Sophie Tucker’s “Mammy’s Chocolate Soldier” filled the airwaves that summer, but the constant refrain—Pickaninny cute in his khaki suit . . . Come and lay your kinkey head on Mammy’s shoulder—sugarcoated the fact that draft agents worked overtime to prune the Vine of its men. Doors to several colored businesses were chained and locked, their owners drafted. The firing of colored men had become common practice, as was their arrest. She had looked into the draft registration, worried by some of the changes. At thirty-four, Timbo had aged out of the previous two registrations. He was no longer decrepit by government standards. The third call to duty accepted men as old as forty-five.
Kansas City, August 6, 1917
Dear Ona,
This morning I watched as a well-dressed Negro man was questioned for twenty minutes about his travel plans. When the police finally let him go, he shrugged and said that was the second missed appointment this week due to “special inquiry,” a term the KCPD employs with great frequency. The city, I thought, would be amenable to our race, but here you find store upon store push their wares to us while a colored person has yet to set foot in these same businesses as employee. In next week’s Meditation I will suggest we do not buy where we cannot work.
Through a gentleman at church, I learned of an opening for a cub reporter at the Kansas City Star and immediately placed a call so that at least my gender would be known. I disclosed all: race and age and willingness to accept a cub’s salary despite my experience. Imagine my joy when the conversation ended with an interview date—here, finally, my chance had come and at the city’s top newspaper. Nothing could dampen my spirits, but when the hour came, my hope was dashed. Seated with me in the waiting room was a young man from Illinois who had just completed high school. He assured me the post was mine as he had only written for his high school newspaper and was equally interested in professional boxing. When they called me in, I asked the young man for his name. This morning an article by Mr. Ernest Hemingway appeared on page two.
Next month I will turn twenty-nine. A dozen of those years I have tried to write for a newspaper. In Kansas City alone, thirteen papers have barred me from even the lowest position. If I am to succeed at a paper, I will have to leave this city and there is no guarantee of employment elsewhere. Remind me again of the virtues of black womanhood.
Your loving friend,
Ivoe
.
The apartment on Mulberry Street was quiet when Lemon let herself in. She stubbed her toe on the bag near the broom closet and chuckled. The sack of beans had started out in the cupboard, moved to the counter, and now that three of them were working, somebody had the beans on their way out the door. She could hardly blame them. She had boiled the beans with onions and carrots—bean soup; mashed the beans with a little egg and some seasoning and filled a crust—bean pie; added corn syrup and a little honey before they went into the oven—baked beans; even beans fried in chicken fat. She placed the letter from Texas on the counter and swapped her coat for the apron on the hook. Her children knew how to send a message, all right, but she wouldn’t pay them any mind. Long as there was war those beans wouldn’t budge an inch. But today, with the little money Irabelle made playing in some band on the weekends and Ivoe’s pay, there was enough for canned peaches, a pitiful substitute for the heavenly drupes she’d picked from May-Belle’s tree. She opened the cupboard for spices, the mail from Roena’s aunt Fanny visible from the corner of her eye. For a spell, preparation of the surprise cobbler took her mind off the letter. Her mind had trailed off to Ennis, like it always did in a too-quiet moment, when her daughters laughed themselves into the apartment, play-fussing and teasing Irabelle about something.
“You tell Momma about him yet? Well? Don’t put your pity face on. What she say?”
“Ivoe, you act like me and you didn’t come out of the same basket. How long you been knowing Momma? She ain’t about to let me move in with some man she don’t know nothing about.”
“Bring him around then. How old is he? He mean well by you, don’t he? You grown now. Only babies in this family are breaking up something in the next room,” Roena said. “Just make sure he wants to marry you—and take you home with him. We filled to the gills around here.”
Lemon put her cobbler in the oven, picked up the letter, and called everyone to the kitchen. Junebug and Pinky shot through the kitchen, eager to tell about their adventure at Aunt Ivoe’s. Junebug rushed over to Lemon and held out the palms of his hand, proud of the ink smudged all over them. “Bicey, I was working on the typewriter.”
“Bicey needs to get in these pots and fix something to eat. Y’all go on in the bedroom and let grown folks talk. I be in there in a minute and you can tell me all about it then.”
A key rattled in the door and Timothy bumbled in.
Roena cut her eyes at the torn package her husband threw on the table. Shaking her head, she snatched up the bundle and carried it to the sink, muttering to herself, “A boiling chicken when your mother asked for a roaster.”
“That’s about the most pitiful-looking bird. Tell you something twice but you don’t hear.”
“Ain’t that what you asked for?”
Roena’s face was balled into a knot. “I heard Lemon from the other room when she said ‘roaster’. How come you didn’t and was standing right in here with her?”
“What Timbo do to get on everybody’s bad side?” Ivoe said.
“Can’t follow directions on what kind of chicken to bring home—but you let one of them fools call about a game they got going. That’s the message he gonna take to heart down to the iddiest-biddiest detail. They see more of him at the Spinning Wheel than we do.”
“I done told you—I been at the Spinning Wheel but not on no gambling.”
“I forgot. You’re organizing,” Roena said in a mocking tone.
“Organizing what?” Lemon asked.
Roena glanced sideways at her husband. “Your son has taken it into his head that he’s a union man. Anything so long as it don’t involve no real work.”
“I tell you, Timbo, if foolish was dirt you’d have four or five acres. Walk around here just like you ain’t got a thing to lose,” Lemon said.
“The world ain’t never give me nothing, so what I got to lose?”
Lemon threw up her hand. “Timbo, you make my head hurt. What you got to lose? If you got to ask you worse off than I thought ’cause straightaway I can think of three good things. You better wake up and start using your head for more than a hat rack. You got a wife and kids to feed—striking, my foot.”
Hell if Timbo knew where the thought came from that he alone could get colored men organized, but it was the first time in his life he had his own thoughts on something important and he was excited to see where they might lead him. Whenever he tried to talk to Roena his words were like spots on dice—all that fumbling and still didn’t come out right.
“I been trying to tell you—” Timbo said in a tone like Roena was the reason his back teeth ached.
“You ain’t tried to tell me nothing. Too busy walking around here full of the devil. Go on and run off this job to another one if you want to. Don’t matter where you go, Timbo, you give people the devil they gonna give him right back to you.”
“What’s going on down at the plant, brother?”
“Them Krauts down there talking they talk—don’t even know what they saying half the time—doing the same work we doing, getting better pay for it. Tell you what it do too—put hate in your heart. Slipping and sliding in pig guts what supposed to be cleaned up before my shift begin. And the smell. Don’t nothing stank like a pig’s insides. Cold months no better. Suffocate in summer, freeze in winter. Nobody should have to work like that and they don’t want to half pay us.”
Irabelle heard echoes of Odell’s complaints about what Pullman porters endured. “It’s not just Timbo’s problem . . . Work these
no-good jobs and your head is still barely above water.”
Lemon thought none of her children looked happy. She blamed the city—not worth leaving her dog for. She had looked for signs of the good life Ivoe claimed were all around them but couldn’t find any. Now that she knew what went on inside most of the buildings—overcrowded with people just like her who worked long and hard just to buy things—she was not impressed. Youngsters couldn’t see how they had traded cotton for some shiny thing, fancy trousers, an automobile, but she saw it plain as day: the only thing the city had on the country was more stuff to keep you working harder, longer.
She opened the letter and began to weep.
Kansas City, August 14, 1917
Most Beloved,
A great warmth has gone from life. Aunt May-Belle has died.
Yours in my darkest hour,
Ivoe
.
The taxi from Kansas City’s Union Station let Ona out in front of a little blue house, the front door of which was ajar to welcome the summer breeze. Her heart raced while she rapped a little and listened before pushing the door open. It was not every day you stepped into a room about which you knew the history. She smiled at the modesty of Ivoe’s letters; she had done more than “make do.” A dreary room that served as office, parlor, and occasional guest room for Irabelle was now a cozy den. Faded floral wallpaper seemed to blossom beneath the wainscoting, painted cantaloupe to match the trim of the bay window looking out over the small manicured lawn. She could see her friend’s taste, hinted at every now and then through months of letters. There were the cheery green curtains of organdy and voile, splurged on at the Salvation Army shortly after she moved in. A maroon carpet with paisley designs of the curtains’ green hid the ugly wood floor that had splintered her feet. Near the window stood the cumbersome brown armchair that took three men to carry. Big enough for two, it held three orange taffeta pillows; next to it, peonies in a long-necked amber bottle on some rickety stand. Draped over the shade of the floor lamp was the pitiful scarf she had knitted for Ivoe last Christmas.
Ona saved the room’s best feature for last. Before her, Miss Industry sat waist-high in books, working at a shabby desk. Ona glanced at a stack of typewritten pages that lay next to the little Underwood she had had mailed to Little Tunis a decade ago. Light from the window illuminated four perfect marcelled waves as Ivoe tilted her head, drawing Ona’s gaze to a nail above the desk from which hung a pair of prayer beads—May-Belle’s. At that very moment, without seeing Ivoe’s face, Ona knew exactly the expression she wore—lips pursed, mouth twisted a little in a moment of concentration.
“Howdy, honey, howdy,” Ona whispered.
Ivoe laid her writing tablet on the desk and brought her hand up to her chest—a mallet ringing against an anvil!—and stood, shaking.
The salmon blouse and powdery pea-green skirt Ivoe wore revealed a few extra pounds at the hips. She was taller, Ona thought, noting the heel on the brown tango shoe. They looked at each other, watching the joyful rise of the other’s bosom. Books toppled over as Ivoe pushed back her chair. Ona’s kiss on the lips was mingled with peppermint. “Goodness,” she whispered, drawing her closer.
Neither could say if they held each other that way two minutes or twenty. Enveloped in the scent of Floris White Rose, Ivoe nearly forgot what all the heaviness was about until Ona pulled away, cradling her face and searching it. “I just had to come see about you.” And there it was, a look of love so fierce it began to melt the grief, thick and frozen like ice floes around her heart. She grabbed handfuls of Ona’s dress to steady herself.
.
For years Ona had practiced how not to be taken in but to remain steady when Ivoe gave her affection without reserve. It was a lesson the pupil herself had taught—deep emotions are best expressed by restraint. She had forgotten the exact month or day but was certain of the season her love for Ivoe bloomed. Bypass Road was alive with red wildflowers as she headed home, quickening her pace because of a hunch. She dashed through a brambly lane on a shortcut home and spilled through her front door, a letter from Little Tunis clutched in her hand. Later that night the pages called her from bed. She returned to the kitchen, reading the letter a third and fourth time. Only when she was satisfied the girl could never be any more near to her than she was at that moment did she return to bed. She tried to bully her desire back into a quiet place but fell into a kissing dream.
.
Ona was thinking of Ivoe with the same intensity now while she cooked and Ivoe wrote in the next room. She threw a generous pinch of salt into a small basin of cool water filled with kale and mustard greens. She liked to soak them that way then throw in a handful of raisins to bring out the flavor. The secret was in the fire; they didn’t need much, just enough to get the leaf nice and tender yet still bright green. The other dishes Ivoe had spoken of longingly Ona’s first night there were not any of the things she prepared with confidence; but this meal she had traveled seven hundred miles to make. The chicken pie, red rice and okra, and peanut butter soup were May-Belle’s specialties, as much a part of Ivoe’s girlhood as stolen newspapers. No recipes to guide her, Ona tasted as she cooked—more pepper, a dash of sugar here, a capful of cream. She hoped the meal would tell on her: she wanted to stoke Ivoe’s memories and make new ones.
Ivoe snapped open the linen, turning the sofa into Ona’s bed as she had done every night of the visit.
“What do you think?”
“Fine.” Ona indicated on the page where improvements might be made, but she was not about to give the whole evening up for the plight of her race. They didn’t have to be race women all the time.
In the kitchen, they passed a glass of water between them.
“Good thing my train leaves tomorrow. Stay much longer and you’ll be all twisted up like a pretzel,” Ona said.
Ivoe would twist into a thousand knots if it meant more time with Ona, whose eyes held a strangeness she had never seen.
“I’ve been meaning to ask, you keeping company with anybody? You never mention in your letters.”
“I wouldn’t call it company. We met at the factory—the job I got following your advice.”
Ona laughed a single high note as derisive as a magpie’s. “Had I known I was fattening frogs for snakes I never would’ve mailed that letter. So, how do you and Ms. Alton Clover get along?”
To watch Ona’s demeanor change from bravado to jealousy tickled Ivoe. She took the empty glass from her hand. Everything she thought to say was wrong, yet she was braced by the furtive touch on her arm. She kissed Ona on the cheek, chin, the little bit of collarbone peeking out from her dress. The most delicious sighs fell from her lips, spilled off the kitchen counter onto the floorboards to tremble and nestle in the cracks.
Ona tore back the curtains and gasped. It was a devil of a sky—the orange evening sun in one corner, a full moon in the other. She motioned for Ivoe’s help. Together they pushed the little bed beneath the window.
Their breathing told secrets their bodies could no longer hold. Kissing, nuzzling Ona’s breasts all over, Ivoe smiled at their beauty, moon-washed and glistening. She kissed down Ona’s stomach, pried open damp thighs, pressed her knee against the coarse, wet triangle. Ona arched against the outside light and cradled Ivoe’s face, moving against the knee—staccato breaths like steady puffs of steam. Ivoe shifted her body, crawling backward over her lover. “Ivoe—” Ona grabbed her buttocks, moaned like she was in full-grown love with everything she saw, and pulled her sex closer. Above her, Ivoe rocked against her face in perfect measure, kissing the inside of Ona’s thighs until Ona thrust forward, eager. Ivoe’s breath caught in her chest; against her belly she could feel the cage of Ona’s chest expanding like the sails of a yawl. She paused before kissing her there, strained to see everything, batted back the tears. Both spread her legs farther apart.
“Ba-by.”
Belly
on belly, north and south: full vision. Their sound, the new scent of them, filled the room. Ivoe had been here in the sweet place with Ona, feeling this good, a million times before in her mind. Whispering in the dark with her now was something else. Could a heart break from too much tenderness? She slid over Ona’s body, slipping one hand inside her while the other felt around Ona’s mouth, where pleasure held her lips apart. Ivoe whispered, “You took me the long way”—deep—“down back roads and everything”—deeper still—“glad you did . . . ’cause only time could tell me how I love you like I do.”
Ona Durden was not a woman who hankered for things, yet everything she owned she cared for with devotion. Like the hat she now placed over her bun, securing it with a hatpin, the end of which was a small pink pearl. She’d worn the same hat a decade ago at Willetson. Even then it was far from new. Ivoe flashed on a funny little thought: if Ona could love a hat that well, she could trust her with everything.
Ona leaned her head a little to the side; the grip on her pocketbook slackened. “Come on now before I miss my train,” she said, staring with eyes so full of desire Ivoe could not meet them. She crossed the room to where Ona’s valise stood. A moment passed before she felt Ona against her back, encircling her waist with both hands. It was impossible to believe that somewhere the building of skyscrapers went on; that tobacco, cotton, and peanut fields brimmed full with pickers; a fisherman emptied his net; little children sat to their desks about the business of learning—there was only the two of them in the world.
Many words came to mind but only one fit as Ivoe struggled against a sob that rose in her throat: “Ona—”
“I’m not rehearsed in romantic speechmaking but I know this: we have work to do—don’t look so glum. We got some loving too. Make room for me.”
.
The trolley began its slow clank and rumble. Ivoe rapped against the window for Ona’s attention. She had turned in the wrong direction for the dry-cleaners. Ivoe had half a mind to get off the streetcar and escort Ona to pick up the dress she planned to wear for a talk before clubwomen. Instead, she shook her head, causing Ona to laugh, and pointed her in the opposite direction. Ivoe’s disenchantment with the factory was no mystery. Happiness had ruined any ambition, at least for chocolate. Lois would not take kindly to her request for the afternoon off, but she would hold her ground. It was Ona’s first time doing anything of significance in the city; Lois could like it or lump it.
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