The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  “I know, right?” Lydia said. “I couldn’t believe it when I found those at the thrift shop! White folks throw out the nicest things.” She didn’t want to tattle on their father, even though he was dead. That he’d sneaked out the sewing machine from their house and brought it to Lydia.

  “Girl, this is cute!” Ailey said. “It’s all, like, arty and stuff.”

  She could have anything in the refrigerator that she found, Lydia told her. There wasn’t much, but she always kept water because she liked it cold. The same as Miss Rose, in a quart mason jar with a piece of plastic wrap over the top.

  The bedroom was off-limits, unless Ailey had to pee. The first time she’d walked toward the closed door, Lydia had jumped from the couch and asked, where was she going?

  When Ailey came out of the bathroom, Lydia was standing next to the bed. She knew that her sister had checked the medicine cabinet, that she’d lied about her bladder, and then flushed the toilet and ran the water while she did a quick search. Wasn’t she a Garfield woman? But there was nothing in there but off-brand tampons up top, and some bleach and washing powder in the lower cabinet, along with a hot water bag and sanitary napkins the same brand as the tampons.

  Lydia saw her sister scanning the living room and the kitchenette. She was wondering, where could the drugs be? But Ailey couldn’t turn the apartment upside down, not right in front of her big sister. She didn’t know that Lydia’s hiding place was behind the armoire.

  * * *

  Some evenings, Lydia tried to teach Ailey to sew. If she learned a skill, it was hers forever. She’d never need to buy clothes again.

  “What about my drawers?” Ailey asked. “I need to buy those, don’t I?”

  “Don’t make fun. And you can make your own out of T-shirt material. Or you can get fancy and buy some silk.”

  “Like I’m really gone be whipping up some silk panties in my spare time.”

  “You are incorrigible.” She pulled the test skirt from her sister’s lap. “And that zipper is grinning.”

  “I’ll do better on my drawers.”

  They laughed some more, and then Lydia pulled out The Color Purple. It was Ailey’s turn to read aloud. There was nothing that had changed about Ailey’s love, though she was no longer a girl. She still wanted to lie next to her sister on the couch, her feet resting in Lydia’s lap. She still giggled at the portion in the book where Celie and Shug became lovers.

  Then it was time for Ailey to leave. Their mother would be waiting, but she held on to Lydia tightly. Don’t go away again, she begged. She stuffed a twenty-dollar bill into Lydia’s hand. Just for emergencies, and Lydia tried not to clutch the money. Mr. Harris slipped money under her door every week, but it was starting not to be enough. Long ago, she had run out of keepsakes to pawn, and there were only so many dresses she could make.

  But Ailey wasn’t content with the two of them spending hours together in the tiny apartment. She wanted to bring Lydia home. She thought her strategy was subtle, but Lydia had helped to raise her. She knew every one of Ailey’s tricks, like how she wiggled when she had a secret.

  “Lydia?”

  “Yes, baby?”

  “I was just thinking. “

  Lydia shifted on the couch. In a while, her need would come down. She didn’t want to lose sight of the time.

  “You know Christmas is coming up,” Ailey said. “I just don’t want you to miss it. Thanksgiving is already gone.”

  “We’ll see.”

  The holidays came and went, but in the New Year, Ailey didn’t surrender. She began to speak of Easter. There were three months to prepare for that season. Her sister should have some new clothes for the Resurrection. When the sun shone, but the air was still cold, Ailey drove them to Worthie’s. She had insisted on their dressing up, like when their mother had brought them there as children.

  Ailey flipped through the racks. “What size do you wear?”

  “A four.”

  “How about this?”

  “No, that’s too expensive.”

  “I told you, I got it. And we’re in the sale section.” Ailey pulled out another dress. “What about this?”

  Before Lydia reached out to finger the material of the dress, she wiped her hand down the seam of her suit pants. She touched the collar for the price tag.

  “Unh-uh. No. This is way too much.”

  There were two white ladies a few feet away, touching dresses under the watchful gaze of an anxious-to-please saleslady. She had flicked her eyes to the sisters as they entered her sales zone minutes before, and then turned her back. The security guard perched on a stool in the corner was watching.

  Lydia placed her pocketbook on top of a stack of shirts. In the corner, the guard put one of his feet on the ground. She withdrew her purse from the stack, clamping it in the space in her armpit, and the guard settled himself back on his tall stool.

  “Please let me buy you something,” Ailey said.

  “Okay, baby sister, but I don’t like it here. Let’s go to the fabric store.”

  * * *

  As the weeks passed, Ailey kept talking about Easter.

  “Mama was talking about you the other day. About how much she missed you.”

  Lydia didn’t speak.

  “I didn’t say I’d seen you, though. I wouldn’t do that.”

  “That’s good.”

  “But you know Easter is coming up,” Ailey said. “I just don’t want you to cancel, like with Christmas.”

  “I didn’t cancel, baby. I never promised you I would come.”

  Politely, they had talked around it, the subject of her addiction. Lydia told her she wanted to be perfect for their mother. Clear her skin up. Put on some weight, and she tried to cancel Easter, the special day that Ailey had planned for her, buying the expensive jersey from the fabric store out in the suburbs, and a Vogue pattern for the new dress.

  “Ailey, I’m not well. You know that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She won’t care. Don’t cancel again. Please.”

  Lydia shifted, pushing at her feet. “I gotta work on Mrs. Bradley’s dress. You know how particular she is.”

  Ailey didn’t respond, and settled in, though her sister’s foot tapped nervously. She didn’t want to go, to lose her sister to whatever was calling to her, but Lydia began shaking. She needed to answer that call. She had to, but at the door, Ailey dawdled. Covered the hand that stroked her face, the same way their mother touched.

  “I’ll see you next week, baby,” Lydia said. “I love you.”

  “You sure?”

  “How you sound? Of course I do.”

  “And I’ll see you, for real?”

  Lydia tried not to shake. She tried so hard, her teeth felt see-through.

  “You sure will,” she said.

  “All right, now, don’t have me looking for you like Celie at that mailbox.”

  Lydia laughed and gave a teasing push to Ailey’s shoulder, a movement to steer into the hallway. The door closing in her sister’s face, and then she ran to the armoire, reached her hand behind it, and pulled out her plastic bag.

  * * *

  On Easter Sunday, Lydia sat on her couch as Ailey knocked on the apartment door. She called Lydia’s name, the hope leaching from her voice. She knocked a long time before she left.

  Three days later, she appeared. She was sulking, like when she was a little girl. Lydia had stood her up, and that hadn’t been nice. And Easter dinner had been real good. Their mother had made a big ham and so many sides and banana pudding for dessert, but Ailey had been too mad to bring leftovers by.

  Lydia turned to her dependable tactic: she offered a secret. When Ailey had been a little girl, that had always chased her anger away. Lydia confessed that she hadn’t run away. Their father had placed her in the apartment, and when Ailey turned her anger on him, Lydia told her, no, it wasn’t cruelty on his part. Don’t be mad at their father. He had done his best.

  And Ailey should feel the same a
bout Dante. She tapped her feet while she talked to Ailey about the love of her life. His kindness, how he had tried to protect her. That he hadn’t broken up with Lydia, but had been murdered, and he hadn’t been the one who’d gotten Lydia hooked on drugs, either.

  “I know you want to think that. But is that really true, Lydia? I mean, I’m sorry Dante died, but that doesn’t make what he did right.”

  “No, listen! It’s Gandee’s fault, not Dante’s!” Lydia hadn’t meant to say it, but she couldn’t let her sister talk bad about her husband. Maybe if Lydia finally told the truth her family would stop demonizing Dante. Their bad opinion of him hurt her almost as much as his death.

  Her baby sister touched her hand. “No, you’re confused, darling. Gandee has been dead for almost twenty years.”

  She spoke to Lydia as you did to a small child. Or an invalid. Or a dangerously insane person who was wielding a knife. There was no one who respected Lydia anymore. Not even this woman whom she’d taught to swim and taken to the bathroom as a toddler, and wiped her messy behind.

  Lydia moved her hand. “I know Gandee’s dead. I might smoke crack every day, but my memory is just fine.” The old bear stirred in its cave. The animal she’d thought had frozen to death during that hard winter years before. “What I mean is, Gandee did something to me when I was a little girl. Something real bad.”

  “I know.” Her sister’s voice was gentle. “I heard you downstairs that day, when you came to Nana’s. It happened to me, too.”

  Lydia shook her head, no, that couldn’t be true, though the dread crawled through her. She had finally told the truth, as Dr. Fairland had counseled her to do, back in rehab, assuring her that telling the truth wouldn’t be so bad, but here was Lydia’s most beloved person in her small world, saying her sacrifices as a little girl had been useless. No longer a child, as Ailey smoothed her big sister’s hair. Don’t cry, this woman said. It would be all right.

  “But he told me I was the only one!” Lydia said. “He told me I was special! And now you’re telling me that I was quiet for nothing? That he hurt you, too? Oh my God. Oh Lord.”

  The light was dimming, the sign that her sister should go home. Lydia didn’t want her to leave, but her need was coming on, and strong. She didn’t want to lose herself to what called her, but she couldn’t help it, and she put on a smile to quell Ailey’s concern. She told Ailey she would see her in a couple of days, and watched as her baby sister reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a twenty. Lydia wanted to say, don’t give the money this time, but she couldn’t. She held on to the bill.

  After Lydia closed the front door, she went to the armoire and pulled out the plastic bag, pipe, and lighter. She turned the ancient heater higher, but she was still cold, so she went back into the living room and pulled out a blanket from inside the armoire. In the bathroom, she piled towels on the fuzzy mat, sat on top, and wrapped the blanket around herself. She didn’t feel anything with the first rock, so she smoked another, and then another until her supply was gone. But she wasn’t frightened. Her sister had left the money on the table and Mrs. Bradley was coming the next day, so Lydia could fit her for a dress.

  She lay back against the tub. She felt so nice but was annoyed that she’d left the cassette player on. She didn’t remember turning it on. Something with drums was playing, and it kept running past the same loop. She got up, stumbling, and went into the living room, but she was wrong. The cassette player was unplugged, and now somebody was knocking at the door and they wouldn’t stop. Calling her name, and she walked to the door, reminding herself, don’t be rude to Mrs. Bradley. You couldn’t yell at an old lady, not if you had home training.

  When Lydia opened the door, there was a woman standing there in a ragged dress. And so much hair, well past her knees. How did somebody fix all that? Lydia didn’t even want to think about this lady’s complicated wash day.

  “Yes, ma’am. May I help you?”

  The long-haired lady didn’t answer, she just took Lydia’s hand. She led her to the staircase; Lydia looked down. Below her on the steps, she saw her great-grandmother, but Dear Pearl wasn’t carrying her cane. She was young and her hair was black and pulled into a bun. She wore a yellow dress with buttons down the front and yellow shoes to match. Dear Pearl shimmied in the dress, giggling. She said she’d sewn this on her hands, and wasn’t she looking fine?

  At the bottom of the staircase, there was Dante in church clothes, saying, hey, baby, I missed you, and Lydia gave a cry. Her husband put his hand on the shoulder of her father, who had on his doctor’s scrubs. Daddy waved at her, apologizing. He was sorry that he’d left so suddenly. But he was here because he’d missed Lydia so much. He’d come back to get his darling girl.

  VIII

  . . . need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the veil?

  —W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

  Keeping the Tune

  My mother didn’t feel it when her child died. There was no dream, no prescience in her spirit, and when the police informed her that a woman named Irma Bradley had found Lydia at the bottom of the stairs of the apartment building where she’d been living, the surprise hit my mother so hard that she fainted.

  Lydia hadn’t died from the fall down the steps, but from the series of seizures from the cocaine in her system, which had moved her into a short coma before her heart had stopped. Coco would explain that to us, after she went to the hospital and identified our sister’s body. Lydia had kept a card in her bra with our parents’ address, number, and names printed neatly on it. At some point, she had added my name beneath theirs in red ink: And my youngest sister, Ailey Pearl Garfield.

  It was a spring morning when Lydia passed away, a morning that I was sleeping in. I didn’t have volunteer work at the clinic, but I was planning to see my sister later in the day. I was sleep-logged, and when I came down the stairs, I was disappointed I didn’t smell coffee. Then I saw my mother’s head on my aunt’s shoulder; her eyes were closed. I joked that the both of them were goofing off so early in the day, but my aunt shook her head.

  “Darling, it’s Lydia. She’s gone, Ailey. She passed away.”

  I made a loud cry, and my aunt put her finger to her lips. She shook her head again and pointed at my mother. Not now. When we half carried Mama upstairs, she awoke, and I supported her while Aunt Diane pulled off her clothes, dropping them into a pillowcase. I held Mama steady as my aunt tugged a fresh nightgown over her head. Before she fell back asleep, Mama promised me she would be better tomorrow. Her voice was faint. She shuddered between words.

  * * *

  No mother expects to bury her child, and there was no funeral policy for Lydia, the daughter everyone had prayed would get better. Coco told me she’d solicited donations to bury our sister. It happened quietly, she said. Our Chicasetta relatives called each other behind Mama’s back, and that collection paid for shipping the body down south. The pink casket, the flowers, and the repast. The gravestone, though no plot had to be purchased. Lydia would be buried in the old cemetery out on the farm, on the left side of our father’s grave.

  Miss Rose made the funeral arrangements with Mr. Cruddup, our family mortician. He’d been the one to bury my father and so many others in my family. He made Lydia look like a girl again, dressing her in the Easter outfit she’d made from the fabric I’d bought her. It was a small homegoing, with only relatives and friends: David was there with his fiancée, Carla. Boukie and Rhonda came, too. They had three children now. I’d called my college roommates, but only Keisha attended. I sat between Coco and her during the service. Melissa didn’t come. Somebody had to stay in the City and be with our grandmother, because Aunt Diane wanted to attend the homegoing. She had loved my sister like her own daughter.

  In our church, the men spoke, but I was too grieved to care about the sexism. I was happy I didn’t have to say anything. I held Coco’s hand throughout the service, as my mother’s broth
er spoke for the family, tears streaming down his face. When it was Uncle Root’s turn to speak, he pulled out index cards from the inside pocket of his jacket. But then he only stood there, clearing his throat, before abruptly stepping down the two steps from the altar. When he sat down on the pew, he covered his face with a handkerchief.

  At the cemetery, I was surprised to see my other roommate’s ancient hatchback: Roz hadn’t been at the church. Another car had pulled up behind hers, and four more behind those. Women began to climb out from the cars, all of them dressed in white, with gloves and shoes to match. Dr. Oludara went over to the old man, and he moved into her arms. Roz headed right to my mother. She whispered something, and Mama nodded a few times. Then Roz and Dr. Oludara returned to the group of women in white.

  Elder Beasley recited the final remarks, and then, a young woman I’d never seen walked to the grave. She was light-skinned, short and plump.

  “God bless you all,” she said. “I am so sorry for your loss. My name is Crystal Lightfoot—they called me Niecy back in college—and Lydia was my line sister and my best friend. When I heard the news about Lydia passing, I knew . . .” She paused. Took a few breaths. “I knew I had to be here with the rest of my sorors, to tell y’all that I loved Lydia so much. She was a good friend and a hardworking girl. You could always call on her in a time of need. We are Lydia’s sisters of Beta Alpha Beta, and we want to honor her today.”

  Niecy reached for Roz’s hand, and Roz reached for Dr. Oludara. The handholding continued, until the white-garbed women made a large circle. I’d kept my composure through Elder Beasley’s words, but as these women began to sing of lilies and never-ending sisterhood, I emitted loud, guttural wails.