Tumbling

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “I’ll bet this is one of the first dollars she sent.” Fannie walked to Liz and pushed it in her face, almost rubbed it against her nose.

  Liz waved the dollar away. Fannie shoved it harder against her face, this time mashing her nose for real. Liz jumped up from where she’d sat at Noon’s feet. She pushed Fannie’s hand from her face. “What’s your problem? You act like you mad ’cause I got a little bit of money.”

  “I’m just trying to make a point, Liz. Like I been saying to you all these years, this proves how much Ethel cared about you. She took time every month to make sure you was being provided for.” She continued to wave the crumpled, faded dollar bill. “But you so concerned about the money, you haven’t even given a second’s thought about Ethel. Maybe it was a sacrifice for her. Maybe she even did without so you could have.”

  “Oh, Fannie, how she supposed to act?” Noon interrupted. “I doubt that woman did without too much except maybe some religion. Now get off your high horse and help clean this money up before Herbie gets in here. Come on now, let’s go around the corner right now and talk to Rose. You gonna be living right in the house with Liz, so you benefiting from the money too.”

  “I’m not looking to benefit.” Fannie’s voice was angry. “And you know that, Noon.”

  “Get it up, hurry.” Noon talked right over Fannie.

  “And you know it too, Liz.” Fannie leaned into Liz as she stooped to pick up the dollars.

  “Let’s go over to Levitz’s when we leave Rose’s; couch in the window that is so gorgeous, Noon.” Liz ignored Fannie. She’d heard her, though. Knew exactly what Fannie was saying. No, she hadn’t thought about how hard Ethel had to work. Probably wasn’t hard enough, leaving her the way she did, lying to her. Should have sent more. Should have worked twice as hard and doubled what she’d sent.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Liz got the couch she wanted and first pick of the bedrooms, the largest one that got the sun in the morning, the one with the smoothest walls. Even though before she and Fannie moved, she had to redo the walls in the closet at her bedroom at Noon’s. Fannie cursed the whole time about how she better stop eating that shit ’cause it was gonna kill her sure nuff, but Fannie helped her with the walls just so Noon wouldn’t find out, the same way Fannie kept the secret of Liz seeing Willie Mann, to protect Noon. Noon was in such a volatile state these days. Obsessed with winning out over the road. Day into night, meeting with Jeanie, and Bow, and the Saunderses, and Pop, and the other faithfuls who refused to sell out. Hearing the report from the lawyer on the latest appeal he’d filed. Noon was turning into a walking, mumbling wreck.

  Herbie was too. He had never seen Noon in such a state. Thought that maybe all those years of never getting her passion stirred had finally taken its toll. Drifted to her brain and confused her. Except that she wasn’t really confused, just emotional, high-strung. Stopping people on the corner so they could hear her out. Going door to door to tell them about the hype. “No road,” she’d tell them. “My daughter saw it, and it’s not gonna be a road.”

  “Get some rest, Noon,” they’d say as they shook their heads sympathetically. “You’re working too hard. Now go, go get some rest.”

  She didn’t even listen to Reverend Schell when he said it, and she’d always listened to Reverend Schell. Even at the last session when he prayed over her body, asked the Lord to touch and give her a nature of passion so she could do her wifely duty, Noon had sat straight up. Got off the table in the middle of the prayer. “What’s the use?” she’d said. “Nineteen years passed. What’s the use?”

  “But the Israelites wandered for forty years, Noon. Forty years before their deliverance came.”

  “No use. It’s no use,” she’d said, and walked out of the church before she could even get that thin hot line that was her glimmer of hope. “It’s just no use. Devil get a hold of you, get inside of you, scar you up like the devil did to me, it’s just no use.”

  Her brothers called from Florida. Each night a different one would call. “Take care of yourself, Noon,” they’d say. “Get some rest, Noon, or I’m coming to bring you back home,” they’d caution. “Let it go, Noon. Just let it go,” they’d counsel. And Noon would promise them she would. Then she’d throw a sweater over her shoulders, and sit on the back steps facing the Saunders Funeral Home, and rub spirit of peppermint between her teeth, humming, “Come by here, my Lord. Come by here.”

  Herbie went to work and to the club because he couldn’t stand being home anymore. Now with Fannie and Liz gone, the house was just too quiet, too many memories, reminders in the quiet of what he and Noon had never shared. The stretch of time turned on him like a two-faced friend and made him start to blame himself. Maybe he should have gone to church with her; maybe that would have loosened her up. Or forced her. Maybe if he’d forced her just once, and she saw it hadn’t killed her, maybe she would have been willing the next time. Or maybe he shouldn’t have been so quick to take up with other women, especially the prostitutes after Ethel left; if he’d forced himself to go longer so that he really needed it, maybe he could have been more convincing to her, more creative with his pleas. The maybes and the two-faced stretch of time were too large in the quiet house. They fell over him like a heavy blanket, covered him until he felt he had to fight himself out. So he went to work and then to Royale, until it closed, until he had nowhere else to go except home to be with the quiet.

  Then one night Big Carl leaned over the leather-clad bar and said, “What’s doing, Herbie? Now you having your mail sent here?”

  “What you talking ’bout?” Herbie asked as he tilted his thumb-sized glass of gin to his lips.

  “Letter came for you the other day,” Carl said as he leaned in closer across the bar. “Don’t know who it’s from, but it smells sweet.” He handed Herbie a short envelope with a fine textured feel to it.

  Even through the dark blue air of the club, Herbie recognized the inked symbols. He used to tease her about her handwriting. Said it was pretty as all getup, but you couldn’t understand a word of it. Herbie’s heartbeat stepped up; his fingers were sweating now as he tore across the end of the envelope.

  Carl moved the candle in the red-tinted jar closer in. “Little candlelight to read by.” He laughed.

  But Herbie didn’t need the candlelight. He had already read the too-few sentences. “I’m coming back to Philly, maybe for good this time, looking to settle down. Hope to see you. Love, Ethel.”

  “I’ll be damned,” he said out loud.

  “Somebody die?” Carl asked, filling Herbie’s shot glass.

  “No, but somebody might, somebody damned sure might.”

  “Just keep it outside of the club.” Carl chuckled. “Bloodshed ruins the reputation of a nightspot, especially when it’s the domestic variety.”

  Herbie barely heard Carl. He was too distracted by the jumble of emotions. His rage percolated. That she would just bounce back after all these years as if she’d just left that morning to go shopping. And the way she’d had his ass kicked in New York. But then he also wondered if her laugh was still easy and loud. When her gaze fell on him, would he feel that flood of warmth mixed with tingling anticipation? The desire, still there, still as strong as it had always been, fought with the rage now. Damn, almost thirteen years since he’d seen her that day in court, and just the thought of her still had him turning to jelly.

  “Herbie, ’nother one?” Carl asked as he tapped a bottle of Beefeater’s gin against the leather-clad bar. “Herbie, you with us, or what?”

  “I’m gonna split, man. I got to work some things out. I’ll see you tomorrow, Saturday, you know I’ll be by tomorrow.” Herbie turned to get up and then hesitated and said, “By the way, man, what you hear from Ethel?”

  “Hear she doing good, doing real good. Still in the Big Apple. Last I heard, she was kicking ass at Small’s Paradise. Hear she packs in the crowds wherever she goes.”

  “Guess the cats cram into the place just to see her move
,” Herbie said, his facial expression very far away.

  “Awl, c’mon, she gotta voice too. It ain’t just her body; they could sit right where you sitting on any barstool in any club, and see just ’bout any shape they wanna see.”

  “Oh, I know it ain’t just the body, it ain’t just the voice or just the face,” Herbie said, almost having to shout now as the club was starting to fill with the Friday partyers. “It’s all of it, the eyes, the lips, the arrangement of her songs, the way she walks, and throws her head back when she gets mad, and looks at you when she talks like you the only living thing on earth. Her shit is perfectly arranged for greatest effect, and she knows it, you know what I mean?”

  “Do Noon know what you mean?” Carl asked, laughing.

  Herbie exaggerated a grimace and said, “This ain’t really about me and Noon; me and Noon, well, we’re well, we’re me and Noon, you know. But since we raised Ethel’s niece, and all, I just like to know how she’s doing.”

  “You should hop on the train and catch her act,” Carl said, moving down the bar some to pour for other patrons.

  “Yeah, I’d love to catch that act. Love to catch the shit out of that act,” Herbie said as he spun off the barstool and headed for the door, fingering the finely textured envelope as he went.

  He reached for Noon that night. He hadn’t reached for her in years. They had settled into a pattern, like doing a ten-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. They had started at the edges and gotten all the blue pieces for the sky, except that sometimes a blue piece belonged deep inside of a green area, a tree that was allowing a little light through. But they’d tried to make it fit at the top. Herbie tried to force Noon to move to the beat of his passion; she was capable only of stillness. “Still waters run deep,” she’d tell him time and again. And she tried to force him to settle down, to grow out of some of his playfulness, to go to church, to walk slow, to be patient with her until her healing would come. “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” was his response. And they’d go back and forth until they accepted that the puzzle piece didn’t fit at the top, that it belonged deep within the green of the tree, that it was just a little light coming through after all. That the puzzlemaker threw in such tricks to keep it a challenge. The way he’d thrown in Noon’s illness, which had become almost ordinary over the years. The eye after all adjusts itself over time, making what first seemed horrible appear normal. Like having a wife with palsy; soon the shaking becomes as much a part of her as the slant of her mouth.

  But tonight Herbie reached for Noon as gently as he could. She didn’t move. How could she not move? he thought. She even seemed to stop breathing. He needed Ethel. He almost called out Ethel’s name. He almost whispered in Noon’s ear that he needed Ethel. He wanted to hurt Noon. In that instant he wanted to hurt Noon for being the one that he’d desired all those years ago in her daddy’s church. He nudged her, and then he pushed her, right in the small of her back, he pushed her hard. He could see her back shaking, he could see she was crying. He clenched his teeth and held his hands stiffly to him. If he didn’t, he might hurt her. He didn’t want to hurt her, not really. He ached all over. Noon was crying hard now, he could tell by her back, it was convulsing so. At least she was moving. At least her back was going in and out. Some nights she didn’t even move. Some nights he had to fight the impulse to get his thickest strap just to make her move.

  He felt ashamed. He got out of bed and went downstairs and opened the front door. The night air was cool and full of movement. He sat outside on the front steps. Cross-the-Street-Dottie turned her bedroom light on and off three times. She had told him if he ever wanted to visit for a late cup of coffee, just watch for her light. “No, thanks, Dottie,” he said to the fast-moving night air. “No, thanks, no, thanks.”

  The morning after Herbie got Ethel’s letter, Noon woke with a soreness right in the small of her back where Herbie had pushed her. She soaked in Epsom salt. I hope that don’t cause me to have arthritis right in my back, she thought, as she stretched out in the tub and let the hot water cover her. She listened to the church bells chime their 4:00 A.M. wake-up call. She watched daylight peek through the skylight. She tried to clear her mind enough so she could say her morning prayers. Her mind was too crowded. The road mess. People falling for the lie. Treating her as if she were the one crazy when all she was trying to do was expose it for what it was. Abandoned houses starting to pile up, block by block. People who swore they never would buckle were crumbling like day-old bread. And that turncoat Willie Mann smiling up in her face, Liz’s eyes going bright whenever he crossed her view. Liz not looking quite right, either, as if she were getting ready to come down with something; not coming to visit regularly, not even stopping by with Fannie for morning coffee on her way to classes. And Herbie pushing her in the small of her back late at night. “Oh, no, he’s not either,” she said out loud. Her voice bounced around in the bathroom. The loudness of it shocked the quiet and pulled her from her thoughts. The water was barely lukewarm now; her fingers were prunelike; daylight was completely overhead. Must be at least six, she thought, as she pulled the rubber stopper and let the water rush through the drain. She sat in the empty tub. Now she said her prayers.

  Herbie passed up breakfast. He just wanted to get out of the house away from the two-faced stretch of time and the emptiness. He and Noon argued before Herbie could get to the door. How dare he let her fry up all that city dress salt pork, and scramble all those eggs, and he had no intentions of eating. And how dare she expect that he hang around the house on his day off when she was gonna be gone quick, straight over to the church to a meeting or rally or prayer vigil or, at the very least, in a huddle on the back steps with Jeanie.

  “I told you I’m not going to a service. Didn’t I tell you we were getting petitions signed today?” Noon asked, irritated. “Didn’t I say yesterday that when I left this morning, it was gonna be for a petition meeting? Why you can’t never remember what I tell you?”

  “All I heard you say was that you was going to church, Noon, which is all you ever do, since Fannie and Liz moved, might as well say you moved too, at least I knew they were leaving.”

  “All right, Herbie, what else is it?”

  “What you talking about?” He moved quickly toward the front door.

  “This ain’t about me and church, I always spent a lot of time in church. Something else is going on, I can feel it. I could feel it when you walked through the door last night. Now you can treat me like you think I’m going crazy, like other people been treating me.” She followed Herbie into the living room as she talked. “But you know I ain’t going crazy, you know my feelings are usually right on the mark.”

  “You and your feelings again, huh, Noon? Too bad your feelings don’t operate when it’s time for you to feel something. Past twenty years your feelings ain’t kicked in once when it really mattered. So don’t give me no shit about your feelings.”

  Noon flinched. She breathed in deep the thick, angry air. The air was heavy in her chest, painful. She flicked a tiny spot of dust from the otherwise spotless coffee table. She shifted the orange gladiolus so that they were more balanced in the vase. She turned the table Bible so that it sat on an angle to meet in a point with the Ebony magazine. She sucked her teeth and swallowed hard.

  Herbie was sorry; he was angry and sorry at the same time. “I got to get the hell outta here,” he said as he moved quickly through the front door.

  Noon was beginning to trust her instincts—everything that culminated to shape her assessments of the present moment. It would catch her by surprise. Like knowing that something was going on with Herbie. It was a sound that the quiet house made, like a sad trumpet blurting out notes that ended too soon.

  The thud of the door as Herbie left jolted Noon. She watched him half run, half jump against the wind up Lombard Street. A trolley sliding up the street crossed her view. The clang of the trolley was distorted by the wind, carried to a higher note, swirled around against the blue and sun-lit
Saturday. The clang faded too quickly. That disturbed Noon. She had come to rely on the sound of the trolley, much like the church bells that rang every hour. Stability was in those sounds. The trolley coasted through the wind on down the street. Herbie had already turned the corner.

  It had rained the day before. And then the March winds had come through like a vacuum cleaner and sucked up all that wasn’t clean. Now the sun was out; it sparkled out. Herbie walked. He walked up to the bridge and stared into the wind-rippled water. He walked back on the other side of the tracks past Ninth Street and the smell of Italian sausage and pepper cheese. And then down to the waterfront, where the air was moist and cool. He stopped off at Bow’s for a cut, a long wait for a chair. He was glad for the wait. He could shoot the jive with the other men waiting about the up-and-coming Cassius Clay, the demise of Lady Day, the Warriors’ stats, Willie Mays’s hits, and South Street, the way it used to bounce in the old days before all the talk of the highway had people closing up shop.

  When he left the barber’s, dusk was settling in. He got the urge to talk to Fannie; he walked over to Pop’s, stuck his head in. “Just missed her,” Pop said. “I let her go a little early tonight, reward for her doing all my balance sheets.”

  Herbie acknowledged Pop with a nod and a wave and then headed around to Fannie and Liz’s new house. He had to walk back past his house to get to Fannie and Liz’s. He walked on the other side of the street. A trolley was sliding up the street. The wind pushed the clang of the trolley deep into his head. It followed him around the corner.