The Importance of Being Dangerous

by David Dante Troutt

  Chickie was Sidarra’s mother’s only living sister and was seventy-four years old. She had been called Chickie since the early days when she was the pride of the Dean girls. They all had moxie, a little extra style, and above average minds, but Chickie was the only one who looked the part of a starlet. She lived the part, too, as a young woman married to a Harlem showman who took her to Paris to live for a while in the fifties. Aunt Chickie’s visits were always an event when Sidarra was growing up. She spoke French in between English sentences, wore perfume nobody had ever smelled before, and brought clothes you couldn’t find in the United States. Her husband Melvin, the entertainer, was a chocolate-colored man with chocolate-filled suit pockets. The sight of them together started Sidarra’s pubescent dream of being a lounge singer. They seemed to live the best way a person could: with cash, with the world’s respect, and without barriers. And they were kiss-on-the-street in love the way she never saw with her own parents. But that’s where it all ended. One night on the Champs-Elysées, Melvin had a stroke and collapsed at the side of a white female acquaintance. He was dead before the ambulance reached the hospital. After that, Chickie came right home to America, poor and brokenhearted. Now, she was an arthritic woman with diabetes, surviving alone on Social Security in a two-room senior apartment on Edgecombe Avenue. Like a long-forgotten tattoo, the only thing left of her former glory was her name.

  “Why are we going in here?” Raquel asked as Sidarra led them into a Payless ShoeSource.

  “Thank God it’s air-conditioned, that’s all I know,” said Aunt Chickie.

  “We’re pretending, that’s why,” Sidarra told Raquel.

  “Pretending what?”

  “We’re pretending that we’re poor and this is the best Mommy can do this year. Try it. It’ll be fun.”

  “Oh, I’m real good at this game,” Aunt Chickie said, slowly making her way over to the first place to sit down.

  Raquel wasn’t sure she liked it, and walked down the long, dark aisles of shoes in her size wearing a distinctly funky face. Sidarra’s plan was to wear her out by looking upstairs and down at every possible pair of shoes she might like, making her try them all on, then bringing the five or six finalists over to try on again in front of Aunt Chickie.

  “How ’bout these? I like these okay,” said Raquel. She was pointing to an open-toed pair of patent-leather heels.

  “They’re a little hoochie-mama, don’t you think, Raquel?” Sidarra asked, holding the shoe up to the light. “I mean, this is a little more heel than I think you’ll be needing for a few years, sugar. And how you gonna wear that one in the snow?”

  Raquel was undeterred. “I guess I could wear some other shoes when it snows. Or we could just get some boots to wear over them, couldn’t we?”

  She sounded so reasonable that Sidarra was being pushed into an absolute “No” when she had hoped to avoid that. Being in Payless was bad enough. “Oh, Raquel. We can’t get these as a matter of conscience. Yeah, I’ve read about this manufacturer. Scobi. Yes. I recognize the name. I own a few shares of their competitors. Did you know that the thing about Scobi’s is they use forced child labor? That means that kids your age make these shoes in Taiwan. They’re not allowed to go to school or play outside. All day long, separated from their parents, they put ’em at a long table and make them make shoes.”

  Raquel listened with great interest as long as she believed her mother, and Sidarra maintained a look of grave concern on her face. “Really?”

  “Isn’t that terrible?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So let’s not support that kind of stuff. Why don’t you put ’em back on the shelf?”

  Raquel didn’t hesitate. She practically threw the shoes down in disgust and wiped her hand on her shirt. For the next hour or so, Raquel was distracted, her brows furrowed, wondering to herself how an eight-year-old could make a shoe like that.

  Finally they got back to Aunt Chickie with four pairs of contenders to choose from. Aunt Chickie was sitting right where they’d left her, holding a Payless bag and talking with an elderly gentleman standing above her with a silver-handled cane in his hand.

  “Pardon me,” Sidarra said to them. “I thought you needed shoes, Aunt Chickie?”

  “I’m fine, honey. Thank you.”

  The man smiled broadly, revealing two gold teeth. He bowed his head, winked at Aunt Chickie, and turned for the door. “I’ll see you then,” he baritoned on his way out.

  “Who was that?” Raquel asked.

  “He had a lovely smile, didn’t he?” Aunt Chickie answered, watching the man walk gingerly into the sun.

  Sidarra looked down at her aunt. Still so beautiful, she thought. Body broken but the spirit unbeatable. That’s how I was gonna be. “Well, here are Raquel’s choices.”

  After spreading them out to lots of exaggerated oohs and aahs from Aunt Chickie, Raquel made her selection. Two pairs costing just $12.99 plus tax. Sensible blue with the silver buckle and brown suede Timberland knockoffs for styling. Raquel actually looked happy as she walked up to the register with her mom. Sidarra pulled out her last good credit card and handed it to the teenage cashier. They waited. And waited.

  “Ma’am, your card’s been declined,” said the expressionless teenager with all the quiet discretion of a boom box.

  “I’m sorry?” Sidarra asked. “The card is fine. It must be your system.”

  “Run it again!” Raquel demanded.

  Her daughter’s tone caught Sidarra by surprise. She didn’t even know Raquel knew what that meant. “Raquel. Don’t use that tone with her.”

  “Run it again!” Aunt Chickie called out from her seat by the door.

  The teenager ran the card again. And again. Chastised by an eight-year-old and an old woman, she must have figured it was better to wear out an arm than to argue. But the card was declined every time. Sidarra had exceeded her limit. Maxed out on just fourteen bucks. So she asked the young woman to hold the shoes for her and told her she would come back after she went to an ATM. Sidarra hoped that was true, for her sake and her daughter’s, and they walked back out into the stifling August heat.

  “Ghetto shopping, baby,” Aunt Chickie said. “That’s what happens. Broke-ass machines. That’s all.”

  Sidarra and her only aunt did not always get along well, but given her brothers’ unwillingness to help her out, she was left the duty to look out for her. Their mutual reluctance and Aunt Chickie’s diabetes episodes were the reasons Mrs. Thomas had been pressed into babysitting service most days after school. But there were times like this when Sidarra wouldn’t want anyone but Aunt Chickie with her.

  “Did Mommy embarrass you a bit in there?” she asked Raquel.

  “Nah.”

  “Well, that’s just how it goes sometimes. I’m not sure whose mistake it was—probably mine. But the important thing is I’m working on it, so don’t worry.”

  They needed to walk as far away from that embarrassment as they could. Sidarra took them each by the hand and marched them back and forth, a half block this way, a half block the other, totally indecisive. But Aunt Chickie could barely walk, and the sun was beating her up bad. In front of the Apollo Theater they crossed 125th Street between the cars. They made it to Lenox and crossed the wide avenue. Once they reached the other side, Raquel was annoying them with questions about how kids could make patent-leather shoes, and Aunt Chickie was breathing hard.

  “I gotta stop,” she gasped, her eyes almost closing and one hand on her chest. “I, uh, need to get into some cool, Sid.”

  Sidarra finally stopped. She and Raquel looked over at the old woman and nearly panicked. “Okay. You right. Let’s just ease over next to the building there and get some shade. I’ll think of something.”

  She thought about the Theresa Hotel, which was just back across the street. Maybe they could sit down in the investment club conference room and pull themselves together. Maybe there would be air-conditioning in there. But all of a sudden Aunt Chickie spoke up.<
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  “Would you look at that,” she said, her eyes fixed inside the huge pane of storefront glass beside them, and her finger rising to point.

  “Wow. That’s a beautiful dress, Mommy,” said Raquel, her mouth open.

  It was a beautiful dress. A knockout dress. The kind of dress four hundred and fifty women believe they must own and only three can wear. It was a strapless gold lamé evening gown, with a low-cut V revealing maximum cleavage and short slits at the top of the calves. You had to have the calves and the cleavage to wear it. Then you needed to have a statue’s neck and only the most sculpted African shoulders. Even if you had all that, plus height enough to show how it all worked, you had to have the figure of a most bodacious mermaid to make it look like skin.

  “It’s gotta cost a fortune,” said Sidarra.

  “Let’s go see,” Aunt Chickie decided, and they went in.

  The store was one of a thousand identical cheap clothing stores on strips like this all over the country. New York City had at least half of them. They stretched cheap evening gowns and party clothes from hooks on the walls and ceilings. Neon-colored two-piece outfits hung everywhere on hangers from above. If it wasn’t tacky in some way or another, the Arabs or Asians or Colombians or Russian Jews who owned the place refused to stock it. Somehow you rarely saw anyone ever wearing such clothes. Yet in spite of all the hundreds of thousands of clown outfits hanging on racks throughout the huge place, there was this gold lamé wonder in the window.

  The store was crispy cool and totally empty except for two eager brown salesmen. “Young man, I’d like to sit down near the dressing room. My niece would like to see that dress in a size eight,” Aunt Chickie ordered.

  “Well, maybe a ten, too,” Sidarra added.

  The salesman led the three of them through tight pinball rings of circular clothing racks to the middle of the store. Aunt Chickie had ambled her way to a bench when the man came back holding two dresses and gesturing toward the changing room door. Raquel wanted to come in with her mother. They crowded into the small cubby together while Sidarra undressed. She was relieved when the size ten was too big. Raquel sat cross-legged on the floor. As soon as Sidarra had managed to get out of the first one, Aunt Chickie was sticking her head between the lime green curtains.

  “What’s goin’ on in here? What’s taking so long? Y’all stealin’ something?” Sidarra just laughed, standing in her underwear, ready to step into the dress. Aunt Chickie looked her up and down as only an old aunt or a mother could do. “Well, look at you, Sid.”

  “What?” Sid blushed, bending her knee to pull the dress up.

  “Raquel, take a good look at your mother. That, my dear, is a body. And you gonna have one too. Apparently for a very long time.” Aunt Chickie pulled her face away and disappeared back to her bench. Still in earshot but out of sight, she added: “Don’t give that thing away, either. I mean, who knew?”

  Sidarra paid her no mind and finished slipping the dress up and around her torso. The size eight was it. That much she could tell in the sliver of a mirror on the wall. And from the look in her daughter’s eyes. “Wow, Mom. You look mad fine. Like a queen. Or even a princess.”

  “Really?”

  “No doubt.”

  Sidarra smiled sweetly and stepped out into the fluorescent light of the big, open room. “Ta-da!”

  Aunt Chickie put her hand to her mouth, not for herself but for her sister, who was not alive to see her own child shine so beautifully. “Incredible,” is all she could say, her graying eyes slowly going over every inch of the dress fitting perfectly on Sidarra’s frame. “It’s like they made it for you, Sidarra. My God, that’s a pretty sight.”

  Like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, the fantasy ended. There was no way in the world she could afford that dress. The longer Sidarra stood there wanting it with them, the deeper her disappointment would be. She had just been unable to afford Raquel’s cheap shoes. Letting this go should be easy. This was a luxury. She didn’t have any money. Simple as that.

  “We gonna make you autograph the others,” said the salesman. “I give you a good deal on that today. Serious.”

  Sidarra shook her head and started back into the dressing room to take it off. “How much?” Aunt Chickie asked.

  “Every day, three hundred dollars,” the guy said without blinking. “Today, for lovely lady, two hundred and fifty.”

  Even Raquel joined in the you-gotta-be-joking look he got. Everyone knew these stores ask for twice as much as they ever hope to get. There was a long silence, like a bunch of gangsters waiting to see who’d shoot first.

  “I’ll give you a hundred and fifty,” Sidarra suddenly spat out.

  “A hundred and seventy-five,” he shot back.

  Silence again. “C’mon, Mommy. Nothing you have is nice.”

  “What? What do you know, little girl? You ain’t even got any school shoes.”

  “Do it, woman,” Aunt Chickie said, searching in her purse for a piece of gum. “You’ll be old tomorrow.”

  “Well…” Sidarra fidgeted and fumbled, standing there in the dress like a bolt of light. “I can’t do it today, but we can do that price. I’m a little short today. I’ll give you a small deposit to hold it. You give me a receipt, and, uh, we’ll go from there.”

  “No layaway,” the guy said, trying to be firm about it despite the fact that the big store was just as empty now as when they came in.

  “It’s not layaway,” she said, quickly coming up with investment club knowledge. “It’s securitization. I give you something as collateral, and you hold it in trust for me on installment.”

  That seemed to work. Sidarra gave him ten dollars, saving just enough for three hot dogs when they got out of there. She left with a receipt, and they walked out into the setting August sun. Raquel smiled ear to ear all the way home, saying not another word about children making shoes in Taiwan.

  A few blocks from home, while Raquel was busy singing, Aunt Chickie had to say something she had been keeping back. “I wished I coulda helped you out back at that store, Sid. I truly do. I wish I coulda bought Raquel’s shoes, too. I wasn’t sure how to ask you, but I’m in a bit of a fix myself right now. My rent is due, and I had to buy some medication I lost on the bus. They only pay for it once, you know. I see ’em kick old folks out if they get behind more than a month, the lists are so long. But I think I’m okay. I think we gonna make it anyhow.”

  Raquel kept singing into the thick evening air. Sidarra held both their hands and kept them on a slow, even pace uptown. She knew without a doubt that she might as well have given that ten dollars to Tyrell, because she was never going to see that dress again.

  5

  AFTER SIDARRA’S PARENTS DIED, she became the kind of person who sleeps with the TV on. She was never that way before, though she knew many older people, especially women like Aunt Chickie, who regularly fell asleep to the sounds of old movies and commercials and awoke to morning news shows and more commercials. They did it for the white noise, she discovered, because they preferred that to their own thoughts. For her it had been better than reenacting her parents’ violent death in her mind. It was better than thinking about the stubborn silence that commenced soon afterward between her and her oldest brother, Alex. That stupid breakup kept sadly repeating itself, an unavoidable fixture of her nighttime mourning, until she discovered how white noise could distract her into sleep. The TV also interrupted the endless replays of demeaning conversations she had at work. When he slept over, it could drown out Michael’s long, throaty snoring, which had always managed to remind Sidarra of her loneliness—even in Michael’s presence. And most of the time the TV could even overcome her worries about Raquel. The TV’s white noise muffled the sound of a bad song her life kept playing in her head.

  Yet a strange thing started to happen to her: the song of Sidarra’s life seemed to change just a bit. It still held the halting low notes of Tyrell creeping up on her from behind a corner, and the tired blues chords of
every day at work. Her shame inside the Payless kept up its steady reprise, and a soft requiem for the four schoolgirls still lingered. But it had some high notes now. It was her own curiosity about a life with less fear that led Sidarra to a stock market investment club. She discovered friends again when she had forgotten how, a crew with its own stuff to talk about, and she had at least one night a week when, led by her uncle’s beautiful pearl-handled cue stick, she could play in the green glow of a pool table and talk tough about business. She felt different and talked different. But usually the best thing to think about in bed was this long, brown, intense man, Griff. He had good voice. He had good tone. And she loved the way he said her name. She could listen to that all night. Which is why Sidarra began to sleep with the TV on but the sound turned off. It would still be several weeks before she would sing her new song aloud. For now she began instead to dream.

  “Sidarra,” Griff said. “It’s your turn, baby.”

  They were playing in another beat-up place, an underground pool hall on West Twenty-second Street, when the second sidecar martini allowed Sidarra to turn the mischief of a private worry into words, which she was now ready to spit out. “Is anyone interested in making some money? Because I need some money,” she asked.

  Yakoob smiled. “You’re not saying you wanna start some action up in here, are you, baby?”

  “Not pool, Koob. Stocks. I hate to admit it, but I really need to see some profit. Soon.” She almost began to whisper, as if she’d be embarrassed if someone could hear her over the blaring rock music. “I mean, I might have to sell off some of my positions. Did you ever expect making a little gain would come so slow?”

  The ice above the river of moneymaking discontent was now officially broken. Griff and Yakoob each wore looks of pure commiseration. They had all learned a lot in the investment club, but they had made almost nothing yet.