Tumbling

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “No, thank you, ma’am,” Herbie said as he looked in her face for the first time. She was coal black with clear eyes and dark lips and soft white hair knotted in plaits at either end.

  “Take it, young man, didn’t your mama teach you not to refuse nothing from a old lady, especially when you just done something good for her? Hard luck to do that, old lady like me too close to heaven to be refusing something from.”

  Herbie sighed and took the fabric from her plump hands. “Thank you, ma’am. Can I carry your basket to the platform?”

  She smiled, and her clear eyes crinkled and soft lines surrounded her eyes like the crisscrosses on a road map. “Basket’s light enough to carry, son. Go on and take care of your business on a Friday night in the city.”

  He didn’t argue or insist. He stuffed the fabric square in his pants pocket and stepped out onto the platform through the grandness of Penn Station on a Friday night. And then into the loud lights that made New York City.

  The city blared with lights. Traffic lights honked and car lights screeched, and the neon dripping from everywhere shouted so loud he thought he should muffle his ears. He knew where she’d be. He hopped on a bus to Harlem and went straight there. To the spot they talked about playing when they were much younger, when he still made a living stroking a drum pad. They’d always talked about playing here, Club Eden.

  The air around the club glittered as if it’d been spiked with silver dust. Herbie inched his tongue out into the air just to taste it, a drop of a dream that he’d never have even in his deepest sleep. Not now. Not after he married Noon and promised her father and her five brothers that he would do right by her. Get a respectable job of a God-fearing man. And now too much time had passed even to consider striking a drum pad before a crowd of whiskey-gulping, loud-talking clubgoers. The swing sound of the thirties was quickly becoming passé; bebop was the new sound with its mixed-up beat. This was the closest he would come, a bit of silver dust on the tip of his tongue on the outside of Eden. He straightened his tie and tilted his brim like the cool cats and walked down the steps guarded by thick black iron railing.

  He pushed open the door on bare-backed, small-waisted women and men in suits as sharp as his. Red carpet ran from wall to wall under gold-framed smoked glass mirrors, round tables under low lights, and a square of hardwood floor for jitterbuggers where the spotlight glared and rushed. Large fans whirled and sliced through the laughing air scented with perfumed sweat and cigarette smoke that formed a silver gray cloud that bounced along the ceiling. The band bounced too, as did the hips and shoulders that crowded the square of a dance floor, and Herbie’s heart too as he inched through the laughter to a long bar and leaned in and ordered a straight gin with a beer chaser.

  The bartender was efficient, almost clinical, and lacked the jolly warmth of Big Carl at Royale. Even the clubgoers here were different from Philly’s, lined against the bar, glasses poised like soldiers saluting as they watched the dancers on the hardwood floor. A woman taller than Herbie with hair piled high on top of her head bobbed to the beat, and her whiskey did too as it splashed over the rim of her glass and onto Herbie’s suit coat. She pulled a tissue from her cleavage and handed it to Herbie without a look, not an “excuse me, please” or “beg your pardon,” just a brisk hand with the tissue and a slow walk away. Herbie shook his head and sopped the liquid with the tissue. The band took a break. The Victrola spun out slow songs. The laughter that was hard went soft as bodies swayed on the hardwood square.

  Herbie watched the band walk to the side of the club and down a dark, narrow hallway. Their dressing rooms or closets pretending to be dressing rooms would be through that hallway. Ethel’s too. He wanted to get to her to hand her the legal papers concerning Liz before she did her set. But a tall, wide bouncer kept guard and slapped hands with the band members as they turned the corner into the darkness. Herbie reasoned that there must also be a door that led into a side alley. In all his time working clubs, the smallest, dowdiest clubs still had a door that led to an alley or side street for the quick getaways that sometimes accompanied the lifestyle. He drained his beer and stepped through the breeze of the whirring fans back out into the silver dust–spiked air.

  He walked around to the side alley. The air was much blacker here. He almost missed a thick wooden door painted black. His heart jumped as he turned the knob. It was sealed tight. He leaned his back against the door, suddenly weak from the prospect of finding her on the other side. He figured that he’d just have to settle for waiting for her to do her set. Then he’d try to see her afterward, hand her the papers, tell her when she had to appear in court. Scowl at her, he reminded himself; call her a bitch and leave her standing with her mouth hanging. He got comfortable with the thought as he leaned up against the door in this black alley that was remarkably quiet considering all that was going on in Eden. It was so quiet that he could hear the click of fan blades whirring the air somewhere inside. He followed the sound deeper into the alley, and right there, just above his head, he saw curtains pushing against an open window. He picked up a beige-colored pebble and threw it into the window and poised himself to duck should anyone come investigate. Nothing. He tossed another one; still nothing. Nobody home, he said to himself, time for Herbie to get in and find Ethel when her public’s not around.

  He lifted himself onto the low ledge. Peeling wood scraped his palms. He would have dropped right then and dusted his hands and tried again, but the curtain swung out, and with it the unmistakable scent—cocoa butter mixed with fine French perfume. Jackpot. No having to sneak through here, down the dark hallway, dodging and peeping until he found her room. This was her room. Just a leg swing away and a push through the curtains. After a year of plotting to leave Noon, and deciding to stay for Fannie’s sake, and dreaming about Ethel, crying over her, cursing her in his head, he was here, one leg in, now the other. He was standing here in her dressing room.

  It was a small room. A narrow bed strewn with dresses, mostly red and black, or red and gold, or red and white. The red predominated. A desk lined up with nail polishes, lipsticks, makeup brushes, perfumes. A large oval mirror with looping etchings around propped against the back of the desk turned the desk into a dresser. A calendar taped to the bottom of the mirror, the flip-through kind of calendar. Inked markings all over the month marked “August”: hastily written notes, numbers, circles, check marks. Herbie peeled the back of the calendar from the mirror and flipped through it. All the months looked as full as August. He tried to tape the calendar back to the mirror, but it wouldn’t stick. He tried to lean it against the mirror, but it kept falling. He picked it up to fan out the pages as a base to lean it on and noticed a sleeve in the cardboard at the back. He ran his thumb through the sleeve and pulled out a photo. A photo of two little girls. At first he thought it was Ethel and her sister when they were children. But he looked closer. It was Fannie and Liz. It was Easter Sunday. He could tell because Fannie was carrying the black patent leather pocketbook that he had picked out for her. It had a big bunny rabbit carved on the front. She had lost it that very Sunday. In the picture she was smiling big, showing her gums. She had her arm around Liz, who wasn’t smiling. They had obviously posed for the picture.

  “Now where the hell did she get this?” Herbie said out loud. He turned quickly to look around. It almost felt as if someone were in the room with him. Just the fan blades clicking. Somebody would think she really cared about Liz the way she got this picture tucked away. I wonder if she been creeping back into Philly spying. He started to take the picture and then decided he didn’t have it in him to be that mean. He stuck it back in the sleeve and tossed the calendar on the dresser-desk. He went into his wallet and pulled out the lawyer’s card. And then dipped into his breast pocket for the folded papers for her to sign. He picked up one of her red lipsticks, and mashed down on the envelope, and wrote, “If you really care, sign these, call this lawyer.” He was just about to write “bitch.” But then the fan blades seemed to get
louder, clickety-clickety, then footsteps just outside the door. He stretched his arm. Tried with everything in him to get to the little black hook on the door to slip it into the hole, to lock the door. Almost but not quite. The door opened with force. Too much force for it to be Ethel. Too much force for it to be anyone he’d be glad to see. Damn. The tall, wide bouncer glared at him, then came at him asking him what was he doing there.

  “Just taking care of some business I got with Ethel.”

  “What kind of business?

  “Personal business.” Herbie couldn’t keep the edge from his voice.

  “Yeah, well, how’d you get in here?” His face was wide as his shoulders, and his mouth was big, like his nose, which was flaring at the ends.

  “Walked in.” Herbie said it as matter-of-factly as he could.

  “Oh, walked in? You one of them smart asses. I been standing out in the hallway I sure as hell ain’t see you walk in.”

  “Look, man,” Herbie said, scanning the room for something he could wield as a weapon should the need arise, “I said I walked in. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll walk on out.”

  “Not yet you’re not. ’Cause I don’t like no yellow niggers like you just appearing in my lady’s dressing room. Now I’m gonna ask you one more time, how did you get in here?”

  “All right, I flew in.”

  “Oh, you got wings, huh, motherfucker?”

  “And a brain, asshole.”

  “I don’t think so; only a dumb ass would get smart with me.”

  “Come on, man.” Herbie starting backing up until he was right at the dresser-desk. “I walked in. How the fuck you think I got in?” He flipped at his lapels and flexed his shoulders.

  “Well, guess how you going out, you smart-assed son of a bitch?” He slapped his mountain of a fist into his palm and moved toward Herbie.

  “After you, motherfucker.” Herbie said it loud as he called on every molecule of strength he ever had or hoped to have and balled it in his fist and swung high and landed it square across the wide-open target of the bouncer’s jaw.

  He watched the bouncer stagger, as if he were getting to ready to fall; he prayed for him to fall. That had been his best shot. His knuckles were sore and bruised. The bouncer was shaking his head back and forth; he wasn’t staggering, he wasn’t going to fall; he was breathing fire from his nose and his mouth. Herbie balled his fists again, ready to summon what strength was left. He saw the bouncer’s fist coming at him. He ducked. The punch went inches over his head and sounded like the crack of a bullet. He forced his sore knuckles into the bouncer’s gut, which was hard as Herbie’s knuckles.

  “You no-good yellow bastard,” he said, bending only slightly after Herbie’s fist went into his stomach. “I’m gonna fuck you up for real now. Then when I find out what you doing here, in my lady’s dressing room, and I don’t like the reason, I’m gonna fuck you up again.”

  Herbie was breathing hard and moving his feet fast and bobbing and weaving trying to stay alive. “Where’s your neck, you fathead dunce, you neckless asshole, fuck you, fuck that bitch Ethel too. Tell her I said that too.” His words were spilling fast as his feet were moving.

  “You calling my lady a bitch?”

  “Your lady? She ain’t nobody’s lady. I know ’cause I been with her. She was mine too—”

  Surprisingly he didn’t feel anything when the bouncer’s fist quaked against his head. It was as if all of his senses had shut down except for his hearing. The clickety-clickety of the fan blades, the roar of the air as the bouncer’s fist pushed through it. His skin splitting just above his eye sounded like a watermelon when the first cut opens it wide. He could even hear the cracking sound his head made as it met the floor, and then the tap-tap-tap of his eyelids closing shut.

  He just lay there when he came to. One eye looked out into grayness, the other into a fuzzy haze. Too much pressure on his head. As if sandbags used to hold a cresting river at bay were holding his head down, keeping him from moving. His first instinct was to jerk forward, look around, determine where he was. He couldn’t. Not until he could move the sandbags from his head.

  He was on a bed, he could tell that. He could feel the mattress pushing against his back. He moved his fingers along his sides, up to his head; his hand touched his lip, what was his lip doing so far from his face? Farther along he moved his hand until it came to his eye, the one that stared into grayness. Covering of some kind. Then on up to his head. No blood on his head from what he could tell, no wrappings like the one over his eye, just the sandbags that he couldn’t feel but knew must be there. His thinking was blurred like his vision. All he was sure of was that he had gotten his ass kicked. Hadn’t been beat like this since he was fourteen, down home. He had the same feeling then coming too, numb confusion, angry humiliation, supplications to Jesus Christ that the fathead wouldn’t come back until he could pull himself together and locate a two-by-four, or switchblade, or good solid baseball bat. Something to even the odds a little. He was praying that prayer now.

  He heard a door open and braced himself. The footsteps were light, though. The laugh was melodic. The voice vaguely familiar. He was certain only of one thing: It wasn’t Ethel’s voice.

  “You woke, huh, sweetness? Well, you messed around and got your head good and caved in.”

  Herbie struggled to speak but could only push the word “Where?” through his swollen mouth.

  “Where are you? That’s what you trying to ask me, handsome? Least you used to be handsome before you got beat up. You in Miss Ethel’s dressing room, in her bed. Now ain’t that right where you was trying to get to? Ain’t that what caused that Grand Canyon right over your eye?”

  “No!” He said it so emphatically he almost sat up. He tried to focus through the blur of his uncovered eye to see the woman he was talking to. He only saw streams of light. “It can’t be daylight,” he groaned.

  “Yeah, sweetness, you been stretched out on Miss Ethel’s bed all night into today. And she ain’t been in it. Now isn’t that a cruel turn of fate?”

  “Where’s she?” he managed to ask.

  “Gone, left this morning.”

  “I left papers.” Herbie half moaned, half spoke. “On the desk.”

  “Papers? She got those. She love that little girl. Both of ’em. Got her own lawyer on it too. Miss Ethel hit the big time. Keeps her people on retainer.”

  “Who are you?” he asked as he struggled to remember where he’d heard that voice.

  “You mean you been listening to me go on and on and you don’t even know who I am? I guess that one eye ain’t working yet, huh, sugar? Maybe I should flip that persistent body of yours on your stomach and mash my magic fingers up and down your spine, maybe then you remember me. Huh, Papa? Huh, Mr. Sad-Eyed Married Man.”

  He thought that he must be dreaming or delirious; this couldn’t be the woman from Gert’s, the woman whose name he never knew, and when he went back to try to find her under that tent, nobody knew her either. And since the smoky haze from the barbecue had kept her face in a kind of cloud that night, all he could describe were her lips. But that voice, the way she said, “Papa.” That was the voice for sure. He blinked several times to try to clear the vision in his uncovered eye. He managed to lift his hand to the covered eye.

  “Don’t touch that, baby,” she said quickly. “Nasty gash right over your eye needs to stay covered. Lucky for you I found that strip of material in your pocket. Club ain’t want to even offer you a piece of toilet paper the way you broke and entered. Yeah, sweetness, I been all through your pockets, even found the rubbers in your wallet. You was planning on a hot night. I took out a dollar to pay for the whiskey that I had to use to clean that cut. Still a corner left in the shot glass, you want it? Guess you got one hell of a headache.”

  She sat on the bed and lifted Herbie’s head and put it in her lap. His uncovered eye was starting to focus, but now her face was too close to his to see. She was lifting the covering and peering into his o
ther eye. He could see the pores in her brown skin exaggerated like a doctor’s skin during an eye exam. Her breath was warm and soothing.

  “You’ll live, Papa.”

  She sat back, and he could see bits and pieces of her through the blur. Her hair was tied down with a scarf filled with swirls of color. Bright colors. Yellows and purples and hot pinks. He couldn’t look at the colors for long and had to shut his uncovered eye.

  “That is, I think you’ll live, long as you let Miss Ethel be. Come on, Mr. Married Man, let me help you up. I got to get to my other job, and with Miss Ethel gone, leaving you here alone will be like leaving a mouse in a trap for my hungry cat. Ever tell you ’bout my cat, course not, last time I saw you was itching so to get to Miss Ethel’s dressing room, wouldn’t hardly settle down for me to massage your back. Well, my cat’s name is Liver, cat likes onions, and I love liver and onions, so I named him Liver. Anyhow, good cat, ain’t seen a mouse since I had him. I feed him his onions once a day. Fried with catsup and salt. Well, awhile back, he’d just finished eating, I’m sitting with him in my lap pulling at his fur, gently. So first he nestles his head, kinda like the way you trying to nestle your head, but then, out of nowhere, he turns around and bites a chunk out of my arm. Bite was so bad I had to keep it wrapped in cloths soaked in witch hazel for a solid week. Now what made Liver do that? Probably the same thing that made Miss Ethel tell Chip, that’s the big guy that took you out last night, imagine that, big as he is got the nerve to have a name like Chip. Anyhow, same thing that made Miss Ethel tell Chip to come in here and kick your butt. Just don’t want you pulling on her fur no more.”

  Herbie sat up with force. He forgot all about the throbbing in his head and stood and stomped his feet and swiped at the air with his fists. “You ain’t saying she sent that big, dumb motherfucker in here. You better not be saying that, or I’m a—”