It was a warning.
In twenty years they’d never come close to getting caught by Dickie. Tilly, yes. Tilly might not have graduated from M.U., but that didn’t make her dim. When Narcissa first started in the kitchen, Tilly said, “Don’t you smile at this one now. I jest got her learnt on canning.”
“What do you mean?” Hadley said.
“I sees the way she watches you.”
“Narcissa?”
“Don’t act the fool with me,” she said, facing him down with her pecan leaf. “Ain’t no body likes reading so much as Missus Worther-Holmes. Iffin’ she fires Narcissa, I’m gonna start hiding burrs in your trousers to remind you to keep ‘em on.”
Dickie tucked a wild curl behind Lucinda’s ear and stalked out of the Reading Room.
I need a woman, Hadley thought.
A woman would set things right in so many ways, and Hadley was sure he wouldn’t be using her. On the contrary, he’d be the most grateful man alive. Lucinda could be jealous as a demon, but this time she would have to go along with it.
Maybe this’ll turn out to be a good thing, he thought. Maybe Dickie won’t have to kill me after all.
That only left the question of who. Who would want him after all these years?
Hadley was thirty-five years old, and he’d hardly kissed anyone other than Lucinda. He hadn’t wooed a girl since he was seventeen and things had ended badly that time around. He couldn’t so much as think of Flora without breaking out in a rash.
As he ran through the short list of possible dinner dates in his head, Hadley realized that he didn’t know any women. To make matters worse, he didn’t know the first thing about them. He only knew about Lucinda, and he was pretty sure she didn’t represent the gender particularly well. He’d let her carve him up pretty bad over the years, too. Hadley had the body of a man who’d decided long ago that he wasn’t going to need it for anything except Lucinda Worther-Holmes. The thought of explaining himself to someone new was enough to make celibacy look like the only alternative to what he already had.
Over the years, he’d developed a rather uneasy relationship with pain. As far as he could figure, something got wrecked in his brain when he let Lucinda drink his blood. The damage was permanent. It was entirely possible he might want things that only Lucinda knew how to give.
Nope. Much as he liked the idea of finding a woman to love, that was completely out of the question. Hadley reckoned he’d best settle for finding someone who would have coffee with him and look, to Nina, like a girlfriend.
###
“Hells bells,” Lucinda said the day after Hadley found himself a date. “Just because Nina doesn’t know the first thing about men, doesn’t mean she’s going to buy a femme fatale called Vaseline Jenkins. No one is that dumb.”
How she’d found out about the hostess from the Dinner Bell was anybody’s guess. “What’s wrong with her name?” Hadley said. “I think it’s pretty.”
“Pretty?” At that particular moment, he was trailing Lucinda out the door of Warson’s Department, and she came to the sort of grinding halt that would have had an untrained man spilling boxes everywhere. Not Hadley. Hadley had a talent for managing enormous amounts of crap. His all-time record was five hat boxes, one pair of jersey gloves, one Hudson seal wrap, and four pairs of shoes. “Why not just call her Diaper Rash?”
“I think she’s called Vassie.”
“And did you make whoopee with Mrs. Diaper Rash Jenkins after your dinner date?” Lucinda wanted to know.
“She isn’t a Mrs. anymore.”
“She’s an ever-loving divorcee, for pity sake.”
“I guess some people divorce their husbands when their marriage turns out to be a joke.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Are you jealous?” he asked from behind a striped hat box.
“Jealous of a black-skinned soup jockey with five brats? Are you out of your mind?”
He’d followed her through shop after shop while she tried on hats and slipped on shoes yet she didn’t say a single word to him until they left Warson’s. “This is supposed to bother Nina, not you,” Hadley reminded her.
“Oh, it bothers me, all right. What did she say about your . . . thing, I wonder?” Lucinda waved a hand at the round silk box pressed against his stomach.
“My thing ain’t none of your concern these days, remember? Your husband’s got his eye on me.”
Lucinda started for the car. “I know her type, dear. I bet you didn’t even have to buy her dinner.”
“Vaseline is a nice lady,” Hadley said. “I didn’t so much as kiss her good night. Happy?”
“You can do better.” She waited for him to fit her packages into the trunk. “Anymore love notes from our girl?”
“Three since Monday.”
Lucinda frowned at the reflection of her old hat in the car window, ripped it off her head, and threw it in the back seat. “Okay then, Diaper Rash it is.”
Hadley and Mama had been having their Sunday lunch at the Dinner Bell for more than a year now, and Vaseline Jenkins had served them every slice of buttermilk pie they’d ever eaten there. The place served the best food in blackie town, if you asked Hadley, and that was saying a lot because Greasy Jim’s was damned good, and Roadside did a hambone and butter beans that swept Mama off her feet.
Hadley had never paid Vaseline much attention, but one day she leaned in to pour coffee, and he got mesmerized by an unpinned lock of hair on her forehead. Most colored girls went for short finger curls, or else they wore something Mama called made hair. Made hair was straightened flat hair. Vaseline had a thousand long, wild corkscrews covering her head. She rolled the front ones back from her face and confined the rest in a yellow hairnet that matched her apron stripes. It was part Harlem/part Andrew Sisters/part Medusa. He didn’t know why that one black ringlet made him swallow his whole bit of catfish in an un-godly lump, but he promptly fell into a daydream that featured him breathlessly watching as she set free all those wonderful shiny corkscrews. In twenty years, Vaseline Jenkins’ twisty hair was the closest he’d come to fantasizing about anything other than Lucinda.
Of course, he and Mama talked to Vassie here and there while having their lunch, but then they talked to Willie Semple at the counter, too, and every other week, Mama brought a new batch of her melted mutton and turpentine cure for Chefee’s peptic ulcer. The Dinner Bell was a chatty place where people leaned over the back of their booths to ask after ailing grandparents and broken automobiles.
Every time Willie came through the door, instead of saying hello, he said corny things like, “What’s your story, Morning glory?” and the regulars that knew him always answered in perfect unison: “How’s it shakin’, Bacon?”
Like it or not, you absorbed a general sense of knowledge about the other patrons purely by eating there once a week. You knew about Chefee and the rest of the help, too. A person’s chronic heartburn, pregnant dog, or noisy neighbor just naturally worked its way into your body along with the scrambled eggs.
Anyone who’d ever said two words to Vaseline knew that she was raising five rambunctious boys on her own. Five fire-setting, back-talking, bone-breaking, mess-making “A” boys. Hadley didn’t know all their names, but he knew they all started with A. You couldn’t talk to Vaseline without hearing the latest high jynx involving her A-named boys.
Vaseline made and sold cologne water when she wasn’t waiting tables She gave Mama a sample once in a little violet bottle, and when Mama took off the cap and sniffed it, it didn’t smell like anything at all.
“Thank you Vassie,” Mama said, because she was too polite to mention that the perfume had no smell to speak of.
Vassie winked at Mama. “That’s potent stuff you got there, Miz Crump. Just dab you some on your wrists and neck next time you go to church, I guarantee every man in the joint will wind up following you home.”
Mama believed this whole-heartedly and locked that bottle in a drawer the first m
inute she got home.
Vaseline had little mushroom-shaped ears which meant that she had a way with hypnotic herbs and the like. Mama said mushroom ears revealed an earthy soul.
“How about Vassie?” Mama whispered on the Sunday after Dickie promised to keep his eye on things. This was not because Mama knew of Hadley’s plans to find a woman. This was because Mama was always trying to interest him in Vaseline Jenkins. Mama had done this with so many women over the years that Hadley never listened to anything she suggested. He just smiled and shook his head and politely ignored any arguments she tried to start. But on this Sunday, for the first time ever, he gave the question some real thought. How about Vassie?
“She likes you, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Hadley hadn’t noticed anything of the sort. “If she likes me so much, why doesn’t she dabble some of that magic cologne on her wrists and make me follow her home?”
“Well now, that’s a good point,” Mama said. “Maybe she ain’t so magical after all.”
That’s when Hadley remembered about the little black ringlet. “What do you think I should do about her, Mama?”
“Ask her to have ham and beans with you tonight over at the Roadside.”
When Vaseline came back with the coffee pot, Hadley didn’t let himself think. “Vaseline, would you want to have ham and beans with me tonight over at the Roadside?”
Mama looked like she might faint dead on the floor. Vaseline, too. “Okay,” she said, and darned if that black ringlet didn’t’ pop loose the same second in the middle of her forehead.
They’d had a swell time at the Roadside, which came as a nice surprise. The place wasn’t anything fancy, yet Vaseline wore a red camellia pinned to her corkscrews, and she wore her corkscrews in a camellia-colored hairnet. “Why’d you ask me here?” she asked him as soon as they set down at the table. “After all this time, I figured you were taken.”
Hadley laughed. “That’s a good word for it.”
“You work at that house with all the wisteria, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“What’s that beautiful Mrs. Worther-Holmes like? I hear all sorts of crazy stuff about her.”
Hadley often worried that people knew about him and Lucinda, but Vassie fixed her eyes on him in such a sweet way, he decided it was an honest question. “She has her good points and her bad points,” he said. “What about the Dinner Bell?”
“It puts bread on the table, I guess, and man-oh-man can my boys eat bread.”
Hadley touched the flower in her hair. “Flames,” he whispered.
“Huh?”
“Red camellias. They symbolize flames.” Hadley could feel the scar on his neck beginning to do some flaming of its own. “I read a lot of gardening books.”
“I just wore it ‘cause I thought it was pretty,” she said. She straightened her flower with a sheepish grin.
“Prettiness aside, every flower has its own special meaning. Honeysuckle, for instance, means bonds of love. Heather means protection. It might sound dumb, but I choose where I plant flowers based on what they mean. Heather works out real nice by a front door.”
“My favorite flowers are hyacinths,” Vaseline said.
“Hyacinths mean sporting.”
“Oh.” She wrinkled her nose. “That ain’t very romantic, is it?” Vaseline didn’t look the least bit happy about the meaning of hyacinths. “What’s wisteria mean?”
“I cling to thee.”
“That’s a nice one,” she said. “Flowers are my business, too, you know? I wouldn’t be able to mix up Darratu without them.” Darratu was the odorless perfume Vaseline gave to Mama.
“What’s in your perfume?’ Hadley asked. “Or is it a secret recipe?”
“It is a secret, but if you’re interested, I’ll show you sometime. Or maybe you’d like to guess?” She stretched her arm out toward him, but, luckily for Hadley, the ham came right then and saved him from being swept away.
Much to his surprise, he enjoyed the date with Vaseline more than he thought he would. In fact, he invited her to Laughing Larry’s Traveling Funfair the following weekend. Laughing Larry’s was the talk of Beattie’s Bluff, and Hadley intended to show up the first minute the fair rolled into town and help put up bleachers and tents so he could get a free pass. Carnivals would do that if you came willing to work. A lot of funfairs wouldn’t let coloreds ride the rides, but Laughing Larry’s made a point of putting up different signs on their wagons meant especially for the South whenever they came through. EVERY SUNDAY IS NEGRO DAY! RIDES ARE OPEN TO ALL. There wasn’t a negro alive that didn’t know about Laughing Larry’s Negro Days.
The fair was a calculated move on Hadley’s part, and he felt a little bit bad about that. He knew Nina and her cousins were planning to attend on NEGRO DAY because NEGRO DAY was also FREE COTTON CANDY DAY. He hoped Nina would see him with Vassie. “Bring your boys too, if you’d like,” Hadley told her. Even though it would take every last penny in his Jolly Nigger to afford her big brood, it wouldn’t be right for boys to miss a carnival.
“My brother Joe is taking them on Sunday night after he gets offa work,” Vassie said. “If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to keep you to myself for now.”
Hadley smiled when she said that; not because of all the candy floss and popcorn she was saving him from buying, but because of the way her eyes twinkled when she said keep you.
They strolled down the midway hand-in-hand, and he told himself he would be holding her hand even if Nina wasn’t possibly there to see it. But later, when he won the biggest coconut in the Coconut Shy, he made a big show of giving it to Vassie, and his eyes darted all around, hoping to spot Nina. Where was the girl? They moved on to The Swooper next. Vaseline had giggled when she told him how much she loved to ride roller coasters. The line looked half a mile long.
“We don’t have to wait in that big line,” she said.
Hadley was glad for the big line. Maybe Nina was somewhere in the mob? Of course, giving Vaseline a ride on a roller coaster was the most important thing.
“We can’t miss the swoopiest ride we’ll ever take,” he said, pointing to the faded sign that read: “Most Swoopiest Ride You’ll Ever Take!”
As a result, they stood in the hot sun for an hour and a half with every black-skinned Beattie’s Bluffer and his brother and, even though they never saw Nina and the boys, Vaseline laughed like a child at every swoop, and that made it all worth while.
The day rolled on without any sign of Nina, and Hadley grew more desperate. There were white kids zipping through the crowds, pepped up on cotton candy, but Nina and the boys were not among them. He paid for three shots at the Coon Dip, thinking that if he could just send the nigger boy for a splash in the tank, it was guaranteed to raise a ruckus of cheering and congratulations. It took all three shots, but Hadley won, and when the boy stood up in the water with his big bushy hair dripping like a fat sponge, dozens of on-lookers laughed and patted Hadley on the back. Three strangers shook his hand. Vaseline must of noticed him searching the crowd because she asked if he was looking for someone. Suddenly, everything he did felt contrived, even the stuff he was glad to do. Worse still, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, the Coon Dip made Vassie mad.
“Why would you wanna knock that poor kid in the water? You ought to know better.”
“I’m just helping him earn a living,” Hadley said. “If people don’t play, he’s out of a job.”
“It’s degrading is what it is,” Vaseline said.
“Why?”
“What do you mean why? It’s called the Coon Dip, for pitysake.”
“What else are they gonna call it?” Hadley asked.
Alas, two more hours passed without any sign of the kids. Hadley was disappointed, but the good part was, when he kissed Vaseline on the Tumble Bug, he didn’t have to feel like it was all for show. Closed up in that hot metal ladybug car there was nobody to see. It was just Hadley and Vaseline.
It felt different k
issing someone else. Hadley had been kissing the same woman for so long, he didn’t know if he would mess it up if he tried to do it with someone else.
“You kiss nice,” Vassie said, so that much was encouraging.
By the time he took her home, the kissing was getting easier. “The boys won’t be back until the fair closes,” she said. “Do you want to come inside?”
Vaseline Jenkins was far and away the most fun he’d had in years, and Hadley didn’t want to stop kissing her. She had a startling way of talking, though, that made him twitchy. When she called her boss Mr. Slimstead, Mr. Shithead, it was almost as cute as it was surprising. Lucinda was known to curse a blue streak, but it wasn’t never cute.
“Ain’t you ever called anyone a shithead before?” Vassie asked.
“Not out loud.”
“That figures. You look like a bottled-upper if ever there was one. Well, in case you ain’t noticed, I don’t believe in bottling up anything but my perfume. I think it’s unhealthy.”
Hadley wanted to go inside with Vaseline, and then again, he didn’t. Lucinda had striped him like a zebra, and he was scared he wouldn’t know the first thing about what a nice woman might like from him.
“I have to get back to work,” he lied.
“Maybe another time then?”
“Sure,” he said, even though he couldn’t see himself ever having the courage to go in her house. Shoot, Hadley thought. I am a bottled-upper.
When Hadley got home, there was a note under his front door.
Who’s the Negro lady?
Hadley smiled and sat down to write his first note to Nina Worther-Holmes. He no longer favored recipe cards for such work. Instead, he used the pad of paper Tilly had given him that advertised for Omo Washing Powder. Underneath the words OMO ADDS BRIGHTNESS TO WHITENESS, Hadley wrote: Just a friend.
“Friend?!” Nina screeched the next morning after Hadley had been summoned from the wild flower patch to drive Nina into Hartsville. No sooner had he slid behind the driver’s wheel when the girl started railing at him. “You don’t have any friends, Hadley. In all the years you’ve been with us, I’ve never known you to have a single friend.”
The Reading Lessons Page 25