The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  After the community center cleared out, Geoff told her he needed to stop by the place of one of his classmates, to get notes from that week’s lectures. Maybe Zulu could drive her to pick up the baby, and Zulu chimed in, saying it was no trouble. Anything to help his brother. The two men exchanged a soul shake.

  At her mother-in-law’s house, Belle told Zulu to wait in the car. No, she didn’t need help with the stroller. But when she emerged with Lydia, he was standing outside the car with the passenger door open. Then, at the apartment, she told him she was fine. She was safe, but as she was putting Lydia down in her room, Belle heard Aretha singing. He had put a record on the turntable, and she wondered, who had raised this man? Where had Zulu learned to go searching through folks’ homes, doing whatever he wanted?

  Coming out of her bedroom, she yawned widely. She stretched her arms, but Zulu asked, would it be too much trouble for her to warm him up some food? He was always so hungry after the weekly community meetings. Something about talking in front of people took all his energy, and when he went home, sometimes he ate two or three plates.

  “You sound like a preacher,” she said. “Back home, our Elder follows folks after church into the parking lot. My mama always runs from him, ’cause she said she can’t afford to be killing as many chickens as that man likes to eat on Sunday.”

  She laughed, hoping Zulu would take the hint, but he swayed to the music. He followed her to the kitchen as she prepared his meal. She made sure to put a huge portion into the baking pan: she didn’t want him asking for seconds. She sprinkled water over the food before placing it into the oven to heat, and thought about the three women that he lived with. Did only one do the cooking or did they take turns? And how did the sleeping arrangement work? She was so curious, but it would be rude to ask.

  Zulu leaned against the refrigerator, smiling. “Sister, do you know why I changed my name?”

  “I didn’t know you had changed it. I thought your mama named you that.”

  “Oh no! My slave first name was Tyrone, but I changed that last year. Now, I’m King Shaka Zulu Harris.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “Because now I’m a warrior fighting for the revolution! ‘We shall heal our wounds, collect our dead and continue fighting.’ That’s Chairman Mao. Heavy, ain’t it, sister?”

  “I thought he was Chinese.”

  “He is.”

  “But isn’t the man you’re named for African?”

  Zulu nodded solemnly. “Exactly. This is a global fight. You getting it now, sister. Right on.”

  When his food was done warming. Belle sat at the kitchen table with him as he ate. Then she sat with him on the couch, listening to Aretha sing the same side of an album seven times. They talked about nothing in particular. By midnight, a dangerous comfort had sneaked up on Belle. That she could sit with a man other than her husband and feel so at peace frightened her.

  She sat up, telling him she was real tired and her baby liked to wake at dawn. But at the door, Zulu lingered, and right when Belle was going to throw another hint, he told her he hadn’t eaten cooking like hers since his mother had passed. She had been from the south, too. Alabama, and she’d had the same sweet ways.

  Belle leaned against the doorway. She couldn’t let a man tell her about such a great loss and immediately throw him out of her house. That wouldn’t be right.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss. And you know you’re surely welcome to come back. Anytime.”

  “Thank you again, my dear sister,” Zulu said.

  He kissed Belle’s cheek and left; as she closed the door after him, she trembled. When she finally lay down, it was two in the morning, and her husband had not returned home, and when light hit, he wasn’t there, either.

  Geoff didn’t come back home until the next evening, and when she asked where he’d been, he told her he’d stayed over at Zulu’s apartment on the couch. Thinking of how she’d lounged on her own sofa with Zulu, talking and laughing, she didn’t confront her husband, or ask what had he been doing that necessitated his lying.

  * * *

  At the community center bazaar, Belle bought bolts of African cloth in tones of red, black, and green, and ran up minidresses on her sewing machine. And on her wash day, she decided not to straighten her hair after it dried. She couldn’t stop touching it. It pleased her, how it sprang back from her fingers, and when Zulu saw her at the Wednesday meeting, his eyes widened. He showered her with compliments, praising her decision to no longer oppress her hair. He told her she’d already been a beautiful woman, but now she was a heart-stopper.

  But Geoff said nothing about Belle’s new dresses or her hairstyle. Soon, he stopped coming home after the Wednesday meetings, and then he stopped coming home several times a week. He claimed he was studying late at the library. He didn’t want to wake her, so he was sleeping on Zulu’s couch. When she assured him that it was all right to wake her—that she could hold his dinner—Geoff told her, no, but thank you. That was very kind of her. His cold politeness troubled her. Her husband always had been so warm, a fire she could stand next to.

  The first night Geoff hadn’t come home—her husband’s first lie—Belle’s guilt over sitting with Zulu had pushed her intuition into the road. Belle’s mother would have told her she knew better. That when she’d opened her door and let Zulu in, she was allowing the Devil into the apartment.

  But after several weeks of Geoff’s lies, the truth sidled up to Belle: her husband not only was staying out nights. He was seeing someone else, for he no longer reached for her when he was home. This was the part of marriage that Belle hadn’t been prepared for, despite what she’d seen back home. She’d convinced herself infidelity was only part of country living, brought on by boredom and old-fashioned women who didn’t stand up for themselves. Even when the women in her small town threw hot grits on their husbands in retribution for cheating, that wasn’t a prelude to leaving. That was simply an act of frustration—a sense of rage—that their lives would not change. Now Belle was becoming familiar with that infuriation. She and Geoff weren’t playing house anymore. This was real. Even in the concrete strangeness of her new home, she couldn’t pretend that she had other plans waiting around the corner.

  She wondered who her husband was spending his time with. Maybe a girl who’d never had children. Who didn’t have stretch marks on her belly and the sides of her hips. Whose breasts didn’t tilt down, after a year’s worth of nursing. And at the next community meeting, she watched her husband with Evelyn. His warm laughter as he threw back his head.

  One rare night, Geoff came home late after a meeting. When he found her with Zulu at the kitchen table, he didn’t complain. He hailed his friend with the usual handshake. Belle put his plate on the table beside his friend’s, but there were no thanks, and when Geoff finished eating, he left his plate on the table, rose, and went to the bedroom.

  “Well, I guess it’s time to go,” Zulu said. “Thank you again for the wonderful meal, my dear sister.”

  There was no cheek kiss at the door.

  In the kitchen Belle wiggled her fingers in the dishwater, thinking of how, if this had been another night, Zulu would have kept her company while she cleaned up the kitchen, and then sat some more on the couch. And Geoff didn’t even seem to notice Zulu was attracted to her. That he appreciated Belle, even if her own husband didn’t.

  She put off going into the bedroom. To lie down next to Geoff, who had turned into a stranger, but when she thought about it, she realized she had never really known him to begin with. There had been only a few months of going steady before Geoff had gotten her pregnant and they’d gone down to her hometown courthouse to marry. What had she known then? But she had to lie down, sooner or later, and when she did, Geoff reached for her, wanting. Their rhythms were off and she lay there underneath him, unenthusiastic. Waiting for him to finish.

  In the morning, she rose and made breakfast and coffee. When Geoff followed the smell of bacon into the kitchen,
she told him he needed to leave the apartment for good. Maybe he could stay with Zulu, like he always did.

  * * *

  Belle stopped showing up to community meetings. She was too embarrassed, watching her husband at Evelyn’s side. And she didn’t want Zulu’s three common-law wives tossing their cloth-wrapped heads in her direction. Throwing her triumphant looks, because Belle had thought she’d had a man to herself. But see there? She was no different. And if Zulu’s women had to get with the ways of Africa, so did Belle.

  For a week, she waited for her husband to come back, begging. That was the ritual, down where she was from. When a man stepped out on his wife, and she discovered his indiscretion—when grits had been thrown or the tires of his pickup slashed—there always was a husband’s contrition. And then, after the news had traveled through the Black part of town, there was the Sunday where the reunited couple would attend church, and the wife’s triumphant look: what God had joined, let no hussy wearing bright lipstick and a tight-ass dress tear asunder. For it was always the woman’s fault in Belle’s hometown. Nobody really blamed the man; he was part of the weaker sex, one that couldn’t control its urges.

  So Belle waited, but Geoff did not return. And during those days, Zulu came by, knocking, even on days that weren’t Wednesday. She only spoke to him through the door, her face resting against the wood. She was tired, she told Zulu. She didn’t feel like company.

  Another week passed, and she called her mother. “I might come home to visit. Would that be all right?”

  “Girl, you know I want to see y’all! Come on if you coming.”

  “It’s just gone be me and Lydia.”

  “What about Geoff?”

  “He can’t take off from school. You know, with studying and everything . . .” Belle’s voice trailed. She’d never considered having this conversation. She was making things up as she went along.

  “Belle, what-all’s going on up there?”

  “Nothing. I just miss y’all. I . . . I miss home.”

  “Uh-huh.” Her mother paused. “Then you come on home, baby. You know you surely welcome.”

  The next afternoon, Belle dressed in the clothes she used to wear, before she’d been trying to recapture her husband’s attention. One of her dresses from high school that came four inches below the knee. She washed and pressed her hair, which had grown down to her shoulders, because she didn’t want to be a hypocrite. This was the way women in Chicasetta wore their hair. She had her own style of dressing, and it definitely wasn’t anybody’s dashiki, but she left off the hat and gloves. It was still summer; she didn’t want to look ridiculous.

  She left the baby with Diane and walked the several blocks to Evelyn Dawson’s, and by the time she tapped on Evelyn’s front door, she had blisters on the back of her heels. She told herself she shouldn’t be ashamed of herself. She was only going to talk to the person who was trying to break up her family, woman to woman. Belle told herself she was doing this for Lydia, so her child could grow up with a father in the house.

  She didn’t have to search the neighborhood for Evelyn. She lived on the same block as the community center, in a two-story dwelling with a large covered porch and concrete steps bordered by short brick pillars. There were flowers everywhere, and Belle’s heart drained to see a vegetable patch in a corner of the small yard. She recognized tomatoes and a basil plant.

  Evelyn didn’t act surprised to see her. She asked Belle inside and offered coffee or tea, but Belle requested water. Evelyn told her she knew why she was here, but she didn’t mind the visit.

  “I don’t know what Geoff has told you about me—”

  “Not much,” Evelyn said. “And I haven’t asked.”

  “All right. I’ll tell you myself. I’m from a little town in Georgia called Chicasetta. And where I’m from, we talk straight. So I’m going to ask you, is this thing you got going on with my husband serious?”

  Evelyn smiled. “Define ‘serious.’”

  “Are y’all in love? Do y’all want to get married? After he and I divorce, I mean?”

  Evelyn reached to a side table. She picked up a pack of cigarettes and shook two out, halfway. When she offered one, Belle waved her hand. No thank you, and the woman lit the other cigarette. Evelyn wasn’t nervous or stalling for time, only thoughtful, as she blew smoke.

  “Marriage is a convention of the establishment,” she said.

  “What’s that mean?” Belle asked.

  “It means that I don’t need a label to justify what I feel or what I’m doing. I care for Geoff, and I’m pretty sure he cares for me. But marriage is a white man’s concept.”

  “Not when you have a baby.”

  “Look around, Belle.”

  So this woman knew her name. She wondered who had mentioned it, her husband or Zulu?

  “There are plenty sisters in this neighborhood with babies and they aren’t married.”

  “And they’re not getting their bills paid, either,” Belle said.

  “That’s how you define happiness? With money? Then you should be happy already. From what I know of Geoff, he’s taking care of his responsibilities.”

  It was true. He had waited until Belle had gone to the grocery store and placed the monthly stipend his parents gave him on the kitchen table. When she checked inside, he hadn’t taken anything for himself.

  This conversation wasn’t going the way Belle had planned. Evelyn didn’t have one bit of embarrassment. Nor was she trying to stake a claim on Geoff because of love or another child. Instead Evelyn was speaking of Belle’s husband from familiarity, when she knew nothing of what it meant to have a man’s child inside you, to know that his seed and blood caused every bit of joy and heartache you were feeling right down to the moment when his baby split you wide open and you couldn’t walk properly for weeks. When you were worried about pissing yourself, but still had to get out of bed to feed that man’s progeny.

  Belle put down her water glass. She smoothed her dress; it wasn’t store-bought, but it was one of her favorites. A baby-blue cotton with tiny navy flowers. Her grandmother had made the dress for her, without taking any measurements. And by hand, too. Not a stitch had been sewn on a machine.

  “I guess that’s it, then,” Belle said. “I didn’t come to fight. But I can’t share a man, neither. I’ll cry, I know. I’ve shed a few tears already, but I have a baby to see about, so I can’t cry but for so long.”

  Evelyn stubbed out her cigarette. “I didn’t mean to cause you pain, sister.”

  “Oh, I don’t blame you. Geoff’s the one I married. But he’s pretty charming when he wants to be. I guess you know that.”

  “He certainly is.”

  “All that poetry he recites!” Belle laughed. At least she had her memories.

  “Oh, we don’t talk much about that. We don’t have time for frivolities. It’s all about the movement around here. About the revolution coming. Geoff’s a pretty serious man, and he has so many great ideas. He just needs somebody to listen.”

  Belle stood, holding out her hand. She’d never performed a handshake before, but she made sure her grip was firm. She told Evelyn, thank you for the hospitality.

  * * *

  The next evening was the Wednesday meeting at the community center. Belle dressed Lydia in a romper and pulled on a plain shift and flat shoes. Nothing fancy, because she wasn’t going to put forth too much effort. She pushed the carriage up the sidewalk and waved at folks in the neighborhood. She didn’t know most of their names, but she wanted to be seen. She wanted them to carry the news that she wasn’t crying. She was strong and with her baby girl.

  In the community center, she saw Evelyn and Zulu standing with her husband. She didn’t have to call his name because the baby did that for her. “Dada,” she cried, and waved her hands. Zulu and Evelyn stepped in front, a shield as in ancient times, but Belle pushed the stroller toward them.

  She told them this was between two married folks, and she didn’t want no trouble. Belle
didn’t care that she sounded country; her temper was traveling.

  Zulu stepped aside, leaving Evelyn to hold the field. The woman smiled, as if she knew the outcome of this scene. She was that sure of another woman’s husband, and Belle gave a second warning.

  “Evelyn, what I say? This ain’t none of your business. But now, if you want to cut a jig, I can cut one right on with you.”

  A crowd had formed to watch. Some weren’t even regular attendees of the meeting, but they’d come off the street because this was a new scene to them. There were used to the police getting rowdy and sometimes a brother beating on a sister and having to be pulled off, but they’d never seen a tiny woman with a very big voice getting her husband told. This was something else altogether. This was out of sight. Right on.

  “Geoff, I know we young,” Belle said. “And I know we both tired. But I’m the one taking care of this baby, and you the one wanted her. You the one wanted to get married, too.”

  There was clapping and cosigning from women in the crowd, even Zulu’s wives. Go ’head, sister, they all said. Tell that brother how you feel.

  Geoff stepped toward her, whispering, “Woman, do we have to do this here?”

  Her tone was sarcastic. “Yes, man. We gone do this right here, ’cause you been messing ’round with her.” Belle pointed in the direction of Evelyn, whose amused dispassion had flown; she was so alarmed her eyes were popping. “And it ain’t no secret, neither. Everybody here knows it. So I’ma say what I came here to say, and then I’ma go. You see this baby in this stroller, Geoff? You keep on acting a fool and my baby and me going home to Georgia. ’Cause I’m not staying here without a husband. And I ain’t sharing a man. I came to the City for you, and if you don’t want me no more, I’ma leave you here.”

  Geoff spoke then, but not to his wife. He touched Evelyn’s arm and told her he needed to return to his family. He had responsibilities, but he hadn’t meant to do her wrong. Gosh, he was sorry, he called, as Evelyn strode away. Then he walked to a folding chair and sat down, hanging his head. A few of the men came over to him and patted his shoulder. Damn, brother, they told him. Your wife sure is loud.