whispered in Viola’s ear. “About time you noticed. He been eyein you like you owe him money for at least a week.”
Viola shrugged.
“Wish I could pay him to look the other way.”
She had attracted suitors since she was fourteen, some more promising than Francis in her parents’ eyes. Men who were closer in age to Olivia or Lucille had shamelessly inquired after Viola instead. Olivia had never shown interest in a man. Lucille—the eldest, as quick to laugh as to curse folks out—once had a steady boyfriend, but he’d been drafted early on into the war, and she hadn’t heard from him since.
The next morning, as they waited for the bus, Barry Stuttle cautioned a wave. Viola nodded, then turned away from him.
“You know,” Olivia said. “Ain’t no shame in movin on.”
“None whatsoever,” Lucille added. “Shoot, you did all what you was supposed to do. Ain’t your fault the man ain’t made good on his part of it. You got a child to feed and a life to get on with.”
Viola had stopped going to church because she feared the disapproving eyeballs and the prying questions. She wondered if Reverend Tufts himself would judge her for moving on. The last time she’d gone to service, about a month after Francis’s departure, she’d noticed Reverend Tufts moving in her direction through the after-church crowd. On impulse, she hurried out of the sanctuary before he could reach her. She wanted Tufts’s approval and also felt angry with herself for caring what he thought. Every time Viola had spoken to him in the past she’d felt cornered, or scrutinized. Despite being short, he had a looming presence; he shrank others down when he spoke. Most women found him handsome, but Viola and her sisters weren’t sure his looks made up for his demeanor.
“He so pushy,” Lucille had said once. “He look like the type to bring a list with him into the bedroom, and he ain’t done makin love till he check off everything he got in his mind to do.”
Tufts represented a larger truth that troubled Viola: if she stayed in town, she’d always be defined by Francis’s abandonment. He would be a shadow over her and Cha-Cha’s life. She refused to let her husband’s poor decisions define her life; she would save up and leave. Another month passed with Viola working sometimes sixty hours a week and saving three dollars out of every week’s pay. She estimated that she’d need at least seventy dollars to feel good about her and Cha-Cha moving, to be able to contribute at whichever brother’s household would have her until she found work. She wrote friendly, generic letters to her brothers up in Cleveland and Omaha in an attempt to feel out which location was better, whose wife would be the most welcoming. Clyde, James, and Josiah mailed short responses devoid of any useful information, and Viola suspected their wives had written the letters, given the neat penmanship. No matter, she would just have to take a chance on one of them when she had the money.
All of the planning and saving made her feel older, more confident about starting a life alone. Her love for Francis began to feel like a remnant from her juvenile past. What had there been between them, anyway? He’d seemed a prize, standing in that pulpit, the yearning to make people believe in him so clear on his face. And she’d won that prize. So much for all of that. Next time around she would look for a simple, hardworking man with a good he
art, humble aspirations. It was just as Lucille had said: she was eighteen years old and had too much life in front of her to be without love.
Gotham in Detroit
WINTER 1945
A secondhand brown wool suit, a fur-lined hat, leather wingtips, and a pair of galoshes. Francis used the money he made working at a stamping plant on Jefferson to better equip himself for winter and improve his appearance. It was his fifth job, and it didn’t pay as well as the salt mines, but he’d managed to work at the stamping plant a whole month without quitting or getting fired.
Galoshes were most appropriate for a night as icy as this one. Still, Francis wore the wingtips. They pinched his toes. He aimed to take Odella to the Gotham Hotel. He’d passed by the hotel on the bus, heard that Paul Robeson, Joe Louis, and local political figures had dined there. He would take Odella and elevate himself in her eyes, perhaps his own eyes too.
Lately, starting over seemed more feasible than returning to Arkansas, begging for Viola’s forgiveness, and bringing his wife and child back up to Detroit. There was a good possibility that Viola would not forgive him. He had no way to explain the long months of silence. Better to make that silence permanent, to look forward, to push the guilt away from him and focus on making something of himself with the woman he had in front of him. Odella was not exactly his woman, not yet, but he thought he might alleviate her apprehension about his young age and pennilessness by staying on at the stamping plant and taking her on proper dates. Then, once he’d saved up, he’d see about enrolling in school for something, maybe becoming an electrician.
Francis drank a swallow of bourbon from his flask, balled up his bedding, and headed downstairs. Odella sat in the parlor in a steel-gray dress that hit below the knee and hugged her hips. She’d rolled her hair at her neck and pinned a matching gray beret onto her head at a fetching angle. Not the fanciest outfit Francis had glimpsed in her basement apartment, but perhaps understated was best tonight. You could dress so rich that you came off looking poor.
Amos ’n Andy yammered on the radio. Francis turned the dial down.
“Well, look who’s finally turning into a city fellow,” Odella said.
Francis moved to kiss her on the cheek, but she ducked out of reach, picked up his bedding from where he’d left it on the sofa, and put it in a closet.
“This who I am now,” Francis said. He reached for her again, succeeded in kissing her on the temple. “I’m livin in the city, may as well dress like it. Sides, if I aim to keep the attention of the likes a you, I can’t go around in no dusty duds.”
Odella patted his shoulder.
“Aw, soldier,” she said. “What I tell you when I first met you? You already had the posture of a gentleman. But I guess it doesn’t hurt to have the clothes, too.”
Life in Detroit did not slow down for winter, as Francis hoped it might. Detroiters simply bought more coal or kindling for their heat and piled fur on their backs. Odella wore such a fur—fox, with tails shimmying along the shoulders, and one tail missing on the right side. Francis had seen the fallen tail sitting on Odella’s dresser, awaiting repair. The first time she’d worn the fur Francis must have made a quizzical face because she quickly explained that it was a gift “from another life.” He didn’t ask for elaboration; he liked that both of them had other lives they’d left behind, secrets they would not force each other to share. Now he told Odella to wait in the parlor while he walked to Hastings to hail a cab.
“Where are we going, soldier? We can’t walk?”
“It’s downtown, and I don’t aim to have you walkin no way. Not even round the corner.”
“Downtown? Well, as long as we have reservations, that should be nice.”
He kissed her again, this time right on those velvety lips that always encircled his own.
“I’ma dazzle you tonight, girl. Just wait.”
He felt silly as he pulled on his coat and hat, his back turned to her. He’d never said such things to Viola. Where had the words even come from? Those damn radio shows, he guessed.
“Be ready when you hear the cab honk,” he said.
The cold reached down his throat and snatched at his lungs, as it always did when he first stepped outside. The boardinghouse was a block away from Hastings. Francis had never thought of the distance in terms of actual steps before. Tonight he tiptoed over icy patches in his too tight shoes, the street desolate. It seemed to take ages to pass two houses. He was nervous about showing up at the Gotham. He hadn’t made a reservation, hadn’t even known to make one. Hell, if they couldn’t get dinner, they could at least have a drink or two at the bar.
Up ahead, right before the corner, was an ice slick about three feet long. To his left Francis saw that the street was full of murky, brown, half-frozen sludge. He went gingerly forward on the ice. He chuckled at himself moving so softly, hunched over like a picture-show burglar in the middle of a heist. A whistle blew—a police whistle—and Francis stood up straight on instinct. He slipped. Slid on his right hip across the stretch of ice, the cold so fierce it felt like fire.
“Stop right there,” the officer said from across the street, and Francis wanted to laugh. Where could he go without slipping again?
He stood, brushed off his suit as best he could. His wingtips had lost their shine.
“Just tryin to get a taxi,” he told the officer. “Slipped on the ice.”
The officer crunched across the street in shiny black boots. He had a smooth white face, save for his ruddy cheeks. Outside of work, Francis had experienced minimal contact with white people in Detroit, and no police run-ins at all. He’d heard that they did this, randomly approached colored men on the street and questioned them, tried to make them nervous. He was not yet nervous.
“Have you been drinking tonight?” the officer said. His name badge read WILLIAMS. “How many drinks have you had tonight, friend?”
An off-duty taxi slushed by. Was “friend” the Up North version of “boy”? Francis wondered.
“I ain’t had no drinks,” he said. “Just wore the wrong shoes.”
He lifted up his leg to show the wingtips and nearly slipped again.
“No drinking at all?”
“None, sir.”
“Where you headed?”
There were at least a dozen places within walking distance Francis could have named—bars, jazz halls, pool halls, restaurants, even Clydell’s place on Beaubien, where he’d washed dishes. Instead he puffed out his chest and said, “Gotham Hotel, downtown. Got a lady friend waitin for me to come round once I get a cab.”
The officer widened his eyes, pulled a side of his mouth up into a smirk.
“Alright, I think you’d better show me some identification, friend. Empty out your pockets too.”
Francis didn’t move. His flask was in his breast pocket, half full of bourbon. An older colored couple walked by, and Francis looked at them with pleading eyes. They did not seem to see him. He thought about Reverend Tufts, and how during the ten years in his care he’d never seen the man humiliated by anyone, colored or otherwise. What was it about himself that people in this city wanted to knock down?
He saw no way out of following the officer’s instructions. He reached his hand into his coat pocket for his wallet.
“Oh, hello, Officer Williams.”
Francis turned to see foxtails flying and a familiar pair of legs skipping across the ice in high heels.
“Odella Withers,” Officer Williams said. “This man is a friend of yours?”
Odella appraised Francis, no doubt noticing his wet trousers and scuffed shoes.
“A tenant of mine,” she said. “Which means he pays me money every week. Better than a friend, wouldn’t you say?”
Odella’s smile made Francis furious. Too wide, too gummy. Desperate. It didn’t do that mouth of hers justice at all. In return Officer Williams offered her a quick grin but then tightened his lips once more.
“Your tenant is drunk,” he said. “Says he’s headed to t
he Gotham Hotel. Tonight.”
Francis opened his mouth. Odella reached out and squeezed his arm.
“He’s not drunk,” she said. “Just clumsy, and not too familiar with restaurants and such up here. He’s from Down South. It’s his first Detroit winter.”
“One of those newcomers, huh?” Williams looked at Francis with renewed contempt. “They’re as likely as anyone else to be intoxicated in public. More likely, in my experience.”
“Not this one,” Odella persisted. “He’s as green as this snow is cold.”
“Well, you make sure he learns to be quick about showing identification when an officer of the law requests it.” He turned and walked down Hastings without waiting for Odella’s response.
Odella put her hand on the small of Francis’s back. He shifted away.
“What?” she said. “Let’s go on home, soldier. You’re soaked, and I can feel you shivering.”
It had started to snow shortly after Odella appeared. Now a snowflake landed in Francis’s eye. A fire truck’s siren wailed a few streets over.
“We still going to that hotel,” he said. “I said I was takin you out tonight.”
“And here I am, and we are out, aren’t we?” Odella giggled and put her hands on her hips. “But the Gotham? Even with a reservation we’d have a hard time getting sat, no-named and colored as we are. Without it?” She tsked.
“What’s my name matter?” Francis asked. “I got money to spend. And it’s a colored hotel, ain’t it? You tryin to tell me I ain’t welcome there, or you just ashamed to be seen with me?”
Again she put her hand on the small of his back.
“You know what I mean, soldier. It’s ran by our folks, sure, but you and I don’t have the clout to just stroll through without reservations on a Friday night. Say, let’s just get a bite someplace nearby. That’ll be nice.”
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