“For what it’s worth, if you panic he’ll panic. Stay calm and see what he has to say. You don’t have to make any decisions right this minute. Capisce?”
“Capisco,” said Maggie as she threw open the door and grabbed Aunt Jo’s suitcase from the back. By the time she turned around, Sam was standing on the sidewalk with a bouquet of orange day lilies.
“Chill,” Maggie whispered to herself as Sam cut across the lawn to the driveway.
“If you take these flowers for your Aunt Jo, I’ll carry the luggage,” said Sam. Maggie made the exchange without words and headed to the house. Turning to Aunt Jo, Sam said, “You must be Maggie’s Aunt Jo. I’m Sam. I don’t normally show up without calling, but I wanted to apologize to Maggie in person. If this isn’t a good time . . .”
Aunt Jo interrupted him. “Nonsense! Let’s go in the house and unload this stuff. We can give Maggie a few minutes to catch her breath. She’s been running all day.”
As Aunt Jo chatted her way to the kitchen with Sam, Maggie slid into the bathroom. No shower. Maggie didn’t want Sam to hear the pipes clanking and think she cared. A quick sponge bath, deodorant and a clean top to get rid of the pizza smell would have to do. Then decided on tangerine lipstick to set off her aqua top. This time, Maggie was pleased to have the self-imposed discipline of hairy legs on a jean day.
“That’s an incredible story. I had no idea how you and Maggie met,” said Aunt Jo.
“What blew me away was how much fun it was to laugh together, as if the world wasn’t falling down around us. In the heat and emotion of violence, there’s no place to hide or release fear. That’s why guns are so dangerous and war is so freaking impersonal. Everyone is in the open and holding on to fear. When Maggie showed up in a red convertible filled with pop in the middle of the storm, the fear lifted and I reclaimed myself. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed that hard.”
The teakettle was whistling and three mismatched cups sat on the counter for instant coffee. Aunt Jo got up to pour the water and set out three chocolate éclairs on different colored Fiesta Ware dessert plates with red linen napkins and mismatched silver forks. Sam’s orange day lilies rested in a yellow water pitcher on the counter, an identical bouquet dressed the kitchen table. Looking around, Sam thought an accountant’s eye would focus on the lack of uniformity, but an artist’s eye would experience the color, warmth and life of this tableau.
Maggie walked into the kitchen just as Aunt Jo set the third place setting. Sam could not take his eyes off Maggie. Aunt Jo could not take her eyes off the two of them. The air in the room purred with anticipation.
“Hey, Maggie, have a seat,” said Aunt Jo. “We’re going to get into the éclairs while they’re fresh. Sam told me how you met. What a wild story! I had no idea you’d ventured into the battle zone.”
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry. It was nuts, but at the time I wanted to help the cops stay hydrated and calm. I didn’t want them to start shooting because they were irritable. Tensions were high enough.”
“You saved what little sanity I had,” said Sam. Aunt Jo laughed and Maggie couldn’t suppress a smile.
“Well, I won’t argue with you there,” said Maggie.
“No, I imagine not,” said Sam. He could feel Maggie’s coolness while he took in her beauty, intelligence, humor and lovely curves. He knew Aunt Jo was watching him, trying to take his measure.
Once Sam bit into the éclair, he silently blessed all things French. The three scraping forks continued well beyond the last morsels. Aunt Jo said, “We have three éclairs left. We could hold two for Angelo and split the third one three ways.”
Sam jumped up and said, “Done!”
In no time they were, once again, lost in the sensation of all things creamy and chocolate.
Maggie thought there were few culinary experiences as sensual as eating éclairs—vive l’éclat de l’éclair! Which, in the strict English translation means: long live the brightness of the flash. Maggie tucked that away for a future poem.
Sam thought he’d be happy sitting at this kitchen table for many years.
Aunt Jo thought, hang on to your Birkenstocks, Maggie, and don’t look over the edge.
Sam opened the gate while Maggie drove her car in the backyard and raised the convertible top. The curfew had been moved back to eleven and that gave them about two hours before Sam had to head home.
Now that she and Sam were alone in his car, Maggie found it harder to be calm. She agreed with Aunt Jo that acting from panic wouldn’t help, but she didn’t like to be taken for granted. If Sam treated her like this before their first date, then she sure as hell couldn’t expect it to get better.
Sam turned into the Sunoco parking lot next to Hope Chapel. “I’m not sure where we can park in this neighborhood, but I wanted to look at you when I apologized. Is this okay or is there a better place to park?”
“This works.”
Sam turned off the car and settled sideways in his seat to face her. Maggie turned toward him, crossed her arms and nodded.
“Listen, I was expecting you to tell me to get bent but instead your aunt invited me in. It was nice to spend time with her. She’s smart and beautiful . . . like you.” Maggie remained silent and tried to ignore the gymnastics in her heart, stomach and head.
“Before I explain my disappearance, I want you to know I’m seriously attracted to you. I don’t know if I can’t or don’t want to let you out of my mind. Either way, we’ve been spending a lot of time there and I want to get to know you better.
“Last Sunday night I received a telegram ordering me to report to the National Guard Building on Eight Mile Road at o-six-hundred hours Monday morning. The telegram instructed me not to tell anyone, including spouses, families and employers. The National Guard would handle notifications after we received our final orders. I had no idea what was going on. I thought the United States had been invaded or we were being shipped off to Vietnam or Cambodia on some secret mission.
“Long story short, I spent Monday at the National Guard Building with other Guardsmen debriefing the riots—more like rehearsing for a debriefing. Late that night, we were loaded on busses and heading to the MEP Station in Lansing. MEP stands for Military Entrance Processing, where we spent the night. All day Tuesday, we had the same debriefing with Governor Romney, Mayor Cavanaugh, state and federal military chiefs and a bunch of other officials. Afterward, we spent a second night in Lansing and were bussed back to Detroit on Wednesday. During the entire process, we were restricted from contacting anyone for any reason. The government did not want the press to get wind of the debriefing until they heard it first. That is why, dear Maggie, I didn’t call. It frustrated the hell out of me that I couldn’t reach you. I hope you’ll give me another chance.”
“Oh, Sam, no one would ever accuse me of being a romantic, but I was so looking forward to seeing you. I even cleaned the house! By this morning, I was totally pissed off at you, and pissed off at myself for trusting you and romanticizing about our connection. I did, do feel a connection, but I’m a little burned right now. Not sure what I want to do. Part of me wants to jump your bones and another part wants to run for the hills. I want to kiss you and slap you. Does that scare you?”
“Yes, it scares me, but I don’t want to let government paranoia about the press mess up a good thing. I hope you don’t run for the hills. Take whatever time you need. I’d like to start over,” said Sam.
Maggie thought the intimacy and thrill of being heard, exposing vulnerabilities and risking rejection was mind-blowing. She’d never met anyone who seemed so unafraid. In the past, with other guys, Maggie might have insisted they jump through hoops. Somehow she knew Sam was not a hoop jumper. She wanted to believe he was a truth teller.
“Where were we on Sunday before you left? Could we start there?”
5
Cliff Jumping
We have to see that riots grow out of intolerable conditions existing in all our cities, an
d also out of centuries of neglect. The tragedy is that the riots aren’t going to solve the problems. . . . They only intensify the fears of the white community while, in many cases, relieving its guilt.
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
NOVEMBER 1967—Sitting Indian style on the floor in his white skivvies and a tattered gray Wayne State sweatshirt, Sam sorted through his albums looking for Nina Simone.
When Maggie first saw Sam’s place in Highland Park she was horrified. She wasn’t blind to the wretched poverty in Detroit, but she’d never entered the slums. Sam’s apartment house, a tan-brick, soot-covered building, was constructed in the early 1900’s without any relief to its four flat, bland sides. Slivered and battered window frames served as archeological evidence of the multiple times they’d been repainted shut and re-pried open during the past fifty-plus years. Most windows were propped up by tin cans, but some held small sliding-window-screen inserts from Woolworth’s to provide ventilation. The hallways and lobby were dank with the odor of people living in close quarters. Animal, vegetable and mineral smells blanched together in a perpetual alchemy of life and decay. And sounds. Sounds merged in ways Maggie had never encountered. Cries of pleasure and pain, music and plumbing, cats and babies reverberated in a hauntingly beautiful, warped cacophony of life. Maggie’s first reaction was flight. Yet, once she entered Sam’s third floor apartment, place was no longer part of the equation.
Maggie sang, “Bird’s flying high you know how I feel—bump-ah, bump-ah, bump-ah.” Dressed in a pink Flower Power sweatshirt and white Lollipop briefs, Maggie swung her hips low and slow with the taunt of a burlesque queen. “Fish in the sea you know how I feel—don-cha know.” Putting her nose to Sam’s nose, Maggie twirled away, her shoulder-length black hair moving with a drum roll of bumps and grinds, as she sang out “hip swing, hip swing, hip swing—it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me—you know what I mean—and I’m feeling good—bump-ah, bump-ah, bump-ah.”
“What am I doing looking for Nina Simone when you’re right here with all this sass and jazz?” Catching Maggie’s ankle on the last bump-ah, Sam said, “Come here you green-eyed witchy woman.”
Maggie knelt in front of him and realized getting lost in Sam was becoming an addiction. Nina Simone could wait, food could wait, homework could wait, sleep could wait, but her hunger for Sam couldn’t. Maggie pulled herself up on Sam’s lap and wrapped her legs around his waist. She smiled as he moved closer. Sam ran his fingers along her shoulders then down her arms to her hands. Taking her wrists, he raised Maggie’s arms over her head and gently lifted her sweatshirt, kissing the tender skin from the crook of her elbow to her shoulder.
Hands, hips, torsos, necks and mouths began moving to a silent rhapsody—like kettledrums, violins and trumpets seeking a crescendo. Time stopped. All that existed was the syncopated movement of skin, bone, muscle and breath. Maggie whimpered, “holy mother of god.”
Sam cried, “Jesus, Maggie, you’re killing me,” before they broke into laughter—sounds that fed the jukebox of this hungry tenement.
Maggie nuzzled Sam’s neck, breathing in the musk and salt of an ocean, then hurried to the bathroom to wash up and remove her diaphragm. She was always famished after sex. Instead of a cigarette, she wanted three sliders from White Castle.
“Hey Tervo, I’ll pick up lunch at White Castle.”
“Hey Soulier, I’ll take a rain check. I’ve got to crack my econ books and study for the final.”
“Shit. Why does it always feel like we’re stealing time to be together? I know we’ve got to study, but we act like we’re breaking a promise, cheating on a betrothed. Hmm. What would this illicit sex be called? An extra-curricular affair?” teased Maggie.
“We could always get married and sign up for married housing on campus. Cheap and convenient! We could park the cars, even sell one, and walk to class.”
“Tervo, that has to be the lamest marriage proposal in the history of humankind!”
“Yep. I imagine. But here’s the thing, we both know we’re heading there and why not do it now? That way we sleep together every night and graduate before the next century. Can you believe 2000? We could have grandkids by then.”
Maggie knew she was over the moon, but she wasn’t stupid. Sam fired all her pistons—looks, intelligence, humor, kindness. For some reason, she was certain he shared her same sense of mysticism and pragmatism—open to new things, new ideas and new adventures. While conceding her universe of men was limited, Maggie was convinced she’d never find anyone else she’d want to spend her life with. She was ready for Sam’s proposal, marriage and cohabitation, especially the cohabitation.
“Sam, I love the idea of sleeping together every night, but give me a break. I’m a woman and wannabe poet. When it comes to things like marriage proposals I need a little more juice.”
“Okay, I’ll work on that after I study for the econ exam if you promise to say yes. In the meantime, we need to get our application for married housing in before the December 1st deadline.”
“Oh, mon dieu! I’m not sure I’ll survive the tsunami rush of romance here. A conditional yes, depends on the proposal,” said Maggie as she hopped around the small room to collect her jeans, shoes and coat. Flushed from the heat of their lovemaking, Maggie glanced out at the cold, gray day. She wanted to cling to the afterglow as long as she could, carry this sense of bliss a while longer. When she got home she’d try turning her feelings into an aubade—her assignment for a poetry workshop that week.
Sam was sitting at a nominally constructed cinderblock and wood plank desk when Maggie tipped his chin up, gave him a chaste kiss, then copped a quick feel between his legs and said, “adieu.” Sam reached to pull Maggie to his lap but missed as she darted out the door. Sam stared at the wall and shook the smile off his face before he looked down at his econ book and began to read.
On her way home, Maggie was shaking her head and laughing to herself, or at herself, thinking I’m ready to jump off the freaking cliff and have no idea why I think I can fly! Maggie wasn’t sure where her certainty came from, but she knew her relationship with Sam was far more important and complex than physical or sexual attraction. They had a familiarity and intimacy that spoke of lifetimes, if not ages. Sam said it felt as if they’d known each other in a previous life. Maggie rejected the idea of reincarnation because she thought who in their right mind would want to come back and do this again? But she agreed with Sam, this was not the first time they’d known each other. Maggie had been blinded in the past by lust, but not love. She wanted to believe her Chakras were fully open now. Or, the planets were perfectly aligned for her and Sam to meet. Or, she and Sam shared some primordial stardust that fed their conscious and unconscious memories. Maggie thought being a writer worked remarkably well when life got messy. She could create or remake her own reality.
As Maggie daydreamed about how others would respond to their marriage plans, she imagined Issie saying go for it. Aunt Jo would say trust yourself. Sam’s brother Kenny would probably say fucking A. Clyde would be elated. But most of their friends and relatives would be flummoxed. She could hear them saying Maggie and Sam always seemed so levelheaded. Is she pregnant? What’s the rush?
Writing an aubade turned out to be trickier than Maggie thought. The challenge was crafting something that was sensual, even erotic, but not pornographic. After her fifth, or was it sixth draft, Maggie smiled, ran her hand over the blue-lined page, blue-inked words, before she closed her eyes.
Morning Prayers
Light slides through bamboo blinds as I trace the angles of your uncovered
frame—hinged shoulders, elbows, hips, gnarled hands and knees.
Last night you folded and cradled me, whispered against my skin; our words
tumbled together, turning the dial of a padlock, riding the tension, opening.
I pull the blanket up, stretch myself along your back and close my eyes.
The dreamer knows images are lost upon
rising.
Clyde organized The Detroit Eight (The Eights) to make strategic decisions for Detroit’s Freedom Riders. The name was based on the number of members but more importantly provided a moniker that wouldn’t raise alarms on work calendars. Sam and Maggie were ostensibly invited because of their role as liaisons to riot victims. But, there was more to it than that. The NAACP and MLK’s lieutenants were modeling and encouraging mixed race committees. Clyde first checked with Maggie and Sam to see if they were willing to be the token but highly valued whites before he appointed them to The Eights. Until now, conversations about the need to reach out to the suburbs and form mix-raced coalitions to keep Detroit vital had been exploratory. Now, it was generating serious attention and support from the big guys, including civil rights leaders, trade unions, industrialists and others with known mafia connections. In spite of the money being made by white flight, some of the power brokers had too much invested in Detroit to see it fail.
Sam told Maggie he’d meet her at Clyde’s for The Eight’s fourth monthly meeting but planned to leave early to pick up some hours at work. Too many nights with Maggie had taken a financial toll. This would be the first time Maggie and Sam saw each other in the evening without spending the night at Sam’s. Right now, his place was their only option. Aunt Jo would have thought nothing of Sam spending the night in Maggie’s room, but she had too many Catholic relatives, neighbors and co-workers. The last thing Aunt Jo needed was a reputation for operating a den of iniquity. Maggie knew the Catholic Church would go kicking and screaming through the feminist movement. Good Catholic girls didn’t jump in the sack without a prayer, promise and wedding vow.
Maggie knew her and Sam’s current arrangement couldn’t last long; they were ready to play house, with or without a license. Married housing at Wayne State made sense, but it wasn’t the only option. At first Maggie thought she’d move into Sam’s apartment, with all its smells and sounds. On second thought, she realized it was totally out of the question. Sam’s place would be too expensive, as they’d both need cars to get to school and work. And, because of crime in the area, Sam had to rent a locked garage to protect his Corvair from being cannibalized for parts. The locked garage for his Corvair cost more than Maggie paid Aunt Jo for rent each month. She couldn’t fathom what it might cost for a TR4.
If the Moon Had Willow Trees (Detroit Eight Series Book 1) Page 4
