No Matter How Much You Promise

by Edgardo Vega

  And he had known Billie Holiday, and her daddy, Clarence, who played banjo with Fletcher’s band back in the thirties. God, he could still see her and often woke up from dreams in which she had been performing and after she was finished, she came to him and time stopped, and there was nobody else except him in her company. But that hadn’t been the case and everything had turned out bad for him. He should have stayed with Florence Baines, who loved him and wanted to set up a home with him and didn’t care that he was on the road nearly all the time. “I’m just happy working at the hospital and thinking about you,” she’d tell him on those hot summer evenings when they sat in Morningside Park, talking about things. Then they’d walk through the tree-lined streets of Harlem brownstones and return to her apartment and she’d give him a glass of lemonade and then they’d make love, her body like silk and her quiet passion filling him with enormous pride in his manhood.

  She was a big, kind woman, not very attractive to look at. Folks joked around and said she looked like she was Louis Armstrong’s sister. But Florence Baines was warm and generous, and in her eyes he could do no wrong. Even when he’d gone off with some other woman for a while, he was able to come back to her, apologizing for hurting her, and she sitting quietly listening to him, the pain clearly showing in her eyes so that he was reminded of being back down in Alabama when he was a boy and watching the look on his sister Melinda’s face when she found her puppy dog ripped open, thinking a coon or a panther had come in the night and done it.

  Butterworth recalled his youth once more and thought about making love to Florence Baines. There was something about Florence he remembered vividly and still admired. Her smile was wide, and her even, good strong teeth sparkled. But all he ever did was compare her in his mind to Lady Day, never mentioning Billie, but like a ghostly vision, the sensuality of her face and voice were always there, interfering with his relationship with Florence. More than his failure as a musician, his thwarted love for Billie Holiday made him feel like a failure in jazz. To everyone at the university, he was just an employee of the school who came each morning at seven o’clock and ran the elevator until four in the afternoon, taking periodic breaks for meals and bodily needs. His walks through the Village brought back memories of jazz clubs and the life back then, but he didn’t allow the thoughts to take root.

  His life at the university became everything. He loved being at the school and basked in the energy of the students, always on the move somewhere, to a class, a laboratory, a tutoring session, a test, a date, a meeting with a professor, or lunch, and he insisted that they all call him Pop. There were mornings when he couldn’t wait to get to the job.

  “Where would you like Pop to take you, young lady?”

  “Fifth floor?”

  “Fifth it is.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Butterworth. How are you doing?”

  “Very well, Professor Oliva. Eighth floor? Pop’ll take you right up, sir.”

  Professor Oliva had been there almost as long as he had and people were talking about his being the next president of the school. Who better? Homegrown, and Pop didn’t know anybody who loved the school more than Dr. Oliva, except maybe himself.

  Back then Butterworth would rise early in the morning, walk up the hill past Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue and then down the hill past Convent Avenue until he got to Saint Nicholas and then had breakfast at the diner near the subway station. Eggs and grits with whole wheat toast. No fried meat. Strong coffee with sugar and milk. No cream. Some days he had wheat cakes with a little syrup. He always bought the Herald Tribune, the Daily Mirror, and the Daily News. Now only the Daily News remained. Then he’d head downstairs to the subway platform and wait halfway down the stairs, between the two underground levels, like some people do, waiting for the A or the D to arrive, and either race back up for the one or continue downstairs for the other. More recently, he would wait on the first platform even when the train below was approaching, the effort of going down the stairs too taxing of his strength.

  The ride downtown was always a pleasure. Winter or summer, he loved his departure from Harlem to venture out into the city. Leaving the safety of Harlem was like going on an adventure. Often, riding the train he’d hear in his mind Betty Roché singing “Take the A Train” with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. His time with the orchestra had been brief. He’d thought of getting a Walkman and listening to music while he rode the train or walked around, but he knew he’d feel foolish. He was too old for all that nonsense. It didn’t matter. He could hear the tunes in his head and hum them and that was enough.

  He was nearly to Sheridan Square when he realized that his mind had drifted back to those times when he was a boy back down south. What had made him think of all that? Was it the girl? There was something about her that made her seem familiar. Of course she was Billy Farrell’s daughter, but there was something else. Who did she remind him of? That was it, he thought as he began going down into the subway station to wait for the Number 1 local to take him to Ninety-sixth Street, where he could get a seat on the Seventh Avenue express. A few years ago he saw this actress on the Dick Cavett Show who said she was black. That her father or mother was black and the other parent had come from Norway or Iceland, someplace up north in Europe. He got closer to the television set to try to figure out if this was a joke, but the young woman was earnest and she talked with a little southern tilt to her words. What was her name? Lana, Lina. Something like that. She had an Irish name. McCarthy. Lina McCarthy. She didn’t look any more black than Ava Gardner, who this girl Vidamía looked a little like with her big eyes. But the more he looked at the actress and the more she talked the more he could see that it was possible that the actress’s daddy was a Negro. With this other young woman, the Negro was all gone from her looks, but still something was there, and that’s how it felt being with Vidamía. And then he recalled why he’d been thinking about being down south again. Just then the train came and he got on and found a seat. He immediately dozed off, not quite sleeping but still remembering his life.

  His sister, Melinda, was sixteen years old, but slow and nearly blind, so she couldn’t do much to help their mother except husk corn or shuck peas or beans, but not much more. She was eight years older than him, and he loved her because she was so beautiful and kind, her skin smooth and the color of pumpkin pie, but she couldn’t read or understand and the only thing that meant anything to her was animals, which she loved to hold and pet. “Let me hold the rabbit, please, Alfred, please. The rabbit, the rabbit, the rabbit,” she repeated over and over until he brought her a rabbit and she held it tight to her breast, her eyes closed and her cheek next to it.

  He had no memory of his father, Clarence, who died in an accident in Mobile, caught between a barge and a pier on the gulf, his body so crushed that they buried him first and then brought word to the family. He was only a year old when his father died. For his mother it was as if misery had moved into her home. No more than six months after word came that her husband had died, Melinda climbed a tree to look at a bird’s nest and fell. Alfred’s mother had found Melinda under the tree, out cold in a pool of blood, her head cracked open like a melon and her eyes rolled up into her head, her tongue hanging out like a dead animal’s. She picked her up, and, carrying both him and Melinda, walked a half a mile to her sister’s house, left both of them there, and ran to town for help.

  The year was 1918, and before she was able to convince a doctor to help her, Melinda was nearly dead. She had returned with the doctor three hours later. By this time their aunt Louisa had managed to stop the bleeding, clean up Melinda, and give her a little liquor to keep her heart going. She had fed the girl some soup, which she ate hungrily, and then Melinda closed her eyes and went to sleep.

  When the doctor arrived, he asked that the child be woken up immediately. He examined Melinda, shaved the back of her head where she’d been hurt, cleaned out Melinda’s scalp wound, and sewed her up. He asked her questions, but Melinda just looked at him and smiled d
umbly. The doctor checked her limbs and they all seemed to be functioning. When he examined her eyes, he frowned and then nodded several times. Before leaving he said that there had probably been damage to the brain and that for the next two days she was to be awakened every three hours, no matter what, to make sure she didn’t go into a coma. He prescribed some powder for the pain and left.

  Aunt Louisa’s husband, Buford, put Melinda on the wagon and brought her back home. For the following week her mother watched Melinda, taking care of her, feeding her and making sure she was comfortable, talking to her and asking her questions, but Melinda would simply look at her and smile weakly. The following week she recognized her surroundings and their mother, and even said a few things, but it was obvious that something horrible had happened inside her brain, because she spoke haltingly and as if she were two or three years old. More distressingly, she couldn’t see well and for the next six months she banged into furniture and fell as she was going out of the house.

  Her mother cried and prayed but Melinda didn’t improve. Convinced that there was a curse on her, she began seeking release from the torment by going to a conjure man who went into a trance and said somebody had put a spell on her and what she had to do was first of all find a Blood of Christ plant, mix the roots with sugar, spice, and bluestone and wrap the whole thing in red flannel and wear it around her neck and this would bring her peace of mind and keep everyone safe since whoever this person was wanted to destroy her whole family. She gathered up the roots, mixed the sugar and spice, and dutifully got herself a small piece of red flannel that her sister Louisa cut from her husband, Buford’s, red long Johns, putting a patch down on the leg and explaining that he must’ve ripped them on a nail in the outhouse. The cure worked for a while, as she began to feel tranquillity come into her life. One morning, however, she woke up itching to beat the band. When she opened her eyes there were ants all over her, and yellow jackets, wasps, bumble bees, and a couple of birds were flying around the house, all of them trying to get at the sugar in her pouch. She then went to a roots woman, who said it seemed people were trying to run her life and she should get the leaf from a Ten Fingers plant, measure it with the middle finger of her left hand, then tear the leaf off, wrap it up and keep it in her pocket. This, the woman said, would give her control over anyone she came across. It helped calm her down for a while, but Melinda didn’t improve much, and she began once again to despair.

  Eventually, she traveled across the border into Mississippi to see a woman that people said could cast out spells. When she arrived at her cousin Rachel’s house it was dark. She ate and went to bed but couldn’t sleep. The next day after breakfast she and Rachel went down a dusty road, cut through a cornfield, across a fallow stretch and past a few shacks where some Negroes lived, and then entered the woods. Rachel took her through the woods to a house in the darkest part of the forest where the air was cold and the light of the sun barely penetrated the shadows. Inside the house, sitting on a rocker, was the woman.

  “Cornelia, this here is Miss Lulu,” her cousin Rachel said. “Miss Lulu, this is my cousin Cornelia from Branch, across the border in Alabama.”

  “Morning,” said the old woman.

  “Morning,” his mother mumbled.

  At first sight his mother had been frightened because she thought she’d been brought to see a white woman and she was a witch. She heard of white “granny women” who worked as midwives and did magic and killed babies to feed to the Devil. She protested but Rachel pushed her forward and said not to be afraid. As she got closer she saw that the woman was old and wrinkled, most likely over eighty years of age, but she had clear blue eyes and straight white hair and was indeed whiter than any woman Cornelia Butterworth had ever seen. For a moment her knees buckled and she nearly passed out. And then the woman spoke eight or ten words, but his mother didn’t understand them and thought perhaps she was a New Orleans Creole and was speaking French, but Rachel said she was speaking African and Indian magic words and was calling on their spirits to come and help her. His mother’s fear was so great that her bladder gave out and she felt the urine running down her leg.

  The woman wrinkled up her nose, sniffed the air, and coughed.

  “Stop that,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Rachel, take her to the outhouse and let her finish passing water out there. If she’s got anything else to pass, let her do it in the outhouse. What is the matter with that child! Didn’t nobody ever teach her how to behave with folks.”

  When she got outside his mother was shaking and wanted to know why Rachel had brought her to a white woman.

  “She ain’t no white woman,” Rachel had said.

  “Yes, she is. I ain’t blind. I seen her.”

  “I’m gonna repeat it and I just want you to get ahold of yourself and stop running your mouth like a crazy person. She ain’t no white woman. She is Miss Lulu. She is a Negro, just like you and me. What’s wrong with you? Why I’d be bringin’ you to some foolish ole white woman? Just go in there and finish doing what you gotta do and stop this nonsense. You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

  “But how come she so white?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care. The woman do roots and cast out spells and heal people and animals and cure folks of love troubles and lay on hands and everything else you can imagine, and folks round here swear by her. She ain’t into no sanctification or pleading with the Almighty, either. She just fix you up as good as new. They bring her people crazy as a crossed goose and they come out meek as a lamb. She’s a medicine woman and can cure anything if you’d just shut your mouth and listen.”

  “Is she a albino?”

  “No, she ain’t no albino. Has she got red eyes like a bunny rabbit?”

  “I ain’t never seen no Negro with blue eyes.”

  “Well, live a few more years, honey, and you’ll see a lot more than that. Now go in there and hurry cause I ain’t got no time to be standin’ around listenin’ to foolishness.”

  When she got back inside she knew she wasn’t going to do any such thing because she was shaking worse than before, but at least she didn’t feel like she was going to go in her pants.

  “Whatcha ’fraid of, child?” Miss Lulu said, in a clear voice.

  “Nothing, ma’am,” his mother answered.

  “Then you’s a fool cause they’s plenty o’ things to be ’fraid of. Whatcha doin’ comin’ in my house and passin’ water on my floor?”

  “I’m real sorry, ma’am.”

  “You wanna know why my skin’s so white? Is that what’s makin’ you so skittery?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t. My mama was a high yella gal from Louisiana, last name of Breaux, what they call a Creole octoroon, which means that she was one-eighth black. Breaux. That’s with an X, but pronounced Bro. Marie Solange Breaux from New Orleans, Louisiana. My daddy’s name was Rolando Mendez. He was a gambler, met my mother in the French Quarter and brought her back to Biloxi. Set her up in a fine house in the back bay of the Gulf where there was a colored section. I don’t remember him too well because according to my mother he ran off to Texas with James Bowie. Most likely he went chasing after a Mexican woman. He was a handsome, coffee-colored man whose father, Price Mendez, was the son of a Spanish grandee and a beautiful redheaded Irish woman from Atlanta. Some say she was a high-priced lady of the night, but when folks is jealous they’ll say any ole thing. His mamma was a high yella gal by the name of Tillie Blake and her mamma’s mamma was the daughter of an African Gitchie gal named Delia that come over from Georgia, spoke hardly any English and worked over at the Butterworth plantation.”

  “Butterworth?”

  “That’s right. What’s the matter now? You look like you ready to pass water again.”

  “That’s my husband’s name. My name. Cornelia Butterworth.”

  “Then we related.
”

  Cornelia Butterworth had shaken her head over and over again.

  “That can’t be. You white.”

  “I can’t help that. My daddy’s grandmam’s name was Eula Mae and when she was born that’s the name she got. Butterworth. From the master of the house, who was probably her daddy anyway cause she was pretty light, but a bit backward. Large, big-breasted, big-haunched woman with a Mandingo nose or maybe crossed with some Cherokee brave from the Carolinas cause things were pretty wild back then. Folks just runnin’ around in the forest huntin’ and trappin’ and fornicatin’ to their hearts’ content any time the urge hit them and the women just dropping the children hither and yon like they was deer in the woods.”

  The old African white woman then explained that she had lived part of her life as a white woman. She said that when General Lee was beginning to muster up his Confederate Army she was a sixteen-year-old girl who, because of her beauty and grace, was living at her grandfather Balthazar Mendez’s home right there in Mississippi, taking care of his home and doing his books because she had always been excellent with numbers and could read English, French, and some Latin, and also play the piano from sheet music, by ear and from memory.

  22. African Antecedents

  After her father left, when Lulu was four years old, her mother made ends meet by sewing fine dresses and teaching music and dancing. A beautiful, cultured woman, her mother played the piano, spoke French, and also taught young ladies needlepoint, and manners. Hearing from friends in Biloxi that his colored son, Roland, had married and then abandoned such a woman who had given birth and was raising an equally beautiful young daughter, Balthazar Mendez retained a lawyer and made sure Marie Solange Breaux Mendez was taken care of financially.

  During a trip to the Biloxi area to look in on one of his many business ventures on the Gulf, he visited Marie Solange and was utterly charmed by her, telling her that he couldn’t imagine why his son would leave such a beautiful woman, hinting that although he was old, he was still virile, and an arrangement could be made if she so wished. Marie Solange said that she greatly respected him and valued his friendship highly and more important, as attractive as his offer was, she looked at him like her father, Henri Breaux, who had been shot helping Andrew Jackson in one of his many disputes. The old man didn’t feel in the least rejected. He appreciated Marie Solange’s fine intelligence and continued to take care of the young woman and her daughter, Lucinda Bernier Mendez, or Lulu, as her mother called her.