Windy City Blues

by Renée Rosen

  Uncle Moishe barely glanced up from his newspaper and Ber said hello, but Golda wouldn’t even give her that much. Leeba could feel the judgment coming off them and she knew that they really did blame her for her mother’s cancer.

  No one spoke to her, or to each other. Instead they watched her mother sleep. Leeba didn’t know what to do. She stood awkwardly off to the side. Nurses came and went. Doctors were paged over the intercom system. The sounds of the monitors and other machines beeping and buzzing were maddening. Before long Leeba had figured out which one was her mother’s blood pressure, her heart rate, her oxygen level. From time to time the smell of antiseptic became overpowering and Leeba felt like she couldn’t breathe.

  At one point, without warning, her mother stirred and Leeba rushed to her side, leaned over the railing and reached for her hand. “It’s Leeba, Mama. I’m here,” she said, with a gentle squeeze. The skin on the back of her mother’s hand was paper-thin and badly bruised from IVs and where they’d drawn blood.

  Her mother opened her eyes, looked at Leeba and said one word: “Golda.”

  But Golda, her perfect daughter, was out in the hallway, arguing with Ber. Leeba overheard snippets: Ber was spending too much time at work. Golda was spending too much money. Golda said she knew Ber was having an affair. Ber denied it. Leeba’s father sat in the corner, pretending not to hear, reading the newspaper and fiddling with the venetian blinds.

  “Mama,” she tried again. “It’s me, Leeba. Mama, I’m—” She wasn’t sure what she was going to say and it didn’t matter because her mother pulled her hand away with surprising strength and winced, calling out for Golda.

  Golda must have heard her and came rushing back into the room. “Look at what you’ve done,” she said to Leeba. “You’ve got her all agitated. This is exactly why we didn’t want you here. I told you not to come. Go,” she ordered. “Leave. Just go already.”

  Leeba felt like a monster watching Golda trying to calm her mother down, saying, “It’s okay, Mama. She’s leaving. It’s okay.”

  Her father came and stood by her side. “Maybe it is best for you to go,” he said with tears misting up his eyes.

  “We’ll let you know if there’s any change,” Aunt Sylvie promised, her hand on Leeba’s back as she coaxed her to the door.

  Leeba felt so dismissed. So excluded. She couldn’t keep from crying on the El. Other passengers looked on; one even asked if she was okay. Leeba nodded, trying to compose herself. A moment later another burst of tears flowed down her cheeks. Her family was never going to accept her, let alone Red. And if her own family wouldn’t, who would?

  When Red came home that night she was sitting on the davenport in the dark. He turned on the lamp and she looked at him through a veil of tears. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “It’s too hard.”

  “Do what?” He hadn’t even taken off his coat yet. He sat down next to her, thumbing away her tears. “Tell me. What’s too hard?”

  “This,” she said, indicating him and her. “I love you, I do, but it’s just too hard.” She told him what had happened at the hospital with her family. “I feel like the whole world is against us.”

  “We knew this was gonna be tough,” he said, trying to soothe her.

  “We get threatening notes under our door, rocks thrown through our window. They killed our dog. They stabbed you. What’s next?”

  “So we’ll move to a different neighborhood.”

  “Oh, Red, there is no neighborhood for people like us. And after what happened today with my family—I can’t take it anymore. I love you, but maybe we don’t belong together.”

  “Don’t say that.” He cupped her face in his hands and made her look him in the eye. “We can fight this. We have to. Why do you think I’m going to all those meetings? This is about our future. It’s one of the reasons why I’m getting so involved, and it’s time you did, too.”

  • • •

  The following night Leeba went with Red to a meeting of a group called CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality. It was held in the basement of Hutchinson Commons at the University of Chicago, a small room set up with rows of folding chairs to accommodate the fifty or so men and women who attended, most of them college students. Leeba was surprised to see so many whites there. She’d been expecting mostly Negroes. And she was even more surprised to see so many other mixed couples.

  A man with dark brown skin and a full, round face that defied his slender build stood in front of the room and welcomed everyone. He was well-dressed, in a handsome suit and tie. He set a leather briefcase down on the table at his side.

  After Red and Leeba took their seats in the back of the room he began to speak. He chose his words thoughtfully and was charismatic. Leeba noticed how everyone, including herself, had inched forward in their chairs as if to get closer.

  “Everybody thinks that segregation and discrimination are just problems down South,” said the man. “But we know for a fact that our brothers and sisters face that kind of racism and hatred every single day right here in Chicago.”

  Leeba’s eyes grew wide as she soaked it all in. Though Red had told her about the meetings she hadn’t expected the speaker’s words to resonate so clearly with her own situation.

  “We see it in the school system. We see it in the job market. In the housing market. This is no way for a civil society to exist and we are here to put an end to segregation and discrimination. And I’ll tell you something else. Everyone’s saying that it’s Chicago—not Atlanta, not Jackson, not Memphis—it’s Chicago that is the most important city when it comes to effecting change in race relations . . . We can’t afford to waste time complaining about how we’ve been wronged,” said the man. “We need to focus on the future, on what is to come. What we together can make happen.”

  With that, the speech was over and everyone began to clap and cheer. Looking around at the room of white and black faces, Leeba was overcome with a visceral sense of belonging and being part of something greater than herself, greater than the rejection of her family, greater than the injustice she and Red had suffered ever since they’d been together.

  After the CORE meeting another mixed couple, Wendell and Yolanda, invited Leeba and Red to join them and some others for coffee. There they were, four couples, and instead of boy, girl, boy, girl, it was colored, white, colored, white, up and down the table.

  Wendell and Yolanda had been married a little over a year. He said the first time he brought Yolanda home to meet his family was the last time. “They were an embarrassment,” he said. “I haven’t spoken to any of them since.”

  Another woman, Janice, told them her parents had had her institutionalized for six months because of her Negro boyfriend. Another couple said their car tires had been slashed and that they’d found Go back to Africa spray-painted across their front door.

  The more stories they shared, the more Leeba realized that everyone in a mixed relationship had at least one relative who wasn’t speaking to them and all of them had been victims of vandalism or more violent crimes. It struck her that their struggles were not unique. She and Red were no longer alone and she was grateful that she’d found people to commiserate with. But it was bittersweet to think that she felt more at home with them than with her own family.

  FORTY-ONE

  • • •

  “Dust My Broom”

  RED

  Red looked out the front window at the snow coming down. No sign of James. Red was concerned. They had a lesson that day and it wasn’t like him to be late.

  Red overheard Leah talking on the phone with her aunt about her mother. It sounded like she was home from the hospital and Red could sense the hope in Leah’s voice when she asked if she could come see her mother. She asked her aunt that same question every time they spoke.

  “But I just want to see her,” Leah said. “I won’t stay long.”

  R
ed looked at his wife, sitting at the kitchen table, feet curled beneath her, clutching the phone, her eyes squeezed shut, as if to keep from crying. Her tears fell anyway as she hung up the phone and a rush of guilt flooded him. He was the reason she couldn’t go see her mama.

  He couldn’t look at her; it was killing him. He turned back to the window and finally there was James, coming up the walkway with Stella in his hand. It was bitter cold that day and snowing and the kid was wearing nothing but a flimsy coat with half the buttons missing. No scarf, no hat.

  “Where have you been?” asked Red when he opened the door.

  James looked at him glassy eyed, his teeth chattering. “My head hurts.” James set Stella aside, leaning her up against the wall, and rubbed his temples. “My throat’s all scratchy, too.”

  Leah came over and felt his forehead, first with her hand and then with her cheek. “You’re burning up.” She rushed into the bathroom and Red heard the squeak of her opening the medicine cabinet. She came back with a thermometer and a bottle of aspirin. “Get him a glass of water,” she said to Red and she shook down the thermometer, checked the reading and placed it under James’s tongue. He tried to say something but she stopped him. “Just sit still.”

  When she removed the thermometer James said, “I gotta get on with my lesson.”

  “You, young man, are getting straight into this bed. You’ve got a hundred and two fever.”

  Red brought him the glass of water and Leah took over. She gave James aspirin and bundled him up under the covers, but even so, James was still shivering. She instructed Red to get an extra blanket from the hall closet and when he came back into the bedroom, James was already drifting off to sleep. Leah sat beside him, stroking his forehead.

  She met Red’s gaze as he stood in the doorway, a blanket in his hands. She got up and took it from him and returned to James’s side, smoothing the quilt over him. “We don’t have a phone number for his foster parents,” she whispered. “All we have is the street address. We need to let them know he’s here with us. Will you go and tell them? I don’t trust them to take care of him right now.”

  Red bundled up and walked over to the Macks’, James’s foster family’s house. He hadn’t been there before and he noticed the shutters were barely hanging on and the gutters weren’t in much better shape. The walkway was snow covered and he saw a single set of footsteps leading from the sidewalk to the door. There was mail stuffed in the box that looked like it had been accumulating for a while.

  He tried the buzzer, but it didn’t work so he knocked instead, looking through the windows alongside the door. The lights were out, but he could see there were dishes lying around, shoes kicked off, an empty whiskey bottle on a table.

  Red knocked again and finally a porch light came on and an elderly woman in a housecoat came to the door. Red explained that James was sick and would be staying with them tonight. The woman just nodded. He couldn’t tell if she understood him or not. She had a small box with some knobs hanging off a strap about her neck, attached to her hearing aids.

  “Are the Macks home?” asked Red. “Can I speak with them?”

  The woman nodded, closed the door and turned off the porch light.

  As he walked along, Red thought about that poor boy living with those people and how Leeba had been more of a mama to him than any of his foster mothers, probably more than his own grandmother had been.

  When Red came back to the apartment he found James still asleep and a rich aroma coming from the kitchen. Leah was in there making chicken soup for James, cooking chopped onions, celery and carrots. Something about walking into that apartment and knowing James was there with her, safe and being cared for, was exactly the way it should be. It was what that boy needed—what they needed, too.

  Without giving it much more thought than that, Red turned to Leah and said, “Let’s adopt him.”

  “What?” She turned, her spoon paused in midair.

  “I mean it. James needs a home. He needs love and we can give him that. Maybe since we can’t have a child of our own, God brought us James.”

  Leah looked at him, barely blinking.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  She set the spoon down and went to him, burying her face in his chest.

  “Is that a yes?” he asked.

  She couldn’t speak. All she could do was nod.

  • • •

  The next day Red was on the assembly line, gluing cork to soles. He’d slept on the floor the night before and Leah had taken the davenport so they could give James the bed. He kept wondering why they hadn’t thought about adopting him a long time ago. The idea of being a father was nothing new to Red. He’d been a father figure for James from the start, but this would make it official. Besides, it was better for the boy, too.

  Red was lost in thought and accidentally glued two corks to the same sole. He’d been at the Moore Brothers’ Shoe Factory for three years and hated every single day. It was a miserable place. Between the glue fumes and the noise from the stitching machines, the conveyor belts and the giant fans, not to mention the racists that ran the place, Red left every day not wanting to go back. It wasn’t hard work, but it was exhausting just the same. The plain nothingness of it was what wore him out. Red felt as if he were wasting away there, one day bleeding into the next. He was always on the lookout for something else, but all the jobs available to Negroes were the same: factory jobs, kitchen help, janitors, drivers. All his life he’d been a musician. That was all he knew and that had been taken away from him. If he couldn’t use his talent anymore, then at least let him use his mind to make his way. He didn’t want to grow old on that assembly line, but he couldn’t see a way out for himself.

  When it was break time, Red got the newspaper from his locker and found a quiet place to read. He sat right down on the cement floor and leaned up against the cool brick wall. It was December but felt hotter than August inside that factory. He started reading the Tribune. He preferred the Defender, but the boss man didn’t appreciate seeing a Negro paper with headlines like: “NAACP Say Jim Crow Laws Must Go.”

  Red was reading an article when he felt the jolt of someone kicking his foot. “Back to work, boy.” Red looked up. Billy Moore was standing over him, red faced, gut hanging over his belt, hands planted on his hips. Just the very sight of this man agitated Red. Since he’d started getting involved with things like CORE and the Urban League it was getting harder to take the kind of abuse this guy loved dishing out. Something bigger than this man’s bigotry was under way. Red could feel it. Somewhere out there was a man demanding to be served at a lunch counter, another daring to drink from a “White” water fountain, a woman refusing to give up her seat on a bus, a young boy determined to get a better education at a white school. It was like thunder building in the distance, growing louder and bolder by the day.

  “I said get back to work.”

  Red glanced at the clock above the lockers. “I still got five minutes.” He picked up his newspaper again.

  “Back to work or I’ll dock your pay. You hear?”

  Red drew a deep breath, trying to hold his temper.

  “I said, you hear?”

  “I hear you just fine,” Red said in a measured tone.

  “Then speak up.” Billy Moore kicked Red’s foot again. “I won’t have no uppity Negroes workin’ here.”

  Red shot up, towering over the man, and he saw that Moore was scared. He should have been, too, because Red wanted to deck him. He was shaking to control himself, knowing the last thing he needed was an arrest for assaulting a white man. “Well, then,” said Red with full restraint, “I guess you’ll have one less Negro to put up with.”

  He turned and walked out of the factory and in a way it reminded him of the day he quit his job at the brickyard. Only then he’d had a record on the radio, and this time he had nothing. But maybe that
wasn’t really the case. Back then, he’d walked out because of pride at having heard his record. Maybe today he walked out based on pride in himself.

  It felt good, even as the winds were howling and the full force of winter’s cold chill was all around. He realized that in his haste to leave Moore’s, he’d forgotten his gloves in his locker. Snow was blowing and whipping around as he turned up the collar on his coat and stuffed his hands inside his pockets. He was making his way to the El platform and while waiting for the light to change he looked over and saw Al Benson. The Old Swingmaster was dressed in a cashmere overcoat, a black fedora and spit-shined Stacy Adams shoes. Red was painfully aware of his shabby coat, his workman’s boots. He started back the other way, hoping to go unnoticed.

  “Red Dupree! Is that you?”

  Red froze, shoulders to his ears, as he turned around.

  “Where you been, man?” asked Benson. “Haven’t seen you around in ages. How’s that hand of yours?”

  “Not so good.” He held it up so that the scars showed.

  “Damn shame is what that is.” Benson shook his head. “So what are you doing with yourself these days?”

  “Right now, I suppose I’m trying to find work. Believe it or not, I just walked off my job. Couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “I know how that goes. Yep, I sure do.” Benson rocked back on his heels. “So you’re looking for work now, huh? You need a job?” He reached into his pocket and handed Red his business card. “C’mon down to the station. I’ll put you to work.”

  “I don’t know anything about radio.”

  “You don’t need to know nothing to sweep floors and make deliveries, do you?”

  Red forced a small smile. “I’ve been on the radio, man. I can’t go from that to sweeping floors.”

  “Pride won’t feed a man. Remember that. You got yourself a wife now, don’t you?”

  Red nodded.

  “Probably be planning on starting a family soon. Gonna need a job to provide for them and I need the help.”