Four Spirits

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  “Do you see trouble?” she asked in her soothing, sugarcoated voice. “Once the lights down, you won’t be able to tell black from white. They all right. Let it go.”

  “Not a month gone by, and four black folks beat bad. Who they think they are, coming here?”

  The kid at the bus stop—he thought, but did not remind his wife—why had the white boys got him? He wasn’t demonstrating. Just wrong place, wrong time. They didn’t have nothing against that boy. And the newspaper! Hardly acted like anything happened. Assault, murder! That’s what white folks did and got away with. The newspaper needed to scream.

  Underneath his wife’s warm hand, TJ’s fingers twitched. At the demonstration, his fingers had picked up first a rock, then a chunk of brick. He remembered the thunk the brick made against the side of the policeman’s helmet. The man had stumbled forward, but he hadn’t fallen; he’d regained himself and kept running. Like a soldier, his buddy running beside him had reached out to steady him.

  TJ had snatched the bottle from the wino next to him, thrown it dead at the back of the buddy, but the man hadn’t flinched. And then a dog was at TJ’s elbow, pulling off a patch of his denim jacket with his teeth, but TJ had jerked away from the snarling teeth, melted into the mob running at his left.

  “Look at all these pretty clothes,” Agnes said. “There’s Matildy Jones with some handsome man. Look at his tie. I believe I’ll get you a pale blue tie like that.”

  Agnes was always trying to get TJ into a long tie. He smiled at her, patted his bow tie. “I so used to wearing bow tie to work, I don’t think I’d feel right something hanging down my chest.”

  “That’s why you need one, man. So you know you off work. Would you please order me a 7UP?”

  TJ turned to get the attention of the young waiter. Lord, he was skinny. Skinny as a girl, not a muscle on him, long curled eyelashes. He most made TJ sick to look at. He wished there was a sassy young girl waiter he could call to come get their order.

  “I can’t miss my music man,” Agnes bubbled on, voice as pretty as a clear stream, “even if I have to come to a nightspot.” She leaned toward him confidentially again. “Now you have that whiskey like you like.”

  JUST GLANCING THEIR WAY, Cat thought nobody would know Don was her brother. He might be her date. Or possibly Stella’s date, but just as likely her date. Don was sitting closer to her than to Stella. Don was looking good. Cat could tell he was glad she’d made him come. They were integrating a public facility, and it was perfectly painless. Nobody gave a damn. People accepted them as though they were just like anybody else.

  Everybody was sitting down at their tables, except the waiters, and unless you looked close you wouldn’t even notice she was sitting in a wheelchair.

  The lights pulsed again, and Cat’s heart pulsed high in her throat, seemed to jump with little feet off the top of her stomach and hit the back of her throat. She hoped she wasn’t going to get sick with excitement. This would be entertainment like they had in New York, first-class, famous entertainer, but here in Birmingham, here on Morris Avenue. And most white people were too stuck-up to notice who’d come to town. They were missing out. But not Cat, no, she was here with her group. She loved jazz, and she loved the blues.

  When the electric lights of the Gaslight started to flick off and on, the voices rose in excitement, as though everything was transposed up a half step. Cat used to love that moment, when they lived in the country, when on the next-to-the-last hymn verse, the Baptist piano would crank up a half step in religious fervor. Now when the lights flickered, her heart transposed up a half step and she thought I’m here, I’m really here. I’m sipping beer, I’m wearing a low-cut dress, I’ve got on a choker necklace, and I look like an adult.

  A thin waitress, no it was a waiter, came swivel-hipping through the chairs right to them. He had the most beautiful eyelashes Cat had ever seen.

  The waiter looked at Don and said, “Last chance, you want anything extra?”

  “I think we’re fine,” Don answered rather stiffly. He held his beer glass with both hands, barely glanced at him.

  “Once the lights go down,” the waiter said, looking sideways, “that’s it.”

  The lights flickered again.

  “See what I say,” he said. “Y’all sure handsome.” But he wasn’t looking at them. “We glad you here.”

  “This is my sister,” Don suddenly said.

  “And who she, elegant lady with the pretty pink cummerbund?”

  Cat heard Don snuff through his nose. He reached over and picked up Stella’s left hand, displaying her little diamond. “She’s my fiancée.”

  “Excuse me,” the waiter said, and he turned around to leave, then looked back. “Y’all enjoy.”

  When Don let go of her hand, Stella thought, Don’t.

  Because he’d touched her, her hand felt atomic, like radium throwing off magic. Maybe her hand had turned green, like the painted numbers of a radium watch dial, maybe her hand resting on the table was glowing green. She couldn’t move it. She didn’t want to move it. But he had let go.

  What would it hurt if she and Don held hands? Would Cat care? Would Cat feel left out? What about Darl? He’d never know. Cat wouldn’t tell. It would be just for tonight, in the Gaslight. Why not?

  Stella knew she was panting, her breath too quick. Don had only touched her. That was all. No, he had said “She’s my fiancée.” Those thrilling words. And Darl had said them in the cemetery. And then he’d gotten her a ring, a little diamond, the next day. They hadn’t had time to think. She and Darl had looked at each other and were glad that the other was whole and untouched. Alive. Stella and Darl. Without a scratch. Out of danger. Darl had sold the Vespa and gotten her a ring. But she’d never liked little diamonds. She’d wanted an opal, a large opal full of mysterious blue and red. An opal like a window into the heart of things.

  The club lights crashed into total blackness.

  Quickly, Stella felt her left hand, inert on the table, with her right hand. Would it be extra warm? Not glowing green but somehow warmed to an abnormal temperature. No. Her left hand was like a lump of ice.

  A spotlight jittered crazily across the dance floor. It swooped around, searching. The room held its breath. Suppose it was Don she was engaged to and not Darl? Darl seemed remote, as though he didn’t exist anymore.

  Don was an artist. Darl kissed her and kissed her, but he never said he loved her. He never touched her breasts, as though he was ashamed that they were small. Darl wouldn’t be caught dead in a colored nightclub, but he’d taken her to a cemetery. What was there to love about Darl except his body? Plenty.

  When Darl played the organ, his left foot reached down the foot pedals to unleash a sound that hooked the base of her being. That was where he was coming from—a glory so deep that it made Stella’s body vibrate. But that sound was hard to remember here in the Gaslight.

  The spotlight found a black man, wearing dark glasses, standing beside the piano. The room shrieked, erupted in applause as thunderous as a rock slide. Maybe the building was coming down on them. The spotlight widened and narrowed, widened and narrowed like a crazy eye pupil.

  Darl might think he could read her mind. But he had no idea of who she was.

  Stella let out a little yelp.

  There was enough diffused light, so she could see Cat, grinning from ear to ear like a Cheshire cat, slowly clapping her feeble, noiseless hands. Making the gesture of normal. But Cat was enjoying herself; yes, Stella thought, she truly was. Her handicap might be visible to Stella, but Cat had forgotten it. At the Gaslight, you forgot who you had become; you reentered the old cave of the essential self; you knew your defining desires.

  The musician held up just one hand, like a cop stopping traffic. A hush fell, total quiet.

  He seated himself, and with what seemed a hundred hands, out tumbled a spiritual so raucous it was like the eruption of a volcano: Joshua fit the battle of Jericho. Jericho, Jericho—

  And
the crowd leapt to their feet, clapping, dancing in place.

  Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho.

  Joshua fit the battle of Jericho,

  AND THE WALLS COME TUMBLIN’ DOWN!

  They stamped, and clapped, threw back their heads, yelled it out, closed their eyes, sang with all their might, faster and faster, stretched hands held high shimmying down the air till suddenly it stopped—they all stopped. No more piano. They dropped breathless into their seats. They’d won. They’d done it. Fit the Battle.

  Walls down, broken stone at their feet.

  Then low and slow, quiet and heartbroken, the pianist played “Blueberry Hill” and sang. His raspy voice, so raspberry sweet, made love to the world.

  Uh-huh, un-hum. That was all Stella heard, uttered so low. Uh-huh. So low so as not to interfere with anybody’s hearing. The listeners each wrapped their arms around themselves, rocked themselves. Stella could see tears squeezing from some of the eyes, men and women.

  Then they were safe. Their spirits had walked into the shade. Time to loll. Time to let go all the tension, just loll on back in the chair, sprawl. Relax and enjoy. Ecstasy, regret, pain, yes, they’d visit there again while he played and sang. Again and again, all through the night. Already they yearned for the yearning. How a body did want.

  Aye, yi, yi, yi, yih: Stella remembered her mother singing unaccompanied to an ancient black woman at Helicon. Blessed girl, the old woman had said, her hand light as a wisp on Stella’s head. But she had not been blessed.

  The houselights gradually returned to low, so a person could see the drink on the table, maybe order something to eat. A light snack.

  From the dim light the shapes of people emerged. There were two college boys—Freddie and Marshall—from Birmingham-Southern across the room. There was the handsome black couple: he with an opalescent blue tie, she in Irish green. Of course he was not Martin Luther King, but he resembled him, only taller. After studying the handsome man and the beautiful woman, Stella knew: that was what it looked like to be in love.

  Maybe she wasn’t in love with Darl, but she had promised. You do what you say you’re going to do. Especially about a serious matter. About marriage. And when Darl reached with the toe of his left shoe for the low notes of the organ, he raked her soul; those notes harrowed hell and found the buried silver box where her soul was imprisoned.

  She glanced at Don, but he was totally absorbed in the music, a faint flush across his skin. He had such nice hair, loose blond waves, fluffy hair. Cat’s was straight as a stick and simple brown. Don had beautiful posture, even when he was relaxed. Don was here, but where was Darl—just a thought, a memory, a little ring like a manacle on her weakest finger.

  People had started to dance. Some with a cushion of space between their bodies, hands and arms cocked high. Some plastered against each other;a man’s hand practically on a woman’s high ass. There was an older couple, dancing as close as anybody but with their hands above the waist, he in a bow tie, she in a flowered jersey skirt—purple—and matching overblouse. The woman could have worn the purple-flowered jersey to church, but now it was embellished by big drooping, glittery earrings. The couple moved in perfect synchrony, he steering. Stella thought she had never seen such sure, quick feet as those of this ordinary, aging black man. Ah, a fancy pivot, and his wife followed in purplish perfection, though her feet were already swelling out of the pumps, rising like bread where the smooth, black shoe left off across the front of her toe.

  Cat leaned toward her brother. “Ask Stella to dance,” Cat said in a stage whisper.

  But Stella wasn’t embarrassed. She was glad. Perhaps they would look as glamorous as the handsome man who looked like Martin Luther King and his beautiful partner in emerald green. Perhaps she and Don would seem as perfectly paired as they of the aging expert feet.

  Don looked at her. “Would you like to dance, Miss Silver?” He spoke with just an edge of irony, as though to suggest he would now play the role of Ashley Wilkes, in Gone with the Wind. But there was always a twinkle of kindness behind Don’s irony. His eyes invited her to play the roles with him.

  “Sure,” she answered, but she knew she was a poor dancer and felt afraid.

  Since Don stood up, she stood, too. Suddenly the music slowed and the lights lowered again. The effeminate waiter was coming toward them.

  “Let’s dance,” Don said to her, almost urgently, and held out both hands.

  As soon as they were on the floor, it was as though he had walked onstage, as though he were acting a part and knew it perfectly. With his back held beautifully straight, he pivoted and took her as a partner, moved her, all in one gesture, so that she stepped back without a thought. They were dancing to perfection. She closed her eyes. How was he holding her? Appropriately. It couldn’t have been better—she followed, and he made her graceful.

  Blessed was how she felt. And she remembered Helicon again when the old black woman—Aunt Charlotte!—touched her head and blessed her. She had never imagined that all four members of her family would be taken, and soon. When the ghost comes, Boo-hoo-hoo. Don’t be frightened, Boo-hoo-hoo. But of course she had been frightened, and for a very long time. In the woods at Helicon, she had fired a pistol. She had run through the woods with her arms stretched up, saying, “Who, who, whooooooooo?” Never imagining that death never stopped for only one.

  But here they were, dancing on Morris Avenue, living, this moment alive, on a down-low street while the traffic rumbled above on the viaduct, dancing at the Gaslight, dancing among colored people. An inclusive world. Birmingham healing. Birmingham swaying into the future, tremulous as a soap bubble. Engaged.

  Maybe she could heal, with her city, too.

  THE LIGHTS WENT LOWER. Cat willed her brother to kiss Stella. Just on the cheek would be fine. Just a little brush of the cheek. But she felt sure he never would. As surely as she would never rise up from her wheelchair, he would never let his lips brush Stella’s sweet cheek.

  Maybe Stella could be her sister, closer than a friend. While she watched them dancing, Cat wished hard.

  The table seemed desolate without them. Cat wanted there to be a candle on it. But candles would be a fire hazard. Once the Baptist church had had a banquet in the basement and there had been a big brouhaha over whether to have candles. Cat and Don had voted For. “A vote for romance,” her brother had said to her, looking into her eyes with that mixture of irony and affection that she so much adored. As though choreographed, they had raised their hands to be counted:yes, for romance. And their side had won, but the minister had overruled the majority. “It would look like a honky-tonk,” the minister pronounced. Just once. And the matter was settled.

  Honky-tonk, a word heavy as a club and needed like a club to smash down onto the Baptist table just once: honky-tonk. No discussion. “No candles,” the plump, clean-shaven minister had said, and part of Cat’s religious life had grown dimmer. Naively, Cat had thought the argument had centered on whether candles would be a fire hazard before he blurted out:honky-tonk. The word had shocked her as much as if he had said masturbation. Or, miscegenation. She had seen her brother flinch.

  Sitting in the Gaslight, Cat loved the sway in the music, so soothing. Her brother looked like a movie star. The perfect affect—slightly aloof—of a handsome star. Stella was a little clumsy, but the way Don looked at her! Like a star looking at the leading lady. The lights lowered again. Cat swayed her upper body with the music. It was “Blueberry Hill,” again, slower, full of gravel, sung more seductively than ever. The pain of the world was in that man’s throat, and the remedy for it, too.

  WHEN LIONEL PARRISH HELD forbidden Matilda Jones, beautiful Matilda come south from Newark, New Jersey, to be with him, he asked Is this sin? Lionel Parrish prayed while he danced, her long body against him. His prayer was sincere, shimmering and deep as the color of his tie:Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Most Holy One, for letting me live this moment.

  THEN A VOICE WAS in Cat’s ear. S
omebody was releasing her wheelchair brakes.

  “Le’s you and me dance,” said a voice at her ear, and it was the thin waiter, his cheek beside hers. “Want to?” His face so close. She could see the mascara on his eyelashes, curled back in a perfect roll.

  She nodded. She couldn’t speak.

  He bumped her over the bricks—she could tell it was hard for him—and then onto the smooth polished floor. She’d never rolled over such a surface, like gliding. Like a table knife gliding through a plate of warm fudge candy, she moved. He pushed her, riding in the chair, away from himself, out at arm’s length, brought the two of them back close, moved the two of them together in perfect rhythm to the music. It must be like ice-skating, Cat thought. He arced the chair to the left, to the right, tried to put a curve in the movement. People gave them space. No pity, no scorn in their faces. He was finding out what the chair could do. Sometimes the waiter put a snazzy quick check in her gliding, when he reeled her out or pulled her in.

  He left her still and danced his thin body around in front of her, reached out his skinny wrists, took her hands and pulled her to him, pushed her back. His face was impassive, masklike, impersonal.

  But she sailed; she closed her eyes and sailed.

  Don couldn’t believe what he saw beyond Stella’s shoulder, beyond the elderly black man, who had scowled to see him, now embracing his plump wife as though she were a cumulus cloud streaked with purple: transported beyond anger, the man was dancing with his wife. Beyond them, beyond everyone, Don saw Cat. His sister, seated, was gliding among the dancing couples. His sister out on the floor in her chair, moving, being moved to the music. Her eyes closed, her face, bliss. Suddenly, her partner twirled the chair, beautifully, in a slow circle, the spokes of the wheels throwing out spangles, the crowd giving room. Eyes closed, oblivious to spectacle, Cat was smiling. Dancing the impossible dance, on Blueberry Hill.