by Mary Monroe
“What’s your name again?” I yelled.
“Levi. Levi Hardy,” he replied with a warm smile, letting himself into his room.
“Thank you, Mr. Hardy,” I told him, my voice cracking. The food was so potent it immediately filled my entire room with a delicious smell. I set it on the foot of the bed, then sat down and picked up the phone. “Rhoda, I’m sorry. It was this man from across the hall dropping off something,” I slurred.
“Well since you take your good old time returnin’ calls, I figured I’d keep tryin’ until I reached you. I just wanted to wish you a happy holiday.”
“Thanks, Rhoda. I’ve been meaning to call you back, but I’ve been so busy looking for a job.” My eyes rested on the vodka bottle sitting on the window ledge. “How is your family?”
“Oh everyone is fine. Muh’Dear, Daddy, and Aunt Lola came down. They’re goin’ to be here until the weekend,” Rhoda said cheerfully. “They all said to say ‘hi’ to you.”
“Didn’t Uncle Johnny come?”
“Uncle Johnny. He’s in jail,” Rhoda whispered.
I was blind drunk, and my head was spinning like a top, but I was still able to talk coherently. “My God. What did he do?” It was so good to hear from Rhoda. Already I was feeling better. I shuddered when I looked at the window that was still open. If Rhoda had not called when she did, or if Mr. Hardy had not come by and knocked when he did, I probably would have been on the ground by then. In a whisper to myself I repeated one of Muh’Dear’s frequent phrases, “God’s trying to tell me something.” I had not eaten since before noon. I took the foil-wrapped dinner out of the bag while listening to Rhoda.
“He was drinkin’ with Uncle Carmine over at Antonosanti’s the other day. Well, Uncle Carmine had to leave, but he told the bartender to keep servin’ Uncle Johnny. You know my uncle when it comes to free booze. He got so drunk he fell off the barstool and hit his head. He gets up with this bloody knot on his forehead and has the nerve to ask for another drink. Well, when the bartender turned him down, Uncle Johnny picked up a chair and threw it at him. Uncle Carmine is my daddy’s oldest and dearest friend, but I believe Uncle Johnny’s goin’ to ruin their relationship. Daddy tried to talk Uncle Carmine out of it, but Uncle Carmine had Uncle Johnny arrested.”
“Poor Uncle Johnny. That man has such a miserable life.” I sighed.
“Yeah. Too bad he’s not happy like us.”
“Yeah. Too bad,” I responded. I started eating the dinner. It was a huge plate with all the trimmings, even corn-bread dressing and cranberry sauce.
“I can’t talk long. We’re goin’ to sit down to eat in a few minutes. We’ll talk again next week.” After Rhoda hung up I sat looking at the phone and eating. Then I looked at that window again, thinking how close I had just come to jumping out of it. I set my plate down and went to close it.
I called up Muh’Dear and just as I expected, she was out. I finished my dinner and turned on the television. My buzz was still pretty strong, and my head was hurting like somebody had hit me with a brick. It helped when I walked around. But the room was so small, walking around too much meant I had to walk around in circles. To avoid doing that, I walked across the hall to Levi Hardy’s room. He was glad to see me.
“Come on in, sister, and make yourself at home!” He grinned, opening the door wide. Gospel music was playing softly on a clock radio on his dresser.
Unlike my room, Levi had personalized his. His Bible was on the nightstand, and there were several pictures of various members of his family next to it. His mother looked a lot like him, but the three brothers he pointed to didn’t.
“Me and my brothers had different daddies,” he confessed, like he had read my mind. He seemed eager to talk, so I let him ramble on for a few minutes without interrupting him. “I’m my mama’s outside child by some other woman’s husband. Ma’s folks didn’t accept me. When folks treat you different, you know, not as good as the rest of the family, you grow up with all kind of mixed feelin’s. I been on my own since I was sixteen, fifteen years now, and I still don’t know what to do with myself. I spent a few years on a merchant.” Levi paused long enough to catch his breath. “One of my shipmates talked me into movin’ to Erie, where he’d help me get a job in one of the mills. A week after we got here, me expectin’ to live with him and his folks ’til I got situated, boom. He had a massive heart attack and was dead at thirty-eight. I had a few dollars on me, so I figured I’d kick around here for a while, rather than go back to a home in Georgia that wasn’t a home. I just got hired over at the Davies Body Shop the other day. I swear, sometime it be like God intervene at the right time.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I told him. “I only have my mama and an aunt somewhere in New Jersey.” I occupied a wobbly chair by his window, and he was on his bed with his short legs crossed, with a bottle of beer in his hand. “Thanks again for that nice dinner.” I smiled. I could still feel the vodka dancing around with my brain.
“Where your man at?” Levi smiled, scratching his chin and giving me a thoughtful look. He had on a dull brown suit, a dingy white shirt with a stiff tie, and a pair of brown loafers with run-over heels.
“Um…in the military,” I lied. “We’ll probably get married when he gets back from Vietnam,” I added.
A sad look replaced Levi’s smile. “He a lucky man,” he muttered, finishing his beer.
I told him about my futile job interviews. He told me more about places in Erie I’d probably enjoy, like his favorite bar, the nearest movie theaters, the best soul food restaurants, and his church. “I hope I get a chance to take you out before that soldier boy come home.” He grinned, raising one brow suggestively.
“Maybe,” I mumbled, rising. “Thanks again for the dinner,” I continued, moving toward the door.
“You ain’t got to run you know. I don’t know about you, but this is a lonely night for me, and I am enjoyin’ your company,” he said, leaping up from the bed with his arms outstretched.
“Well…”
“There’s a gospel program comin’ on Channel Seven in a few minutes.” He strode across the floor and turned off the radio, then turned on the small color TV next to it.
I ended up staying another hour, and I am glad I did. He was a nice man. After the program went off I stood up again.
“I really do have to go now. Thanks again for the dinner,” I told him one more time, extending my hand.
“Oh, you welcome.” He got up to shake my hand and walk me to the door. “Anytime you missin’ that soldier boy of yours, my door is always open if you wanna come over and talk. And I wish you’d think about goin’ out with me sometime.”
I went to bed that night still concerned about my employment situation. But I was in a much better mood. I couldn’t believe how close I had come to ending my life. Again, Rhoda had saved me. Rhoda and a strange new man.
CHAPTER 46
I spent most of Thanksgiving Day in bed. The hotel restaurant was open, so I went to pick up one of their dinners. Before they wrapped it I could tell it was a mess. The turkey looked dry, the dressing looked like mud, and the mashed potatoes had lumps big as marbles. “You sure are a brave soul,” a petite Black woman with red hair and gray eyes laughingly said as we got into the same elevator. “The last time I ate in that restaurant I spent the next two days in the bathroom, throwin’ up from both ends.”
“Yeah, I know the food is deadly,” I said. “But sometimes anything is better than nothing.” The woman I was talking to was one of the ones who had tried to get me to baby-sit. She was just a little older than I, but she had four kids already.
“Ain’t you got no family neither?” she asked.
“No not in Erie,” I told her.
“Well I’m Jan Kirksey in Room 1142 if you ever feel like talkin’ or you just need somebody to lean on.” I thanked the woman and got off. Once I got to my room I felt bad about turning down her many requests for me to baby-sit for her. When she knocked on my door later Thanks
giving Day, accompanied by a rough-looking man wearing a do-rag asking again if I would watch her kids while she went to one of the nearby bars, I still said no. As bad as I wanted and needed friends, I promised myself I would avoid anybody I thought was out to take advantage of me. I lied to her about having a date, but as soon as she left, I crawled into bed and ate my dinner with a relish.
I dozed off, but around ten the phone rang. Muh’Dear told me all about the wonderful Thanksgiving dinner she had enjoyed with Mr. King and a holiday service they’d attended at church. Before she asked I told her that I was certain I’d be working any day now. “I’ve been on several interviews,” I revealed. “That’s why I was not here all those times you called.”
“Well turn it over to God. If you done interviewed all you can interview, it’s up to Him now.” Muh’Dear babbled on for a few minutes more about Judge Lawson’s failing health and what some of the people from the neighborhood were up to. She told me in great detail about Caleb’s recent hip surgery, Florence calling to get my address, and Pee Wee’s picture in the newspaper because of some medal he had earned. She finally hung up after telling me about how she took flowers over to the cemetery to put on Mr. Boatwright’s grave.
I dreamed about Mr. Boatwright that night. He had come into my room wearing a white robe and carrying his Bible. “Don’t you be scared of nothin’, girl. I’m here to comfort you,” he told me. The dream was so real. I woke up around 5 A.M. in a daze the day after Thanksgiving and could not get back to sleep. I was just lying in bed staring at the ceiling when around 9:30 A.M. the phone rang. It was the personnel representative at the Erie Manufacturing Company, one of the two factories where I had applied. They had a job for me.
“When do I start,” I yelled. The woman on the other end was silent.
“Are you available to start work a week from Monday?”
“Oh yes. I’m available to start TODAY if you want me to,” I said eagerly.
The woman laughed. “That won’t be necessary. You’ll need to take a physical first, then, of course, there is some paperwork you will need to complete.”
After I got off the phone I actually started dancing around the room. I had to share my news with somebody. Rhoda and Muh’Dear were both out. I put on a blouse and skirt and walked across the hall to tell Levi. Before I could knock, his door opened and he walked out with an attractive woman in her mid-twenties. “I’m sorry. Um…I just wanted to let you know I got a the job I applied for at Erie Manufacturing.”
“Praise the Lord!” he yelled. I didn’t bat an eye when he hugged me. His lady friend rolled her eyes at me and advised him that they had a cab waiting.
Too excited to sit in my room, I went to the hotel’s restaurant and wrestled my way through another one of their fried chicken plates.
CHAPTER 47
I hated my new job at first. Along with seven other women I sat on an assembly line screwing washers, nuts, and bolts onto various parts of garage-door openers. After only a week, it was a chore I could do in my sleep. Because of the oil and dust, we all dressed very casually, so I’d wasted all the money I’d spent on business suits.
The seven dollars an hour and the medical benefits were the incentive I needed to keep me going. Muh’Dear, Rhoda, and everybody else I’d told were happy for me. Florence even sent me a congratulatory card.
“What are your coworkers like?” Rhoda asked. She had just come home from the hospital with a seven-pound baby boy she had named Julian. I could hear him crying in the background.
“Well, I don’t know yet. They mind their own business and so do I. I am the youngest one and there are only two other Black women. There is another department in another section where they test and paint the garage-door openers, but I haven’t met any of those people.”
“You’ve been sharin’ an assembly line for two weeks now with seven women and you don’t know what any of them are like yet?”
“Well, the white women hang together and keep to themselves on breaks and lunch. They’ve all been working together for almost twenty years. The two Black women, well, they aren’t very friendly. Everybody speaks to me, but none of them have invited me out for break or lunch or anything,” I said sadly. It was true none of the women had tried to establish a friendship with me.
“Have you tried to develop a friendship with any of them?”
“Well no—”
“Annette, you don’t have to wait for them to approach you. Why don’t you ask one of them to go to lunch or somethin’? I bet if you made an attempt to get to know them, they’d help you find an apartment,” Rhoda told me, sounding almost angry. “You can’t spend your life waitin’ for things to come to you, Annette. Life’s too short.”
The next day at work I invited the middle-aged white woman next to me on the line to lunch. “There’s a McDonald’s down the street I usually go to,” I told her. Cynthia Costello, a thin, plain-looking bleached blonde smiled at me and shook her head.
“But I’d love to. With six kids I am on a tight budget. I always bring my lunch unless it’s a special occasion.” Cynthia had the worst case of acne I’d ever seen on a woman her age, and her teeth didn’t look too much better. I ate lunch alone that day but later when it was afternoon breaktime, Cynthia invited me to join her and one of the two Black women. Her name was Viola Jenkins, and she appeared to be in her mid-fifties like Muh’Dear.
“You look a little like my niece in Baton Rouge,” Viola informed me. I sat across from her and Cynthia at one of six plastic tables in our lunchroom down the hall from the assembly line. In the lunchroom were several vending machines with chips, sodas, and candy bars. Cynthia opened a thermos filled with coffee that she had brought from home. Viola was even larger than I was. We each had a Diet Pepsi in front of us. She had beautiful bronze skin, small, tired black eyes, and only half of her teeth left. There were at least half a dozen moles on the bottom half of her face, and her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back into a flat ponytail with a red rubber band holding it together. “I hear you ain’t got no family here. What about a church home?” Viola said, giving me an intense look. She had a deep aggressive voice that was almost masculine.
“Well as soon as I get settled into an apartment I’m going to pick a church. A man I met at the Richland Hotel where I rent a room told me about the Church of God in Christ. Have you ever been to it?”
Viola’s eyes got big, and a wide grin appeared on her face. “That’s the only sanctified church in town, and my stepdaddy is the preacher there,” Viola said proudly. “You Pentacostal?”
“Well no. I’m a Baptist, but I’ve been to Pentecostal churches before,” I told her. I felt bad not including Cynthia in the conversation. I turned to her. “Do you go to church, Cynthia?”
She nodded. “I’m Catholic, and you’re welcome to attend our services, too.” I truly enjoyed talking with these two women. After work, walking to the bus stop a block away together, Viola shared some disturbing information with me about Cynthia. “She’s done every drug in the book and drinks like a fish. All on account of that man of hers.”
“Does he beat her?” I asked.
“Like he gettin’ paid for it, girl,” Viola growled, walking with great difficulty. She was breathing hard and lumbering along like a weak turtle, a lot like Mr. Boatwright used to do. “Poor Cynthia. I went to school with her mama.”
“What? How old is Cynthia?” I gasped, whirling around to face Viola.
“How old you think she is,” Viola muttered, slowing down even more.
“Well…with six kids and the way she looks, I’d say she was in her late forties, maybe even early fifties.”
Viola laughed and shook her head, fanning her face with a flat straw purse she had in her hand. “The girl ain’t but thirty-six.” Viola sighed with a groan so long and deep I almost felt it.
Erie Manufacturing was on the opposite side of town from my hotel. There was a bus that stopped a block away that some of the workers who didn’t own cars depended o
n. Viola had a car, but because parking was such a problem she chose to utilize the bus. In fact most of the other employees did also for the same reason. Cynthia’s brutal husband brought her to and from work because, according to Viola, he was extremely jealous and didn’t trust her in too many public places alone where men were present.
“He beats her, he brings his two kids by his outside woman home for Cynthia to baby-sit while him and the other woman go out and party, and Cynthia can’t talk on the phone without his permission. He’s even been down here drunk as a skunk tryin’ to start some mess. I can’t tell you how many times he done almost got poor Cynthia fired.”
Viola loved to talk. During the bus ride she told me all about her church, her family, her big house on Noble Street across from her church, and her man. She had four grown children that she had kicked out as soon as they each turned eighteen. She even told me about some new apartments in her neighborhood.
A week after I moved into a furnished one-bedroom apartment on Maple Ridge, two blocks from Viola’s house, I got a call from the personnel rep at the newspaper company. It was a job offer. I thanked her profusely, but I turned the job down. I had gotten used to my assembly-line work and Viola and Cynthia. Two clerical job offers came the following week, but I turned them down, too.
Muh’Dear was estactic when I called and told her I had found a church even though it was not of our faith. “God the same no matter which one of His houses you in,” she assured me. She didn’t seem too pleased that my two new friends were so much older than I. “Can’t you find no friends your own age?” she asked, sounding worried. “I will eventually,” I said.
I had a life now. I had a job I had grown to like and new friends I adored. The Church of God in Christ was very much like the other Pentecostal churches I’d visited. Most of the frenzied congregation shouted and fell to the floor speaking in tongues every Sunday. I didn’t shout or speak in tongues, but I enjoyed the services. It was a small church with not enough benches, so I had to stand for the whole sermon almost every time I went. I often saw Levi and his lady friend at church and each time he was friendly, but the woman, whose name was Nettie, rolled her eyes at me.
