Blues Dancing

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  Ten

  Verdi called Kitt the first chance she got the day after Easter Sunday. She’d gone to a sunrise service, stayed and had breakfast in the lower auditorium, applauded the Sunday-schoolers through their Easter recitations. Rowe was at the gym by the time she got back in and Verdi had the house to herself so she yelled at Kitt and told her what an indiscreet thing that was that she’d done. And Kitt apologized over and over, said she died a thousand deaths when she went to the door and saw Rowe standing there, that as much as she loathed the man she didn’t want to put her cousin in the position of having to explain something that she knew nothing about. “I was wrong, Verdi. I had no right to just disregard your stated wishes like that. Please tell me what I can do to make it up to you, please, cousin, please.”

  Verdi was quiet then, and Kitt seized on the moment and reminded her of the times she and Posie had tried to fix her up, ticked off the nicknames they’d given the Posie-and-Verdi-engineered blind dates gone afoul. “There was Nonie, who wore his pants too tight though there was no bulge where his thing should be so I assumed it was nonexistent; there was Toter who just wanted to smoke reefer, actually wanted me to stand and wait on our way into a movie while he ran into the bushes to do a bone; there was Tinker Bell who couldn’t go five minutes without having to take a piss; and Woof Woof, whose tongue was always hanging out of his mouth like Lassie. Should I go on, cousin?”

  Kitt listened for the heavy breathing from the other side of the phone that meant that Verdi was starting to laugh, she heard it and then she kept her stories going in order to hear the music of her cousin’s hysteria, couldn’t tolerate Verdi being upset with her.

  And Verdi was hysterical, falling off the bed and dropping the phone she laughed so. And after they settled down and reason returned, Verdi asked Kitt to call Johnson for her, insisting that she didn’t want to call him herself, she just wanted to see him, the next day if he could, at a public place, at the diner on Main Street in Manyunk at eight in the morning, if he can do it, cousin, you don’t have to call me back, she said as she thanked Kitt and told her how much she loved her, and then looked at the clock and counted the hours until then.

  A breakfast meeting. That’s what Verdi told her secretary to tell the assistant vice principal when she called her Monday morning. “Just saw it in my planner today though I’ve been staring at it for the past two weeks,” she said, rushing to go over the morning’s schedule so that she wouldn’t have to be specific about the meeting, wouldn’t have to say with whom, why, or what. She’d work out those details by the time she got to school, she told herself as she strained her voice to disguise that she was whispering, walking as far away as possible from the bathroom where the steady sizzle of the shower protected Rowe’s ears from her deceit.

  No sooner had she pressed the off button on the phone and tiptoed quickly through the house to the bedroom to place it securely back in its base, than there Rowe stood, dripping, rust-colored towel wrapped around his midsection.

  He smiled and went to her and put his hands on her shoulders, she turned her head so that if he kissed her it would have to be on her cheek; she’d have to leave soon if she were going to hail a cab and make it over to Manyunk by eight. She hurried to her closet and rummaged through and suddenly everything seemed inappropriate. What was appropriate attire, she thought, for sneaking off to see a long-ago love even if it was just for breakfast at a public diner? She settled on her navy viscose suit, a starched white blouse though she disliked the formality of white against blue like that, but Rowe whistled as she slid her jacket over the blouse and said that she looked both sexy and administrative. His tone was very pleasant, his facial muscles very relaxed as he stretched his watchband onto his wrist and offered her the car for the day. “I think I’ll walk in today,” he said, smiling, tilting his head as if there were some easy-listening music playing in the distance that he wanted to hear.

  She went to him and kissed his cheek, feeling suddenly sorry for him and said no thanks to his offer of the car, if the bus was coming she’d hop on it, she said, otherwise she’d hail a cab, she didn’t want the hassle of having to park, but thank you, Rowe, she said as she just stood there and looked at him. “Thank you so much, for everything.” She grabbed her purse from the ledge and was out of the door, trying to keep up with her emotions that were already walking through the diner door.

  Verdi and Johnson couldn’t look at each other for days after he shot her up that first time, after they nodded on and off that Sunday afternoon as reality swooped and lifted and circled like miniature planes doing their thing at an air show. And after Verdi stumbled down the hall to the shower to clean the vomit that had dried up by now in her hands where she’d tried to catch it even as that initial rush burst in her head like iron filings with no magnet to rein them in, and after Johnson cleaned up the remnants littering the usually orderly dorm-room floor: the bottle cap, the wax-paper Baggie that dulled in its emptiness, they went to bed for the night and tossed and turned and ended up sleeping finally back-to-back.

  They woke Monday morning with heads full of ash and they were ashamed. As if they were suddenly keenly aware of their nakedness so that they rushed to cover themselves. Verdi poured herself into her books, Johnson, into BSL activities. They exchanged polite phone calls as each accepted the other’s excuse for not being able to get together. And yet they missed each other in powerful gusts that swept them up, and finally landed them face-to-face again. They shooed away the awkwardness and hugged and laughed and kissed and pretended that nothing had gone awry.

  But things had gone awry. Johnson had violated the code of every man who’d ever fancied himself a stuffer. He’d turned his lady on to it. He didn’t know anybody who’d sunk so low, and he knew a lot of them now having spent so much time at Bug’s. Married so-called professionals, hooked-up revolutionaries, neighborhood Jodies—even they protected the women they swooned from the sweet, beautiful knowledge of a mainlined heroin rush. So even though Verdi and Johnson tried to reclaim the way they’d been before that Sunday morning, they could never return to having not done it. And even though Johnson vowed never to do such a thing with Verdi again, he couldn’t not do it. That seed he laid when he pierced her vein that Sunday morning had found most fertile ground with Verdi, curious young woman that she was, enthralled by prospects of living on the edge. Now it was an oak-sized desire that begged Johnson, just once more, please baby, we won’t do it again after this, but please, let’s do it just once more.

  And they did once more. And Verdi started with her head held high; unable to tie her own arm to do it herself, she willingly gave her arm to Johnson, and after he hit her bulging vein her chin touched her chest and just hung there as she mumbled nothingness to herself. Johnson watched with envy because he was beyond that point, what he did now he did just to stay ordinary, just so that he wouldn’t shit in his pants from his bowels breaking, or go into convulsions from the shakes, or gag and vomit from his stomach knotting. He did what he did just so that he could continue to be with Verdi, so that she wouldn’t see what he’d become, what she herself was on the way to being.

  And they played a game then of swearing to themselves that one more time and that would be the last time, and maybe two weeks later, she was begging Johnson again, and he couldn’t resist her sultry persuasiveness and against his best intentions there he’d be tying the rubber too tightly around her arm again, and again, and again. And he was working as much overtime as he could, at least showing up and pretending to work, punching his time card so that he got paid, so that he could fund his habit that was now two to three times a week, and Verdi’s habit that was quickly catching up. And they were missing classes and starting to fail exams, and Verdi just made it through the semester with a 2.0, but Johnson didn’t and was put on academic probation and told that if he didn’t have a dramatic upturn, he’d be asked to leave. And she made herself scarce when it came to Posie and Kitt, keeping her contact with them to her normal periods, thou
gh normal had become relative in a dramatic way and Kitt told her she looked like shit, what was wrong? “Impacted wisdom teeth,” Verdi lied. “Can’t eat, can’t sleep, getting them all pulled when I go home for summer break.” And Posie and Kitt looked at each other, denied the sinking that happened in their chests, accepted the toothache story. This was Verdi, their Verdi, not even Johnson who they loved dearly but whose shortcomings were at least acceptable. Impacted wisdom teeth, of course.

  She concocted a story for her parents about spring break, said she’d been invited to spend the week with Cheryl’s cousin at Cheyney, please, please, could she go? And her father relented; though she was at the university, he still had a soft spot for black colleges. And Johnson and Verdi measured that week not in days, but in bags, and they proceeded to unpeel themselves from all the relationships and finally at the close of the semester, when Johnson didn’t graduate, and Verdi was put on academic probation, they peeled away from each other too.

  Verdi was hot and cold in this dorm room, it was the end of April, Penn Relay Weekend, and she could hear the sororities and fraternities chanting and stepping down on the concrete of the super block. Charity was done with her course work for the semester and was going to California, at least Verdi thought that’s what she said that morning when she’d floated into her room like a fog, denim duffel bag on her arm, and kissed Verdi and told her that she loved her and that she had good Karma and would soon be free of that gorilla on her back.

  It was only six months after she’d begun her descent into hell and she was rocking on the bed, midway between the chills and fever she’d been suffering through for the past forty-eight hours. The flu. She should go to student health, she thought, but she couldn’t stand up long enough to try to get dressed without the room going into a spin. She hadn’t even had a cigarette the past day and a half. They had smoked joint and drunk cheap wine the night before, the basic high Johnson called it. And though she’d begged him for some stuff, he said that Bug was out of town, that you never know what you’re getting when you changed suppliers so he would wait for Bug.

  And she had talked to him earlier, he was on the way, he’d said, and yes he had her stuff. And now she tried to sit up praying that he’d be there any minute. Her refuge in a time of need, she thought with a weak smile. Then erased the thought thinking it blasphemous to elevate him so. But he had been there with her seemingly around the clock the past two days since she’d been sick. Brought her a jar of homemade soup from Father Divine’s on Thirty-sixth Street, though she hadn’t kept it down five minutes, the sheer gesture, the almost sheepish expression that took over his face as he’d spoon-fed it to her, touched that spot in her that only he could touch that radiated a shrillness that was so intense that she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, because now that the other substance that they poured into their arms, and even in the veins running between their legs, was touching that spot that had been reserved for Johnson, and now that made her cry.

  She had to go to the bathroom. Wished she could use the trash can that was catching the intermittent contents of her stomach because the bathroom seemed an impossibly long walk up the hallway. “Oh shit,” she said out loud as she tried to sit up again and the sickly-smelling air in the room made a whirlwind around her head. She turned on her stomach and put one foot on the floor. Moose had told her once during one of their all-night get-high sessions that if she ever drank too much and the room was spinning, just put one foot on the floor and everything would settle back to its rightful place. She tried it now though this room spinning hadn’t been induced from too much drink, but the turning air did seem to back up some from her head, and she slanted her body to try to sneak and sit up, if she did it slowly, gradually, maybe her head wouldn’t notice, she reasoned. And it seemed to be working until she sat all the way up and her head was not to be fooled and the cyclone kicked up with such intensity that she fell back against the pillow too weak to even sleep.

  When she came to, it was night again. Johnson hadn’t been there. She could tell because the contents of the trash can streamed into her awareness before she was fully awake. And the first thing he did the past two days after he entered her room with the key she’d given him months ago was to touch her forehead and lightly kiss her lips and then whisk the trash can away from the side of her bed and return it a few minutes later smelling of the pine disinfectant that they used to clean the bathroom. But only foulness emanated from that trash can now and she pushed it from under her nose and turned to face the wall and tried to go to sleep again but her back was cold and she burrowed farther under her blue-and-white-flowered bedspread and she couldn’t seem to warm her back with the spread until she realized that it was not just cold but wet and that she had peed on herself while she’d slept.

  She realized then that this wasn’t just the flu as a sensation started coursing through her muscles that had the effect of a dentist’s drill and she had to move around, told the dizziness to be damned because she had to sit up, because, because, “Lord have mercy, Jesus,” she said out loud, this is what she’d heard horror stories about, because this is how you felt when your jones was coming down. She stood up and shrieked and jumped up and down in the middle of the floor. She’d sworn to herself this would never happen to her, how could it happen to her, wasn’t her daddy a preacher, and wasn’t she from a fine home, a well-raised southern girl? Sweet. Isn’t that what everybody said about her that she was such a sweet person? And didn’t she go to church and even tutor in the after-school program? And hadn’t she had such devoted parents? College-educated daddy, politically connected. The best. She’d had the best parents. “Mommy, Daddy,” she called into the foul-smelling air in that little girl’s voice that would bring her parents tearing into her bedroom in the middle of the night to chase away the witches only she could see. She called again, as if her calling could make them assemble themselves right then in her university dorm to give her relief from this powerful flu. Flu. No flu, because there it was again, the sensation of wanting to spin herself in a ball to stop the dentist drills in her head. This wasn’t the flu. This was what wasn’t supposed to happen to people like her, not her. My God, she screamed, this can’t be happening to me, not to me. No Lord no, please stop this from happening to me. And now the person who could stop it, to whom she’d given her last money, wasn’t here, wasn’t going to show, the first time she’d given him money for it and he had ripped her the fuck off.

  She thought about what she could do, concentrated on her goal right now which was just to get high, she’d get help after this, she told herself, but right now she had to get high. Who could she call, Kitt? She couldn’t call Kitt. Couldn’t beg Kitt for money and not tell her why. She’d been lying the past six months to Kitt and Posie. When they said they were worried about Johnson, she lied and said she was too. When they told her he needed help, she told them he’d gotten help. And he only went over there when he could walk straight and not go into a nod which meant that he wasn’t over there every day anymore and she told them he was working very hard. So she couldn’t call Kitt—but she could call Rowe.

  Of course, Rowe. She could say she needed a prescription filled, that she was a little short of cash until the banks opened on Monday, could he help her out please? She could meet him for the money. She could run out to that car in the middle of the super block that sold any kind of drug imaginable that Johnson told her to avoid that nonetheless saw a steady stream of action, all kinds of students, red and yellow black and white, that car’s so precious to their sight, she’d sung once when she was high and bastardizing songs that had once meant so much to her.

  That’s what she’d do, what she’d have to do just to get through this night. Then she could think tomorrow, she could solve it all tomorrow. But right then the phone rang, and it was Johnson. And just hearing his voice in her ear and associating his voice with her stuff and she couldn’t contain her need for it and started to cry and beg. “Johnson, baby, Johnson, I’m sick. Ple
ase come to me, baby, please bring me my shit.”

  “Verdi, Verdi, Verdi I—I love you so much.”

  “What in the fuck are you talking about, get here, right here, right now, get here with my motherfucking shit.”

  “Verdi, I—I can’t.”

  “What you mean can’t!”

  “You want it, baby, you got to come to me, this time I can’t get there, you got to come to me.”

  “Johnson, please, please, I’m sick baby, please.”

  “Got-to-come-to-me.”

  He was sobbing in the phone and Verdi asked where? Where was he, she was on the way.

  On the west side of College Hall, he told her. Adding, “Hurry up because I got it and it’s so, so good.” Even as he sobbed into the phone.

  Verdi pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt over her pee-stained bedclothes, didn’t think about her hair, or unbrushed teeth, just pushed through the relay assemblages that were just crawling through the campus, like roaches she thought, she just wanted to step on them to move them out of her way because they were separating her from her goal, her target, help me Jesus, she prayed as she ran across campus this April night to try to quell her jones. By the time she got to the west side of College Hall she thought her lungs would explode, and her head, and the pit of her stomach because they were all spinning now and then she spotted Johnson and he was running too. But he wasn’t running toward her waving the treat he had for her in the wax-paper bag. He was running away from her. All she could see was his back in the clarity of the light beams gushing from the spotlight on the side of the building.

  “Johnson!” she called to his back. “Johnson, don’t do this to me, you motherfucker, I hate you!” That’s all she could do, she couldn’t run anymore, couldn’t catch him, she was too weak, too defeated, too strung out, too sick. She started vomiting out there, and now her bowels were breaking and she busted into College Hall, into the bathroom, the men’s room, and collapsed right there at the urinal’s base.