Frank pushed her toward them, where they stood at the door—Stan, a girl with glasses like sideways teardrops, a crowd of students behind them. “Go on. Sinbad ain’t going nowhere.” She went forward and Stan pulled her arm.
“It’s not a long walk,” he shouted to the rest of them. “That’s the point, right? It’s not even that far, so we should be able to go there and do what we want.”
They marched down the sidewalks of King Street, passing the stores where she had bought her shoes and clothes, and then kept on past Calhoun. Faces bobbed around Marietta, feet scuffed into the backs of her shoes, and she saw the lunch counter ahead of her quickly. Stan, the girl with glasses whom he called Loretta, and Robert sat down at the only three seats available, and the rest of the students stood behind them. Marietta edged toward the wall when she saw the white boys with short hair and thick jackets come in from the street.
The waitresses stood with arms folded, staring at Loretta, and she said, “I’ll have coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich, please.” They walked to the end of the counter where the coffee urns stood, and Loretta stared at the menu, her mouth turned up in a small smile.
Stan said, “Look, more vacant seats.” The white people sitting at the counter had gotten up and backed away from the students. “Sit down, guys, maybe we can get some service now.”
When more of the students sat down, pulling their overcoats around them on the seats, the white boys moved in behind them, and shouting began to echo off the mirrors and menu and linoleum crowded with moving feet. “I’ll serve you, nigger! Here, have some a this!” Ketchup dribbled like blood onto Stan’s head, and through the arms Marietta saw a lit cigarette slide into Loretta’s straight, fine hair—the glow flickered for a moment inside the nest of hair before she brushed the back of her head and turned. Marietta felt the cool wall against her back and stopped breathing, thinking that the boys near her would stretch out hands for her throat, but she saw two of them look straight past her, their eyes not stopping at her face. She stayed still, and they reached for the girl with a black purse and red coat next to her. They ain’t see me; I ain’t no student. They see my headwrap, they see me, she thought, and slid against the wall toward the short swinging doors at the end of the counter. They ain’t see me. Robert didn’t hit the boy holding someone next to her; his hand stopped and he stood still. “Chicken nigger boy, ain’t you gonna help your girlfriend?” the white boy said. “I’ll help her out the door.” The crowd shifted and turned, and Marietta pushed through the doors into the kitchen.
The two older men by the stove stood staring at her and at the noise that massed at the door. They were shiny brown with grease and sweat, white aprons clear at the chest with oil, and when she ran past them to the alley door, open and cold, they turned back to the shouting she had let in.
Marietta walked quickly back up to Frank’s, stilling her face before she went inside, and when Frank and Sinbad looked up at her, she said, “They sitting in. I try to get back for lunchtime—they got plenty student for stay there.” She went straight to the back and rearranged the boxes in the supply closet, but the paper napkins were the same as the ones she had seen on the counter beside Stan’s arm, splattered with blood-red ketchup, and she closed the closet door, sat on an overturned bucket to breathe regular again.
Frank came to the swinging doors—she heard his feet—and she jumped up to wash her hands at the sink. He went into the closet for the large can of pepper and said, “So they okay? Downtown?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe police come.”
“Why you come back by yourself?”
She looked at him. “I don’t want for sit next to nobody. I ain’t want for see no white people.”
He nodded. “Maybe not now,” he said. “Come on in the front and make some coffee, huh?”
They came again, after they got out of jail, Stan and the others, but this time when they tried to talk to Marietta Frank told them, “Naw, now, you all got out of school to do this, and you gon have to go back sometime. But Marietta gotta stay here and work. I can’t let her go all the time.” She stayed behind the counter as much as she could, letting Sinbad serve and smile.
“The courts got it now,” the students said. “We have to persist.” Stan and Robert sat at a table alone sometimes, hands moving across the salt grains and fingers bending. She couldn’t hear what they said, but she watched them while she turned the fish and steamed the rice, and she watched Sinbad sit more and more often with the pretty, red-mouthed, girl named Gloria. She came in the afternoon, before she went to work at the airport, carrying a bag with a blue uniform edging out. But she never wore the uniform to the store—always narrow dresses with belts at the waist, and her collarbone making hollows below her shoulders.
And at night a girl named Pat came to buy shrimp. She carried books, but Marietta didn’t know if she was a student—maybe high school, her face was so soft and her smile so small.
Loretta was polite to Sinbad, but she stayed close to Stan, and every weekend the students gathered and made more plans, but Stan didn’t ask Marietta to come along with them. He and Sinbad rarely said more than “Hey,” and Marietta gathered thrown-away newspapers to see what Stan and the others were doing.
The newspapers said that the Negro student revolt was dangerous and should be stopped by any means—“the knife, the gun…” Marietta watched Stan’s face for wounds, but only his eyes were hard, and his lips thin and curved as fish-knife blades themselves.
The older men still argued about what the students were doing, and when Marietta served the women who came in the early evening, the maids and housekeepers and cooks who had already served one meal and were getting ready to cook another, they waited by the case, talking to Frank. Their purses hung from hands clasped over their stomachs; they rocked back and forth on their heels while she fixed their orders, saying to Frank, “Wash my hands down they throats three times a day. I chew up her baby’s food on my plate. Hang up her draws inside so nobody can’t see em drying. And she talking about, ‘How can you let your girl sociate with them trouble-makers?’ But she can’t sociate with me at the restaurant. Chew up them babies’ food every day and night.”
“Ma’am,” Marietta said, handing her the wrapped fish, and the woman said, “Thank you, honey. I fixing to cook this fish right.”
His grins were wider than ever all spring, but never for her. He forget he ever say something for me, she thought. He ain’t see nothing but my hand give him the plate or money. He juggle them two girl every day. Sinbad watched them like Big Johnny checked the tide—Gloria and Pat. She saw him in the alley one evening when she went to put the trash out, and he stood with Gloria near the doorway that led to his apartment. Gloria began to come by the store at odd times, though, and one summer night she came long after dark.
“See? Sinbad, you better tell this girl,” Gloria said. He looked around quickly from the table, where he sat with Pat and her friend. Frank looked up from the register—it was near closing.
“I ain’t playing, nigger,” Gloria shouted. Her curlers were covered with a thin scarf, and her lips were still red, but her knuckles were pushed into her sides so hard that Marietta could see how soft her waist was. “You better tell her you was with me last night.”
Sinbad stood up. He looked at Pat. “Yeah, I was,” he said, and then he walked past Marietta and through the double doors to the back.
“Nigger, get back in here,” Gloria yelled. “I swear to God, you better tell her something more than that!” Frank went over to her; Pat was smiling at the floor, and Marietta was starting for the back, too, when the curlered Gloria rushed past her. “No, not you, don’t you go in there. I need to see him alone.”
But she came back out after a few minutes, hollering still, and said, “He ain’t there.” She stood in the street, looking up at his windows, and after a long time she went away. Pat and her friend left then, and a few minutes later Sinbad came in through the front door, smiling at
Frank. “I had to pick something up at the store, man,” he said, and Frank frowned at him.
“Don’t get business mixed up with foolishness,” he said. “You ain’t bringing in customers much as you bringing in trouble.”
When July heat came and people slept behind shades in the afternoon before coming back out at night, the store was quiet for a few hours after lunch. Frank went out to buy supplies one afternoon, and Marietta pinched the heads off shrimp in the back, thinking that she’d been in Charleston almost a year. Stan and Robert had gone to Orangeburg, to protest there, and then to Columbia. Sinbad said, “Good—less competition,” and he and his friends sat drinking Coke now. She dropped a shrimp, shook her head, and went to pick it up where it had slid across the floor near the swinging doors. Sinbad’s voice rose above the rest.
“She got a nice ass. African ass.”
“Only a yellow nigger care about a African ass,” someone said. “Only a skinny nigger like you.”
“I care! The behind the best part.” The one named Gene laughed.
“Yeah, but who in hell gon touch that? She six damn feet tall. Sinbad only one tall enough.”
“She exactly your height, then, Lijah. Fit you perfect.”
Marietta’s forehead was hot, but she stayed bent there, near the wide crack. Her fingers touched the shrimp shell.
“Uh-uh,” Lijah said. “I don’t want no woman looking me dead off in my eyes.”
Sinbad said, “She got nice eyes, too. You notice that? Naw, you wouldn’t. So black they almost purple. Plum purple.”
“Sinbad, nigger, you talking about a woman could have purple teeth for all I know. She ain’t smiled or spoke since she been here.”
“Man, all women beautiful. Gloria got three little freckles on the side of her nose. You ever kiss a woman side of the nose? Naw, Lijah ain’t that smart. All women got something beautiful on em somewhere. You gotta look.”
“Look all you want—you ain’t gon see no freckle on Marietta.” Lijah laughed. “Nothing show up on her.”
She slid herself back to the sink and threw the knife into it so that the metal clanked. She dropped the bucket hard, and when she came out with the shrimp, Lijah said, “Man, them crackers was talking some scary stuff to that kid on TV, the one at the movie theater. I ain’t playing.”
“My aintie sick,” Michael said when he showed up alone to deliver corn. “My wife take care for she.”
He wife? Marietta thought. He so young for marry. When the corn was inside and she had started shucking the ears, Michael said to Frank, “I bring more corn Thursday you want.”
“Yeah, we boiling em up,” Frank said. “What’s wrong with Miss Pat?”
Michael frowned and took the money. “She just ail. She seventy year old.”
All day she thought about Miss Pat, about the first day she had brought Marietta to look for work and said, “Look, Sinbad, she see you face fe true. She look right in you eye.” Michael was married—he never talked to her anyway, but she missed Miss Pat’s short laughter and pats on her arm. Why did she want Sinbad to talk to her? Last year, all her life before, she had run into the woods to leave she-she talk behind, those voices, but this wasn’t the same. She wanted someone to laugh and tell her about going to Memphis and New York and everywhere else.
His breath puffing above her eyes. That warmth bathing her forehead for just the one second when she had turned around that first day—she remembered it, and when she lay awake listening to the voices in the street and the cars, she was angry with herself. That was a foolish thing to want; it was what all those other girls, curlered Gloria, the red-nailed waitresses, the college students, wanted. Aint Sister’s voice grumbled in her ears: “Pinkie girl fast too much—follow she hip and not she head.”
But she couldn’t stop thinking about what his lips would feel like, not on her mouth but above her eyebrows, whispering. She traced the ridges and knew it didn’t matter—she could never buy a dress, fit her long feet into a pair of shoes right for a woman, stroke paint onto the dark skin below the hairs she rubbed now above her eyes.
He had looked at her eyes, though. And nighttime—the dark… “Nighttime is the right time,” Lijah always said. Sinbad couldn’t see her face in the dark. She remembered the white man—the haint?—at the landing, and suddenly wondered if he had really seen her face clearly on the water. She traced her brows and the rims of her eyes.
Waiting and watching every day, she saw that it would never happen, and she wondered how he’d ever looked close enough into her face to even see her eyes. Whenever Frank was gone, she waited, but Sinbad counted money or stacked boxes in the back, or laughed at a table. Gloria was happy again, her hair stiff and perfect, her neck arched to the side when she came in after lunch. The fuzzy girl, Pat, with furred sweaters and hair cottony-soft at the edges, was happy, too, when she stopped by after dark.
But Sinbad kept his top lip down too far when he smiled now. Marietta saw. He was quiet when the men laughed and slammed hands on the tables; he rolled his eyes when Stan stopped by to say that the courts were going to order the municipal golf course to integrate. “That should make every nigger happy,” Sinbad said. “We all play golf, right?” He want to go, Marietta thought. He restless.
“You look like hell,” Frank told him one morning when he came in with his clothes rumpled, the same pants and shirt as he’d left wearing the night before. “Lijah?”
“Nigger had me at a party,” Sinbad said sleepily. “They don’t never give up.” He went straight to the back and didn’t hear Frank say, “We gon have a party today with this storm coming.”
Marietta joined him at the sink when she had made the coffee, and their knives flicked elbow to elbow. Storm coming, she thought. He think I the hurricane expert. Maybe he scared.
When they were finished, Sinbad said, “Tell Frank I’m a go upstairs for a couple minutes, huh?”
“He gone to see the doctor,” Marietta said. Sinbad rubbed his eyes. “You didn’t hear bout you favorite thing?” she asked, keeping her voice steady.
“What?” He spoke into his palms.
“Storm off the coast. Maybe come today.”
He laughed. “Just what I need. I don’t even care today. Float my butt out to sea and rock me to sleep.” He turned and went toward the alley door.
Frank was gone for hours, and Sinbad didn’t come downstairs. Marietta made only a few leftover ears of corn, the pot of rice, and some mullet and shrimp. Even by lunchtime only a few customers had come, and they were distracted by the radio warnings. Long after lunch, Frank came back from the doctor’s and said, “You feel that air? I seen a damn tornado in the sky, like they supposed to have in Kansas. Just like a finger reach down and run along the ground. Never seen anything like that in my life.”
“Not like a wind?” Marietta asked.
“Like a tunnel, I guess, just picking up and wrecking. But it was gone real quick. They don’t know what might come next, so people suppose to stay in. Where Sinbad?”
“He run upstairs for change clothes.”
“Well, tell him don’t drive tonight, just in case.”
“What the doctor say?”
“My pressure up. He said to stop eating. Stop smoking. Stop everything. I’ma go home and take these pills he give me. You and Sinbad lock up, huh? You can go home, cause ain’t nobody gon be in.” He took the mullet and wrapped it in paper. “I eat whatever I want, not what nobody tell me. Goddamn tornado could hit me and I’ll be chewing something good.”
Marietta fixed two plates of food and waited. She washed her face at the little sink, went outside to the glass to look at her face, and pulled her headscarf straight. Last September, the rain and wind, and nothing for Sinbad to look at but her. She got the plywood out, just in case the radio said the hurricane was coming ashore.
When he came down, he had washed; she saw edges of wet near his ears, and he stroked his little mustache. “Where everybody go?”
“I tell you storm com
ing,” she said. “Frank see a tornado hit over there where he been to the doctor. He gone home, and radio say stay inside.”
“I’m tired a these damn hurricanes. What this one called?”
Marietta, she thought. “I don’t know,” she said. “Just stay inside, like last year.” She said it right, looking into his face, and he brought his thumb and finger together again and again on his chin, smiling.
“That’s right. You the hurricane expert.”
She brought out the plates and set them in the corner booth. “You don’t eat yet, huh? Here.” She set a beer down by his plate.
“What’s this? What I do?” he said.
“Nothing. You tire today,” she said, and made herself sit across from him. She ate carefully, sweating down her back; she hadn’t eaten in front of another person for so long.
“Thanks,” he said, cutting his eyes at her, and she saw he knew.
“I gon clean up now, cause Frank tell me lock up and go.”
“He did. Okay.” He drank the beer, smiling, watching her empty the coffeepot and wipe down the counters. In the back, she looked out the alley door and decided not to put the trash out today. The alley was deserted, the bricks damp, and the sky lighter. This storm not nothing, she thought, but I ain’t tell he that. Since I the expert.
Splashing water on her face again, she stopped to fill her chest with air. “Go on,” she whispered to herself.
“I fixing go,” she said, putting the key on the table. “You stay?” She waited till he stood up and then walked to the door, watching in the glass when he followed her. His shoulders were wider than hers, only their edges and the top of his head showing behind her. Her back was cold. He stood close at the door. “Ain’t we got something to take care of?” he said.
“What?”
“Don’t we have to put up the wood?” He laughed.
“Up to you.” He play now, like he do, she thought.
“You sure you want to take the chance and walk home? You the Carolina girl, the storm professor.” His voice had come closer, changed now to the dipping-softer one she’d heard him use so many times before.
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