Unforgivable Love

by Sophfronia Scott

  When the wedding ceremony began and Alice appeared at the wide-open oak doors of the Fairfield Baptist Church, Mae couldn’t make out her friend. Alice was swathed in layers of organdy to hide her shape and her face was covered with a long white veil. It wasn’t until after, at the reception, that Mae could push toward Alice and have her worst fears confirmed. The girl stood glassy-eyed as she stared past the faces of each happy guest offering congratulations. But her look softened when Mae reached her. Alice’s spirit felt small, so small Mae could hold it in the palm of her hand.

  “Mae! My Mae!” They embraced, close enough for Mae to hear Alice choke down a sob in her throat.

  “How are you?” Mae whispered. “I’m sorry, I wanted to help.”

  “Shush. I’m gonna be all right.”

  “But Detroit? It’s so far. What am I going to do without you?”

  “You will be all right.”

  Mae’s knees shook. A cool grief began to sweep over her.

  Alice, as if reading Mae, grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her up to stand taller. She turned Mae around and whispered in her ear. “See him?” she hissed urgently. “See him?”

  Mae’s eyes sped around the room. “Who, Alice, who?”

  He stood leaning against a pillar, his lanky frame dressed in a rich-looking suit and his pencil-thin mustache perfectly groomed. His long fingers held his drink so lightly it seemed to float in the air beside him. Mae didn’t know his name, but she knew it didn’t matter.

  “Mae, have him,” Alice whispered. “Take him for me.” She kissed Mae on the cheek and pushed her in his direction. Mae looked back into her friend’s eyes and realized she would never see Alice again. She nodded.

  Mae turned to him. She breathed down into her lower body and let her legs swing forward. Her hips swayed. As her hands moved up to them Mae raised her chest up and in that moment she felt a coal ignite in her heart. This man, whoever he was, would be the first to pay.

  Val

  Harlem, 1925

  Val Jackson didn’t want to walk any farther. Not when he already felt the hard leather rubbing on his toes so a blister could form at any moment. Not when the sun had already risen high enough to be in his eyes and burn his thirteen-year-old head. He wasn’t running all over town to find the perfect empty street when this alley right here, bounded by Mr. Porter’s pine board fence and the cellar walls of tall apartment buildings, was wide enough and close enough. They were stopping right now.

  “Here!” he shouted to the boys just ahead of him. He dropped his glove on the ground and bent over to retie his shoe. “We can play right here!”

  “Naw, naw, ain’t enough room. You crazy!” Short Red Johnson kept walking and pointed the way with his stick. “We gotta go out to the street like my mama said.”

  “Your mama’ll be beatin’ us over the head when you get your sorry butt run over! We’re playing right here.”

  Besides, Val thought, I don’t have time for this. That little shrimp didn’t know what time was. He could run around in the streets till the sun went down and maybe even after that. Short Red’s mama didn’t sit at home reading all day, threatening to call him home the moment she came across words that made her think, My son’s got to know this! Short Red wouldn’t get dragged home to the kitchen table and a makeshift classroom, as though summer didn’t matter and there wasn’t enough time in the world to learn who thought what about colored people and what they needed to do with themselves.

  Val rolled up the cuffs of his pants to keep them out of the dust. Some of the other boys stopped and made their own preparations.

  “Shit,” Short Red murmured. “All right.”

  They followed Val’s lead because they didn’t know any better. Val just had that way about him. They knew he wasn’t the oldest—Tyrone, who was throwing down a potato sack for second base, would be fifteen next month. But Val was the best talker and the best player. If you wanted him on your side you just shut up so he knew you weren’t gonna bother him too much.

  He was the best looking too. Val had smooth deep-brown skin, high cheekbones, and a blinding smile. When he stared at you with shining eyes, you felt like you were the only person in the world, and you wanted to follow him around forever just so you could stay in that light.

  “Short Red, you up first!” Tyrone stretched his muscled back like he was about to take a nap, not pitch a ball. The boy stepped up to the plate and Val bent over to wait for the ball. Sometimes it happened too fast—the swoosh of the bat as it whipped round through the air, the crack when it made contact with the ball, the drumming of running feet, the satisfying thump of the ball into the glove.

  “Boy, that wasn’t no strike! My grandma can pitch better than that and make corn bread while she’s waitin’ to bat!”

  “Then you better get her out here ’cause I don’t see no one else pitchin’ and I need somethin’ to eat!”

  “My grandma got better things to do than teach you how to play your game!”

  For Val the best part was when it was his turn to grip the stick in his hands and feel the sting in his palms when he thwacked the ball out into the street. It burned like hell but he could sing with the pain because it just felt right to be making use of his body. Didn’t his mama understand that? Didn’t she know all the times she was scolding him for not being able to sit still when he was supposed to be practicing scales on the piano that he was just trying to give in to his body’s power? He had felt it coming on for months, like he was starting to get things he didn’t have a use for yet. But he was understanding these new things wanted him to move, to be in his body and feel everything there was to feel: heat, cold, pain, sharpness, and that other thing—the sensation he had no name for. It made him shiver when he watched the older girls like April Jean strut down the street with chests suddenly rising like they had baseballs stuffed underneath their shirts.

  He didn’t know what the feeling was, didn’t know what to do with it. One day he expected the shiver to come round full force and explode out of his mouth with an exultant Aaaahhhh! But until then he would swing the bat and sniff the leather of his glove and whip balls out into the air. One day it would all be clear to him—one day.

  Not this day. On this day the sting in his hands would be followed by the crashing sound of broken glass, his friends swearing, and the hammering of their feet running away from him. Val dropped the stick and looked up with resignation at the broken window where Mrs. Walker’s braided white head soon appeared.

  “Val Jackson! Val Jackson! You get your behind up here right now, boy! Your daddy’s gonna have your hide if I don’t tear it off first! You get up here now—don’t you give me that look, boy!”

  You go ahead and get my daddy, Val thought. And I can look at you any way I please. He didn’t have to run like the other boys, running scared like rabbits looking for a hole to jump down. His mama was right—there were some things he didn’t know. And his body told him there were many things he didn’t understand. But this he knew for certain: this was Harlem. His name was Valiant Jackson. And because of those two things he didn’t have to be afraid of nobody.

  CHAPTER 1

  Mae

  Harlem, May 1947

  Mae loved herself with a ferocity that came of feeding too hard and too long on her own exquisite beauty. She could smile in the rearview mirror of her car and see the alabaster beam reflected back from her picture in advertisements for Malveaux’s Magic Hair Pomade plastered on every billboard and in the windows of every drugstore starting from West 53rd Street, going all the way up Manhattan and through Harlem for the next hundred blocks.

  Even now she gazed happily into her vanity as her maid, Justice, applied the French pomade and arranged the dark folds of her hair into thick Victory curls perfectly framing her face. She never used the concoction her mother had created and made famous. Tired of having it smeared on her head since childhood, Mae had thrown away her own grease-filled powder-blue tin in the days after her mother’s death.
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br />   She held out her wrists and Justice dabbed on fragrant dots from the crystal bottle of Caron Fleurs de Rocaille perfume. Mae’s cold-creamed skin glowed bright and her eyes danced with the sparkle of a girl, making her seem younger than her thirty-three years. She knew this feature made her irresistible. Mysteriously, each man thought he had discovered this light for himself and believed only he could see it in her. They never noticed her well-hidden contempt for their arrogance.

  Mae was vigilant about her expressions. She learned long ago the faces she wore would always be more essential than any dress she put on, no matter if it were a Christian Dior or a Pierre Balmain. Her beauty was a formidable instrument because people liked to stare at her as they would a motion picture actress and, in the same vein, she could tell them any story she chose to project and they would believe it. So she practiced the lift of her cheeks, the turnings of her mouth, the shapes of her lips, and the conjured emotions that she flitted across her eyes. Her masterstroke came when she could wipe her face smooth and present a look of calm so numinous it bewitched her admirers into claiming her a goddess.

  In rare instances, though, she suffered a rebellion to her visage of serenity. It was an errant twitch seated in the muscles of her lower-left eyelid. She always felt it right before it surfaced. It was as though the weight of all the folly the eye had beheld was suddenly too much for it. She saw how, though small and fast, it unmasked her disdain. Not everyone would notice, but someone less foolhardy—someone like Val Jackson—would never miss such a telling detail.

  Regina, her white Polish maid, brought in Mae’s long, satin Dior that had arrived from Paris the previous day. Mae stood, stepped into the gown, and enjoyed the feel of the gold fabric flowing down her body in a shimmering cascade. She placed one hand on Justice’s shoulder and lifted her right foot with the grace of a ballerina. Regina took hold of Mae’s ankle, guided her into leather slingback pumps, then pulled the strap through the buckle.

  Too tight. Too tight.

  “Ouch!” Mae lit out with her right hand, landing a blow upon the woman’s ear and side of her face. Regina’s arm rose in defense.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  Mae looked away while she finished. The stacked heel added nearly two inches to her height so she had to sit again. This allowed Justice to fasten the necklace of marquise-cut diamonds while Regina clasped the diamond-and-platinum bracelet around Mae’s thin wrist.

  Mae occupied the largest brownstone on Sugar Hill. Designed by the noted architect Branford Waite, it featured a double-width façade and a broad stoop from the front door to the street. Perfect white shades on the windows muted the sun’s glare during the day but let in plenty of light. The flower boxes on the ledges contained enough nicotiana, tuberose, and alyssum so their combined sweet fragrance would greet Mae each time she walked out the door.

  That night she came gliding out of the building like a new moon rising. All down the block she knew quick hands snapped shutters closed then reopened them a crack so their owners could spy on her floating down the steps to where her man, Lawrence, held open the door to her forest-green Packard. She knew this because she knew exactly how her world was situated—how every single person thought, including and especially what they thought of her. She choreographed each step, each motion, and she moved through Harlem exactly as she pleased because of it. What good was money otherwise? She laughed at the predictability of society and how no one but her seemed to understand how to wield this delicious power. And since her mother died, and then her own husband, Mae reveled in the added sweet freedom of answering to no one.

  She settled into the caramel cushions of the car’s backseat. Lawrence steered in the direction of the Swan, her chosen nightclub. Mae knew in particular how it would be there. Lately the bandleader would make sure they didn’t play Duke Ellington’s gorgeous new piece, “Lady of the Lavender Mist,” her favorite, unless she was in the room and ready to dance. Her usual party would be seated and waiting at her table. The air already hummed with the expectancy of an unseasonably warm Saturday night. The scene was set. It only needed her to make it come alive.

  THE SWAN, OWNED by Ike Dunbar, the real estate businessman, held the distinction of being the only club in Harlem completely free of the lower classes. Mae appreciated how smart Dunbar had been in his thinking. As popular as the Savoy was with its crowds of whites slumming from downtown and big bands laying down the heat every night, the club allowed anyone in. Dunbar knew people like Mae wouldn’t set foot in a place like that when it held even the smallest possibility she could end up dancing next to her maid. So he created the Swan to be different. She loved the place for it. The bouncers, many of them former prizefighters, wore tailored suits Dunbar ordered himself, and he introduced them to every single member of the Swan’s clientele so they could greet them by name. It also made it easier to spot strangers who didn’t belong so the bouncers could offer the right physical encouragement to leave the premises.

  These same bouncers, without hesitation, grasped the door handles, beautiful ivory bars carved to look like curving swan necks, and pulled them open for Mae. She walked over mosaic tile depicting two swans facing each other, their necks entwined, and quickly crossed the foyer lit by a mammoth chandelier of sparkling crystal and brass. She climbed the narrow staircase to a balcony landing lined by a wall of thick black velvet curtains. Two men dressed in tuxedos, their dark curls trimmed close to their scalps, flanked the opening, and when Mae approached they held open the folds so she could step through. This revealed another piece of genius by Dunbar—a grand staircase made of ebony, the risers lit with tiny starlike lights. It went down to the main floor of the club so anyone arriving would make a stunning entrance.

  When Mae descended the stairs she maintained an even, middle-distance gaze. She didn’t want to look like she was assessing the room, which of course she was. And because all eyes were on her she knew to be careful. She certainly didn’t want to acknowledge Ike Dunbar waiting for her, as usual, at the bottom of the stairs. People might think they were a couple and Mae wouldn’t stand for that. But she allowed him to lead her to her table in reverential silence. He used to turn himself inside out trying to say something to make her laugh but she put a stop to that long ago. Instead he played the respectful escort while she enjoyed the sound of the trumpets and saxophones laying out notes so smooth she felt she could float upon them all the way to her table. A gentle haze of cigarette smoke mingled with the scent of whiskeys and gins. She smiled because she felt beautiful and whole in this careful pearl that was her world, but she pretended she smiled at nothing in particular. She shared her joy with no one.

  She sensed the room holding its breath until she slid into her booth. The gentlemen stood. Her cousin Gladys Vaughn called out Mae’s name before scooting her stout rear end over. The thick black and white cushioning rose up behind Mae and provided a dramatic backdrop. She took a cigarette from the box on the table and one of the men swiftly lit it for her before sitting carefully out of her line of sight. Mae liked being where she could see the whole room, and everyone could see her. Then the music, the dancing—the swirl—began again. At her table Mae surrounded herself with the safely boring, suitable for her position as a wealthy widow. They were all well-respected, churchgoing people yet connected enough to both provide her with important tidbits of information and broadcast certain bon mots when she needed to have the news out in the community.

  Gladys, her lipstick too pink as always, wore a dark blue gown made of jersey, the only fabric forgiving enough to stretch with beauty, not tightness, over her thick body’s ample curves. “Don’t you look pretty?” she said. “I was saying you look like the sun coming through the room, didn’t I?”

  “She certainly did,” Joe-Joe Johnson and Mantel Suggs replied in unison. They were Mae’s safe admirers. She enjoyed having mature but good-looking men at her table. Mantel was a prominent physician; Joe-Joe was the photographer of record for
their social circle. He was the only one she allowed to take her picture for the press. Both were sharp and handsome in their tuxedos and appropriately adoring of her, perhaps because she knew their secret: though both kept girlfriends, they preferred at the end of the night to go home—and to bed—with each other.

  “Do you want the usual, Miss Malveaux?” Joe-Joe asked.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He signaled to a waiter but one was already pushing toward them a cart carrying a bottle of champagne in a silver bucket.

  She’d call these people around her friends if she could, but in one way or another they piqued her too much. Across from her, Florence and Edward Mills sat close, raising their now refilled glasses in ridiculous toasts—“Here’s to life!” They were much older than Mae, once friends of her mother’s. Ed was both a lawyer and the son of a lawyer and had handled her mother’s business. His happy, nervous energy tested Mae’s patience. But the couple could sit on the other side of the table with their backs facing the room and didn’t need to spin their heads in an obvious way like Gladys did. Sometimes Mae would look over and notice Ed and Flo holding hands under the table. The sight would always confuse her because she’d feel a pinch of contempt while at the same time wanting to cry. She survived these instances by observing how commonplace their sentimentality was and how quickly, she knew, it would disintegrate in the face of a searing, well-placed moment of cruelty.