Blues Dancing

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “Well, I just hope she’s nice,” she said as she spooned string beans into a bowl.

  “What’s nice got to do with meat loaf, Mom?”

  “Can you see to it that I get my good dishes back, please, she’s a rich girl from Georgia, I know she’ll appreciate that this is good china.”

  “Who said she’s rich? And don’t switch subjects on me, Mom. I’m talking about food and you’re asking me if she’s nice and now you’ve even decided that she’s rich. How in the world do you make those leaps?”

  “Well, for starters you just sat there and formed and re-formed those books a half a dozen times and you keep coming back to the letter V. Secondly, you keeping your face from me like you got something to hide. I agree, don’t have a thing to do with meat loaf. But it does have everything to do with being known by the company you keep, so like I already said, I just hope she’s nice. And as for the rich part, I can just tell. Am I right?”

  “She’s nice, Mom; she’s very, very nice.”

  “And rich?” Her arm hung in midair between the pot and the bowl as she waited for him to answer.

  “I think her people have a little money, yeah.” He didn’t know why a lump came up in his throat when he said it. As if he’d betrayed his mother somehow, or why the air in the kitchen was bearing so heavily on him he felt a tightness in chest as if the air was getting ready to close in on him and cause him to suffocate. He thought about just leaving the plates, just running through the house and out of the front door so that he could breathe, so that he could have respite from his mother’s hurting wrinkled face that he couldn’t do a thing about. He couldn’t be the son she buried in the ground, nor the one she buried in her heart; couldn’t be the man who walked out on her; and right now, being her last-born child, a shining sophomore at the university espousing all that being young, gifted, and black entailed, right now being who he was, Johnson, wasn’t enough.

  She set the bowl of string beans on the table next to the plate of meat loaf and rice. The skin on her hands was still smooth and tight the way he’d always remembered her hands, efficient as she tore off plastic wrap and covered the plate and then the bowl.

  “I first thought you might stay and have some dinner with me, but since this is a girl, from Georgia, that you taking this to, I won’t put any pressure on you.”

  “No, I’ll stay, Mom.” His voice was pleading. “Come on and take us both up plates to eat now, I’ll stay.” She’d always had a gift for doing this, getting him to beg to do something for her that he really didn’t want to. Like now. More than anywhere right now he wanted to be in Verdi’s dorm room sharing the meat loaf and rice with her. Had even picked up a dime bag of joint to introduce her to. Had Isaac Hayes and Otis Redding albums packed and waiting on the chair by the front door. Had two fresh condoms tucked into the seam of his wallet. Had hopes for this Friday night with Verdi that after they went to a BSL and faculty advisers–sponsored party at the high-rise and then tipped back to her dorm room buzzing from wine and cheese, she might let him all the way into her moistness. So close, so very close they’d come the weekend before, and the one before that; and before that even. The past five weekends he’d spent Friday night at her dorm, easy to do because she had a single room so no roommate to displace. They’d even come to be known as a couple around campus. But instead of grabbing the food up, his albums, his sadness, and scurrying like a squirrel at snow’s approach running, running to catch the D bus that would zoom him down Chestnut Street and into Verdi’s presence, he was pasted in the kitchen chair, begging his mother to let him have dinner with her.

  “No, no, you get on back to school, now, I insist. How you gonna keep you and hers food hot if you sitting up here having dinner with me?”

  “They have toaster ovens in the lounge.”

  She ignored him, though she was grateful for the gesture, really. But she truly didn’t want to burden him more than he was already burdened being her youngest son. What could she share with him right now save her grief that was welling up in the corners of her eyes. “Let me get you a couple of bags,” she said, walking quickly to the shed kitchen so she could turn her eyes away from him.

  “Mom,” he said again, drawing the word out in a long breath that wanted to cry. “Come on, please, let’s have dinner together.”

  “No, you go on, now. Not tonight,” she called from the shed kitchen. “We’ll have dinner together another night.”

  “Why not? What? Do you have plans or something?” he asked, hoping that she did, that maybe she had reconnected with friends she used to have, or met a man, or joined a church, a Bible study group. He thought about the oversized black leather Bible that Verdi kept on her desk. He suddenly wished that his mother had forced him to go to church when he was growing up. Then at least he’d have something to offer her right now, he could tell her to pray for the return of a little joy. Verdi was always talking about praying for this and for that as if praying was something she did as easily as breathe.

  “I’ll double these bags over so the juice doesn’t leak through,” his mother said as she walked back into the kitchen. “You sure don’t want your clothes smelling like string-bean juice and you’re on your way to see some rich girl from Georgia.”

  “Verdi, her name’s Verdi, Mom.”

  “I’m sorry, son, I didn’t mean to disrespect her by not calling her by name. I know those southerners are big on respect.” She pushed one bag into the other and stood it up on the table. “How you planning on carrying all this plus your books on the D bus.”

  “I’ll manage, even though I want you to know that I could be carrying half the amount of food if you’d let me eat my dinner right now, here with you.”

  “Hand me that plate here, please.” She talked right over him. “Maybe I should use two separate bags,” she said as she sized up the food on the table as if this was the most crucial decision she’d ever have to make.

  He passed her the plate and she lowered it into the bag and then followed with the bowl of string beans. “Okay, this works out fine,” she said as she rolled the top of the bag down. “Just try to support the bottom as best you can.”

  He didn’t say anything, just looked down at the bag. He could feel his mother’s eyes on him, it was warm in here. Wasn’t she unbearably hot in that sweater? he wondered. Then he met her gaze, her eyes were moist and the moistness was spreading out and getting lost in the thick folded skin around her eyes. He grabbed her to him, then. Squeezed the tops of her arms and then circled all of her against his chest, whispered, “Thanks, Mom, for the meal. Love you.”

  He could feel her head nodding against his chest. Now she was pushing him away telling him to go, telling him to go right this minute while the D bus was still running with regularity. Telling him to support the bottom of the bag and don’t forget his books. Telling him to work hard. Telling him to say hello for her to Tower and Turtle and Medic and the rest. And the girl from Georgia. “Verdi. Tell her your mother sends her regards too.”

  Johnson had not planned on such a lengthy stay at his mother’s kitchen table this Friday evening and now he was late getting to Verdi’s dorm room to accompany her to the party in the roof-top lounge of the high-rise dorm where the black students and their faculty advisers were supposed to connect. He’d just made it to the corner of Chestnut Street to see the D bus rolling by, yelled and ran behind it to no avail somewhat slowed down by the heavy bags he carried. He cursed and waited on the solitary corner and tried to scatter the image stuck in his mind right now of his mother in that house all alone where the air was heavy and still. It was dark out already and that made the scene in his mother’s kitchen even more cheerlessly fixed in his mind so he decided to keep moving, move his body and his mind would have to become unfixed and follow, he reasoned.

  He walked the three blocks quickly down and over to Market Street to catch the el. Had to argue with the cashier to get him to accept his transfer; the transfer actually being from the day before but often t
he fare takers didn’t care enough to check. This one did check and Johnson was severely agitated because the man was a brother and violating the unspoken practice that unless one was a severe Uncle Tom, a brother always let another brother slide in such a harmless case as this. Johnson held his agitation at bay so that he wouldn’t blow up and instead was able to offer up a tearjerker of a story that begged for violins about being a broke university student trying to get back to campus. True though it was, especially now that his father was on a new wife and pleading poverty, had barely advanced Johnson money for books, Johnson heightened the melodrama so there would be a hint of doubt. Even though this was the early seventies and the rejection of material excess was often a lauded and fashionable trait, and even though he wore his poverty around his neck as if it were his heavy silver-toned peace medallion, he was sometimes deeply embarrassed by how lacking were his financial resources, particularly surrounded by the relative opulence of the university. He reminded himself to check where he was on the waiting list for a minimum-wage-paying work-study job, if nothing was forthcoming in the immediate short term he’d be forced to look off-campus where an employer wouldn’t be as sensitive to a student’s time constraints, he made a mental list of places to apply as the el jerked him back and forth and carried him swiftly to within a short walk of Verdi’s dorm.

  More fast talking to do to the security on the front desk at Verdi’s dorm who at first wouldn’t let him through because whoever had answered the phone on Verdi’s hall said she wasn’t responding to their door knocks. He tried Cheryl, the sister who lived upstairs from Verdi, whenever Verdi wasn’t in her own room he usually found her there. Not tonight. Went through the list of the few black students who he knew lived in this dorm, no answers from them either. He finally reached a white girl he knew fairly well because she’d been active in black causes, she okayed Johnson up and he went straight to Verdi’s room and found a note on the door telling him that she’d tried to wait but had decided to walk on over to the high-rise dorm with her history professor and his wife who’d had dinner in her dining hall as part of a University Life–sponsored student-faculty mixer. He went into the lounge and left his bag with books and crammed his mother’s meat loaf and string beans into the tiny refrigerator, thought about it, pulled a Hi-Liter pen from his bag and wrote on the food bag in huge block letters DO NOT TOUCH IF YOU LOVE TO LIVE.

  He got to the high-rise dorm and more security to go through where he had to leave his matric card at the front desk to gain entrance to the party that was in the roof-top lounge. This party was already in high gear, he could see that as he stepped off of the elevator and angled himself through the double glass doors. Though the food was sparse, a little celery and dip, cheese and crackers, deviled eggs, the drink cascaded bountifully as the faculty advisers went blind to the bottles of wine being quickly emptied from the cases stacked neatly under the skirted table. The lights were dim and the walls were sweating and all sizes of Afros nodded and bobbed as intelligent brown bodies swayed and bounced to War and Sly and the Temptations in a Mellow Mood. They were loose and laughing with abandon in the way that people do when they’ve spent all week fighting to be seen as more than a special case, a slot, aid recipient, the product of a partnership with the city, state, feds. At least that was how Johnson felt most of the time; for all of his rhetoric about not allowing the racist tactics to make them have a diminished view of themselves, he often did.

  Johnson squinted through the dimness trying to find Verdi; stopped every few steps to do the elaborate Black Handshake with “his boys,” and to give the ladies a peck on the cheek. He was well known here, respected as a Philly man, tough and intellectually gifted, worked hard, partied hard, got in the faces of people who offended him, but always fair. Never flung on his hard-core, urban-boy street attitude unless it was absolutely necessary—and never did at all to people from New York City.

  “You seen that pretty Georgia freshman?” he asked Tower, the six-four basketball player from the boonies in upstate Pennsylvania.”

  “Yeah, yeah, man, I did.” He laughed and slapped Johnson’s hand. “Fucking real, man, over there at that other end of the room, or the middle of the room, or some fucking where.” He laughed again, this time doubled over he laughed so hard.

  “Hey, man, what you been doing?” Johnson asked, his face halfway between serious and amused.

  Tower leaned down and whispered in Johnson’s ear, “A little of this, a little of that.”

  “Little of what, man, wine, weed, speed, what?”

  “Just a little killer smoke, man. From my little killer pipe.”

  “Well, you keep it a little, you country bastard. And you make sure you know what you getting and who you getting it from.” He reached up and shook Tower’s shoulders. “You with me, man.”

  “Lighten the fuck up, Johnson my brother man. And then maybe you should light the fuck up your damn self so you can shut the fuck up.” More bent-over laughter. “In case if you didn’t notice, there’s a party going on in here and shit.”

  Johnson slapped Tower’s palm. “Solid, man,” he said. “Advice well taken, except I hope I don’t get as silly as your wasted, country ass.” He was getting ready to ask him who’d he copped from anyhow, but right then he spotted Verdi and he surprised himself at the surge he got when he finally saw her face.

  She was bubbling over with laughter like everybody in this roof-top lounge seemed to be laughing. Standing between her history professor and his wife, her solid softness molded into tight black jeans, thick leather belt with an oversized silver peace-sign buckle cinched in her waist, white cotton shirt added dimension to her slightly formed top and gave her a wholesome crispness so contradicted by the seductive fit of the jeans that it was exciting to him right now. Verdi was saying something to the wife that made her throw her head back and show the fillings in her molars; the professor smiling at Verdi as if she were his protégée and she’d just done something to make him very proud. Johnson got a tinge of an emotion that he couldn’t define watching the professor watching Verdi so, at first he thought it was jealously, but he shook that off as ridiculous and settled on that maybe it was Verdi’s ability to captivate these two. How seamless was Verdi’s interaction with them right now, like matching patches of silk stitched end to end with a delicate thread. Johnson felt like the odd patch right now as he walked toward them, like flax, or burlap; corrugated with an itchy roughness, and poor. Until Verdi looked his way, and their gazes met, and her eyebrows arched as if to say, Johnson, is that you? And even in the darkened room he could see her face opening up for him, her smile going beyond the gracious and polite shared with the professor and his wife. This smile for him right now was effusive, her healthy lips stretched all the way from earlobe to earlobe, her downwardly slanted eyes almost closed she grinned so. He felt his chest swell when she smiled at him like that. He was dignified right now. A worthy man. An honest man. A weakened man right now because he knew for sure that he was a man falling in love.

  She waved him over, called out his name, laughing as she did. “Hi, Johnson, ’bout time you showed up.”

  “Now, you know I was going to show up,” he said as he entered their circle. He pulled her gently, loosely in his arms and kissed her cheek, then extended his hand first to the wife then to the professor.

  “So this is the Johnson you’ve been telling us about?” the wife asked. “So nice to finally meet you.” She nodded approvingly at Johnson and he caught a glint in her eye that told him that she was sincere enough. Plus her attire, a tan suede western-style vest with fringes topping bell-bottom jeans topping more tan suede on the boots, also fringed, gave her a casual air that didn’t smack of the I-am-a-professor-and-I-control-your-fate image being cast around by her husband right now who was excessively tweeded down from sport coat to button-down vest to pants.

  He told her how much he liked her vest and she shook her head, thank you, said she’d picked it up down at Sansom Village. “I just love the
revolutionary energy in that place. Don’t you?” she asked.

  The professor cleared his throat then, threw his head back and drained the sherbet and 7UP punch. “Well, speaking of revolutionary energy,” he said, clearing his throat again and reaching his tweeded arm between Johnson and Verdi to toss his cup in the trash can that was beginning to overflow, and then moving all the way between them to mash the cup solidly in. “It seems as if you’ve given this freshman some bad advice.”

  “That’s debatable, Rowe.” The wife cut him off.

  “Anything’s debatable, Penda,” he said, his jaw muscles shifted, and he made a sound that was somewhere between a sniffle and a snort, as if an unpleasant aroma had just wafted by.

  “Later, please, Rowe,” Penda said as she tried to lock eyes with Rowe and Johnson could tell that she wasn’t the type of woman who was likely to just roll over in public to spare an argument with her mate.

  Rowe didn’t look at Penda though, didn’t look anywhere in particular, just looked out into the room as if he were about to begin lecturing to an auditorium filled with eager, terrified freshmen who’d heard how demanding he was. His voice was pointed, as if it were his finger going right to Johnson’s chest. “All of this, this business we’ve been hearing from Verdi about the white professors at this institution wanting to pick somebody’s brain, is nonsense, just nonsense,” he said.

  Verdi looked at Johnson apologetically. “I was just saying to Rowe and Penda,” Verdi rushed her words, “when they asked me if I’d gotten to know any of my professors that I was honestly a little hesitant of letting them pick my brain, which led me to tell them about the conversation we’d had about that, you remember, don’t you, Johnson?” She held Johnson’s gaze as she spoke, which he took to mean that she hadn’t quoted him in a negative way.