Blues Dancing

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  And it wasn’t just the missing Verdi. It was all of his school activities that had kept him occupied so that his sadness had to be thunderous before it captured his attention. He’d worked incessantly on a committee to plan a black dorm on campus, and now that was going to happen; he’d studied hard otherwise, though he’d missed the dean’s list because of a C in a lit course, Romantic Poets, not even part of his major architecture concentration, blamed the grade on the racist professor who told Johnson that although his paper comparing Wordsworth and Coleridge was brilliant, he’d misplaced semicolons, that he’d never make it through an institution such as the university if he didn’t master the use of semicolons. But even fighting the racism when he was on campus involved a certain directed energy that he didn’t have to draw on at home. Had to draw on only enough to make it to his assembly line–like summer job at UPS, and stop by Bug’s third-floor apartment on the way home because at least that way his mother would already be asleep when he stumbled in and he wouldn’t have to torture himself trying to think of something to say to drain the heaviness from her sighs.

  And Bug’s orange vinyl couch brought Johnson relief this summer. Bug’s stories about his brother mixed with the marijuana and the wine, even filled a corner of the hole Verdi’s absence left. And when Johnson confided to Bug that he missed his old lady, Bug laughed, said my young blood I got just the thing to cure a lonely heart and turned him on to a little speed in orange juice. And by July he was also popping Quaaludes to counteract the hyperness brought on by the speed, and then he was smoking opium to smooth it all out, and he was on the countdown to when school would start, when he’d have Verdi’s head against his chest again, and it was within ten days, the middle of August now, and by now Bug’s orange vinyl couch had the print of Johnson’s substance etched into its cracks. And Bug asked Johnson if he was ready to taste heaven.

  “Taste heaven?”

  “No shit, man. I swear to you man, but you got to be prepared because it’s some powerful shit, man. Better than pussy, man. I wouldn’t lay this shit on just anybody, but you my young blood, man.”

  And Johnson said that he wasn’t about getting strung out.

  “One time don’t string nobody out, Johnson, man. But hey, it’s cool. It was gonna be turn-on but I ain’t got to beg nobody to turn them the fuck on.”

  And Johnson’s defenses were already down, the wine, the reefer, his sadness snaking him the way that it was, and ten entire days before he’d see his Verdi Mae. “Bring it on, man,” he said, “let’s see what the fuck you talking about. Bring it on.”

  “You sure, man?” Bug said even as he cooked it in a Vaseline lid on the coffee table. “This shit is without sin that’s how pure it is. Get ready to see Jesus,” he said as he showed him where to tighten the belt, and the vein they were going to hit: the thickest vein, that showed on the underside of his arm and shimmered with sweat and pulsed like a sex-starved woman. “That one, we gonna hit that one,” Bug whispered, and he pumped it into Johnson’s arm, and Johnson didn’t even feel Bug pull it out because a pipe organ started issuing forth its vibrations from the center of his chest and sending its smooth tones to his head bursting note by note and melting, coating his brain with liquid music that was thick and sweet as sap. And he started to sing along with the organs. And now he knew how it felt to be transformed into a note and given pitch through the air and soar and dip, freely, uncaged, no longer internally bound. This night he sang all night long and nodded as spit dripped from the side of his mouth. And even in this liquid condition he knew that he would have to feel this pipe organ again. Damn.

  Remarkably Johnson kept the heroin part hidden at first by just staying away from people who mattered; he was only partaking once a month anyhow, light doses, and after each one, when the rush was over and the liquid music dried, leaving only its irritating thickness, he swore to himself that he wouldn’t do it again. That the posthigh lethargy was too momentous a price for him to pay with all that he was trying to accomplish. School, Verdi, the BSL, the good-paying part-time job at United Parcel. Except that at least while the pipe organ was vibrating, he wasn’t sad. It was the absence of sadness that he sought when time and again he’d return to the orange vinyl couch at Bug’s. Once a month on Thursdays, his payday—though this rippled progression from one substance to the next had started off as turn-ons, freebies, gifts from Bug, now Bug would often proclaim, “My young blood, if it were up to me I wouldn’t charge you a dime, but you understand I have suppliers to pay, though I swear whatever you want will always be at a price not a penny higher than my cost to procure it.”

  But with this regular, monthly use came a certain boldness, that he could do it and nobody would know, and surprisingly, nobody did notice at first; more surprising, at least to Johnson was who noticed first.

  Posie was between men this Saturday evening and spending more time outside of her bedroom where she could think clearly. She couldn’t think at all in her bedroom. Her bedroom was designed for feeling over thought with its perfumed air, and lacy antique curtains, and softly textured and flowered wallpaper; her night tables were skirted, her pillows covered with satin cases, her bedspread such a hot, bold pink that it bordered on red. But the kitchen where she was right now was a mild yellow, Kitt’s favorite color, and expansive and cozy at the same time, organized, functional, no excesses like the boudoir vases, and lamps, swatches of silk here, velvet there that permeated Posie’s bedroom and ensured that any brain activity was merely as the conduit to explode impulses to other body parts. Posie was thinking about how she really needed to spend more time outside of her bedroom, that she probably wouldn’t have been with half of the men she’d been with if she’d picked and chosen surrounded by the kitchen’s mild yellow thought-provoking walls. Right now Kitt stirred around in a pot on the stove, and Johnson had his face in a book, and Posie’s thinking was so clear that she could feel the crisp, smacking sound of her thoughts as if they were being shuffled around like a deck of new cards. No man was coming to call this Friday evening so no need to pull away from the settling sounds of the kitchen to bathe and oil and dust herself down and sweeten her crevices and swathe herself in her silky lounging robe that fell open to her waist when she sat in her pink velvet chair just so. No need to light an Essence of Nature candle and inhale deeply so that the oil on her skin would mix with her own womanhood rising out through her pores and have him—whoever was the object of her infatuation at the moment—begging to do anything, whatever she wanted, just let him be against the feel of her skin. Instead tonight she inhaled the steam rising out of the pot of chicken and dumplings Kitt was stirring, and something about that aroma hitting her nose brought out her maternal side as she picked at the ends of Johnson’s dense Afro and told him that his ends needed a clipping, that his bush would turn shaggy and unkempt looking if he didn’t take special care of his ends.

  And Kitt agreed and commenced with a description of the worst ’fro she had seen yet. “It was all matted and so filled with lint that I swore a whole family of rats could have been living in that hair, so I stood up the whole bus ride home rather than sit next to that man.”

  Posie laughed and fingered Johnson’s hair and enjoyed the card game going on in her head that was unencumbered by her bodily sensations.

  That’s when her thoughts moved beyond Johnson’s hair to his hands. His hands were still. They were rarely still. He was always tapping them or patting them or strumming them, always palpating something, fidgeting in ways that she thought so charming and little-boy-like. But he wasn’t fidgeting now, hadn’t been lately now that she thought about it. Lately he’d been dragging, even talking slowly when usually his words splashed out like typhoons. Big intelligent words especially if he was preaching to Kitt and her on the unseen ways that black people were exploited; many Posie hadn’t even given thought to. But he wasn’t talking as Posie squinted over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of the title of the book he was reading. The Underside of American History. Sh
e repeated the title out loud. “That sounds interesting, Johnson,” she said as she walked around to the other side of the table to look on Johnson’s face.

  He sat there smiling slowly even as Posie prayed for the typhoon, for his words to gush out and indict the white man and his history. Anything to show some pointed understanding. But Posie saw that his face wasn’t showing any real comprehension of the words on the page, that he seemed ready to fall asleep in the middle of his smile. And now he yawned, took what felt like to Posie a full minute to stretch his mouth to an oversized O, and just as long to fix it back to a line that sagged at the corners. Posie felt her heart drop. “I said that book you’re reading sounds interesting, Johnson.” Her voice was loud and insistent and Kitt turned around from the stove to see why her mother was speaking in such a tone.

  “It is, Posie. Very interesting,” Johnson said, his head still in the book.

  He started laughing then, and if Posie’s heart dropped just a minute ago, now it froze. She knew only one thing that would have an otherwise hyper person like Johnson laughing like he was laughing now, a slow series of low erratic cracks coming from his throat that sounded to Posie more like a death rattle than a laugh. It was true. She hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself how off of his rhythm he’d been. And just at that second of insight when the airiness of her feelings might have transformed itself into a concrete thought, she’d get distracted, pulled to her bedroom by her latest beau so that her thoughts went amorphous on her. And then Johnson would show up a few days later with his movable nature intact, talking in gushes again, following Kitt and Posie’s every word.

  “Johnson,” Posie said, in that voice of hers that was high and flat and belied the seriousness plastered on her face. “Do you feel all right, I mean you seem not altogether with it, if you know what I mean.”

  Johnson closed his book and let it fall against the table. He looked at Posie then and tried to smile, but what felt like syrup was caked to the sides of his mouth and was impeding his smile, so he scratched at the corners of his mouth and then scratched his neck, his eyes closed now, and then he realized he was scratching all over and sat up with a jolt.

  Posie’s expression had gone from serious to horrified as she watched him scratching like a common street junkie. Why? With all he had going for him, why? Why would he flush it down the toilet like this? She almost asked him, almost demanded that he explain the why to her. But she couldn’t form the words against her tongue even as she groped with her hands to try to help the words along and ended up doing with her hands what she couldn’t with her mouth. She slapped Johnson with the back of her hand soundly across his dumbstruck face.

  “Mama,” Kitt blurted as she turned around this time to the sound of skin against skin and saw Johnson grabbing his face, blood dripping between his fingers from where Posie’s cocktail ring had ripped across his cheek. “What did you do to him? What’s wrong with you?” She walked toward Posie, the wooden ladle in her hand dripping a cloudy-colored liquid on the floor that smelled of dough and onions. “Mama, are you going crazy or something, look at what you did to his face.”

  Kitt ran to the sink and exchanged her wooden ladle for a wet paper towel and in a flash was dabbing Johnson’s cheek all the while asking, demanding an explanation from her mother, even as Johnson told Kitt that it was okay, he was fine, just fine. “Just leave it alone, Kitt,” he begged, “I’m fine, just fine.”

  But Kitt wouldn’t leave it alone, couldn’t as she stood eye to eye to Posie and was struck by the righteous defiance in Posie’s eyes. In Kitt’s mind there was only one thing that would make a woman slap a man, draw blood the way Posie just had, and then stand back looking justified and vindicated. The man would have had to have just squeezed her butt, or pinched her breast, wet her ear with his tongue, slid his finger in her crotch, rubbed his manhood against her thigh. Kitt couldn’t even fathom that Posie had just slapped Johnson as a mother would a son, because she rarely saw Posie as a mother in a terrycloth robe and mismatched wool socks, or cotton duster, or pinafore apron making chicken and dumplings. No. Kitt was the one who made chicken and dumplings while Posie sauntered in and out of the kitchen whenever she felt like it wreaking her womanhood like a whore wearing too much perfume. And since at this moment she couldn’t see Posie’s maternal side, she totally misread the scene and didn’t even notice Johnson trip over nothing but his own feet as he pushed himself to standing, or the lagging to his words when he mumbled out that he didn’t mean to cause any confusion, that he would just leave, he was fine, just fine.

  “Don’t leave, Johnson,” Kitt said, even as she continued to stare Posie down. “Mama owes you an apology because she’s sorely mistaken about whatever it is that she thinks just caused her to hit you like that.”

  “Well, what do you think I think it is?” Posie matched Kitt’s tough-girl stance with her own but the hand-on-hip, finger-pointing, I’ll-kick-your-ass-right-now demeanor was too unnatural for Posie to maintain and she settled for her arms clasped tightly across her chest.

  Kitt shook Johnson’s shoulder. “Tell her she must be losing her mind,” she said, her voice screeching with all the emotion of someone who’s positive that they’re right even before hearing the facts and feeling so certain without the facts reinforces that the sense of rightness must be coming from some intuitive place and therefore couldn’t be in error.

  Johnson felt as if he wanted to piss and shit at the same time not knowing what to make of whatever was happening between Kitt and Posie. Even in his diminished state with the fog over his head that always hung around a day or two after he’d emptied the white powdered-filled bag into his arm, he could tell that the argument between them was serious, much more serious than the backhanded slap he’d just taken from Posie. “Please, Posie, Kitt, don’t fight on my behalf,” he said to the confused kitchen air as he started walking toward the archway of the kitchen door. He let out that death-rattle laugh again. “I just need to get some sleep at night. Whew.” He tripped again on nothing but the floor as he continued to walk.

  It was too late to ask Kitt and Posie not to argue. Their voices were raised against each other as Kitt told Posie that she was just so self-possessed that she thought every man wanted to come on to her. “Well, you’re wrong, wrong, Mother, if you think Johnson wants you, you old woman you.”

  That stopped Posie. She was just beginning to think that maybe Kitt knew what Johnson was doing, that she was covering up for him and that’s why the vigorous defense. Or that maybe Kitt cared so much for Johnson that she was choosing to keep her eyes pressed shut to what he was doing. She was all set to bombard Kitt with the evidence, wear her down with her mother-knows-best offense. But these words that had just left Kitt’s mouth and slammed into her with all the force of a Mack truck were not daughter-to-mother. They were woman-to-woman. They were more like words that would have come from her sister’s mouth, that had come from her sister’s mouth once. How much Kitt looked like her sister now, beautiful and self-righteously defiant and wrong. Posie was without offense, without words, without even breath as she felt herself going into a wheeze. She needed to get out of the kitchen, needed to get to her bedroom and take her medicine, needed to go for a walk in the chilly air and clear her head.

  Kitt knew that she’d leaped wildly in the wrong direction when she looked at Posie’s face and watched the question mark in her mother’s eyes yield to a pained understanding of what Kitt was saying. She didn’t know whether to run after her mother, whose silk-paisleyed back was to her now as she walked away shaking her head, or Johnson, who had just closed the front door behind him. She opted for Johnson, called out his name as she ran through the living room to the enclosed porch just in time to see him leaned over, vomiting on the pavement in front of her just-swept door.

  Six

  Rowe and his estranged wife, Penda, were at it again the day of Sage’s birthday party. Arguing. They hadn’t traded two back-to-back civil sentences since Penda wouldn’t agree to
give him a divorce more than twenty years ago. And now they were also trading puffs of smoke on the sidewalk in front of the University City house where Rowe and Verdi lived, because it was chilly for a Saturday afternoon in April, Easter Saturday. This argument was impromptu. Rowe had just stepped out of his front door to run to his car and was on his way back when there Penda was who actually lived only a few blocks away. She was walking right toward him with her purposeful walk no doubt headed to some Saturday-afternoon socially redeeming function, Rowe could tell by the way she held her head, slightly thrown back, her eyes sharp and direct, her mouth hinting at a smirk, exuding confidence in what he’d always called her more-humane-than-thou demeanor. She was still stunning to look at though, even as she came straight at him wagging her finger, saying that she had started to take Pine Street, she’d had a feeling he might splotch her path this otherwise bright and crisp spring Saturday, but since he had interrupted her view, she wanted him to know how irate she was over his refusal to agree to sell a piece of property they jointly owned.

  She was aging in an artistically elegant way, multicolored shawl wrapped around her shoulders, fish-shaped southwestern-style earrings dangling in the breeze, black-and-silver braids piled high in a roll atop her head, leather fanny pack cinching her long wool dress around the hips, hands on her hips now as she exploded at Rowe, told him that she should have dissolved all of their financial arrangements way back when after he’d betrayed her so. She never passed on the opportunity to throw his deceit in his face. Though the slant of her attacks changed through the years, what had been a seeming insurmountable rage over Rowe’s betrayal had ebbed over time, receding finally to pity for Verdi most days who’d she’d always considered a victim in the sordid affair, and a tolerable disdain for Rowe. But that didn’t stop her from consistently barreling into him over the details of their many legal entanglements since they’d never divorced. To this day they still shared ownership in insurances, pension plans, real estate.