This whole place has been decorated since yesterday but I put pink flower vases on all the tables this morning ’cause nobody would be able to see the small lit candles burning since it’s day. We took down the dark curtains and let the light come in bright and clean like this ain’t Cynthia’s saloon. Even the mahogany wood chairs look pine from the sunshine. The smell of liquor’s been traded for lavender. Streamers run down the walls, baby blue and white. At the top are paper-cutout stars, pulled open to a ball.
White men, dressed a little better than customers, make up the band at the front of the room tooting horns, twanging banjos, and sliding harmonicas. Except one man. He holds a wide-bellied bottle, got his top lip capped over the mouth of it, blowing. His deep base hums and gets everybody’s fast feet stomping including Cynthia’s.
In the middle of the room, tables and most of the chairs have been pushed away leaving space for Cynthia to throw herself this way and that way, dancing alone but wild in her wedding dress. Her hair that was all pinned up this morning’s been danced loose on the sides, parting her unbleached strands, showing it brown underneath.
Sweet-smelling barbecue is wafting through the door now, full flavored and hickory smoked—chicken, beef, but no pork. Not because Cynthia won’t eat pork ribs but because she’s fond of the pig she call Doc.
She starts some kind of jump-back dance in the center of the room, hopping backward all the way across the floor and behind the bar. I meet her there with a glass of cold water. She grabs Sam and grinds her hips on him, laughing. She say, “Can you believe I graduated to ‘woman’!”
Some old man behind her say, “You been all woman to me.”
“Why don’t you mind yer business,” Cynthia say.
“You look beautiful,” I tell her. “Better late than never.”
“That’s right,” she say. “I’m officially responsible for my own actions. Six hundred and thirteen new laws not to break. I should teach a class.”
A banjo player, his white face painted black with grease, takes a seat with the band. When Cynthia sees him, she grabs my hand and rushes us into two chairs already in the middle of the room. She starts hooting and clapping before our butts hit the seat. She smiles with all her teeth, tells everybody, “Ssssh. . . . Shut up!” then whispers to me, “This is for you. It’s popular in New York.”
Black-faced Banjo Man puts the pearly round part of his banjo on his thigh and bends one arm around it like he’s holding a woman, pulling her close. He slides his other hand up its neck, along the four strings, and plucks one with his middle finger for sound. With the thumb of his other hand, he searches for the first note of his tune and his flat heel taps the floor. He shifts in his seat and closes his eyes. His song comes. It rises from deep in his gut like he mean every note.
Applause explodes when he finish. Cynthia is jumping up and down and clapping and whistling. “From New York!” she say, then shakes me, “How you like your surprise?”
“Mine?”
“Your gift . . . the Black-face man?”
“Does his face have to be painted that way? Do I look like that?”
“Go wash your face,” she tell Banjo Man. “And come back and do it again.”
THE PARTY ENDED an hour ago and the big white man that was at the door is paid and gone. It’s calm and quiet here now except for the clacking of the band packing up. The orange-brown haze of dusk is pouring through Cynthia’s uncovered windows while I stand in the way of one placing a golden platter, silver spoons, knives, and forks inside a cherrywood box, under a velvet cloth. I didn’t ask where she got all these nice things.
It’s just me and Sam left to clean up now. We don’t talk much but we friendly. He gave me his last two days of tips, told me it was for the baby. Albert’s only been up twice today from the room he building downstairs. Told me to stay off my feet and I told him I’d sit as soon as I finished serving the drinks in my hand. That was two hours ago. Now I’m just wiping down the tables. I saved him a plate, though. Barbecue sauce is coming off the side.
“Good job, boys,” Sam say to the band as they leave. The bandleader tips his hat.
When the front door shuts, the side door near the gambling parlor opens. Sam shouts toward it, “Party’s over. We closed.” Then he say to me, “Drunks never know when it’s time to say good night.”
But footsteps from that side door keep coming up the hall. Sam say again, “We closed!”
“Evenin, Sam . . . Mimi.”
My breath leaves me.
I grab this table, the only thing keeping me up. I’d know that voice and that word—Mimi—even in deafness.
“How do, Jeremy?” Sam say. “Long time.”
I don’t turn around. Cain’t turn around.
“Let me get you something,” Sam say.
“Water,” Jeremy say.
Jeremy’s hand squeezes my shoulder, squeezing the life out of me. My tears fall sudden—his touch the only push they needed.
Sam sets Jeremy’s glass of water on the bar top. Jeremy don’t take it. He grabs my hand, instead.
He say, “I don’t blame you for not wanting to see me.”
I cain’t move.
He backs away and takes a seat at the bar. His reflection in the window across the room is like blurred vision in front of me. My tears giving me layers of lenses. He hunches over his water glass and slides it to his right side and rubs his thumb on the side of the cup, say, “I was hoping you’d find a way to forgive me. Maybe another gamble of mine that won’t pay off . . . unless you think it do.”
But I don’t think nothin.
“I’m sorry, Mimi. I want to do better this time.”
I can see myself in the window’s reflection. See him. Feel this loss inside me swimming up to my throat and to all my surfaces.
In his reflection, his left sleeve is rolled up in a puff of cloth around his elbow. But below his elbow I cain’t see nothing. No flesh. No fingers. Some kind of trick of these tears.
I swing around to him, confused. But it’s true. His arm is gone, half-missing, a stub of what used to touch me, feed me. He stares at my big belly.
I say, “What happened to your arm?”
“You pregnant?” he say.
He rubs his good hand over his head of hair and smiles, “Mimi? We having a baby?”
Albert’s voice comes too soon. “You save me a plate!” Albert say. I can hear the smile in his voice before I see it on ’em when he gets in the room. But it goes when Albert and Jeremy meet eyes.
Sam say, “Tell Cynthia I’ll see her in the morning,” and picks up his satchel from under the counter.
Jeremy say, calm, “But I didn’t pay you, Sam.”
“Water’s on the house,” Sam say.
“No,” Jeremy say. “I said I’d pay you for it. For the good service. I’m a cripple, not a liar.” He tosses a coin on the bar.
Albert say to Sam, “I’ll let Cynthia know you’re gone for the day,” and he turns back up the hall.
Jeremy bursts out laughing.
Laughs longer than he should, slamming the countertop with his fist for funny.
He smiles at me, then at Albert’s back. “Where you going, Papa Bear?” But Albert keeps up the hall.
“Funny thing,” Jeremy say, smiling. “After that rockslide . . . when the doctors told me I had to lose the arm. All I could think about was the last thing I touched. Can you believe that shit? See, there I was dying, Mimi, and I thought of you.” He bursts out laughing again, reaches over the counter and grabs a bottle of whiskey, pours it in his glass, sips it, and throws his legs up on the seat next to him. He say to me, “So when did you say you were due?”
“We’re due next month.”
“We? Who, we?”
“Me and you.”
He starts counting his fingers out loud, “One, two . . . wait, I left, when? Almost nine months ago. . . .Whew wee, Mimi. This baby’s overdue.”
“Baby’s supposed to be born after nine full months,
not when the ninth month start.”
“You don’t look but half that.”
He makes his voice soft and girly, “‘I’m a virgin. Be gentle. Don’t hurt me. It’s only you. I love you. I want to marry you.’ Bullshit, Mimi.”
“There weren’t nobody else,” I say.
“Yeah. . . . So who’s the lucky guy?”
“You, fool,” Cynthia say, walking in, her wedding dress swaying above her sandals. “And by the looks of that arm, you sure as hell ain’t lucky.”
“You been lying on me, Mimi?” he say. “Been telling people that I’m the father?” He laughs again, picks up the whiskey bottle, and sips from it directly.
“Oh, hell naw,” Cynthia say. “I know you ain’t drinking straight out my whiskey.” She rips the bottle from his hand and he throws a gold coin at her.
“Oh. All right,” she say. “It’s yours. You was fixin to earn yourself another bloody nub, though.” She pours him a little more in his cup and caps the rest. “But I’ll keep this bottle.”
Jeremy finishes his drink in one gulp, then looks over his shoulder at me standing behind him, say, “If it’s a girl, you gon’ sell her, too?”
I slap him hard in his face. My hand is sore when I finish. He stares me down and Cynthia tells him, “This a private party and you weren’t invited.”
“My pleasure to leave,” he say, putting his hat on, getting up.
“Wait! Just wait,” I say.
He stops.
“Just give me a minute,” I tell Cynthia. “Please. Just . . . a minute.”
A look of sorry for me comes over Cynthia. She comes and stands so close to me, arm to arm, and in such a way that Jeremy cain’t see her face. But I do. Her expression’s not of pity, but of a mother. My mother. She say, softly, “Not everybody deserves your honesty, Naomi.”
I nod. “I won’t lie.”
“You could be quiet.”
“Just give me one minute,” I say. “Please.”
“All right,” she whispers, then yells toward Jeremy, “One minute! Then we closed.”
Jeremy brings his heel up on the footrest when she leaves. When I take a step toward him, he turns away from me. I grab his good hand, pull him back toward me, make him touch my belly. “This is our baby.”
“Do you know what I been through? To get back here for you? How could you do it, Mimi? Whoring around?”
“You left me!”
“So you laid with the first man you see, some . . . some nigger?”
“You calling me a nigga, too?”
“I didn’t say that . . .”
“His name is Albert. And he ain’t a nigga. When you left, he was the only person to take care of me.”
“Is that your story?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Well here’s mine. You’re a whore. Just like the rest of ’em. ’Cause no man would look after somebody else’s baby unless he had a stake in it.”
“He did.”
He gets up slow from his stool and goes to the door. “Then Albert’s a better man than me.”
“It is funny, ain’t it?” I say, these pasts we reach for like ghosts. Sometimes, we just got to be happy we survived. “You’re right,” I say. “Nobody can go back to what’s gone. Like reaching out with a hand that’s not there.”
He holds the doorknob, ready to leave me again and I don’t care. “Well, maybe when the baby’s born, we can see who it favors.”
“Albert,” I say. “My baby’ll favor Albert.”
He opens the door. Gone. Gone again. And this time, it don’t matter.
44 / FLASH
Conyers, Georgia, 1848
I BEEN SPINNING THIS gold coin around my fingers for most the night ’cause the worse thing about being pregnant is sleeping. Better, not sleeping. Cynthia gave it to me after Jeremy flicked it at her a few days ago. She said it was for the baby now. For me.
I told her I didn’t want it. Not from him. Not for this baby. ’Cause there are things more important than money. Time is one. Peace, another. A good father for this baby. I’ve got all of that now without him. She said, “Don’t let nobody tell you money ain’t everything. Money keeps you from paying for things with your life.”
Before this baby, I took for granted sleeping on my stomach or sleeping on one side for as long as I wanted to. Cain’t even sleep on my back, now, for drowning. Like deep breathing through a reed. It’s how I feel when I remember Jeremy.
Cynthia told me not to punish myself for him, for still feeling love for him. “If a person never loved somebody pathetically and unrequited, they haven’t met themselves yet, so consider yourself introduced. And lucky. We don’t always get to touch the ones we want without losing everything.”
IT’S JUST AFTER midnight now, and I’ve been wasting time. Been folding clothes, counting unmatched socks. How does that happen? My mind’s been racing with thoughts and feelings that pass and re-pass. Not just about Jeremy. And Albert. Or Cynthia. Momma. Hazel. A chaos of faces. Bernadette’s, too.
Cynthia gave me her room like she promised. And in between time, Cynthia put Bernadette out in the shed across the road. Locked her in there for four days with only bread and water. Left her hollering and screaming like she was being murdered over and over again. When Cynthia finally got her out, Bernadette had throw-up all over herself, her clawing fingers were bloodied, and her screaming voice was gone. But she was cured of the leafs, though. Has been for almost a month and Bernadette say it ain’t easy. Say, the first thing she think about when she wake in the morning is the leafs. Then she spends the rest of the day trying to forget ’em.
I FELL ASLEEP in this chair with my folding still in my hand. Might as well get up ’cause it’s 3:00 a.m. and another couple hours of sleep won’t make a difference.
I shuffle up the hall, gon’ clean the saloon. Shouldn’t be much to do ’cause it’s been empty since Cynthia closed for business a few days ago—the day after her party. She’s been telling everybody she’s “renovating” but she tell me she need time to decide what she gon’ do next.
Sam still comes to work every day. Been unloading them crates that he never got a chance to unload for five years. Some of the crates are more full than others, a couple of ’em only got one bottle inside from him cherry-picking ’em the last few years.
He built a new drying rack closer to where he wash. “Doesn’t make sense to keep dripping across the floor,” he said.
A few of the girls are still here, too, some loyal, some hoping Cynthia will come up with a new way a woman can make money without being a wife. Bernadette’s making dresses. She’s got a ball gown on a wire frame in the windows and when sunlight hits ’em, it throws sparkles of yellow and white light around the room, mixing with Cynthia’s rainbows on the walls from her hanging crystals.
Cynthia and Sam are already up when I get to the saloon. “Evening, Sunshine,” Cynthia say. “Or should I say, morning.” She’s sitting at the bar, nursing a drink, still wearing her wedding dress. Been in it three days. “It’s about time you got up. Longest nap a person ever took.”
“It’s only three,” I say.
“Yeah, but you was ’sleep at noon yesterday.”
Cynthia’s just holding her drink in her hand. Usually, pouring it in her glass is the same as putting it in her mouth. Only a two-second delay between ’em. But this time, we’re going on a minute.
“I’ve been thinking,” Cynthia say. “Maybe marriage ain’t so bad. Maybe I could live with a man. A young sunflower like me gotta rethink her options. And Sam says he’ll marry me.”
“I didn’t say nothing about marriage tonight.”
He sets a glass of water in front of me.
“You don’t want to marry me, Sam? I already got a ring. You can get down on one knee at sunrise or in front of the fire, romantic like, and . . .”
“See, that’s the problem, you’re too bossy. Most men find that intimidating.”
“The people you want to partner wit
h should intimidate you,” she say, smiling. “Not because they’re a bully but because they’re that good and you know it.”
“And what makes you think I’d ask again when you’ve already said no?”
“I’m a new woman, Sam. You never know. I could’ve changed my mind.”
“All right,” he say. “Marry me.”
“No,” she laughs and shoots her drink. “I cain’t marry nobody. I’d eventually kill him.”
“I know thas right,” I say.
A look of calm rests on her face. She looks around the room. “Isn’t this a good feeling,” she tells me. “The stillness in here? Reminds me of the good ole days.”
“Naw,” I say. “Reminds me of the good days coming.”
“So what you gon’ do, then?” Cynthia say. “You welcome to stay here, make this house a home for you and Albert and Baby Peaches.”
“Peaches’ll be a boy.”
“Then, Berry. And y’all can still be my good deed before I die. It’ll make me look like a saint. A white woman caring for a black baby always makes her look like a saint.”
“You ain’t going nowhere,” I say. “You got Johnny to take care of . . .”
“That’s why I got Sam. You’ll keep him for me, won’t you, Sam? Be a better mother-father than me.”
“I wish you’d gon’ and divorce your death talk finally. Death, religion . . .”
“Then, what did you decide to do, Naomi?” she say. “You can be my backup for Johnny.”
“I cain’t even think that far. I just want this baby out.”
“You say that now. Wait ’til it starts coming. When you cussing us all. I’ll be sure to remind you of how bad you wanted it out—the baby and the old bag of blood that comes out after.”
“Mercy!” Sam say.
Cynthia laughs. “Too much girl talk for you, Sam?”
“You could talk about these late notices instead,” he say, opening an envelope.
“I don’t pay taxes,” she say, and slides back in her chair, puts her foot on the table. “What’s the government done for me? I’m still a woman.”
“Your problem is you always think you won’t get caught for nothing. They could send you to jail.”
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