“I’ve got a twelve o’clock jazz class way uptown. I had better catch the train.”
Laura didn’t seem to believe what Cypress was saying . . . “Oh, no . . . !”, and Cypress, laid back on her right hip, retorted,
“Oh, yes. ’Cause I’m gonna be someone to reckon with around here, sometime, so I got to go to class. Right, Idrina?”
All Idrina could bring herself to say was, “Uh huh, but are you gonna come to the concert tonight? It’ll be the first time that Azure Bosom has ever appeared before mixed audiences, you know.”
Cypress threw out an “Of course,” and was gone. Erzulie always thought she was cute.
Not much was on her mind except catching the A train, and getting rid of images of Laura and Idrina curled up on each other in a nostalgic twilight, but she thought hard again, trying to make her mama feel her gratitude.
“Mama, you lied. You knew just what to do. Don’t break bread with folks you can’t trust.”
That’s all it took. Imagine sharing dalma and lamb with Laura and Idrina. No, no, not in this life. Cypress wished Sassafrass and Indigo could be with her on Eighth Avenue. They could sing like Martha and the Vandellas to “Come and Get These Memories,” the sound of their voices on megaphones from Times Square to Columbus Circle. They weren’t there, so Cypress sang alone. People on the street thought she was a jackleg panhandler.
“No, no. Take your money back. I’m doing this for free.”
JOURNAL ENTRY #298
whatchu cant have you just cant have
who aint meant just aint in you
who be gone just aint there
what aint yrs/ must be somebody else’s
you gotta bring what you be needin
you gotta unwind-wound-down/ take a look a round
& bring what you be needin
The Golden Onk had never looked so bad. Cypress was sober enough to see the years of dirt mixed with current grime, the elbow spots worn into the bar from night after night of heavy drinkers, the odor of old anything akin to whiskey, folks who stayed too long in the same pair of drawers. What Leroy was doing in this hellhole confounded her. So far only a couple of neighborhood junkies had wandered in from Avenue A. Four nasty-looking beatnik types were reminiscing in the far corner. Cypress had sized up the bartender as one of those whimsical black guys committed to integration at any cost. That was the reason he hadn’t paid her too much mind: she didn’t advance the cause of race relations.
One peach brandy down and one fine nigger coming up, or so she hoped. Leroy would appear in a second to break down the instruments, and she could tell him about everything she’d seen since she left his place. Two black beauties on the corner of 49th and 8th. Four raving queens in crocheted bikinis, 59th Street station. Six perfect sets of nails from 96th to 145th Street. One free colored gal in a red leotard soaring through the skies. One dancer who couldn’t forget the second night that changed her life.
JOURNAL ENTRY #692:
what does it mean that blk folks cd sing n dance?
why do we say that so much/ we dont know what we
mean/
i saw what that means/ good god/ did i see/ like i cda
walked on the water myself/ i cda clothed the naked
&fed
the hungry/ with what dance i saw tonite/ i don’t
mean dance
i mean a closer walk with thee/a race thru swamps
that fall
off in space/ i mean i saw the black people move the
ground
& set stars beneath they feet/so what’s this mean
that
black folks cd dance/ well/ how abt a woman like
dyane harvey who can make
her body the night riders & the runaways/ the
children hangin
on they mama’s dress/ while they father’s beat to
death/ the
blood/ from the man’s wounds/his woman’s tears/
the night riders
goin off in darkness/ the silence of the night
how abt bernadine j. whose body waz all of that in
5 minutes/ & whose very presence humbled all but the
drum/
now that’s a dance/ like rael lamb careenin cross
the stage on his bare stomach/ fifty feet/
sounds like possums n rattlesnakes/ mississippi
undercurrents
& steamin hog mawls/ tossin him from decatur to
south texas/
tearin him from contraction to leaps so expansive/
his body
took the space allowed thirty redwood trees/ & those
sounds
kept pushin him/ little racing motors like the cops
waz
round the bend/ windows opened & shut cuz there
are things
others ought not hear/ feet on stairways of burned
out homes/
the sounds pushed him/ & there was a dance that
was a black
dance/ that’s what it means that black folks cd
dance/ it
dont mean we got rhythm/ it dont mean the slop or
the hully gully/
or this dance in houston callt “the white boy”/ it
dont mean just
what we do all the time/ it’s how we remember what
cannot be said/
that’s why the white folks say it aint got no form/
what was the form
of slavery/ what was the form of jim crow/ & how
wd they
know . . .
That a kiss on the third vertebra down from the nape of her neck would make Cypress hum . . . a dance she would do with Leroy that night and many nights to come; a dance that began without a word of explanation, no questions, nothing hard, except the empty seats by the bar. The bite of cheap whiskey made sweet, as Leroy’s hands flew under her skirt to the edge of her clit, saying “Do you want me” when he could . . . because he couldn’t keep talking with his tongue in her ear, behind her ear, biting her scalp above her eye. And every time he said anything he’d move his fingers over the rose-red vulva, with Cypress wanting exactly where those fingers just left. He’d sigh, “How much,” and Cypress could feel lightning in her back, and he’d say, “That’s not enough,” and she thought, “Jesus, the man has no mercy.” But she was too glad to care about mercy; if she and this man could turn the Golden Onk into a sure enough Paradise, who’d take the time to tell them the bar was closing?
Cypress sat up slowly so she wouldn’t disturb Leroy, who was sleeping the sleep of an old tortoise on a deserted beach. She pulled her shoulders toward the wall, lifting his head over her legs, laying his face on her thigh, leaving his locks in a great fan from her knee to the fold in her hip where so much fire had leaped between them. There were too many things she wanted to do, all at once. To run her finger over her lips to rekindle where those sleeping lips had driven her to abandon; to figure if Leroy was simply perfect . . . or perverse; like he was sleeping now, like all he needed, he had. That nothing bothered him, because everything was fine.
“I wouldn’t believe any of it, if it hadn’t been me. I mean if I hadn’t been there, I’d say I was lyin.’ ” Cypress spoke softly while she curled the long braids round her wrists. “I guess I could be insulted . . . maybe I should be outraged.” She went on, now that she could put the last few days in some order. She liked to make lists: lists of what happened to her; lists of who loved her; lists of who hurt her; lists of things to wear; lists of surprises, and her time with Leroy was replete with surprises.
SURPRISE #1
When they left the Golden Onk that night she’d fallen off the barstool from too much finger fucking. Leroy had given her a piggyback ride to Fifth Avenue, before he asked, “Girl, don’t you have any clothes or personal belongings?” Cypress jumped off his back, remembering all her marvelous Chinese silks, her kaftans and silk stockings with seams, the combs of sea shells and f
eathers, her satin slips and camisoles. She wanted to scream “What kind of woman do you think I am,” but she realized she’d been in the same peasant skirt (the blue one with roses and violets) and a yellow Mexican blouse with lace on the sleeves ever since she’d left Idrina’s. Now she did wash it out on occasion, but that had been a while, too. Was Leroy saying she was dirty? Was this one of those times to weep for forgiveness, or was this a time to have a shocked faint? Cypress looked somewhere other than directly at Leroy or herself, though she covered her bosom like a thirteen-year-old who’d gotten her period at the movies.
“They’re in a bunch of lockers at the East Side Terminal. No, that’s not true. They’re on the 9th Avenue side of Port Authority.”
“Okay then. Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“To get the runaway’s things.”
“Well, where am I gonna take ’em?”
“You don’t have any sense of romance, do you? No stars in your eyes or sensations of magic, humph?”
Cypress saw the Empire State Building do a slow drag at that very moment. She thought there were lilac trees on the corners of 9th Avenue and 14th Street. The meat-packing houses turned into aquariums for giant fishes the colors of sunset in Puerto Rico. She was being taken home; she was finally going to her house in New York. When they’d lined up all her boxes and baskets of things from her closets in California, Leroy just smiled at her.
“Can ya carry all of these parcels on your head the way the women in Haiti do?”
Cypress tried because she wanted so much for Leroy’s every dream of her to be true, but when the fourth attempt failed, they took a cab to the loft.
SURPRISE #2
One day she was improvising in the mirror while getting dressed, so that each movement was the reverse of a strip-tease, because she was putting on more and more things. And Leroy would hand her strange objects: a box of hominy grits, Jet magazine, or Nadinola skin cream . . . they were dressing her at an incredible pace. Finally she took on the stance of a tango, with a mass of feather combs streaming from her mouth. This had been Leroy’s idea, and now he sat just beneath her, feeling her calf.
“You know sometimes, not very often, but sometimes, you move like Idrina. Did you know that?”
All the play stopped. Cypress dropped to the floor in front of Leroy, who took the feathers out of her mouth and kissed her quickly, like “I-love-you-but-we-have-to-talk” kisses can be. With his hands under her chin, he said again, “Did you know that, that you move like her?” Cypress saw herself in the Mojave Desert; stranded homeless, loverless. She saw Azure Bosom take her in and care for her. She did not believe Leroy was trying to get her to renounce Idrina, or the other women she danced with who loved her, the other women who knew that womanhood was as sacred a right as liberty. Her eyes were those of a she-wolf, while her body still lingered for him like a gazelle’s.
“Oh, that’s not surprising. We worked together for a long time when I first came here. I admire Idrina.”
Leroy got up, and walked to the windows. He saw Idrina straddled ’cross the tower of the Empire State Building, legs pushing through clouds, and women floating around her mouth like gulls by the Santa Monica pier. He looked harder, and made the skyline a thousand beds for the French girls who always came in pairs . . . it was more fun that way, they’d say. Then by trial and error he’d have to keep tasting to see which one had the coke on her pussy and which one didn’t. He knew Cypress didn’t belong out there in the sky with the women he remembered, conjured from other days. Yet she had been among them, flung from wing to breast, to tongue, to flight. Would she want that again, a world where he could not be seen? Leroy was too much of a gentleman to reveal the depth of his need for Cypress to want to stay. He’d resisted this kind of closeness ever since his parents died. Cypress might be his chance for true intimacy, but she’d shared so much with so many; while he took as little as possible, gave what could be spared without having to remember. With his back to Cypress, he didn’t see how beautiful she looked in the mirrors; how there were three illusions of her, with the fleshbound Cypress on the floor amidst hominy, feathers, and cloth . . . and more illusions.
“I know all that Cypress. I live with you. I’ve lived in New York for the past eight years. I know who Idrina is.”
Cypress looked at herself in one mirror, then the others. She could see that there was something enticing about her ensemble of kitchenware and petticoats, but there was also something distorted. Was it that Leroy wasn’t saying what he really wanted to say? There was a half-truth hovering; some vestiges of a lie were overtaking them. “Well, I thought I loved her.”
“You did or you thought you did?” Leroy queried as he turned toward her, because now there were no secrets being kept, no reason to walk away. Cypress was going to be honest, he hoped. He would have prayed she’d be honest, but he didn’t want to give her any help. She had to do it on her own.
“Well, you loved the woman or you didn’t, which was it?”
Cypress didn’t like being put on the spot. She didn’t like having to answer for her own time, her own feelings, her choices.
“Is it your business what I was doing before I met you?”
“No, but it’s my business what you’re doing now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Boy, you think the world’s got the memory of a fool. Don’t you think I know why you were drinking yourself silly in bar after bar for weeks when Laura came back? Don’t you think I know why you haven’t mentioned your great admiration for Idrina before?”
“No, why don’t you tell me.”
“Oh, Cypress. I’m not attacking you. I just wanna talk to you; I wanna know you’re here ’cause you want ta be, not ’cause you’re runnin’ away from somebody. Is that so hard to understand?” Leroy moved over to where Cypress was idly undoing her peculiar array. “Listen, I want you. I don’t care what you did before, I’m just not sure you’ve finished with her, that’s all.” He slipped his arms over her shoulders, and pulled her up to him. “I think it’s wonderful for two women to be lovers, there’s a sanctity to it that I respect. And I’m glad for you to have known all that is, but, Cypress, you can’t dress it up, or cheapen it down, by saying you ‘thought’ you loved her, see what I mean?”
Cypress relaxed in Leroy’s grasp, fell closer to his body, smelled that smell of his that reminded her of coffee and the sea. She opened her mouth, let her tongue glide over his collarbone, whispering, “I did love her. I still love her, Leroy, like one of my sisters.” Leroy took a deep breath, inhaled all the air he could and poked Cypress repeatedly with his inflated stomach, like an Americanized Yanvallou. It was only seconds before she realized he’d chased her back to their bed; only a few more seconds before they were no more than shout and sweat, and released. Cypress was gone; absolutely dead to the world. Leroy caught himself whispering, “I know it’s terrible. I shouldn’t have done it. You can’t fuck somebody into loving you, but I had to, I had to. She can’t leave me for that bitch, she can’t. I won’t allow it.”
Now she was awake and he was asleep. Cypress decided that she could sleep too, because all she needed, she had. Nothing bothered her, because everything was fine. If they ever got up she was going to cook a meal that all Carolina would envy.
CYPRESS’ MEAL FOR MANHATTAN NIGHTS
Barbequed Lamb Manhattan
3–4 pound leg of lamb
1 lemon, quartered
¾ cup blackstrap molasses
2 teaspoons chili powder
2 cans tomato sauce
1 teaspoon hot dry mustard
2 stalks celery, cubed
Dash of Worcestershire
1 medium onion, diced
Red pepper, salt, black pepper
1 green pepper, diced
to taste
Score lamb crossways, one inch deep & one inch apart. Boil remaining ingredients for barbeque sauce. Marinate the lamb with 1/2 of your sauce for about 45 minutes
, then place lamb in roasting pan in 300° oven for 1½ to 2 hours, basting every 15 minutes.
Nighttime Potato Salad/ ’Cuz There’s No Time to Cool
6 good-sized potatoes
½ teaspoon dry mustard
3 hard-boiled eggs
1 cup mayonnaise
1 onion, diced
Salt & pepper to taste
1 stalk celery, diced
Paprika to sprinkle over top
3 tablespoons prepared sweet relish
Boil potatoes till tender. With old-fashioned potato masher, break into smaller chunks in mixing bowl. Chop eggs, celery, onion & add to potatoes, along with the other ingredients. Mix well. Check to see if it’s too dry. If so, add a little more mayonnaise. Sprinkle paprika over the finished salad. Serve.
Easy Asparagus
½ pound baby asparagus (16)
¼ teaspoon powdered ginger
1 lemon
Wash asparagus. Slice off bad ends if they are tough or brown. Sprinkle ginger over the asparagus. Squeeze lemon over the asparagus. Chill and serve.
Cypress dear,
Where you’re living sounds so wonderful, but I’m not sure I understand what a loft is, exactly. Is it just a big room, or something more special? Then too, you musn’t brag about how much you’ll get for something later. You shouldn’t let everyone know how much store you set by something . . . and I definitely believe you should speak with your landlord about this fixture fee business—sounds crooked to me. Who ever heard of paying for a toilet and tub . . . in decent lodgings the management always supplies such. I know New York is different and that you’ve more experience with some things than I have, but mark my words. Somebody’s gypping you.
If it’s just a big room, how did you manage to have a duplex living quarters? I guess I can’t quite imagine seeing the Hudson River and New Jersey from one window and walking ’cross a floor to see the Empire State Building. Is Macy’s big enough to see from where you live? I’ve wanted to go to Macy’s ever since Miracle on 34th Street. Let me know, will you?
Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo Page 15
