Sidewalks covered in ice, Maggie walked on the crusted snow at the edge of lawns. A disturbing kind of pleasure, she loved the sound and shape of each imprint, but thought it was somehow wrong to deface the clean sweep of white snow. It was like being the first person to leave footprints in tide-swept sand or walk across a freshly raked shag carpet. She felt wickedly impudent in this silent space.
Maggie’s sense of being adrift on a lonely planet felt familiar. Detroit’s brutal winters had the effect of isolating people from one another. With the city’s unrelenting din muffled by snow, there were no sounds other than the crunch of each step, thrum of her heart and the vibrato of warm breath against the icy sting of air. No traffic noise. No dogs barking. No other walkers. Maggie remembered a safety film about hypothermia in high school—for hikers, cavers, skiers or anyone who might get lost or disoriented in the cold. Maggie was bewitched when she heard hypothermia seduced you to lie down in the snow and fall asleep, like some horrible fairy tale. But, the narrator kept saying, “Killer Cold,” like Jack Webb on Dragnet, with a bass drum tapping dum-da-dum-dum, and her classmates had booed and hooted. But, today, she got it. Maggie felt the undertow of the cold and the beguiling call to lie down for a few minutes and rest. She knew the brain and body would begin spinning cold into warmth, like straw into gold, enough to fall asleep—to fall away from this world. Whoa, Maggie thought, without work, without my own wheels, I’m spending way too much time in the hollows of my mind.
Just then someone in an old, blue and white banged up VW bus, covered in peace signs and bumper stickers, honked at her. An older woman with a kind face and matching smile rolled down the window and said, “Can I give you a lift?”
Maggie broke into a full grin and said, “You just did! Thanks, but I’m only going to the corner, and I could use some fresh air.”
“Girl, you kiddin’ me? You must have some Eskimo blood in you. In case you haven’t noticed, its ten-effing-degrees-below-zero.” Her breath crystallized with each syllable. Maggie gave her a peace sign and the woman returned it, her fingers popping through a threadbare green-knit glove.
Between the extreme cold and overheated store, the windows at Cunningham Drugs were completely fogged over. After pushing through the door, Maggie was relieved to find an open but empty lunch counter. “Hey, Buddy,” she called out to the soda jerk dressed in a freshly pressed white shirt with his signature black bow tie.
“Well, up pops the devil! We ain’t seen you since the leaves fell from the trees. You lookin’ good! What’s up?”
“Well, for one, I’m expecting a baby.”
“No kidding? You’re way too young to be havin’ a baby.”
“You’re right. I was hoping you’d notice,” Maggie grinned as she hopped on one of the red plastic covered stools and spun around to face him.
“Look at you! You look like a teenager. You think it’s too cold for a Vernor’s float?”
“Is it ever too cold for a Vernor’s float?” Maggie chuckled. “Yes, please. Plus, a cheeseburger with extra pickles and onions, french fries with extra catsup and a side salad with Thousand Island dressing.”
Buddy raised his thick, gray eyebrows and looked at Maggie through the yellowed lenses of cataracts, old age and untold pain and pleasure. Buddy had been tending this counter for more than thirty years with love, pride and a dignity born of gratitude for having a job, any job. Maggie couldn’t hold back her tears.
“Yep, you expecting!”
“Damn it, Maggie, I’ve been calling you for the past two hours. Where’ve you been?”
“Gosh, Sam, I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
“Really, Mag? I’m under a lot of pressure with the auto show and I don’t have time for games. What’s up? Maxine said you had good news.”
“It can wait. Go back to work. We’ll talk later.”
“Got it. You’re right. I’m being an asshole. Let’s talk when my head’s on straight. Tonight there’s that dinner with the models for the new models so I’ll be late.”
“What models and how late?”
“The New York models for Jingo’s new car models at the show. I told you.”
“I don’t think you told me.”
“Please, Mag, not now. I’m over the top. As you like to say, I have miles to go before I sleep. I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up.”
“SistaHood Salon, may I help you?”
“Hey, Loretta, I definitely need some help. You busy tonight?”
“No, honey, I’m not busy. You want to get together?”
“Sam’s got a business dinner with a bunch of models from New York and I’m royally pissed, lonely and car-less.”
“Cold as a witch’s tit out there. I’ll grab some pizza at Angelo’s and head your way.”
“Would you? I’m starting to salivate.”
“Hang tight. I won’t be there till five-thirty, quarter-to-six. Cheese and pepperoni?”
“Add mushrooms if you want. We’ve got some beer in the fridge.”
“Great timing because I need to tap your brain. Some crazy black chicks with hair envy bout ready to tip civil rights on its skinny ass.”
“Believe me, my brain is in serious need of tapping. I’m just not sure what you’ll find.”
“Maxine, Skip wants me to put together separate files for each of the models even though they’re all covered under one contract. He said the agency doesn’t want to risk the models seeing each other’s pay rates. I don’t understand. Did we just find out about this?” asked Sam.
“I doubt it. Skip had the file on his desk for two weeks. I have no idea if he read it, but my guess is no.”
“Doable?”
“Any choice?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, then doable. Let me have it and I’ll run copies and put together the eight files. I don’t know why we need two models for each car. What the hell?”
“Maxine, you’re a wonder! I think the two models cover bathroom and meal breaks for each other.”
“Yeah? Well, I think there are two each so the models have time to mingle with the dealers and media types.”
“Sounds plausible.”
“No plause about it. It’s how it works.”
“Max, let go of the morality police routine. It is what it is. Let’s get through this year’s show, and let me know if you need help.”
“You’re covered, Tervo. Oh, before I forget, a guy by the name of Louie Zito at Sheer Juice called. Seriously, sounded like some kind of Mafioso. Anyhow, he said he wanted to leave a message but then hung up. You want me to get him back on the line?”
Sam shook his head no.
The pizza box looked like it had been licked clean.
“Oh, Loretta, that was so good! I can’t believe I inhaled three pieces. I’m going to be as big as a silo.”
“You mean barn?”
“That’s what you expected me to say so I said something else. Poet games. We all use hackneyed sayings without realizing it. But, when I’m thinking, I try to change it up and find a new metaphor or simile or image. Most of the time they’re dorky.”
“No shit? I always thought hackneyed meant bowlegged or knock-kneed. Like your knees are screwed up. Glad I do hair. All that thinking would wear me out.”
“Who’re you kidding? I see that mind of yours turning, spinning, rotating . . .”
“More like whirly-gigging out of control. Oh, Maggie, life can be so messed up. Did you hear about the gang of black girls at Cooley High attacking white girls with long, silky, flaxen, waxen—however that song goes—hair?”
“No. Where?”
“In the schoolyard, or on the way to or from school. One girl got her face cut because she started to fight back—badass, gang action. The cops were called.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Here’s where the brain tapping comes in. We all know black women don’t have straight, silky hair. But we’re human. These Diana Ross wannabes want what they don’t have. So
rather than wear kinky, stiff, wooly hair as a matter of black pride, they spend hours, days, months, years trying to look like Sandra Dee. And now attacking girls who do! Maggie, it’s pure insanity for black girls to spend half their lives longing for silky hair, white skin and blue eyes. I know. I did it for most of my life. I want black to be beautiful. I want these tough looking chicks to know they already got it going on. To know they got it so going on that the last thing they want is limp-white-girl hair and pink skin. Help me do this. I think it’s more important than integrating the burbs. It’s a generation of girls we’ll lose if we don’t start now.”
Maggie was tapped and blown away. Like so many times before, she was in awe when she listened to Loretta and saw the world through her kaleidoscope. “Oh Loretta, you’re on to something! Here we are trying to bend the calcified minds of adults—people stuck in their ways, scared shitless. Just the idea of bringing young, sassy, strong girls to the table is exciting. They have more to gain and more to lose than anyone.”
“It’s a mindbender. Let’s play with it.”
“What if we could get someone, say from the play Hair or Motown, to help us open some doors? Your ticket is the salon. But SistaHood means more than a salon. Right? What about The Black & White SistaHood or The SistaHood of Hair? You could talk about hair, power and diversity as strength.”
“And find a white beautician who knows what’s going down. Those white girls got to feel like they’ve been hair raped. Think Sampson and Delilah—hair is power. You don’t mess with someone’s hair. If this shit keeps up, we might as well hang up our go-go boots. We gotta get them together in the same room, get them to talk to each other. Talk about being black and white, about being beautiful the way we are. Screw Madison Avenue and Glamour and Vogue; or, better yet, we put pressure on magazines and modeling agencies to hire black models, more Naomi Sims and real women, fat, skinny, curvy.”
“Loretta, do you ever feel under water, like you’re drowning? You ever think racism is way too big or too much, like there’s no way in hell we’re going to make a difference?”
“Every day, baby doll. Every day I have to talk to myself. Every day I ask myself the same two questions. If not me, who? If not now, when?”
“What if we start with those two questions and talk about the power of peace and understanding in the day-to-day stuff? Then, we could hold hands and sing Kumbaya. Kidding. Too creepy,” laughed Maggie.
“You got that right. No Kumbaya. But I like where you’re going. We need some honkies to talk to the white girls. I always feel like I scare the Holy Ghost out of ‘em. If we could kick this off with a gig, that’d be so fine! I know Willie and Robin have Motown contacts, but I’m tripping on the idea of the musical Hair. I wonder how long it’ll take to get to the Fisher Theater.”
“For real? You think the Fisher has the cojones to ask a cast of half-naked hippies mocking ‘Gawd’ and the flag to play on their stage?” Maggie stood up, pointed to Loretta and began shaking her hips as she sang “Gimme head with hair, long beautiful hair, shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen—give me down to there hair, shoulder length or longer, here baby, there mama, everywhere daddy daddy . . . .”
“I swear you’ve got the blackest ass I’ve ever seen on a white girl. And lord, you do shake that booty like a sistah!”
“No shit? Loretta, I think that’s the best compliment I’ve ever had.”
“Here’s what I think. I think we signed up for a marathon, but our hair-brained selves are racing to the corner store because we’re afraid we’ll run out of supplies before we get to the starting line. Before we do anything, and I mean ANYTHING, we’ve got to get the principal on our side. We get his support or a door slammed in our face. Either way, we’ll know if we need to spend money on a new pair of Keds.”
“You know how I am about bureaucracies. I’ll help on the school stuff, but I promise, I’m no good at jumping through hoops.”
“I’ll call Blanche. She’ll know someone who knows someone, but we need a white person at the table. You can smile, shake your head, bat your non-stop green eyes, whatever it is you white girls do to get what you want. Okay, your turn. Why pissed and lonely?”
By the time Maggie finished telling Loretta about her day, they were both poking fun at the melodrama of it all. Loretta said, “Let’s see . . . you walked three blocks in the snow to have a nice lunch at the drug store, bought some Red-Hot lipstick, then your husband was too busy to talk to you? That’s it? Girl, what do you expect sitting in this rental shack all day talking to yourself? Where’s my kick-ass activist friend? I want her back. Get your sorry ass off the couch and do something, even if it’s wrong. Write some poems—find a job, volunteer, anything! Don’t let that wicked mind of yours turn to silly putty. As for Sam, let him live his life and you live yours. I ain’t smoking dope on this one Maggie. Sam’s not stupid. Doesn’t matter anyhow. Smart people screw up. He’s going to mess up and you’re going to mess up. That’s life. But you, baby doll, got it all. Right now. You might lose it, but you sure as hell don’t want to throw it away because your hormones are running helter-skelter.”
Sam had eight files in his briefcase as he walked into the Sheridan-Cadillac Hotel. He’d always thought of this place as the Mafioso don of downtown hotels—lots of glitz, crystal and bravado. The message was: do not enter unless you plan to spend serious money, keep your mouth shut and tip well. When the hotel opened in 1924, the Book Cadillac, better known as The Book, was Detroit’s tallest building and the tallest hotel in the world. With more than one thousand guest rooms, three dining rooms, three ballrooms, it housed the godfather of all lobbies. Detroit’s downtown dwellers knew The Book was the favorite hangout for Abe Bernstein and his Purple Gang, Detroit’s answer to Al Capone and his Chicago Outfit. In fact, Abe and Al were friends, as far as friends go in crime syndicates. Majordomo Bernstein, who spent his life dodging bullets, imprisonments and rival gangs, lived on The Book’s top floor until he died in 1968 at the age of seventy-six, far surpassing the most generous actuarial tables for gangsters. Many believed Abe haunted The Book, training his eyes on good-looking broads in the lobby, ordaining poker hands in the small salons and taking a sip of each neat Ballantine’s 30-Year Whiskey served at the bar.
Dressed in his gray gabardine suit, white shirt, steel blue tie and silver and copper cufflinks, Sam thought his new black wingtips were overkill. What perverted, psychopathic urge had possessed him to buy a pair of shoes like his dad’s? With each click of his heel across the marble-tiled lobby, Sam was sure everyone knew he was an imposter, a boy pretending to be a businessman. He had no idea he was turning heads because his platinum blond hair was catching the setting sun, or his high Finnish cheekbones were transforming worry into determination, or his fiery blue eyes were silencing detractors and claiming his power.
“Hey, ass wipe, you clean up pretty good. New shoes?”
“Hey, Zito. Yeah, they are.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nice. Didn’t see that coming.”
“Tried to call you today but decided to catch you before the party. I’m here with Carla, and I didn’t want you to wet your white jockeys when you saw us. She knows you’re here and we’re all going to keep our distance. Capisce?”
“I don’t get it. What’s the connection? Why are you here?”
“Who’s asking, Bozo? Just thank me for giving you a heads up.”
“Sure, Zito. Thanks.”
“That’s better.”
This was the first time Sam saw Zito dressed in a suit, and there was no missing the custom-made tailoring. His shoes, soft Italian leather, were the new style low-cut boots. Zito walked liked he owned the night.
20
Sidelined
Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.
—Al Capone
MARCH 1969—“Hey, Clyde. What’s up?”
“Hey, dickhead. I haven’t heard from you since New Year’s Eve. You too important to hang
with us regular folk?”
“I’ve given it some careful thought, but no, not too important.”
“Nice. I’m weirdly comforted to know you’re still a dickhead.”
“Then it won’t come as a surprise to hear my life’s starting to take on water, a lot of water. I thought I could navigate through this squall on my own, but it’s beginning to look like my ship is surfing some mother lode tsunami with a bunch of scary-ass rocks along the shore. Or, on the flipside, I’m losing my frigging mind. You got time for a Big Boy summit? I can use whatever sanity, humor or advice you might be peddling.”
“Not sure what sanity is these days, but we’ll try not to fall down that rabbit hole.”
“Right now, falling down a rabbit hole sounds like a good option.”
“Hold your skirt, Alice. Late lunch today, two o’clock?”
“Thanks, my friend. You’re on.”
“Hey, Issie, kids at school?”
“Bonjour, Marguerite! The kids are at school, what’s up?”
“You mean besides being as big as the broad-side of a hay loft? Oh, Issie, I think Sam’s having an affair.”
“Maggie, when are you going to get yourself a car and get a life? Sam’s not having an affair.”
“We’re saving money for a house. And, as much as I want you to be right, you’re wrong. Sam is having an affair.”
“Maggie, I was joshing when I said Sam might find someone who bathes. Sam isn’t the type. Did he tell you?”
If the Moon Had Willow Trees (Detroit Eight Series Book 1) Page 18
