Detroit Noir

by E. J. Olsen

  "So where in England are you two from?" I asked, relaxing.

  "Spent my 'ole life in London …" He was about to say more but then one of those coughs cut him off.

  His daughter rubbed him on his shoulder.

  "My father is dying," she said matter-of-factly, and I did my best not to let my mouth fall open. She said it the same way someone would have said: My father's name is Elliot, or, I don't like bananas. I wasn't surprised. Helen Keller could see that her father was dying. Saying it out loud, however, was like spilling a deep, dark secret that no one wanted to talk about. Psst, hey, I know he's dying and you know he's dying, but let's not talk about it. I wanted to say to her, I know that! You didn't have to tell me! It seemed that by her saying what we all knew anyway, she somehow betrayed a closeness that we had developed in the short time that we had known each other. I was taken aback, but how does one continue that conversation?

  Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that.

  Really? Well my father's still alive and healthy as a bull.

  OhmyGod! Whatever he's dying from isn't contagious, is it?

  I just sat there not saying anything. I looked into both of their faces trying to ascertain whether or not they wanted to continue talking, or was this her way of killing conversation. Her smile was certainly gone. If this was her way of killing a conversation, it sure worked, her pronouncement being right up there behind, I'm sorry to inform you, Mr. Blake, but it's malignant, on the list of Great Conversation Killers of the twentieth century.

  Elliot broke the uncomfortable silence.

  " 'S okay, mate, I'm living out the rest of my days the way I want to," he said, producing a genuine half-smile on his face. I looked at him closely, trying to see any sign of a man who was patronizing and didn't.

  "I'm … I'm sorry," I said, not really knowing what I was saying.

  "My father grew up listening to Motown music," Diana began, thankfully moving the subject in another direction. "I guess I did as well," she said, lifting the pall out of the air with her smile. "The words, the beats, the singers, and the way they danced, they were all so … so magnificent. I remember 'aving always ' eard this music when I was young." Diana looked around lovingly. "' e and my mum were always singing and dancing to this music." At this she threw her left hand on her hip and stuck her right arm out with her hand up like a crossing guard. She began shaking her hips to an unheard beat. "Stop! In the name of love, bee-fore you break mah heart," she sang. She didn't sound like Diana Ross. She sounded like a British teenager trying to sound like Diana Ross.

  Behind me a couple of my students finished the song off for her, doing a pretty fair job of sounding like TLC trying to sound like the Supremes.

  "Think it oh-oh-ver. "

  Elliot tilted his head and began nodding to the beat, his eyes glazed in dreamy memories. Looking at his face, I saw in it his love for the music. Elliot looked a lot less sick than he had when I first laid eyes on him. What was he seeing in his mind's eye—Diana Ross singing on The Ed Sullivan Show? Or was he possibly reminiscing about himself and his wife during a younger, happier time? What was it like to experience the Motown Sound over in merry old England? I wondered. Whatever he was thinking about, it made a difference on his face immediately, and I was thankful for that.

  "This was a place my dad always wanted to visit. ' e always talked about coming ' ere one day with my mum. When ' e took ill, our family decided that ' e'd get to see some a the places ' e always wanted to," Diana said proudly as she massaged her father's shoulders. "We got the money together and flew 'im over. My mum couldn't make the trip. She's at 'ome with my sister and brother. I took some time off from school 'cause ' e needs someone to be with 'im. We decided that this was one of the things that dad would see …" Diana said, trailing off.

  My students all sighed.

  "That is sooo cool," I heard a couple of them say.

  "This place 'as meant a lot to me. Being ' ere, in this city, in this 'ouse … I feel like I'm standing in some sacred or 'oly place. Ya know, when I was a young child, I used to look at pictures of this building in old magazines that my parents used to keep back 'ome," Diana said with a voice that reverberated with real awe.

  I was in awe as well, but for different reasons. I was trying to work out in my mind why anyone would want to come to Detroit. I was someone who couldn't wait to leave and generally dreaded coming back. My mind kept flipping to the question: If I only had a couple of moments left on this earth, where would I go? Detroit was right up there, sandwiched between Bosnia and Haiti on my list of gotta-see destinations! What about the Grand Canyon, Africa, the Alps, or taking a swim in the Caribbean, where the water is turquoise and the temperature of bath water? My God, I could think of so many other things to do and certainly other places to see.

  "Hitsville?" I said.

  "Ummm-huh, 'itsville, Motown, Dee-troit, Michigan. I know Detroit, Michigan doesn't show up on a lot of travel brochures, but ya should see 'ow many people travel to Liverpool all the time!" Diana said plainly, as she was obviously picking up on my amazement. "I mean, I know a lot of people who travel from England to Memphis every year, just to visit Graceland!" Now it was her turn to be incredulous.

  "Yeah, and that's just the place where Elvis died," Elliot said.

  "Different stuff means different things to people, don't it, Mr. Blake?" one of my kids said.

  "Some people used to say: Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks," Elliot added, grinning knowingly at me.

  "Ya know, for people who cared, for people who loved the artists and the music, there's bunches to see and do ' ere. My dad wants to see the places where they grew up—to walk where they walked, eat where they ate. ' e wants to see and feel what made the music," she said happily.

  What made the music.

  What made the music?

  That statement clung to my thoughts suddenly. Yes, what about this city got the people to sing and harmonize the way they did? You know, like certain places out west in this country inspired beach music, yet nothing else sounded like Motown. Berry Gordy, a Young African American Male (this group of adjectives tends to send people scurrying to their statistic sheets on drugs, crime, and death) who worked in a factory and lived in the city where I was born, decided that the music that he would create would have a certain sound. He did whatever it took to get it done. In creating that Motown sound he affected a city, a generation, and countless lives. In the process of making music, he not only affected the lives of the people he knew but the lives of people he would never meet—people from half a world away.

  I was stunned at the significance of that revelation.

  I remembered looking at the 45s that my parents owned. The shiny black disc, larger, more pliable, and much less foreboding and antiseptic than the metallic-looking CDs that we listen to today. The funny-shaped little yellow thingy that you popped into its center to play it on the stereo, that was surrounded by the blue label with a little map of Detroit with the red star, showing the entire world where both I and the Motown Sound were born. People who otherwise may have never given Detroit a second thought discovered the city that way, through hearing the music. Young American soldiers found respite as they listened to it while they lived and some died in murky rice paddies and jungles far away from the streets and the house parties of their youth.

  There are many times that I look around this city and see nothing other than burned-out and dilapidated old neighborhoods. Neighborhoods filled with homes and buildings whose usefulness has become nothing more than insidious schemes. Lately, whenever I drive around the city where both of my parents as well as all of their children were born and raised, I no longer see the city of my youth, the one that once vibrated— literally—with sounds. The coffee-and-cream voices of Marvin and Tammy crooning, Ain't no mountain high enough, that wafted up from the convertible Deuce-and-a-Quarters and finned Caddies that rolled up the streets. They are now replaced with hoopties that pump out Jay-Z as he tells me about Big Pimpin', while his
sampled soundtrack, that measures 8.5 on the Richter scale, rattles the windows of the homes that are left standing. I see a city that I once loved creeping along in its fifth renaissance, a town trying to find an identity without the virtue of direction. A town that reflects its citizens, or did its citizens reflect the town? Am I black, African American, or a person of color? Am I angry, upwardly mobile, or just a sellout? A playa, a hoe, or a man? A sinner or saint? Who or what was my town right now? Did my perspective allow me the blessing to care? Elliot saw none of these things. For Elliot, this wasn't Detroit, 1999. It was Motown, circa 1960s. Elliot and Diana saw the specters of a lost time that brought joyful memories to their minds and warmed their hearts. Elliot saw the town that spoke to his teen and young-adult years, producing the perfect aphrodisiac to woo the love of his life and eventual mother of his children. He saw Detroit—pre-riot—when downtown radiated with life; when groups with names like The Temptations, The Marvelettes, and The Miracles danced—in the Motown style—in suits and shimmering dresses; when every Friday night the Fox Theatre presented the Motown Review, the proving ground where young men and women perfected the love songs that they performed on street corners and school talent shows. Motown, the city that nurtured the hope that they would be the next Smokey or Marvin, or that their words would join "The Tracks of My Tears" or "Love Child" on the airwaves that floated even across an ocean to waiting ears. A glow rested on Elliot's face, replacing the shroud of death that had earlier hung on him like a ten-dollar suit. I thought of something from the Bible: Rejoice young man in thy youth. That was what Elliot was right then, this scripture transformed into flesh.

  I thought of the times that I had asked—that's too soft of a word, implored!—my students to "watch what happens when you change your perspective." At what point had I lost mine? Feeling a bit like the Pharisees, I looked around the house—the house that Berry, Diana, and Smokey built—once again trying to see it through Elliot or Diana's eyes.

  "Ya never realized ya lived in such an interesting city, did ya?" Diana looked me straight in the eyes triumphantly. She seemed to be gloating just slightly, as if she were letting me know that she saw things that I didn't.

  "Thanks for the reality check," I said sincerely.

  "Anytime."

  "You like this music, do you?" Elliot asked.

  "Yeah, I grew up just like your daughter did, listening to the music of my parents. They neglected to name any of their children after any of the artists, however. Man, I wish my name was Tito." We all laughed.

  Elliot coughed and cleared his throat. Doing this caused him some pain. He shut his eyes tightly. He sat there motionless for just a few seconds. A lone tear emerged slowly from beneath his eyelid, then slid down his leathery right cheek as if it was in fear of being discovered. The grim, pained expression on his face melted into the calm that he had shown only moments ago when his daughter and my kids sang their rendition of "Stop! In the Name of Love." His eyes were clear and his face showed no sign of death at that moment, then he spoke. It wasn't rough and scratchy like it had been previously, a voice that was being infected by the same sickness that had bent his body. He spoke in his voice, clearly yet softly. He sounded distinguished and learned as only the British can.

  "Back in '68, I took my wife—well, she was just a girl I liked at the time—out to a pub one night. We 'ad been dancing to a lot of music, you know, the Jerk, the Twist—my favorite dance was the Camel Walk … Then they put on some Stevie Wonder. She and I socialed together to it."

  Elliot took off his face mask, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back, taking in a deep breath, as if he smelled the fragrance of his girl—his love—right there, his memories having become incarnate.

  "Aaah, I can still ' ear that song," he said, his eyes still closed in dreamy retrospection. His right hand began to snap his fingers to a melody that played inside his mind, a slow-dance for him and his love.

  Then Elliot did something that I was totally unprepared for, he began singing. Not a croaking, raspy-voiced whisper, but actually a pretty good imitation of Stevie Wonder.

  "La-la-laa-la-laa-laaaa, La-la-laa-la-laa-laaaa. My cherie ahh-mour, lovely as a summer's day …" He went on and sang more of Stevie's love song. As the last of the lyrics eased from his mouth—"Mah cherie amour, pretty little one that I ah-dore. You're the only one mah haarrt beats for, how I wish that you were mine"—I began to finish the song off for him, and in the middle of the Lala-laa's, Diana joined me and we finished together.

  For a moment Elliot had left his sickness, his twisted body, and his leathery skin. He had become Elliot Taylor—Motown Sound Casanova—singing love songs softly into the ear of his girl as he slow danced with her. A brief respite from reality as he went back to a point in his life when face masks, bottled oxygen, and a wheelchair were as far away as the moon. Elliot's memory freed him from the confines of the wheelchair, something that doctors, their orders, modern medicine, and technology had failed to do.

  "That was the night I fell in love with your mum," he said to Diana, taking her hand and rubbing it against his cheek tenderly. She smiled the smile of a well-loved child and replaced her father's face mask, just in time for another coughing fit that knocked a few more moments off his life.

  Some people walked into the museum. Their eyes were instantly drawn to our group. They made a point to look at all of us, making sure not to stare too long at Elliot, clearly something difficult to do. Invariably their eyes lingered on the wheelchair, the oxygen bottle, the mask, and then on Elliot. The faces of the people spoke loudly: My God, look at that poor man. He looks like he's dying. Isn't that so sad?

  I smiled as my eyes went from Elliot to them and back to Elliot again. I smiled because I knew better.

  THE LOST TIKI PALACES OF DETROIT

  BY MICHAEL ZADOORIAN

  Woodward Avenue

  I was on the bus, heading down Woodward Avenue. We had just stopped at West Grand Boulevard and I craned my neck to check out the former site of the Mauna Loa. I probably do this once a week on the bus on my way to work. I try to imagine how the place must have looked there in the New Center: a massive Polynesian temple, its thatched A-frame entryway flanked by flaming torches and swaying winter-proof palm trees on a gently rippling man-made lagoon—nestled amongst the cathedrals of twentieth-century V-8 Hydromatic Commerce, just across the street from where they decided the pitiful fate of the Corvair.

  I have an extensive collection of Tiki mugs. My rarest are from the Mauna Loa. I own the Polynesian Pigeon, a section of ceramic bamboo with an exotic bird for a handle. Also the Baha Lana, an ebony Tiki head sticking his tongue out at the drinker. Both say Design by Mauna Loa Detroit on the bottom.

  There were high hopes for the place. It was to be the largest South Seas supper club of its kind in the Midwest. (Second only to the majestic Kahiki of Columbus, Ohio, now fallen to the wrecking ball since greedy owners sold to Walgreen's.) Over two million dollars were spent on this paradisiacal bastion of splendor, a lot of money in the late '60s.

  There were five different dining rooms at the Mauna Loa (Tonga, Papeete, Bombay, Lanai, and one other that I forget), as well as the lavish Monkey Bar, which featured a Lucite bar-top with 1,250 Chinese coins embedded in it and tables made from brass hatch covers from trading schooners. A waterfall scurried down a mountainette of volcanic lava into a grotto lush with palm trees and flaming Tikis. The waiters wore Mandarin jackets and turbans as they served you.

  The Mauna Loa opened in August of 1967. Barely a month after the worst race riot in Detroit's history. It lasted not quite two years.

  "I'm invisible!"

  That's what the homeless man on the bus kept saying. He boarded at West Grand Boulevard and none of us dared look at him. But then you never look anyone in the eye on the bus. All gazes are cast peripherally, on the down-low. With the homeless man, we simply examined the air around him. Even the bus driver, a large man, blue-black and stoic, who never says more than a word or two to anyone
as they board, looked away as the guy paid his fare. We all knew someone got on, but we weren't sure who it was. He could be smelled but not seen. The homeless man must have walked down the aisle defiantly, as if daring anyone to say something to him.

  "That's right! I'm invisible!"

  What could we say? We had all looked away. We had made him invisible.

  I was pretty sure that he was sitting three aisles up from me on the other side. The bus wasn't nearly as full as it usually was on a Monday—President's Day or some such nonsense. I kept my eyes on my newspaper, but they kept straying out the window searching for landmarks, lost ones as well as those still standing. I gazed upon a beautiful old abandoned factory from the '20s, with a sign that read: AMERICAN BEAUTY ELECTRIC IRONS.

  I kept my ears open. I felt the homeless man's eyes on me. I wanted to look, but didn't want him to catch me looking because I wasn't sure what he would say. When I felt his eyes leave me, I glanced forward into the bus, at the spaces around him.

  A little boy, about two years old, sitting in the seat in front of him, was the only one who truly acknowledged the homeless man's existence. The little boy looked over the back of the seat at the homeless man, and started playing peek-a-boo with him. The man cracked a bitter half-smile at the child.

  Then he said it again: "I'm invisible!"

  I was frankly kind of impressed that the guy would say something like this. I don't expect a homeless guy on the bus to say such things, strange and existential—an awl to the heart. It made me think, He understands his condition. I thought about Ralph Ellison.

  The homeless guy looked around and repeated it yet again, as he peered around at the rest of us on the bus.