by Renée Rosen
The highway patrolman still had his gun aimed toward the sky. “Enough,” he said. “You’ve made your point. Now it’s over. Leave these people alone.”
As the mob backed off, Leeba collapsed onto the grass, coughing, hot tears sliding down the sides of her face. She didn’t remember much after that other than the crowd dispersing and the fire engines and ambulances arriving. They were all taken to the hospital and emerged the next day covered in bruises and bandages. Leeba was stunned by the number of reporters and photographers waiting for them as they clung to one another, making their way through the hospital lobby. She felt defeated until she realized that they were finally calling national attention to the situation. Their story would appear in newspapers, on radios, on televisions across the country. Surely people would side with the Freedom Riders. Maybe they hadn’t made it to their final destination, but they were exposing the crimes of the Deep South, showing the rest of the world the injustice.
It was the end of the road for them. Their bus was destroyed and Greyhound refused to sacrifice another vehicle. Besides, there wasn’t a driver in all of Alabama willing to take them any farther. They thought it was over, until another crop of warriors and a brave driver took up the cause. The Freedom Ride would continue, just not with Leeba, Red and the original Riders on board.
FIFTY-TWO
• • •
“Rescue Me”
LEEBA
There was no leaving it behind and picking up where she’d left off. Leeba had retuned to Chicago scarred inside and out. The gash along her arm and the scar on her chin were nothing compared to the wounds and heartaches lodged beneath the surface.
The day after she and Red arrived back in Chicago Aileen was in a bad way. She had just found out that Etta James was going to be on American Bandstand and Muddy had told her they were finished, once and for all. Leeba hadn’t heard that kind of despair in Aileen’s voice in a long time and it frightened her. Her friend had been clean for well over a year—no dope, not even a drink—and Leeba was afraid she might revert to her old ways.
It was a Sunday afternoon and though Leeba was exhausted she dropped everything and went to Aileen’s apartment. She found her sitting on the floor in her kitchenette, hugging her knees to her chest. The potatoes in a bag on the counter were growing eyes, watching the whole thing.
“It’s too much,” Aileen said, wailing. “I can’t go on without him.”
“C’mon now,” said Leeba, sitting down beside her. “You’ll be okay. You can handle this.”
“When does it get to be my turn, huh?” She raised her head; her eyes were bloodshot. “Muddy’s got that new girl, Lucille.”
“Well, she doesn’t really have him, either,” said Leeba. “Don’t forget he’s still a married man.”
“Not anymore. He’s leaving Geneva. He’s moving in with Lucille.” Aileen broke down just saying that out loud. “Do you know how many times I begged him to come live with me? But the truth is, he didn’t love me. Not enough. He never loved me the way he loves Lucille.” Aileen cried some more, dropped her legs out in front of her like a ragamuffin. “I just wanna die.”
“No, you don’t. C’mon now.” Leeba put her arm around Aileen and pulled her close. “Don’t say things like that. You’ve been doing so good.”
“What am I gonna do without Muddy?”
“Maybe stop torturing yourself, for one thing.”
Aileen cracked a half smile and then burst into more tears as she rested her head on Leeba’s shoulder.
“C’mon now, you’ve got so much to look forward to.”
“Like what?”
“We’re going back in the studio soon. We’re gonna put out a new record. And you wait and see, I bet it’s gonna be even bigger than ‘Lovah, Lovah, Lover.’”
Aileen sniffed, wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “You think maybe someday they’d put me on TV?”
Leeba smiled. The fact that she even asked that, that she was looking toward the future, told Leeba that Aileen was coming out of it. “Sure,” she said. “I think someday they’ll put you on Bandstand, Sullivan, all of them. You’ve got just as much talent as Etta James.”
“You used to say I had more talent than her.” Aileen laughed and so did Leeba.
After that they fell into their usual routine where Leeba told Aileen how talented she was, how beautiful and bright and funny she was. Each accolade seemed to prop her up more. And by the time the light inside the kitchenette had changed, so had Aileen’s mood. She smiled, even laughed, and began laying the groundwork for her climb back up.
“Walter told me about a new club, Linda’s Place, that’s opening up. I’m thinkin’ maybe I’ll try and get a gig there.”
“You should. I think that would be great.”
“You think maybe someday I’ll meet someone new? Someone better for me than Muddy . . .”
“Oh, I have no doubt about that.” Leeba looked at her watch. It was getting late and she was supposed to have met Red and James back at the apartment over an hour ago. “Tell you what,” said Leeba, standing up, reaching for her pocketbook, “why don’t you come back with me. Pack a bag and come stay with us until you’re feeling better.”
Aileen smiled and shook her head as she stood up. “No, you go on.” She dusted off her backside. “I’ll be all right.”
“You sure?” Leeba asked as she hoisted the strap of her pocketbook on her shoulder.
Aileen nodded and thanked her and hugged her with such ferocity it stunned Leeba. She had the strongest urge to say I love you, but something stopped her. Aileen knew, though. Leeba didn’t need to say it.
• • •
The next day Leeba drove to the suburbs to pick up her father, who had been visiting with Sylvie and Moishe. She hadn’t seen her father since she’d gotten back and on the drive home she tried to explain what she’d been through on the Freedom Ride down South.
“So the whole bus was on fire?” he asked, futzing with the window knob. “And this happened while you were still on it?”
She nodded, gripping the steering wheel tighter, wanting something to hold on to. “It was terrifying.” Talking about it had placed her back there in Anniston. “I think the Ku Klux Klan wanted to kill us whites more than the coloreds on board. They saw us as traitors and a disgrace.” Those angry faces came rushing back to her, all of them shouting Torch ’em niggers. Kill that white trash. “We couldn’t go on after that. I’ve never seen such hatred before. Such ugliness.”
Her father said something, or she thought he did. She glanced over. His eyes were closed, his head bobbing, his breathing heavy. Like a newborn, the motion of the car had put him to sleep.
Driving back into the city and back into Lawndale she remembered what it was like growing up there and was struck by the passage of time. They said the neighborhood had “turned,” as if they were talking about a bottle of milk. Yes, things had changed. Beth El Synagogue on the corner of Independence Boulevard and Lexington Street was now a Missionary Baptist church. Almost all the synagogues were churches now. The kosher butchers were gone, replaced by shops selling pork ribs and chitterlings. Having so many colored families in the neighborhood didn’t bother Leeba. She welcomed them, relieved to see them out of the slums. She didn’t think twice when a Negro family moved into Aunt Sylvie and Uncle Moishe’s old apartment across the hall. But her father worried.
“Lock the door. Did you lock the door?” That was always the first thing he’d say to her whenever she came by to visit, even before he’d say hello. Sylvie and Moishe wanted him to move to the suburbs, but he didn’t want to be that far away from Leeba and Golda.
When they got home that day, Leeba watched her father hobble across the room. With her mother gone he’d become an old man at the age of sixty-four. He went over and sat in the chair her mother used to sit in. He had adopted it after she passed away. C
onsidering all that had changed outside the walls of their apartment, it made sense that her father found comfort in her mother’s remnants. There was her Maxwell House coffee can on the kitchen counter still holding her spare change, the needlepoint pillow she used for her lower back. But Golda, newly divorced and in need of a project, wanted to redecorate. Each time Leeba came to see her father there was a new brushstroke—a paint sample—on the living room wall. Golda, the maven when it came to these things, couldn’t make a decision.
Even that day Leeba saw that Golda must have been there. Her father slapped his hand to his forehead. “Oy, she’s driving me meshuge, crazy. What’s the difference between that beige”—he pointed to one sample on the wall—“and that beige? Beige is beige.”
Leeba laughed. “How could Golda have been Mama’s favorite?”
“Auch, your mother didn’t have favorites.”
Leeba turned toward him, eyebrows raised.
“Okay, so maybe she favored Golda. A little.”
“A little?” Leeba was laughing when someone knocked on the door. “It’s okay,” she said to her father, who gripped the arms of his chair, a worried look on his face.
“See who it is first,” he said. “Don’t let anyone in.”
“Don’t worry.” She peered out through the peephole and her heart about stopped. A prickly feeling rushed through her. She opened the door and her father let out a gasp. All he saw was a Negro standing there. But Leeba saw Muddy and his face was filled with dread.
“Red told me I’d find you here,” he said. “I think somethin’s wrong with Aileen. She called me a couple hours ago cryin’.”
Leeba couldn’t speak. All she could think was, Why? Why of all people would Aileen have called Muddy? What was it about this guy? What kind of hold did he have over her and why couldn’t she let go?
“She was in a bad way,” said Muddy. “Kept sayin’ she’s a failure, sayin’ nobody loves her, nobody cares if she lives or dies, you know—all that shit she say when she get down on herself.”
“I know she’s down. I saw her yesterday. But she was okay by the time I left.”
“I can tell ya she ain’t okay,” said Muddy. “She sounded messed up. Like she was on that dope again. And now she ain’t answering her phone. Won’t answer the door, either. And I gave her back her key, so I can’t get in.”
Leeba swallowed hard. “I’ve got a key. Let’s go.”
They left Leeba’s father and drove to Aileen’s in Muddy’s new Cadillac. Muddy was talking the whole way, saying he was sorry for the way he’d treated Aileen. “Especially lately.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” said Leeba. “She’s the one you should be saying all this to.”
“Can’t explain it,” he said after they’d parked and were walking up the front steps of Aileen’s building. “There’s something inside me that can’t be satisfied with one woman. It’s my weakness. Like how hers is them drugs, mine be womens.”
The hallway was narrow and smelled like sulfur and cigars. They came to Aileen’s apartment. They heard her song “Jealous Kinda Love” skipping over and over again on the same line: “I got a jealous kinda love and where my heart was, there’s a hole.”
Leeba knocked on the door. “Aileen? Open up. It’s me.”
Muddy was still rambling. “I ain’t proud of being this way and I know I caused her pain, but I do love her.”
The record was still skipping. Leeba pounded on the door again as she reached in her pocket for the key. Muddy continued with his confession, but she’d stopped listening. The song kept skipping, repeating that same line. Leeba had a bad feeling even before she turned the key. Even before she saw the overturned chair; even before she saw Aileen.
As soon as they opened the door Leeba slid down against the wall, her legs unable to carry her. Muddy ran to Aileen, her body suspended from a beam, lifeless legs dangling above the capsized chair she must have been standing on. And all the while her record was skipping: “. . . where my heart was, there’s a hole.”
• • •
In the days that followed, sometimes Leeba forgot. She would reach for the telephone, thinking, I have to call Aileen. She sat in the living room listening to Aileen’s records, shuffling through photographs of the two of them from the time they were kids to one more recently taken of Aileen and Muddy with Leeba and Red. Aileen had her face pressed to Muddy’s cheek. She looked so happy, not a hint of the demons lurking inside.
After Aileen’s funeral Leeba went to her kitchenette to start packing up her things. It was dark and musty inside. It smelled like death. After all those years of threatening to do herself in, Leeba shouldn’t have been surprised that Aileen would have taken her own life. She thought it would have been drugs that did her in, but instead Aileen had ended her life the same way her mother had. But still Leeba was shocked and struggled with one nagging regret: Why hadn’t she told Aileen she loved her that one last time? The words had been right there, but she’d pushed them down, thinking the gesture unnecessary. It shouldn’t have mattered how many times she’d told Aileen before. She wished she’d said it one last time and vowed to never again hold back—she would tell Red and James and her father, Aunt Sylvie and Uncle Moishe and even her sister that she loved them because that chance could be taken away without warning.
She opened the shades and the windows to air out the place. She bagged up some garbage and that sack of potatoes on the counter growing more eyes. When she came back from the trash chute, she noticed the houseplant. Aileen had had that plant since her first kitchenette. For the longest time it just stayed the same, never grew, never died. It was just there. But now it looked like it had new leaves and shoots coming up. And no fruit flies. They were gone. It was like they’d left along with Aileen. Leeba sank down on the floor and cried.
When there were no more tears she managed to stand up. Her heart was heavy as she turned off the lights. She’d started to lock the door when she stopped, went back inside, picked up the houseplant and took it home with her.
FIFTY-THREE
• • •
“Boom, Boom Out Goes the Lights”
LEONARD
Leonard got a call in the middle of the night. The alarm was going off down at 2120. He eased out from under the covers and told Revetta he had to go downtown, turn it off, make sure everything was okay. He’d be back before it was time to get the kids up for school.
He got in his Cadillac and made the drive from Glencoe into the city. Pain in the goddamn ass was what it was. When he got downtown the streets were almost empty, just a few other cars on the road, a couple of late-night bars where folks were still staggering in and out. Leonard pulled up in front on Michigan Avenue. There was no alarm going off. It was quiet. He’d come all the way down here for nothing. Did the security company have the wrong address?
As he turned back toward his car he felt something hard clobber him on the back of the head. He fell to the ground, landing on his knees, and when he looked up he saw a group of thugs. They started in on him, punching, kicking, ransacking his pockets, grabbing his money, car keys, whatever they could get. They kicked gravel in his face; some landed in his mouth as it filled with blood. They shouted at him, “Leonard fuckin’ Chess. Jew man. Rich kike record man.” They ran the tread on their boots over his knuckles, making them bleed. They left him on the sidewalk, curled up and holding his ribs, a piercing pain gripping him each time he breathed.
Leonard didn’t know how long he’d been down before someone spotted him and called an ambulance. He must have passed out at some point because the next thing he knew, he was in the hospital. Revetta, Phil and Leeba were standing around his bed. He was dizzy and stared at the brim on his brother’s hat to stop the spinning. When he tried to move, a surge of pain shot through him, making him wince.
“Easy does it. You’ve got three broken ribs,” said Phil.
Phil eventually asked Leeba to take Revetta home while he stayed with Leonard.
“I was set up,” said Leonard after they left. “The guys who jumped me knew me. They called the house, said the alarm was going off, and they were waiting for me.” He paused for a minute. “And they were Negroes. I never had a problem with Negroes in my whole life.”
“Why would a bunch of Negroes jump you? Of all people. You’ve given more money to the NAACP than anyone I know.”
“Because nobody but you knows I do that.” A sharp pain gripped him when he breathed too deeply and he had to pause for a moment. “Times are changing,” he said after the spasm subsided. “When we got started in this business we all needed each other—they needed us as much as we needed them. There were no Negro record men back then. Now you got Vee-Jay and Motown and other labels—they’re all run by coloreds. They’ve got coloreds in management and coloreds in sales and distribution.”
“So what are you saying? Negroes don’t need us anymore?”
“We’re just in the way,” said Leonard. “Maybe it’s time to get out of this business. I’m tired, man. I’m tired of it all.”
“First things first. You get better and then we’ll talk about getting out of the business.”
• • •
They kept Leonard in the hospital for five days. Five days of lying on his back thinking. Thinking and thinking some more. He and Phil had skated through the payola scandal. The FTC eventually dropped their charges and the IRS had nothing on Chess since they’d declared every penny spent on deejays as a write-off, a legitimate business expense.
But on the other side of payola it was a different ball game. There was no way to influence a record’s chances of success. Now when he and Phil went on the road to see disc jockeys, they kept their hands in their pockets. They took ’em out for a nice dinner, but that wasn’t enough to guarantee they’d get additional airplay. Plus, Chuck Berry was still in jail. He was writing songs while he was away, but they couldn’t do any recording. Etta was taking off and, yeah, maybe Muddy, Wolf and Walter were doing fine in Europe, but back home their sales were still sliding. And now Aileen was gone. That stung. He’d known her from the time they were kids, back in the old neighborhood. He remembered the day her father died and six months later, he was there when she buried her mother. The kid had one tough break after another. She had the guts, though, and she’d gotten herself off the dope and everyone thought she’d beaten her demons. She was starting to make a comeback, too, but in the end the pain in her life was just too great.