Delta Belles

by Penelope J. Stokes

  Now the whole place was ablaze, a bonfire at a pep rally, a giant Yule log roaring in the grate. Yellow and orange flames leaped and danced, candle-shaped, like hands clasped in prayer. The ceiling gave way and fell in. Sparks flew skyward, mingling their gold with the silver stars overhead.

  It was, for Rae Dawn, a moment of complete release. As the fire raged and spread, engulfing the Airstream in a matter of seconds, some chrysalis in her own soul cracked open. All the years of suppressed fury and shame rose and left her, propelled toward heaven on the rising flames.

  Music threaded through her mind, a score she had written for her final performance project in college. The minor-key oppression of a burdened soul. The turn, the movement upward, the change to a lifting, soaring flight. “Woman on the Wind,” she had called it, but until this instant she had not fathomed all its varied meanings. What new life would rise from the ashes she did not know, only that her spirit, at last, was free.

  Rae Dawn’s eyes never left the trailer, but she felt the doctors hand reach for hers and drew strength from its warmth.

  “Now that, ” Noel said softly, “is what I call a Christmas celebration.”

  NINETEEN

  COME RAIN OR COME SHINE

  NEW Orleans

  FEBRUARY 1974

  Maison Dauphine, jammed to the rafters, seemed to close in on Rae Dawn as she took the stage for her second set of the evening. Friday nights the club was always packed, but when the audience consisted mostly of regulars she knew by sight if not by name, the place didn’t feel so claustrophobic. On this Friday before Mardi Gras, however, with a wild and rowdy mob of out-of-town revelers, she found her nerves on edge.

  The lights came up, diffused by a haze of blue smoke. At the bar, a group of guys in LSU jerseys, clearly drunk, were causing some commotion. Rae glanced to the edge of the stage, where Arlen Crocker, Chases army buddy and head of Maison Dauphine s security, stood with his arms crossed over his massive chest. She caught his eye and nodded in the direction of the troublemakers.

  Mardi Gras might well be called the biggest bash on earth, but it was also the most dangerous time to be in New Orleans. Large quantities of alcohol did not mix well with thousands of anonymous partygoers shedding their inhibitions in the streets. Bar fights were common, and a broken beer bottle served as well as a shiv for a murder weapon.

  Arlen moved toward the bar and positioned himself close to the college boys. The crowd quieted a little, and Rae Dawn launched into an arrangement of “Come Rain or Come Shine.”

  “Hey, baby!” one of the boys yelled. “Take it off, why don’t you? Come on, show us some tits!”

  Rae kept on singing. This was the downside of the career she loved so much. The regulars at Maison Dauphine showed respect. They listened when she sang and filled her tip jar when she remembered their favorite tunes. Even the habitual drunks fell into a stupor quietly, without interrupting the show.

  The LSU boys were wound-up, ugly drunks. Over the music and the low buzz of conversation, they shouted obscenities and made lewd suggestions about their own personal endowments and what they could do to make Rae Dawn happy.

  She chuckled to herself. These dogs were definitely barking up the wrong tree.

  “Tits!” the leader of the pack yelled again, and his cohorts took up the chant: “Tits! Tits! Tits!”

  Then it happened. The alpha dog lunged off his bar stool and made for the stage, evidently intent on helping Rae Dawn undress. He shoved several other patrons aside, spilling drinks. Someone threw a punch, and all hell broke loose.

  Arlen was on top of the situation and jerked the college boy into a choke hold long before he reached the stage. But his intervention, though effective, came just a little too late. By the time he and his other bouncers had corralled the troublemakers and shown them the door, the floor was covered with shattered glass and blood was flowing. One man had been hit in the head with a bottle and clearly needed stitches.

  “Stand aside; I’m a doctor,” came an authoritative voice from the shadows.

  The crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses’ staff and out of the darkness stepped a diminutive woman with red-blonde hair and the tawny eyes of a lioness.

  Noel Ridley knelt before the injured man, examined his wound, and staunched the bleeding with a bar towel. “You’re going to be all right,” she assured him, “but you need to get that cut sewn up. Did anyone call an ambulance?”

  The bartender nodded, and as if on cue, flashing lights appeared outside the doorway of the club. Two paramedics came in and took the guy away to have his head stitched. Cops hustled the college boys into a couple of squad cars and carted them off to the drunk tank.

  The rest of the crowd, much subdued, went back to their beer while the bartender began sweeping up the broken glass.

  Rae, however, did not return to her piano. She stood on the edge of the low stage and watched, entranced, as Noel got to her feet and turned in her direction.

  Suddenly Maison Dauphine didn’t seem claustrophobic at all. For Rae Dawn, there was no one in the club but Noel. The woman had an aura about her, an unearthly gilded brightness. As if in slow motion she turned and smiled, radiating that light in Rae’s direction.

  This, Rae Dawn thought, is it.

  To be perfectly honest, she wasn’t at all sure what “it” was, only that Noel’s presence—in the room, in her life—changed everything.

  Since New Year’s, Noel had been coming to New Orleans almost every week on her days off. They had taken in a few of the quieter clubs, listening to other singers, but mostly they sat in Café Du Monde drinking coffee and eating beignets, strolled among the artists in Jackson Square, bought po’boys, picnicked along the river.

  They talked about Rae Dawn’s music and Noel’s medicine. Healing was not a job, Noel said, it was a calling. It was art and poetry, prayer and worship, heart and soul. It was the place where she felt most connected to God and herself and the universe.

  The strands of their conversations coiled and twisted inside Rae Dawn, a haunting motif, diverse notes weaving together into impossibly beautiful harmonies. The differences between them were every bit as lovely as the similarities, an ethereal inner melody that caught her heart and held her fast.

  Noel came, and she went. Her coming brought a measure of peace and well-being unlike anything Rae had ever known; her going left that golden glow behind like a benediction. Expectation lit Rae Dawn’s days as she waited, and when Noel departed no emptiness remained in her wake, only a contented fulfillment and a sharpened sense of glad surprise.

  But Rae Dawn had not known that Noel was coming tonight, and her unexpected appearance sent a palpable flash of longing through her veins. With her eyes fixed on Noel’s, she stepped back to the mike. “I’m going to take a break and regroup after our little melee. But don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

  “How about finishing the song, at least?” someone suggested.

  Rae Dawn’s brain had turned to mush. She couldn’t for the life of her think what song she had been singing when the fight broke out. Then it came to her, and with a self-deprecating smile she sat down at the piano. “Just this one,” she agreed. “And more later.”

  Noel sank down into a chair in front of the stage. Her amber eyes shone, illuminated from within. Rae Dawn couldn’t have looked away even if she had tried.

  Rae began to sing. The words flowed through her veins, reborn, newly alive, words about a love that was high as a mountain, deep as a river. A love like no other. A love that would last forever. How many times had she sung this song? Hundreds? Thousands, even?

  And yet she had never sung it at all until this moment, this night.

  BACKSTAGE, IN THE TEN-BY-TEN CLOSET that had been made over into Rae Dawns dressing room, the two of them clung together as if they’d never let go.

  “What happened out there?” Noel said, searching Rae s eyes.

  “I don’t know.” Rae Dawn shook her head. “When I saw you, sort of materializing out o
f the darkness, it was like a vision. A dream. Like all the pieces fell into place.”

  Noel collapsed into the single chair that nearly filled one side of the room and pulled Rae Dawn down onto the padded arm. “I have to be back tomorrow, but I needed to come. Needed to talk to you. It’s all right, then, my just showing up like this?”

  “All right?” Rae began to laugh. “What do you mean, ‘all right’? It’s wonderful. ”

  A look of relief passed over Noel’s face. “That’s good to hear. Because—” She hesitated. “What would you think about me taking a job here?”

  Rae Dawn stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “An old friend of mine from med school is opening a practice. A twenty-four-hour clinic for low-income families. He’s invited me to join him.”

  “In New Orleans?”

  “Yes.” Noel nodded. “But our patients will mostly be single mothers and their kids. I won’t be making much.”

  “So what?” Rae said. “You’ll be here, and that’s what counts.”

  Noel’s expression changed—subtly, but Rae Dawn saw it. “There’s one other thing we have to talk about.”

  Rae slid off the arm of the chair and sat on the rug at Noel’s feet. “Okay, shoot.”

  “I want us to be together.”

  Rae Dawn frowned. “We are together.”

  “No, I mean, really together.” Noel ran a hand over her face. “I don’t know how to say this. There’s no language for it. We can’t be, well, married. Not technically. Not officially. But that’s what I want. A commitment. For life.”

  Rae stared at her as this bit of information sank in. For a minute she said nothing. Then the humor of the situation overcame her. “Damn, honey, if that’s a proposal you really need to work on it. Sounds more like a criminal conviction than a romance.”

  Tears welled up in Noel’s eyes and she looked away.

  “Whoa!” Rae said. “Hold on. I was just kidding. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” She reached up and pulled Noel out of the chair and into her arms. “There is nothing I want more,” she whispered, “than to be with you forever. I want you with me—here, now, all the time. We fit. We complement each other. Like melody and harmony.” Rae kissed her on the eyelids and tasted the salty tears on her tongue. “When I saw you come into the club tonight, I thought, ‘This is it.’ I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but now I know.”

  She glanced down at her wristwatch. “It’s time for my last set. Come listen to me sing.”

  Noel got to her feet. “If you sing anything else the way you did ‘Come Rain or Come Shine,’ I’m going to have difficulty restraining myself.” She arched her eyebrows. “You were singing it to me, weren’t you?”

  “What do you think?” Rae finished touching up her makeup and held out a hand. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Noel said. “I forgot to tell you something.”

  Rae opened the door to the stage, and the noise nearly knocked them over. She had to shout to be heard. “What did you forget to say?”

  In that instant the house lights went down and the noise in the club subsided. “I’m in love with you!” Noel yelled into the sudden quiet.

  In the darkness someone let out a piercing whistle.

  “I’m in love with you too,” Rae Dawn whispered, and kissed her.

  WITH BILLIE HOLIDAY PLAYING on the stereo, Rae Dawn moved swiftly around the apartment, clearing out drawers and closets, purging, filling black plastic garbage bags with things she didn’t really need and shouldn’t have kept all these years. Houseclean-ing wasn’t her favorite activity by a long shot, but today she worked with a fervor born of love.

  They had talked until dawn and then, after two hours of sleep, Noel had left to return to Picayune. But everything was decided. It would take her some time—several weeks, probably— to tie up loose ends and get moved. Still, Rae Dawn was determined to be ready. Eventually, once Noel got settled in her new practice, they would look for a larger place together, maybe even a small house. But in the meantime, they would share this apartment.

  She swept the dust bunnies out from under the bed, then straightened up and regarded the bedroom with a critical eye. The apartment, though quite sufficient for one, seemed to draw in and constrict upon itself when she considered how it might work for two. The closets were inadequate, the kitchen outdated, the bathroom barely large enough to turn around in without putting one foot in the tub. But the living room was light and spacious and would easily accommodate Noel’s furniture, which was far superior to the hodgepodge of secondhand stuff Rae Dawn had collected over the years.

  She wished, just briefly, that they could afford the apartment over Maison Dauphine. It was an expansive place, with two bedrooms, a terrace that extended over the back garden, and a wrought-iron balcony that faced toward the river and offered a view of the spires of St. Louis Cathedral four blocks away. Unfortunately, it was far out of their league. Noel’s new practice wouldn’t bring in a great deal of money, and Rae had long ago resigned herself to the reality of what kind of income a musician made. It was a nice dream, but that’s all it would ever be.

  Still, it didn’t matter. They would be together.

  Together. The very word caused Rae’s heart to swoop and soar. Never in her life had she felt this way, as if the world itself rejoiced. Never had she known that anything other than music could bring this sense of wholeness, of well-being.

  For years she had sung the love songs that had propelled her career forward, had watched the way couples in the audience held hands and gazed into one another’s eyes when she sang. Somehow she had infused into those songs a passion and desire that came from a well of longing deep within her. But now for the first time she realized that the images in those songs were not mere metaphors. Skies really were bluer, stars closer, the moon brighter. All creation moved together in a windswept dance of celebration. Life really did begin when you fell in love.

  At last Rae Dawn understood. She had awakened from a dream to find that the dream had come true. The dream of loving and being loved. The dream of Noel Ridley.

  TWENTY

  ECSTASY AND AGONY

  NEW Orleans

  FEBRUARY 1979

  “Are you planning to sleep all day?”

  Rae Dawn opened her eyes to see Noel standing over her with a tray She struggled to a sitting position, and Noel placed the tray on her lap. Waffles and scrambled eggs, steaming strong coffee, fresh orange juice.

  “Good morning,” Rae mumbled.

  “Never mind morning,” Noel said with a laugh. “It’s almost afternoon, and I don’t want to waste our entire anniversary.” She sat on the edge of the bed and leaned forward expectantly.

  Rae put a hand to her mouth. “Trust me, you don’t want to kiss me until I’ve brushed my teeth.” She shifted the tray, pulled on a robe, and dashed to the bathroom. When she returned, Noel had arranged the pillows against the headboard and settled the breakfast tray between them.

  “So, what would you like to do with our day?” Noel forked up a slice of waffle.

  “I’d like to celebrate. ” Rae sipped at her coffee and smiled. “Dance in the streets and throw confetti in Jackson Square.”

  “I know exactly how you feel.” Noel grinned. “Five years. The best five years of my life.”

  AT NOON THE FOLLOWING MONDAY Rae Dawn sat in Chase Coulter’s office with the door closed. She stared at him, not believing what she was hearing.

  “You expect me to do what ?” she demanded.

  Chase’s jaw flinched convulsively beneath the flesh of his cheek. “I’m sorry, Rae. I’d be the first to argue that you should be able to live however you want. But you’ve got to consider your career.”

  Rae frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you, Rae, and your doctor girlfriend.”

  “My life with Noel is nobody’s business, Chase. Besides, this is New Orleans, not Podunk, Iowa.”

  Chase
slammed a palm down on the desk. “You have to listen to me, Rae Dawn. Why do you think people line up every night to get in here?” He gritted his teeth and pointed at the door. “Because of you. Because of your music. Love songs, torch songs, jazz, blues. Look at you. You’re steamy, you’re sexy. You’re gorgeous and mysterious and fascinating.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m just—me.”

  “Well, just you is what they’re buying. The men want you and the women want to be you. And if word gets out about you and Noel—” Chase shook his head. “Nobody’s going to come hear you sing if they know you’re belting out love songs to another woman.”

  “So you’re saying that I’m public property and don’t have the right to be in love? That I’m supposed to hide my relationship with Noel?”

  “I’m saying you can’t bring your private life into the public eye, especially when it would ruin your career—and mine, if you get my drift.”

  Rae could hardly believe this. Chase Coulter knew Noel, for pity’s sake. He liked her, thought she was cute and funny and smart. And now he was talking about her as if she were some kind of one-night stand, a minor employee in an all-girl escort service.

  She tried to reason with him. “Chase, what’s changed? Noel has been living with me for five years now. She moved here to be with me, took a new job for me. She has an established practice, and—”

  “I know,” he interrupted. “She’s a saint. She’s Mother Teresa. But she talks too much.”

  Rae frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Chase sighed. “This guy came in yesterday afternoon looking for a job. Said he had been to the clinic and his doctor had told him that her partner was the headliner here and we were advertising for another bartender.”

  “So what?”

  “So if your girlfriend is talking that freely about the two of you—”

  Rae Dawn shook her head. “Chase, this is ridiculous. The Quarter is a very diverse and accepting place. This is my life—”