Blues Dancing

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “Auntie Posie,” Verdi blurted, laughing, “I can’t believe you telling me that I’m getting fat, it’s these khaki pants, Auntie. And as for my hair, since you telling me it’s looking bad, that’s ’cause I just washed it and blew it dry before I left to come here—”

  “What she’s trying to tell you,” Kitt said, jabbing at Verdi’s thigh as she spoke, “that if you gonna maintain untruths with your man, you at least need to cover your tracks. How much sense does that make, telling somebody you’re going to get your perm touched up and then coming back looking the same way you went out? Huh? Rowe may be many things, but trust me, baby, he’s not at all unobservant.”

  Verdi nudged Kitt as she rubbed her hands through her hair. “That reminds me, cousin—”

  “Don’t even be calling me cousin,” Kitt said. “You only call me cousin when you want something, and I know you’re getting ready to ask me to clip your ragged ends.”

  Sage reached behind her to hand her mother her dull-edged children’s scissors, and Kitt’s mouth fell open the way it always did when Sage revealed this gift for being in her own world and still so attentive to what was going on around her. And Verdi stooped on the vinyl porch floor to Sage’s level and put Sage’s hands to her jaw so that she could feel Verdi’s facial muscles as she said scissors, over and over, “scissors.”

  And Kitt got up to get her clipping shears, said, “Mama, you want some water,” as she noticed sweat accumulating on Posie’s face again and took her mother’s temperature with the back of her hand against her forehead, and Posie told Kitt that yes a little cold water would be good and Kitt was right back in a flash with Posie’s water plus the scissors and a towel, a wide-toothed comb, and leave-in conditioner for Verdi’s hair.

  “Come here, girl,” Kitt said, mocking sternness, and Verdi scooted giggling across the vinyl-tiled porch floor and leaned against Kitt’s legs as Kitt spread the towel over her shoulders and commenced to parting her hair with her wide-toothed comb and massaging conditioner in her hair.

  “Awl goodness, cousin, you putting me in heaven,” Verdi said as she rolled her head around to the motion of Kitt’s fingers pulsing through her scalp.

  “Actually, I don’t think so,” Kitt said as a seriousness overtook her tone. “I think it’s Johnson’s presence here that’s got your face in the clouds and you can’t even admit it, that’s what bothers me. And somebody’s bound to get hurt, and I just don’t want it to be you, really, I don’t want it to be Johnson either, and if truth be told as much as I can’t stand his arrogant self, I felt kind of sorry for Rowe that Saturday night at Sage’s birthday party standing in the middle of the floor looking all pitiful.” She felt Verdi’s back stiffen against her legs when she said that, and a dread that she had been picturing as a storm cloud all day resettled in her stomach again the way it had been dropping and dissipating all day. It felt darker and heavier now and she got quiet as she measured portions of Verdi’s hair between her fingers and snipped the ends off and then started on a new section. There was no way this could end well. The least painful would be if Johnson left soon to go tackle his next fund-raising project in some other city; the most devastating would be if the fire were really turned up between Johnson and Verdi and she left Rowe. Messy, she thought. Thinking about how horrific it was when Verdi had first admitted to being in love with Rowe, that it had just happened, she’d cried to her and Posie, that she hadn’t meant for it to happen, but they were hopelessly in love and couldn’t live without each other. And Verdi was so frail back then, some horrible case of mono, according to Rowe, and she had lost all the weight she’d come here with along with the glimmer in her eye that said I’m waiting to be delighted. And it was like stolen moments for her and Posie to have a little time with Verdi because Rowe was so overly protective, dropping her off, picking her up, and when they did have an hour with her the best they could do was prop her between them and rub her back and listen to her cry about how sorry she was over betraying Penda. And then Rowe would show up after too little time and say that he was there to pick her up, that she had antibiotics she had to take, that she needed her rest. And each time she would come Kitt would beg her to pack her bags and come live with them, that they could nurse her back to health as well as Rowe, but he seemed to have a hold on her and Kitt started asking where was he from anyhow because it was as if he had put some juju on her the way she insisted how badly she needed him, that without him she would die. But over time she started coming back to herself, her eyes reclaimed their waiting-to-be-fascinated brightness. And once she started working with special children a fulfillment settled over her, and they didn’t even have to suffer through interacting with Rowe because Verdi seemed to be coming and going as she pleased. So it was just the messiness of breaking up that Kitt dreaded and suspected was imminent—try as she might Verdi couldn’t convince her that she wasn’t mired deeply in love with Johnson—and the emotional strain on her cousin whom she still viewed as needing her protection, and the memory of the hollowness that had taken over her eyes when she’d moved in with Rowe because she’d gotten into a situation too big for her and it had taken its toll on her physical health, made Kitt worry all the more. She didn’t say any of this, just efficiently moved through section after section of Verdi’s hair and listened to her mother’s light hums and the rolling and stamping of Sage’s crayons against the construction paper.

  When she had evened Verdi’s hair in a half-moon around her face and trimmed the edges at the nape of her neck and even chiseled points where her cheekbones began, she knew she was still participating in Verdi’s charade, a charade she’d started, tried to convince herself that it would all work out as Verdi was insisting, that Johnson would leave and everybody would be happy ever after, even as the storm cloud in her stomach coalesced and thickened and felt like a rock. “That hair’s looking much better,” Kitt said as she smoothed her fingers through it and then took the towel from Verdi’s shoulders and gently swiped flecks of hair from her face. “Be glad you’re keeping it so short, much easier to maintain, or try to convince somebody you’re maintaining it anyhow.”

  “Thank you, cousin,” Verdi said as she stood and stretched and then leaned down to give Kitt a smooch on the cheek.

  Right then Johnson stepped through the opened door to the enclosed porch and was stopped by the sight of Verdi’s behind as he walked onto the porch. He squeezed Posie’s neck, and winked at Kitt, and put his finger to his mouth when he looked at Sage who was blowing spit bubbles as she glanced up from her coloring and tried to sound out an S. Then he went straight to Verdi’s back and poked her in the sides and she screamed then collapsed against him and they both landed laughing on the porch floor. And they were all hiccuping they haha’d so except for Posie who though she was humored by the scene going on in front of her didn’t want to get another one of those god-awful piercing stabs that had been moving from her back to her chest.

  Then Hawkins from down the street walked onto the porch with news about the upcoming primary election. Told Kitt that Jeff, the candidate they were supporting for committeeman, needed help in understanding how street money worked because the ward leader wasn’t even trying to explain. And Kitt said that she was going to have to give the ward leader a call anyhow because she wasn’t crazy about a couple of the judges he was endorsing up for retention, and they got on the subject of local politics then, and Johnson knew some of the names from his coalition building, so they got a gossip session going about who was sincere and who wasn’t when it came to the plight of the neighborhoods.

  Then Kitt added emphatically that if Jeff was elected committeeman she was sure he’d help them do battle with the situation on Ludlow Street just a block and a half away. “They sell everything on that corner, don’t even have to get out of the car either, hear tell all you have to do is stick your finger out of the window and they push whatever you want through the window. The regulars even know the signals, certain fingers mean crack, others joint, others heroi
n, tell me they even give you a bag filled with a syringe and anything else you ever thought you needed to get high.”

  Verdi flinched when Kitt said the part about the syringe. She was sitting next to Johnson on the porch floor, their arms just barely touching and their hips. She tried to keep her body loose and soft so that Johnson wouldn’t sense her stiffening, why was she stiffening anyhow? she thought. It’s not like Kitt even knew really what a stuffer she’d been. Even when she’d tried to tell her Kitt had turned her ears to metal and wouldn’t even let such a notion penetrate. So no need to feel embarrassed as they denigrated those who were swishing the neighborhood closer and closer to the drain. Hawkins said they were going to start taking down license numbers. “Most of the clientele is made up of suburban white boys, anyhow,” he said. “Shit, let them open a drive-through cop spot on their own corners, see how long that would be tolerated.”

  Verdi agreed, her voice squeaking, and Johnson turned to look at her and she turned her face in the opposite direction because she didn’t know what was coming over her to suddenly make her heartbeat step up.

  Then Penda’s relative from farther down the street stopped by with Stella Dora lily cuttings she’d just separated from her garden, and Kitt said they’d work perfectly in the corner lot because they could follow the irises and keep the progression of color going.

  They settled in for Friday-evening banter as the swish of roller skates floated up from the street and a jump rope smacked the pavement to the rhythm of little girls’ rhymes, then the jingle of the water-ice truck mixed in with these Friday evening sounds on this insular block that had even managed to garner a cop on foot patrol. And though they’d occasionally hear gunshots reverberating from a couple blocks away the dregs knew to avoid this diamond of a block, the way that the enemy reconnaissance know to wave the troops back when they sense the fortification is solid.

  “My gosh, summer must be around the corner if that’s the water-ice truck I hear,” Kitt said.

  Then Johnson said water ice was another thing he missed about Philly.

  And Kitt said, “Johnson, every time I turn around I’m hearing something else you missed about Philly, why don’t you just admit that you missed everything about Philly.”

  And Verdi blushed, and Johnson and Hawkins walked off the porch laughing, swinging Sage between them out to the truck to buy everybody a round of water ice. And they licked and slurped and enjoyed the cold sweetness in their mouths as they talked about what the overly white Phillies weren’t going to do this season, and Posie wasn’t hearing any of this, was too absorbed in other sounds trying to swallow a bit of water ice, grape. Tried to let its cold wetness navigate down her throat to coat the inside of her crowded chest where the intermittent stabs in her back had radiated now and stuck. She knew she should clear her throat, clutch her chest, wave her hands around, make some overt gesture to call attention to herself.

  The volume was way up on Kitt’s porch now as their conversations bounced from point to point like lightning bugs. And at first nobody even noticed that Posie’s grape-flavored water ice was sitting in her lap, staining a purple puddle in the middle of her brightly flowered dress until Sage jumped up and made grunting sounds and bounded for her grandmother, followed by Kitt, hollering, “Mama! My God, Mama, what’s wrong? Help! Help her! Mama, please what’s wrong!”

  Then Verdi, “Auntie! Auntie! Oh no, my auntie Posie. Oh Jesus. Does she need her oxygen, where’s her tank, Kitt? Kitt, where’s her tank?”

  And Johnson cradled Posie’s head and found a pulse in her neck, and Hawkins went to dial 911, and now it was the baleful whine of sirens interrupting the glimmering sounds that had been so perfect on this block this Friday evening under the purple-tinged sky that was now more navy with a hint of a crescent moon starting to turn its light on.

  Sixteen

  This Friday evening in May and Rowe was headed home thinking how happy he should be. He’d just given his last lecture of the semester, had stopped by the travel agent and picked up more brochures this time for their honeymoon so more exotic than even the first batch. Maybe they could nestle the night away looking at the pictures and reading the delicious propaganda and narrowing down how they’d spend their first vacation as a married couple. He’d had to rein in his attempts at spontaneity though when Penda said she had to think about the divorce, she had to think about the loss of retirement benefits and their other joint holdings. He’d be patient. Knew Penda wasn’t someone he could rush. What was the urgency anyhow? he asked himself as he walked up the steps to their room burdened down with a widemouthed urn stuffed with two dozen startling red roses. He felt the urgency though. Felt it as a flash of a shadow just outside of his peripheral vision that would sometimes make him turn his head to catch whatever it was that lurked around him, around them now, and wouldn’t allow him to settle down and enjoy their life the way Verdi seemed to be enjoying it.

  And she really did seem to be happier than he’d remembered, moodier now too, he reasoned, from the pressures of her new job, but when she smiled lately it was a startling gushing smile that disturbed him because it was tinged with a familiarity that he couldn’t pinpoint. He felt himself stirring as he thought this, and put the urn in the center of the kitchen table and momentarily admired the roses’ velvety perfection.

  He wasn’t happy. Headed to sixty with more successes than failures, secure relationship with a pretty, smart principal at a special-needs school who could undress at night and turn into his fantasy. Never wanted children and was never burdened with them, enjoyed academia and scholarly thought and was paid well to indulge his tastes in both. Sought-after lecturer, fairly well published by a modest university press. Good life, exceptionally good life. And he wasn’t happy.

  He tried to remember when he’d ever been happy really. Had to go back years, maybe when he and Verdi first kissed, because up until then life had been so burdensome, once he’d escaped the abject poverty of his past, he was always onstage it seemed, needing to be precise and calculating, writing the appropriate papers, getting noticed at the proper places, keeping his past away from his present. But when he’d first moved inside of Verdi that night in her high-rise dormitory he’d experienced a jolt of what he thought happy must be, a sensation of wanting to giggle, or click his heels together, put his hands in soft un-formed clay. He’d made love to Verdi in his imagination many times before he did it in reality. But he’d felt such guilt over the fantasy that he’d go out of his way to do something special for Penda, buy her a pair of those gaudy southwestern-style earrings she insisted on wearing with the matching chokers, some hand-beaded monstrosity as he thought when he’d made such purchases from what he considered a low-life street vendor. But when he touched Verdi for real, the irony was that he felt no guilt. Felt instead a levity, an undoing of the pressure he’d been so accustomed to. He’d never figured out whether it was her youth, or the way she looked up to him, or seemed to need him especially then when she was most vulnerable, all he knew for certain was that once he kissed her, and her mouth parted without resistance welcoming him, he knew he’d had to have her, have that jolt that struck at the pleasure center in his brain over and over again.

  He didn’t know why he was thinking about all of this Friday evening as he walked into the bedroom to change, sitting on the cream-colored bedspread and undoing his shoes. Probably because Verdi wasn’t here to open the door for him, his dram of brandy already poured, some light dinner started. But this evening she’d gone to work with her cousin’s child, then to get her hair done, and then to the gym. He’d resisted calling the shop to confirm her appointment the way he’d done from time to time over the years. He couldn’t figure that out either except to attribute it to how he’d embarrassed himself going over to her cousin’s last month. It had been at least ten years since he’d gone over there, and then only because Verdi begged him to share with them in maybe a Thanksgiving dinner, and Kitt would insult him the entire time, introduce him to the neighbors s
itting around the table as the big-shot, Republican professor at the university. He reached deep inside for some self-control right now so that he wouldn’t call the shop.

  He decided to distract himself by stirring something up so that they could eat when she got in; she was usually famished after her workout. Her closet door was open and he stared into it absentmindedly as he slid his shoes from his feet. Maybe he’d boil some tricolored, vegetable pasta and open a can of tomato paste. He pushed his feet into his slippers and walked out into the dining room and poured himself a dram of brandy and let a drop of it singe against his tongue as he headed into the kitchen to survey what ingredients he had to work with for a meal.

  He started a pot of water boiling for the pasta and pulled down a can of sockeye salmon. He hit the remote that controlled the miniature television on the kitchen counter and the opening sounds of the nightly news filled the room. The lid to the tomato paste was stubborn and the can opener kept popping out of the groove and he ended up trying to lift the jagged edge with his finger. His finger got caught just inside of the can opener and when he pulled it out he thought at first that it was just covered with tomato paste but then the sensation of ripped flesh registered in his brain and he realized he was bleeding and he stuck his finger first in the brandy and then in his mouth suppressing the need to cry out. That’s when the phone rang and he hit the speaker button and Penda’a husky voice flooded out Peter Jennings.

  “Penda, I hope you’re giving me good news,” he said as soon as he heard her say hello. His words distorted from his finger still in his mouth. He pictured her oversized fish earrings dangling from her lobes.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, yes, I’ve decided,” she said, her voice taking over the kitchen so that he hit the down arrow on the volume to the speakerphone. “I’m granting you a divorce, free and clear, all I’m asking is that you give up the title to that property, that’s all, I won’t even lay claim to your retirement benefits.”