Gumbo

by E. Lynn Harris

  A bomb can kill you instantly, love can make you wish you were dead.

  Within days of my arrival in Paris four separate explosions killed three people and wounded 170. There was an atmosphere of paranoia. The tension was visible in people's eyes. Everyone was suspicious. Every abandoned bag standing alone for more than a few minutes could be filled with explosives set to kill. Anyone could be a terrorist. Bombs were exploding all over the city the fall I arrived, and that made tickets to Paris cheap and suicide unnecessary. I would become a witness. I left my body and another me took over, someone who had no fear of bombs or dying.

  It is 1986. I am twenty-six years old. I have 140 dollars folded flat and pressed into my shoes between sock and sole. It is what's left of the 200 dollars I arrived with two days ago. I have no friends here and barely remember my two years of college French. I think that my ticket to Paris will be the beginning or the end of me.

  In 1948 James Baldwin, author of Another Country, then twenty-five years old, arrived in Paris with forty dollars. During the Sixties civil rights movement he led marches, protests, and voter registration drives. His angry, articulate essays on race shocked France and compelled witnesses to action. He was awarded the medal of Legion of Honor by the French government. I was a witness.

  Josephine Baker arrived in 1925, at age eighteen. She danced naked except for a string of bananas around her waist, sang the “Marseillaise” in beaded gowns, and was decorated by the French government for her efforts during World War II. She created a new tribe in her château with children from every ethnic group. Like the character she played in the film Princess Tam Tam, she represented to the French the exotic black, sexually independent woman who could learn to speak French and pick up enough manners to dine with royalty.

  I was transformed.

  Bricktop arrived penniless and taught Paris how to dance the Charleston. Richard Wright was already a celebrity; he joined the French intellectuals and gave voice to the Negro problem in America. There were others and there will be more. My heroes. They dared to make a way where there was none, and I want to be just like them.

  I was born again.

  This is the place where it happened, where it will happen again.

  For once I slept without dreaming. I woke up when the plane touched down on the runway and heard the entire cabin clap and cheer the pilot and crew for our safe landing. As we taxied along the runway I pulled my small French-English dictionary out of my bag to look up in the phrase section how to take a cab. Across the aisle from me was a young woman who had slept through most of the flight. She was blonde with olive skin and had a long face and pretty features. She wore jeans and a black sweater and held a Museum of Modern Art gift bag in one hand and a large Louis Vuitton satchel on her lap. The satchel looked real, not like the imitations everyone at home wanted. I assumed she was American.

  “It's my first time in Paris. What's the best way to get to the city? Is there a bus?”

  “We can share a taxi if you like. Where are you going?” Her French accent was a surprise.

  “I don't know. I was going to ask the driver for a hotel. I don't have much money.”

  She looked at me as if I was crazy.

  “You don't know anyone?”

  I shook my head.

  “It will be very difficult to find something not expensive.” She pursed her lips and blew into the air, a French gesture I would come to recognize and imitate. She said that the students would be arriving for classes that week.

  “Many of the hotels not too dear will be . . . complet. You understand?”

  I quickly flipped through my dictionary and learned that the hotels would be full, no vacancies.

  “My name is . . . Je m'appelle Eden.”

  “Delphine. Come,” she commanded. We got up and joined the line of passengers exiting the plane. Charles de Gaulle airport was a maze of lines, people talking fast, signs I couldn't understand, and everywhere, guards carrying machine guns and holding fierce-looking dogs on short leashes. Then I began to be a little afraid of what I had done. I didn't know anyone, my French was practically nonexistent, and I had only enough money to last a few weeks until I found a job. But there was no going back. I took a deep breath and followed Delphine to baggage claim. I was relieved to see my duffel bag circle round in front of me. We stood in long, crooked lines in customs. One for citizens of France and several for everyone else. I gave Delphine twenty dollars to change into francs for me. She said she would meet me outside. When she was out of sight I had the fleeting thought that at home I would never be stupid enough to give a stranger money and watch her walk away, but I was in Paris and I was giving myself up to new angels.

  When I offered up my passport, the customs officer, who had had a dry, grim expression for all the passengers before me, looked at me, then back at my passport. He scanned my short natural hair, high forehead, slow, sleepy eyes, broad nose, and full lips, as if to make sure the brown-skinned girl in his hands was me. He pushed my passport toward me and startled me by speaking in English. “Welcome to France, mademoiselle. Enjoy your visit.”

  During the ride to the city Delphine told me that she was a student at the “Science Po,” the Ecole des Sciences Politiques, which I later learned was comparable to Harvard. She wanted to be a lawyer and in the current term she was studying English. When I told her I was a writer her eyes grew large and she could not hide her admiration, as if seeing in me something special she had not noticed before.

  “I admire the dedication of the artist, but nothing is certain for you. I am not so brave.” She looked out the window.

  I did not feel brave, there was nothing else I thought I could do or that held my interest in the same way. The taxi was an old white Mercedes with a gray leather interior. The driver looked African and spoke French. We had loaded our bags in the trunk and got inside. Delphine had given the driver an address and instructions in rapid French. We sat in silence looking out at early morning Paris. The cars on the highway seemed to go faster than in the States. I was so tired I kept nodding off. When the taxi stopped on busy rue de l'Université, in front of a photography shop, I opened my wallet and Delphine took out some of the bills she had exchanged for me and added some of her own.

  She pointed out the Sorbonne from the foot of the hill before we turned into the lobby of her apartment building. I followed her up four flights of stairs. She opened the door onto a small studio with high ceilings and cream-colored walls that made the room seem much bigger than it really was. Books and a small compact-disc collection lined the longest wall in the small but neat room, a high-tech stereo system and a small TV found space there as well. A bare desk sat in front of the windows, overlooking the street. Two double futons were stacked on top of each other in a corner. The most beautiful feature of the room was the set of tall French windows covered by metal shutters. Delphine opened the windows, letting in the light and noise of the street below. I went to the windows and looked down into the street. I saw a shop displaying cartons of brightly colored fruit, a florist's shop with spring in huge vivid bouquets that brightened the gray morning. She pointed me in the direction of the toilet. The bathroom fixtures were odd and ancient-looking. I did not recognize my face in the smoky gilt-framed mirror above the wide porcelain sink. There were dark circles under my eyes and my hair was so short. It was still me, a new me in a new place ready to begin again. I felt lost. After my father's funeral I felt as if I were drifting inside, as if anyone could disappear. Few things were certain. My father was dead.

  Delphine made us strong cups of coffee in the tiny red-and-white kitchen area—miniature appliances lined up under tall cabinets. Stale bread crumbs were scattered over the counter, a knife left sticking out of a pot of butter. We added sugar to the coffee and drank it black from heavy yellow bowls.

  “What will you do?” she asked, sitting crosslegged on the futons next to me.

  “I thought I could look for a job as a secretary or an au pair.” I sipped the coffee
and felt the caffeine spreading through my chest.

  “I have heard the American Church has a place to look for jobs. I can check the newspaper for you. There is a black American writer who is every day at a bookstore close to here. He might help you. I think he is a poet.”

  Delphine made two phone calls, then we left the apartment to look for a room. Her apartment was in the heart of the Latin Quarter, near the boulevard St-Michel. The streets were filled with people even though it was still early in the morning. Delphine was right, the less expensive hotels in the guidebook were complet, and I could not afford the more expensive ones. I could see that she felt pity for me and that she was determined to help me. Perhaps she thought an artist who was destined for a life of poverty needed all the help she could get. It started to rain, and as we were walking along the Seine back to her apartment I saw a hotel with a tiny sign in the window. By some miracle they had one room left, for about thirty-five dollars a night. We were told that it did not have a toilet, I'd have to share one on the floor below, and if I wanted to take a shower it would cost me about three dollars. The shower was in a stone cubicle in the basement. The clerk was a young man who, when he realized I was American, began speaking to me in English. This was a small relief to me, knowing I'd soon be on my own. I agreed without even seeing the room. I only hoped it had a view. It was not far from Delphine's apartment. She helped me carry my bags back to the hotel.

  Delphine gave me her phone number and told me to call her when I was settled. She was going away to visit her sister in Lyon for a week until school started. Her cousin Jean-Michel would be in her apartment until she returned and he spoke a little English, so if I needed help I was to call him. I reached out to hug her but she leaned only her face toward me. She kissed me on each cheek and wished me bonne chance. She was the one who would need the luck. The very next day a bomb was found on a train headed toward Lyon. It was defused and no one was hurt, but it was only the first sign of more danger to come.

  Suddenly it was night, and I was far from home and completely alone. The little room at the top of the stairs was not decorated with a chandelier, gold-leafed antiques, and a canopy bed covered in delicate lace as I'd imagined, but I was thankful to have a place indoors to sleep. On the floor at the foot of the bed were my green duffel bag and a black canvas backpack, which contained everything I owned. A tiny book of Bible verses the size of a matchbook, a 1968 Frommer's Guide to Paris I'd stolen from the public library. I knew all the major attractions by heart. I used the guide as a dream journal, writing between the lines. Between the pages I filed found poems and movie stubs and photographs. There was the gold pen from Dr. Bernard, three sharp number two pencils, a red Swiss army knife, seven pairs of white cotton panties, two pairs of white socks and one pair of black tights, a navy blue sweater and a pair of black jeans, a fat, palm-sized French-English dictionary, and a new address book with three addresses written in it. On the chair next to the sink, a pair of black stretch pants, a pair of gold hoop earrings, a watch with a thick brown leather band, a green trench coat from a military surplus store, and underneath the chair, a pair of black leather sneakers.

  “Je m'appelle Eden. Je suis une . . . writer.” The new me tried to impress the scratched mirror. I couldn't remember the French word for writer. Ecrivain. I said other things in French and practiced forgetting my old life.

  My mother told me that she found me lying there, like a lost book or a forgotten hat. Found me crying, hungry, wet, and cold, wrapped in newspaper at the bottom of a brown paper bag in the bathroom of a Greyhound bus station. My father confirmed her story.

  “Who am I?”

  “Mama's little girl.”

  “Who am I?”

  “Daddy's African princess.”

  “How do you know for sure?”

  I discover that nothing is ever certain. A name, a birthday, an entire life can be invented, and that being so, can be changed. I intended to change all the ordinary things about myself. When I began to write I kept secret diaries, writing between the lines of books my father found in the trash at work. Books on law and economics, typewriter manuals. I wrote about the life I lived in the night place, where I traveled as far as the stars. Before I could speak my father read to me from his found books, sounding out each word as if it were an island, as if either of us understood. Having learned to read so late in life he valued books as treasures of knowledge waiting to be unlocked.

  When I was four years old my parents told me that I was an orphan. My parents were orphans too. They found each other in church one Sunday. Hermine was a big-boned, sturdy, pecan-colored woman, with green eyes and gray hair she kept braided and wrapped around her head. She taught Prior Walker how to read the Bible, and in return he worshiped her. He was small for a man, with thick, callused hands, and balding by the time he was twenty-three. She was a seamstress in a blue-jean factory, and he was the custodian at a bank. They were old, like grandparents. Kind and patient, hardworking Christians. They were alone in the world until they found me. Their family, and therefore mine, was the church. We were happy together. They called me Eden. I made dresses for my dolls, but I was more interested in reading books and writing poems than in sewing. One summer Hermine and I pieced together a quilt made from scraps of clothes Prior and Hermine had worn out or I had outgrown. She called it the family circle quilt. The center image was three interlocking circles. She cried when it was done and sewed a lock of hair from each of us into three corners of the quilt, and in the fourth corner she sewed a secret. She folded the quilt into quarters and packed it into the cedar chest at the foot of her bed. In winter when it was time for me to go to sleep, she pulled the covers up around my chin.

  “When you have a family you can put your baby to sleep under your family circle.”

  “My baby will have pretty dreams,” I said stroking the lines of thread so lovingly handstitched.

  “As long as Singer makes sewing machines, we'll get by,” Hermine always said. The old machine she had must have been one of the first Singers, made in the late 1800s. She had a new electric model my father had bought her for her birthday, but for the quilt we used the one her mother left her before she died. Hermine told the same story about how her life began over and over again. At the age of two she had been left on the doorstep of a colored orphanage along with a note and the old Singer sewing machine in its case next to where she lay asleep. This was all she knew, but her life was full of stories she made up as she went along.

  The only other family we had was Aunt Victorine, my mother's best friend and mine. On the first Saturday morning of each month she used to take me for blessings to the Church of Modern Miracles, where we both pretended she was my mother. When we were together she called me Daughter and I called her Mother, and that was only one of our secrets. Aunt Vic had never married and was childless, and in her way adopted me so that I had two mothers. She had something to do with my wanting to go to Paris. From the time she showed me on a map she drew with a broken pencil on her kitchen wall and told me that black people were free in Paris. Free to live where you wanted, work where you were qualified, and love whom you pleased. At least that was the rumor she had heard. One of her friends in Chicago, where she had grown up, had a sister, an opera singer who went to Paris and married a white man. The opera singer became famous in Europe. According to Aunt Vic the white folks in America didn't want us to know about that kind of living, where a colored person could socialize and marry whom they wanted whether they were white or black, Chinese or Hindu. If she could have chosen, Aunt Vic surely would not have chosen to be a maid for most of her life. She worked two days a week for a rich white doctor in Green Island Hills. That was freedom to her, to choose the life you wanted to live.

  “And who would not choose to live well?” Aunt Vic said.

  Aunt Vic's stories about Paris had sounded like fantasies. She talked about it as if it were a made-up place. If Paris was a real place, I wanted to go.

  “Every day you ought to
learn something new, Daughter,” Aunt Vic said. I tried to learn new things, and I wrote them down like recipes between the lines of my found books.

  I would go to stay with Aunt Vic, who returned me home Sunday morning ready for Sunday school with Hermine and Prior. I slept through most of Sunday morning sermons at the First African Baptist Missionary Church, where the service was orderly, the hymns hushed, and the service short, and nobody cried too loud or shouted that the Holy Ghost had them by the collar. There was no dancing in the aisles. At the Church of Modern Miracles there was a three-piece band—drums, electric organ, and electric guitar—and several ladies in the front row who shook tambourines and their ample hips and tremulous breasts all through the service. People shouted, praised God so their prayers could be heard above the sins of the city, were possessed by the Holy Spirit, who took over their bodies, shaking them with emotion and filling their eyes with tears and their throats with hallelujahs. I could use my voice strong and was put in the young people's choir. Soon I was singing a solo almost every Saturday morning. And Aunt Victorine had me performing at the age of six in juke joints on dirt roads for miles around almost every Saturday night. After midnight, when a juke joint was most crowded, some cigar-smelling man would lift me up onto a table in the middle of the room and somebody else would unplug the jukebox. Sometimes there would be a pianist or a guitar player to accompany me. I would sing songs I'd heard on Aunt Vic's record player. Aunt Vic taught me how to lift the hem of my dress and dance at the end of the song like Josephine Baker and the French can-can dancers who looked so glamorous in the photographs she showed me. The audience would throw handfuls of change and crumpled dollar bills at my dancing feet. I loved the attention. I dreamed about doing the can-can in Paris. If Mama hadn't found out when I was thirteen, I might've become a star on the dirt-floor circuit. Instead I started taking classical voice lessons from a mean old Creole woman who used to be an entertainer. Her long black curls left greasy spots on the collars of her old-fashioned quilted pastel dressing gowns. Miss Candy shouted at me in Creole when I forgot the words to a song. I didn't like her and the lessons didn't last long. Aunt Vic didn't speak to Mama for a long time. She was mad at losing all that income from my singing. And she missed me as much as I missed her. Low lights, Aunt Vic's copper-colored lipstick, and the sparkling dresses she let me borrow to perform in made me dream of a kind of life different from the one I was living. I made maps in my mind that would lead to other worlds.