Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo

by Ntozake Shange

  Well, all I have to do this week is a church supper and a Thursday night bridge game. You two have a good time. Mind what I told you. And dress up pretty.

  Love,

  Mama

  The ladies and men who might have wanted Sassafrass were too cool to seek her out so early in the evening, so Sassafrass only felt the steam heat of their glances and ended up on a cushion with Leroy McCullough, who was not at all concerned about being cool. He was a serious young man, and not given to whims of a romantic nature. He didn’t even have the fear of involvement that kept most of his friends looking for a new lady; Leroy was in a woman or he wasn’t, and he didn’t care how much time passed between one and the next—just how much caring went down, all the time. And so he sat with Sassafrass, finding out secrets, and sharing his. Sassafrass liked the way his mouth evinced hints of sadness, how his arms were rippled with tiny criss-crossing veins, and fingers a vain woman would love to have. He was small and light-limbed, and auburn brown; all of which tripped Sassafrass out, because she was used to Mitch’s towering darkness and his perennial teasing. But Leroy was actually fragile, and knowing his own delicateness, he didn’t trample on Sassafrass; he kind of threw feathers and caresses in front of her every motion, so she wouldn’t be hurt, and wouldn’t want to tear at him, either. Sassafrass kept looking around, not used to being with another man. Leroy sensed a soprano horn around Sassafrass, and felt like whoever was playing, was playing for all he was worth. He wanted Sassafrass un-done from this other man’s music, so he went off and came back with his bassoon, and tried to pull Sassafrass out of the alien melody. Sassafrass pushed herself against the wall to keep from exhibiting the pains of withdrawing from Mitch, so she could see about this new man. She fought to get Mitch out of her, but Mitch held on, and sent lyric after lyric through her marrow. Leroy laid down his horn and pulled Sassafrass up to him; held her like she might become a vapor. Then, he said, “Let’s try it, huh, Sassafrass. Let’s make a song, and see what we can be.” Sassafrass kept holding her breath, looking through the back of her head for Mitch. Where was he? Didn’t he want her at all? But she answered Leroy affirmatively, and the two of them sped up to the roof, cushions on their backs and wine in Sassafrass’ bag. This was going to be a fine night, and the breeze was strong, but not chilled. So Sassafrass untied her halter and sat bare-breasted with Leroy singing to her, and pulling her breasts to the skyline.

  Cypress had skedaddled with Malik to the back of the walk-in closet, so he could make a deal for some coke. Malik would do anything for Cypress except hurt her, but he was being very stubborn about having to have some blow. Finally, Cypress admitted she couldn’t spare much, because she was saving the best and the larger rocks for her sister to have some money when she got back to L.A. Malik loosened up a bit; agreed to buy a minuscule portion of an ounce, which Cypress did not discount heavily, even though Malik was urging her to let him be her “good-night-kiss.” Cypress laughed and joked that all they did was run together, but Malik was not smiling. He was hoping that just once Cypress would let him love her the way she ought to be, not how she prescribed. Malik wanted Cypress to know him; how she was cherished, and not obliged. And Cypress saw herself having a chance to let go of all her cynicism, and stay in business. She agreed with Malik; maybe this time she wouldn’t have to keep a houseful of men busy trying to cop, and unable to deal with her except as the coke connection. Maybe this time, with a man she knew and worked with, and respected and loved in a way, she could let herself love. She knew she could. Cypress left the closet, and picked up a large antique geisha doll that sat on her dresser. She returned to Malik, and pulled off the doll’s head. In the bosom were bunches of tiny aluminum rectangles Cypress liked to think of as her dowry. She gave Malik one, and shoved the headless doll in a shoebox. She and Malik sank low in the closet, ferreting out likes and dislikes, until Lallah knocked discriminately.

  “Cypress, it’s a long distance person-to-person call from Los Angeles.”

  Wiggling up, Cypress shouted, “I’m comin’.”

  By dawn, Cypress’ house was a mass of huddled couples and threesomes under afghans and fur coats. She left Malik in a warm spot, knotted up in shawls she had made as a child. Shaking her head, Cypress pushed some weariness out of her way. “Got to make these folks some breakfast in a while; got to talk to Sassafrass.” She really had to control herself to keep from shouting, “Look who’s over here with . . . !”, but she was actually looking for Sassafrass to tell her Mitch said she had to come home, it was time to talk. Cypress was glad and worried at the same time, because Sassafrass was her sister and should have the man she wanted, but she couldn’t help thinking that Leroy was a better choice. She could just not say anything, and let Sassafrass try a new thing with Leroy; forget about that heap of blues in L.A. But she kept looking for Sassafrass, and found her sculpted into Leroy under a red and white patchwork quilt. Cypress stood over them thinking about what to do, and finally she whispered into Sassafrass’ ear: “I got to talk to ya.” Sassafrass woke slowly, and reluctantly followed Cypress into the kitchen. Cypress fixed some coffee and cornbread, suggesting she might have something incredible on her mind. Sassafrass was irked at this early kaffeeklatsch, and fiercely whispered, “Cypress, what do you want?” Cypress stood absolutely erect—her dancer’s pose—and announced, “Mitch says you’re to get on home.”

  Sassafrass’ stomach moved into her lungs, like when someone gooses you unexpectedly. She was all caught up, and feeling the nausea of overwhelming excitement. When she could speak, she asked Cypress what else Mitch said. Cypress stood over Sassafrass, grasping her shoulders.

  “Sassafrass, he didn’t say anything else, just you are supposed to go on to L.A. and I am ’sposed to keep . . . now how did he say that . . . yeah. I am supposed to keep my whorish ideas to myself and send you right out of here, like you were Miss Muffet, and forget about his low-down niggah ways and you bein’ in them.”

  Sassafrass could hardly deal with the significance of Mitch’s call and Cypress’ anger simultaneously, so she thought about Leroy. What would she say to him? Sassafrass rubbed her thighs, where Leroy’s weight had been. Cypress kept muttering, “If you go back there, you’re a real fool.” Sassafrass felt herself beginning to grin . . . the touch of Leroy’s lips, Mitch’s wanting to be with her; the two men blending, offering Sassafrass more than she had imagined men even knew about. Tipping her head to the side and watching Cypress’ every expression, Sassafrass again asked what else Mitch said exactly. Cypress started breathing real heavy, and acting like she was in a melodrama, circa 1902.

  “Tell Sassafrass I love her . . . I can’t exist without her . . . my life has no meaning; I am drowning in loneliness. Please tell Sassafrass I need her.”

  Sassafrass was amazed. “You mean he said all that?”

  Cypress was livid. “You stupid ninny, Mitch didn’t say nothing but ‘tell Sassafrass to get her ass home.’ Then he hung up the phone; I didn’t even get a chance to curse his black ass.”

  Sassafrass bit her lip and made attempts to ignore Mitch’s abrupt and cursory request for her presence. She got up to go somewhere else to think and discover some way to get that feeling back, when Leroy and Mitch were one person and no wants existed in her world. Sassafrass approached Leroy, still gentle in his slumber. She heard the music, same as the windy thrusts of their encounter on the roof: one horn beckoning, soothing, and the sounds became very old, familiar and easing like dudes on a corner hankering for a strange and rolling woman. The music echoed hot and dusky; almost blues, but cradled in possible sunlight. Sassafrass was weaving one thin willow by the sea over Leroy, and she felt herself go home. She left with the music; kissing Leroy’s fingers, humming Mitch’s tune.

  Sassafrass jumped out of the back of the rose-printed pickup right in front of her house. Some mystical hippies had given her a ride from outside Salinas, when the bus got a flat tire. And as she made her way, awkward and giggling, toward the door, she blurted, “We
ll now. Somebody’s swept the porch and weeded the shrubs, the windows are washed. Mitch! Mitch . . . who you got livin’ here?” Sassafrass was a heap of tears and moans, thinking Mitch called her all the way back to L.A. just to hurt her feelings and show her any old woman could do what she’d been doing, and oh, shit . . . why didn’t she listen to Cypress? Mitch came through the front door, horn in hand, and stood loosely by the rope of flowering Judas. Sassafrass had always loved him to stand right there; the plants whirled up the side of the house, just like her mother’s twined all through the back kitchen in Charleston. Mitch was just smiling and happy.

  “Sassafrass, you came all this way here to stand outside in fronta all these Latinos and put all our nonbusiness right here in the street? ’Fore you was always cryin’ ’cause I didn’t help you do nothin’; now you bawlin’ ’cause I done it already. Will ya get your trip aligned? Babee, listen . . .”

  And Mitch drew the alto to his mouth, and Sassafrass was grabbed up in the song, the bewitched and tortuous mermaid song that Mitch offered her, to love her. The alto echoed itself and notes swooned on the richness of Mitch’s breath; the air became thick as oceans by Atlantis; and Sassafrass felt ten thousand hands lift her off the earth into leap and run and breathe. Even God came down to L.A., because the sound was pure, and Mitch and Sassafrass were sanctified. And Albert the Great Dane came from around back howling like he was Albert Ayler, and the cats lay up beneath the porch.

  Mitch switched into a circus parade rah-rah, and the whole family jigged around the house two or three times, for Sassafrass. She pulled all her belongings just through the front door, shooed the dog away, and vibrantly led Mitch to the long-unshared two-poster bed that almost shimmered this particular day, because the afternoon sun was picking his way through the laced and diaphanous curtains, same as the tiny buds of flowering Judas were coming through the hole behind the rocking chair. And Sassafrass and Mitch discovered the joy in themselves—again—and Mitch jerked up once because Sassafrass was laughing like a spook-house demon; she got enough words out to sing, a la Robeson, “My lawd what a mornin’ . . . oh lawd, what a mo-ooorrr-nnnn . . .” and they consecrated spirits until crickets began messing with the sunset.

  Everything was just hustle and bustle. Sassafrass was busy putting her things in old and new places, Mitch was packing his instruments for a gig later on, and Cleo, the neighbor (former Merchant Marine), was yapping away about travelling the world. And folks kept calling because Sassafrass was back. She, who thought she would never be missed, was bowled over by such reception. Even Howard and Otis came by and managed to be pleasant. And Sassafrass forgot she ever had left. Mitch was so healthy and interested in assisting her, she just couldn’t get over it; any of it. She went up to Mitch and pulled his shirt, stage-whispering.

  “So this is what happens when you get to play your horn for money, huh? You get generous and committed to livin’—is that right?”

  Mitch laughed inside his throat and lifted Sassafrass ’til her head touched the ceiling (which was low), and Valentinoed back, “Mamselle, the paid artiste has no worries. Mamselle, you are bein’ supported—and I say this with modesty—you are bein’ upheld by the only horn player in the only combo in the only club in Compton, California that hires non-Texas blues bands. Now that’s not the Village Vanguard or the East, or the Afro-American Livin’ Theatre, but we got soul . . . an’ we get paid. Below union scale, but we get paid. An’ we can’t play free, but we can play funky. We on a double bill with some old dudes could show ninety-eleven young horn players what dudes are, just by standin’ up all beat an’ crooked. And I tell ya, Sassafrass, we gonna get it on tonight—for you. I’ma do every blues lick I ever knew, and I don’t want you to arrange nothin’, don’t want ya to carry nothin’, I just want ya to groove on the rhythm. Same as all that ol’-fashioned knottin’ and tyin’ you be doin’, only it’s me. Sassafrass, I know why you so ol’ fashioned and respectful of the old folks—’cause they know where we come from, and how to make do. And can’t a soul down at the place tell a holler from a scream, but we do be gettin’ holy.”

  By this time Sassafrass was beaming, and squirming because she was still in the air. Mitch let her down right where he could pinch her ass, and it wasn’t until they were in the car that she got a chance to tell him about the cocaine Cypress gave her to sell so she could invest the money in the artists’ community in Louisiana, and they could get on to a new way of living.

  Mitch never got excited about having to get rid of two ounces of coke quick-like, but he didn’t ever say it wasn’t all right, either, because you do what you got to, and $15.00 maximum per nite wasn’t going to send anybody anywhere close to New Orleans for at least a year. And Sassafrass was right about L.A.: it wasn’t a place for free Africans to be being free in, especially with Mitch’s record, and the way he towered over every living thing in sight except for the buildings out by Century Boulevard, and of course, the L.A. County Jail. But something was not clicking, and Mitch decided to wait and see. As always, the Arkansas Spot was hopping as much as it could, with some gut-bucket jukebox spirit just crying how his woman done left him high and dry. Mitch met the rest of his band at the end of the bar, and Sassafrass sat in an old splintered chair, like the kind in Polish lunchrooms down by the warehouses. She was right at ease; red-checkered napkins were tucked under the ice container in the back of the place, and she was sitting nattily in a claret satin and velvet dress Mitch had traded a painting for. Sassafrass scavenged the bar looking for another past in the faces of the workers carrying on for Friday’s sake, and the regulars nobody could mess with. She felt the rancor of Cypress’ vendetta against the blues, and her own affinity for slow low-down tearin-ya-up singing, and guitars pulling through hairs on her stomach to hold onto her insides so she could swear she knew the pain, the truth of her existence. As ladies in skinny-heeled tipping shoes straddled in with a housewife’s “I’m-out-for-the-night” switch, and young working girls in all the latest, cheapest clothes, padded in makeup and bangles, sat swivel legged in chairs facing the bar where men—younger than the law allowed—tossed scant shots of whiskey down throats scratching in newly pressed collars, and old dudes with grease relentless under the nails and those heavy working-walking-carrying shoes leaned over each other, Sassafrass began a conversation with Mamie Smith . . .

  . . . who had just come out of the bathroom, and was busy straightening the plumes of lime and lavender that grazed her heavily waxed coiffure. Her silken dress clung to her broad hips and full bosom like she was a hefty Cotton Club dancer . . . on her arms were aeons of pre-depression plastic bracelets, and she smelled of day-opened scotch and fresh perfume.

  As she let her ass reach for the chair nearest Sassafrass, she laughed one of those raspy drunk laughs, and patted Sassafrass’ shoulder, saying, “Chile, if this wasn’t one of your visions I’d be wearin’ the same secondhand white lady’s dress as you . . . and I wouldn’t hardly be havin’ no just-done hair, or these plenty bracelets . . . why I probably would be lookin’ to one of these men to keep me company.”

  Sassafrass moved to hold Mamie’s hand, and the woman jumped like she got the spirit, and strutted in place.

  “I’ll eat pork if I want to; I’ll paint both my lips red. I ain’t goin’ to heaven when I’m dead. And Garvey can’t save me ’cause I ain’t ready to go home . . . no I don’t want no sympathy from any of y’all. I gotta sing this low; I gotta share this burden; I gotta pay the Devil his due. Get outta my way! Can’t ya see? I’m sufferin’; I’m bringin’ ya tears your mama shed, that terrible loneliness in the middle of her bed. Her hands worn all tough, and her body whatall misery could lay on it . . . get outta my way. Gotta sing this sorrow’s tale, and I’m alright, and mad. And I’m alright, and sorry, how the river floods. Lawd, I’m bringin’ ya the fears of your kin in this ravaged land, and I gotta sing this low. I’m forsaken—ya know it—don’t bring me no kind words, bring me a full shot o’ gin, and let me roll a lil truth on ya. Ho
ney, just look at yourself, all innocent and soft . . . I’m a hard mama and can’t nobody take it from me, less’n I want to give it up. I bet ya work a lot with your hands and make pretty things and don’t have no chirren, either . . . well, I had me a bunch o’ chirren and as many men, and I still went on singin’ in taverns or the street . . . honey, I didn’t care, not like folks expect a mama to care. I gotta whole world fulla chirren, and tell ’em what’s a blues about . . . then I let ’em be. Yeah then I let ’em be.”

  Mamie sat down again, and effused that heavy scent of trouble in mind. Sassafrass huddled over her, fixing the tousled feathers and patting Mamie’s wide cheeks, until the Southern songstress dissolved amid the clatter and excitement of Mitch’s group, setting up . . .

  “Ladies and Gentlemen.” The owner of the bar was speaking as proper as he knew how. “This night we gonna present a local group, with some Arkansas blood—hahaha—called Stick-Up, and ya favorite down-home duo, Washboard Sam and Ironin’ Board Slim, so y’all be sure an’ stick around ’cause we are gonna be hoppin’. Alright, alright . . . y’all take it.”

  And Stick-Up, led by Mitch, was corralled by the same folks that had been sitting and styling and eyeing each other. Now everybody was ready to swing, and Mitch broke out in some King Curtis solo. Then came the traps, then the electric bass—sort of loud—then the trumpet, just teasing, and the whole sound was like a James Brown Revue in Fauquier County, Virginia. Thick pushing, wailing, and Sassafrass could catch Mitch’s incessant experiments.