“You sure about this Josephus?” she whispered from the stage stairs. He answered her with a chuckle while extending a hand to her as she slowly climbed the stairs. On stage, her eyes shifted to each band member as Josephus introduced them - Carl on upright bass, Ben on saxophone and Oscar on drums.
On stage, she covered the microphone with her hand and said to Josephus “but we ain’t rehearsed anything.”
“Girl, don’t worry your pretty self. We fellows can play anything. Just tell us what you’re gonna sing.”
She glanced at Josephus, admiring how green flecks twinkled in his brown eyes. “The Man I Need,” she said.
He nodded toward the microphone and mouthed ‘go on, girl.’ The band started playing. Crimson lips to the microphone, she addressed the audience. “How you all doing tonight?” A burst of applause cued her to begin singing. Eyes closed, hips swaying, her velvety voice rippled through the large room like a balmy breeze, mingling with the ambient sound of hushed chatter and ice cubes tinkling in amber glasses. Through the curtain-like haze of cigarette smoke, she studied the black, brown and sprinkling of white faces in an audience apparently enthralled by her performance. Being on stage in this place and unleashing her vocal gift upon such a receptive audience was exhilarating, like this was truly what she was meant to do. At the end of the song, she held the final note allowing it to simmer like a fine stew. And as though they could taste that fine stew, the audience was hungry for more. They hollered for an encore. Dahlia merely smiled, then left the stage.
That night, Josephus asked her to join The Jazz Deliverers. And she happily obliged. But her girlfriends, whom she had enthusiastically invited to the new club, didn’t share her enthusiasm and expressed their misgivings. “Dahlia,” they warned. “Men that look like that, with their pressed hair, fancy suits and smooth talk are the most troublesome kind.” But Dahlia didn’t pay them any mind. Her friends, she decided, were just jealous.
So Dahlia dismissed Josephus’s detractors while she marveled at his musical stylings. Josephus didn’t just play the trumpet; he seemed to have formed an organic bond with the instrument, as though it were an extension of his hands. And she reveled in the passion with which he played, eyes squeezed shut, lips pursed against the mouthpiece, cheeks inflated, achieving a range that rivalled any of the great horn masters. And every Saturday night she tasted something magical when the notes from her lips fused with the notes from his trumpet. Thus began their courtship, and throughout their courtship Dahlia’s vision was clouded by a romantic haze, distorting the tell tales signs, among them Josephus’s roving eyes, that should have caused her to proceed with caution.
One night, after a particularly electrifying show, Josephus fixed his eyes on none other than Dahlia. That night, she was his and he was hers exclusively. He invited her to his apartment in a brownstone on 135th Street. She accompanied him there, without hesitation, where one blissful night melded into another and another after that until they made those living arrangements permanent. A year later, she cradled a rosy cheeked baby girl in her arms and Josephus, the doting father, gushed over them both. The second baby girl came only 15 months later. Their adorable daughters, Patricia and Anne, completed their perfect family, or so it appeared from the outside. Inside, the reality was entirely different.
***
Bradley’s voice jolted me from my work. “I ordered take out, Chinese, if you’re hungry.”
I spun my chair around to see his large frame fill the doorway. My stomach rumbled, as if on cue. Hunger had taken a backseat to my distress and determination to work on Dahlia’s story.
“Thanks,” I said quietly. “I’ll get some in a moment.”
“Working on an article?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Listen, Megan. I’m not trying to force your hand when it comes to you contacting Helen. Whatever you decide has to be your decision. I just don’t want you to live with regrets.”
“Damn it, Bradley. How many ways do I have to say I don’t feel anything toward that woman and I’m not interested in talking to her? Why are you always taking her side?”
“That’s just childish. You know it isn’t a matter of taking sides.”
“Just give it a rest, alright?”
“Fine. Forget I said anything. But don’t come crying to me when it’s too late and you wished you had done things differently. I’m going to bed.”
“Good,” I mumbled under my breath. Why did he insist on rubbing salt into my gaping wound and why had I allowed that wound to fester? Any steps that we had taken forward were now moving in reverse. Fresh tears welled up in my eyes.
***
The weekdays wedged between my Sunday visits seemed to drag by at an agonizingly slow pace. I was on to my third notebook, quickly filling up with Dahlia’s story. Last week’s excerpt included more on life with Josephus which, according to her narrative, deteriorated over the years since the birth of their daughters.
During this Sunday’s visit with Dad and Dahlia, she told us that Josephus became more and more absent from their lives. Her song, like the soundtrack to her story, softly played while she spoke.
“He was gone more than he was home,” she said. “Those times, my heart felt thick and heavy, like it was coated with molasses. That’s when I used to hear Momma’s song in my head.”
“Momma’s song?” I asked.
“Yeah. ‘Walking Through.’ It’s what my momma used to say. She used to sing it, like a song, ‘I’m just gonna keep on walking, walking through ‘till I gets through.’ That’s how Momma got through, from the time, I expect, that she come up here from Georgia to the minute she breathed her last breath. I learn to walk through from my Momma and I put her words into my own song.”
I listened to the familiar lyrics emanating from the CD player. Something about that song, those words, “walking through,” seemed to resonate deeply within her. What hardships in her own life had her mother’s song carried her through? I wondered. I had an acute sense that she would soon share that with me. First, though, she spoke of a heated argument she and Josephus had had, one that became the impetus behind her decision to leave him. Dad was apparently as mesmerized as I, his gaze fixed on Dahlia’s faraway expression.
“We fought real bad that night, hollering and raising hell with each other.”
She paused. I waited.
“Dahlia,” I coaxed. “What did you and Josephus fight about?”
She turned to me. “I was tired, tired of hearing that sorry old line over and over. ‘Dahlia baby, I’m gonna make an honest woman out of you, hear?’ I used to believe him you know, ‘till I came to my senses. When he said it again, after he’d been gone for days and been with Lord knows who, I just didn’t want to hear it no more.”
“Did you tell him that?” I asked.
“Hell, yeah, I did. And that’s how the fight began. Well, he just kept at me, cussing and telling me it was him who got me where I was. But I let him have it too, and we just kept flinging nastiness at each other ‘till it got so bad that if my baby girls hadn’t of come into the kitchen, I think he would’ve beat me. I really think so. That’s when I figured I couldn’t be with that man no more.”
“What did you do then?” Dad asked.
She turned toward him. “The next day, I took my little girls and left his sorry backside. I was done with him.”
Dad frowned and cast sad eyes downward. To a man who barely raised his voice toward Mom or me, much less raise a hand to us, her words must have been difficult to hear. I was overcome by an urge to hug him, but continued taking notes until Dahlia stopped speaking. The emotions of those memories, I believed, took a toll on her. She became quiet and started humming her song.
I closed my notebook and offered to accompany her and Dad to their suites. That evening, I raced home from my visit, recklessly disregarding the speed limit in my rush to get home and start on the next chapter of her story.
***
One of our house rules was
no electronic devices at the dinner table. Despite that rule, Bradley held his cellphone in one hand, scrolling through emails while he ate. His trial had wrapped up and the jury had begun deliberations. Since then, he made sure he was always within reach of his phone. He loathed losing trials and this part of the judicial process always made him anxious. He hardly noticed me studying his face over dinner.
‘Bradley, I’m leaving you.’ The words that invaded my thoughts startled me. That was Dahlia’s narrative, not mine. Bradley was no Josephus. I loved him and he loved me. At least I clung to the belief that that would be his answer, were I to ask him.
“Why can’t we get back what we had?” I whispered.
“What’d you say?” Bradley asked, his gaze still on his phone.
“Nothing.” I rose from the table and took up our plates.
Later, I hunkered down at my desk. Bradley had gone to bed ahead of me. He slept fitfully, mumbling incoherently. The jury deliberations for this pivotal trial, I was certain, stayed on his mind even while he slept. Seeing him looking so vulnerable tempted me to go and try to comfort him. Instead, I turned to the computer screen and continued typing, eager to complete chapter three.
***
Dahlia’s Story – Chapter Three
“Walking through. I’m gonna keep on walking, walking through. Don’t know how long it’ll take me or when I’m gonna reach, but I’m gonna keep on walking, walking on through.” Dahlia hummed the tune of the song she’d written. She sat at a vanity table in the small space that served as her dressing room while dust particles danced in the glow emanating from a row of lightbulbs fastened above the mirror.
The song was inspired by those words passed on to her by her mother and by generations of women before her: "I'm just gonna keep on walking, walking through ‘till I gets through.” She could still hear her mother’s Georgia twang, strong and clear, speaking the words that had accompanied her when she, like one of Moses’s people, joined the exodus from the South. The lyrics were simple yet they spoke of a complex struggle. And the times were ripe for her song. On the streets of Harlem, Malcolm X rallied his troops while, in the South, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. dared to have a dream.
Dahlia wanted to call the song ‘Momma’s Song’ but the record producer, the fancy fellow who’d come from Detroit to talk record deal with The Jazz Deliverers, said no to the song title. “Too plain,” he’d said, his long fingers curled around a glass of bourbon. “You want a name that grabs folk, make them want to hear what you have to say in that song.” So, she called the song ‘Walking Through.’
Carl, the bassist, leaned against the dressing room’s opened door while clutching a bottle of beer. “Sure is a nice sounding tune, Dahlia. That record ex-ec-u-tive,” – he said, emphasizing each syllable as if to highlight the word’s significance – “is gonna be real impressed.”
She studied Carl’s reflection as he stared at her through the mirror. “I hope so, Carl. I just feel bad about Josephus. He started this band, after all.”
“You feel bad? Girl, what exactly do you feel bad about – that Josephus didn’t want anything to do with the Jazz Deliverers no more? That he never showed up for rehearsals and the few times he did, all he talked about was going to Chicago to do session work coz he was too good to be stuck with this dead end house band? Tell me, when was the last time you saw your man?”
Her sigh was a heavy one. She looked toward the overstuffed sofa tucked in the corner of the dressing room where her daughters lay asleep, curled up, like kittens, at either end. Carl was right. Josephus hadn’t been home in over a week. In fact, he was gone more than he was home. But her heart no longer felt as though it was coated with molasses, thick and heavy with anguish, during his frequent absences. Instead, as their relationship grew more volatile, she began to cherish his absences. “Walk on through it, Dahlia. Walk on through.” Of late she found herself increasingly reaching for the lifeline that was her Momma’s adage.
She peered into the mirror, past her reflection and Carl’s trying to recollect what Josephus had said that ignited their last, and most vicious, quarrel. The lame promise he’d made, one she’d heard too many times, suddenly popped into her head. She pictured him on the night they fought, slumped over the kitchen table, gazing into a flask of whiskey. A thin line of smoke from the cigarette he held between his forefinger and thumb spiraled toward the ceiling. She remembered tensing up at the sound of his voice. He must not have noticed or even cared about her reaction as she stood at the sink, back to him, swishing dishes around murky water.
“Dahlia, baby. I’m gonna make an honest woman of you yet, don’t you worry ‘bout that, hear?” Too many years had passed since she’d stopped believing in those words, since she’d stopped believing in him and since she’d let go of the sparkling hope that soon they would be a proper, legitimate family. Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut, let him ramble on with his nonsense but that hollow sentence became like an annoying housefly buzzing at her ear, only to be swatted away with her own words.
She had poured herself a drink also and turned to reach for the glass. She took a gulp before speaking. The words she’d shot back at him rattled in her head, her courage probably bolstered by the alcohol. “What you know about honest, Josephus? You ain’t got an honest bone in your body.”
She remembered every bitter word that followed, the pitch of their voices rising and crashing like angry waves against the brownstone’s paper thin walls.
“What you mean by that? Why you gotta be like that huh, Baby?”
“Don’t you ‘huh, Baby’ me. You know damn well what I mean.”
“Woman, you best watch your damn mouth. Remember who got you to where you’s at, all right?”
“Where’s that, Josephus? Where’d you get me, huh?”
“Hell, girl. You better check your head. I got you singing in one of the best Jazz clubs in Harlem and all you wanna do is knock me down. Yeah, tha’s right, knock me down.”
“Coz you got me into The Half Moon, I’m supposed to put up with all your crap, just look the other way while you play tomcat with all them hussies flinging themselves at you, all the nights you don’t come home, and when you do come home you’re so stinking drunk or high you don’t even make it into bed? Is that what I’m supposed to put up with? Those sweet little girls in there hardly even know you.”
“You don’t know shit, woman. I know shit, the shit that’s going on between you and them Jazz Delivers boys.”
“Crazy fool. You know full well ain’t nothing going on between any of them boys and me.”
“Woman, who you calling crazy? You think I don’t see how they look at you and how you look at them? Oh, they’s delivering, all right. They’s delivering and you’s taking.”
“You’re just resentful after the group kicked you out for not pulling your weight. All you’re doing is trying to cover up your own stinkin' guilt, that’s all.”
“Guilt? I’ll show you guilt.” She could still feel his steely grip on her arm after he rose from the table and lunged toward her.
She’d gasped but her gaze met his, challenging the rage she saw in his eyes and in his fist. “Go ahead, Josephus, go ahead and hit me.” She leaned toward him, hissing her words through clenched teeth. “You just go on, but it’ll be the last time you ever do, hear me?”
“Momma, Daddy. Stop.” Three little words, a panicked plea hit them like a sobering bucket of ice-cold water. Patricia was standing at the kitchen door, her younger sister partially hidden behind her.
Dahlia had always tried to shield her daughters from the turmoil that was this relationship. But they had witnessed these flare ups too often. She rushed toward the girls, throwing her arms around them her trembling hands fluttering at their backs. “Patricia, Anne, go on back to bed.”
“But we’re scared, Momma,” Patricia whimpered. “We want you to come with us.”
“Go on, now. I’ll come directly. Your Daddy’s just leaving.” She paused and turn
ed to Josephus. “Ain’t that right, Josephus?”
“Yeah, tha’s right. I’m going but not before I get a hug from my girls.” He shuffled toward his daughters who shrunk away from his outstretched arms.
“Uh huh. Don’t want nothing do with your mean ole Daddy, huh?” He glared at Dahlia. “After all I done for you, all I give you, this is how you gonna treat me, huh?”
“Just get out, Josephus. Go on.”
“Alright. I’m going, but this ain’t finished, hear?”
He turned and left the kitchen stumbling toward the front door.
She hadn’t seen Josephus since that night. Carl came to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “C’mon Dahlia. We’re about to go on.” She nodded and stood up, then went to give each daughter a gentle kiss before following Carl out the door.
***
The flu bug struck me like a venomous snake hiding in tall grass. By mid-week, I felt like I’d gone three rounds with a Mixed Martial Arts champion. Wednesday morning, I emailed the college to cancel my classes, emailed my editor to let her know I wouldn’t make this week’s editorial meeting, and, sadly, called Dad and told him I wouldn’t make our Sunday visit.
I detected a note of disappointment in Dad’s voice when he said, “Get better soon, sweetheart. Hope I will see you next Sunday. But don’t push it.”
“Thanks Dad. I’m sure I’ll be well enough by next week.” I hung up and climbed back into bed. Bradley had gone to work. He would check in on me during lunch he assured me. Seeing me looking so miserable must have triggered that sympathetic gesture, the first he’d shown toward me since our ill-fated Helen discussion.
Walking Through and Other Stories Page 13