Marshall’s presentation went on and on, slanted and deadly. “Instead of blight, there will be upscale restaurants, nightlife.”
The commissioners nodded, took notes.
“But it won’t come to Charlotte if we don’t plan now.”
Another slide: “Independence Square at Trade and Tryon, the heart of Charlotte. As you see, there’s a drugstore on one corner, a dry cleaner on another, a dime store on the third, and a haberdashery on the fourth. These photos were taken in the heavy pedestrian traffic of late afternoon.”
When people, the majority of them Negroes, were getting off work in the inner city, Eben added to himself.
The next slides showed colored people leaving the drugstore. Catching buses. Going into and out of Kress Five and Ten, which for decades had one of the few bathrooms for blacks in the whole of downtown.
The display ended with a photo of a colored man slumped on the sidewalk outside the dry cleaners. Passed out, apparently.
Marshall was winding up for his finish. “In a few years the Square will have a skyscraper, an art plaza, a major hotel.” He beamed at his audience. “Questions?”
Eben raised his hand.
“Yes, Reverend?”
He stood, wanting to be sure all the commissioners could see him. “These businesses,” he projected his booming pulpit voice to every person in the room. “These businesses that currently fill the four corners of Independence Square, will they be forced to close, and if so, will they be given options for relocation?” He glanced at Reverend Timmons. Their eyes met and Timmons gave a slight nod.
“Those shops are used mainly by residents of the wards.”
“Colored people?” This was both a question and a statement.
“Yes, for the most part.”
“And again, will the merchants have any choice about closing?” Eben looked over his glasses at Marshall, who returned his steady gaze.
“Sacrifices must be made for progress.” Around the room heads bobbed.
“Yes, sacrifices will be made.” Eben paused, looked at the mayor as if directing the next question to him. “How many members of the board have help who live in Brooklyn? Maids, yardmen, carpenters, plumbers? Do you frequent the shoemakers, seamstresses, and bakers in . . .” He paused. “. . . Blue Heaven? And how will your employees get to work if they move to Biddleville or Belmont or Fairview Homes?”
Rhyne grinned, mouthed, “Amen.”
“I raise these questions to bring up a topic that perhaps has not been addressed. Most of these service people avail themselves of public transportation—buses. How will they commute when they’re forced to move?”
He steeled himself for reactions or—worse yet—no reaction at all. The questions had an impact, reflected by downcast eyes.
“Before I conclude, I want to tell you of a conversation I had last week with a neighbor. The man was born in his home in Brooklyn, had planned to live out his life there. He owns the property outright, but struggles to keep it”—Eben paused—“fit. Many repairs are needed.”
Around the room men mumbled, “Yes,” or “Uh-huh.” Someone said, “Exactly.”
Eben continued. “So I asked him how he felt about redevelopment, the prospect of leaving his lifelong home in Brooklyn to move into a new house, with a new mortgage. He replied, ‘Now, Preacher, that puts me in a trickbag.’” Eben saw puzzled looks.
“A trickbag, gentlemen, is a question with no right answer.” Eben spoke to Blaire. “One last thing. Will the suggested sites for relocation of downtown merchants offer the same amount of foot traffic?”
“We’ll be making every effort in that regard.” Marshall pointed to another raised hand. “Yes?”
Eben ignored him. “What about the people?”
“A renovated downtown, geared toward the growth in the banking industry, will attract thousands of professionals, I guarantee it. Charlotte is uniquely situated between Washington and Atlanta to appeal to bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers, politicians.”
“I meant those living in the wards.”
“Of course, an important part of the plan is affordable housing, multistory complexes—”
“High-rise tenements?”
“I’m speaking of apartments with air conditioning and indoor plumbing.”
“But not in Brooklyn—or Second Ward, as I’m sure you’ll call it—where the land is too valuable.”
“Rest assured, we’re going to take care of the people who leave the Brooklyn community.”
“That’s a nice word, ‘community.’ ” Eben sat down.
At the end of the meeting, Rhyne followed him out. In the elevator he clapped Eben on the shoulder. “You made some points in there, Pastor Polk. We got their attention.”
“I hope so.” Eben pushed the down button. “Where are you staying in Brooklyn?”
“With my sister, Roberta Stokes.”
“The seamstress?”
“Yes, she speaks highly of you.”
“You said you were going to settle in Brooklyn. A peculiar choice, given its certain fate.”
“Certain? We’re not convinced of that.” The elevator door opened. Rhyne waved good night and took off before Eben could respond.
There was something too slick about Gideon Rhyne, from his highly polished brogans to his pomaded hair, a whiff of bay rum, but he was brother to a decent woman.
Eben felt he’d scooped up water in a great thirst, only to have it slip through his fingers. He longed for the solace he always found in his study. As he approached St. Tim’s, he passed a group of men at the corner of First and McDowell, their faces lit by a fire in the barrel they surrounded, mouths open in song. He recognized Eli Patterson. Just this evening he’d been thinking of him. He pulled over to listen: “When the night has come, and the land is dark, and the moon is the only light we will see, I won’t be afraid just as long as you stand, stand by me.”
CHAPTER 12
In June of 1962 Persy felt drawn to go back to Windy Hill, to get away from Blaire’s interminable involvement with the planning commission. She often spent evenings alone anyway, when he went back to the office, and she was attracted by the thought of solitude at the beach rather than in Charlotte.
Her second morning at the shanty she woke before daybreak, went to the porch to catch sunrise over the ocean. The water was flat, colorless in the predawn, lazy waves lapping the shore. The sun, when it broke the horizon, was tepid, disappointing. After breakfast she cleaned the small kitchen, thinking it strange that Mother had kept the shanty sparsely furnished, unlike the overcrowded mess she lived in at home.
Persy had seen Mother go on binges of straightening up, getting rid of stuff, swearing, “I’m clearing out my clutter!” It seemed not to bother her that some of the things she tossed weren’t hers. Like the baby shoes Persy had planned to have bronzed. “You wouldn’t have wanted to preserve them,” Mother had said. “The leather was cracked.” Or the flowered shawl Persy wore to her senior class dance, hoping someday she’d have a daughter who’d want it. “But it was so dated,” Mother said.
That might have been when Mother got rid of the letters Persy’s father had written her from California when she was a toddler. Every letter began, “My Sweet Persy,” carefully written in block capitals, the only cursive being “Daddy” scrawled at the bottom. He wrote about living near the Pacific Ocean, how it sounded and smelled. When she was in the second grade she found the letters in a shoebox in Mother’s closet. She sat on the floor in Mother’s bedroom, stared out the window, holding a letter, trying to imagine the waves crashing. Then her hands were empty. Mother towered above her. “What are you doing?” she yelled.
“Reading Daddy’s letters.”
Mother grabbed up the box. “They’re private!”
“He wrote them to me.”
“He left you.” Mother looked tall and mean. “He’s never coming back.”
After that, when Mother was out Persy searched through her things, hoping to find the l
etters. As she got older, she created her absent father from fragments of dreams. If she’d ever talked about it, she would have said he haunted her sleep. She had dreams about a man, though it wasn’t always the same man. Just the same sort of fatherly fellow: in the auditorium when she won the spelling bee in fourth grade, and shouting hooray at Municipal Pool when she got a blue ribbon for the hundred-meter backstroke. Persy felt this father’s presence at her elbow during her small wedding. She never found a single photo of him, but over the years she formed an image of Robert Rochester Alexander: slender, kind, and funny, she decided. Like James Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life.
Mother hired a maid when Persy was ten, the third or fourth since Persy’s father left, and finally one who stayed, who brought order to the household, and who seemed to understand Persy’s mother, Gracie Nell Alexander.
The big house in Eastover got calmer and more organized under Augusta Baxter’s firm hand; Persy soon learned that she could count on that order. Augusta spoke with a directness that was at first abnormal to Persy, who was used to Mother’s way of stating what she wished was so rather than what was. When Augusta found Persy going through her mother’s things, searching for the shoebox, she said, “Your mama got rid of those letters. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do. They’re gone and you got to stop looking for them. You got to remember that your mama is the one who stayed, not your daddy.”
Sometimes Augusta would tell Persy something about her father, though Persy never knew how Augusta got her knowledge. Augusta didn’t respond to direct questions, but at odd moments she’d share a tidbit such as, “You’re tall like your daddy, got his eyes, too.” If Persy followed up with, “How do you know?” Augusta would change the subject. One day, Augusta said, “Your daddy was wrong to leave the way he did, but he had his reasons.” Persy wanted to scream when Augusta would say nothing more, but was grateful for any scrap, waited for the next one.
Augusta knew her place, understood exactly how far she could push Gracie Nell, but she had a way of getting what was due. This wasn’t something Persy understood until the matter of social security came up, long after she’d left home. During her second pregnancy, when Persy was told to rest as much as possible, Augusta came over to Persy and Blaire’s three days a week to cook and clean, run errands. She must have been in her fifties by then, had been working for Mother for thirty years, but her smooth skin made her age hard to judge. Persy had never considered the issue of social security for a maid, but Augusta must have given it a great deal of thought.
One afternoon when she was clearing the lunch dishes, Augusta said, “You go on and take a nap now, and while you down I’m going to make a phone call to the government. Your mama has to start paying my social security.” Augusta turned to the sink, began running water hard, humming as she washed the dishes.
“Good luck getting her to do that.” Persy went to her bedroom, imagining Augusta’s confrontation with Mother. But if anyone could maneuver Gracie Nell Alexander, it was Augusta.
That evening Persy found a paper by the phone with notes in Augusta’s careful hand: “Work at least 2 days a week—50% paid by employer. Retroactive. No exceptions.” She smiled to think how this matter would be greeted by Mother, and wished she could be around when Augusta approached Gracie Nell about paying the government two percent of her salary into social security. Augusta deserved it, and Mother deserved whatever grief the payment caused. Retroactive, my goodness, Persy thought.
Once when Persy had taken Augusta home in weather too harsh for the usual bus ride, she’d seen an astonishing garden in the tiny front yard, a mass of flowers framed by a neat redwood fence. She knew so little about the woman, her personal life, or what social security would mean to her. It had never occurred to Persy to wonder what would happen to Augusta when she got too old to work. After all, she had a nice little house in Third Ward. A husband and two children—Persy remembered the pregnancies, the inconvenience to Mother of having Augusta out for a month or so each time. During the last ten years that Augusta worked for Mother, Persy had spoken with her a few times, but she never saw Augusta again after she retired in 1961, upon her sixty-fifth birthday. The only thing she ever heard Mother say about the woman was, “There’ll never be another Augusta. She took such good care of things and stayed out of my business.”
How could it be, Persy often wondered, that someone was in our lives for forty years, then gone. Only five miles away, but gone.
* * *
After lunch Persy took a long walk to the pier and back, pushing herself, going in and out of the water to cool off. At the groin she sat to catch her breath, heard laughter coming from Atlantic Beach to the north. A man and woman ran along the edge of the water, tossing a ball back and forth. The man was very dark, his long arms and legs flailing awkwardly. Not an athlete. He threw the ball to the woman. She caught it, threw it back, her movements fluid and natural. She was fair-skinned, her hair a frizzy bouncing mass. The woman must have felt Persy watching. She turned, looked at Persy, raised her arm as if to wave, but didn’t.
Late in the afternoon Persy swam out beyond the breakers where she floated on gentle swells. The ocean was running south, and she frog-kicked to stay near the shoreline at the shanty, the most contented she could remember being in a long while. She heard someone call out. The man had drifted well south of the groin. The woman shouted from beyond the segregating rope, “Louie! Louie, come back!”
The man noticed where he was, and began a strong crawl toward the groin. He turned his head to breathe, saw Persy, continued stroke after stroke.
She watched the man swim away feeling a sadness she couldn’t explain.
After supper she sat out front, nursing a Scotch, enjoying the wind off the ocean and contemplating something that had occurred to her in the heat of the day. She set down her glass, rose with a purpose, and went to the storeroom for the toolbox. Thirty minutes later she shoved the first-floor A/C unit from where it had been moored in a front window. The unit landed with a satisfying crunch on the sandy lawn, leaving an unobstructed view of the moonlit ocean. The wooden frame around the window had apparently been painted several times since the unit was installed, and no matter how she tried, she could not get the window to close. She was sweating heavily, had scrapes, scratches, and broken nails, but the result was worth the pain and trouble. A beach towel would do to cover the gaping hole until she could hire someone to come to the shanty, remove the two upstairs units, and get all the windows operational again.
Restored by a long hot shower, she took the phone to the porch, stretching the curled cord, which was just long enough, and called Blaire. He was at first incredulous at what she’d done. She listened through his mild rant, then said, “I hate those units. They’re ugly, inefficient.”
He surprised her by laughing. “Fulfilling neither form nor function.”
“Right!”
“And it is your house, after all. I guess if I were there more than once a year I’d have a right to object.”
“But you aren’t.” She smiled to herself.
After they said good night she sat a while longer, finishing her Scotch. Mother had been right in her advice, “. . . put it in your name only.” What an amazing gift it had turned out to be. Most of all, regardless of her shortcomings, Mother had been there all Persy’s life.
A falling star streaked the eastern sky. Instead of a wish, she vowed: “I release you, Robert Rochester Alexander, my long-departed father, wherever you are.”
CHAPTER 13
We having supper when Jonny No Age comes in the back door carrying a bouquet for Bibi like he does from time to time. Flowers he can’t sell but are still pretty.
“Hey, Jonny,” say Bibi. “You want a glass of tea?”
“No, ma’am. Can’t stay.” He puts the flowers in the sink, runs water over them. “Stick ’em in a mason jar after supper.” And that quick he’s gone.
“A nice boy,” say Uncle Ray.
“Uh-huh, shame, though
. A shame.” Bibi shakes her head.
Jonny—he tells folks his name is Jonny, no h, but they hear it wrong—is six and a half feet tall, thin as a rail, and pitch-black. If Bibi sees him walking down the street she say, “There go that licorice whip.” She’s fond of Jonny, even if she doesn’t approve of what he is. Several men use to go in and out the back door to his shop, now only the one, a bookkeeper from Raleigh who moved in with him two-three years ago.
Steadman’s Flowers is a bright spot in a gray block of run-down stores, so no one makes a move to push Jonny No Age out of Brooklyn. But he’s got two strikes against him, being Africa black and a queer.
We still at the table when Mayrese Hemphill calls from the front door, “Loraylee?”
Bibi looks up, her eyes round. “We Grand Central Station this evening.”
I push my chair back. “It’s Mayrese, Bibi, for me.”
“Go on.” She stabs up a forkful of green beans, cocks her ear to the radio we listen to while we eat. WGIV Weekend Jive. She starts singing, waving her fork, beans dropping, “Mama said there’d be days like this.” Hawk tosses a bean back on her plate, laughing.
Mayrese is standing inside the front door in a cloud of perfume. “Hey!” She’s in her glad clothes, glad it’s Saturday night, glad to have a friend girl. “Y’wanna go hopping?” Got her hair piled up in a wave, glossy with Lustrasilk, a purple flower in it, her red satin blouse tucked into her swirly purple skirt.
She plops into Uncle Ray’s chair, crossing her legs, swinging one foot. There’s scuff marks on her red ankle straps.
Uncle Ray comes into the living room, stops when he see Mayrese in his chair. “You got on some powerful cologne, Mayrese.”
She pays no mind to his frown. “Thank you, Ray.”
He shakes his head, goes out to the porch with his pipe.
“Mama!” Hawk calls from the kitchen. “Can I eat your pork chop?”
“No!” I holler. I ask Mayrese, “You want to wait for me?”
“I’ll go on over to Tocky’s.” Mayrese gets up, waves her polished nails as she opens the screen. “See you there in a bit.”
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