Southern Ruby

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘I’ll die without you, Leroy! I’ll just die!’ I had never cried in front of him before. I resisted crying in front of anybody. My pride wouldn’t allow it. But this time the tears got the better of me.

  Leroy hesitated, wrestling with something in his mind. Then he took me in his arms and kissed me deeply.

  ‘Don’t cry. I’ll always look after you,’ he said when he pulled back. ‘I’ll always put you first.’

  ‘Then let me stay with you. I don’t care what it costs — I’ll pay it. Just let me stay with you.’

  He steered me towards the bench, sat down and tugged me to him. He stroked my hair and pressed my head to his chest. ‘What we have is too strong to be torn apart by anybody else,’ he said.

  A rush of warmth and love replaced my fear. I slipped my hands around his neck as he embraced me and lowered me to the rug.

  ‘We’ll elope,’ he said, gazing into my face. ‘We’ll go to San Francisco as you said.’

  My neck ached from the bruising and the rug was rough against my back and legs but the desire flooding through my body only made those pains exquisite. I moaned with arousal when he undid the buttons at the front of my dress and kissed my throat and breasts.

  ‘Yes, we’ll elope together to California,’ I whispered, nuzzling into his neck and losing myself to waves of rapture. ‘We’ll get away from all this madness and always be together.’

  That evening before the show I used panstick and layers of powder to hide the bruises on my neck. I slipped on my G-string, and noticed the burn marks on my derriere where I’d rubbed against the rug when Leroy and I had made love. The memory made me smile and reluctantly I disguised them as well.

  ‘A new life,’ I told my reflection in the mirror. I was relieved now that Leroy and I had come to a decision about our future. He was going to leave for San Francisco in a few days’ time to find work and a place for us to live. Then I would follow him, along with his family. Although I was intoxicated with love for Leroy and excited by the idea of the new freedoms that awaited us in California, I had mixed feelings whenever I thought about Maman and Mae. I had paid off the mortgage on the apartment so they would be financially secure. Once I was established in San Francisco, I would send for them. But would they come? Or would their horror that I loved a coloured man stop them from ever accepting Leroy and his family? None of that I knew and it tainted my happiness with agitation.

  I touched the cat figurine Orry-Kelly had given me, which I kept on my dressing table, and steeled myself. I had to believe everything would work out. I had saved us from financial ruin by sheer force of will and my readiness to do something out of the norm. There hadn’t been any reason I shouldn’t work other than stupid tradition. And there was no reason Leroy and I shouldn’t be together other than stupid bigotry.

  The stage manager knocked on the door. ‘Five minutes to show time, Jewel!’

  My routine was one I’d been performing for a week now, yet everything felt jarring when I got out on stage. Marty, the orchestra leader, was at the top of his profession but I didn’t feel in sync with him and his musicians. Miss Hanley assured me that things would improve with more rehearsals together but I doubted it. Even though the audience didn’t notice it, a spark was missing for me: without Leroy, the magic of performing was gone.

  Sam must have noticed I was out of sorts. When I’d finished for the night, he summoned me to his table to share some champagne with him.

  ‘You’ve got it bad, Jewel,’ he said in his familiar lisp. ‘You’re really stuck on Leroy, aren’t you?’

  I nodded.

  He lit a cigarette and took deep puffs. ‘You’re a fool, but I can’t judge you. I was a fool too when I was your age.’

  ‘Did you fall in love with the wrong woman?’ I asked, intrigued.

  ‘I fell in love with the right woman, but I married the one my family wanted me to. We haven’t had a happy day together since the wedding night. She was the one who drove me to work for the mob — I needed an excuse to get away. My family are all artisans. They aren’t even Sicilian; they’re glass blowers in Venice.’

  I studied Sam with new eyes. ‘Your wife is still in Italy? What happened to the woman you were in love with?’

  His face turned dark. He inhaled on his cigarette and blew the smoke out through his nose like a dragon. ‘She threw herself out of a window.’

  I gasped and instinctively put my hand on his arm as if to comfort him. He shrugged, embarrassed at having shared something intimate about himself. His face returned to its normal wary expression.

  ‘I told Leroy this morning not to play around with you unless he’s prepared to sacrifice everything for you. Even then, Jewel, you will be shunned by both white and coloured people.’

  He looked me directly in the eye. ‘Are you prepared to destroy yourself to be with Leroy? You’ve got a good thing going here. There are a lot of wealthy men who’d be crazy for you. They’d give you everything a woman could possibly ask for.’

  There was no point playing games with Sam. I was sure he’d already guessed what Leroy and I were up to.

  ‘We’re planning to go to California,’ I told him. ‘To San Francisco.’

  Sam took a last long drag on his cigarette before snuffing it out in the ashtray. Then he sat uncharacteristically silent and still. I wondered if he was going to get mad. I did have a contract with him, after all. But then something shifted in his expression, a subtle softening.

  ‘Go ahead and do it,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll use my contacts to get you both work. Sometimes you’ve got to be brave enough to say “Damn it!” and do what you want to do.’

  A few days later, as I ate breakfast with Maman, I admired how pretty she looked in the satin dress suit with lace cuffs I’d bought her for her birthday. It’s because of Jewel we have this life, I thought proudly. I’m not going to be ashamed of her, and I’m not going to be ashamed of Leroy or our children either. I’m going to make my own path.

  I didn’t know how I was going to tell Maman about Leroy. I couldn’t tell her beforehand what I was planning to do, because she’d try to stop me. If Mae knew, she’d call the police. I was going to have to present it to them as a fait accompli.

  Although I thought about Leroy and our new life constantly, I hadn’t heard from him since I’d seen him in the tool shed. He’d told me that he’d only get in contact once he was about to leave for San Francisco. ‘No news will be good news,’ he’d promised.

  When I reached the rehearsal studio and saw Miss Hanley had brought in a record player, I choked up. ‘I miss Leroy,’ I said.

  Ever since the attack on me and Leroy my heart felt like it was beating in irregular rhythms. I clutched my head and sat down in a chair, willing the dizziness to go away.

  ‘Goodness me,’ Miss Hanley said, pouring me a glass of water, ‘what’s the matter with you? I miss Leroy too, but Marty is going to come to our studio rehearsals from tomorrow and he’s charming. Good musicians move on all the time. You’ll have to get used to it.’

  Bless Miss Hanley. She hadn’t guessed there was something going on between me and Leroy, even though it had started right under her nose. It made her seem foolish but I was fond of her anyway. She’d done so much to shape me into a star and I was grateful. I’d miss her when I went to San Francisco.

  We rehearsed together for nearly two hours, using a chair as a prop. It represented a man who was initially impervious to my charms but eventually gave in to them. Then the studio telephone rang and Miss Hanley answered it.

  ‘It’s the receptionist from the Vieux Carré Club,’ she said, her hand over the receiver. ‘She says you have a message from a woman named Bernadine to meet her urgently.’

  Bernadine was Bunny’s proper name. I realised that Leroy must be about to leave for San Francisco.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I told Miss Hanley. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  I took a cab to Tremé. When it pulled up outside the funeral home, I saw a crowd dressed
in black gathered outside. I felt sorry for the mourners and their grief. My life was about to begin and somebody else’s had ended. I paid the driver and was heading down the driveway to the Thezan home when I heard Bunny call out to me. Her distressed tone sent a shudder through me.

  I turned and saw her walking in my direction. She faltered a couple of times and I wondered if she’d hurt her leg. When she reached me I was horrified by the chalky undertone of her skin. She always looked so healthy.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked her. ‘Are you ill?’

  Her lips quivered and she couldn’t bring herself to speak.

  ‘Bunny?’

  When she finally looked at me, her eyes were glistening. ‘Leroy’s dead.’

  A sickening numbness spread across my chest. I wavered on my feet. No! Leroy was going to San Francisco. We were going to start a new life together. I closed my eyes as if I could make this nightmare disappear. But when I opened them again Bunny was still standing before me only now she was sobbing.

  ‘We were worried when he didn’t come home the day before yesterday,’ she said through her tears. ‘Then we got a call from the police last night. A fisherman found his body in the river. Someone had shot him multiple times before throwing him in the water.’

  Her words hit me like a blow. I staggered and clutched my stomach, struggling to breathe.

  ‘Somebody killed Leroy?’ I turned towards the funeral home and the mourners.

  ‘That’s for him,’ Bunny said. ‘Mama laid him out.’

  My legs were leaden weights and yet somehow I began to move one step at a time towards the building. I felt as if I’d become a corpse myself. The part of me that had been excited and joyful only a few minutes before had died.

  ‘Don’t go in there, Jewel,’ Bunny pleaded. ‘Please don’t, it will only distress you.’

  I kept walking. How could I not see him? I loved him. I’d had no chance to say goodbye.

  The mourners parted when they saw me coming. Inside the parlour, a woman was singing a hymn in a strange sweet voice. The open casket stood at the end of the room, surrounded by bouquets of gladioli, hydrangeas and lilies. Pearl was sitting at one end of the casket weeping into a lace handkerchief. Joseph and Milton were standing at the other end, their heads bowed. How could my beloved Leroy, so warm and alive a few days before, be lying in that box?

  Above the casket was a carving of Jesus carrying his cross. I’d seen that image many times but only now did I understand it. I had a much heavier burden to carry than the one of a secret love.

  As I walked towards the casket, the world turned foggy around me. An elderly man looked at Leroy and threw his arms above his head and fell into a faint. He was caught by one of the mourners and helped to a chair.

  Bewildered, I regarded the grim faces of Eleanor, Alma, Dora, Dwight and Gerard. They were not the same people I knew. The joy in their eyes was gone.

  Dora reached forward and grabbed my arm. ‘No, don’t look, Jewel,’ she said, a note of warning in her voice. ‘I don’t know why —’

  I disentangled myself from her and continued towards the casket. A sickly smell pervaded the space undisguised by the flowers. I reached the casket and looked down. My cry of horror pierced the air of the parlour. There was no jaw, and the top half of the head was missing and so were the hands. The flesh was so bloated that the body barely appeared human. That mangled mess couldn’t possibly be Leroy!

  I reeled backwards in horror. Milton grabbed me so I wouldn’t fall.

  ‘Why didn’t you fix him?’ he asked Pearl. ‘Why did you put him on show like that?’

  Pearl lifted her face. The vivacious person I’d cooked with all those Sundays was gone. In her place was a broken old woman. She stared at us with vacant eyes.

  ‘Because nothing was going to fix that! Nothing! I want the world to see what they did to my son!’

  Bunny rushed towards me and hugged me, sobbing into my hair. ‘I wanted you for my sister-in-law. It’s all I’ve been able to think about for months. And now he’s gone. Oh, Jewel, what are we going to do?’ she wailed.

  I couldn’t feel her arms around me. No arms could comfort me after this. Nothing could offer any consolation. My beautiful Leroy was gone.

  I turned away from the Thezan family, away from those wonderful times of shared meals and conversations. A strange numbness overtook me entirely as I left Tremé. I couldn’t smell the gardenias that bloomed in profusion in the pots on porches, or feel the breeze from the river, or hear the birds in the trees. The cars that rushed by on Esplanade Avenue made no sound, and one of them nearly hit me when I tried to cross.

  I didn’t care. I staggered back to the Quarter, away from my life as Jewel and back to my life as Ruby, Leroy’s destroyed face and desecrated body etched in my memory forever.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Amanda

  Grandma Ruby and I sat in silence in the summerhouse. I heard bees humming in the lavender, and the doves cooing on the lawn, but for us the whole world had come to a standstill. The tears that I’d seen glistening in her eyes while she was telling the story of Leroy’s death now rolled down her cheeks. My heart ached for her. While she’d been telling her story, Leroy had come vividly to life for me. I had pictured his warm smile and his handsome face as if he were standing right in front of me. I knew something had happened to break off their relationship, but I had not anticipated such a horrific end.

  I looked out over the garden and the dragonflies hovering above the grass. Nan and I had once watched a documentary about Martin Luther King Junior that mentioned the story of the torture and murder of a teenage boy named Emmett Till in Mississippi. His mother displayed his body in an open casket to show the world what had happened to her son, and his death sparked the racial rebellion that led to Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus and the Montgomery bus boycott. But I could not have conceived a similar event had occurred so close to my own family.

  Grandma Ruby and I stayed together the whole day, finding comfort in each other’s company. We strolled around the garden with Flambeau following us, listened to Beethoven on the CD player, and read together in the sitting room. We both needed to process the past — Grandma Ruby anew, and me for the first time.

  At five o’clock I remembered that I’d promised to meet Elliot at Preservation Hall.

  ‘I’ll cancel,’ I told Grandma Ruby. ‘I’m not leaving you alone, especially not tonight.’

  ‘Is Elliot the lovely young man who called here? The jazz professor? We talked a long time.’

  I looked at her in surprise. I knew that Elliot had called the house, but not that he and my grandmother had shared a lengthy conversation. ‘About what?’ I asked.

  Grandma Ruby took the telephone from me and put it back in its stand. ‘We talked about the city and its music. He was going to take you to Snug Harbor.’ With a smile she added, ‘He sounded so charming I nearly went with him myself.’ She pushed me towards the stairs. ‘I don’t want you to not go because of me, Amandine. I’ve been alone in this house many nights with my memories — one more isn’t going to kill me.’

  I took her hands. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course! Now go and pretty yourself up. Southern men appreciate it when a woman makes the effort.’

  Although I thought Grandma Ruby’s advice was old-fashioned, I did take time to blowdry my hair straight. Then I dusted my shoulders and legs in shimmer powder.

  Having been told that Preservation Hall was the place to hear authentic New Orleans jazz, I expected that the taxi would pull up at the equivalent of the Opera House in Sydney or London’s Royal Albert Hall. Instead I found myself alighting in front of a dilapidated townhouse. The weather-beaten exterior hadn’t been painted in years and the ironwork was coming apart at the joins. However, the line of people outside stretched a distance down St Peter Street.

  Elliot was waiting out the front for me, looking hot in an ethnic-print shirt and white Panama hat. ‘Hey, Amandine!�
�� he called, and waved me over. ‘You look beautiful,’ he said, kissing me and admiring my python-skin-patterned top and pencil skirt. ‘You Sydney people sure know how to dress.’

  ‘You look pretty good yourself,’ I replied.

  He took a bottle of water from the vintage canvas satchel he had hanging on his shoulder and gave it to me. ‘No drinks or food are served here. There aren’t even bathrooms. Just great jazz.’

  Because he’d been able to reserve tickets through a friend, we were placed next to the musicians. Elliot grinned as we squeezed with another couple into an old church pew. The rest of the audience sat on backless benches or cushions on the floor, or stood at the rear.

  ‘Not what you were expecting, is it?’ he said.

  ‘Not at all.’ I laughed, and gazed over the cracked soundproofing on the unpainted walls. The wooden floor was rough with gaps in it and the seats set aside for the musicians looked rickety. I sneezed from the dust in the air.

  ‘God bless you!’ said the woman sitting next to us.

  ‘We talked the other day about music and segregation,’ Elliot said. ‘Preservation Hall broke the barrier between black and white. You left your racism at the door when you came here. It was all about the music.’

  It was a steamy night and there was no air conditioning in the building, but Elliot and I pressed against each other happily.

  He looked into my eyes. ‘I’m glad you came to New Orleans, Amandine.’

  ‘I am too,’ I told him.

  A saxophonist and two trumpeters came out first, and placed their chairs only an arm’s length from us. The pianist, bassist and drummer followed. A thrill of excitement ran through me as they began a rousing rendition of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’. I remembered what my mother had written in her letter to Nan about seeing my father at Preservation Hall for the first time: We locked eyes and I didn’t take mine off him until the last note was played. It was like being drunk on a magic potion from the witchcraft store. I looked out into the audience and imagined my mother there with her pretty face and wild blonde hair, falling in love. Then I looked to the saxophonist and pretended he was my father making eyes in my mother’s direction. The picture warmed my heart. I took Elliot’s hand and squeezed it.