Tumbling

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Noon dropped a heavy towel she had pulled from her washbasket. The loose dirt of the backyard mixed with the towel’s wetness and became muddy streaks. “Shucks,” Noon said, snatching the towel up and waving it like a banner. “I been thinking about concreting this backyard, but the girls love playing in the dirt so much, making mud pies, digging up worms—but excuse me for cutting you off, Jeanie, what were you saying?”

  Jeanie walked out of her yard and the few steps down the buttercup- and honeysuckle-lined alley into Noon’s yard. “I need this big old beautiful shade tree that’s in your yard,” she said as she sat on the steps. “Your nice brown skin can handle the sun. My old sallow coloring turns to red; then I’m burnt but good.”

  “Got to be careful in the sun, for sure, especially when it’s right overhead. I tell Fannie that with her light complexion, even though she gets as golden as a piece of fried chicken when the sun hits her, but too much of anything is no good. I tell Liz that too, even though she’s a little brown, like me, she still got that red hair, means she’s sensitive. I know she’s sensitive, definitely got a sensitive stomach—”

  Jeanie cleared her throat.

  “Lord have mercy, listen at me going on and on, Jeanie. Just tell me to hush if I start talking about those girls anymore.” Noon flung the muddy towel over the wooden fence that separated her house from the alley and stood her line prop straight up as well.

  “I was just saying how Dottie gets used by the system,” Jeanie said as she slid her feet from her sandals and leaned her back against the step above her. “They know she needs a job, raising a daughter by herself, give her a couple of hours of work at that school office, then tell her don’t ask questions, just do as we say do—”

  “That still don’t give her the right to act the way she did.” Noon pushed her remaining clothespins in her apron pocket and sat on the steps with Jeanie. “Then she got the nerve to speak to me the next day, imagine that. ‘Morning, Noon,’ she said like nothing happened, like she had just registered Liz like she could have done.”

  “So shouldn’t that tell you something? You can’t totally fault her, Noon. You’ve got to be cognizant of the bigger picture. This system, that white man, ruthless son of a bitch.”

  Noon winced. She hated to hear Jeanie curse. High school teacher, refined-looking woman with her elegant cheekbones and straight back. “This ain’t gonna be another one of your hate-talking sessions, is it, Jeanie?”

  “I got strong reason for being the way I am,” Jeanie said as she shifted on the step. “The things I been through.” She fell silent and stared off into the pink and blue sky.

  Noon looked at Jeanie sitting next to her on the steps, at her creamcolored arms in her sleeveless dress, her straight brown hair that hung under her straw hat in billows around her shoulders. “Now, Jeanie, let’s be truthful, you look as white as the whitest person I ever did see, you could pass for white if you wanted to, I just want to know what’s been done to you that got you in a separate category called ‘the wrongest done to’?”

  Jeanie dug her feet into the yard’s dirt floor. “Breeze off your tree is wonderful.”

  “That it is,” Noon said, looking at Jeanie intently.

  “It’ll make this August heat in the afternoon easier to take, the memory of the breeze. When you take those sheets off the line and stretch them tight over the bed, they’re gonna carry the memory too, keeps the morning breeze with you even late at night, even have traces of that honeysuckle scent in them.” Jeanie paused and adjusted her straw hat lower on her forehead. “I’ve seen and heard things, Noon. Been taken for white, been privy to things because of my complexion.” She fell silent, then started to speak, then pulled her words back and was silent again.

  Noon forced a cough, almost embarrassed that she should have to call Jeanie back to the yard, back from other times and places that she could tell by the deep wrinkles that folded in Jeanie’s brow were not as peaceful as these yards filled with the pink and blue morning air.

  She didn’t have to. The fishman’s loud baritone did as it floated down the alley. “I got porgies, silver trout, butterfish, catfish, bluefish, stripes,” he sang.

  “But is it fresh?” came the response from two or three doors down.

  “My fish, it still wiggles, it still swimming in this bucket, you come see, come see.”

  Noon laughed, grateful for the distraction. Jeanie cleared her throat but didn’t laugh. Noon went into her apron pocket and pulled out a knotted handkerchief. “Over here, fishman,” she said, mocking his strong South Carolina accent. “Let me get a whiff of your fish.”

  “Where you, lady? Oh, there you are. Miss Noon, Miss Mother of my little friend who tells me how much fish I sell.” He walked into the yard half singing, half talking. “She look in my bucket one morning and say, ‘They all be gone by lunch.’ Well, that day I sell out in one hour. Another time she tell me, ‘Long day, Mr. Fishman,’ and that day I don’t think two people buy.”

  Noon gushed as she untied her handkerchief and pulled two quarters from beneath a small roll of dollar bills. “That’s my Fannie, mnh, that’s my chile. Give me six butter, the ones still wiggling.” She laughed again.

  The fishman set his silver bucket on the ground and pulled newspaper from the oversized pocket of his coveralls. “Yeah, I call that girl my friend,” he said as he reached into the pail of ice-covered fish with knuckles where fingers should be. His knuckles were quick and deft, and Noon and Jeanie politely looked away as he dropped the fish in newspaper and wrapped it on an angle. “Either she know what’s in tomorrow, or she put the whammy on me; either way, I stay on that girl’s good side.” He laughed louder as Noon dropped the two quarters in the center of his palm. “The other one is quiet, I bet she be smart, but my friend, that girl something all right. What Mr. Noon feel about having a daughter with the present of sight?”

  “Oh, Herbie”—Noon waved her hand—“he just humors me, said if she can’t tell him what number to play, what good is it?”

  “Now that be a fine present for sure, you and Mr. Noon be rich, yeah?” He motioned his knuckles to his pail and looked at Jeanie. “No fish for you today, Miss Book Lady?”

  “Not today, sir. Later in the week maybe. Just me in my house and I’m an old lady, don’t eat much, no refrigerator—”

  “You welcome to use mine, Jeanie. I’m surprised your refrigerator didn’t come in yet. Didn’t you order it last year?” Noon interrupted her.

  Jeanie nodded. “I’d read in the paper around the time I ordered it that the War Protection Board said to look for the war to be over for at least a year before the household goods were back in ample supply. Even though I’m willing to bet those white folks aren’t waiting as long as us.”

  “Maybe that why I can’t buy no radio, yeah?” the fishman said as he tuned his voice up to sing again. “I got silver trout, catfish, porgies, stripes.” He trilled it as he left the yard.

  “Beautiful voice,” Jeanie said to his back. “Young man missed his calling. Should be in the theater.”

  “Or on a church choir,” Noon said as she stood and shook out her apron. “I got to put this fish on ice until I can get to it to clean it. So excuse me, Jeanie, you welcome to sit, though, sit as long as you like. I need to run a dust mop through the downstairs, then promised Fannie and Liz I’d take them over to that new city pool. Don’t know if I’ll let them get in, though, depends on how clean it looks, and the looks of the other people using it. Can get polio swimming in those dirty pools.”

  “Oh, it’s okay, Noon.” Jeanie sighed her words quietly. “I don’t mean to disrupt your schedule. You run on such an organized schedule.”

  “Now, Jeanie, you know you’re welcome anytime. Anytime, you welcome to come sit over here. If the girls are out here making too much noise, just shoo them on around to the front to play.” Noon had her hand on the doorknob. “Got to get those sleepyheads up. Must be almost seven-thirty, girls don’t budge before eight if I don’t ca
ll them, definitely got sleeping habits of city folk.”

  Noon was inside the door. She let out a long breath. Didn’t really have time or desire for a lesson from Jeanie on the woes of being colored in Philadelphia in 1946. “Should come to church and lean on Jesus,” Noon muttered as she put her fish in the sink. She had more immediate things to concern herself with. Like frying up the butterfish for Herbie, keeping him in a good mood, laughing, so he wouldn’t protest when Friday came and it was time for him to get on that New York–bound train so Liz could stay.

  FIFTEEN

  Herbie did get on that train when Friday came, but he wasn’t laughing as the train whooshed toward New York. Headed to track Ethel down at the club where Big Carl assured him she’d be, so she could sign the papers making Liz his and Noon’s adopted child. Feeling as if fireflies were all through his joints, flickering, making him twitch unexpectedly, no order at all, just jumping and jerking.

  The train was almost empty on this Friday night. A few men in suits, a fat lady with a big straw basket filled with pieces of brightly dyed fabric. An occasional newspaper rustled above the fast clacking of the train. Herbie leaned back against the headrest. This could have been a good car for napping. The lights were low and buzzed with a faded hum. His muscles wouldn’t cooperate, though. He was even blinking more than usual, and yawning, so much that water starting forming in the corner of his eyes. He went into his vest pocket and pulled out his neatly squared handkerchief. Last thing he wanted was for Ethel to think he’d been crying over her. A whole year since she’d busted his heart wide open. He wanted her to think he’d gotten beyond her. He hadn’t, didn’t know that he ever would be, but he was angry too. So he didn’t want to act like a whimpering puppy. He dabbed at his eyes and then looked around the car lest these last-minute Friday night travelers think he was crying too. He fingered his wide-brimmed Dobbs on the seat next to him. The hat was gray and matched his tailor-made suit. The suit gleamed from Noon’s repeated hits with the whisk broom. She had fussed over him so. Made sure his tie was perfectly straight and that his handkerchief peeked through the top of his pocket, clipped his mustache, even got down on her hands and knees and shined his black-and-gray wing tips. He hadn’t been this decked out since his father died the year he and Noon were married. He had protested the expense of these new clothes. But Noon insisted, said they’d cash in one of the bonds left by Herbie’s father. Since he was going to New York on a Friday night, he needed to look the part.

  He tried to think about Ethel to the hum of the faded lights. His thoughts melted before he could see them as pictures. Noon spoiled it for him. Dressing him the way she did. Telling him how sharp he looked, as if he were a little boy. He should have stayed casual the way he’d planned, everyday pants, shirt opened at the collar. He felt overdressed, as if he’d been sent out on an errand by his mother just to impress the shopkeeper. Noon’s prints were all over him. He pictured her fingers curled, going for his neck to straighten his tie. The tie pressed against his windpipe now and made him want to gag. He loosened it. He took off his jacket and folded it over in his lap. He undid his top shirt button. He kicked at his heels and slid his feet from the the confines of the shining wing tips. He begged the fireflies to leave his joints; his muscles settled down to just an occasional twitch. He wet his lips, which were dry. Now he thought about Ethel.

  He’d met Ethel in Albany, Georgia, ten years before. She was no more than seventeen. He, a couple of years older. He’d just left his Mississippi home for the call of the drummer’s life. He loved to lose himself in the beat of smoke-filled blues halls, pretty women, straight gin, hard-living colored folks tougher than any he’d ever met. Gamblers and other hustlers, and sometimes people with soft insides just out to catch the beat and clap a little to tide them over until they could get to church. He’d figured Ethel for the soft type. The first time he heard her sing at Colt’s, the biggest dance hall in the heart of Albany, the stirring that went on inside him, he was sure she must have been singing about Jesus. Must have gotten her songs mixed up between what she sang on the church choir and what she sang out on Saturday nights. But when he listened to the words, once he could get beyond her look, which was more sensual than any he’d seen, she was singing the blues. He was transformed, lifted out of the muck and mire of everyday life by the face and voice of this girl-woman.

  He followed her home one night past the concrete along Albany’s main roads, down a dirt trail to a clump of houses that sat in a cloud of smoke that the residents sent up to keep the mosquitoes at bay. He walked faster to get to her before she disappeared in the cloud. Her walk was easy, uninhibited. Her hips went from side to side in a rhythm that would have lulled him to sleep if he were not a young man. Her head was thrown back. Her faced looked up toward the sky. Her hair was short. Nothing interrupted her face from the God that he was sure must have kissed it to arrange it so. The saucer eyes that drooped, the short nose that crowned the healthy mouth, the fleshy lips, ripe for kissing, or for pushing out those notes that had thrilled him so.

  She was getting closer to the houses in the cloud. He had to say something before she crossed over into the cloud. He cleared his throat. She turned quickly, not with fear or apprehension, almost as if she expected him to be there, but with a quickness.

  “Oh,” he said. He felt so stupid then; he still felt stupid when he thought of it, right here on this New York–bound train. He had just followed her through the night, stealthily like a snake, and all he could say was “Oh.”

  “Oh?” She repeated it with a chuckle. “You better say more than ‘Oh’!” She imitated him again. “I suspect you been following me, and my grandmom keeps her shotgun loaded by the porch door, see, right over there. C’mere.”

  He followed her curled finger motioning toward him. He wasn’t sure what his face looked like, but his knees were buckling for certain. He hated right then that his light complexion couldn’t be covered over with the night.

  “Don’t you see it?” She pointed to the houses in the cloud. “The butt of her gun is leaning right against that windowpane, see it?”

  He squinted and peered and couldn’t see it. He could barely see the house through the cloud of smoke. He nodded, pretending to see it. He was close enough to her to pick up her scent that was like hot chocolate, no, it was cocoa butter, only sweeter, richer. He turned to look at her, and when he did, he saw her saucer eyes all over him. He felt the flood of her eyes burning him her gaze was so hot. She moved to him and kissed him right on his lips. Not a peck, a kiss that gushed. She laughed when she pulled her lips from his.

  “I saw you watching me at Colt’s. You ain’t a cool cat yet. I like that. Your face can’t hide shit.” She laughed again and then smiled right at him. It was a warm smile, the smile a church girl might give. “Uh-oh. Got to go,” she said as she turned quickly and moved toward the cloud. “I think grandmom’s got her gun aimed, don’t you see it, you better duck till I get in and tell her you ain’t one of those cool cats.” Her laughter hung behind her as she faded into the cloud. Her laughter stayed clear.

  He went back to Colt’s night after night after that. Walked her home. Decided he cared for her. Proposed them joining up, putting their sounds together. Her voice to the beat of his drums. She agreed, recruited a piano man, a horn player, then a road tour through southern back streets, corn liquor barn parties, and she’d laugh. Late at night, when she’d allow him in her bed until four in the morning, when she’d ease out, to walk, she’d tell him, “Clears my head to walk.” And she’d laugh. Then he’d met Noon, and he and Ethel did one more tour that ended in Philadelphia, the joy bells, his father’s connections with the railroad, the steady salary of a redcap, found his way back to Florida to make Noon his bride. “You! getting married, Herbie?” Ethel had said, and the laugh.

  Herbie could hear the laugh now on this train, bouncing around in his head. In a little while he might hear it for real. And see her. Touch her. Tell her that was low, low-down dirty the
way she did him. He might even call her a bitch. That would get her for real. He had never called her a bitch before. Even when they were touring in Florida and she got word that her grandmother died, and he wanted her to cry on his shoulders, and he wanted to give her the money so she could skip the rest of the tour and go back home, and she refused him both, told him no man would ever claim her and buy her off. And later that night she went home with the waiter at the club they were doing. He didn’t call her a bitch then. He just got up the next day and found a nice little stable church that turned out to be Noon’s daddy’s church.

  He squirmed in his seat as the train blew a loud whistle. They were almost in New York. He sat up and slipped his shoes back on. He could feel the fireflies coming back. He was starting to panic. Just sign the papers, please, bitch. That’s what he’d do. No overtures, no niceties, no asking for explanations. He’d beat her at her own game. He’d be the cool one this time, the one that didn’t need her this time. The train lurched to a stop.

  People were standing all around him. The woman with the basket of brightly dyed fabrics stood in the aisle, blocking his exit. He wondered what she’d do with the fabric. Make a quilt. They were just pieces all different colors. And now they were falling all over the place as the train backed up and then lurched forward again. She plodded quickly down the aisle trying to pick up the pieces. The suited-down businessmen almost walked over her. Herbie started to walk right over her too. Just stamp the prints of his wing tips on the purple and green and orange cuts of cloth. Then he said, “Damn,” under his breath, and leaned over and walked up and down the aisle until he had retrieved every last colorful piece. He handed them to her as she stood with her hand to her chest trying to catch her breath from the quick, unplanned moves up and down the car.

  She stuffed them in her basket and held one back and extended it to Herbie. “Take this one; it matches your suit.” It was a silver gray piece of fabric, silky on one side, nappy wool on the other.