by Pearl Cleage
“Near the freeway?”
“Practically runs through the backyard.”
She squinted a little, trying to picture it in her mind. M. L. King was still a major thoroughfare through Atlanta’s black community, and if she’d spent much time here, chances are she’d driven by Evans Estates. My mother, in a fit of grandiosity, once threatened to have a small sign made that she would post at the foot of the driveway to help people find their way. I managed to talk her out of it, but it became an inside joke between us. Welcome to Evans Estates.
“Does it have a great big lawn in the front?”
“It used to. Now it has an overgrown weed field that seems to double as the neighborhood landfill.”
“Oh, no!” she said. “I know that place. I’ve driven by there with my niece. She worked on a project with an older woman who lived around the corner on Wiley. After her house got robbed twice, Regina helped her find a place in West End.”
Older meant “older than us.” It probably always would.
“The robbers were most likely staying at my place when they did it,” I said.
“Oh, Jo, I’m so sorry. And you’re right. It is a real mess. Inside, too.”
“You’ve been inside?”
She nodded. “When Regina told Blue what was going on, he thought about buying it, but when he sent a contractor over there with us, to take a look, the guy said thieves had ripped out all the copper wire and dragged away as many of the plumbing fixtures as they could carry. There were big holes in the wall and in the floor, too. Both sides.”
“Is that why Blue didn’t buy it?”
“Blue doesn’t really want to expand out of West End. If he had bought your place, people would have expected him to do more. To do…the kinds of things he does over here.”
She got up and poked the fire, added another log to it, and sat back down. “He’s not really looking to take on any more right now, especially since they had the baby. In Trinidad, Blue can be an artist again instead of…you know.”
Of course I knew. I had walked over here in the dark without giving it a second thought, hadn’t I?
“I’ll be surprised if they ever come back here to live,” she said.
“So I can’t count on Blue Hamilton to reclaim my neighborhood anytime soon?”
“’Fraid not.” Abbie smiled. “But even the land is worth more than fifteen thousand.”
“That’s what I thought, but Ms. Woodruff seemed to think I was being naïve.”
“She’s being naïve. That whole area is in line for some serious redevelopment,” Abbie said. “All that property over there is going to double and triple its value in the next two or three years.”
“She said ten.”
Abbie shook her head firmly. “Not a chance. Nothing in Atlanta takes ten years. All those folks who left the city to get away from Negroes are tired of fighting the traffic every day to get to work. They want these in-town neighborhoods back. And right now!”
Funny how language sets a tone. Inner city sounds dark and dangerous. In-town sounds hip and trendy.
“Besides,” Abbie said, grinning. “All those neighborhoods are now full of people from all over the world, including black folks. The days of lily-white enclaves protected by privilege from the unwashed masses are gone with the wind. Now all they got is a long commute twice a day and the specter of four-dollar-a-gallon gas.”
“How much do you think I might be able to get for it if what you’re talking about happens?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You should ask Aretha when she gets here. She keeps up with that stuff.”
A fabulous photographer with a second career as a real estate mogul? I was liking this Aretha more and more.
“She can also give you an estimate on repairs. She’s done a lot of work with contractors.”
“How many jobs does she have?” I said, but before Abbie could answer, the doorbell rang.
“That’s probably her now,” Abbie said, heading for the door. “You can ask her yourself.”
TWENTY-ONE
I didn’t get a chance to ask Aretha anything right then. When Abbie opened the door, she was greeted by both of our dinner partners and another man who looked a little surprised to find himself included.
“I found these guys in front of your house,” Aretha said, hugging Abbie hello. “Do they belong to you?”
“Well, this one does,” said Abbie laughing and kissing the one who was clearly Peachy on the cheek. “And the other one is welcome. Any friend of Peachy’s is a friend of mine.”
She extended her hand to the man who was almost a foot taller than she was in her little flat Chinese shoes. “I’m Abbie Browning.”
“Louie Baptiste,” said the man, bending over to touch his lips lightly to the back of her hand.
“Hey, you heard the lady,” Peachy said, grinning. “She’s spoken for so don’t be kissing on her hands!”
The man looked startled by Peachy’s teasing. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean any disrespect, Miss Browning.”
“Don’t pay him a bit of mind,” Abbie said. “He’s just trying to distract me so I won’t point out how late he is for dinner.”
“It was this Negro’s fault in the first place,” Peachy said, pointing at Louie. “I’ve been begging him to come down and help me out at the restaurant, but he’s stubborn as a Georgia mule.”
Aretha hung their coats and her own in the front closet, clearly a frequent and comfortable visitor.
“So I figured maybe you could talk him into it,” Peachy said.
“Not a chance.” Abbie laughed and shook her head.
“You don’t even know what I want you to talk him into yet, Sweet Thing.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “Talking people into things is not my style. Mr. Baptiste, come in and meet my other guest.”
“Call me Louie,” he said quickly. I stood up, wondering if he would kiss my hand, too, or if Peachy had scared him out of it for the rest of the evening.
“Louie, meet my friend Josephine Evans. Josephine, meet Louie Baptiste and Peachy Nolan.”
“My pleasure,” Louie said, but made no move to take my hand.
“Aw, man, it’s okay to kiss this one. Go for it!”
I laughed and extended my hand. “How about we just shake instead?”
“So you got a thing about talking somebody into something, too?” Peachy said, grinning, clearly a man who liked to tease. Abbie was standing easily within the circle of his arm.
“I don’t have a position against it,” I said. “I’m just not very good at it.”
“So you say!” He laughed. “I’ll bet you could talk the black off a crow.”
Aretha came over to give me a hug. “Good to see you again.”
“You, too.”
Abbie smiled and disengaged herself from Peachy’s easy embrace. “Aretha, why don’t you come with me and get the glasses? Maybe we can get Peachy to pour some champagne in addition to all that signifyin’.”
“I’m your man,” Peachy said. “Bring it on!”
He sat down on the other end of the sofa and waved an arm at Louie. “Cop a squat, man. Make yourself at home.”
Peachy was a small man with a compact physique and a full head of wavy white hair that he wore just long enough to let you know he considered it one of his best features. He was wearing a rust-colored turtleneck sweater, a pair of softly pleated pants, and a pair of brown and tan two-tone shoes. He looked like a jazz musician. Louie was taller than Peachy, and everything about him was medium: medium brown complexion, medium height, medium weight. His dark hair was cut short and sprinkled with gray and so was the mustache he had let grow in full and bushy. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and sober tie, all of which made him look more like he was going to church than to dinner with friends. His face looked sober, too, like he had more on his mind than Abbie’s paella.
“It’s good to meet you,” Peachy said. “Abbie was real excited that y
ou all just ran into each other at the West End News like that.”
“I was, too. We haven’t seen each other in a long time.”
“Well, now that you’re here, don’t be a stranger.”
“I won’t.”
Aretha came in with three glasses and the champagne. Peachy quickly took the bottle to do the honors. By the time he refilled my glass, Abbie came in and stood beside him.
“To sweet Abbie,” Peachy said, smiling and handing her a glass.
“The place or the person?” Aretha said.
“The person, of course,” Peachy said. “No contest.”
“I love you, too.” Abbie laughed, drank a sip of her champagne, and excused herself, promising dinner would be ready in two minutes.
Peachy’s eyes followed her until she disappeared down the hall. “Only reason I even opened the damn restaurant was so she wouldn’t think I was spending all my time waiting around for her to agree to marry me.”
“How’s business?” I said.
“It’s great. Too great. We got lines out the door every night. Now when she’s got time to see me, I can’t see her because I gotta go down to the dock and pick out some shrimp? That ain’t right.” He turned to Louie, sipping his champagne and gazing into the fire. “That’s why I’m trying to get Baptiste to come and help me out in the kitchen, but like I said, he’s stubborn.”
Louie looked up at the sound of his name and smiled a noncommittal smile. It was clear he had been lost in his own thoughts. “Say what?”
“I said, you’re stubborn. Now tell me I’m wrong.”
“I came here with you, didn’t I?” Louie said quietly.
“I’m just messin’ with you, brother. Some of my best friends are stubborn. That woman in there…” He jerked his head toward the kitchen. “She is the most stubborn person I’ve ever met in my life and I couldn’t love her more if I tried. So what are you gonna do?”
As if on cue, Abbie appeared in the doorway. “You’re going to count your blessings,” she said. “Dinner is served.”
TWENTY-TWO
Another bottle of champagne, Abbie’s perfect paella, and lots of laughter made for a wonderful evening. Once we all gathered around the kitchen table, Louie seemed to relax a little, too, grinning and shaking his head whenever Peachy’s teasing turned his way. For her part, Aretha treated Peachy like a favorite uncle and he returned the favor by praising the photograph that now hung in Sweet Abbie’s to welcome his patrons.
“Pretty soon, people are going to start coming in just to see that picture,” he said, adding three sugars to the coffee Abbie had passed around.
“That doesn’t say much for your chef,” Aretha said, obviously pleased at the compliment.
“You hear that, Louie? What have I been trying to tell you?”
“Let the man have his coffee in peace,” Abbie said.
“I ain’t bothering him. I’m just saying…” He sipped his coffee.
Abbie smiled at Louie. “You know, I’m glad Peachy didn’t tell me he was bringing the Louie Baptiste to dinner or I might not have had the nerve to make such a complicated meal.”
“Miss Abbie, you ain’t got to apologize for nothin’,” Louie said, adding a southern compliment to a great cook. “You put your foot in that paella.”
“Thank you,” Abbie said. “It was an honor to have you at my table.”
“The pleasure was all mine,” Louie said.
“Well, now that you two have formed a mutual admiration society, does that mean you’ll consider my offer more seriously?” Peachy said.
During dinner, it had come out that Louie had been a much admired chef with his own small restaurant in New Orleans before Katrina. After the levees broke, he’d waited in water up to his chest for two days before the coast guard rescued him. He had escaped to Atlanta, assuming he’d go back and pick up the pieces when the water went down, but by the time he was allowed back to his Ninth Ward neighborhood, all that was left was the slab the restaurant building had been sitting on and a bunch of empty houses where his neighbors used to live. He stayed around for a couple of months, waiting for some signs of the recovery they kept promising and not seeing any.
Finally, when the smell of the bodies and the sewage and the broken promises got to be too much for him, he had come back to Atlanta with two friends of his, also chefs, and taken a job at a downtown hotel where, according to Louie, the man in charge couldn’t have made a pot of decent gumbo if his life depended on it. One of his friends had moved in with a daughter, but he had lost his wife when the water swept through their house and he never got over it. His daughter, still grieving her mother, kept trying to get Louie’s friend to talk about it, but he couldn’t, or he wouldn’t, and one day he left a note saying he was sorry, enclosed four thousand dollars in cash he had buried in his backyard and brought with him in a tin box, and just walked away.
Louie had tried to comfort the young woman by telling her that her father just needed some time, but they both knew he wasn’t coming back. His other friend had tried and failed to find a job and finally went back to New Orleans because he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Every now and then he and Louie would talk on the phone and his friend would say, Don’t come back here, man. Stay up there where you got it good. Ain’t nothin’ down here but broke niggas and stray dogs and neither one worth a damn.
Louie knew his friend wouldn’t lie, so he rented himself a small apartment just outside of West End and tried to cook the bland food that was required, but in his dreams, he still heard the sound of second-line bands and longed to add just a pinch of spice to the pot. When Peachy came to see him about the chef’s spot at Sweet Abbie’s, he had thought it was a dream come true until Peachy told him the place wasn’t in Atlanta, but at the tip of a tiny little island where hurricanes were a fact of life.
He told Peachy he was sorry, but he couldn’t do it. His desire to run his own kitchen was overwhelmed by his memories of all that water rising in the darkness. But he longed to be able to accept Peachy’s offer, and Peachy knew it. That’s why he had coaxed Louie into coming along this evening. By the time we all settled over coffee, no deals had been struck, but the fellowship and the good food and Abbie’s easy hospitality had worked their magic. Louie agreed to consider the offer again.
It had worked on me, too. Our conversation early on before the others arrived had given me some hope for the house and Aretha had agreed to come with me in the next couple of days to take a look around so I’d know what I was up against when it came to repairs. Once I knew that, I’d be in a better position to evaluate Greer Woodruff’s offer and decide whether I could afford to keep playing hard to get or whether I should jump on a plane back to Amsterdam and start begging François for that teaching job.
But none of that had to be decided tonight. It was late and Peachy was driving back to Tybee early in the morning. Aretha offered to give Louie a ride home but he said he’d rather walk. Me, too. I was looking forward to the short walk back to Zora’s. She wasn’t due back until tomorrow and the idea of a midnight swim had just presented itself to me as the perfect way to finish off a lovely evening. Maybe I could absorb the mermaid’s serenity by osmosis and emerge filled with a newfound peace, an unshakeable clarity, and a plan for getting Zora back on track.
Abbie declined my offer to help clean up and walked me outside. Louie and Peachy were standing at the end of the walk. Peachy was still lobbying.
“Thank you,” I said to Abbie, smiling at the soft scent of her ever-present patchouli. “I really needed this.”
“Me, too,” she said. “I’m so glad you had a chance to meet Peachy. Now we can talk.”
“Talk about what?”
“About whether or not I should marry him,” she said, laughing. “What else?”
Peachy came up on the porch, grinning at me as he put his arm around Abbie’s waist. “I can vouch for that Negro’s character if you accept his offer to walk you home.”
Louie was stan
ding on the sidewalk, holding his hat in his hand like an old-fashioned gentleman caller.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“We go the same way,” he said. “I’d be honored to have your company.”
Peachy and Abbie had such signifyin’ looks on their faces, I laughed out loud. “You two deserve each other!”
“You got that right!” Peachy laughed, too.
“Great to meet you,” I said to Peachy, hugging Abbie goodbye.
“You, too,” Peachy said, and kissed my hand just like Louie had done to Abbie a few hours ago and winked. “That Negro ain’t the only one with the moves.”
TWENTY-THREE
Louie lived just outside of West End in a small apartment right on the MARTA line. He could catch the bus outside his front door and be at the downtown hotel kitchen where he worked in less than twenty minutes. His route home took him down our street and he matched his steps to mine easily, like a man who already knew what his feet would find. The night was cool and our nonstop, laughter-filled conversations at dinner had allowed us the luxury of enjoying each other’s quiet company as we savored the walk home together.
There is no way to imagine the terror Louie must have felt watching the water rising with no possible escape. No way to understand the horror of the sounds and sights and smells that came after. The destruction not just of neighborhoods, but of a whole way of moving through the world. Some people could not survive it. Their hearts broke and rebroke too many times for mending, and so even if they lived through it, they were never the same. How could they be?
It was like that afternoon at the height of the plague years when Howard called in tears because he wanted to plan a brunch and realized all of his beautiful, fabulous friends were dead of AIDS, except me.
“What’s the point?” he had sobbed, filled with the pain of loss and the guilt of the survivor. “What’s the point?”
I never know how to answer that question. That one seems better put to a priest or a shaman than an actress who has never been very good at improvisation. Good food had been the point for Louis. He found his way by feeding people. I found mine by telling stories from the stage. But now things had changed and he found himself taking orders in someone else’s kitchen and I found myself getting ready to fix up my wreck of a house and wondering how I would ever know the answer when I couldn’t even seem to find the question.
