So this night when Johnson was so late and Verdi was working so hard to keep her denial intact so that it remained just a restlessness that had her feet cold, Charity and her friends were so gregariously insistent that Verdi join them as they indulged in a smorgasbord of drugs. There were more of them here than usual, Verdi knew the usual ones by name, but there were almost twenty people crammed in here tonight and the living room was hot and they laughed and glowed, and radiated peace and love as they rained out just-conceived poetry from their ever-smiling mouths promulgated by their various chemical mixes. And they were passing around pipes stuffed with hashish, and plastic cups filled with Kool-Aid and grain alcohol, and mescaline dropped on Three X mints, and green pills packed with speed, and pink pills and Darvon, and Quaaludes as they sang from “White Rabbit,” told each other to go ahead and feed their heads.
Verdi stood against the wall in the living room right next to the phone, hoping it would ring, picking it up every few minutes to make sure the dial tone was intact. She waved away the drugs being buttered like exquisite hors d’oeuvres and laughed at the crazed and intoxicated acting like performance apes as they swung and dangled from the furniture. Then someone stuck a pipe under her nose and the seeds were popping and glowing orange and red and the smell of burning dried leaves was tantalizing and even though she never ever got high without Johnson because he liked to be there to supervise her indulgence, she felt the need to get back at him for making her wait like this, so she accepted the pipe, but after that first pull on the pipe she said, “Damn!” because this weed was much stronger than anything she’d ever shared with Johnson. And after a second pull that she held in her throat until her head wanted to explode, her defenses were stripped and she was giggling all over the place too, getting ready to recite some poetry of her own and the next time the pipe came her way and she sucked the smoke all the way to her chest she knew that this was no ordinary weed because she was moving her mouth, trying to talk, but no words would come out, and Charity was standing in front of her, smiling her omnipresent smile, saying “Oh-oh my ebony friend, you’ve gone and gotten yourself good and dusted.”
Verdi’s good reasoning kicked in like a flash of light and she was sorry then, tried to pull the smoke back up from her lungs, to blow it out. But it was too late, it was down, burning her chest as it went. And she was imagining the scenes Johnson had described to her when people were high on angel dust. “I don’t mess with that shit,” generally, he’d said. “Too unpredictable, like acid except that it hits you all at once and your reality fades in and out on you. At least acid fucks you up and keeps you fucked up till you come down and you’re not cursed with knowing how fucked up you are while you’re in the throes.”
She was in the throes now though at first she experienced nothing more than a twitching deep in the muscles of her arms and legs. The twitching grew in degrees though and soon she felt as if her limbs were answering to some marionette’s strings out of her immediate control even though when she looked down, stretched her arms out, patted her feet, they seemed to do as she wished. If this was the worst of it, she could handle it, she told herself, as she nodded to smiling face after smiling face getting in her face, asking her if she was cool. “Yeah, yeah, I’m cool,” she said over and over again, and soon she was walking, squeezing herself through the room too, asking others too until the entire apartment seemed to be chanting, “Cool? Cool?”
But then her eyes started to tear and she couldn’t tolerate the light from the television and then it wasn’t just the television but the light over the stove, and the table lamp, and soon even the brightness of Charity and her hippie friends had the tiny living room ablaze as they now warned each other not to let the trip go bad. Verdi had to squint and finally dig out a pair of dark glasses just so that the dazzling light wouldn’t make her own trip go bad.
They turned the music on high, Janis Joplin, and Verdi’s ears were hypersensitive now like her eyes and she thought she needed to find some cotton for her ears because the music was really bothering her. It didn’t seem to be affecting anyone else adversely though, they were twirling around and dancing out of sync to the music and touching each other and laughing and squealing. And now she thought that if she couldn’t blot the music out, she’d just have to leave the apartment for a while. Not that she was paranoid about them turning on her though there had been published reports of college students killed by drug-crazed roommates and clearly seventy percent of the sweating swaying bodies in this room right now were total strangers to her, it was more the thought that her mother was trying to reach her through the music. Johnson had told her that he knew people who got dusted regularly just so they could see God, or the devil, but he’d never mentioned so that they could communicate across space with the living. But there it was, her mother’s voice saying, “Verdi Mae, you put one step in front of the other and you walk on out from that place right now.”
Verdi felt queasy and her knees started buckling and she had to hold herself up with the wall as she edged to the door, to get out of there like her mother said, go for a walk, find herself a cup of warm milk to still the twitching in her joints. Charity caught her though just as she was about to slip through the half-opened door.
“Where are you going, my beautiful ebony friend?” she asked.
“Just for ice,” Verdi lied. “The Kool-Aid is hot, the air in here is hot, I’m hot, you’re hot, I’m going down the hall for ice.”
“I’m sorry they’re crowding you out like this and making it so hot. Please don’t let it blow your high.”
Charity’s eyes were sincere and pleading and Verdi just nodded because she was afraid that her high was in fact being blown.
“There were only supposed to be four, six at the most, not twenty,” Charity continued. “They’ve multiplied like roaches, and I know any minute they’ll be ready to start fucking like rabbits in a cabbage patch. I probably won’t even be able to pee tomorrow I’ll probably be fucked so blindly.”
Charity’s words were registering and not registering at the same time in Verdi’s head as she tried to tell Charity to just leave with her, she didn’t have to be fucked if she didn’t want it. But her mouth wouldn’t cooperate with her brain, her brain still too shocked from what Charity had just said, and she could only push out grunting sounds. Charity grabbed her in a close hug and Verdi could feel her rib cage through the thin cotton dress she wore. She suddenly felt sorry for Charity that she was so thin, so giving. She took Charity’s hand, was finally able to get her mouth to work. “Leave with me,” she was able to say. But Charity just smiled sweetly and waved. “Bye, bye, my ebony friend,” she said as Verdi stepped all the way out into the hallway and watched the door close. She was immobilized at first as she just stood there looking at the door as if she were trying to memorize her own address. She thought she would go over to the Quad, try to find Cheryl and Tower. She ran down the hall to the elevator and didn’t even notice that she wore no shoes on her feet.
The crisp Saturday night air was dark and smoky blue and filled with activity. She took her hands down from ears, lifted her sunglasses off of her face, and stuck them in her ’fro like a tiara. She felt a horrified sinking in her chest over what Kitt had said about Johnson as she wove in and out of the eight o’clock rush hour of campus foot travelers on their way to and from dinner, or to secure beer for frat parties, or borrow door-knocker earrings to wear to some private set, or assemble in groups to venture downtown to the Bijou Café, or over to Gino’s Empty Foxhole in St. Mary’s basement to hear some authentic jazz, or to some underground rally, or over-the-top hard-rock concert at the Electric Factory, or like Verdi, on a high that had the potential to go bad as she headed to the low-rise to find Cheryl and Tower, maybe Johnson might even come in.
Her steps were dragging and she still didn’t yet realize her only feet covering was her double-knit sweatsocks. She was halfway to the low-rise when the continuous friction of wool against concrete and now against steel
as she crossed the street lined with trolley tracks finally cut through the jittering in her muscles that was getting all the attention and reached her brain and made her say out loud, “Damn, my feet hurt.” She stopped right where she was in the middle of the street, though to her fortune the light was green, and lifted one foot, then the other, squeezed and massaged them along the soles and was oblivious to the throngs of students also crossing this street and now blaring car horns as the light changed and Verdi still stood there massaging one foot, then the other, and letting out an aha, over how good it felt.
Such was the scene Rowe happened upon as he headed in from the library, he always spent Saturdays between five and eight in the library. It was emptiest then and he enjoyed the solitude as he reserved reading material for his classes, reviewed journals, did a little of his own writing and research, maybe even graded a few papers. Afterward he and his wife, Penda, would generally go in town for dinner, tonight it would be the Harvey House on Broad Street, then to the Midtown Theater to see Funny Girl. Rowe enjoyed the relative material comfort and predictability of his life, especially having survived his financially uncertain childhood. He’d been awarded full professorship and it looked like his wife’s tenure was imminent as well. They’d just moved out of the graduate dorm and into their own house just off campus in the transitionally upscale area where many of the professors lived. So he was feeling a satisfaction in his muscles over having completed much work at the quiet Saturday-evening library. He had a smile on his face, a whistle in his mouth, a lightness to his steps, a rousing appetite for his wife as he glanced at his watch to see if there would be time for a quickie when he got in, and it was in that second as he felt a twinge in his manhood over thoughts of being with his wife that he looked up and saw Verdi stopping traffic in the middle of the street as she hopped from one shoeless foot to the other. At first he didn’t realize that it was her, saw only that it was a young black woman in a blue-and-red university sweatshirt and tight blue jeans and socks that appeared worn away at the soles. Then he did notice it was Verdi, didn’t want to admit that it was the curve of her hips in the tight blue jeans that brought her into focus as he ran toward her, unable to fathom that Verdi of all people, so brimming over with promise and ability, would be in the middle of the street acting like a drug-crazed moron.
“Verdi? Verdi?” he called into the commotion, and then rushed into it himself as he held his hand toward the traffic like a cop and half dragged, half scooped Verdi to the relative safety of the sidewalk. “What is going on with you?” he asked over and over as Verdi leaned her weight on him even as she tried to stand straight and tall unaided.
Verdi’s high was blown sufficiently for the moment for her to be deeply embarrassed. “I—I, I’ll explain,” she said as she looked directly at Rowe, and then unable to conjure up an acceptable explanation save the truth, which was so unacceptable to her at this moment, and she figured to Rowe also, she just hunched her shoulders and looked at the ground.
Rowe peered hard into Verdi’s eyes. Had seen enough students wasted off any of a myriad of substances to recognize that Verdi was fired up. He circled Verdi in his arms and told her that she would be okay, even as she got the nerve up to try to explain what she’d done, she didn’t know it was angel dust, “honestly,” she said, and started flailing her arms and gasping on her words as he told her over and over again that it was okay; it was all okay.
What could he do for her? he asked, whispered in her ear because he was that close as he pulled her over to a ledge and helped her to sit, and then sat himself, his arm back around her shoulder, squeezing, telling her some more that she was okay. “Fine, you’re going to be just fine,” he said in his most soothing voice, “just tell me what I can do.”
He looked her over from head to toe, decided not to comment on her lack of shoes. Besides her behavior right now was mild compared to the outrageous, even bizarre scenes he’d been privy to since he’d been here. Just last year he’d seen a bed in the middle of an intersection every bit as busy as this one, two students snuggled up as if they’d gone to their parents’ home for the weekend, though one was so severely intoxicated he nearly died that morning.
She wobbled some on the ledge. He put his foot out to keep her from falling. His knee was pressing into the calf of her leg at first and he shifted his foot quickly. He prided himself on the tasteful professorial distance he maintained with all of his students, even the ones who’d cried on his shoulder the several years he’d been at this university.
“I—I’m fine,” she said. “I’m, oh God, I’m embarrassed, I’m just going back to my dorm and putting my head under my pillow until Monday morning.”
He laughed out loud. Fingered her chin. “No need to be embarrassed with me, ever,” he said. “I want you to feel as though you can come to me for anything, anything at all, Penda too, I mean that, Verdi.”
She nodded, but avoided looking at him. Heard Johnson calling her name. Thank God, Johnson, she thought as she looked through the Saturday-evening campus rush hour of foot traffic, saw Johnson crossing against the light, cars blaring at him now as he risked being struck to get to her.
He sucked the air in through his teeth when he saw Johnson approach. Had even remarked to Penda what a mismatch they were, what does she see in that street thug? he’d asked his wife. Probably completes her in some way that you’re not privy to, Penda had said. Nor should you be.
Rowe took her hand and helped her off the ledge. Bristled because Johnson was right up on them now.
Verdi stumbled as she tried to get to Johnson. “Whoa, Verdi, you okay?” Johnson said as Johnson and Rowe lunged for Verdi’s wobbly body at the same time and almost ended up clutching at each other.
“Actually, no. She’s not okay,” Rowe said as he straightened up and yielded his grasp of Verdi.
Johnson took her in his arms, squeezed her in a hug, and told her how he’d been looking for her. “Charity said you went to get ice, what’s going on with you, baby, out here with no shoes on?” He was whispering now and Rowe cleared his throat.
“Uh, if you’ll excuse us, Professor, I’m going to walk Verdi back to her dorm.” Johnson didn’t look at Rowe as he spoke, looked only at Verdi. Didn’t even want to see Rowe’s face right now, really. Was still too disturbed from seeing him sitting on the ledge with Verdi, their bodies almost touching they were so close, as if the space between them could have just as easily been filled with an embrace.
Rowe resisted the impulse to grunt as Verdi leaned on Johnson.
“Really, thank you, Professor,” Verdi blurted, “I mean for everything.” She tried to hold on to this current flash of reality that seemed like it wanted to stay for a while and not fall and lift away. Now that Johnson was here, her refuge, she thought, she could go back to the way things were before she tried to get high without Johnson even as she felt a piercing sense of gratitude toward Rowe. Sweet. Very sweet, she thought as she found more of her balance and leaned less of herself on Johnson.
Verdi extended her hand to Rowe. “I’ll see you in class?” She said it both as a question and a statement of fact. Her eyes went big as she said it, her mouth turned up in a demure smile.
He took her hand. Squeezed it. Said, “Verdi, please take care of yourself, you’ve much too much to offer to risk blowing it.” Her hand was warm inside of his; he felt the handshake as a warmth washing over him. Then he dropped her hand abruptly, thinking now of his wife, telling himself that it was Penda he had on his mind even as he looked into Verdi’s downwardly slanted eyes and felt a powerful urging for the contact of skin against skin, the kind that would make him rush home—as he was about to do now—to be with his wife.
Verdi and Rowe sealed a friendship after the evening he found her dancing in the middle of the street. He never reminded her how horrified he was to realize that was her stopping traffic like a common drug-crazed lunatic; she never allowed angel dust to touch her lips in any form. He treated her as if she were his prize stu
dent; she went to extraordinary lengths preparing for each class to ensure that she was. Occasionally they shared coffee after class and he’d tell her how gifted she was, really. Invited her once again to have dinner with Penda and her sister’s son because that young man was more in her league, this time he said it outright. And though she declined, she did it graciously and without insult, took his gesture only as an indication of his fatherly affection for her, even as she talked Johnson up. “Johnson’s going to be a famous architect one day,” she’d say, eyes shining when she did, or, “Johnson’s so devoted to his mother, it’s sooo sweet,” or, “Johnson got a raise, did I tell you? It’s rare for the part-timers to get a raise, but he did and hasn’t let his GPA slip in the process.” She never let the opportunity pass to praise Johnson’s attributes to Rowe.
But when Verdi’s parents visited Philadelphia for a national ministers’ conference, and Verdi’s mother planned a dinner at Bookbinder’s so that she could properly meet Verdi’s young man, Johnson pleaded overtime at the last minute. And though Verdi was secretly relieved because her throat would get so tight and dry and she’d lose the ability to swallow at the thought that Johnson might fail her parents’ inspection of him, she was still embarrassed that he’d bowed out on them with such short notice like that and so to fill the potentially insulting hole that Johnson’s absence left, Verdi invited Rowe and Penda, and Penda was suffering with a stomach virus and didn’t come and so it was just Rowe.
Rowe charmed her mother, commenting on her jewelry, her wonderful taste in restaurants, her ability to raise a fine young woman. Such an asset to the university, he said of Verdi, and then went on to assure Leroy and Hortense that he and his wife Penda had adopted Verdi in a sense so they could be sure she was well taken care of. Then when Verdi and Hortense excused themselves to freshen their lipstick, Rowe confessed to Leroy that he was quite frankly concerned about Verdi’s choice in a steady beau. From one of the city’s less affluent neighborhoods, he said about Johnson. Not that he had anything at all against the financial-aid students, some of the university’s brightest stars are on full scholarships, he said, but this one is lacking in not only economic resources, but a certain strength of character as well. And Leroy thanked Rowe for his concern, made a comment about youth being wasted on the young, told Rowe to extend their appreciation also to his wife, reminded him that Verdi had an aunt and a first cousin in town with whom she was very close, and if anything ever came up with Verdi and he and Hortense were unreachable, please feel free to go to them, they were Verdi’s surrogate family, he said.
Blues Dancing Page 13
