She laughed and touched her stomach. “How do you know?”
“The way you carrying. A boy, sure thing. I’ve never been wrong, even my own, I knew. . . .” She stopped. “Where do you live?”
“Near Freedom Park.” Blaire always says, “On Sterling Road in Myers Park. Off Queens Road West.”
“Sugar Creek must be close by.”
“Yes, behind our house.” She gave her address.
“We call it Little Sugar here.” Mrs. Stokes put the pad back in her pocket. “I can get to you easy on the Number Three bus.”
“I’ll repay you for the fare.”
“That’d be all right.” Mrs. Stokes stood. “I can have it for you in a week or two.”
As she was leaving she said, “Your gardenias are lovely. I didn’t see the bush.”
“It was by the fence out front but folks passing by kept picking it clean, so I moved it to the back.”
“Oh, my.” She couldn’t imagine her neighbors taking her flowers without asking, but there was something enviable, something in the nature of a village that made folks think they could pick one another’s gardenias.
On her way to run other errands downtown she passed a large blue house on Brevard. A wooden sign between two posts said, EDWARD WILKINS, MD. What would it be like to be attended by a midwife, and only have a doctor if something went wrong? She thought about her obstetrician’s modern offices on Hawthorne.
* * *
Ten days after she met Roberta Stokes, she and Blaire were at the kitchen table, supper dishes pushed aside. A front-page story in the Charlotte News caught her eye: ONE DEAD IN SHOOTOUT.
A colored man was killed Saturday night and a Charlotte policeman injured in a shootout in Brooklyn at McDowell and First Streets, the notorious Murder Corner. Two policemen were called to the scene where a fistfight had accelerated. Sgt. Richard Bridges, 34, was rushed to Memorial Hospital with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. His condition is stable. Lew McCreedy, 47, a Negro, was killed while resisting arrest. Oscar Polk, 52, another Negro involved in the brawl, is being held pending investigation.
She showed Blaire the story. “This happened a couple of blocks from Roberta Stokes’ house.”
“Roberta Stokes?”
“A seamstress in Second Ward. I went to see her about a christening gown. She’s bringing it to us next week.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “For Christ’s sake, Persephone! It’s dangerous down there.”
“Where I went was perfectly safe. I wish you could see Mrs. Stokes’ house, a charming cottage on Myers Street.”
“Myers? That’s on the list for tear-downs.”
“Have you been there?”
He went to the kitchen, got a beer from the refrigerator. “I’ve seen plenty of pictures, horrible shanties up on pilings, dirt roads, garbage.”
“The part of Myers she lives on is paved. And her doctor lives nearby in a handsome home on Brevard.”
Blaire took a chilled mug from the freezer, filled it, drank deeply. “Persy, I want you to promise me you won’t go into those slums again.”
Why don’t I just salute him? “Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER 4
Me and Hawk share a room on the back corner where the sun comes in at a slant through one window in the morning and full tilt through the other in the afternoon. Last thing I do at night is pull the shades down. We only six feet from Dooby’s house next door and I can hear him if he sneezes. First thing in the morning, after we dress, I pull the shades up, let the sunshine in. Two single beds, oak chest of drawers between them—tall, golden brown, five drawers with brass pulls I keep polished. Belonged to my daddy, a piece Bibi bought him when he graduated high school, before he joined the navy. He asked Bibi to keep it for him when he got shipped overseas. He never came home, so now it’s mine, the only furniture I have from either of my parents.
Bibi say my daddy took care of me. But he left for good when I was five, and try as hard as I can, I only remember he smelled like starch. All I have is that chest and the photo of him that’s sitting on top of it. He’s young in the picture, maybe twenty-five, same age as I am now, stiff and tall in his navy uniform. Three white stripes on his sleeve. The words at the bottom say, “Seaman Ronald Alexander Hawkins, San Diego, Cal., Dec. 1936.” The year I was born. Bibi believes he was married to Shushu—my mother—but has no paper to prove it. Shushu said something about Chicago, according to Pap Shumaker, her father, and that she’d write. He say she never did. I don’t think Pap and Grand would keep that from me. I think about her, wondering if she thinks about me. I look at Hawk, see myself in him, and believe she must.
I can also see me in Bibi, in her eyes, hooded like mine. She’ll touch my face and say, “You got Hawkins eyes. I want to remember my boy, I look at you.” We both got big feet which is another thing the Hawkins women run to, and we the same five feet four inches tall. She’s slim, though, where I am heavy in the hips. Her legs are skinny, where my thighs are full, and my calves plump but with small ankles, so I don’t mind. Bibi’s breasts are way down, almost to her waist, which she say is from never wearing a bra. “Didn’t have no such thing when I was a girl coming up, getting shapely. One day Lorena say we should put brassieres on to see what we look like.” She throws back her head, laughing with her mouth open, showing her upper plate. “Lord knows, I say once and never again. Pinch me here. Pinch me there. Rub my shoulders. How could any woman get use to it?”
She ask me only one question when I tell her I’m gon have a baby. “You getting married?”
“No, ma’am. That’s not happening.”
“Well, they’ll be talk, but we’ll get along. Ain’t first baby born to a mama not married.”
* * *
For seven years now I’ve had a help wanted ad from the Charlotte News tucked into the frame of Daddy’s picture on my dresser. Bibi has asked me more than once, “Why you hanging on to that scrap of paper?”
“Leave it be. Something I want to keep for now.” I’m not gon tell her it reminds me of how I met Mr. Griffin.
Most of the jobs in the paper said, “Must have experience,” and they didn’t mean how to unpack boxes, stock shelves, sweep floors. I wanted something more than working in the grocery store, and the ad looked right for me: “Kitchen help. S&W Cafeteria. 6 days/wk, $1.15/hr. Benefits. Will train. 112 W. Trade. Interviews 9 A.M., Mon. Sep. 14, 1953.”
I shower, wind my braids into a smooth bun, and get out a dress use to belong to Auntie Roselle, one of her things Uncle Ray gave me. She was built stocky, wide in the hips same as me, and her clothes fit me well.
I tell Bibi I’m ready to leave my job at Stone’s Grocery, show her the ad that’s now in my daddy’s picture. She say, “Um-hm. Let’s go to Sears Roebuck. You got to have shoes that show you take care of yourself.”
What I want is a pair of leopard skin high heels that’d be so right for going out on Saturday night, but wrong for getting a job. Instead I get black leather pumps that’ll do for an interview or going to church. Bibi lets me borrow her small hat with pink flowers on it, same color as Auntie Roselle’s dress, and she inspects my gloves, the ones Shushu left behind.
I get up on the edge of the tub in my stocking feet to see as much of myself as I can in the medicine cabinet mirror, and what I see looks so fine. I tip Bibi’s hat over my right eye and jump to the floor. She stands in the doorway buttoning her uniform. “You gon get that job.” She gives me a dime. “For luck and for taking the bus. You don’t want to get sweaty walking to the S&W.”
We start out together on that mild fall day, getting to McDowell right before the Number Three bus for downtown that will take me to the Square. She’ll catch the Number Three going south to take her to the Easterlings’ in Myers Park. I put one foot on the step of the bus and say, over my left shoulder, “Bye, Bibi, cross your fingers.” I drop her dime in the glass box beside the driver, pleased I’m gon be early, and sit on the long seat in the back, waving to Bibi out the window, wa
tching her get smaller as we roll away.
I get off at the Square and walk to the S&W. All my life I’ve been passing it, wondering what it’s like inside. Three stories of windows on Trade Street, with red velvet curtains floor to ceiling, pulled tight today. I’ve stared through the windows, wishing I could go inside, sit at one of those glossy tables, eat a delicious Sunday dinner, but as Uncle Ray reminds me, “That’ll happen someday, but not this day.”
A black man steps from the shadows of the doorway. “You here for the job? You mighty young.”
I’m thinking he’s mighty old to be looking for work in a cafeteria, but I keep that to myself. “I’m seventeen.”
He has on what I reckon is his best suit, wide shoulders, shiny pants. We both wearing clothes we’d never wear to work. He touches the knot of his tie. “This your first job?”
I shake my head, not wanting to go into my history with him.
Another man and a girl walk up, both colored. The girl say, “Y’all know what time it is?”
The second man checks his watch. “Ten to nine.”
A white man turns off Church Street onto Trade, strides toward us. Tall, wearing a navy suit that shows bony ankles in black socks. He’s got on a plaid bowtie, a hat with the brim tipped over his forehead. “I’ll open up,” he say with a smile, key ring jangling. Can’t be more than twenty-five, which makes me feel better about being young myself. “Be right back,” he closes the door behind him.
The other girl say to me, “You done kitchen work?”
“Not for pay. You?”
“Huh-uh. What you think it means, benefits?”
“My uncle say health insurance, they pay your bill if you get sick.”
“My, my, wouldn’t that be something?”
She’s about my age, dressed up, with patent leather heels I admire.
The men talk to each other, ignoring me and the girl. The man with the wristwatch is dressed first-rate, like he doesn’t need a job. He winks when he catches my eye. I look away. Might be some jackleg winking at me.
The front door opens. The white man has taken off his hat. Wavy red hair, friendly gray eyes, a scrap of tissue near his left sideburn, where he must of cut himself shaving. “Y’all come on in.”
Inside, I make myself not show the wonder I’m feeling about what I’m doing in such a place. Ceiling so high it could have clouds. Rows of tables stretching all the way to a serving counter in the back.
“Have a seat,” the man say, waving to a plush sofa and easy chairs, like in some living room. I’m feeling jumpy thinking I might work here, but the other girl sits down, crosses her legs, and jiggles her foot like she’s having a high time. She lights a cigarette, drops the match in an ashtray.
“I’m Archibald Griffin, manager of the S&W Cafeteria, which has been here twenty-six years. We seat well over two hundred folks for Sunday lunch, when we use all the tables, upstairs, too.” He points to a balcony hanging over the rear of the dining room. “We’re closed on Mondays except for special parties.” He leans on a brass rail that separates the lobby from the dining room. “What I’m looking for is someone willing to go the extra mile.” He wants a worker. That’s me.
“Any questions before we start the interviews?”
The girl say, “So the job is six days a week. Is that all day, and starting when?”
“We work two shifts. First is six a.m. to two p.m.; second is two to ten. First shift opens, does breakfast and lunch. Second does supper, cleans and closes.”
The girl looks at her jiggling shoe, squashes out her cigarette in the ashtray. “Can we choose?”
“I like new people to start on first, for training.”
“I’m glad,” she say. “I got somebody to look after my baby mornings.”
“Who was the first one here?” Mr. Griffin ask.
“That’s me,” the older man say.
They shake hands and walk together toward the back.
“My, my,” say the girl. “Fancy, isn’t it.”
“Yes,” I say, “Be nice to work here.”
“It’s gonna be, that’s for sure.”
Does she think she’s already hired? “How old is your baby?”
She looks pleased I asked. “Six months. I’ve been keeping him and two others, but one of the mamas moved away and the other baby is in nursery school, now she’s outta diapers.”
We sit there quiet till the first man comes back, tells us goodbye, and Mr. Griffin say, “I’ll let you know in a week or so.”
“Yes, sir, I be waiting to hear.”
“Who’s next?”
I stand.
“This way.” We start toward the back. He ask, “What’s your name?”
“Loraylee Hawkins.” I walk fast to keep up, my new pumps making a pleasant sound on the red-and-tan tile floor.
We go through the dining room and stop near the serving counter along the back wall. He say, “We have twenty-eight four tops—that’s a table for four—and a dozen two tops on this floor, can seat another seventy upstairs.” He points to a wide staircase in the corner, an elevator beside it. “The kitchen downstairs serves all our patrons, using dumbwaiters to get food to the lines on both floors.”
Dumbwaiters? He can’t mean stupid people, but I don’t ask.
“Let’s go to the kitchen first.” He leads me into an elevator, punches a button to take us down. “We turned this into an automatic about six months ago. The elevator boy now works in the kitchen.”
I get a whiff of aftershave. He’s removed the speck of tissue below his neat sideburn and I see the nick it was covering. We walk out into a huge room. Gleaming, that’s the word for it. A row of ovens, shelves of dishes and glasses.
“Even as large as it is, people bump into each other,” he say, “so everybody needs to know who’s doing what. I’m looking for someone who can work in a hot steamy room, and get along with the rest of the staff.” He taps a counter. “I try to find folks who fit in, so we’ll have a happy kitchen.”
He’s proud of what he does. I say, “Yes, sir,” even if a lot of it doesn’t make sense. Everything’s clean, not a speck of dirt on the floor. A whiff of something in the air makes me think of sugar cookies. Stored under a cooktop are pots large enough to do our laundry in. Metal counters. Sinks like bathtubs.
He stops at a row of steel doors along one wall. “Walk-in cold storage, one for vegetables and fruit, one for meat. Part of the job is to track the food in the fridges and freezers so the last thing in is the last thing out.” I follow him back to the elevator and we return to the first floor where we go through a door with a brass plaque, ARCHIBALD C. GRIFFIN, MANAGER. Inside is a small room with a desk and two chairs. Through one window is a parking lot. Another one behind the desk overlooks an alley. He points to it. “That’s used by delivery vans for several businesses, runs off Church Street. The vendors who serve us have access to a dumbwaiter that takes food down to the kitchen.”
I’m feeling easy enough to ask, “I don’t know that word, dumbwaiter.”
“No reason you would. We have three. They’re elevators—but for stuff, not people—from the balcony upstairs to the basement below, carrying food for the serving line, dirty dishes, deliveries.” A calendar hangs on the wall, a pencil on a string dangling beside it. “Shift schedule. Changes every week.” We sit, him behind the desk, me in the other chair.
“Loraylee, is that right?”
“Yes, sir.”
His hair is even redder under the overhead light. “Would this be your first job?” His whole face smiles, his eyes kind.
“I’ve been working in the grocery for a year and a half, shelving stock when products come in, helping with inventory. Mr. Stone—he’s my boss—has been teaching me the cash register so I can work up front, but when I saw your ad in the News . . .” I stop, feel like I’m saying too much.
He makes another note. “How old are you, Loraylee?”
“I turned seventeen in August.”
“A
re you married, any children?”
“No, sir. No, sir.”
The phone on his desk rings. “Hello? Oh, hey, Kevin. Sure.” He muffles the receiver. “Excuse me, this’ll only take a second.” He speaks back into the phone. “No, eighty pounds yellow onions, ninety of russets. Y’all got it wrong last order. If there’s an overage this delivery, I’m sending it back.” The hand on the phone is strong, with blunt fingers, blond hair on the back.
I like how confident he sounds, and wish I could ask him how old he is, if he’s married, has children.
He hangs up the phone, takes a pen from his pocket, writes something on a pad. “Are you prompt, punctual?”
“Yes, sir, never late.” Not the whole truth, but close.
“Does Mr. Stone know you’re looking for another job?”
I nod. “He say he doesn’t want to lose me but he doesn’t want to stand in my way, either. You can call him for a reference.”
“Can you work weekends? Would that be a problem?”
I think about how upset Bibi would be if I didn’t go with her to St. Tim’s. “No, sir.”
“We start serving at twelve-thirty on Sundays, so our diners can get here after church. The staff has to come in at nine.”
“Everybody?”
“We shift people around. Those who want to can go to church every couple of weeks.”
“That’s what I was wondering.”
Mr. Griffin stands. “Any questions?”
“No, sir.”
As we leave his office, he holds out his hand. Big, warm, like his smile. “You’ll be hearing from me, don’t worry.”
We walk back through the dining room. It’s easy to be quiet with him.
So that’s how I met my Mr. Griffin, all those years ago. After the interview I decided to walk home. I liked strolling through my neighborhood all dressed up, saying hey to people going to and from work or sitting on porches. I went down East Second Street, which has several places to stop for a Coke: Queen City Pharmacy, where I had my first job, or the Royal Snack Bar across from the record store. Before people started moving away, Brooklyn had everything anybody could need. You could get your shoes shined or your dress hemmed, a tooth filled or a baby delivered. A lawyer could draw up a will, knowing the preacher and the undertaker would be there when it came your time. But even back then we were hearing rumors of the city forcing us out. I thought about that as I headed home.
Tomorrow's Bread Page 3
