Unforgivable Love

by Sophfronia Scott

  Justice brought out the yellow dress and matching Dior jacket with the delightful peplum that flared out from the waist. Regina followed with Mae’s undergarments, and the process of clothing their mistress began.

  Sam Delany woke and seemed to be in shock to find such activity going on around him in the room. When he sat up Mae trained her eyes right on him in the mirror. He froze. His reaction pleased her so she spoke pleasantly, keeping her voice low and silky.

  “Good morning.” She didn’t turn her head but continued to speak and no longer looked at him. “Sam, you’re going to get dressed, go down the back stairs, into the cellar, and exit this building through the door taking you out into the alley. You will end up on the street completely on the other side of the block and far away from here. Do you understand?”

  “Sure, Mae,” he said but then stopped. Justice turned to him swiftly and a stiff shake of her head told him this was just the absolute wrong thing to say. “Uh, I mean, yes, ma’am. I do understand.”

  “Good.” Mae turned to him then and smiled. “If you can manage that I might invite you back. But Sam, remember this: if you speak a word of this to anyone, you won’t sing a note in public again. If you do it’ll be with a harmonica behind a set of prison bars. It’s your choice.”

  Mae carefully examined herself again in the full-length mirror. She nodded to Justice, who picked up a small white Bible from a table and handed it to Mae as she left the room, Justice and Regina close behind.

  THE CHOIR, A small summer retinue swathed and sweating in dark purple robes, hummed the start of a tune, a cappella, to begin the service.

  “When are they gonna get a new organist?” Gladys complained, adjusting herself on the hard pew where she sat between Mae and Cecily. “It’s been months.”

  “You know Reverend Stiles,” Mae said, and stared straight ahead. “He won’t even think about something as trivial as an organist until the campaign is completed.”

  Gladys fanned herself with the wooden-handled piece of cardboard given to each of them when they entered the church. “He better get this service started soon before we all melt. Where is he anyway?”

  Mae raised an eyebrow under the brim of her hat. “Probably primping.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Val

  Harlem, May 1947—Sunday Morning

  The windows of Val’s bedroom in his top-floor apartment faced fully east, as they did every place he ever lived. He didn’t want it any other way. And he never let Sebastian or any other servant close the curtains. He always let the sun come through and, on some summer mornings, practically burn him out of bed. Val cherished that first blush of sunrise and how it grew into pure yellow light as it lifted itself up from behind the Harlem buildings. There was something about it that fed him, sustained him. He felt it coming through his eyes and flowing straight into his veins—better than the dope he once needled into his arms before he realized he could get the same feeling without crashing to the brink of death after each high.

  On this Sunday morning in May, Val rose to meet the light. He stood naked in the glow for several minutes, his skin burnished and smooth all over, before he reached for his burgundy silk robe and wrapped it around the taut muscles of his body. He stepped across the room to his dressing area and slid the heavy pocket doors closed behind him. Not once did he glance back at the young woman still sleeping in his bed, the sheets covering only her round bare bottom.

  He slid the hangers along the rod in the closet so he could examine his suits and decide which one to wear. He heard the girl shift in the bed and sigh. She must be awake by now. She would be like all the others, lying there with a grin on her lips because of where she was, and thinking she’d finally been lucky. She’d probably begged to borrow her sister’s dress and her aunt’s earrings. Was probably dying to tell whoever she could all about him. He satisfied himself with how little he cared.

  When he was dressed he returned to the room. She seemed to have gone through the trouble of arranging herself on the bed for full effect. She’d pulled the sheets around her like a sexy movie star, placing one long slender leg out and on display. When she saw him she gasped. He was polished head to toe and dressed in a dark blue pin-striped suit. She reached out her arms but he only looked down at his cuffs, tugging them out from his jacket. He opened the door.

  Sebastian was at the threshold waiting and he stepped in quickly. The woman pulled her leg back under the sheets. He was holding a hanger of clothing—a simple brown dress with a small floral print, a hat, a slip, panties, and stockings that he presented to the woman by laying them carefully on the bed. Val stood out in the hall and waited.

  “Those aren’t my clothes!” he heard her protest.

  “Your dress, miss, is in that box on the dresser,” Sebastian said. “If you don’t want the world to know what you were doing last night I suggest you not put it on and wear these instead.” He moved toward the door, grasped the knob, and looked at Val then back at the woman. “You may get something to eat from the cook in the kitchen, but afterward I trust you can find your own way out of the apartment.”

  “What about Val?”

  Sebastian glanced through the door and down the hall. Val started walking.

  “Mr. Jackson will by now be downstairs and once I join him we will be leaving. In fact I will go now so I don’t keep him waiting.”

  “Leaving? Where the hell is he going?”

  “To church. Goodbye, miss.” He closed the door behind him.

  FROM THE BALCONY Val spotted Elizabeth Townsend with the accuracy of a bird dog. He sat back in the pew, satisfied once more with the precision of his people’s information, right down to the navy and yellow flower print of her pretty dress. He sighed. Unlike the other women so handsomely endowed, Elizabeth’s gifts were not on display. Her neckline didn’t venture below the simple scoop shape just under where her neck met her shoulders. But Val had no trouble seeing that she had much to offer—the fabric curved admirably over the generous mounds on her chest and moved in to hug her slim waist. Her fair skin still held the glow of youth and hope and Val wanted badly to add his own hue to this fresh palette.

  Her hair, neither too short nor too long, rested in thick brown curls just above her shoulders. Her lipstick was an easy, unpresumptuous shade of pink. Her eyes he knew well from constant study—wide-set and large—the kind of eyes that demanded honesty. Val knew he would have to be at his best—smooth and pitch-perfect—to deliver a pure lie into those eyes. He could stare into a mirror and talk all day, but it wouldn’t be the practice he needed. He would just have to be ready to endure those eyes when the moment arrived.

  CHAPTER 5

  Elizabeth

  Harlem, May 1947—Sunday Morning

  The car horn blared into Elizabeth Townsend’s ears as the wood-paneled station wagon passed her on the left. She jumped a little on the seat but her hands remained glued to the wheel. She regretted not taking her friend Rose Jarreau up on her offer to use her driver and car, but Elizabeth didn’t want to impose. Besides, Elizabeth thought, her own husband, Kyle, had left the black Ford coupe, a wedding gift from his parents, behind for her to use. But then he had also arranged for this long visit to Rose’s home, not giving a thought to her monthly service in the Mount Nebo soup kitchen. She was determined to keep her commitment, so here she was, making the trip alone on a Sunday morning. Elizabeth continued driving too slowly down the highway.

  She let go of the wheel for a moment to use the back of her white-gloved hand to dab at the sweat forming on her temples. Rose’s Mercylands estate, with well-tended gardens, rambling woodlands, and a shimmering lake, was beautiful, though, and Elizabeth was grateful to be there instead of cooped up in her lonely apartment with the heat of summer coming on. She blamed Kyle for the lonely part. Over the course of their eight-year marriage she grew used to his long absences south for his civil rights work, but last year Kyle decided they should switch churches and leave Fairfield Baptist, which she had attended si
nce childhood, for the larger, more public Mount Nebo. He’d pointed out how the most prominent Harlem residents attended Mount Nebo, and he was getting to a point in his career where it was time for him and Elizabeth to take their place among them. Elizabeth preferred the warm familiarity of Fairfield’s small congregation, but she was also of the mind that God would be with her wherever they went. She volunteered to help out in the soup kitchen, having decided she would meet as many people as she could, but she was hurt Kyle hadn’t seemed to realize that he had now left her, at twenty-eight years old, without the comfort of her own church community.

  Elizabeth murmured a prayer of forgiveness for Kyle and for her as she maneuvered the car. She had known this was what their life would be like—long periods of separation, for the greater good, Kyle had said. “We’re like missionaries, Elizabeth. There’s great work to be done in the South and here too. Our lives are going to mean something—we’re going to be about something!”

  Such words made her devoted to Kyle, as she’d been ever since she got paired with him at the Debutante’s Cotillion as a teenager. She’d worn a dress of white organdy swathed around her like a flower blossom and a ribbon had held her hair piled high on her head. She was grateful for the white gloves, pushed above her elbows, because she worried about her palms sweating and making her lose her grip on her partner. She also worried she might slip in her white pumps on the polished floor, but Kyle, six inches taller than she, held her securely and never let her stumble. They had to dance a waltz to music by Tchaikovsky, but most of the other boys chafed at dancing to a piece with the word “fairy” in the title. Some of the mothers weren’t happy about it either, but Hattie Sanders, the chief organizer, prevailed. Most of the boys took the floor with sour faces, but Kyle looked straight across at Elizabeth with a gentle smile that seemed to say, It will be all right. His fingers held her gloved hand and spun her like a water lily on a swirling pond. Elizabeth liked his confident touch—he made her feel light, as though she had wings. She thought he liked her too, but after the dance he only smiled and honored her with a curt bow. He blended back in with the boys on the other side of the ballroom and Elizabeth assumed she would never see him again.

  The dance had been one of those perplexing times when Elizabeth longed for her mother. Her name was Uriah and whenever Elizabeth thought of her, she smelled warm cotton and remembered her mother ironing, which she’d done every Thursday. She’d let Elizabeth iron the handkerchiefs and pillowcases, showing her how to sprinkle water on them before pressing out the wrinkles and how to keep her fingers out of the way of the hot iron. Now and again Elizabeth burned herself anyway—she was always distracted by the drops of water as they tumbled off her mother’s fingertips, catching tiny rainbows in the sunlight just before they touched down on the cloth.

  Uriah was the reason Elizabeth was called Elizabeth and not Liz or Beth or Betsy. “I gave you a beautiful name so I could love it every time I heard it,” she used to say. “And so you can love it every time you hear it.”

  Elizabeth did love to hear her name. The tiny buzz on the lips that came when people vocalized the “z” always thrilled her. It was like she was six years old and hearing her mother call her home for dinner. Elizabeth held her mother in this way, in the hearing of her own name, for years. And she still whispered “Uriah” to herself whenever she needed a blessing.

  URIAH WOULD SIT and talk to Elizabeth before bedtime. Elizabeth loved looking up at her round brown cheeks and wanting to reach up to touch the metal curling pins in her hair. But when she was fourteen and Uriah began coughing up red sheets of blood, Elizabeth became the one sitting on the side of her mother’s bed. Sometimes she crawled under the covers with her mother when she couldn’t get warm, and Elizabeth would wrap her arms around her mother’s thin, leathery skin, damp with the smell of sickness, and feel life in retreat like the tide pulling back from the sea.

  One night Uriah patted Elizabeth’s arms with spindly fingers. “It’s all right, honey.” Her voice sounded full of gravel and liquid, like a river was flooding up to drown her from within. “I figured I was just about done anyway.”

  “Done?” Elizabeth spoke the word into the back of her mother’s damp nightgown. “What do you mean, Mama?”

  “Done with the journey the Lord laid out for me. And it sure has been nice. Look at all I got to do. I got to love a man like your father, love him in a way most people don’t even get to know the word ‘love.’”

  Elizabeth could feel her mother’s head turn back toward her and Elizabeth pressed her own forehead against her mother’s spine.

  “I got to have you. Even got to see you through to the point where you’re practically grown so I know you’re gonna be all right.” She coughed hard and pushed her cheek into the pillow. Elizabeth squeezed her gently.

  “Mama, how do you know when you’re done?”

  Her mother drew a breath and Elizabeth felt it shudder through her body. “Well, I guess because I can feel peaceful about things. I know I don’t want for more. But I see what you’re thinking, Elizabeth. What about watching you get married someday? Or having a baby? Honey, all that would have been icing on the cake. All that would have been nice but I don’t need it. And I sure won’t lie here making myself miserable because of it. Not when you’re here with me, right now, and I know you’re just fine.”

  Elizabeth squeezed her mother again, harder, and began to weep.

  “Mama, I don’t want you to be done. I don’t want you to go.”

  Elizabeth felt her mother’s lips, dry and chapped, against the skin of her forearm. “It’s all right. I see where I’m going. I see it clearly, baby, like a bright light shining in front of me, calling me home. I’m not afraid. When your time comes you’ll know it too. You’ll see it’s nothing to be scared of.”

  But Elizabeth could only think she would be angry if she saw such a light. She decided she would mistrust it with all her being. It was a flaming void for all she knew. And despite what her mother said, it seemed to be burning up what she loved and believed in most.

  ELIZABETH’S FATHER, WALTER G. Moore, was in real estate, but after his wife died, he founded a weekly newspaper, the New York Clarion, because he wanted to encourage Harlem’s blacks to own more businesses and control more of the money they spent every day for housing, food, and clothing. He had small ears and a receding hairline and wore round wire pincenez. He enlisted his younger sister, Sadie, to help prepare Elizabeth for her social debut. Sadie took her shopping for the all-important white cotillion dress, but Elizabeth didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask her what to do about Kyle Townsend.

  Her father sent her to Vassar, where she studied English and art history. Elizabeth enjoyed the subjects but in her heart she hoped her education would lead her to helpful, meaningful work. She developed her writing skills and read widely to form her own opinions. When she felt she was ready, she asked her father if she could work for his newspaper.

  He removed his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed.

  “Elizabeth, it’s not something girls usually do. It wouldn’t be right for you.”

  “Why not?” She stood before his desk in the office. He closed the door, but she could still hear the buzz of the reporters talking and the clacking of their typewriter keys. Elizabeth had dressed carefully in a straight dark blue skirt and matching jacket. She squeezed the clasp of her pocketbook between her fingers to give her hands something to do.

  He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Because a man asking questions is thoughtful and looking to learn something or say something. A woman asking questions is just plain nosy.”

  “What am I supposed to do, Daddy? If you won’t give me a job, who will?”

  “You have other talents, Elizabeth.” He put his glasses back on and turned back to his typewriter.

  Elizabeth knew he was talking about her faith. It was the only seed her father allowed her to nurture. She wore the apostles’ attitude as naturally as she did her s
kin, and she dutifully sought the face of Jesus in the face of every person she met, no matter their station. Her faith upheld her—it was her life—but she didn’t see how it could help her make a living.

  One Sunday Elizabeth and her father arrived early for Fairfield Baptist’s service, and found Reverend Mitchell arranging his sermon notes at the pulpit. When he saw the Moores he stepped down to greet them. The tall and elegant man seemed to Elizabeth to float down to them, his robes billowing lightly behind him.

  “Good morning, Miss Elizabeth, Brother Moore!” He shook Elizabeth’s hand and his slim, tan fingers were so long she thought they might wrap twice around her own.

  “On your own today?” her father asked. He surveyed the small nave and the polished wood pews.

  Elizabeth smiled and turned her head so Reverend Mitchell didn’t see. She knew her father was looking for Deacon Phelps, whom he didn’t like. Her father always groused about the deacon’s heavy, pedantic Scripture reading. Though it was a small part at the beginning of each service, Walter Moore thought the deacon set the tone—and that Deacon Phelps set the tone so low they had to spend the rest of the service recovering from him each Sunday.

  “The deacon is sick today,” Reverend Mitchell said. He removed his glasses and polished them with an edge of his long sleeve in a self-important way. “I’ll just read the Scripture as well. No problem there.”

  Walter Moore waved his hat in front of his daughter. “Why don’t you let Elizabeth do it? I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

  Her father looked at Elizabeth and winked. She frowned at him. Women in their church didn’t often participate in such a visual manner unless they were singing—something Elizabeth had no talent for. But she would like to read. She had already glanced at the bulletin on the way into the sanctuary and noticed the Scripture reading was from the Book of Isaiah, one of her favorite parts of the Old Testament.