Harlem Redux

by Persia Walker

  “Miss Lilian took ill. Got the tremors. Her hands would start to shaking. She got so she could barely hold a cup. She started complaining about her eyes, too. Said her vision was getting blurry. One minute everything would be fine and clear. The next, she was as blind as a bat in a ray of sunshine. Mr. Jameson took her to the doctor, but the doctor said he couldn’t find nothing. Told Miss Lilian it was her nerves. She was working too hard, he said. She’d been taking on extra work since her boss left and she was writing poems, book reviews, and the like. Doctor said she’d have to cut back, go to bed and get some rest.

  “Well, she tried. But it didn’t do no good. She’d start having nightmares the minute her head hit the pillow. Sometimes, she’d wake up screaming, babbling about voices in the dark. Mr. Jameson, he told the doctor to give her a sleeping potion. But them spells come on her so sudden, nobody knew what to do. And they’d go way quick as they come. One minute, she could see; the next she couldn’t. One minute, she was sitting at her desk, typing away; the next, her hands were shaking so bad she couldn’t hit the keys. And her heart—she said it’d beat so hard, she thought it was about to jump outta her chest.

  “We was all desp’rate, trying to find ways to help her. We was so busy with Miss Lilian, wasn’t none of us paying no attention to Miss Gem. She seemed fine enough with her fellah. But then sumptin’ went wrong there, too. Folks say he jilted her. I don’t know about that. I ain’t heard nothing about them supposed to be getting married. But he sure ‘nough dropped her. They had a big blowup. Right out in public. Everybody was talking about it. She left town right after that. Said she’d had enough of New York. At least, that’s what Miss Lilian said. She the one went out there and talked to Miss Gem. Nobody else did.”

  “When was that?”

  “Last year. ‘Round this time. Strange how Miss Gem took off: Not a word to nobody. Gone. Into thin air, much the way she came.” Annie felt around in her apron pocket, pulled out a small white handkerchief, and blew her nose softly. “After Miss Gem left, Miss Lilian started drinking. Having blackouts. Sometimes she’d lose track of hours. Didn’t have no idea where she’d been or what she’d been doing. Leastways, she said she didn’t know. But I knew. She’d go places when Mr. Jameson wasn’t home; come home late at night. I smelled smoke on her clothes and liquor on her breath.

  “God forgive me if I’m wrong—but I think it was Miss Gem who got Miss Lilian started down that road. She’s the one taught Miss Lilian about smoking and drinking. To this day, I wonder why Miss Lilian listened.”

  Maybe, he thought, just maybe Lilian thought she was missing out on life. He didn’t know why he thought that, but something inside him told him it was so.

  Bitterness touched Annie’s face. “She dropped all her old friends, got right secrety. And she tried to fire me. Me, of all people. After all I done for her. After she’d promised me a place till my dying day. Well, she had to bring me back a week later. Miss Lilian didn’t say nothing about why she’d changed her mind. But he told me the new girl had burnt a hole in his best shirt. Said he liked a smooth-running house. He was the one told her to fetch me back. She didn’t want to do it, but he forced her to.”

  David’s dismay deepened.

  She sighed. The tightness around her eyes softened. “It was sad, so sad, how Miss Lilian changed toward the end. Forgetting things and all. Her hair turned white. She was scared of her own shadow. She’d have fits. Tear all her clothes outta her closet. One time she couldn’t find a frock she wanted. Mr. Jameson suggested she wear sumptin’ else. She got so angry she grabbed up the shears, started ripping her clothes up. Said she hated her clothes, hated her life. Then she looked at him. Ran at him with the shears. He caught her just in time. Shook her. Her eyes cleared and she broke down. Started weeping like a baby.”

  David was by nature a silent man, so he had listened to Annie’s account for the most part without interrupting. Now he continued to regard her for some time without speaking. The more she told him, the less he understood. The babble of inner voices seeking answers had only intensified, their questions multiplied. A sliver of pain darted through his head. He rubbed his temples. He was so terribly hung over. He turned his gaze to the window. Vaguely, he noted a rumble of thunder in the distance, like the faint rolling of drums. It was hard to believe what he was hearing about Lilian.

  “But what caused it all?”

  “Coulda been Miss Gem’s up-and-going like that. Mr. Jameson sure didn’t seem to know what to do. He said nobody, but nobody, could figure it out. Not none of the doctors, anyway.”

  “Was she taking medicine?”

  “Yes, but I don’t r’member no names. Just sumptin’ to calm her nerves.”

  The rain fell suddenly. Fat drops beat a hard ratta-tat-tat against the windowpanes. The only light in the kitchen came from the soft pearl gray of the storm clouds outside. They could have been sitting in a small, shadowed cave.

  Inwardly, he shuddered. Lilian, dear Lilian. How was it possible? Leaning on the table, he rubbed his eyes. A lot’s done happened since you been gone. He groaned. Yes, it had.

  Some two years ago, in April 1924, Lilian had impetuously married a virtual stranger, moving with amazing alacrity. That same year, Gem returned. She was at the house for roughly five months, before suddenly, inexplicably, taking off again. Lilian had written him for a whole year without once mentioning either her new husband or Gem’s return. She had lied to him by omission, and betrayed Annie’s trust by trying to fire her.

  That wasn’t Lilian’s way. It wasn’t her way at all.

  He’d been so grateful for the bits of news she was sending him that he hadn’t noticed what she was leaving out.

  Now that’s a lie.

  The truth was, he’d sensed that something was wrong. Sensed it. And when the letters stopped, he could’ve asked why—

  But I was too busy hiding my own damn secret.

  He raised his head. Now he knew that Lilian had had her secrets, too.

  But why hide her marriage and Gem’s return? Why not write and say she was ill? It was unlike her to be so secretive. Perhaps she didn’t want me to worry.

  That would have been like her: self-sacrificing, determined to resolve her problems alone. Only Lilian had remained loyal to herself, to her home, to their father’s vision of what it meant to be a David. Only she had really tried. He had more in common with Gem than he wanted to admit. They’d both become wanderers. Both had rejected their upbringing and tried to reinvent themselves.

  But he was ashamed of his new identity. He lived in a personal hell of his own creation—and from what Annie said, he suspected that Gem did, too.

  He could imagine Lilian’s shock when she opened the door and found Gem standing on the family doorstep. They hadn’t heard anything from Gem since December of’21, when she’d sent a postcard from Paris after six months of silence. At the time, they’d wondered whether she was paving the way toward asking for more funds, but as far as he knew, nothing more had been heard from her. Not before that Halloween night.

  Gem’s return meant that her money was gone. She had set sail for home and the one sure touch for easy cash. But someone had gotten to the till before her: a watchful husband. Gem might have figured that it would be difficult to manipulate Lilian, but easy to seduce Sweet. She had never had to do more than crook her finger to make a man come running. But Sweet was different. He had refused to budge. For once, Lilian had it all: the man and the money.

  Sister Gem was down on her luck. Is that why she hightailed it back to Europe?

  Perhaps. But it was unlike Gem to give up easily. Especially when it came to men and money. He would’ve expected her to make another play for Sweet. Instead, she had reconciled with Lilian. That was surprising.

  But then she left, although she knew that Lilian was ill. Now that was not surprising, not surprising at all. And her silence since Lilian’s death, it fit her pattern also.

  He resented Gem’s absence, but he was relieved b
y it, too. He preferred to handle this matter alone. She might have been able to help him, but he doubted she would have been willing to. She might have been the only one, other than Annie and Sweet, who could help him understand why Lilian died. But Gem knew how to set his teeth on edge and enjoyed doing so. She was fickle and unreliable, two qualities he despised. She had an easy charm he found suspect. She had never once thought about pleasing anyone but herself. And she had nothing but contempt for her family.

  Had Lilian given Gem money to go away? Not exactly paid her off, but ... Gem must’ve gotten the money from someone. From whom else, but Lilian?

  “I wasn’t in the house when she did it,” Annie was saying. “She told me she was going to stay with friends for the weekend. Said she’d be back Monday afternoon. That’s when Mr. Jameson was supposed to be back, too. So I went and visited my nephew. I’ll wish to the day I die that I’d stayed here. She musta done it sitting on her bed. The mattress was soaked. Blood everywhere. On the walls, the bed canopy, the floor. Pools of blood. Dried hard, dried black. I don’t remember much more. She was wearing a white gown, I think. Or it had been white. And she was sitting under the window, looking up to Heaven. Her eyes, those beautiful sweet eyes, was wide open. And she had these deep cuts, one in each wrist. I’ll never forget that. All it took was them two wounds, just them two wounds, and Miss Lilian’s life poured out.”

  4. Lilian’s Grave

  She was buried in a municipal cemetery at least an hour’s drive away in Brooklyn, amid a sea of white and gray headstones. Standing at Lilian’s graveside, David gazed out over the memorial park.

  She was never fond of Brooklyn. Except for Coney Island, she had no use for the place. That she should end up here, of all places, here …

  “It was the only place Mr. Jameson could find for her,” Annie had told him. “It’s a shame Miss Lilian couldna been buried in consecrated ground, closer to home.”

  It’s a shame she’s here at all.

  Crouching down by the grave, he reached out to touch the hard mound of earth. Slowly, his hands balled into fists. It was such a struggle to believe that Lilian—gentle, proud, and deeply religious—would take her own life. What brought you down, little sister? What brought you down?

  A breeze, unseasonably warm and gentle, caressed his hair. His nostrils caught a faint whiff of perfume, lightly sweet and powdery. He imagined he heard her voice.

  Remember me, she seemed to say. Forget what others tell you. Remember me, as you knew me.

  He’d been five years old when Lilian was born. From the moment he laid eyes on her, he’d given her his heart. His parents were touched and amused, but perplexed by his singular affection for Lilian. She was a twin. Why did he love her more than Gem, who was as sweet and huggable as her sister? How could he, as small as he was, even tell the two tiny girls apart? He shrugged— he didn’t know. He simply never mistook one for the other.

  Snatches of memories floated to the surface of his mind. Images of life with Lilian: holding her up in the shallow end of the public swimming pool as she splashed about; stealing chocolate chip cookies for her from Annie’s kitchen; standing side-by-side at their mother’s graveside. They had been so close. How could he have let four years go by without seeing her?

  The last time he had seen her, she had been conscientiously teaching English to bored high school students. It was her way of living up to their parents’ edict of giving back to the community. He had visited her classroom one day and, quite honestly, found her a tedious, uninspiring teacher. He had come away wondering whom he should feel sorrier for, Lilian or her students. He thought her effort misdirected, but he admired her for it just the same. During summer breaks, Lilian would escape to Provence. She had friends there who rented her a small cottage. She wrote during those summers, but she seemed to have given up any hopes of a serious literary career.

  Then her situation changed.

  From Lilian’s letters, he knew that she had met Helga Bennett during one of those summers in southern France. Bennett was just launching the Black Arrow, which was to be not only a literary journal, but also the official voice of the Movement. Bennett was so impressed with Lilian that she invited her to join the staff. She became Lilian’s mentor, but was herself inspired by Lilian’s enthusiasm and vision. They both dreamed of a day when Harlem artists would receive the same recognition, prizes, and contracts that white writers did. Lilian wanted to read books about her people, written by her people. By that she meant books about well-bred, refined colored people. There was, she said, enough being written about the downside of Negro life, about the crime and the poverty. Someone had to tell the story of the educated colored people, too. Someone had to speak up for the Negroes who were doctors, lawyers, philosophers, professors.

  “We live as a minority within a minority,” she once wrote him. “It’s time our voice was heard. That would advance the cause of the entire race.”

  By the time of her death, Lilian was a senior staffer at the Black Arrow and making her own mark as an author. The Nubian Art Players had performed her unstructured play, Shadowlands, the year before. She had written one novel and was working on another when death claimed her. Her first book, Lucifer’s Parlor, was a social statement about Irish and Negro life in the Tenderloin. Her second work, Lyrics of a Blackbird, dealt with betrayal in a genteel Harlem family. Her first book was well received. He was confident her second one would have been, too.

  Someone had placed fresh roses near her headstone. The flowers were a pleasing soft shade of pink. He brushed them with his fingertips. The blooms were stiff in the cold air. They would discolor and shrivel soon. He closed his eyes. The pain in his head had become a steady pulse. There was again that breeze from nowhere. He blinked and looked up at the sky, but saw nothing there. No miraculous face in the clouds, not even a sudden ray of sunshine to ease the bleakness of the day. What had he hoped for? Leaning forward, he examined the farewell on Lilian’s gravestone, mouthing the words.

  “Lilian McKay Sweet, 1897-1926. To my Lilian, I will miss you.”

  He assumed that Lilian’s husband had written the words. Sitting back on his heels, he wondered. Who indeed was Jameson Sweet?

  5. The Book of Rachel

  When David returned home, he found Annie sitting at the kitchen table. She had a nearly empty bag of string beans to the left and a big pot of beans and water to the right. She grabbed up several beans from the bag, lined their ends up, and snapped their tips off with a smooth twist of her wrist—blat-blat-blat. She tossed the last of the beans into the pot and dropped the tips onto some newspaper sheets.

  “How was it?” she asked.

  “Fine. It’s not a bad place, that cemetery. Just far from home.”

  She nodded. “Too far.”

  She shoved her chair back and stood up, wiping her hands on her apron. Then she rolled up the newspaper, put it into the bag, and set it aside for garbage.

  “I’ll just let these soak for a while,” she said, putting the pot of beans on the stove. “Sit down. Rest your feet. You left without eating breakfast this morning. I just made some coffee and I baked a pie, apple, ‘cause I knows that’s your favorite.”

  “Oh, Annie, I—”

  “It ain’t no trouble. That’s what I’m here for, to take care you.” She wiped up the table and motioned for him to take a seat. He did. She took down a plate and fork and poured him a cup of coffee. “Before I forget, Miss Rachel stopped by to see you last night.”

  He bit back his surprise and forced a smile. “How’d she know I was back?”

  “Oh, everybody know you back, Mr. David. Everybody know that.”

  He kept his smile plastered in place.

  She fetched the pie, set it on the table, and served him a healthy slice. “Miss Rachel helped me nurse Miss Lilian when she was sick.”

  “Did she, now?” He picked up his fork. “What did she say?”

  “That she wants to see you.”

  Keeping his face devoid o
f expression, he reached for his cup and took a sip. A question hovered on the tip of his tongue. “Did she ever marry?”

  Annie looked at him. “No, Mr. David. She never did.”

  He flushed at the knowledge in her eyes. Mercifully, she left him, saying she had shopping to do. Alone, he drained the coffeepot. But, although it was delicious, he barely tasted the pie. One name echoed in his mind.

  Rachel.

  She lived in a tenement building on 130th Street, on Harlem’s southern edge, in an area called “Darktown,” presumably because it had been an area for black residency since the 1890s, when the rest of Harlem was still white. It was a crowded building. Most of the apartments were filled beyond capacity. She was the only resident who could afford the luxury of living in her apartment alone.

  She sat on the couch near her parlor window, a small, delicately slim creature in a warm tailored frock. Flipping the pages of a thin photo album, she studied the photos one by one. Pictures of her and the McKay children: of her and Lilian; of her and David; of her, Lilian, and Gem. Studio photos taken over time, paid for by the McKays.

  The friendship between the McKays and the Hamiltons went back some twenty years, when both were living in the Tenderloin. The two families had lived only blocks apart. They attended the same church and Rachel went to the same school as the McKay children. Rachel spent many afternoons after school playing with Gem and Lilian. Her mother worked. Mrs. McKay was at home. The arrangement was practical.

  No one thought of long-range consequences.

  Like the McKays, the Hamiltons started out poor. Unlike them, the Hamiltons stayed that way. While Augustus McKay, a waiter, sunk every extra dime he had into real estate, his buddy Bill Hamilton, a better-earning mortician, drank and gambled away his dollars. David’s fortunes took a decided upswing in 1907 when the Pennsylvania Railroad purchased some of his Seventh Avenue property for more than one hundred thousand dollars. Three years later, in 1910, when the twins were fourteen and David nineteen, the McKays left the miserable, overcrowded Tenderloin and bought property on West 134th Street, joining other prominent blacks in Harlem. It took the Hamiltons, now consisting only of Rachel and her mother, another nine years to achieve the move uptown, and when they did, it was to squeeze into a grimy four-room apartment on West 130th Street with four other families. By then, David was back from the war and the McKays were on the move again, too—this time, into their home on Strivers’ Row. Over the next few years, the McKay property would rapidly rise in value, and the building housing the Hamiltons would just as decidedly decline.