No wonder Aurora Mae found him changed.
Look at you, she said a week later, how you bound out of bed these days. Ready to take on the world, are you?
He laughed. It was a robust sound from deep in his belly, where the flame of his sacred purpose dwelt, warming, energizing every aspect of his being. He snapped the suspenders he pulled up over his shoulders, grabbed his jacket off the hanger in the closet, then bent and squeezed her bare foot, which peeked out from the covers of the bed where she lounged thinking about getting up.
The world, the moon, the stars! Magnus Bailey joked. There’s coffee on the stove, ’Rora Mae. I’ll drop by the store later on today, see if you need anything.
And he was gone.
Aurora Mae wondered if he’d fallen in love with someone. That’s how he acted lately. Like a man in love. He’d sung hymns in the yard Saturday when he mowed the grass. He whistled while he shaved. He was more tender toward her, sweeter of tongue to the customers he met at The Lenaka when he chose to stop by and help out. She tried to determine how she’d feel if indeed it was the truth, that Magnus Bailey had another life, another woman, which would mean that sooner or later they’d come to a tipping point, possibly a parting of ways.
It was not a simple matter. Just as Bailey suspected, tucked away in her heart was a man from the past, a love born among the fields and woodlands back home, a virginal love that spent its honeyed passion in lingering looks and unspoken vows of ineffable delight until the night riders came, stole her away, and ripped her up. After that, she’d renounced the thought of enduring affection from any source. She was no longer capable of true pleasure. There were places in her that hurt every day of her life, not so much physically but in her mind, side effects of the wounds she’d suffered that night and in the months that followed, those oozing injuries that would never heal no matter how many potions she brewed or how much time passed. Why, she thought, would Magnus Bailey or any other man consider her maimed and damaged vessel a place to lay his own weary heart?
Aurora Mae Stanton was an honest woman. She enjoyed living with Bailey. His company kept her worst memories at the fringe of her consciousness, which was the best place she could hope to store them. He made her laugh. She could depend on him. Still, she would never love him the way a man ought to be loved, and it would be wrong, she decided, to hold him back from whatever love he managed to find elsewhere. But she was not going to press him on it.
That morning, she got going at a leisurely pace, lingering over her toilette, especially the pinning of her long, thick hair. She had a tendency to open her shop when she felt like it and close it under the same conditions unless someone banged at the door relentlessly, which signaled an emergency. Before unlocking the door that morning, she checked on her stock in the storeroom and went to the backyard to pick some mustard greens and licorice root. The dahlias in the hothouse looked peaked, so she set to nursing them on her knees. It was close to noon before she was ready to open her door to business, and when she did, the slumped form of a young woman fell across her threshold and into her arms. Aurora Mae gasped, thinking her dead. She examined her chest to determine if the heart beat, the lungs breathed. They did, but barely.
Aurora Mae put the woman’s arms around her neck and lifted her, lay her down on top of a display case, then rushed to close the door. There was an ashen tint to the woman’s cocoa skin, which was very warm. Her nail beds were turning blue, her hair soaked through with sweat. She wore a red dress heavy with the damp of her fever, and beneath it a corset of black lace. Long glass earbobs dangled down her neck and bangles draped her wrist. She had high-heeled shoes with worn-down soles. There was no doubt in the root woman’s mind that here was a whore come to die in her shop, and she would die quickly if Aurora Mae could not find something in a hurry to prevent her. First, she put a funnel in her mouth, lifted the girl’s head to a propitious angle, and slowly poured into her a tincture of foxglove to wake up her heart. After that, she administered a tea of powdered mistletoe, white willow, and hawthorn in case the foxglove failed. The patient’s head lolled. She moaned. In the next instant, she bolted upright and had a coughing fit. Aurora Mae put two arms around her and steadied her just before the poor gal fell back against Aurora Mae’s chest and passed out.
Aurora Mae had no idea what else to do for her except watch and wait. At times like these, she regretted her choice to practice her medicine for the folk of Orange Mound. If one went by the reputation she’d acquired and the sheer number of people who came to her shop, she had a successful business. There was only one alternative in town, the single medical doctor who accepted Negro patients. He kept evening hours for coloreds once a week. Everyone had to wait a very long time to be seen. By the end of the night, many were sent home and told to return the next week. He charged them what he’d charge a white man who walked into his surgery without an appointment in the middle of the day. Naturally, folk preferred to go to the always-available Aurora Mae, who saw the sick on credit she did not expect to collect. She excelled in ameliorating childhood illnesses, the cleaning and treatment of wounds, and the banishment of infections, but for those on the brink of death, she could offer only ease of pain and the promise of a swifter end. There was no hospital in Memphis or anywhere else she knew that would do any better for a whore in extremis than whatever she could offer. She carried the woman to the bedroom where Magnus first slept, the room she designed for visiting family, who never came. She stripped her and wrapped her in cold, wet towels. Several hours passed. Happily, the woman’s fever broke. Praising Jesus, Aurora Mae sponged her down, then dressed her in one of Magnus Bailey’s nightshirts and left her to sleep. When her man showed up at dusk, Aurora Mae was at the stove, stirring a potent soup to feed the whore when she awoke. She told him of the day’s extraordinary events and gave him instructions.
I need you to go ’round Beale Street and see if you can figure where she belongs. I know her name is Pearl, but that’s ’bout it. You might start at L’il Red’s. You know, Minerva Fishbein’s place. If she don’t use this gal, she’ll likely know who does.
It was the first time during their cohabitation that Minnie’s name had passed between them. The five syllables shot through Magnus’s heart like bullets from a Thompson gun. He put a hand on the kitchen table to steady himself. Fortunately, his lover had her back to him as she leaned over her pot, scraping at the bottom, turning down the heat. She noticed nothing. He swallowed his emotion and played along.
Sure. That’d be off on Mulberry, no?
No. South Third.
South Third it is, then.
Suddenly, Aurora Mae turned around, pointing a wooden spoon at him.
You ever see those two anymore? Li’l Red or her daddy? I recall you were close in St. Lou.
No, no, no, he lied. We went our separate ways almost afore I got ’em to Memphis.
She turned back to the stove.
I recall how sweet she was on you as a child. Oh, it was scandalous. Remember how jealous of your company she was at Mags’s wedding and that time you all spent the night at the big house with Horace and me? So bold she was! Maybe we all should’ve guessed how she’d turn out. Funny how time fulfills inclination.
Alright, I’m off then, Magnus said before he broke down and told her everything.
He went to the river walk. It was a warm night, but the river was cool and a mist arose from it. He walked with his head down, deliberating if he should go on to Minnie’s establishment. He could always lie later and say he did. It wasn’t the best time for him to present himself. He wasn’t half ready. On the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t be the worst time either. Now that he’d bitten the bullet and contacted her father, he’d no doubt she’d know soon enough that he was back in Memphis. Not that Fishbein would say anything, but Golde was bound to mention to her mama the black man she’d met with eyes green as her own and she’d know, she’d know straightaway it was him.
Rather than let her stew on the thought, it made sense to seize the moment and make his call. Bailey lifted his gaze. The mist coalesced to take the ghostly shape of Golde’s face, which was also that of her mother. Alright, he said to the river, you don’t got to beat me over the head. I’ll go.
He knew from the many nights he watched over L’il Red’s which hours belonged to white whoremongers and which to colored. It was white man’s time when Aurora Mae sent him out, so he went to the back door. He stood on the stoop and took a minute to work up his nerve. As it was, his heart pounded so hard, his mouth went dry, and he feared he would not be able to talk. He clenched and unclenched his balled fists, calming himself by thinking, It’s a good day. This moment was writ large in our fates from the beginning of time. I’d feel like dyin’ whether it came on this good day or on one of my choosin’, a day still comin’, when I’d have the money and even the paperwork in order. But now will do, it’s a very good day.
He rang the bell.
A burly black man with a face crisscrossed in scars, one thick and running all the way down his neck, answered the door. Blue tobacco smoke surrounded his head in thin, forked trails giving him the look of a demon straight from the womb of hell. Bailey stared at him, helpless as a child.
You wan’ sumtin’? the brute asked in a jaggedy voice that suited his appearance.
It took a bit of a while, a period during which the brute looked as if he’d take a blackjack to him any moment, but at last Bailey said, I’d like to speak to Miss Minnie.
Why?
It’s a private matter.
Then go to hell, the man said, making to shut the door when Bailey saw, coming down the service stairs that gave into the kitchen, a pair of sensible shoes and two white legs encased in dark silk, disappearing up a navy blue skirt of modest length, and a voice he knew well, a voice that had echoed repeatedly through his mind while he was on the Mississippi, on the railroad, in Little Rock, Dallas, Wichita, and Des Moines, rang in his ears.
Wait, John!
It took an eternity and then some, but slowly the sensible shoes descended the rest of the stairs. Each step revealed more of Minerva Fishbein to the view of Magnus Bailey, and more of Magnus Bailey to the view of Minerva Fishbein, until at last the two were face-to-face with only the brute between them. Their chests heaved, their life’s blood rose then dissolved in their veins while their heads swam in clouds of sweet, thick air. Each moved forward half-faint with emotion while the brute, seeing the gravity of their reunion, stepped aside, enabling them to fall, gloriously, into each other’s arms.
XIII
Minerva took his big hand in her own two small ones to lead him upstairs. The vulgar harmony of squeals, yelps, groans, thumps, riotous piano scales, and a single aching horn accompanied them. Smoke, cheap perfume blended with whiskey, and the sour stench of masculine desire saturated the air. Like a knight errant assailed by a gauntlet of temptation, Bailey closed his senses to all of it and focused on the slender back of the woman he persisted in thinking his sweet young gal, the wretched victim of his cowardice, for whom he had much to make whole. They achieved the landing. She released him, unlocked a door. They entered her suite, the office first with the dressing room and bedroom beyond.
They stood, shoulder to shoulder, looking around. He took in the room carefully, trying to measure what each square foot meant about his Minnie, at how she had changed or not changed. She moved her head with his to trace his gaze. What he saw was the order and precision that had impressed Thomas DeGrace when Fishbein sent him to fetch Minerva all those years ago. Every object was pristine, set in its place with care. There was nothing superfluous, nothing without purpose. It reminded him of her childhood habits, when all hell broke loose if the maid or her tutor dared to move the slightest object and so disrupt the calm that order gave her stormy soul.
It broke his heart.
She put her hands on him and turned him to face her. They stood flushed and open and shy as if no time had passed, as if she were yet at the dawning blush of maturity and he the unscarred dandy of cocksure step and rippling palaver. The hardness of jaw, the lines of suspicion writ around the eyes, the thin set of skeptical lips vanished from their features in favor of a soft, liquid longing. They kissed, at first sweetly and then with a yawning, hungry wrench of mind and heart and soul that propelled them, stumbling, to the bed.
Magnus had few cogent thoughts during the next quarter hour. It was his life’s first intimacy with a white woman. The wonder and beauty of their skins’ contrast spurred him to a state of marvel quickly followed by the stark recognition that the pale, blue-veined woman he caressed so tenderly had had many black men, who knew how many. A lust for complete possession of her rose from his gut to sear his hands and his mouth and his sex with a fire that battered against her flesh in a chorus of moans that pled and demanded at once.
Minerva was in ecstasy.
Afterward, they were both oddly embarrassed and, lying side by side, pulled the sheets up to their chins. Magnus spoke first.
What just happened here, Minnie?
I don’t know.
What we just did could get me killed.
Not in this house, Magnus.
She propped herself up on an elbow and leaned against his chest. The mention of her business stabbed at him unexpectedly, and he frowned. She put a finger against his lips before he could speak.
This is a house where all things are possible, she said. If you knew who comes here at what hour under cover of daylight as much as night, through the front door, through the back, in company or on their own and each one lookin’ only to soothe an urge impossible to satisfy anywhere else, you’d be amazed.
She got up and slipped into a silk robe embroidered with tiny blue flowers that lay draped over a chair next to the bed and went to the dresser to open her cigarette box, picking one out, lighting it with her back to him, then turning swiftly so that her red hair lifted and stole his breath.
Amazed, I tell you! She pointed at him with the smoldering cigarette. Amazed!
She plopped down at the foot of the bed and put her free hand on his right shin, which she stroked while a big, brazen smile played over her lips. I’ve waited so long for this moment, her smile said. I regret nothing, it said, if everything I have done has brought you here.
Magnus Bailey was horrified. Where had his sweet girl gone? Was there none of her left? Confusion addled him. He could not think what next to do, what next to say.
She seized upon his hesitation. Squinting one eye and pursing her mouth, she asked, And what has brought you to my door, Magnus? After all these years.
He swallowed hard to find his voice. I was sent to find out if you knew a whore named Pearl.
At the name, she lifted her chin to a sharp, mistrustful angle. Her spine straightened. She snorted.
Pearl. Gal with a fever, maybe? Run off from here just two days ago?
Maybe.
L’il Red’s face went hard as he ever hoped to see it. Any harder and it’d shatter like glass.
That bitch. Look, if you know her, you tell her to get her skinny ass back here pronto. I got a heap of complaints about her we need to settle. I suspect she is more damn thief than whore. A l’il ole fever ain’t goin’ to get her off the hook. Huh. Pearl.
She spit out the last word like a curse. Magnus shivered.
Are you cold, darlin’? Minerva asked. I could light the fire.
Mercifully, there was a knock on the door, an insistent one, and the voice of the brute who’d answered the kitchen door earlier.
Red, Red! We need you downstairs. There’s a ruckus gettin’ started.
Giving Magnus an apologetic shrug, she yelled back to the man that she’d be right down. She got dressed in thirty seconds flat, patted her hair, stuck on shoes, and squared her shoulders, ready for whatever battle summoned her. She did it so swiftly, so calmly, she
might have been a milliner called by her manager to reprimand the young girl who sewed flowers on her hatbands.
Don’t go nowhere, now, she said. I won’t be long.
No, I should be gettin’ on, he said. For his sanity, he needed to be away from there, onto the street, where the air did not oppress, where his head might not ache from too many ideas all at once driving the sense clear out of it.
You can’t leave. I won’t let you.
He started to dress, only he fumbled with sleeves and pant legs and buttons and suspenders until his cheeks went hot. He spoke without looking at her. We both need to take in what happened here tonight, he said. I’ll come back tomorrow. In the early afternoon. It’s quiet here then?
She studied him without expression. Pretty much, she answered. Most days.
Alright, the afternoon then. We’ll sit and talk. There’s lots of talkin’ we got to do.
Red! Red! came the brute’s voice again, only from farther away.
Frowning, Minerva looked from the door to Magnus Bailey and back again. There was the sound of crashing glass downstairs. A half dozen voices, male and female both, shouted, screamed, or wailed. Red! The brute’s voice rose above them all, Red! Red!
She threw open the door and stood at the landing with her hands on her hips.
If any of you bastards broke my French gilt mirror, there’ll be hell to pay, she shouted down. Without a backward glance at her prized, long-awaited lover, she marched down the stairs, sturdy afoot as a rough rider descended from his mount.
The sight of her sent Bailey into a sweat. He could not get out of there fast enough. Soon as his shoes were laced, he bounded down the service-entrance stairs and out the back door, around the corner to the front of the house and to his usual position across the street. There he stood in his customary doorway, panting, his eyes wet, his throat sore, his gaze directed at the first floor of L’il Red’s, where, according to the riot of movement and color he witnessed, pandemonium broke out, and his mind said, Minnie! What’s happened to you! Oh, Christ Almighty, I know what’s happened to you, but can it not be erased? I have my plan. I have Paree. Oh, please God, let there be a place you might go to heal our souls or I don’t know what will happen to me. Or your daddy. Or that darlin’ girl, Golde.
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