He had two more weeks of concerts and a Thanksgiving in-law visit in Boston planned with his wife. I fumed all the way back to California and wrote a farewell note over the Sierra Nevada.
Roy didn’t respond. He was busy. The song was a hit.
My withdrawal symptoms were the same: acute backache followed by sadness, a few weeks of resignation, and finally relief.
Meanwhile, Sarah’s skirt sat on a shelf, reminding me of the beautiful drive with Roy across the Florida Keys.
Six months later, I picked up the phone. “Roy?”
“Miss Sue?”
That instant, we began retracing the familiar blueprint. By Sunday, all signs had returned. I was immobilized on the sofa with an ice pack and a bottle of Motrin, cursing my lack of resolve.
Then, I spied Sarah’s unhemmed skirt. Third grade was almost over, but it was still big enough to fit her. I grabbed the skirt and hobbled to Mary’s apartment.
“My best friend,” Mary enunciated. Her English had improved.
She inserted thread into her industrial machine, adjusted the bobbin, and depressed a foot pedal the size of a cookie sheet. The needle raced over the hemline. A minute later, Mary smiled with satisfaction, folded the skirt, and handed it back to me.
At last, I thought, it’s finished.
Skin Deep
My neighbor, Saraswati, was born in Mauritius. Her mother called her poulet noir (“black chicken”) because she was darker than her siblings. She treated her daughter like a servant. Saraswati left home at a young age, traveled to India, and joined an ashram where she met and married an American. I was told they were Hari Krishnas although I never heard her chanting or saw religious markings on her face.
Saraswati was an extremely friendly woman in contrast to her husband. “My husband is an excellent man,” she frequently told me, shaking her dark, pretty head. “His studies require him to go away.”
Saraswati operated a day-care center in a two-storey, brown shingled house. Weekdays, weekends, days, nights, she was busy with other people’s children and her own. Despite the traffic, the house and yard were immaculate. In the late afternoon, she could be found sweeping the street with a short, handleless broom, reporting the latest neighborhood gossip.
“This morning a couple stopped by the fence at a devilishly early hour to admire my roses,” she confided to me.
The tall, tangerine rose trees that lined her front yard were perfect. No black spot or rust. As she spoke, I conjured dawn meanderings with a lover.
“They had a basket and shears,” she shrilled, changing gears and thrusting her small head into my face. “I yelled at them from the window, ‘You get the fuck away from my roses.’ Then, I called the police.”
Saraswati was always calling the police. Last spring, after a terrorist was arrested, local news crews appeared seeking photos of the cottage where the culprit once lived. Several handmade NO TRESPASSING signs were posted on her fences, gates, and doors. She told me a TV anchorman threatened her when she refused to let him enter her yard.
“He made a disgusting gesture at my crotch. He shouted that he wanted to fuck me in the ass.” She repeated “in the ass” several times as her tiny, slack-jawed daughters clung to their mother’s skirt.
When she finally lowered her voice, it was to point out a black youth with an Afro who had recently moved in next door. “He’s dealing drugs from the car,” she said.
I glanced at the sedate Honda parked in front of Saraswati’s house. She had already called the police.
The next time I saw her, I simply waved. I was too tired to walk over and listen. I could no longer sort out vigilance from paranoia. However, a wave sufficed for friendship. That evening, Saraswati telephoned to ask if I would drive her to the hospital when she went into labor. Her excellent husband had already been away many months and was not scheduled to return until after their baby’s due date.
A week later, she called again with news that labor had started. Half-asleep, I prepared to drive to the hospital and hold Saraswati’s hand. She never called me back.
A few days later, when I saw her, she was sweeping the street. “Hey!” she cried excitedly. “My excellent husband arrived just in time.”
I hugged Saraswati and introduced her to my mother, in town for a visit.
Saraswati hugged and kissed my mother, too. “Your daughter is my good friend,” she said. My mother, not easily moved to affection, was charmed by the embrace of such a vivacious woman.
“You must come see the baby,” Saraswati sang, ushering us into her tidy house and seating us on the plush velveteen sofa below a gallery of Hindu gods.
Her little daughters flitted about like fairies while she ordered them in French to settle down. The lovely baby lay sleeping in his crib. All the children were fairer than their “black chicken” mother. The boy was fairest of all.
Saraswati handed me the infant.
“What’s his name?” my mother asked.
“Marvin,” Saraswati beamed.
“Marvin?” my mother repeated incredulously. She had few inhibitions, a characteristic now exaggerated by age. “You named your baby, Marvin?”
“Perhaps, we chose strangely,” Saraswati admitted.
Mother nodded sympathetically. “Can you use his middle name?”
Something unpronounceable was mumbled in Sanskrit. “Marvin is my father-in-law’s name,” she explained. “He is an excellent man.”
Later, I mentioned to mother that her comment might have hurt Saraswati’s feelings. “Marvin, the baby’s name is Marvin?” I imitated her perfectly.
“It was an honest response,” she smiled.
Indeed, I understood the range and velocity of that honesty. It had fueled a list of grievances about my skin, hair, clothes, and friends. Especially skin.
“The sun will turn you swarthy,” mother uttered with contempt. “Swarthy” like “black chicken” prompted me to go far away and never return.
The Dancing Shoes
Every week, Elaine and I were driven to dancing class by Noble (her grandmother’s chauffeur). He drove us in a Fleetwood Cadillac, spit-polished and waxed, from the outskirts of Buckhead to The Temple, the oldest, most reformed and prestigious of Atlanta’s synagogues (founded in 1867), domed and columned (like Monticello), and located on a flourishing section of Peachtree Street near the city’s most elegant churches.
For dancing class, my mother bought me a brown velvet dress with a scalloped lace collar and a pair of matching Capezio flats. It was a fussy, childish outfit that would never attract the attention of Terry Vatz, the only handsome (and pimpled) boy in the class. His pimples gave him allure, making him look sexy and mature. The DA haircut was a sign of rebel, and his black pegged slacks showed off his slippery hips as he spun Miriam Blum around. I desperately envied Miriam who wore slinky dresses. The best dressed were the best dancers, and I was neither.
Noble drank as he drove from a flask that he said was filled with root beer. We sat next to him, inhaling Wild Turkey. During dance class while he waited, he proceeded to get loaded. One evening he asked us, “Y’all know about nookie?”
“No!” we chorused, holding our breath and waiting for enlightenment.
“I gets fired for telling y’all,” he slurred. “All I gonna say is if y’all don’t know now, gonna know someday.”
As soon as we reached Elaine’s house, we raced to the dictionary. We searched for nookie, nukey, knooky, and other variations. The word itself connected to the mysteries of Terry Vatz’s hips and Noble’s promise of someday.
By the end of the year, Elaine and I had mastered the fundamentals of ballroom dancing: jitterbug, fox trot, waltz, and cha-cha-cha. Now we were ready to attend The Temple’s teen dances in the fall.
I begged mother for a new, sophisticated, grown-up dress. That was a hopeless request. I consulted with my cousin, Peggy, guru of fashion. She had a dozen party dresses she wore when she dated college boys. She said I could borrow any dress I wante
d.
The lavender satin sheath had a deep sweetheart neckline and cap sleeves. I took her gold heels (half-size too big) and a boxy gold evening purse, too. Peggy showed me how to sweep up my hair in a French twist and smudge my eyelids with lavender shadow. She lent me a Merry Widow and a white rabbit fur cape.
The night of the dance, I put on my brown velvet dress and velvet flats. “What a pretty picture!” my mother cooed. She made me turn and twirl. “At least, you won’t look like a slut,” she said.
At Elaine’s house, I metamorphosed into a womanly package. When Noble arrived, he concurred. His eyes rolled up and down my stockinged legs. For the first time, Elaine and I sat in the back of the Cadillac.
The hall behind the sanctuary was crowded with teens. Everyone in the young set looked nervous except Terry and Miriam. They were in control. When the music started, he winked at her, and they spun, hip to hip, over the dance floor.
Our instructor tapped Sandy Weber (older by two years) for the first dance and pulled him out into the center. When the music stopped, she led Sandy to me. I was terrified, but when he held out his hand for Belafonte’s “The Banana Boat Song,” I followed him.
“Step, one-two-three,” my lips commanded and feet followed. Soon, I stopped counting. I melted into the music. After three dances with Sandy, I kicked Peggy’s gold heels into a corner.
At evening’s end, the instructor dimmed the lights for the last dance. The lubricated chords of Johnny Mathis soared. Terry and Sandy each tugged on my hand. Choosing between them would prove emblematic of my romantic future: danger and desire versus loyalty. I chose Sandy.
Limping barefoot from the hall, I rested on Elaine’s arm, strands of French twist falling, stockings ruined, my cousin’s lavender dress stained, the rabbit cape askew. It had been the sweetest night of my life.
Noble jumped from the car to open the door, grunting happily (no doubt, anticipating we’d soon be drinking Wild Turkey with him).
Late that night, a bomb exploded at The Temple. Part of the sanctuary building was blown out. No one was hurt, but that was the only good news.
“They bombed The Temple!” my panicked mother called in the morning. “They bombed it!”
“Bombed?” I repeated in disbelief. “Why?”
“Negroes,” she said. “It’s because of Negroes.”
A few hours later, my family went to The Temple. Hundreds of bystanders were on the street and sidewalk, viewing the damage. We had to pass through a ring of policemen. As the rabbi, in his dark robe, stepped onto the bema, the human buzz in the sanctuary grew absolutely silent.
“We are here,” the rabbi said. He asked us not to be deterred by threats of violence. He likened the Negro struggle to that of the Jews, and the color line of segregation to the Red Sea.
I stared at the cavernous hole, praying that whoever planted the bomb would be sucked into the middle of the earth. Their hate scared me more than anything. I knew it firsthand. I had seen the parades of the KKK, marching by Leb’s (Atlanta’s large downtown Jewish delicatessen). Marching were girls and boys (all ages), dressed in white robes and conical hats, their eyes burning “Jew! Jew! Jew!” on my forehead.
After services, we filed outside and talked with other families on the sloping lawn. Terry, Miriam, Sandy, Elaine, their families stood nearby.
“What if the bomb exploded during the dance?” Miriam’s mother wept into a handkerchief.
“Sue,” a voice called over to me.
I turned to see my dance instructor. She was walking towards me with Peggy’s gold heels.
“They were blown out the door by the explosion,” she said.
“They aren’t hers,” my mother replied. “We’ve never seen them.”
I took the shoes by their straps and skipped ahead to the parking lot.
“Noble!” I tapped the glass, leaned through the window, and shoved the shoes under his seat. I sent him a pleading look and ran to our car.
“You don’t have to talk to Negroes like that,” my mother reprimanded. “Up close like he’s your friend.”
“Marguerite, please,” my father said.
“It’s the reason for the bomb,” mother insisted. “Jews and Negroes, they think we’re the same.”
My father leaned into my ear and whispered, “Garbage.”
“That’s the reason,” my mother sobbed. “That’s the reason.”
The Red Beret
In the lobby of the movie theater, I hung (invisible) by my cousin, Peggy, watching the boys watch her. I had nothing to do except fidget with my purse and wait for someone to notice me.
“Y’all know my cousin, Sue, don’t you?” she declared proudly.
Peggy’s boys turned. Dutifully, they assessed my figure and face. However, no amount of primping had imparted any shred of sex appeal to me.
“Everyone says she’ll be beautiful someday.” Someday made it sound like I existed only in the future.
The blue darkness of the theater was a kind of war zone. Boys, single and in pairs, hovered and roamed. Young romance imploded. Couples split up and changed partners halfway through the show. Expletives and threats were shouted. Fist fights broke out. Cups, wrappers, popcorn, and ice were tossed around. Paper debris was everywhere.
Peggy assumed a royal seat in the center of the chaos, her favorite suitors on either side. At the far end of the row on the aisle, I sat next to one of the leftovers, a boy marked by ineptitude at sports, a boy who wore glasses.
From a distance, I witnessed their fealty to Peggy. I saw how she had to be gracious. She had to smile and laugh while I wasn’t required to be anything. I was relieved of all feminine duties. I could ignore the commotion, observe without being disturbed, and know I had been spared.
Once Lenox Square was built, no one went downtown to shop. Ding Ho’s (Atlanta’s only Chinese restaurant) and Frohsin’s (an elegant dress shop) were the only two enticements. Sometimes to flaunt our independence, Peggy and I skipped the movies on Saturday afternoon and took the bus from Buckhead into the center of the city.
Much of downtown Atlanta was segregated: restaurants, movie theaters, hotels. But, as we walked farther south, we found blocks where the color line wavered. The throngs of sharply dressed brown men and women made it hard to tell whose city it was.
Our adventures were modest: a grilled cheese sandwich at Woolworth’s, the lingerie department at Davison’s where we fondled nightgowns and slips, the white marble Carnegie Library (a miniature Parthenon) with its permanent tribute to Atlanta’s most famous writer, Margaret Mitchell, and the highlight, a trick and magic shop which was a wedge-shaped room in a wedge-shaped building (I was a big fan of practical jokes, especially invisible ink). It was there our excursion ended unless Peggy could be persuaded to play a game of my own invention.
Peggy was reluctant. She usually made excuses to go home. Unlike me, she was not fascinated by the unknown. Her interests lay in controlling the familiar.
The game began the instant I chose. “Her!” I pointed.
Off we went, steadily following the figure ahead, traveling deeper into downtown, passing pawnshops and bars, surplus stores and resident hotels where wet clothes fluttered in the windows.
The sauntering, mocha-cream giantess was extraordinary. She sported a red beret no bigger than a doily, attached with black bobby pins to a coil of yellow hair. Her jacket was red leather, and her tight skirt had a slit that went above the knee. Under the contour of skirt, her backside jiggled and swung. We watched with fascination.
“No girdle,” Peggy said.
“She’s French,” I told her.
“A slut?” she asked.
“A dancer, look at her legs.” I was already something of an expert on French dancers, having attended a performance of the Folies Bergère on a trip to Europe when I was ten.
“And her name?” Impressed by my omniscience, Peggy inquired.
“Francine, Francine Monet.” I had visited Giverny, too.
Mademo
iselle Monet swayed through the crowd, leading us into the plumb center of Atlanta, a point not so much somewhere as nowhere, an empty spot where everything dropped away. When we walked out of this center, the city reformed itself into towers of tall, friendless buildings. Downtown was behind us. We had crossed into the quarter of pool halls, seamy hotels, taverns, and the Greyhound station where legless veterans sold No. 2 pencils.
“I’m not going there,” Peggy cried.
Neither was Francine Monet. She walked on, leading us over a massive number of tracks into the railway terminal. This was another kind of center where people and histories waited and then disappeared.
We took up a position behind two pillars in the waiting room. Above us was the schedule board, times and destinations marked in chalk. Francine Monet checked the board, took a seat, removed a hand mirror from her purse, adjusted her perky beret, and by angling her mirror caught my eye like flint.
“She knows,” I gasped.
“What?” Peggy jumped.
“That we’re here.”
We grabbed each other’s hands, waiting for the next move. Hers, no doubt. We were no longer masters of the game.
She rose and exited the station, and like zombies, we followed her out the huge doors, past the taxi stand to a covered alley, piled high with luggage wagons and rusty boxes.
“Hey, girls!” Francine shouted at us.
“She speaks English,” Peggy said. Even I was surprised.
We stood at the entrance to the alley, ready to run at any moment. She stood a few yards inside.
“Is this what you looking for?”
In one quick motion, she yanked up her skirt. There was neither girdle nor panties but a great deal of something else. Two white striped straps framed a bulge, a knob, a hump. The skirt came down so quickly that later, neither of us could believe what we saw.
Peggy and I bounced backwards. We raced past the station into downtown. Towers, movie palaces, department stores flashed above us. Brown people laughed and waved as we ran. Finally, we were on the bus, heading to Buckhead where there was time for the second show.
My Life in Clothes Page 4
