Glorious

by Bernice L. McFadden

  Colin reached up, dug his fingers into his wooly hair, and gave his scalp a good scratching; the action normally helped to clear his mind, but on that day his thoughts were like bricks and the weight was bringing on a migraine.

  And then there was that woman, his wife’s friend. He’d met her just twice. The first time Easter came blustering into the apartment, Rain behind her, they were giggling like schoolgirls. Colin was down the hall in the bathroom, heard Easter’s jubilant laughter echoed by that of a stranger. As he reached for the doorknob, he heard the stranger say, “You remember how to do it, girl? Lemme see.”

  When he walked into the room, Easter’s back was to him and she had her skirt hiked up so high he could see her bloomers. Her legs were flapping like wings. Rain looked up at him and smiled. “Well, hello.”

  Easter swung around and the hem of the skirt fell from her hands. “Hi,” she stammered, her tone filled with disappointment. She said nothing else.

  Colin looked at Rain, extended his hand, and said “Hello, I’m Colin Gibbs, Easter’s husband.”

  She took his hand in hers and said simply, “Rain.”

  “Oh, I don’t know where my mind is.” Easter brushed at her skirt and asked, “Baby, what are you doing home?”

  “It’s my day off,” Colin reminded her without pulling his eyes from Rain’s smiling face. “Rain? Oh yes, Easter has spoken of you. So nice to finally meet you.”

  Her hand was warm, her grip strong.

  “Same here.”

  “Can I get you something to drink? A Coca-Cola?”

  “Sure, thanks.” Rain crossed her legs.

  Easter stood stupidly by, not knowing what to do or say. Colin gave her a passing glance as he used his teeth to pry the cap from the bottle and then handed it to Rain.

  “Are you visiting?”

  Rain huffed, “Something like that.”

  Colin watched as Rain tilted the bottle to her mouth and drank. She wore a black scarf wound loosely around her neck, and he was sorry for the obstruction, for some reason he wanted to see her throat.

  “Oh?” Colin sat down in the chair opposite the sofa. “Easter didn’t say you were coming to town.”

  “She didn’t know.”

  “She saw me … us on the street last week,” Easter spouted as she moved to the sofa and sank down beside Rain. “She didn’t even know I was living in Harlem.”

  Colin ignored her. “Where are you staying?”

  “With a friend on Edgecombe Avenue.”

  “Sugar Hill?” Colin made a face. He didn’t know of any Negroes living up there. “Fan-cy,” he added.

  “Her friend is a writer,” Easter spoke rapidly. “Rain is going to show her some of my stories.”

  Colin looked at Easter. “For what?”

  “To see if maybe she can get them published,” Rain said, and set the empty bottle down onto the table.

  A look of surprise passed across Colin’s face. This was news to him. Easter had never mentioned a word about publishing her stories. As far as he was concerned it was a pastime, like knitting or needlepoint. He looked at his wife and she avoided his gaze.

  Colin shook these thoughts from his head. He had to stay focused on what needed to be done in the here and now. He rose, straightened his pant legs, and headed toward the UNIA headquarters on 135th Street. He’d speak with Marcus Garvey personally; he’d explain his situation. Garvey was an intelligent man; he knew the hardships his brethren faced. He’d give him his money back, Colin was sure of it.

  CHAPTER 14

  Number 409 Edgecombe Avenue sat south of 155th Street. The building had been designed by Schwartz and Gross and climbed thirteen stories into the sky. The imposing red-brown brick structure was one of the most desirable addresses in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem. The only colored people who came and went from 409 were nannies, cooks, butlers, maids, and lift operators.

  After a thorough tour of the penthouse, which was so massive that it enclosed twenty-one servants’ rooms, Meredith Tomas had paid a year’s worth of rent, signed the lease, and pocketed the keys.

  “I’m sure you and Mr. Tomas will be very happy here,” Art Ball, the superintendent, had announced with feigned sincerity. As far as he was concerned the climate in Harlem was changing for the worse. South of 155th Street had been infested with coons and monkeys who were gradually swarming north and no doubt one day soon would invade his beloved 409, bringing with them their stench and jungle bunny ways, and he would have no choice but to leave, because nothing could make him answer to a nigger, no less an entire apartment building filled with them.

  He’d already begun making inquiries about positions on the elegant and staunchly white Lower East Side.

  And so it was no surprise to Art Ball when on that blustery October morning his prediction became horribly true and Meredith MacDougal Tomas walked into 409 Edgecombe linked arm in arm with her bronze-colored Cuban husband, Eduardo.

  Meredith Tomas, the only child of Tabitha and Conrad MacDougal, was born and raised in Michigan. Her father had made his fortune in real estate. The family lived in a sprawling mansion on Iroquois in Detroit’s Indian Village. Edsel Ford, son of the auto baron Henry Ford, lived just two houses away with his wife Eleanor and their children.

  Meredith attributed her love of everything African to Edsel, who traveled to the continent several times and became an enthusiastic collector of its artifacts.

  “Something stirred in me the first time Edsel let me hold a Senegalese fertility mask,” Meredith would purr whenever she told the story. “And I’ve been smitten ever since.”

  Meredith met her husband Eduardo at a cocktail party at the exclusive Grosse Pointe Yacht Club. She’d mistaken the tall, dark, and excruciatingly handsome third-generation tobacco plantation owner for a waiter, since the yacht club was exclusionary, so the only people of color allowed inside were the help.

  Allowances had been made for Eduardo Tomas to gain entrance, as he was a guest of Oren Scotten of the Scotten-Dillon Tobacco Company. Oren had been courting Eduardo and his acres of Cuban tobacco gold for some time.

  Scotten needed the yacht club to solidify the deal, because every deal he’d ever closed inside those white walls had gone on to be profitable beyond his expectations. He was a superstitious man and he wasn’t about to jinx his streak of good luck just because some blue-blood socialites couldn’t break bread with an Oyé.

  Eduardo signed the contract and extended his trip, to make time to court the beautiful Meredith MacDougal. A scandalous affair had ensued. Meredith was a brazen lover, willing to do anything to please him sexually, and Eduardo found himself exthralled in a way he had never been with Maria, his wife of fifteen years.

  His mind made up, Eduardo took Meredith’s hand in his and asked her to be his wife.

  To Meredith, Eduardo represented the ultimate accessory, the consummate conversation piece: tall, handsome, and exotic. She would be the first one in her circle to defy convention. Meredith tousled Eduardo’s hair and said yes.

  A speedy divorce followed and Eduardo evicted his wife and three children from his palatial Havana estate, relocating them to a modest second home in Las Tunas. Three months later Eduardo married Meredith in a lavish ceremony at the Hotel Plaza in Havana. The wedding made the front page of El Diario de la Marina, relegating the death of Grace McLaughlin, the missing American heiress who had eloped with her married lover to Cuba four months earlier, to the lower left-hand corner of page eight.

  CHAPTER 15

  Easter and Colin stared at the cucumber sandwiches that the servant had set down before them and Easter wondered if white people truly enjoyed that type of food or if it was all for show and when out of the sights of colored folk, they hungrily gorged themselves on pig’s feet and Johnny cake.

  “I really loved your work,” Meredith leaned forward and said. “It resonated with me in a way that I never thought it would.” She reached her hand out for one of the sandwiches and then decided against it. “I c
an’t believe you’re not published.”

  Easter tried to focus on Meredith’s gray eyes, and on the words that were streaming from between her thin lips, but she was distracted by the strands of pearls that hung in waves around her neck and the precious baubles that graced her fingers, and how Rain was sitting so close to Meredith their hips touched.

  Colin was fidgeting.

  He was a simple man and was uncomfortable with the lavish surroundings. He felt intimidated by the crystal chandelier and offended by the expensive oil paintings that hung on the walls. He found it hard to meet the eyes of the black female servant who brought him his drink, as if his being a guest of the white aristocrat was somehow a slight against her, against their race.

  And that woman. That Rain. She was fooling herself if she thought her light skin and green eyes made her one of them. Hadn’t she heard of the one-drop rule?

  “You have a phenomenal voice and I think with some polishing …”

  Colin pulled at his tie; the knot was cutting off his air supply and he’d begun to perspire. When Meredith interrupted her monologue to ask if he would like another drink, he said yes too quickly.

  “Polishing? But I thought you said they were good.” Easter sounded wounded.

  “Oh they are, darling, they are, but …”

  Colin raised the glass and drank.

  He hated them, these white people who had everything. He looked over at Easter and began to scrutinize her. The dress she wore was old and the color faded. She wore dull hair pulled back into a ball. Her shoes were scuffed and the heels worn down to the nail.

  The servant brought him another drink without Meredith having to tell her. The liquor made Colin feel confident and he finally found the nerve to look up and into the servant’s eyes. There was nothing there, save for complacency. She was a trained seal. They all were. Including him.

  Colin shifted on the sofa, working hard to contain the anger that was bubbling in his stomach. He swallowed the liquor and the servant brought him another.

  “They’re good, but they’re raw. And raw is not a bad thing. I just think with some tutelage they could be better.”

  His mother was sick, her house was falling apart, the shop was closed and his pigs were dying, and this woman was talking about tutelage? Everything he had worked hard for was going to rot and she was talking about tutelage. He needed some tutelage right about now, preferably in the form of a check.

  Money.

  He’d borrowed five dollars from his friend Jack and sent it off to his mother with the promise of more to come. That was two weeks ago and he hadn’t heard anything back yet. He’d gone to the UNIA headquarters on three separate occasions to speak with Marcus Garvey in person and each time was told that Marcus was traveling. Jack, an officer with the UNIA, had confirmed this and then asked if there was anything he could help him with. Colin had said no, and then yes, and Jack ended up lending him the money.

  “I can help you. I mean, if you want my help, that is,” Meredith said to Easter.

  Colin’s eyes roamed the room and lit on a set of silver candlesticks. He thought he could live for a year on what those candlesticks would bring him. They were just sitting there looking pretty; she probably never even used them. Rich people did things like that. They spent extraordinary amounts of money on things that looked pretty but served no real purpose. They bought expensive clothes for specific occasions and then never wore them again. They purchased cars that they never drove, preferring instead to stash them away in warehouses. They bought wine they didn’t drink, jewelry they rarely wore, and vast estates they only visited once a year. In Colin’s opinion, they were an excessive, wasteful people.

  “You could help me with my work. I write in longhand as well and my secretary usually transcribes—”

  “Transcribes?”

  “Yes, she transcribes my written notes to typeface. Can you type?”

  No she couldn’t, though she had seen it done. It looked simple enough. How hard could it be?

  “Yes.”

  Colin was drunk and could barely stand up when it came time for them to leave. The butler brought him his hat and it slipped from Colin’s hands and fell to the floor. The butler made no move to retrieve it and Colin was in no condition to make the attempt, so Easter stooped down and picked it up.

  On the street Colin tripped over his feet and swayed drunkenly from side to side. In the streetcar, he plopped heavily down into a seat and began talking loudly.

  The closer they got to their neighborhood, the more contentious and hostile his babbling became. Easter remained stone-faced and silent. There was no use trying to speak to him while he was in that state. And she realized as they climbed off the trolley and started up the street that he was in that state more and more frequently.

  When she’d first met Colin, he had not been a drinking man, but that had changed. Whatever life circumstance had triggered that change he wasn’t saying, and Easter was tired of asking.

  CHAPTER 16

  Jack Jones turned the desk lamp off, rose from his chair, gathered the receipts, stacked them neatly, placed them in the bottom drawer of his desk, and locked it. He pulled the shades down over the windows before walking out of the office and down the steps to the lower level of the brownstone that housed the UNIA headquarters.

  The kitchen was thick with the scent of herring and boiled yams. Sitting at the square table were three men of various shapes and sizes. “Rum?” one of the men suggested, nodding at the bottle in the center of the table. Jack shook his head as he reached for a chair.

  “You eat?” another asked.

  Jack raised his hand and said, “I’m good.”

  Wesley Payne, one of Marcus Garvey’s generals, reached for the bottle and poured until the amber liquor reached the rim of the glass. He drank deeply and made a face as the liquor burned a fiery trail down his throat. He gasped, slapped his chest, and asked Jack, “How many today?”

  “Two hundred thirty-five.”

  A murmur of satisfaction passed around the table. Wesley grinned. “That’s nearly a thousand shares of stock sold this week alone.”

  “When will Marcus be back?” Jack asked casually.

  “The end of the week.”

  Jack nodded, stood, and bid the men goodnight. He took the train down to Greenwich Village. On the street he was vaguely aware of the crunching sound his shoes made against the frozen snow. The sky above his head was dark, the moon and its cousins hid behind clouds that threatened more snow.

  Jack headed to Chumley’s, which was located at 86 Bedford Street. He stepped in and allowed the door to close nosily behind him. He stood in the vestibule stomping the packed snow from his shoes and then shrugged off his coat and stepped into the warm, dimly lit bar.

  The embers in the fireplace glowed and crackled as Jack moved past men and women seated at booths and round tables, embroiled in conversation. He slid into a booth located in the rear, where the shadows were thickest.

  “What can I get fer ya?” the brawly waiter with shockingly blue eyes asked.

  “Coffee.”

  The history of Chumley’s made him uneasy. Why they’d chosen that particular place to meet was not entirely beyond him. Chumley’s had been a refuge for runaway slaves. He imagined that the meeting place made great fodder for jokes amongst his colleagues.

  A few minutes later two white men joined him. Even though Jack Jones had the color and features of an Anglo, he felt conspicuous sitting between the two men. In a line-up he was sure one of his own could confidently pick him out as a spade masquerading as an ofay.

  “How many today?” the larger of the two men asked.

  “Two hundred thirty-five,” Jack responded.

  The smaller man let off a long whistle. “That nigger—no offense, Jack—is really pulling in the cash, ain’t he?”

  Jack said, “None taken,” but his jaw was clenched. “And he’s in negotiations to purchase another vessel.”

  The two men exchange
d looks of surprise. The smaller man laughed, “I’ve got to give it to him, he’s got heart.”

  “That he has,” said the other man.

  “Imagine, he wants to take Negroes back to Africa. Africa, for God’s sake! We get ’em here and get ’em halfway civilized and they wanna go back to Africa and live like savages again.”

  Now both men laughed. Jack raised his cup to his lips and drank. The smaller one reached for his hat and set it firmly onto his head. Still laughing, he asked the larger man, “What is that catch phrase he’s using to rile up the Negroes?”

  The larger man rolled his eyes in thought and tapped at his chin. “I can’t remember.”

  “Africa for Africans,” Jack said in a low voice, and raised the cup to his lips again.

  “Yeah, that’s it!” the two white men cried in unison.

  Who are you? the voice echoed in Jack’s head as he rode the train back uptown. The voice always came after he left Chumley’s. He wasn’t a superstitious man; he didn’t believe in ghosts, haints, or juju. Besides, he knew it was none of those things; the voice in his head was clearly his own.

  As he trudged home, the snow finally began to fall, sugaring his hat and the top of his coat. At that late hour he had Harlem to himself. Jack stopped walking, tilted his head back, and opened his mouth. The flakes melted instantly on his warm tongue.

  He remained that way for some time, his mind drifting back to his childhood in Massachusetts when he and his family lived in a community of Octoroons. Did they think themselves better than other Negroes? Maybe not always better than—but certainly better off. They could move among the whites unnoticed, gaining access to places their darker cousins would never be welcomed. The idea of living that way forever was seductive, and many fell under the spell and made the small leap from black to white, often never to be heard from again. But living a duplicitous life was a curse and a blessing. Jack had witnessed several young women who passed to marry white men. A year or so later they would return to the community, shame-faced and distraught, cradling mocha-colored newborns.