Atlanta Noir

by Tayari Jones

  But as the gods would have it, I would see that anthropoid bitch again. Ha! I am nothing if not a centurion in an army of good. She would pay for her falsity, for none are more false than those who pretend to do good. I waited for her, waited for her through the blackest hour of the night passing into the dreariness of dawn. And there she came. On all fours, as it were. I bagged her head. Oh, how she did fight! Kicking and scratching, and screaming such vexations that my ears hurt. In that neighborhood, such commotion draws no attention. Good twine held her and I stuffed her under the hood of the Beetle. Ho-HA! The little car shook with her struggling in the trunk. It took effort, but the strength of the gods were, as they are always, with me.

  Kill you? Now I scoff! I have told you how I am a merciful man. But no. You shall keep company with the rats and the squirrels and all the dark shadows that creep and crawl in this old turret. That is how I am directed. The sweet little voice always in my ear. What does she say? You heard it rightly. Evermore, is what she says. Selah.

  Caramel

  by Tayari Jones

  Cascade Heights

  On the day before Thanksgiving, Angie bought a skimpy strand of lights and strung it over the front door, asking why everything had to be so goddamn pitiful all the goddamn time. In my opinion, the lights with the lazy on-and-off only made the place more dreary and actually gave me a headache.

  Last week a fight broke out in the lobby, so I grabbed a magazine and sheltered myself behind the desk. When I came up for air, the lights weren’t working anymore and I just let them hang there, dead. No one complained. This job isn’t a Secret Santa type of establishment. When Angie brought up the possibility, I cut her off: “The secret is that there’s no Santa.” Like everyone who doesn’t have family, I hate Christmas like the devil hates holy water on the rocks.

  All this took place at the LPF, a motel right off I-285, between Campbellton Road and the airport. When I was coming up it was called the Mark 6, but now it has new management, a new name, and a new sign out front with LPF tricked out in cursive like a rich lady’s monogram. It’s an inside joke that there are three types of hotels—tourist hotels, business hotels, and LPFs—which stands for Local People Fucking. The LPF isn’t an hourly place because the blue laws in the state of Georgia don’t permit that, just like they don’t permit you to buy alcohol on Sundays, though they can’t stop you from drinking it on the Lord’s day. Underneath the monogram, the sign promises $49 a night because we know that nobody will stay here longer than a couple hours and that makes it a fair deal for everyone. It’s a good business. I should know. The same room can be rented out three times in one day, adding up to $150 a night, same as the Peachtree Plaza downtown.

  I’ve been here too long. For two years I’ve sat behind bulletproof glass, handling stolen credit cards and sticky dollar bills. But I always say working behind the counter of an LPF sure beats working on your back in one of the grimy rooms.

  Not that I’m judging the horizontal occupation. Angie, the one with all the holiday spirit, earns her money like that and we are best friends. She and I were Mutt and Jeff when we were little and stayed with the same foster mother way out in Jonesboro. She gave me a nickname, Bluebuttons, because of my winter coat. We lost touch after my mother Regina got her act together, sprung me from the suburbs, and carried me back to our small cozy apartment where the sheets were always clean.

  Fifteen years later, Angie tripped into the “lobby” of the LPF, pulled in by a white dude who swore up and down that America could be great again. Her back was to me as he handed over a pair of limp twenties and a ten. All I could see was her wig, a riot of curls the color of strawberry jelly. As he led her to the staircase, I saw her profile and recognized her instantly. The hair was new, but her face was the same as the little girl who let me share the bottom bunk because the other one smelled like pee.

  “Angie?” I blurted.

  “Of course it’s me. Who else could it be?”

  After that, my old friend became a regular and I tried to keep room 106 free for her.

  We never really talk about what she does for a living. She calls the guys her boyfriends, and I go along with that, even when I see money exchange hands right there in the lobby. Being a friend means not asking too many questions. For her part, Angie never asks what became of Regina.

  * * *

  On Christmas Eve I got the night off, but I really didn’t have anywhere to go. Holidays in general are a drag, but Christmas is the worst. It’s like the world prints up your account statement and you see exactly how fucked up and lonely your life is. To raise my spirits, Angie invited me to room 106. The room was a little musty, but she tidied it up, making the bed and filling up the ice bucket. On the little particleboard dresser was a fifth of booze. Somehow, a giant pear floated in the belly of the bottle. As I unwrapped the thin plastic cups I found on the back of the toilet, I wondered how the hell the pear made it through the narrow glass bottleneck.

  “My boyfriend gave me this for Christmas,” she said, pouring me a slug. It tasted like someone took a can of fruit cocktail and set it on fire.

  “It looks expensive,” I replied, because it did, and because I knew this would make her smile.

  “I wish he had just given me the money,” Angie said, only pretending to complain. She tuned to V-103. Donny Hathaway sang out “This Christmas” in a very tiny voice. Angie twirled in the middle of the room wearing a green-sequined tube dress; the Santa cap pinned to her pink wig bobbed to the beat. “C’mon, Bluebuttons,” she said, “dance.”

  There are two kinds of people: the ones who get drunk and want to dance and the ones who get drunk and want to cry. I fall into the second category.

  “Oh sweet black baby Jesus,” Angie said, “what’s wrong?”

  And just like that I let it all out, filling her in on everything that had happened since I left foster care holding my mother’s hand. Regina had died three Christmas Eves ago. It hadn’t come as a surprise exactly—anyone using that much heroin wasn’t going to live forever—though I had expected her to last until Christmas Day. But no. On Christmas fucking Eve she took a hot shot somewhere near Bankhead Highway and died with the needle dangling from her arm. If it wasn’t for the Medical Alert bracelet I’d given her, they would probably never have identified her.

  “Blue,” Angie said, “I liked your mother. She was pretty. That’s what I remember.”

  “But wait,” I responded, trying to lighten the mood, “there’s more.” I stood up and snatched open the worn blackout drapes. The view was of a clogged stretch of the perimeter highway lined with billboards, though I only cared about the one sporting the welcoming face of Lerome Johnson. Reverend Romie, the pastor of Rebirth Baptist Church, posed with his wife, both of them looking like real estate agents. Romie wasn’t up there with Creflo Dollar and the late, great Eddie Long, but he was yapping at their heels. His parishioners couldn’t buy him a private jet like Creflo’s people, but Romie had a TV contract and there was coin enough in the collection plate at Rebirth Baptist to pay for a pair of Benzes. His wife was never seen after Labor Day without some kind of fur, even if it was just a fox collar on a wool suit.

  Angie looked out the window. “Don’t tell me ol’ Romie is in this story. Seems like all roads in Atlanta lead back to Romie Johnson or Tyler Perry.”

  “You know black people are serious about their pastors.”

  “Romie wasn’t always a preacher,” Angie said, pouring herself some more brandy. “Before he got saved, he was a pimp. You don’t believe me? He has this sermon about it. Look it up on YouTube. I heard it has over six million views.”

  “I’ve seen it. Doesn’t he say his wife showed him the way?”

  “She must have some good you-know-what.” Angie helped herself to another splash of brandy. “But I can’t lie, I do love me a singing preacher.”

  “You think he looks like me?” I asked her. “Maybe around the eyes?”

  Angie squinted at me and I sat perfectly sti
ll. I could smell her pear-fire breaths.

  I turned so she could check out my profile. “Not my nose, but the shape of my chin?”

  “Sweet baby Jesus!” Angie hooted. “Please don’t sit up here and tell me the Right Reverend is your real daddy! You thinking too small. If you talking crazy, tell people you are the lost bastard baby of President Obama’s first cousin!”

  “Angie. For real. My mama told me. She said they went to Washington High together and he carried her to his senior prom. She was just a freshman, but my grandmother let her go anyway. They went together two years, but when she got pregnant, he vanished.”

  “Trifling ass,” Angie said with real sympathy.

  “I just wish I could have five minutes alone with him. Five minutes.”

  “You sure he’s the one?”

  “Yes. My mother told me his name a long time ago. Used to say he was coming to get us and take us to Detroit.”

  That had been Regina’s story and she’d stuck to it up until she first saw him on TV. This was about five years ago, and she was pretty far gone. My grandma warned me not to let her in the house, but how could I shut the door on my own mama? I gave her what money I had, mostly change I needed for the laundromat. She took it, shamefaced, then she sat on the couch, pretending like she had come over to say hi and watch some TV. This is how I knew she loved me: she cared about my feelings.

  With nervous hands, she flipped through the channels and asked me about school. I told her I made straight A’s which wasn’t true, but she grinned, showing her teeth, dark and crooked. Still, there was real joy in her face. When you love a drug addict, you take what you can get. And that smile was all I got.

  “Well I’ll be a motherfucker,” she said.

  I looked at the TV and saw a large, well-groomed man speaking from the pulpit as the choir rocked behind him. She turned up the volume and closed her eyes as she took in that sweet singing voice. “Honey,” Mama said, “that right there is your daddy.”

  “Well,” Angie said now, “if you want him, you know where to find him every Sunday.”

  This, I knew. I had warmed the pew at Rebirth Baptist six Sundays in row, and on the jumbotron I watched the Good Reverend, glorious in purple robes, sharing the Good News in song. His voice was a rich baritone that filled me with longing. “He puts on a good show,” I admitted. “I’ll give him that much.”

  “So what you want with Romie? You want back–child support? All your pain and suffering? You should get double for that bitch of a foster mother we had.” She lifted her cup and drank a long hot swallow to her own wisdom.

  “No,” I said, “I don’t want money. I mean, if he gave it, I would take it. But really, I want to show him these pictures of my mother.” On the bedspread I laid out two photos. On the first, you could see how beautiful my mother was when I was little. She was seventeen years old, thick-legged with bright eyes. As I rode her hip, we wore homemade floral dresses cut from the same fabric. The other picture told a different story. “This is her close to the end. On Thanksgiving. She looks like she’s already dead.”

  Angie held the picture of my mother’s ravaged face carefully, like she didn’t want to cause more pain. “You can’t tell nobody this, Blue. Romie didn’t get where he is today by being a gentleman. You think you’d be the first person from his past to pop up with your hand sticking out?”

  “What?”

  “I know him. I know Romie. He’s one of my boyfriends. He’s a lot of people’s boyfriend. It’s not like I’m special, but he does call me by my name.”

  “You bring him here?” I said, looking around room 106 like I was going to discover something meaningful

  Angie smirked. “Girl, the Right Reverend can’t be seen in the LPF unless he claims to be trying to convert the wicked.”

  I sat back on the bed feeling stupid. “You must meet him at the W Hotel. Or the Biltmore.”

  “No hotels. He can’t risk it. We go to his house.”

  “We who? You and him we, or we like he lets you bring somebody with you?”

  “Oh no,” Angie said, looking at me. “No ma’am, no way. You’re not going to make me lose the best boyfriend I have. It’s nice over at his house. He lets you take a bath in the whirlpool tub. Tip, everything. The only thing he asks is that you can keep a secret.”

  “One time when I was little,” I told Angie, “my mother took me to Rich’s downtown to ride the Pink Pig. That’s the last time I can remember being happy on Christmas. Back then she used to sign a couple of my birthday presents Daddy. She thought he was coming back. When she realized he was gone for good, that’s when she hit the streets.”

  Angie and I were so close that our heads rested on the same pillow. “Why don’t you just leave it alone? Remember your mama and Rich’s and whatever shiny memories you have. Keep the first picture and throw the other one away. You’re not going to get nothing out of Romie. Trust me, I know him.”

  “I just want to show him the photos.”

  “Why?”

  “I want him to live with it for the rest of his life, just like I have to live with it.”

  “Let it go, Bluebuttons. That’s survival rule #415. Look at me. You got a sad story. I got a sad story. My mama finally got me out of foster care and took me to live with her and my nasty dog of a stepfather. She never did a thing to help me. But do I play that same home movie over in my head on loop?” Angie turned over on her side, facing the window. The talking and the blues gave weight to the air in the room.

  At the edge of my line of vision, Romie Johnson smiled on his billboard. All are welcome, he promised, as the soft face of his wife seemed to agree.

  “Angie, if you could meet your real father, wouldn’t you do it?” Now I turned on my side too, and fitted my body around hers the way we did when we were two little thrown-away children. Christmas Eve at the LPF. It was depressing as hell.

  “Bluebettons,” Angie whispered, “I have a date with Romie just before the new year.”

  * * *

  The Right Reverend Dr. Lerome “Romie” Johnson lives two turns off Cascade Road, and so do I. The difference is that I live in the West End where the primary business establishments are strip clubs, churches, and beauty supply shops. The only modern convenience is the chrome-and-glass Krispy Kreme said to be owned by Hank Aaron. The reverend, on the other hand, lives ten miles west down this same road, but down there subdivisions sit back from the street, protected by wrought-iron gates, softened with twists and curlicues. This is something that never ceases to amaze me about Atlanta: whatever you can think of, there is a black person doing it—probably up and down Cascade Road. Crackheads, CEOs, and everything in between.

  When Angie and I arrived at the gates of Guilford Forest, the guard waved us though like he was expecting us. We looked like two girls home from college in our V-neck sweaters and tight jeans. Safe in my purse were the two pictures of my mother. I opened the bag to take a look, hoping the nice photo would be on top, but instead Regina’s dead eyes stared back at me.

  Angie said, “Before we go in, tell me one more time what you think this is going to accomplish.”

  “I just want him to know what he did to her. She would have gone to college if it wasn’t for him.” And if it wasn’t for me, growing inside her.

  “Remember,” Angie said, “when this goes down, I don’t know nothing. I’m going to act shocked as hell. I might call you a bitch or something, so don’t take it personal.” Then, before she could ring the bell, the Right Reverend threw open the door and stood in the glow of a gorgeous chandelier the size of a Volkswagen. Behind him a Christmas tree stretched up all three stories; glass ornaments cast rainbows across the room.

  After he took a quick look inside our handbags, finding no weapons or cell phones, his face opened into a smile. “Angie,” he said, patting her on the ass. “Looking good.”

  “You ain’t too bad yourself,” she countered with a wink.

  “Who you got with you? Damn, she’s fine. Is
she for me or Deacon Shipp?”

  “She’s all yours,” Angie said.

  I took a cautious step forward. As he looked me over, I took stock of him as well. According to the Internet, he was forty-eight years old, but he managed to look older and younger at the same time. His attire was what they call business casual, but his bald head gleamed like it had been waxed and his salt-and-pepper facial hair was groomed more carefully than my weave. I took my time on his face, searching for some resemblance. I settled on his eyes, round like mine, and his lips, fuller on the bottom than the top, just like mine.

  “Come say hello to Romie,” he said, opening his arms, though he was distracted by a noise on the stairs behind me. I turned to see a man dressed in a tracksuit and an Obama hat, looking like somebody’s uncle. “Sorry to be late, ladies. I was waiting for my medicine to kick in. Ooh,” he added, staring at me, “is that for yours truly? ’Bout time I had me something nice.”

  “Naw, Branford,” the reverend said. “Yours is in the kitchen. This is for me.” He turned and motioned toward the Scarlett O’Hara staircase. “Shall we go upstairs? I’m sorry to be abrupt but Mrs. Johnson will be back in two hours and I don’t like to rush.” He raised his eyebrows and wet his lips. Somewhere in the belly of the huge house, I could hear Angie giggling. Her voice was light, like that of a little girl.

  The reverend took me by the hand and led me to a white-carpeted bedroom. The furniture was old-fashioned, maybe antique. Cherrywood everything.

  He held my small cold hand in his large hot one. “Are you nervous? Do you watch me on TV?”

  “Sometimes,” I whispered. I couldn’t take my eyes off the large four-poster bed in the center of room.