Gumbo

by E. Lynn Harris

  He is my first love and will be my last. I would be lost without him.

  Mason Dimple had many secrets. Secrets I did not tell visitors to the house. Sometimes when it was quiet in the house I could hear a young woman singing and a grown man weeping. I could feel the cold, sad suffering of a mother's love. Some nights I dreamed, some nights I didn't sleep at all. My dreams shift my thinking:

  I am in Paris. I climb a spiral staircase seven flights up. I enter a room made entirely of books, the walls, the fireplace, and the ceiling. The floor is a soft carpet of words. Leatherbound books with SECRETS etched in gold leaf along their spines are displayed in elaborate boxes set in the walls behind glass. The smell is haunting, dried ink and musty memories. I lie on the floor and words beneath me whisper in my ear, water words, the names of trees and flowers, parts of the body, parts of the eye. I leave the room and enter a dark hallway heading toward the light. I see my father in the distance, he waves me back toward the living. I whisper good-bye and turn my back on him.

  My father died of a heart attack the summer before I went to Paris. All of us who knew him almost died from shock. A pious deacon of the church. A kind neighbor. A loving husband and father. Simply put: a good man gone to glory. “Prior Walker, dearly beloved” was carved in stone. Daddy was stitched onto the tender parts of my heart. My body folded and water fell from my eyes like rain.

  The weight of all those dead things pulled me down.

  One afternoon shortly after my father died, I had a revelation and a sign. The streets outside were steaming as if little teapots were brewing beneath the city, but I was cool underground. I was working at my desk in the windowless basement office. That morning the principal from a local boy's school called to cancel their one o'clock tour, and I was afraid I would cry all afternoon. A man I'd been dating had called me at noon to tell me he was returning to Detroit. He'd been looking for a job as a radio news journalist the whole year I knew him, but he had been unlucky and he felt that it was time for us both to face facts. For me the reality was more jarring, that he hadn't even asked me to go with him, let alone marry him. I couldn't say I was in love with him. I was just sad to be by myself again. I wanted to run away from so much loss all at once.

  I was not allowed to be with my sadness for long. At one-fifteen the front doorbell rang. I went up the stairs, crossed the foyer, and opened the front door. Standing there were a regal-looking, well-dressed older black woman wearing heavy gold jewelry and too much powder on her face and a younger man in a conservative dark suit who I guessed by their resemblance was her son. I invited them in and noticed that they spoke with soft West Indian accents. The son seemed more interested in the house than the mother. Sometimes he would whisper to her in what sounded like French. I gave them the standard tour and the son asked the standard questions. At the end of the tour the son looked around with a puzzled expression.

  “I presume that Mr. Dimple was an educated man.”

  “Yes, he graduated from Yale.”

  “That is not what I mean. His collection seems incomplete. He traveled to Africa in the Fifties?”

  “Yes, but he wasn't much interested in African art. He brought back several tapestries from Morocco, and you saw the Ibo mask?”

  The man made a noise in his throat and pitched his eyes around the room once more. “You can tell so much about a man by what he keeps in his house.”

  “Thank you very much for the tour. It was lovely,” the mother said, signing the guest book. I noticed she wrote down Paris as her address.

  “How did you hear about the museum?” I asked, curious.

  “The concierge at the hotel recommended it.”

  “Are you West Indian?”

  “We are French,” the mother said, as if I'd insulted her.

  The son looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. His eyes assessed me quickly, lingering on my breasts before returning to my face. He seemed to want to continue talking with me.

  “There are many black Americans living in Paris, many artists,” the son said. “I believe the black American writer James Baldwin makes his home in France. Do you know him?” he asked, as if it were possible for me to know someone famous.

  “I know his work. I've been listening to my aunt go on about France since I was a little girl. I'd love to go there someday.”

  The son warmed to me when I said I wanted to be a writer. He said there were many bohemian artists living in Paris.

  “There are certainly enough entertainers,” the mother said, dabbing at her perspiring nose with a delicate lace handkerchief.

  For the next half hour the son, Maxime Bazille, and his mother, Madame Marie-Lise Bazille, convinced me that Paris was the last red apple on the highest branches of a tree well worth climbing. I thanked them, and for the first time Paris became a real destination, with real places to eat, museums to see, and wide boulevards to stroll. A list of inexpensive hotels, bakeries and cafés, clothing shops and museums neatly printed in Maxime Bazille's elegant hand was folded in my pocket.

  By six o'clock that evening the security guard hadn't shown up. I called Dr. Bernard and offered to lock up the house and set the alarm. He agreed, and I began clearing up my desk. I called a local copy shop to find out how much they charged for passport photos. Before setting the alarm I went into the library, and my eyes fell on several books by James Baldwin. I'd seen them every day, but that evening it was as if a laser beam pointed them out to me and I was drawn to them. Each of the books was a signed first edition. Giovanni's Room, Another Country, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Nobody Knows My Name, The Fire Next Time. Each book was signed, “Affectionately, Jimmy.” I sat in Mason Dimple's reading chair and read into the night, from one book to the next. The most brilliantly illuminating passages were underlined with blue ink. By the time the sun came up, my eyes were red and tired and an overwhelming sadness had clouded the room. When Dr. Bernard arrived he thought I was sleeping. He touched my shoulder and called my name.

  His eyes fell on the bundle of love letters on the table next to me.

  “I found them behind the stairs.”

  Dr. Bernard sat facing me in a leather wing chair, wearily, as if it were the end of a long day and not the beginning.

  “After Mason read a book he liked or hated or was moved by, he would buy another and underline words and sometimes whole passages. Then he gave them to me. We went to Paris after he read Giovanni's Room. It was the happiest time of my life. I love him still.” Dr. Bernard began to weep. I reached out and touched his hand.

  “Don't take only what life gives you, reach out and take what you want,” he said.

  We sat quietly in the room thick with memories and desire. Reading my own copy of Giovanni's Room a few days later lit a fire in me. The main character, David, a white American living in Paris, begins a passionate affair with an Italian bartender, Giovanni, but because David is ashamed and scared of his desire, his love for Giovanni destroys them both. I was determined to have no such regrets, no such fears. I was still young and thought anything was possible.

  I was awake, but I was dreaming about Paris, reading Baldwin, planning a new life. I made a reservation on a flight to Paris. I gave Dr. Bernard one month's notice, he gave me his blessings and a gold pen. When I told Aunt Vic I wanted to go to Paris, she didn't laugh or ask me if I was crazy; she sat down on her sofa, leaned over, and peeled back the carpet. She counted eighteen twenty-dollar bills into my hand and promised to send me more if I needed money to come home.

  “I wish I had the balls to do it.” She hugged me hard.

  “Aunt Vic, that's some salty talk.”

  My mother was still deep in her grief over losing my father. She let her sadness at my leaving roll over her like a fog.

  “Child, I wish I could see you married, but I know that's a long ways off. You still restless.” She stroked my hair and kissed my third eye.

  “Aren't you glad I didn't marry Leo just to ease your mind?”

  “He was to
o handsome to be a husband anyway,” she said, trying to comfort me. I had already put him in a box and shoveled dirt on top.

  I had saved three hundred dollars, and I figured after selling everything I couldn't carry to France I'd have about five hundred more. I watched ten French videos in fourteen days to prepare my ear for my new language. Four weeks later I had a ticket to Paris.

  The day after I arrived in Paris a bomb was found on a train headed toward Lyon. I wondered if my new friend Delphine had noticed a plain package underneath a seat near her. Had she panicked? Did she call the conductor and save the lives of dozens of passengers and her own life as well?

  In another country, reading the words “two men kissed” makes it possible for me to kiss any lips my heart desires. In another country, the sound of music breathes.

  In another country, love means this moment, now.

  It means remembering your mother's face

  when you told her you were leaving,

  your lover's smell on that last day.

  Good-bye is so final,

  say: til then.

  I carry words around in my pocket, put them behind my eyelids, in my mind. I let words float in my mouth. I roll them around on my tongue, taste them until sounds slowly push out of my mouth. Each word is a poem.

  parler . . . la verité . . . à minuit . . . regarde . . . une étoile . . . le nuage . . . fumée

  This new language I am dreaming, I'm beginning to understand, is soft in my mouth like small satin pillows. These words are not hard to swallow.

  Once upon a time, not so long ago and not far from now, there was a black girl in Paris . . . She is lying on her back on a hard little bed with her eyes closed dreaming in French . . . The long narrow room . . . a round window at the foot of the bed . . . All the familiar things are not. A door is not a door. La porte. Love is l'amour, not an open wound. When I wake up I'll leave this place and I'll find my way back again. I'll find a word and sing it like it's the last song I'll ever sing. Josephine and jazz were here. It is a brand-new world.

  My name is Eden and I'm not afraid of anything anymore.

  School

  BY VERONICA CHAMBERS

  FROM Miss Black America

  The first time somebody called me a liar, I was nine years old. It was in a classroom decorated with faded pictures of rosy-cheeked white kids with blond hair, and that did not escape my notice. Every conceivable surface—the bulletin boards, the wall above the chalkboard, the wood closet doors—were covered with the illustrated adventures of Dick and Jane. There was only one white girl in our class: Brenda. She had red hair just like the comic book character Brenda Starr. She swore up and down that she wasn't named after a stupid comic strip, but that's what we all called her. Brenda Starr.

  Our teacher was a middle-aged white woman from Long Island. She told us that the very first day of school. “My name is Mrs. Newhouse and I'm from Long Island.” She pronounced “Long Island” in a really funny way, as if each word was chopped up into five or six squeaky syllables. I thought it was strange that she mentioned where she was from. It wasn't as if it was any place interesting like France or India. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Chong, was Cuban Chinese. We only found out about the Cuban part when some of the Puerto Rican kids in class were making fun of her eyes and she went off on them in Spanish. We always thought her clipped, staccato tone was the way all Chinese people talked. But when she started speaking Spanish, she was like Nidia Velásquez' grandmother cursing people out her window. Mrs. Chong put one hand on her hip and one finger in the air and let loose a string of Spanish words that swiveled in her mouth as fast as her hips. It was extraordinary, like watching a normal person turn into a superhero. That's when Mrs. Chong explained that her parents were Chinese, but she'd grown up in Cuba. We knew then that she was the coolest teacher we'd ever have.

  “You better watch out,” the boys would say, as they roughhoused in the playground. “Mrs. Chong will do a Bruce Lee on your ass. Then she'll turn around and pow, pow like Roberto Durán.” Me and my girlfriends were more concerned with what Mrs. Chong had cooking in her pot. “Her kids are so lucky,” Coco García said, salivating into her peanut butter sandwich. “They can have sweet and sour pork one night and ropa vieja the next.” Kenya Moore added, “They could have won ton soup and black bean soup.” Brenda Starr waved away all the comparisons with an impressive air of cool. “Face it,” she said, crossing her legs and swinging the top one lazily, “her kids have got it made.”

  So, what was so special about a teacher from Long Island compared to a Cuban Chinese? Then Mrs. Newhouse went around the room and asked every kid what their father did for a living. When she got to me, I said, “Magician.” Everyone in the class giggled. Hard of hearing or just not paying attention, she said, “Does your father play an instrument, dear?” I just shook my head. “No, Mrs. Newhouse,” I said. “He's a ma-gi-cian.” I made the word long and squeaky like “Long Island” so maybe she'd understand me better.

  She smiled at me, a fake smile without teeth, then came over to my desk. She smelled of coffee and, on closer inspection, her red pantsuit had balls of lint along the thighs. She patted me on the head. “Here's an example of a very vivid imagination at work,” she said. “I bet every little boy or girl wishes their father was a magician or a circus ringmaster or a flame thrower.” She chuckled, as if she'd told a very funny joke; then she skipped me, moving on to the girl in the seat behind me. I didn't say another word the whole day. I just sat there, silent and furious.

  The thing is I'd already come to school that day feeling bad. The night before my mother and father had had a huge fight because there was no money to buy me a new outfit for school, much less a pencil case or a small pair of plastic scissors or any of the school supplies on the list the counselor had given us. This, I was led to believe, was my father's fault.

  Just the night before, my mother had been yelling about how my father was “no better than a child.” Standing in the living room wearing a blue and green tie-dyed T-shirt and a pair of white jeans, she was beautiful, mad as she was. I thought she looked like a Charlie's Angel, a black Charlie's Angel. Her shoulder-length hair had been pressed to bone straightness and she wore it flipped back like Jayne Kennedy.

  “Some sort of magician you are, Teddo,” she screamed, ripping up pictures of my father's head shot. “Why don't you pull some motherfucking food out of your hat? Why don't you make some money appear, Magic Man?”

  My father closed the paper he had been reading, then walked over to the stereo. “You're so small-minded,” he said, clamping the bulky headset over his ears. “You've got such a fucking small mind. Can't you see that I'm trying to do something amazing with my life?”

  My mother was on him in ten seconds, ripping two buttons off of his silk print shirt and pounding on his chest. “Amazing? You want to do something amazing?” she screamed. “Provide for your fucking child. Live up to your fucking responsibilities.” He shrugged her off of him with one strong swoop of his arms. “This is a new shirt, man,” he muttered to no one in particular.

  My mother stumbled from my father's push but quickly got to her feet. She cut her eyes at my father, tossing him a long hard glare that would have been considered an invitation to rumble on any street corner in the city. But my father refused to take the bait, humming along to music only he could hear. “Come on, Angela,” my mother said, leading me out of the living room. My hand felt small in her hand and in her anger, she clenched her long nails into my palm. I didn't care. She was my angel. My Charlie's Angel.

  We were living in the South Bronx, in a basement apartment that had love beads and shag carpeting in every room. Even the bathroom was carpeted. As we walked back toward my tiny bedroom, I squeezed the carpet with my toes and willed myself not to cry. This was the first time I would not have a new dress for the first day of school. I understood the reason, but that didn't hold back the tears. There was no money. There was never any money. But it had never bothered me. Now I fel
t caught. For the first time, ever, I was drafted into the vicious no-money war my parents constantly battled. It felt terrible. Like playing a game of hot potato and having the cootie-contaminated object glued to your hands.

  By the time we reached my room, I was quietly sobbing. I sat on the bed and my mother knelt in front of me. Her cocoa face glistened around the edges like a halo, where she'd combed her baby hair down with Vaseline. She pulled my face close to hers as if for a kiss and said, “I am so sorry. There's nothing I hate more than to see you go without. But I had no choice this month. Either I bought your clothes or paid the rent and I couldn't have us out on the street.”

  The notion of being out on the street was no idle threat. We'd lived in three apartments in as many years, and all around our Bronx neighborhood there was evidence of eviction sofas, like new, abandoned on the sidewalk, dining room tables left behind when somebody took all the chairs. Sometimes, after it rained, I saw family photographs and copies of birth certificates floating like paper sailboats in the street toward the gutter.

  Mommy had grown up running from the bill collectors and the repo man. They would be in the middle of watching a favorite show—Laugh In or something silly—and the bell would ring and a guy would come in and take the TV. One day, she came home from school and found all of the contents of her apartment on the sidewalk and the neighbors making off with all of her stuff—her dolls, her clothes, even a bag of her barrettes. “Girls I knew,” Mommy had said, her teeth clenched as if those stolen baby dolls had been real babies. “Girls who had been to my house, played with my toys, just took them. As if without four walls around them, our stuff was not our stuff. I never want you to go through something like that. Never.”

  Mommy told the story again as I cried my greedy new-dress tears, then she stood and opened my closet door. “It's a brand-new school, Angela,” she said in a cheerleader's voice that I didn't believe. “Nobody's ever seen any of your clothes. Just make do for now, sweetie. First of the month, I'll buy you a new dress and new shoes.”