Four Spirits

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  He nodded. She wasn’t heavy. She was light as a wisp. With her fingertip, she swabbed up the last of the sugary cheese sauce sticking to her plate.

  “My mother let me do this,” she said.

  “Do your aunts?”

  “No.” She smiled. “I wouldn’t think of it.” She licked her finger.

  If this were New York, he’d be mortified, but it was only Birmingham. Actually, he was pleased with her. She was childishly, eccentrically, at ease. Maybe that’s what she was demonstrating.

  WHEN THEY WERE ABOUT to leave the restaurant, a young woman dressed in red stood up beside a table in the gloom.

  “Stella?” she asked. And then, “I thought that was you.”

  Then she was embracing Stella, in her faded pedal pushers and checked shirt. This woman was dressed appropriately, in a seductive sheath dress with a soft cowl collar dipping toward her breasts. Her dark hair and eyes were somehow fiery.

  “This is Ellie,” Stella said, glancing at him out of the embrace. “We talk philosophy together.”

  “Really?” he said.

  “Where’s Buford?” Stella blurted.

  “This is our friend Neil,” Ellie said.

  Neil stood up from his chair and shook hands. He, too, had a smoldering, fiery eye. A good match, Jonathan thought.

  “Buford said for me to take her to see Tom Jones, while he was away. Great eating scene. Have you seen it?”

  “It made us hungry,” Ellie said and tossed her head.

  “We’ve been out at Miles College,” Stella said. “I teach there. Jonathan and I just met.”

  “Did you?” Ellie asked. She seemed troubled.

  “He’s a brilliant pianist,” Stella explained. “Ellie’s an actress, and she sings.”

  “Your aunts will be worried about you.” Ellie smiled mysteriously. Jonathan thought he’d never met a more seductive woman.

  When he offered Stella his arm to ascend the steps to Twentieth Street, she scampered up like a goat by herself.

  In the Thunderbird, Stella said, “I guess I wasn’t dressed appropriately for Dale’s Cellar. I’m sorry. I should have changed.”

  Jonathan asked her about Ellie, and she said they’d ridden the bus to town together the day JFK was killed. Then she said, “Everybody falls in love with Ellie. It’s her warmth. Me, too.”

  Jonathan replied thoughtfully, “But isn’t she asking for trouble—going on a date when she’s married?” He carefully kept condemnation out of his voice.

  WHEN THEY APPROACHED the aunts’ house, Stella asked him just to turn the nose of the car toward the driveway and let the headlights shine up it, that they always came and went by the back. It would alarm her aunts for her to come in the front.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I had a good time.”

  No physical contact whatsoever in her farewell. Skimpy words.

  A short-legged white dog trotted down the driveway to meet her, and she stooped to pet his head. She petted the dog passionately, like a child, and he wondered why he was stirred by her. It was her oddness, maybe. It made him feel less odd. Jonathan wished he’d thought to call her Pheasant one more time. His hand stroked the mohair seat cover. The wool, though fine, could not be nearly so soft as the wing of a pheasant.

  Dear Self,

  TONIGHT, THIS ROOM AT MY AUNTS’ SEEMS LIKE HOME.

  I have found an anchor for my soul. It’s in the music I love to hear, though I cannot perform it well.

  Who makes the woeful heart to sing?—to use the phrase of an old Methodist hymn. It’s not Jesus. Another Jew. I blaspheme. Jonathan. But the heart, my heart, must beat erratic, if it is to beat at all. I embrace my irreverence, my perversity, my failures, my lopsidedness, that I may be lukewarm, that I may blow first hot, then cold. My inconsistency and uncertainty. The depth of my sorrow and the height of my hope.

  I can love. And I do love. Jonathan B. Green. Let me write his name again: J. B. Green. J. Bernstein Green. Jon Green. His name is verdant as the earth. His hair is like flame. I’m crazy as a jaybird.

  And he?

  I know nothing of what he feels. But how could he play the piano like that if he didn’t know my heart? Subtle as my mother, but masculine. Perhaps he doesn’t know he knows me. Even the pressure of his hand when we shook hands—perfect.

  I am thirteen years old! Not the age of a college graduate at all. Emotionally, I am thirteen, throwing stem glasses on the floor on a dare! But emerging into the beginnings of my adult life in spite of that. What was I in college? Nothing but a giant child. So sheltered and innocent I was disembodied.

  I think of the Negro waiters made visible by their white coats. I relish the image of the interior of the restaurant. Its darkness ignites me. I could lick my finger again to see if any of that grainy cheese sauce is left under the nail. I think of Manet’s boudoir portrait of naked Olympia, lounging on a sofa, the dark servant behind her melding with the dark background. Flowers emerging. She staring boldly out of her frame. My eyes and ears are opened; my tongue has awakened—shrimp, horseradish, sweet, warm cheese and cherries. Ought to give me a bellyache! But it won’t. I savor every mouthful again.

  Before, I have been all mind. Smart enough, but so stupid.

  I pause to read again what I’ve written.

  AH, I SEE WARNING flags: I am enchanted by his music (as I was with Darl). I don’t really know him, nor he me (as it was with Donny). Too much faith and trust on my part in the Don relationship, that anyone could love anyone of goodwill. Too encompassing! I have grown more cautious. Simply more sensible, perhaps?

  But Don did/does speak to my soul in his own way: his kindness. Kindness made colorful with wit. I needed Don’s kindness, his willingness to sacrifice almost everything—I saw it in his devotion to Cat. And Darl would have died to protect me. I wanted a chevalier.

  Is it so easy to transfer love? As from Darl to Don?

  It is if you’re thirteen.

  It is if love is only need.

  But love is pleasure and delight, too. Wine and warm cheese sauce.

  Make me fly!—that’s what the little girls begged Timmy Beaton to do.

  And I will require it of any husband: make me fly. And he may require the same of me.

  Will I someday, an old woman of sixty, look back on these ruminations and muse, “How on fire I was then.” Shall I ask, “And who was this Jon Bernstein—was that his name—Jon Green?” And “Did she (I) notice that Jon is a sort of variation on Don, and that Don starts with D, like Darl. And whatever became of him? Of them?”

  But tonight I am not that forgetful creature of sixty. I am young and growing into my maturity, albeit belatedly. I shall have my life. My hand closes on it as surely as my fingers grip this pen. As surely I took up a cocktail fork this night, in a dark and seductive restaurant. (After I made the mistake of first using my digits and trying to cover up my lack of sophistication.)

  How do I dismiss the warning flags? Darl and Don—who else were they, besides transcendently musical and supernaturally kind? Was there some lack in them as well as in myself? Darl was not weaned from his mother. His parents. And Don?

  I don’t know.

  We reached out to each other on such a sad day, when Kennedy was killed.

  I feel sad again. And Ellie? Is she troubled for herself or for me?

  But I will not. I will not go sad.

  I must note, briefly, that I was a coward today. I left the building when the bomb threat came. But is that being a coward? It’s sensible. Probably Cat would not have stayed behind if I had not announced I was in love with Jonathan Green. She was refusing to abandon whatever was left of her ship. But why had she carried the gun to school in the first place? Her purse was heavy with it when we left the house.

  I hope Cat will forgive me my fickle heart—or is it head?—my betrayal of Don. Ellie would.

  Probably Cat will understand it all better than I do. I should never have told her Jonathan was hunchbacked and then dismissed such an
attribute as a mere figment of my imagination. I cringe now at my cruelty.

  SO SIMPLE, BLEAK EVEN—the interior of a practice room. Stark and bare. I go through a door. We are just a piano and two thin people in a bleached room. One male with red hair and skinny arms. One female, flat-chested, with blond hair. It is only the music itself that is glorious and complex. Encompassing and fulfilling.

  Perhaps Jonathan is really only an emblem. Not the person himself but the promise that there may be such a person for me. One whose essence speaks to mine. He inspires in me a faith in life. Life has treasures. There are fine restaurants where adults sample new food, are curious about each other, without compulsion.

  Independence, not engagement. Perhaps not even marriage. Just feeling. Nothing official. Ellie is my friend who understands the power of passion. She is not a college student settled in marriage. Not represented by a white blouse and a tweed skirt. She is a woman aflame with red.

  What will come of my rush of joy? I feel incandescent, not red. And my flare of brightness has its dark streaks. I look at Don’s paintings hanging around me in this room. They interest me. I feel sympathy for the soul that emanated them. But I am detached. Kind Don, prescient Don, who gave me permission in advance:You can stop this anytime you want.

  Tomorrow I think the students and Christine are planning a sit-in. Gloria, my confidante, implied as much. I want to know Gloria, short and busty, I want to know all of them better. I have to work tomorrow. I can’t possibly participate. I would stop them, if I could. Would I have the courage for protesting if I could go? I don’t have to decide that. But I should quit this switchboard job. I’ve finished school and I should move on to find work that represents me. That promises the future.

  Now I’m going to fold up this loosely woven summer blanket and put it away on the closet shelf. And, Don, forgive me, I must take down your paintings in this room. I will set them on the floor, turn their faces to the walls. The mind is a room. On my blank wall, I will imagine the bold stare of Olympia, engaging the world. Naked and unafraid.

  For now, good night, dear old Self. I’ll dream of pheasants, softly fluttering. Raising their heavy bodies into the air.

  Saturday Morning: Edmund

  ON TWENTIETH STREET, IN THE SKIMPY SHADE OF A LOAD-ING ZONE sign, little Edmund Powers plunked his shoeshine kit down across the street from the Tutwiler Hotel. It was Saturday morning. Might be some businessman would want his shoes shined before lunch. Edmund knew they could get their shoes shined inside the hotel, but might be they’d want their shoes bright by the time they walked in the door. Not much business happening for a Saturday morning.

  Edmund spied Mr. No-Legs swinging down the street, dressed in his good, solid blue suit. Can’t shine his shoes, Edmund thought. When the man passed, Edmund said politely, “Howdy-do,” and Mr. No-Legs answered him in kind, not breaking the rhythmic placing of hand mallets before him on the sidewalk and swinging his body through. Edmund had heard Mr. No-Legs had lost his legs in Korea, shot off by a bazooka.

  More white women out shopping than any white men doing business, but sometimes men had Saturday meetings; sometimes a group would go laughing into Joy Young’s. Egg Foo Young, Eddie read on the restaurant’s window. Well, he knew what eggs tasted like, anyway.

  Oh, no, here came a madman. A sidewalk preacher. His mama had said, “Now, you want to testify at revival, or in church—that’s fine. But folks that preach on the street corner—they got a screw loose, and I don’t want you acting anything but normal when you out in public.” She said it was dangerous to be a standout.

  But Edmund could feel the pull of it—just standing on the street corner, opening your mouth, and proclaiming the Lord. He might be able to save every soul in the city, he himself. Folks just needed to hear. It wasn’t the people in church; it was the people out of church who needed to hear the Word. Over in Five Points, there was a statue of Brother Bryan, kneeling. He wasn’t in Bible clothes. He had on an overcoat, and in one hand he held a hat with a crease in the crown. He was all white, even his clothes and his hat. The strangest thing about him was that he was praying looking up. Edmund had always been told to bow his head in prayer. It seemed disrespectful to look right up into the face of God.

  If Edmund’s mama would let him preach on the street corners, and he saved every soul in the city—who knew? Maybe right beside Brother Bryan, they’d make a statue of a little colored boy in all-white marble, kneeling, with his head respectfully bowed.

  Here came the madman, wearing a sandwich board, written on with Scripture. The word Blood was printed extra big and in red. Full of curiosity, Edmund moved his shoe kit closer. Close by, another man with a sling sack of newspapers was getting ready to call out. Maybe some Mr. Big would buy a newspaper and read the headlines while Edmund shined his shoes. The man would hitch up his pant leg and then rest his shoe sole on the box handle, which doubled as a foot platform. Mr. Big would rest an elbow on his cocked knee and open the newspaper he’d just bought. When Edmund was finished with one foot, the man would step down with that foot, and change sides.

  Edmund was proud of his little box kit. Years ago, his big brother Charles had made it in Manual Training class, sawed the boards to the pattern, nailed it together, sanded it, and varnished it with shellac. It had taken all semester. Edmund wanted to work with his hands, and that would be a hobby, when he was a preacher like his beloved Reverend Shuttlesworth. It was a good hobby for a minister; Jesus had been a carpenter.

  To look busy, Edmund took out his strips of flannel; he had a black one and a brown one, and an oxblood one. He’d shake them out and fold them more neatly, be industrious. The sunshine was hot on his head and shoulders. If he pretended he’d just had a job and now he was straightening up his office, he might get just the right amount of attention.

  In a loud voice, the preacher asked, not of anyone in particular: “Which are you? The wheat or the tares?” He stopped to let his question sink in. He spoke to the empty air, or maybe the blue sky above. He was a big man, poorly dressed in wrinkled tan clothes. “There’s a grrrrrreat winnowing coming. The chaff will be blown away by the breeze.” He pulled his unbuttoned shirt together across his T-shirt, as though he could feel a wind. “A breeze is coming to Birmingham. Watch out, brother! Watch out, sister! Are you washed in the Blood of the Lamb?”

  The newspaper vendor—a small weasel man in comparison to the hulking evangelist—turned his back to the evangelist and called out just as loudly: “Extra, extra! Read all about it. King arrested in St. Augustine.” The little vendor wore a flimsy cap with a bill, like a painter’s cap.

  “I say unto ye,” the evangelist shouted, but there was nobody there but Edmund. “There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.” He pointed toward the sky. “There’s a fiery furnace where God makes steel. He will cast down all pagan gods. Vulcan will tumble from the mountaintop, and Red Mountain will open and gush blood and rust.”

  Edmund couldn’t help but look south to see if Vulcan was being uprooted, but Vulcan stood serene and shiny, holding up his arm, his head in the clouds.

  The newspaper vendor yelled again in a high-pitched voice that demonstrators had been jailed in St. Augustine. He took off his paper cap to smooth his hair straight back from his forehead and temples, which were large and shiny. Receding hairline, Edmund thought. He felt knowledgeable.

  A few people walked by on the other side of the street. Two men went inside the Tutwiler, and three white girls went in the Tutwiler Drugstore. A brown man in a matching suit with a felt hat shuffled by.

  “King jailed in Florida,” the weasel vendor screamed. Edmund had promised Reverend Shuttlesworth that he would go to jail, but he never did quite get the chance.

  “Ten cents, only a dime. Read all about it.”

  Edmund had a dime, but he knew the vendor wouldn’t like it if he bought a newspaper.

  “Repent of your wickedness,” the evangelist exhorted. Edmund thought, But I ain’t done nothing. �
��Sin is a woman with jade in her navel! Sin is mixing of the races! Sin is eating blood and meat!”

  The evangelist began to back up toward the vendor while the vendor backed up toward the evangelist. Edmund hoped there would be a collision.

  “Good news! Good news!” the evangelist shouted. “Jesus is the good news!” A businessman in a suit walked right past all of them, the evangelist, the vendor, and Edmund, but the hulking evangelist said to Mr. Big in an ordinary voice, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” He actually held out his hand. Edmund knew what Brother Bryan would do. Once he’d given a beggar the overcoat off his back. “Brother, can you help?” When he wasn’t fired up, the big old evangelist sounded old.

  Mr. Big just kept walking. Edmund wondered if he should give the evangelist a dime, but before he could decide, the evangelist turned around and said to the vendor, “Brother, can you help?”

  To Edmund’s surprise, the vendor dug into his pocket. “I reckon so,” he said. “What’s the news from heaven?”

  “It don’t look good for this city.” The evangelist shook his head sadly. “It’s Sodom and Gomorrah. Can a hundred righteous be found? Can fifty righteous be found? Brother, can ten righteous be found?”

  The vendor didn’t answer.

  “Well,” the evangelist went on in an ordinary voice, “what’s the news from earth?”

  It was as though they were in church doing a responsive reading, or singing a duet. Edmund just crouched quietly beside his shoeshine box, listening.

  The newspaper vendor said, “Seems like you got the bad news, and I got the good. They got that big nigger troublemaker in jail.”

  “That right?” the evangelist said.

  “Wanna buy a paper?” the vendor asked. “Read about it?”

  “Yeah,” the evangelist said, and he gave the vendor back his dime.

  Edmund wanted to laugh. Then both men turned their backs to each other and hollered out at the same time: “Extra, extra!” and “Repent! Repent ye today!” Edmund did laugh, but he tucked his head down, so nobody would see him laughing at two white men. They yelled their lungs out for a few minutes, and then they both stopped.