Four Spirits

by Sena Jeter Naslund

She didn’t like that little gaping at the small of her back—maybe she’d say that. But maybe then they would never send a sample again. She concentrated on positioning her yellow hat to just the right angle of tilt, toward the front.

  Ryder stood behind her in the circle mirror and adjusted his tie. Like a big portrait picture: them in the mirror circle above the dresser. Could have been painted by Norman Rockwell on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. Title: “Almost Ready for Church.” If Norman Rockwell did paint them, he wouldn’t notice the bruise under the makeup. With her best smile, she looked up at her husband. He put his hand on her shoulder.

  Ryder had fair hair, rather skimpy really, but his once-broken nose was always interesting to look at. His face was scrubbed pink, and he reminded Lee of a cowboy, with his nice high cheekbones. His eyes were a little narrow and slitty, though. And his teeth, yellow with smoke, were going, but they didn’t show in the mirror picture.

  “See,” he said. “Done you good.” And he turned and swaggered into the living room.

  While she watched his back in the mirror, bitter bile rose from her stomach to her throat. He shouldn’t of reminded her. Forget and forgive. You got to forget to forgive. He put a blight on a new day.

  She made the ugly bile stop before it came into her mouth. Swallowed it down. The stomach fluid surprised her. Although it had never happened to her before, she recognized that vile fluid invading her throat.

  This was her true feeling for her husband, and she knew it. When the mirror no longer held his image, she mouthed words. Not a sound:

  “I hate you.”

  She liked to see her mouth working the words. How her lips and tongue shaped them. Her mouth started wide and got more narrow with each silent word: I hate you. She narrowed her eyes so they were slitty and mean.

  She told herself more, just the shape of it, not even the quietest whisper: “I’ll never hate anybody as much as I hate you.” What a long, secret sentence he couldn’t hear except for little pops of her lips. The pops were like code.

  She reached for her compact, swiped the pressed powder with the puff, and gently applied more powder on her cheekbone.

  LATER, IN CHURCH, when they were singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” when she glanced at Ryder, she hated him again and added contempt to her hatred—the way he belted out the song like he owned it: “marching as to war.”

  Him? War? No. He just liked to ambush innocent niggers waiting for the bus and all his buddies with him. His rage at niggers controlled him. He didn’t even run his own life.

  Once he had said, Only job a nigger’s good for is wiping the street with his tongue, and then I wouldn’t step on it. And that was nothing but nasty talk. She knew it was nasty and there wasn’t any need to be nasty that way.

  Truth was, only person he dared to beat up by himself was his little wife—somebody could say that of him, and it would be true. Only person he dared to beat by himself was her.

  “ ‘Rise up, O Men of God’ ”—she sang the new hymn just as loudly as he did. Pity was, that’s what he believed about himself, that he was the right hand of God. “ ‘Have done with lesser things.’ ” He was just a lesser thing. She made her voice even louder than his, but still pretty, like she was singing to God himself.

  What she wished for with all her might and knew could never never be: that she, Lee Jones, would have done with Ryder Jones. Someday.

  Someday. Someday. Someday. Those words chimed like the bell of truth.

  But that could never be. They belonged together.

  Right in the middle of the song, she stopped singing. Her mouth was open, but no sound. A sigh slid right down the inside of her nose and out into the air.

  Martini: Christine and Gloria

  IN THEIR BOOTH AT THE ATHENS CAFE AND BAR, GLORIA said quietly to Christine, “Well, I missed out then, didn’t I?”

  “You might of missed out this spring. There’ll be more.”

  Christine felt as though she would jump out of her skin if she didn’t get some calming alcohol into her blood. Too much had happened. Too much done and too much not done. She wanted to storm into the streets, shout for people to turn out of their houses, march again. She’d even embrace the savage energy of the fire hose, let it spin her again.

  Gloria sipped her 7UP. If she had anything with caffeine in it, then she couldn’t get to sleep. She tilted her green eyes toward the ice in the glass and said in a low voice, “But Reverend King said it was a victory. Said it on national TV.”

  “You see any big change?” Christine’s nerves jittered as though they wanted to play the bones. She could almost hear the sounds of bones clacking together in some artful hands.

  “He said there was a committee—white store owners, A. G. Gaston—” Even to herself Gloria sounded pious and naive.

  “While Shuttlesworth in the hospital, King just took over.” Christine waved her hands over her drink, seemed to clear back the air. “King made a deal. Now he move on. Shuttlesworth try to tell him, ‘Brother, don’t just scald the hog on one side, you got to scald him on both sides.’ ”

  Despite Christine’s gestures and intense voice, Gloria was half listening to the jukebox playing Elvis: “Love me tender, love me true…” Gloria thought Elvis was the prettiest white man she had ever seen a picture of. But why didn’t anybody say he was pretty? The idea felt like her own secret observation, even though everybody had seen the same pictures.

  “What I don’t understand”—Gloria looked full in Christine’s eyes. Yes, she could look somebody in the eyes if she started out about how she didn’t understand. “Why King want to shut down?”

  “He white-collar. Shuttlesworth blue-collar. That’s the difference. Birmingham a stepping-stone for King. He fail in Georgia ’cause police play it smart and cool there. Wasn’t nothing to put on national TV. Not no fire hoses and dogs. Not no Bull. King got to have his national coverage, and Bull Connor played right to him.”

  To Christine, Gloria’s green-eyed stare meant she knew nothing at all about how the world worked. Gloria’s innocence and ignorance mesmerized Christine. Just books, poetry—that was all good little Gloria understood.

  Christine explained, “And King got to stop now ’cause Birmingham out of control and fighting back. Those guys on the sidelines? They ain’t studying no nonviolence. Gandhi just some foreign nigger far as they care.”

  “King made everything work in Montgomery.”

  After Gloria uttered this undeniable fact, she waited to see how far it would take her. She felt that she’d dropped a stone down a well and was waiting for the splash.

  “Let me tell you something,” Christine began. “Montgomery ain’t Birmingham. This steel town. Wasn’t nothing here before the Civil War—Elyton Village, that’s all. Birmingham grew up violent. Nothing plantation ’bout steel city. We more like Pittsburgh than Montgomery.” Christine fished out her green olive and ate it. “And we so poor here. Black folks so desperate.” But Christine knew that was inaccurate: very few were desperate for justice; most were afraid, worn down, cowed.

  “Didn’t we win something?” Gloria wondered how a martini would taste. “You want to come to Sixteenth Street with me some Sunday?”

  “I might. Got to be at Bethel if Reverend Shuttlesworth preaching. You want to come with me?”

  “Didn’t we win something?” Gloria asked again.

  “Yeah. Now educated, rich Negroes talking to rich white folks.”

  Gloria knew it was half true: they at Sixteenth Street weren’t much involved with Shuttlesworth’s organizing till King came to town. Sixteenth Street was the biggest and the richest of the black churches in Birmingham. Their class of colored wanted to negotiate. Here was the other half of what King had done: in the black community, he had smoothed over between those who wanted to wait and those who were already acting. Gloria’s idea of victory contracted, became smaller, seemed more clear and hard-edged. Now well-off blacks were talking with working-class blacks.

 
; In Gloria’s wide-eyed silence, Christine heard the conclusion to her own thought. “Remember this,” Christine added, the idea calming her better than gin as she articulated words: “This be about class—it not just about color.”And that class thing could scare Washington more than race, she thought but did not say. What if poor white was to realize they really in the same boat with poor black? They just fool themselves thinking they in the boat with rich white.

  Boldly, Gloria asked Christine, “How come you talk black when we in here?”

  “ ’Cause I’m home, and I mean what I say.” Christine sipped her martini. Sometimes Christine thought she didn’t half know what she was thinking till she heard herself saying it to Gloria. Nonetheless, mockery rose in Christine’s throat. “ ‘Didn’t we win?’ you asking me.” A mean energy surged in her arms and spine. “What you mean we? I didn’t see any Gloria Miss Green Eyes marching, did I? I miss something?”

  She wanted to hit Gloria, slap her hard, her and her cello, into reality.

  At Fielding’s

  “DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE HURT, MISS SILVER, after these demonstrations?”

  Mr. Fielding, the store owner, paused at Stella’s switchboard desk. He spoke almost accusingly, as though she and the college students had caused the disruptions.

  Actually, they’d done very little, and Stella felt ashamed. Only a few people, like Marti Turnipseed, had dared to align themselves with freedom. Tom somebody, too—very quiet, inoffensive-looking young man.

  Many of the students thought Marti and Tom were freaks. Stella didn’t. She made it a point to get close to them. To say hello. Pretty feeble on her part. But she was scared. She was doomed if she was kicked out of school. She had no future without school. Without a scholarship.

  “Countless people beaten up.” The store owner answered his own question. “Countless separate incidents of violence.”

  Stella wanted to please Mr. Fielding but she didn’t know the right answer.

  “They weren’t directly in the demonstrations,” he went on, alleviating her ignorance. “Four innocent colored people nearly beaten to death. People ought to be more upset. One was just a yard boy waiting for the bus. That’s what came of demonstrations. Did you know that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are people too upset out there to study? Classes going on smoothly?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They both stared down from the mezzanine at the customers on the first floor. The store wasn’t crowded, but there was a smooth stream of people coming through the front doors. The women usually stopped at the lighted accessories counter, or at least glanced at it. The men went on. Stella liked to see young couples come in together. Mr. Fielding seemed like an eagle surveying his territory.

  “This could be the beginning of revolution,” Mr. Fielding went on with his musings. He needed somebody to listen. Why not the switchboard girl? “It could come to revolution,” he told Stella again.

  “It seems to be over. For now.”

  “People need to pray. People need to think about loving their fellow man.”

  “I agree,” Stella said firmly. So that was where Mr. Fielding stood. It was hard to tell. He seemed angry. No, he was deeply worried. He cared about what was happening in his city. It wasn’t just a business matter for him.

  She cared, too. But what could she do besides smiling at Marti Turnipseed?

  “You’re going to graduate next year. Then what?”

  Because his white hair swirled like cake frosting, Stella remembered her mother’s words from long ago:frost the sides of the cake first, then the top. That was the sequence. Not advice she needed now; Aunt Krit made and allowed only plain cake in her house. No frosting. You could have a dish of canned peaches next to the cake.

  Then what? Mr. Fielding had asked her.

  Stella wished the switchboard would blink, the telephone would ring, and she’d have to answer it. That was her job, first and foremost.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe go to graduate school. Get a master’s degree.” She thought, He doesn’t own me. He’s been good to me, but he doesn’t have a right to ask about my future. It’s mine.

  “I see you’re engaged.”

  “Yes, sir.” A wave of nervousness swept over Stella. She could not think of her engagement without thinking of danger. She your fiancée?

  “When’s the wedding?”

  “We don’t know. We have another year of school.”

  From the balcony, she peered down through the glass top of the accessories counter on the main floor at a row of purses. Part of her job was to watch for shoplifters.

  “That’s right. You’re smart to get your education. You’ve got a pretty little diamond there.”

  He surveyed his store. He didn’t sell diamonds. The jewelry in accessories was set with rhinestones. He was glad not to be responsible for the quality of the diamond in Miss Silver’s engagement ring.

  In the shoe department Mr. Sole, a full head of gray hair, a gray mustache, was kneeling before another customer. Mr. Sole started at age twelve in the grocery department; he would have worked for the Fieldings for fifty years, come one more. Mr. Fielding intended to present him with a check for $1,000.

  A thousand dollars, the phrase was hefty, had a certain thud to it. “To show appreciation,” he would say, each word held tightly between his lips for fear that the phrase would burst at the seams. Mr. Fielding feared he might weep at the presentation banquet. How could he possibly convey the way Mr. Sole’s devotion moved him:$1,000. To show appreciation.

  Mr. Sole was Chinese. How in the world had he ever come to Birmingham? Mr. Fielding looked at the young woman sitting at the switchboard. Lucky. She had her whole future ahead of her. Who knew what she might become, might do? Would certainly feel.

  “Where’s it from?” he asked of her diamond. “Jobe Rose? Bromberg’s?”

  “Kay’s,” she answered.

  He sighed. “Bromberg’s is probably the oldest family business in Birmingham. Maybe Alabama. You get quality there.”

  Mr. Fielding watched Mr. Sole laboriously rise from his kneeling before the customer. The soul of the shoe department, new employees always joked. But it was true. Someday soon he would leave Fielding’s, and all Mr. Fielding would be able to do would be to hand him the check, to say the words: “A token of our deep appreciation for fifty years of faithful service.”

  And then Mr. Sole would leave them. Mr. Fielding didn’t know where Mr. Sole went to church, but he was sure he went someplace.

  “Get your education,” he said again to Stella. “That’s something nobody can ever take away from you.” He turned to go back to his office behind the switchboard. “Don’t get mixed up in any demonstrations. You won’t, will you, Miss Silver? Don’t ruin your future.”

  “No, sir,” she replied. But I could, she thought. I can do whatever I want to.

  After Business Hours

  “STEEL WILL DIE IN BIRMINGHAM,” PHILIP FIELDING SAID to the inner circle. “It’s dying now.”

  Twelve businessmen, in immaculate and stylish dark suits, silk ties hanging from their necks, stared at him, then nodded. Permission given to continue—and permission had to be given in this group for it to exist—Philip Fielding went on.

  “We are the future in Birmingham—commerce and education. Particularly medical education.”

  Could he have continued if one face had darkened with disagreement? He must persuade them to change, but he could not dissent. No maverick—certainly not himself—could break away howling for integration. No, they had to move as a collective body, and yet the circle must be widened.

  “Why do I say steel is dying? Why is that important to us?” All of them talked with the steel men, knew their attorneys as friends and neighbors, but the Inner Circle was a mixture of Christians and Jews who owned other businesses. “Foreign steel, cheap labor, no unions abroad. The unions are too strong now here in Birmingham. We all know that. But the economy of this c
ity will rest more and more on us. To flourish—we must have one thing. What is it?” He saw anxiety rise on their faces like the mercury in so many thermometers in a heat wave. Quickly, he said, “Solidarity.”

  Everyone relaxed. The word was mumbled with approval. Now was the time to make the herd take a step. He spoke not from his heart—which was thoroughly conservative and loved most the South of his own childhood—but from shrewd necessity.

  “With solidarity amongst us, we can afford to talk to them. I’ve already talked with A. G. Gaston. He’s a reasonable colored man. A businessman. He’s not pushy. He’s as polite as any one of us. Most important he’s a very successful businessman. He’s respected in his community and we can offer him respect. I respect him. Bull Connor is an embarrassment to us.

  “The idea, gentlemen, is to open negotiations. Then we can take time to plan our course. Then this rioting and demonstrating in the streets will end.

  “A colored boy on his bicycle was badly beaten, nearly killed. He was nowhere near a demonstration. We don’t want that, gentlemen. We’re not for violence. Violence is the worst thing in the world for business. They call themselves nonviolent—and some of them are—devoutly so—but we have loved the peace and harmony of the races all our lives. We are the ones who really treasure and who really can create a nonviolent atmosphere.

  “Couldn’t you sit here just the same, if Mr. Gaston were sitting on my left, and maybe Mr. What’s-his-name, who made a fortune in black beauty products, with him sitting between, say, Jerry and Mike? You could do that, couldn’t you, Jerry?”

  Jerry chuckled nervously. “I don’t quite know what we’d talk about,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Fielding exclaimed. “It’s the tone we’re working with. We’re accessible, in the right atmosphere. We’ll work up to issues.”

  Mike said, “Everybody could talk about his church.”

  “Yes,” Fielding said, “or temple. How is the atmosphere amongst people we’re working with? We could talk about that. What do people fear and hope? Both sides. We can share that.”