“Not before eleven.”
“Where?”
She gave me an address on Hoagland Street, off of Adams Boulevard. It was a house and not an apartment. She promised that she’d be there by twelve.
So did I.
“DADDY, WHERE’S FRENCHIE?” Feather had been sleeping with the top of her head nuzzled up against my thigh for nearly half an hour. I didn’t have anywhere to go and no place that I’d rather be.
“He ran off in the back somewhere,” I said. “But the woman who owns him called. She wants him back. You know she really loves him.”
I wanted to be able to say the next day that I’d told her about returning Pharaoh to Idabell. She might get upset but at least she wouldn’t think that I was doing things behind her back.
She sat up pushing her little hands against my chest and asked, “What was my momma like, Daddy?”
“Oh,” I crooned in a low voice. I lifted her and held her in my lap. “She was light-skinned and a very beautiful dancer. I only ever met her once,” I lied. “That’s when she asked me to take care of you. She was flying away to Europe somewhere to dance for somebody really important but the plane crashed and she was lost out there in the ocean.”
It was a story that we’d made up together over the years.
Most of it was true. Her mother was actually white. And she was a dancer, of the exotic variety. I never knew who Feather’s father was; her mother might not have known either. As a matter of fact I had never even met her mother. I found Feather after the police had forced me to help them catch her mother’s killer.
“Was my real daddy on that plane too?”
“Uh-huh.”
Feather nestled her head against my chest.
“Did they love me a whole lot?”
“More than anything, honey. More than anybody. That’s why they asked me to take care of you forever if anything happened, because they loved you so much.”
Feather went to sleep with the declaration of love burrowing down into her dreams. I took her to her room and undressed her. I placed her in the high bed that she wanted so much and hung all of her clothes in the stand-up closet that I’d built for her.
A GIRL’S VOICE ANSWERED my call to Mofass. “Hello?”
“Jewelle?”
She hesitated for a second and then said, “Hi, Mr. Rawlins. How are you?”
“Fine, JJ. Just fine. Mofass there?”
“Uncle Willy up in the bed. He’s sick.”
My real estate agent, Mofass, had emphysema and surprised the doctors with every breath he drew.
“I got to talk to him, honey.”
“Sorry, Mr. Rawlins, but I can’t get him outta the bed at this time of night.”
Jewelle was a distant cousin of Mofass’s ex-girlfriend, Clovis MacDonald. She was only sixteen two years before when she helped Mofass contact me to get away from her auntie. Clovis was trying to bleed away everything that Mofass had, but we put a stop to that.
After that Jewelle worked for Mofass and lived with EttaMae. But as soon as she turned eighteen she moved in with Mofass.
Jewelle had one of the toughest minds I had ever encountered in man or woman. She was a straight-A student all through Crenshaw High School but she decided against college because Uncle Willy, her pet name for Mofass, needed her. Clovis and her brothers had it in for them, so Jewelle moved them to an isolated little home in Laurel Canyon. She got a place there through a man who owned property down in Watts that Mofass represented. Then she hired Buford D. Howell, a UAW man from Detroit, to collect the rent and maintain the properties.
On the night of her eighteenth birthday she moved in with Mofass. She said that he was sick, she still called him Uncle Willy, but we all knew that there was more to that relationship than good friends.
If you wanted to get a letter to Mofass you had to send it to his PO box. If you wanted to call him you had to use his answering service—unless you were one of the three people who had his private number. He and Jewelle stayed in their posh little house perched up over Sunset Boulevard living like two young lovers; him hacking from emphysema and her holding camphor and menthol under his nose.
“I got to talk to him, Jewelle,” I said.
“What about?”
“Did the cops call your service?”
“Yeah, but you cain’t talk to Uncle Willy ’bout that. He didn’t even get the message.”
“Okay,” I said. “All right. But listen, I told the cops I was out lookin’ at the apartments night before last. I said I was with Mofass. Could you get him to back me up on that?”
“Sure can. I’ll tell’im first thing when he get up.” She thought for a moment and then said, “At breakfast, I mean.”
“Do you wanna know why I’m askin’?” I wondered if she understood what she was getting into.
“It don’t matter, Mr. Rawlins. Uncle Willy owe you his life and I owe you too. It don’t matter what you want. Anything we got is yours.”
“Is that true?” I asked, no longer thinking that I was talking to a child.
“You could drink it,” she answered in a phrase formed in north Texas.
Never in my long years of knowing Mofass could I trust him completely. He was small-minded and cowardly. All he ever thought about was the money roll in his pocket. But when Jewelle came along he became as constant as the tide.
“Thanks, honey,” I said, ready to get on with the rest of my troubles.
“Mr. Rawlins?”
“Yeah?”
“Um, well …”
“Come on, JJ, spit it out. I got to go now.”
“Uncle Willy an’ me was just wonderin’ if maybe you wanna come work for him. I mean, you’d be making more money from us than they pay at the schools. You know all about how buildin’s work and stuff. Mr. Howell have people he trust to do work but you know they won’t even talk to a girl. I figure, I mean me an’ Uncle Willy, that you could show me how stuff works and then I could make better decisions on the spot.”
She was right. Men didn’t like women who wanted to be independent. I could have taught her everything she needed to know about real estate maintenance and value. But that’s not why she wanted me to work for them. She loved Mofass but she was lonely too. She needed somebody who read books to talk to sometimes. Buford Howell read the racing forms on Saturdays and the hymnal on Sundays—that was it.
Jewelle needed someone to talk to her about the paper and the big world out beyond a paycheck or a dirty joke.
“I can’t just up and quit my job, honey. It’s not so much the salary but the benefits and the future.”
Her silence told me how sad I’d made her.
“But maybe I could work with you on the weekends. Maybe every other one, you know, like a consultant.”
“That would be great,” she said. And I was happy because she sounded young again.
I CLEANED UP and put on my good brown woolen suit. My shirt was buff silk and the cuff links were yellow gold and onyx. My shoes were a soft, light brown leather, and the socks matched my shirt in fabric and in color.
I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled. Then I thought about the Gasteau brothers; they were dressed fine too. It hadn’t helped them.
I left a note on the kitchen table for Jesus. If Feather woke up he would take care of her.
I walked out of the house exhilarated that I could still get out, and scared that it felt so good.
CHAPTER 17
PHARAOH DIDN’T WANT me picking him up and told me so. But when I bared my teeth and snarled the yellow dog backed down.
I drove toward Hoagland Street while he sat in the backseat planning guerrilla tactics that I couldn’t even imagine.
The wide boulevards shone brightly and black under a glassy sheen of rain and streetlights.
The address on Hoagland was another small house. There was another light on and another car parked on the side. There was no berry tree, no recessed porch in which to hide. The walkway was a series of cement
disks that were laid out in a meandering trail up to the front door.
The rest of the street was empty. Nothing stirred except the splattering rain.
After five minutes I hadn’t seen anything. No matches struck in darkness; no black cats hissing at their own wet fur. Pharaoh gave out a little yelp and for the first time I agreed with him—it was time to go out and ring the doorbell.
The bell was disconnected or maybe it was broken. I knocked lightly but no one stirred. I was afraid to knock loudly or call out, so I tried the doorknob. If it was locked I would go to Primo’s the next morning and give him the dog; then I’d forget Idabell and her dead relations.
But the door was not locked.
“Hello?” I called into the dark entrance. “Idabell?”
I closed my umbrella and shook the loose water from it.
To the right was a dark doorway and to my left a turn into a lighted room. On the wall facing the door was a mirror that reflected my own shadowy silhouette and the blurry lamp from the street behind me.
I went toward the light thinking of how many times I’d called moths fools.
She was sprawled on her back in the center of the floor, one hand flung out over her head and her mouth agape.
“Naw,” I said in the smallest whisper.
At the sound of my voice her eyes opened and a soft smile came to her lips. She reached toward me with both arms like my daughter did almost every morning. Out of habit I extended my hands.
“What you doin’ on the floor?” I asked as she rose.
“My back hurt,” she said. “I must’ve fallen asleep like that.”
“But …”
“Hold me.” Her body thrust forward as if some invisible force were pulling her to my chest. “Hold me.”
I didn’t love her, I didn’t care about her—I didn’t even like her since she tricked me into taking her dog. But the warmth of her body through our clothes couldn’t be denied. All of those proper ideas and good women couldn’t hold my wild heart like she did.
“I’ve been so lonely,” she whispered.
It might have been a sweet lie but her words were true to my heart. I was lonely. I was cold inside. Idabell spoke to a deep hunger that grew in me back when there was only hunger and need. She’d pulled me out into the street and now I wanted to play.
Her hands moved down between us and showed me what magic they could do.
“Your suit’s going to get wrinkled,” she told me.
My pants fell down around my ankles again. She shoved me backwards into the chair using her shoulder to push because her hands were busy making me mumble. When I was seated I leaned forward to pull off my pants, but she grabbed both my hands by the fingers and pulled them away.
“Leave them,” she said. “You can’t run if your ankles are tied.”
I tried to push past her hands but when she took my erection into her mouth I faltered. And then, when she kissed my lips with that salty brew, I relented.
She moved her head half a foot back from mine and gave me a serious look as if she were searching for defects in my character. Then she kissed me again, moving her tongue deeply inside my mouth. She went back and forth between my hard-on and my lips a few times, each time stopping to gauge her effect.
When she saw that there was no fight left in me she stood up and opened her blouse, showing me with a coy smile that she had no bra on. She hiked her skirt way up on her waist.
When she moved to come astride me I put up my arms to steady her but she said, “Put your hands down,” just like she must have said every day in her classroom.
I was used to being in charge with women, at least I was used to playing that role in love. But Idabell ruled that night. I grabbed on to the wooden arms of the chair obeying her command and she rocked me further and further down into the cushion. When I tried to pull back up she told me to be still.
Every now and then she’d arch back telling me with her body, and a turn of her eye, to kiss her breast.
I was getting more and more excited, and so was she. We were going at it hard and loud when all of a sudden we both just stopped. We were very excited and neither one of us had come, but we had to stop and be still for a little while; like small birds who have risen too high on a hot breeze, we had to coast back down toward the earth.
Her face was wet. The look in her eyes would have been called insane at any other time.
“Easy?”
“Yeah?”
“Oh. Uh, I want to ask you.”
“Wha’?”
“Do you believe me?”
I did. I really did and I told her so.
“I’d never lie to you,” she said. “I mean …” She laughed a little. “I mean I would lie but I’m not. I need you.”
Those three words shot a tremor through me.
“Hold it, Easy,” she said, feeling my mood. “Wait a second. I didn’t do anything wrong. I want you to believe that.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Really?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. Neither of us said anything for the next while. I fell out from the chair and we wrestled across the floor more like snakes than humans, or birds.
IN THE DREAM there was an orange-hot sunset at the horizon of a dense German forest. I was a dogface again, separated from my troop and deep behind enemy lines.
The forest was beautiful and rich with the scents of things living. I wanted to take off my uniform and get down on my belly. I wanted to grow fur and scurry off between the thick branches that bristled at the road.
There were men coming up through the woods. They moved cautiously and abreast. I could see snatches of them but they were mainly hidden by the foliage, and I was nearly blinded by that orange sun.
Were they GIs like me? Or Nazi soldiers? My heart thumped in my throat and I tried one last time to become a beast and run.
A rifle swung up and aimed at me. Was it a GI who saw a bear or a German shooting down an American invader? Maybe it was just a white man shooting at shadows.
Whatever it was, I jumped, gasping my last breath.
“Easy, what is it?” Idabell was lying next to me, her hot skin against my back.
The lamp in the living room had an orange shade.
My pants were down around my ankles and my shirt and jacket were pulled up to my chest. I was in a strange house in the middle of the night sleeping next to a woman who might have been a murderer.
My nightmares were no more threatening than my waking life.
“Nothin’s wrong,” I said. “I got your dog out in the car.”
She jumped up with a wide grin on her face.
“I was so happy to see you that I forgot. Where is he?”
“Out in the car,” I said again. I was sitting there pulling up my shorts and pants. Then I stood trying to straighten out my clothes.
“Can we go see him?” she begged.
PHARAOH LEAPT HIGH into the air on our walk back to the house—splashing in the puddles and putting paw marks on Idabell’s skirt. Inside he licked her face and wagged his whole backside along with his tail while Idabell cooed and giggled and scratched.
After a long reunion I pointed out that it was nearing two o’clock in the morning.
“I have a bus ticket for five.” She yawned deeply and smiled at me. When she reached out to stroke my face Pharaoh growled.
“Oh shush,” she said. “You silly dog you.”
“You wanna ride to the bus station?”
“Yes. I just need to drop something off.”
“What’s that?”
“Just a note to my friend Bonnie,” she said sleepily.
“Is that Bonnie Shay?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get my number from her?”
“She called me here after you came by. We’ve had our differences but Bonnie’s still my friend.”
“So you just wanna drop this note off and then go to the bus station?”
“Yes.” She had very white teet
h. “When I get somewhere I’ll write you. Maybe you could come visit—after a while.”
“Uh-huh, sure.” I was as sincere as a boxer putting up his guard. “Well, let’s go.”
“I just have to bring a couple of things,” she said.
She ran somewhere in the house and came back with a child’s croquet set that consisted of two wooden mallets and six large wooden balls held together in a wire frame that had a handle at the top. She also had a carrying case for Pharaoh. It was a little doghouse with a screened door and a handle at the top.
I took the child’s game and dog cage, she took Pharaoh and held the umbrella over all of us out to the car. The croquet set was very light. I remember thinking that it must have been made from balsa wood.
Maybe Idabell thought my head was made from the same material.
She might have thought it, but she was wrong.
CHAPTER 18
ALL THIS AIN’T over no dog,” I said.
We were driving south and west toward B. Shay’s apartment house. Pharaoh was so excited to be with Idabell that he was leaping around the car and barking. I had to stop the car and make her put him in his cage.
“All what, Easy?” she asked.
“Your husband, your brother-in-law.”
“I don’t know what happened,” she said, rising a little from her dozing posture. “For about three weeks Holland was really upset. He was mad and said terrible things to me. You know I’m from a good family, I’m not used to men using language the way he did. And then he was mad at Pharaoh. It’s true. I left because he wanted to kill my little baby.”
“What was he mad about?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe it was something with a business deal he had with Roman.”
“What kind of business were they in?”
“Roman was a gambler. He didn’t have a real job. He did business ventures now and then but mainly he gambled. He played in Gardena and Reno and Vegas.”
“And what about Holland?” I asked.
“I loved him,” she said. “I mean he was kind and sweet. We’d go out to a movie and then walk back to his house speaking to each other in French. My parents are Guianese but I learned French in school because I came here so young. Holly came when he was a child too but he learned French at home. Sometimes we’d talk all night long. He loved it that I was a teacher. He was proud of me. He’d take me everywhere and say to everybody that I was an educator and that I worked among black children to educate them.”
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