Love in a Carry-On Bag

by Johnson, Sadeqa

  Erica shampooed and rinsed his hair, making sure all of the suds were off their bodies and down the drain before she shut off the water. Wrapping him in a towel, she led him into the bedroom where she oiled his skin, paying close attention to his feet.

  “You need a pedicure.”

  “I have you,” he said when she was finished.

  “Whatever,” she switched her hips, purposefully giving him something to smile about as she went to her closet to search for something to wear.

  Warren tore his eyes away from her long enough to rummage through his tote, though the outfit choice for him tonight was obvious.

  Most musicians have superstitions, quirks and rituals that they perform before taking the stage. Warren’s drummer always wore mismatched socks. His pianist: gold bracelets on each wrist with his baseball cap twisted backwards. Warren dressed in black from head to toe and rubbed a drop of frankincense on his throat and on the crown of his head. The dark clothing was his invention; the frankincense his late mother’s.

  Warren’s mother Alma had grown up in the swamps of Louisiana. She believed in voodoo, church and essential oils, and was always rubbing Warren and his older sister down in something. Peppermint was used for upset stomachs, clove for teething babies, lemon increased circulation, and lavender helped with a good night’s sleep.

  As a classically trained pianist, his mother shared with him her love of music. Warren was taught piano at four, banged on the drums at seven, settling on the finger pattern of the trumpet by ten. Weekly music lessons gave way to recitals, all unattended by his father, who refused to acknowledge Warren’s musical gift.

  “My son won’t end up a needle-pushing junkie. Warren’s getting a good job,” he’d say. And that was how Warren came to earn his Masters in computer engineering. But what his father didn’t understand was that Warren’s music was more than a hobby. Playing his instrument was like a choice between living and dying slowly.

  With just a sprinkle of frankincense in his palm, Warren could already feel the balsamic oil seep into his skin. Erica walked over to him as he tied his shoes on the sofa. She had decided on wearing a red sweater dress. Her beauty sucked up the oxygen in the room.

  “Pretty.”

  “Handsome,” she winked, holding out her wrist with a bracelet she wanted him to fasten.

  Warren loved jamming because it separated the men from the boys. At any given time there could be as many as ten, twelve musicians on stage with four playing the same instrument. The choice was either play or be played and Warren never fell victim to the latter, especially at Smalls, a well-known jazz club in the West Village where the top musicians in the industry came to flex their genius.

  Smalls stayed open all night and there were photographs on the wall of Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Betty Carter, McCoy Tyner and Sonny Rollins, who all sharpened their skills on the very same stage.

  “Look who’s traveling on the wind.” A fair-skinned man wearing a black beret limped toward them. “Come to jam?” His voice was raspy like he smoked two packs a day.

  Warren held up his horn case and the men slapped five.

  In the ten minutes that it took for his name to be called, Warren closed his eyes and visualized warming his instrument. It was a talent he had picked up playing in the band at Howard University. Once on stage, he tipped his horn to Erica and waited while the pianist counted.

  “One, two, a one, two, three.”

  The quartet played a standard, “Never Let Me Go.” Roy Hargrove had redone the song on his third album and Warren knew the piece well. During his solo, Warren spit the notes. Even when he stumbled on the wrong note, it was right. Musicians rotated in and out, other brass instruments jammed with him and against him, but time didn’t tick. Warren played like a man possessed until his lips swelled with the satisfaction of a familiar kiss.

  Warren’s black shirt was soaked through and he left the stage feeling like Superman. At a bistro table in the corner, Erica was slouched over asleep with her head resting against the cushiony padded wall. He had played so hard that he hadn’t realized that she had slept through it. In the chair next to her, he rubbed her hair softly.

  “What time is it?” She opened her eyes and ran the back of her hand over her mouth.

  “Seven.”

  “You played for five hours straight.”

  “It felt like five minutes.”

  “Good, honey,” she readjusted her dress and stretched her arms overhead.

  Two busboys were clearing off the table and she could smell the bucket of water with bleach and disinfectant.

  “You hungry?” he asked, helping her into her coat.

  “Think the Pink Teacup is open?”

  “Should be.” Warren gave the man with the limp a pound and told him he’d be back soon. Once they made it up the stairs and out onto the street, Warren draped his arm over her shoulders. The sun had risen but was cloaked behind pregnant clouds. Warren could have used his sunglasses to help adjust to daylight but they were in the car.

  “You were snoring louder than the music,” he teased.

  “Whatever, I don’t snore. How long did you think I’d last?”

  They walked three blocks over to the Pink Teacup, a soul-food restaurant that had been in the same location on Grove Street for five decades and owned by three generations of the same family. The restaurant was painted pink inside and out with black-and-white celebrity photos hanging from the walls. Because it was early, they had their choice of window seating. The waitress dropped off menus they didn’t need with fresh squeezed orange juice and a saucer of homemade biscuits.

  Erica watched Warren. He had that far-away, detached look in his eyes and she could feel her body counting down the minutes until he had to leave. The weekend had once again gone too fast and she was sick of saying goodbye.

  “Why don’t you stay one more night and leave first thing in the morning?” she tried.

  “I wish, but there’s so much work waiting for me.”

  “Have you signed the contract?”

  Warren’s eyes flashed down at her and she could see the wheels turning in his head, like he was choosing his words wisely.

  “Is it a secret? My life is affected by this, too.” She became impatient.

  “Yeah, I signed,” he confessed.

  “Why?” She wanted to pound the table with her fist. Her cell phone rang from inside her clutch. It was trapped in a pocket being smashed by her wallet, keys and lip gloss. After taking everything out the caller-ID flashed that it was her mother. She silenced the phone. This was not the time for one of her silly emergencies. Erica was having a crisis of her own.

  Warren reached across the table. “I’m telling you nothing will change.” But what he didn’t understand was that Erica craved change. She wanted every day with him, all night, and no more filler.

  The waitress returned to the table with the heaping plates of steamy food and Warren ordered more orange juice. Erica watched a couple who had just walked in pushing an infant stroller. The man smiled with the goofiness of a new dad as he looked for a place to stow the stroller.

  Salmon croquettes and cheesy grits were her favorite, but when Erica looked at her plate she felt nauseated. Nothing ever deterred Warren from eating and he explained while stabbing a bit of fried chicken and a slice of waffle with his fork. Erica’s disappointment suddenly gave way to anger.

  “You just don’t want to move,” she pointed.

  “It’s not that, honey, but I need to make a living.”

  “New York is a major city. I find it difficult to believe you can’t make a living here.”

  “This opportunity that they’re offering me is huge. Trust me, I want to be with you too.”

  “If you wanted to be with me, you would.” She pushed the food around on her plate. “Well, at least your dad is happy.”

  Warren swallowed hard. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Erica watched the rosy cheeked mother scoop her swaddled baby
from the seat, sliding the child beneath her shirt, and said nothing.

  Her silence seemed to have ticked a nerve with Warren because he ground his teeth and said, “If I hadn’t signed, we’d be broke.”

  “Why is it always about money for you?”

  “Because we have bills. And you,” it was his turn to take a jab. “You have your mother. I’m sure that was her ringing your phone.”

  Erica’s fork clanked against her plate.

  “I know you aren’t bringing my mother into this. Don’t worry, you’ll have your money next week.”

  “It’s not about the money.”

  “Well apparently it’s not about love or we wouldn’t be having this conversation, again.”

  “You are so fucking unbelievable,” he reached into his pocket for his money clip, peeling off enough bills to cover the check. “Must be nice thinking that the earth revolves around you.”

  “You are one to talk,” Erica tossed back. She gathered her purse, slipped into her own coat and followed him out. At the door, she glanced back at the couple, wondering how she and Warren would get from where they sat to happily ever after.

  Outside, he walked too quickly up Seventh Avenue while Erica struggled to keep up in her heels. Her toes were pinched, a misty drizzle had started to fall and she didn’t have anything to cover her head. Warren walked several paces in front of her and Erica cursed him in her head.

  “Why are you walking so fast?” she shouted.

  “’Cause I know you are cold.”

  “Well, slow up.”

  Warren turned to wait for her, but he didn’t grab her hand. When they reached his SUV he rounded the car to the front window, checking for a parking ticket. The rain had started to drop and the breeze was bone chilly. When Erica stepped into the SUV the slit of her dress flew open exposing her thigh, and it was so unlike Warren not to notice.

  Their argument continued up the West Side Highway.

  “If you don’t want to be with me just say it,” Erica tossed.

  “You still haven’t told me how we’re supposed to live? Off you?”

  “That and your music.”

  His laugh was bitter. “Get your head out of the clouds, Sweetie; I just played all night long for free.”

  “Well, when I become director…”

  “Your mother’s hand will be in your pocket and you’ll still be too chicken to tell her no.”

  “You are such an asshole.”

  “And you’re a selfish bitch.”

  Warren footed the gas hard crossing 125th Street and Frederick Douglass. Anger had been trickling into his skin like fluid through an IV.

  “Who do you think you are talking to?” She whirled around in her seat as if just slapped. “I’m not some ho off the street.”

  “Just shut the fuck up.”

  “You shut up and show me some damn respect,” she said, continuing to pull him in a back and forth match determined to get the last word.

  Warren found a space right in front of her building. Erica jumped out of the car first and stormed up the front steps of the building. Warren waited in silence while she fumbled with her key. When they reached her apartment, Warren went straight to her bedroom and started shoving his clothes into his bag. He was so mad he didn’t even fold them.

  “What are you doing?” she stood in the doorway.

  “Leaving.”

  “Why?” Even though they were fighting, she didn’t want to spend Sunday without him. How had it gotten this far?

  “Because I need to get the hell away from you.” He threw his bag over his shoulder and pushed past her to the living room, scanning the area to make sure he had everything. His laptop sat on the coffee table and he quickly shoved it in his bag.

  “You haven’t slept all night. You can’t drive to D.C.” Erica was standing in front of the door.

  “Move,” he looked past her.

  “Don’t do this,” she softened.

  “This past Monday I missed one of the biggest gigs of my life providing for you and you still find something to complain about.” He flicked his hand in the air. “The fuck out of my way.”

  “No,” she crossed her arms. Warren was in her face and breathing hard but she couldn’t let him go. “Just stay so we can talk about this.”

  “I said move.”

  She didn’t budge. He asked her three more times, but she held her ground. Warren was smoking hot. Erica really knew how to push his buttons.

  “Get,” he shouted and then without thinking his fist swiped at the table lamp, knocking it to the floor. Porcelain pieces split into jagged edges and the bulb flicked yellow before flashing out.

  The whites of his eyes had darkened, “I don’t want to see you,” he pointed his finger in her face and fear sliced through her like scissors. He pushed past her, leaving the front door wide open.

  “Bastard,” she yelled after him, and then picked up a magazine and flung it at his head, just missing. “Go to hell.”

  Warren’s footsteps pounded down the four flights of stairs as if he was angry with the linoleum.

  Erica breathed back tears, looking at the broken piece of her lamp at her feet. The porcelain pieces could have cut her legs or her feet. They had never fought so vehemently before, and even though he took his anger out on the lamp, it felt very much like he was trying to punish her. While picking up the pieces to see if the lamp could be salvaged, she couldn’t help wondering if this was how the violence between her parents had begun.

  Chapter Ten

  The Cusp

  Erica’s parents married in the parlor of her grandmother’s house on a watery day in January. It was the mid-seventies and her mother, Gweny, was twelve weeks pregnant. She stood in a white full lace gown with two button gloves fastened at her wrists. Her father wore his good black suit and shiny wingtip shoes. Bottles of homemade wine, corn liquor, and crème ale were set up on a card table with paper doilies and plastic wedding cups. At seventeen Gweny wasn’t old enough to drink, but her cousin ignored legalities, mixing together wine and beer, which they called boilers. She sipped, laughed, and forgot for one night that she was pregnant.

  Women had babies in her family but very few married. The ones who did ended up cheated on, abused or abandoned. Growing up Gweny didn’t have one positive example of marriage and family, so young and without instruction she picked her way through her own marriage and motherhood with the baton of failure looming overhead. It almost felt as if failing at it was her destiny. Her husband was a decent provider but his new auto mechanic business often kept him away from the house, leaving her alone with two small girls born twenty-two months apart. Confidence was never Gweny’s strong suit and with no help and her little ones to care for, depression had an easy time finding her on the kitchen floor scraping up peas, in the basement doing the laundry, and on the sofa crying softly over the constant smell of shitty diapers. Her life proved to be a repetitive guilt trip. She longed for an escape from her mundane existence, and found it in Bonnie, a mistress disguised in housewife’s clothes, who one day at the neighborhood bar handed Gweny freedom in a fancy glass.

  At first the change in Erica’s mother was subtle. She began oversleeping, and forgot little things like changing the clocks for daylight savings time. The laundry started to pile up and it seemed as if they were eating their dinner from a can more often than not. She was known to run their house on a familiar schedule and like all children, Erica thrived on predictability. Gradually her mother started losing track of time and Erica found herself being picked up later and later from nursery school, until one day she was the last child. The memory was as strong to her as the smell of ammonia, and she could remember waiting on the industrial rugged stairs, wringing her fingers in her four-year-old lap, trying to quiet the urge to poop.

  “I’m so sorry,” her mother said the first time it happened, bursting through the double doors fussing with her dark sunglasses, while muttering a stream of excuses. After helping Erica into her scarlet
wool coat, she carried her down the stone stairs without paying the late fee. Erica’s ponytails flapped in the wind as she wrapped her arms and legs around her mother, searching for that familiar scent. Inside the car, the stitched vinyl seats were toasty because she had left the engine running, but Erica wanted her mother’s attention and cried that she was still cold.

  With her mother hanging out and her father’s short fuse it didn’t take much for their house to fall into a place of conflict. Her mother would come home late and her father would be waiting for her at the door screaming about money missing from his wallet.

  “You got a babysitter here every night. Why can’t you stay home?” he’d roar and the violent moments would stay stamped in Erica’s mind no matter how hard she tried to wash it away: him turning the kitchen table over, splashing her mother’s blouse with spaghetti. In the living room, he hurled a rotary telephone at her, bruising the skin around her eye, and Erica didn’t know if she should help or hide. In the bathroom, her mother’s arm went through a window and Erica fretted that the neighbors would hear. Upstairs, in the long hallway was where her father dragged Gweny by her ankles kicking and screaming and, as she watched, Erica worried that her mother would get a splinter.

  Soon her parents stopped sleeping together and her mother became Erica’s burden, moaning and turning in the canopy bed that she had once loved, but now hated to share.

  Over the next few years Erica constructed a shell around herself, searching for her mothering elsewhere. She was a likable girl and had no problem finding nurturing in her favorite card-cataloging librarian, bubbling camp counselor, sugar-faced lunch monitor, or doting classroom teacher. These women were generous with cleavage-filled hugs, nourishing smiles and tongues that spun encouragement. And from the moment Erica stepped into Claire Downing’s sun-drenched corner office, Claire became one of Erica’s women.

  President and executive director of B&B’s publicity, Claire Downing was the epitome of corporate professionalism. As one of the highest ranking women in publishing, Claire’s experience spanned close to twenty years. She was credited with building the career of the most successful authors in the history of the business. Her petite five-foot frame commanded respect. When her velveteen voice opened up in a room, everyone listened.