Blues Dancing

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “Well, what about Sage’s daddy?” Johnson cut in on her thoughts.

  “The best thing he did was let go the DNA that gave me my little heart.” She turned the glasses right side up that she’d just washed and then filled them with water, she swallowed hers in large gulps while she handed him his. She went to the oven and peeped in, though everything was done, just on warmer, the macaroni and cheese, the smoked turkey breast, even the miniature pizza squares for the children. She opened the refrigerator next and stared at her container of Caesar salad trying to decide whether to grate the cheese over it now, or wait until she was about to set it out. She knew that the cheese could wait, felt foolish for keeping her back to Johnson like this. “Anyhow, no, nobody else, really nobody since.” She turned around then, could tell by the sad look that washed over Johnson’s face that he understood that kind of loneliness.

  “Well, do I have to step to that Negro? Is he doing all right by Sage?”

  “Does what I let him do.”

  “Well, he better treat my girl right, that’s all I got to say. You tell him your best buddy Johnson is back in town and he accepts no foolishness when it comes to his Kitt.”

  She nodded an embrace. Didn’t run to him with her arms open and let her circle him in hers; her face did it though. And he acknowledged it with an embraceable nod of his own, and since things had gotten so pure between them, he almost asked her about Verdi. And Kitt braced herself because she could feel it coming, could see it welling up from his stomach that he held in now. And she was about to beat him to it, about to confess that yes, Verdi was on her way there, that his being there would be a shock to Verdi because she was emphatic that she didn’t want to see him; she was ready to apologize to Johnson now because she felt even more strongly that having Johnson and Verdi meet like this was a mistake. But right then the doorbell rang and they both jumped, both relieved really, especially Kitt because she knew that it wasn’t Verdi, expected Verdi to be at least a half hour late according to what she’d said earlier. And Kitt said, “All right now, a party’s getting ready to start over here,” and she rushed to get into the living room, with Johnson following behind her.

  In groups they came. One mother bringing three of Sage’s friends, Doreen and Nicole and Patrick, and another bringing Bretta and Lou; two sets of parents came with the attention-demanding Hawkins twins, then Leeanne, Kitt’s next-door neighbor inched in, and the Tilleys from farther down the block, and two of her clients from the precinct came with somebody’s child they’d borrowed for the afternoon just so that they could come and socialize with Kitt, maybe meet some of the single women who’d be there, and the three girls related to Penda were there, though they weren’t different learners, Kitt had invited them because they were patient and caring with Sage, plus she knew that their mother wouldn’t come, she was so polite with the distance she kept. And most everybody carried vibrantly wrapped boxes and Kitt started a tower of gifts atop the dining-room buffet, and Johnson helped her hang the coats, and pour the punch, and people were mingling and nibbling on roasted salted nuts and the crepe paper was hanging in streamers and tickling people’s faces and it really was starting to feel like a party in there. Then Kitt wondered aloud where the heck Posie was, she was making Sage late for her own birthday celebration.

  As if on cue Posie and Sage rushed in, Sage stood in the middle of the room and twirled around and around to show off her party dress, green and yellow like the crepe paper and balloons and other party ware. She made deep throaty laughing sounds and put her hands to her mouth so happy was she to see all of her friends. Posie almost did the same as Sage. Not actually twirling, but she did spin around once as if to show off her own brand of a party dress, waist-cinching, ruffles around the low-cut neckline. She turned from one corner of the room to the next smiling and batting her eyes and patting her chest lightly as if all these people were here to see her and she was very excited and flattered and careful to give them all a proper greeting.

  Kitt and Johnson watched from the dining room, Kitt sucking her teeth and saying, see, told you Mama hasn’t changed, still the little girl she was when you left here twenty years ago. And Johnson was about to burst he was so thrilled to lay eyes on Posie again, and he melted over the sight of Sage. “My God, Kitt, she’s beautiful, Sage is such a beautiful little girl.”

  Kitt gushed. “God she is, isn’t she? You know, I took one look at her when she was born, and I saw this wisdom in her eyes, and her name came to me in a flash. Sage.”

  Then Kitt called out to Sage and she barreled toward the sound of her mother’s voice, almost knocked Johnson over to get to her, and Kitt braced herself and took her daughter’s head against her womb, said, “Johnson, meet my slice of sunshine, my brilliant baby girl, Sage.”

  Johnson patted the top of Sage’s head and she jerked back from her mother to look at him. Her directness as she stared at him, her lips pursed, her head tilted, her fists balled, made Johnson clear his throat and pat his feet back and forth and squirm. She extended her fist and Johnson made a quick move as if dodging a punch from this little girl. Kitt laughed, said, “She’s trying to shake hands with you, Johnson. It takes a lot of effort for her to extend her fingers, I think she likes to reserve her fine motor skills for wrapping around her crayons.”

  “Oh, well, in that case.” Johnson tried to shrug off his mild embarrassment. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance.” He stooped to Sage’s eye level and took her fist in his hands and began gently unfurling her fingers and then just held on to her wide-open hand. “Miss Kitt,” he said, “I’d like permission to give this little Miss Sage a kiss on the cheek.”

  He did and Sage smiled at the feel of his mustache against her cheek. Blue. That’s what she thought she saw around him and now she was sure as he stood back up and tugged lightly on the barrette holding her cornrow in place. A blue that rose up like the inside of the biggest waves she’d seen last summer from the boardwalk at Wildwood that were also mixed with purple and black. She liked colors that moved and showed themselves from every side.

  Johnson felt a tap on his shoulder as he continued to smile at Sage and marvel at the intensity in her stare. “Where’s mine?” an Estée Lauder–scented voice hit his ear and his nose at the same time and there Posie was, a grown-up version—at least in looks—of the child who’d just stared at him so.

  “Posie, baby,” he said as he rushed to hug her and squeezed her so tightly until he could feel her giggling against him, until he realized when she didn’t let go that she wasn’t giggling, she was crying, and he rubbed her back in wide circles and held her some more and felt as if he wanted to cry too.

  Kitt pulled Sage away, back into the living room where her friends were transfixed by Beauty and the Beast playing on television. And Johnson walked Posie in the opposite direction into the sunshine pouring off of the kitchen walls. “I’m sorry to be making such a spectacle out of myself,” she said as she nudged back from Johnson and dabbed at the corners of her eyes and patted her chest. “But I prayed, I mean I prayed so hard for you, Johnson. Only people in my life I ever prayed as hard for were my chile and my grandbaby and my only niece.” Johnson stiffened when she made reference to her niece. “And I’m not a regular churchgoer, but I do have a personal relationship with the Lord and He said, fast and pray, and I have done that on your behalf so many times and I’m just so overwhelmed with pride and joy to see you standing here, looking good, Johnson baby, you look sooo good.”

  “No, you look good, Posie,” he said as he tried to keep the tremble from his voice, tried to keep the lumps accumulating in the corners of his eyes from liquefying and drizzling down his face.

  “Complexion looks healthy, nice tone to it.”

  “Posie, you’re the one with the flawless skin—”

  “Hair got a rich luster means you’re eating right.” She reached up and rubbed her fingers along his neat fade of a haircut, then walked around to his back pretending not to notice the moistness around hi
s eyes.

  “God, Posie, so much I want to say to you. So many apologies I owe you for letting you down the way that I did.”

  She jabbed at his shoulders. “Nice muscle mass for a young man getting into middle age. You been working out too.”

  “I mean the disappointment in your face the last time I saw you when I was leaving Philly finally after I’d destroyed everything I ever cared about—I mean Kitt and I have at least communicated often and I feel as though I’ve really, you know, like our friendship is sound—”

  “You been getting regular checkups, I hope. Especially your blood pressure, you know about black men and high blood pressure, and get your diabetes screening, and let’s not even talk about your colon, you make sure you keep up with your health, you’re getting to the age group that really takes its toll on a black man.”

  “Posie, please, let me apologize, I have to—need to do this for me.”

  “All you have to do for you is keep on doing what you been doing, ’cause it’s working, baby.”

  “No—Posie, I have to say it—”

  “It can wait, Johnson, it can wait.”

  “It can’t. Now. I have to do this now.” He took both of her hands in his and squeezed them to emphasize what he was saying. “I just have to allow the words to hit your ears. I swore to myself that as soon as I saw you, I didn’t care how many years it took, that this is the first thing I had to do before we could even move any further.”

  “Okay, Johnson,” she sighed, “if you insist on it.”

  “I apologize, Posie, if I caused you any discomfort, leaving the way I did, living the way I was, you know, strung out—”

  “I accept it,” she said as she pulled her hands from his and swiped at his sweater to the rhythm of her words, “but only on the condition that you accept my apology too.”

  “Your apology?”

  “Yes, baby.” She rolled the ends of his sweater up in neat folds over his wrists. “I overburdened you.”

  “What are you talking about, Posie?”

  “With expectations,” she said matter-of-factly as if he should have known that. “You couldn’t have let me down if I hadn’t first placed you on a pedestal that was too high for you to stand on all by yourself.” She unrolled his sweater sleeves now and pushed them up in bunches instead. “And when I criticized you, actually I did a lot more than criticize you, I truly hated you for running off and leaving us the way you did so that it was months before we even knew whether you were alive or dead, when I criticized you for that it was because I judged you.” She pulled the sleeves back to the way he had them in the first place and then stared directly at him. “Now look at me, who on this Earth am I equipped to judge, Johnson, who is any of us equipped to judge when you get right down to it. So I had to come to the realization that whether you let me down, or Kitt, or Verdi, or your mama, or your friends from school, whoever, all you did was the best that you could do for who you were during that time when you were doing it.”

  “Posie—I—” Johnson didn’t know what to say really, so he just stammered around searching for something.

  “Just hush and listen.” She cut his nonwords off. “So all I’m saying is that I need to beg your pardon too. I propped you up so unfairly, and then I had the nerve to hate you when you misstepped and fell.”

  She reached up and pinched his cheek and Johnson’s incredulous look just hung on his face, shocked at her level of grace and wisdom. No wonder he was able to love her in ways that he hadn’t been able to even love his own mother. She enabled his feelings to have a levity not possible when a relationship is so steeped in guilt and anger and resentment. He leaned in and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “It’s settled, then,” he said, and for the first time in years felt as if it really was.

  “Okay.” She patted her chest and batted her eyes. “Now what had you started saying? You know, after I told you how good you looked, you were starting to tell me how good I looked and I cut you off, I didn’t mean to cut you off. So go ahead, finish.” She hit him playfully on his chest.

  Johnson laughed so hard then, with all of him, the way he hadn’t laughed in what felt like decades. He serenaded Posie with superlatives like magnificent, divine, and she feigned a demure “oh hush” stance and they walked arm in arm back into the dining room where the lights had been dimmed and the adults sipped wine or cider and naturally designated among them whose turn it was to be in the living room to supervise the children now watching Sesame Street videos, or beating drums on the carpet, or marching around the coffee table, or smearing themselves with jelly eggs.

  And Kitt pulled Posie back into the kitchen to help her start getting food set up and in between slicing the ham and turkey and arranging them on her oval-shaped platter and separating them with sections of tangerine, and spooning up the potato salad in her gold-rimmed bowl lined with spinach leaves, and putting the macaroni in a chafing dish, the Caresser in her white Mikasa salad server, she said, “Mama, I’m scared, I think I did something terrible.”

  And as Posie handed Kitt the cheese grater, and went in the refrigerator for cheese, and recapped and re-covered all the containers once Kitt was done spooning up from them, she listened to the quivering in Kitt’s voice as she told her that Verdi was on the way.

  “What you mean on the way? On the way here? I thought you said she put up a powerful refusal over seeing Johnson.”

  “She did.” Kitt’s voice had a whine running through it. “She doesn’t know that he’ll be here, and Johnson doesn’t know that she’s coming. Neither of them know, Mama. You know, Verdi Mae and Johnson aren’t expecting to see each other, not at all, Mama. I don’t know what made me do such an indiscreet thing. And Verdi Mae was so adamant that she didn’t want to see him, you know, I should have respected that. I have no right to play with their lives like that just because I think that they should be together. Shoot, damn shoot, damn,” she said to the beat of the sound of the spoon that she tapped against the grater to loosen the slithers of cheese that hadn’t fallen. “I need to just tell Johnson that maybe he should go, you know, he’ll understand if I explain what I did and that Verdi really doesn’t want to see him. You know, he’ll leave for Verdi’s sake.”

  Posie just stared at Kitt blankly at first finding it difficult to believe that her organized, calculating, must-know-the-outcome-before-she-makes-a-move daughter had actually gone and for once done something frivolous. “Well, what’s the worst that could happen, Kitt?” she asked, trying to make her voice sound reassuring as she handed her the pepper mill, and not wanting to discourage what she saw as Kitt’s attempt at throwing caution to the wind.

  “Don’t you see, Mama?” Kitt said as she turned the head on the mill and sprinkled black specks over the salad. “It’s not fair to have them shock each other like that. I mean, suppose they shouldn’t see each other. My stomach is jumping, Mama, and I’m afraid something bad’s gonna happen because of what I’ve done.”

  “Well, maybe we shouldn’t just, you know, put him out like that, baby,” Posie said, hating the thought of watching Johnson’s shoulders slump in disappointment. And even though she did trust Kitt’s instincts, through it all, she knew that Kitt had a strong stomach, that her stomach rarely jumped for no reason, she trusted the power of true love more. “How about it if we tell Johnson that Verdi Mae is on her way here and we’ll let him decide what to do. We’ll be honest and say that she’d turned you down when you offered to arrange a meeting for them. And we’ll tell him how much it’s bothering you now. How about that? Because personally I think Verdi Mae will be thrilled to see Johnson looking good as he looks in there right now. Does that settle your stomach some?”

  Kitt nodded and sighed and put the salad fork and spoon in their slots on the white Mikasa set and handed it to Posie. “This should go out first, I already have place mats set where the food should go, leave room in the center for the turkey and the ham, and tell Johnson we need to talk to him in the kitchen, Verdi’s gonna be walk
ing through that door any minute. You got to help me tell him, Mama, you got to.”

  There were two parties going on now as Posie emerged from the kitchen. The children’s was happening in the living room under the glare of the television and the noise of balloons bursting, and clapping sounds as they tried to catch imaginary butterflies, and foot stomping as they marched in a parade organized by the girls from the church. And the adults’ party was in the dining room where the living-room stereo speakers had been rerouted by the music-thirsty father of the Hawkins twins and the dining room ballooned with the sounds of soulful oldies and vintage jazz. Posie giggled when Kitt’s client from the precinct grabbed the salad server from her and put it on the buffet and took her hand and started to bop. She almost forgot about needing to talk to Johnson and when she remembered she called out to him and he excused himself from the jovial conversation he’d been having with Leeanne from next door and Mrs. Tilley from down the street and the oldest of the Carson girls, Penda’s relative, had just finished telling her to tell Penda that her favorite, though under-achieved former student, Johnson, said hello. He was still laughing when he got to Posie and she told him that Kitt needed his help in the kitchen.

  “Oh, so that’s how it goes,” he joked. “You come out of the kitchen to party and send me in there to work, un-huh.”

  “I’ll be in there, directly,” Posie said, doing a little spin in her hip-hugging dress. “As soon as I can tear myself away from this handsome young man, I will.”

  She winked at Johnson and Johnson said he’d be right in too as soon as he went up to the bathroom and washed his hands.

  And Posie tore herself away from her dance partner and she and Kitt commenced to setting the food out and Johnson walked down the stairs from the bathroom on his way into the kitchen to help Posie and Kitt, and both parties were in full swing, the children enjoying themselves either in their own worlds, or those who could, engaged by the games the girls from church made up; the adults chatting, and flirting, and blushing, and patting their feet and enjoying intermittent bursts of laughter, and a cha-cha here and there, and now the titillating aroma of the food Posie and Kitt set down. And nobody even heard Verdi come in because the volume in both rooms was on high now, especially in the dining room where the music from the rerouted speakers sifted all the way to the front door. And Verdi walked inside from the enclosed porch and just stood there taking in the scene going on in Kitt’s house thinking that she must have misunderstood Kitt, Kitt had emphasized that this gathering was to be small, so she just stood and allowed her eyes to adjust to this unexpected crowd of people and nobody much noticed her at first, weighed down with bags where she’d bought twice more than what she’d intended once she got inside of that Imagineering store.