“Then why you always dropping in and out of my life if that’s so important?” He crossed his ankle over his knee, mad at himself for asking.
“Now, Herbie, one thing ain’t got nothing to do with the other.”
“In my book it does. You say you care about somebody, you at least give them a forewarning when you getting ready to up and leave.” He flipped at the cuff of his pant leg and then leaned his arms against the throne-backed couch.
“Don’t do that, baby. We go too far back for me to have to feel like I got to explain my every move to you.” She leaned forward so she could look right in his face. “You understand the entertainer’s lifestyle, seeing as how you lived it for a while too. A person got to make sudden moves sometimes for the career to take off.”
“When you left seven or eight months ago to settle some business, ain’t have nothing to do with your career.” Herbie sat up and put his glass down heavily, unable to stop the anger moving through his voice. “When you gave me the slip at Gert’s that night, then disappeared till I saw you at Royale yesterday, ain’t have nothing to do with your career. Now you sitting up here, looking so good I can’t hardly stand to look at you, and I guess you fixing to go somewhere else, let me guess, for your career, right?”
“Wait a minute, Mr. Herbie.” She paused to sip her ice water. “Should I remind you that you got a wife? She’s the permanent fixture in your life, not me. I don’t have chick nor chile to hold me anywhere, and sure as hell ain’t got no man weighing me down. I don’t owe you no explanation. Don’t owe a damn soul one.”
“Okay, here we go with Miss-Don’t-need-nothing-from-nobody, don’t-owe-nobody-nothing routine.”
“It’s no routine.” This time she put her jar down heavily. “Now we always had that kind of understanding. Just don’t come in here now like you expecting some kind of explanation for my behavior. You’ll kill it, Herbie, whatever we got, you start putting demands on me and you’ll kill it dead.”
He pinched at the cuff link on his starched white shirt and then looked straight at Ethel, trying not to lose himself in her half-closed eyes the way it felt as if he’d lose himself whenever he looked at her. “What we got?” His voice was steady as his gaze.
“We got us a good solid friendship. We buddies. Good, good buddies.”
“Just buddies?”
“You got a wife, you sure don’t need a wife.”
“Got half a wife.”
“Come again?”
“What I say, got half a wife.”
“I know you not saying she’s running. I’ve watched her up and down, you got you a good wife.”
“She’s good in that way.” Herbie’s words were thick and measured. “Honest, good cook, house so clean I could eat off the kitchen floor, perfect starch to my shirts.”
“A good country-girl wife you got.”
“Hold her own in a conversation, loving mother to that baby that was left on our steps.”
“Who you telling? Anyone can look at her and see she could write a song on being a good mother.”
“Helps out the people on the block, in her church, real giving woman.”
“Good church woman, Herbie, I know what you got now. In fact, I don’t see the problem.” Ethel looked at Herbie intently as he talked, at the pain that covered his face a little at a time as he spoke.
“Good in those ways, but not in other ways that count as much, if not more.”
Ethel’s mouth fell open, and she had to put her jar on the coffee table before it fell through her hands. “What she do, Herbie, shut down when the lights go low?”
“Like a clam over a freshwater pearl.” He tried to keep his voice from shaking. He looked at his cuff links. They were gold-toned with a ruby red center. He stared at the center.
“So what, she don’t put out once in a while. Not the worse trait you could have in a wife.”
“She don’t put out.”
“So y’all just get together maybe once a month, makes it sweeter when you do.”
“We ain’t been together.”
“In a long time, right? You saying y’all ain’t been together in a long time?” Ethel’s voice had a pleading to it.
“I’m saying we ain’t been together.”
“Don’t say that. Please tell me you just saying this to try to bullshit me so I’ll be extra nice to you.”
“But you know I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this.” His lips turned down, pulling his whole face with them.
“You wouldn’t,” she said as she thought about all the times she’d heard the “me and my wife ain’t intimate” plea, and now hearing it as the truth from Herbie. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and felt Herbie’s honesty so stark in the room at that moment that it seeped through the silky sleeves of her lounging set and gave her chills.
They were both silent, sitting on the thronelike faded couch. The record had stopped, and there was no other sound in the room save the tinkling of the ice in Ethel’s widemouthed jar. Herbie stared into the ruby red of his cuff links. He had never sighed a word of Noon’s problem to anyone. And now the breath-strangling embarrassment left him and he was ready to talk.
“What makes a woman do that? Just shut down like that? Something I ain’t doing, something I done? I’m on the verge of leaving, love that little baby to death, but I still got needs. Shouldn’t have to be hunting down women like I’m single when I’m doing my part, work my ass off, doing what I’m supposed to be doing as the husband. And then she just shuts down on me.”
“Don’t leave her, Herbie.” Ethel’s voice had a whispered urgency to it. “Y’all got that little baby now. You can’t leave her now that y’all got that baby to raise. Maybe she’s just shy, or maybe she just having some female problems. You know marriage is an adjustment; maybe she’s still in the adjustment period. I mean really, y’all ain’t been married that long.”
“Celebrated a year night before last.” He said it flatly, relieved that the telling of it to another person had extracted the incredulousness of it all and made it all the other person’s.
“A year!” she blurted, and then silence as even the room screamed in disbelief. It had been a year, she thought, measuring it by her own departure from and return to Philly. “That must be rough,” she whispered when she could talk again. “But don’t leave her. Give her a little more time. Maybe somebody did something to her that got her messed up in the head. Colored woman act tough, I know, but she’s mostly a delicate thing, a very delicate thing.”
“And where that leave a man?”
“Right here on Ethel’s faded couch,” she said as she stretched open her arms. “C’mere. Come to Ethel, it’ll be okay, just come on to Ethel.”
PART II
EIGHT
Herbie went to Ethel for a stretch of five years, minus three in the middle when the war took him away, shuttled him across the country in the all-Negro 477th Bomber Squad. He wrote to Noon from Biloxi, Mississippi; Terre Haute, Indiana; Texas; Arizona; but no Europe. Trained for combat, but no combat. Told Noon in his letters don’t worry about him getting shot at by the Germans, maybe by the white townspeople in Biloxi, though. Especially when he and his GI buddies went into town and had to walk back because the military vehicles picked up only the white GIs. He could do as much back home in South Philly, he’d write.
In South Philly that stretch of five years passed like molasses going over biscuits. Where it was thin, it moved. It dripped and crawled into a puddle in the center of the plate. Fannie was growing like the thin part—movement for sure. Five years old with her true cornbread color, and black, black hair that was long and crinkly and thick like wool. Her full-lipped mouth pursed under her thin nose and was always spilling out observations with such honest boldness that Noon sometimes threatened to take a hand to her mouth. Except that Noon had been noticing that sometimes Fannie made mention of something that hadn’t happened yet that sure enough came to pass. Noon adored her, though. Couldn’t ima
gine loving her more if she had been conceived from mixing pleasures with Herbie.
Their pleasures weren’t mixing, though. Thick molasses in that regard. Moved so slowly until it stood still. Once Herbie was done with his southern tour of duty, he returned to Philadelphia and long hours as a redcap since the trains were used to transport servicemen back and forth, and sometimes equipment for the war effort. So with Herbie gone so much it was easy for Noon to wrap herself in her church, in raising Fannie, in her sewing and cooking and cleaning, in everything except Herbie’s arms under the covers when the night came. She continued to see Reverend Schell for her healing prayers, three, four times a year. And she’d get that slither of warmth deep inside, but it never grew enough for her to let Herbie in.
Herbie stopped pressuring her for the most part. Depending on his mood when she apologized for not being able to do her wifely duty, he’d hold her, or else he’d suck the air in through his teeth and leave the room. He lived for Noon’s macaroni and cheese, though, and Fannie’s smile. And especially for Ethel’s faded couch if it was late enough. Because recently Ethel saw him only when it was late. During his time in the service Ethel had taken in the daughter of her dead baby sister. For the past few years she’d been trying to fit raising her niece into her club singer’s lifestyle. That irritated Herbie. As the child got older, he couldn’t visit until Ethel had put her to bed for the night. If she woke up crying, calling for Ethel, he had to leave. Ethel’s house rule.
They could have gone on like that, suspended like no-moving molasses: Noon praying for her miracle, Herbie watching the clock until Ethel would let him in. Except Ethel never did move like molasses. She mostly moved like fire.
“What am I going to do with you, precious Liz?” Ethel said more to herself than to her five-year-old niece, who was napping, curled up on the couch with her head in Ethel’s lap. Since Liz’s mother had been killed in a car crash three years before, Ethel had been trying to muster up enough motherhood to do right by the little girl. Right now she stroked the child’s red hair and rubbed her fingers gently across her forehead. She had just gotten word that she had a tremendous gig singing her brand of bebop jazz if she could just be in New York City in two weeks. Might have the chance to sing with the likes of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, people sliding up and down the scale the way she liked to do, even going off it when need be. But what about Liz? Liz was her dead sister’s only child. Surely she couldn’t move Liz to New York, where the scarlet nights blazed much hotter than they ever did in Philadelphia, and the mornings were hungover with the deepest shades of blue. The child needed soft pink things, stability. She needed oatmeal, milk and cookie snacks, chicken and dumplings. She needed Sunday school, crinoline slips, and a big brown doll at Christmas. Not New York City. So Ethel did what she always did when she needed a quick miracle: She went to church.
She stood outside the sturdy brick church. It was July, and the gray bricks jutted and seemed to sweat in the hot morning sun. She watched the congregation file in for Sunday morning worship. She had been here a few months before in the spring when Roosevelt had just died and the women seemed to be in mourning in drab grays and blacks and browns. But this Sunday they were dripping in colors—as if they knew the war would end any day now and the last of the men still doing their duty would return. They wore summer-weight town suits, and side-draped waistline dresses, and button-down shifts with kick-out pleats. They wore hats on top of hats: sailor hats and saucers, turbans, bonnets and berets sweetened with veils for the trying-to-be-pious, or flowers and maidenhair fern. Ethel fingered her own swallowtail hat, drew it down further on her head, as she noticed how easily they laughed, a lightness to their steps, heading in the church as if they expected a foot-stomping good time.
She looked deep into their faces. She knew she’d want to see unweathered skin, a walk filled with purpose, confidence, maybe to the hum of “What a friend we have in Jesus.” She listened for snatches of conversations and ruled out anyone who appeared to be too much a complainer, gossiper, or too Holy Ghost–filled. And then she saw Noon, the woman whose husband she whispered creamy words to late at night when her set was done and Liz was fast asleep. Noon was as good as mothers came. Ethel was sure of that. She had watched Noon up close several years ago: walked through her block all different times of day, tried to make trite conversation; even had Pop, the man who owned the store at the corner of Noon’s block, over for dinner to learn all she could about Noon. Fed him thick slices of roast beef and butter-brushed candied yams; let him whisper “Jesus, Jesus” in her ear. And in the meantime she stockpiled information about Noon’s habits and routines, her temperament, her friends and detractors, and her family down South. She could call up those details at a time such as this when she needed a home for her precious child.
Ethel watched Noon walk into the church. A neat girdled stride. Not as beautiful as she could be. Her hat was brimless and centered, not propped stylishly to the side, not filled with gardens. Her baby blue–colored dress hung loosely. No tightly clasped belt to show off her bow-shaped hips, no high-heel shoes to emphasize her calves, no red-colored foundation to touch up her coloring, which was middle-of-the-road. No excesses. Instead efficient, just enough makeup, a small Bible, not the kind that weighed like construction bricks, simple earrings, hair pulled back in a tight bun behind the small, centered hat. Not even a French roll, not doing that soft hair no justice at all, Ethel thought. The thick-haired child skipping at her side wore a crisply starched pink cotton dress under a lacy white pinafore top with a sash at the waist tied back into a healthy bow. Two soft pink ribbons laced the ends of the child’s dense plaits to keep her hair from unraveling. The child’s coloring, like corn bread, had a just-scrubbed look about it, a healthy look, the way her long legs looked healthy sprouting from her sturdy leather Mary Jane shoes. Ethel knew the child was Fannie. Herbie often made Ethel laugh until her throat ached with story after story of Fannie’s outrageous boldness.
Ethel trailed Fannie and Noon inside the church, which was markedly cooler than the fierce July sun. She took a seat just two rows behind them and slightly to the side. She had left Liz with the woman who lived in the apartment downstairs and she smiled now as she imagined her Liz sitting with the neatly appareled Noon and thick-haired Fannie. Such a polite child her Liz. She would be the perfect balance to Fannie, who was fidgeting, and trying to untie her hair bows, and waving her arms imitating people that the spirit hit. Ethel cupped her mouth to keep from laughing out loud when Fannie actually stood and flung her hands in the air and pretended to faint. Liz was such a serious child. Fannie would loosen her up for sure. But it was risky. Herbie came to call more than most. What if Liz had gotten a glimpse of him? His light skin and dark hair were the things a child would remember. What if she had heard his voice, which boomed when he laughed, which he did a lot, especially when he talked about Fannie? What if she remembered the whiffs of Old Spice that hung around for a day or two after he had left? Ethel settled back in the deep brown pew. Her flowing red dress, the center of a chocolate-covered cherry, melted and oozed over the seat. She needed to think.
Between the dancing tambourines and drums that beat out “Amazing Grace,” between the waving paper fans that announced cut-rate funerals and the velvet-lined brass collection plates filled up with copper and silver and brown tithing envelopes, she saw Noon’s arms. Good wrapping arms. They were wrapped around Fannie, who was falling off to sleep. That’s what Liz needed now more than anything, some consistent arms. Arms like her grandmother’s that rocked and held and, when necessary, pushed away. Even pushed away her own child, Ethel’s mother, when Ethel’s mother’s mind turned against her, and she went half mad and could no longer do right by Ethel and her sister. Ethel decided right then and there it could work. Hadn’t she been extra careful to keep Liz from knowing her night callers? “No, no, can’t come over till I put my baby to bed,” she’d tell them. Meant it too. If Liz stirred in the middle of the night or cried out for E
thel, company had to leave. And they could never stay until dawn. Not like Ethel’s mother, whom the daybreak greeted time and again sprawled out, half clothed, strange man snoring next to her. Ethel and her sister would have to put cold rags to her face to bring her to, make her decent. They as little girls had to take it upon themselves to chase their mother’s company away. Liz always woke to Ethel’s snuggles, though, in the bed they shared, wrapped in soft cotton sheets scented with cocoa butter and fine French perfume.
It could work, it could. Except for Herbie’s reaction. He’ll be blazing mad, she thought. Poor Herbie, he was different, never rough, an honesty to him. She cringed at what he’d do when he found out. His sharp nose would flare. The top of his head where the jet black silky strands were growing thinner would pulse and redden. A ball of anger would form in his throat, and when he could talk, his voice would crackle as he whispered her name, demanding, Why? Why, Ethel, why? But this was for Liz. She had to give Liz the best. Noon was the best.
Ethel liked Noon’s block. She liked the sound of the trolley as it swished up the street. Intermittent trees gave the shadows a playful never-know-where-I’m-going-to-land dance to them. Even the people who assembled on their steps after their early Sunday dinners to watch the children play hopscotch, and wait to hear what number was leading, and chatter about who got happy in church, or flimflammed on Broad Street, or whose child was sent down South before she started showing, or who got a new couch, or used piano, or inheritance, or work shoveling shit at the navy yard. Ethel liked them too. Close-knit they were.
She walked through the block, hoping to catch up with Noon. Maybe set it up so Liz and Fannie could become playmates beforehand. She was still smiling at the sight of Noon and Fannie in church earlier, Fannie’s bounciness, fidgeting, pulling at her hair, Noon’s patience. She said a string of how do’s as she walked up the block. The men watched her hips move in circles; some smacked their lips; one or two held back whistles in deference to the wives. The women sneered and whispered: Whose man she coming to hunt down, hussy, hot-behinded red devil? A trail of air filled with outright jealousy and suppressed desire followed Ethel as she walked. Her saucer eyes didn’t flinch, nor did her thick ruby lips droop. She still smiled as she walked, her head thrown back, almost facing the sky. She was used to the air that her presence stirred up. She knew how to sift through it, not take it in, not let it cause her pain.
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