* * *
Sunday. One week is all since the last one, it can’t be. The whole Atlantic has been crossed since then. The cotton wool is a filter, or perhaps it is changing, giving over again to something new. Nelie, the whistle of the tea kettle, a low gust of wind through a pipe, a bicycle bell, the church bells. The ring of a coin dropped on the stone stair. Everyone has gone inside the church now.
Nelie has one hand on the iron rail. A wind, her handkerchief, she turns to catch it, it eludes her. Something shimmers up ahead in a tree.
The highest branch, bare and black, perched there, the golden claws clutch. Silver, blue and purple feathers ripple like water, the arched neck reaches up, and the flashing eye meets Nelie’s own. It opens wide its wings, spreads its tail like a Chinese fan and leaps.
The high white walls, and the white sky. And the iridescent bird flies higher.
Nelie’s soles ring out against the brick. Faster now. Because maybe, just maybe, she can catch up.
3
Rosalie
Philadelphia, 1964
It’s the last day of February, and Rosalie Hubbard, a junior at William Penn High School in North Philadephia, is scratching out a few notes for her next article for the school paper. Cassius Clay has just won the heavyweight boxing championship and there’s been dancing in the streets. Rosalie is covering current events, and so much is happening. President Johnson has launched his War on Poverty, boys are getting sent over to Vietnam, only to come back dead or crippled or stuck on dope. Civil Rights workers are murdered in their beds. There is tragedy left, right and center, but there’s a lot of hope too.
Rosalie’s notes are a mess, since she’s riding a bus, up Broad Street, to her evening course at Temple Secretarial. The course is alright, especially since a school friend of hers is taking it with her, and the two girls share a desk. It takes the edge off the tedium of the typing and shorthand drills. Rosalie likes journalism, and photography too, but doesn’t dream of such a career for herself, not yet anyway. She does have her eye on a secretarial future though, at least as something to fall back on. Not many kids she knows go on to college, especially girls.
Stuffing her notes into her school bag, Rosalie gets off early, and so she has time to stop into her favorite record shop. She buys that Coltrane album, the one with Johnny Hartman she’s been hearing so much about, with money earned from babysitting. She holds it gingerly as she rides the bus up Broad Street, thinking how pleased and impressed her older brother, Junior, will be with the record.
* * *
A few months later, Junior goes to see Goldfinger at the Boyd Theater with his friend George Stewart, whom they always tease for having a first name for a last name. George has a high, barking laugh, loud and unstoppable, and five minutes after the blonde in charge identifies herself to Bond as “Pussy Galore” the usher comes over with his flashlight and makes them leave. Out on the street George keeps on laughing, and the next week Junior takes Rosalie to the show instead. He owes her one, especially since he appropriated the Coltrane album for himself, and then went and loaned it to George.
Rosalie is the youngest of the three, once four, Hubbard children. She dearly loves her parents and siblings, her Aunt and Uncle and cousins, and earns excellent grades in school, though she does not stand out socially. She is pretty in a quiet way, her mother says, and that little bit of acne will no doubt fade with time.
Rosalie likes to read, likes to dance, she likes to run up and down the stone stairs when she goes to the library, with her heels clickety-clacking and her book bag swinging from her shoulder. She likes Coca-Cola with ice cream in it, her mother’s yams and roast, and is awed by the young people who march and protest and fight against Jim Crow.
Goldfinger is pretty good, though Rosalie likes it less than Junior, who digs it for the gadgetry and the you-know-what. But even Sean Connery doesn’t hold a candle to Sidney Poitier, if the truth be told. Mr. Poitier has just won an Oscar for Best Actor, the first black man to win it, and Rosalie got to write it up for the school paper. All the girls at school are in love with him, and Cassius too, of course.
At the Boyd, Rosalie sinks into her plush seat. She glances over at Junior. He’s slouched down, leaning on an elbow, and flashes of color make the lenses of his glasses appear opaque. His long legs are folded up so his knees almost block his view of the screen. Junior never did so well in school but he does have a knack for mechanical things. Momma said once that Junior could already read at the start of first grade, but after Azzie died that changed.
For Junior it was like the letters got all shaken up inside his mind, and didn’t line up into words as they did before. His teachers started to say he was slow, though he surely never was. He can fix a radio or a blender or just about anything you want. Many nights he lays a towel over the kitchen table and covers it with neat rows of tools and the parts of whatever he’s working on. Silent and concentrating, with his clever hands moving like big brown spiders. He graduated high school last year and one of these days he’ll start at the technical school, but for now he’s still a delivery boy for Freihofers Bakery. Junior likes being out on his delivery routes, no one telling him what to do, swinging around the neighborhoods in the bread truck and running up to stoops and porches. He looks good in his uniform too. Cap and bowtie.
The day after the movie, Sunday, Rosalie drops in on her cousin Nelie after church. Nelie is twenty-five and married, with a baby daughter, Lea. Rosalie has a shopping bag with some things for the baby that her mother gave her to bring up to Cornelia. Momma and Aunt Violet are the only ones that call Nelie by her full name.
Nelie and Cal have a little one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a row house about ten blocks from the Hubbards. It is tidy and comfortable with wonderful light in the front room from the south-facing windows. It’s late May and warm, so these windows are open. Rosalie, like most of Nelie’s visitors, doesn’t bother with the bell.
“Hey, Nelie!”
Her cousin sticks her head out. “Hey, Baby, come on up.”
Rosalie climbs the stairs and finds Nelie in the kitchen, in a cute little sleeveless dress and apron, fixing up a pan of potatoes for supper. The baby is lying on a blanket on the front room floor, trying to get herself up to crawling position. Rosalie sits down on the floor.
“Lea-Lea,” she coos, to the baby’s instant delight. No one can pass those fat little cheeks without putting at least thirty kisses on them. “Where’s Cal?”
“Up at Marty’s,” says Nelie. That’s Cal’s best friend. He and another friend of theirs go up there most Sunday afternoons. Roosting with the roosters, Nelie calls it. She’s not a big talker though, preferring to save her words for when they are most needed. Some people talk a lot without saying much, Rosalie has noticed, and some people say a lot with just a little. Her cousin Nelie definitely belongs to the second group, which is a lot more rare than the first.
Soon Rosalie hears voices from down on the street, two or three women, and then, “Nelie Porter!” called out from below. Porter is Nelie’s married name. It’s a friend of hers from the neighborhood along with a sister and a girlfriend, they want to come up and talk to Nelie about something important, if she has a minute. The three women don’t bother to wait for the answer though, and a moment later burst into the living room. Nelie asks Rosalie to mind Lea and takes the young women back to the bedroom. Nelie has visitors like these on a regular basis, women mostly. They need her advice on matters of the heart, and sometimes other business, money, health, the things that matter most to folks. Sometimes it’s playing the numbers, but Nelie doesn’t do that. Maybe she could, but that’s a dangerous territory, and a slippery slope, as they say in church.
Rosalie picks up a storybook that’s lying on the sofa and reads it to the baby. It’s not much of a story actually, just a dog and a ball and running and jumping, but Lea is enthralled. Her big brown eyes soak up everything and her babble makes Rosalie laugh, which makes the baby laugh, and they laug
h together. Then Lea falls to one side, bopping her head, and starts to cry, until Rosalie plays Five Little Piggies with her and she smiles again. About a quarter of an hour later the bedroom door opens and the women emerge. The girlfriend is weeping into a handkerchief and the two others hustle her out the door clutching her arms on either side, calling back thank you! to Nelie, who sees them out.
“Her man’s running around like she thought,” says Nelie with a sigh, as she drops down onto the sofa. “She’ll be alright though, long as she don’t marry him.”
There’s some clatter on the stairs and Cal comes in, which makes the baby shriek with excitement. She knows her daddy’s footsteps. Cal is tall and thin like Junior, but broader in the shoulders. He kisses Nelie on the neck and hands her a brown paper bag with a few groceries. “Hey Little Momma,” he says to Rosalie, and scoops up Lea. “What’s shaking at high school?”
“Readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmatic,” says Rosalie.
“Okay, okay, what else?” Cal tries to steal a look at her between swats at his eyes from the baby.
“Got a newspaper article I’m working on about the new chess club at school.”
“Good game,” Cal grins, nodding his approval.
“We better get going,” says Nelie, “I want to bake these potatoes over at Aunt Virginia’s.” They head out together into the hall, Rosalie with the baking pan, Nelie with Lea, and Cal bumping the baby carriage around.
Out on the sidewalk, it’s a fine afternoon to be out walking. The flowers on Nelie’s dress catch the sunshine, and Rosalie thinks she may need one just like it. When they get to her house she’ll have to show Nelie what she’s done, with Momma’s help, with one of her sister’s cast-offs.
* * *
Sunday dinners at the Hubbard home are regular and lively occasions, rivalled only by the Sundays at the Montgomerys when Aunt Violet, Nelie’s mother, is hostess. In either case the participants are the same, the growing clan that centers around the two sisters, Virginia and Violet, and now includes the spouses, children, and sometimes friends. Not everyone makes it to every single dinner, but the seats around the table are always full, the conversation bubbling, and the grace always includes the line, May our cup continue to runneth over.
Most Sundays Rosalie’s big sister Loretta is there, making sure, together with Aunt Violet, that their mother doesn’t work too hard. Loretta has an apartment by herself, living the glamorous life of a switchboard operator at Bell Telephone. Her apartment is decorated in the latest style, with drapes and throw pillows in garish colors that Rosalie thinks are the ultimate, but that give the older generation a headache. The thing about Loretta is that she’s twenty-eight and unmarried, a fact that bothers exactly two people, her mother and her beau. Nearly every Sunday night, cleaning up after dinner Aunt Violet says, just to tease, “Ain’t Charlie proposed yet?” And Momma sighs, “Only about seven times. That girl is too independent for her own good.”
Not long ago, over at Loretta’s apartment painting their nails the sassiest shade of pink, Rosalie asked her sister if she planned on marrying Charlie.
“Yeah, I will,” Loretta said, smiling slyly, “soon as I’m ready.”
* * *
The old radio set in the Hubbard parlor is draped in a white linen runner with lace edges tatted by Rosalie’s Grandnan Hubbard on her father’s side, who came up from the South with her family, as did her mother’s mother around the time of the First Great War. Most everyone Rosalie knows has people in the southern states, though she, like many of her peers, has never been to visit. Upon the linen runner are arranged numerous framed photographs of the Hubbards and the Montgomerys, Aunt Violet’s family. And above these on the wall hang the older generations. Among them are Rosalie’s maternal grandparents, Papa Dax and Grandnan Emily Rougeaux, on their wedding day. Rosalie never knew Papa Dax, the one exception to the family’s Southern origins. He came down alone from French Canada, as a young man. All those pictured on the wall are now gone, while those on the radio set still dance with the music of life. All but one.
Rosalie was only three when Azalea, nearly twelve and second to oldest, was snatched away from them by a case of diphtheria. So Rosalie’s memories of her sister are scant. She remembers her laugh, like a handful of jingle bells, and how once they danced at a birthday party, the song was “The Gypsy.” In fact they danced to that song every time it came on the radio, during the After Supper Music Hour. Rosalie remembers how Azzie shook her finger, mouthing the spoken line in the song.
She looked at my hand and told me
my baby would always be true,
and yet, in my heart I knew, dear
that somebody else
was kissing you…
Last year Rosalie found a copy of The Best of the Ink Spots at the record shop on Broad Street. That day when she arrived home the house was empty. She unwrapped the record, laid it on the family hi-fi and played “The Gypsy” over and over again for an hour. Why was that song so terribly sad? Well, because the man knew he couldn’t keep his baby, even though he loved her so, and that the other part of his heart still held on to the dream. Rosalie drenched herself with tears.
Nelie named her baby daughter after her, which is one way her name carries on. Well before the baby was born Nelie knew she’d be a girl, and that her name would be that most beloved one, Azalea. They call the child Lea, she isn’t Azzie after all, and needs the name to be her own too.
Rosalie also remembers the funeral. Or rather she remembers a lot of black clothes, and the awful sound of adults weeping. And she remembers Aunt Violet’s lavender smell, as she carried her down a hallway, saying they were all of them in God’s hands.
* * *
There weren’t words to describe the axe-blow Rosalie’s mother Virginia experienced when her daughter died. The blow that never ended, and stretched out into the most unbearable future. In those first terrible days and weeks the grandmothers of the community took over, directing prayer meetings and casseroles in a steady stream. They bore up Virginia and her family as they themselves had needed it in the past, and would likely one day need it again, asking God collectively for His grace. May He lighten the burdens He allowed them to carry. May He teach them to accept even His reasons, however unknown to them, for calling little children Home.
When the initial storm cleared and life presented itself as needing to go on, Virginia was blessed to be supported, especially by her sister Violet and her oldest child, Loretta. Loretta was fourteen and steadfast, and would have rushed to her mother’s side had she not already been there. She saw the care of her parents as her first duty, while her aunt stepped in to help with the younger children. With time, Virginia and Lionel Senior righted themselves again, though Lionel lost that easy merriness he’d always had, and Virginia remained just slightly bent forward, as if walking perpetually into a strong wind.
The other person perhaps most deeply affected by Azzie’s death was Nelie, so much so that the family feared they might lose her too. “Two peas in a pod” didn’t describe what Azzie and her cousin had been, because they were far closer than that, and far less alike. Cornelia, who was shy and dreamy by nature, was like a balloon held to earth by Azalea. Azzie protected her fiercely and never gave a second thought to the ways Nelie was different, nor to the unearthly things Nelie seemed to know sometimes.
Indeed that balloon hovered indecisive for a time. When Nelie fell ill and lay abed with her eyelids fluttering, they feared the diphtheria had returned. But Dr. Leventhal, who came to the house straight away and examined her with the utmost concern, assured them it had not. This was a case of shock, he said, packing up his black satchel. He prescribed a regimen of broths and rest and massages to the feet. Harold Leventhal had learned the scientific care of the body in medical school, but his own grandmother had taught him a thing or two about the care of the soul.
When Nelie recovered she said that Azzie had visited her in her sleep, and that Azzie had shown her Heaven. She said Azzi
e was happy and had asked them all to please not be sad. Azzie was with God, and God looked a lot like the Goodyear blimp, but much shinier.
Virginia held the hand of her niece and said, “You say Azzie is happy, Honey? And that she’s with God?” And Nelie said Yes’m all over again.
Virginia looked at the ceiling a long time.
“Okay,” she said at last. She touched her heart, and said again, “Okay.”
* * *
A year or two later Virginia began to notice pains in her knuckles. Now and then she had to put down her cooking or her sewing, or whatever she was doing, to rub on some ointment. Then she began to feel it in her knees. Lionel rang Dr. Leventhal who stopped in the next evening when he was in the neighborhood seeing another patient. The doctor lived with his family up at Oxford Circle and this was back when he still made house calls. He asked her to come into his office just as soon as she could so he could examine her more thoroughly.
Loretta insisted on going along to the appointment. She sat in the waiting area when her mother went in, flipping nervously through copies of National Geographic. The doctor had his white coat on at the office, unlike the regular suit he wore on house calls, and a red and brown checkered tie. Had Mrs. Hubbard been more tired than usual? Dr. Leventhal wanted to know. Yes, come to think of it she had. Any skin rashes? Fevers? Yes, that too. Had she perhaps noticed any hair loss? At this Virginia lost a little of her balance. The brown and red checkers of the doctor’s tie suddenly loomed forward, and it was harder to make sense of what he was saying. But she caught the word Lupus, and the recommendations for extra rest, and to take care not to get too much sun. He said it looked like a mild case, a blood test would be needed, and asked her to come back in a month. She did, and continued to see the doctor every few or several months when the symptoms flared. This was a malady without cure, and was commonly crippling and even fatal.
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