Gumbo

by E. Lynn Harris

  Dirty Bill, trying to keep from gasping, nodded his head. Arrow loosened his grip. “I weren't talkin mutiny Cap'n. I am yours . . .”

  At that moment a crowd of men burst through the doors bringing, it seemed, a thundercloud of noise and tension with them. It was then that Arrow realized that many in the room had been watching him and Bill the entire time. They'd seen his black hands around Bill's white throat. But before he could fully consider the meaning in all this, Dockson stood before him with many of his crew and some sundry others crowding up behind.

  “Cap'n, we ain't interested in goin to Haiti. That's not our fight.”

  Arrow leaned back again. He waited a moment and then asked very softly, “Am I your captain?”

  Dockson was taken off guard. The talk at the Flyin' Fish had pumped him and he'd forgotten who Arrow really was. “Yes, you are my captain. But we . . .”

  “Don't want to follow a nigger? Do you mean to say that you will not be led by a nigger? A black man?”

  “No! Cap'n . . . I mean yes. . . . I ahhh . . . I . . . We have followed you this far. But . . .”

  “This Captain Monkey has gotten too far ahead of himself, taking us into the grip of more monkeys who have forgotten their place? Is this what you mean to say?”

  Dockson had broken out in a profuse sweat. He looked around. The red faces behind him flashed all manner of expressions. Some, obviously up for the fight. Some, in full retreat. Seeing this unhinged Dockson even more. He fell silent.

  “Monkey talk.” Someone in the back shouted. “It ain't right. No white man should take that from that animal.” All eyes went in that direction. Standing at the bar were four from the notorious pirate Captain Flagg's crew. To the side of them, maybe ten more of their crew.

  “This is private crew business,” Dockson shouted to him.

  “Aye. I'd believe you if I didn't see a monkey at the helm.” Dockson moved in the man's direction. Arrow remained motionless. Dirty Bill stood. It was as if a bell had rung, immediately cutlasses were openly displayed.

  “You owe me an apology, brother,” Dockson said approaching the man.

  “There will be none, my brother. You have lost my respect and someone must put these things aright.” He advanced on Dockson. Their steel clashed. Everyone around them located their closest adversary and prepared their defense or offense as the case warranted.

  In truth there were two Arrows. One was the Black Arrow, who in a moment or two would kill two men in an instant. The other was the man who was filled with dismay. His struggles were meaningless in a world where other men had to fight for his own right to be a man. And yet, that was precisely why he was bound for Haiti. To fight for other men to be free. At this moment he even loved Dockson. But he was also intensely sad. This was his fight. It was about him. Simply because he was.

  Dockson and his opponent had only touched cutlass a few times before Arrow stood and, let fly three knives, felling two of the original four men, including the one who was about to take advantage of Dockson's slow reflexes. They stumbled once and hit the floor. The third knife lodged in another man's thigh. Everyone stopped and looked at Arrow.

  “If I had known a name like Captain Monkey, would excite you so I might have taken such a name. Especially if it caused you to fear me. For fear me you should. But, alas, I was limited by my experience. I could only contrive this name, Arrow. So I am Captain Arrow, and if you are lucky and will live to tell of what you've seen and you may say to the lucky hearer of your tale that you once saw the Black Arrow stick this man or that. And that then you saw him sail off under the black flag that is his true color. Off into the horizon with his crew of men who will take no quarter and who will do to their advantage without regard to this primate's heritage.”

  And with that he walked slowly toward the door, his men forming a wall at his back. “To hell with this,” he shouted, “To Haiti or to hell!”

  Mirror Image

  BY AMY DU BOIS BARNETT

  Six stops. White people got on, then black, some Latinos, a sprinkling of Asians—in the six stops between Brooklyn and Manhattan, the racial composition of my subway train changed six times. Every morning for the past five years, I'd watched this underground metamorphosis, feeling something of a traitor when I got off the train with all the white people at the first stop in Manhattan—Wall Street.

  Men with hair slicked stiff and wet-looking from too much gel, in dark suits and ties with tiny symbols of power printed hundreds of times on them, jostled against one another. Expensive silk scarves were knotted at the necks of the few suited women, most of whom looked very driven and very tired. I emerged from the station with them and entered the sweep of people pushed along the financial district's ancient narrow streets. A clear division of power was visible; the men, Wall Street Journals tucked under arms weighted by leather briefcases, strode down the sidewalks, cleaving paths through the gaggles of female secretaries wearing floral dresses, white pantyhose, and sneakers, gossiping and delaying the beginning of another dreary day. There were almost no black men to be seen, even fewer black women.

  I was one of the suited women. I tied silk scarves at my neck, pulled my hair back into a neat bun to expose dainty gold hoops, wore nude pantyhose and business suits in neutral colors, skirts no more than two inches above my knee. Briefcase, trench coat, New York Times—I blended in.

  My mother taught me how important this is—the art of blending in. I would watch her getting dressed in the morning in designer suits, silk blouses, gold brooches, pearl earrings. In this outfit she would cease to be my mother, instead becoming the Radcliffe B.A., President and CEO of Rose Advertising. It was only when she came home, kicked off the heels, changed into some pants, and put on some old jazz record that she became more accessible. From college on, Mom was always one of a few, the only, or the first black woman; she told me that it wasn't as if no one noticed her, but she'd simply figured out how to dress, speak, and carry herself as if there could be no doubt as to whether or not she actually belonged. I never questioned her—never thought about the consequences of blending in—because she made it seem as if I had no choice.

  During my senior year of college, Mom tried her best to convince me to join her at Rose Advertising after I graduated. “It'll be the greatest opportunity in the world. It's your birthright,” she insisted. After several months of fruitless visits to the career services office, I almost agreed. But the thought of returning to St. Louis made me keep trying, until I finally convinced a large commercial bank that four years of last minute papers and barely-studied-for exams qualified me to be a research coordinator in their corporate finance division. Eventually Mom agreed that I'd actually found a good job on my own and bought me five suits, ten shirts, three pairs of shoes, and a jewelry box full of appropriately conservative necklaces, earrings, and pins. I added a few of my own touches over the years but never strayed from the basics, and every morning I put on a well-cut, tastefully accessorized suit of armor. At night I came home, took down my hair, turned on the stereo and felt like me again. No one at the office ever saw my toenails painted black, my pierced navel, the circular tattoo in the small of my back depicting the sun in six stages of eclipse.

  I arrived at work over half an hour late, soaked with sweat and flustered. After trotting through the streets to the bank, I paused for breath at the massive doors to my building before pushing them open to feel the initial sting of frigid air. The lobby was quiet—9:07am—everyone was already at their desks. I hurried to the Media and Communications department on the 38th floor, furtively walked to my cubicle, and turned on my computer so its dark screen wouldn't betray the fact that I'd just arrived. No such luck. Marie, the only other black senior analyst on the floor, emerged from the ladies room.

  “Linda's been looking for you,” she said, leaning against my desk. I could smell the strong perfume she had on and hoped it would wear off as the day progressed. Marie reached up, adjusted the scarf tied securely under her chin and ran a hand over h
er short, careful hair. As usual, not a strand was out of place.

  “You know what she wanted?” I asked.

  “No idea,” Marie bent forward to examine what files I was opening on my hard drive. “I had to tell her that I hadn't seen you all morning.”

  “Thanks Marie.” She must have loved that, I thought as she shrugged and sauntered off. I'd been promoted to senior analyst a few months before her and she'd decided that it was because I'd made sure to befriend the right people, which was only one of the reasons she didn't like me.

  I walked down the long hallway, wondering what had convinced the decorator to use only shades of gray: ash-colored carpeting, pearl and taupe cubicles, steel accents. Under the long rows of fluorescent lights humming along the ceiling, the large space looked cold and stony as a mausoleum. On the right, the row of glass-enclosed offices was full, the vice presidents on their phones, bent over their desks or staring at their computers. I'd never caught any of them procrastinating—reading a magazine, staring out of the window. On the left, the secretaries all had coffee on their desks and were talking loudly to one another. As I passed they called out, “What's doing, Dana?” “Cheer up, hump day's the worst.” “Hot as shit outside, eh?” “How's that fine man of yours?”

  In her glass office, Linda was on the phone but she waved me in and ended her conversation. Her skin was even more sun-tanned than usual, probably from another evening at the tanning salon, and her hair was a brassier shade of blond. She seemed to spend a lot of time and money on her appearance—exercising every day, constantly changing her hairstyle, buying new clothing—but this only accentuated the coarseness of her features, her large pores, her thick, short limbs. She cocked her head and frowned as if reading my mind. I smiled brightly to dispel any doubt that I was thinking anything that wasn't work-related.

  “I missed you this morning,” she said, now smiling but with slightly raised eyebrows.

  “Train trouble.”

  “Oh that's right. You come in from Brooklyn.” To Linda Whitelaw, Brooklyn was too far from the Upper East Side to be considered a part of New York City even though I'd explained to her that my commute rarely took longer than 20 minutes. “Anyway,” Linda went on, “I just wanted to check on the Southstar report.”

  “I'll have it to you before lunch,” I said.

  “Excellent, Dana. Very good, then.” She dismissed me with a wave of her manicured hand.

  Back at my desk I flipped the page on my desk calendar to August 28th and, as I had the past three days, made a small red X on the page to indicate the heat wave. Then I picked up a blue pen and wrote 44, then a green 289, and a black 1548. I was often asked what the color coding was but refused to tell. Not that it would have been particularly interesting to anyone other than myself, but it was private, to protect from strangers who would have thought me odd for choosing to make a careful and deliberate record of the weather, days until my birthday, days until my mother's birthday, and days since she died. Why would anyone understand why the calendar was such a minefield for me? The beginning of the year was horrible because the holidays in November and December, which I spent by myself or with somebody else's family, depressed me well into January. Valentine's Day was usually anti-climactic. Then I'd get a respite of a few months until Mother's Day in May. The summer would crawl by, my mother's birthday and the anniversary of her death having started it off in June. A few months until my birthday at the beginning of October, then the holidays would start all over again. I'd simply given in to this cycle and written in the painful events as official holidays.

  I slowly turned the pages of the calendar to June 3rd. Four years ago on this date I went to my mother's funeral in St. Louis, and this was the last time I'd seen the house that I'd lived in from kindergarten through high school—first with my mother and father, then Mom alone, and finally Mom and Gerald. After the funeral I'd flown back to New York and tried to forget what I'd left behind. Now I had thirteen years of belongings to sort out and I couldn't put it off any longer. I bought a plane ticket to St. Louis for that weekend, then called Gerald and left a message on his answering machine. “Hi, it's Dana. Sorry about yesterday. I can't ever seem to be normal talking about Mom. I'm coming in Friday night but I'll just take a cab from the airport.”

  Just before lunch I gave Linda my credit report, which she handed back with only a few minor changes to my five year projections. The figures were a little too low and she complained that I was always too harsh with my future predictions. “Even for a bank there's no need to be quite this severe. Although I applaud your research,” she told me.

  Linda had a point; I was absolutely thorough and I cut no slack, even for longtime clients. I picked over annual reports looking for signs of deception. I studied Moody's and Value Line analyses for any perceivable weaknesses. I looked for potential causes of industry fluctuation, indicators that the company could lose competitive advantage, character flaws in the principal officers. I was relentless; this was the most enjoyable part of my job. I'm a Libra, the balancer, which, when you look at life away from the office, makes sense. But when I did a credit report, I felt my astrological sign was a fluke, an accident of my having been born two weeks late. I was meant to be a Virgo, the analyzer, and if not for my pre-natal stubbornness, my desire to stay put inside my mother's safe womb, I would have been.

  It had taken me all afternoon to spread the balance sheet and income statement numbers again and I'd just given Linda the new projections when Will called me. “We still on?” he asked.

  “Yup. I'm psyched to try this place.”

  “So you still want Vietnamese?” he asked.

  I sighed, “I said I was psyched.”

  “You have been known to change your mind lately.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Remember last Thursday? We left the first bar because the crowd was too conservative, the next because the people were too young, and the last because you saw that woman you hated from college.”

  “That was different. We're just talking about dinner, here. Besides, it was fun.”

  “That night was supposed to be just drinks. And Leo and Maya didn't seem to like schlepping all over the City.”

  “That's my word. You're copying again.”

  “As long as we don't get to the restaurant and have you decide you feel like pizza.”

  “Okay, fine. But Will, you always talk like me. Schlep sounds so weird coming out of your mouth.” I could hear him light a cigarette, exhale with a faint whistle. “And you smoke every time we talk on the phone,” I said.

  “Now that bugs you too?” I could hear him blowing more smoke although I could tell he'd turned his head away from the phone to do it.

  “So what time?” Will continued, ignoring my lack of response.

  “Seven, out front.”

  “Cool.”

  I replaced the phone and reached a hand up to press my fingers against my rigid neck muscles, closed my eyes for a moment when the phone rang again. I figured it was Will since he'd often call me back immediately after I'd hung up the phone, saying, “Hey, Dana. Forgot to mention . . . ,” and proceeded to tell me something that definitely could have waited.

  I picked up.

  “Dana. Sean. Guess what?”

  It was exciting, still exciting, to hear his voice. “How could I, Sean. I never know what you're going to say these days,” I said carefully.

  “Oh come on. You underestimate yourself, as usual.”

  “Underestimate?” I asked incredulously.

  “No matter. Anyway I had to call you with the big news.”

  “All right. What is it?”

  “Okay, so Pace came by this morning. Pace, you recall, is the Director of Research.”

  “I recall.”

  “Okay, so Pace came by to give me my quarterly review. And then he offered me the plum spot of vice president.”

  “Which you readily accepted. Congratulations.”

  “Declined. Know w
hy?” he asked.

  “I'm sure this is going to be good,” I said, but was not at all surprised when Sean proceeded to tell me he'd be joining a venture capital firm specializing in telecommunications companies. I used to wonder why research didn't bore him more since he was such a risk-taker.

  “You're going to love playing with fire every day,” I told him.

  “That's one way of looking at venture capital. I prefer to think of it as bringing a young company to life. Helping it through its infancy.”

  “Infancy? God, you sound like a proud parent. Why didn't you think of this before?”

  “Oh, but I did. I had it all planned.”

  “And I thought you hated to plan.”

  “That was before.” He seemed unsure of what to say next.

  “You mean before your recent maturation,” I said before he could continue. “The whole, ‘But Dana, I'm truly ready to be an adult, now' thing.” There was a long pause during which I realized I should get off the phone before the conversation descended into the usual recriminatory bullshit. “Look, I should go. Linda's been on me lately.”

  “I know you must be getting a kick out of this, but I'm really quite serious, about everything,” Sean said before I could hang up.

  “Just tell me why I should believe you?” I asked.

  “There's no good reason,” he sighed. “You have no good reason to trust me. You've already expressed that.”

  I could hear the frustration in his voice, but I didn't care. “What did you expect?” I asked. “For me to drop everything and get back together with you just because you say you're ready to be an adult? Because you think you're ready to commit to me?”