by Angela Dews
* * *
The alarm went off at six o’clock on Thursday, and the next sound that landed was the rain. It took a minute before I could manage to sit up, and my mind was storming while I dialed the patient information number at Harlem Hospital.
“Critical but stable.”
The same. Like last night. The nurse who answered the phone on Obie’s floor found my name on some list and told me he was asleep.
I ignored the blinking message lights—lots of them—and sat down on the cushion in front of the window. November had taken the leaves off the ailanthus tree branches so they were no longer blocking the light or blocking my view of the tops of the stately Stanford White-designed yellow brick houses across the street, some with terra cotta detail.
The first bell on my meditation timer landed in my chest and the last three bells landed in my belly. In between, I was aware of my body breathing.
I sat a minute longer and allowed the sadness to drop out of my mind where it was a story and into my heart where I felt it with some tenderness. I took another breath. Letting go.
The first two blinking phone messages were from friends I shared with Cecelia. But I decided I didn’t want to make our sad connection yet, and, instead, I got up and started taming my personal space. Since anywhere I live resembles the inside of my head, the act of making the bed was the act of going sane.
I took a bath in the big claw-foot tub and left the bathroom clean and the window open to the cool wet air. And I dressed quickly, pulling my hair behind my neck, putting on flat shoes and the pants to one of my business suits. But I left the fitted jacket in the closet and chose a roomier one. Then I turned at the mirror to make sure it was as loose as I needed it to be.
I sat down at my mother’s vanity in front of a small tray of shiny things I had hidden from the women who descended in those desolate days when she was first dead, and the perfume bottles and her teacup. The little black funeral hat with the veil was perched on the top edge of the mirror.
One of the pictures caught her at an age I had long since passed with her husband and her new fat baby. She wore a flower in her hair. In another, my father was a boy, standing with his rifle and a dead doe and his proud father in a Kentucky woods.
By the time I took the stairs, the upstairs space and I were both at least presentable.
My father’s floor was still piled with newspapers and magazines and precarious towers of books. The hat rack displayed kangols and baseball caps and cowboy hats. I was going to ask the men who cared for him to come and help me tackle his space when I got back to town. Perhaps they might answer the questions I didn’t get a chance to ask him.
The parlor floor looked like I left it the night before—the antiques and finds restored and upholstered by Scotty, the piano, the sideboard, the African art and the gun rack.
That’s important. I needed to find my stuff where I put it. For one thing, sometimes I heard sounds and thought some ax murderer or some vampire was in the house with me. And even on a good day, it annoyed me to find the messy remains of anybody else in my space, even if it was some friend or some lover. Being lonely when it’s late is the small and occasional price I pay for having my spaces to myself.
Actually, if the truth be told, the price of the space I was going to buy in California was neither small nor occasional. It would take every nickel of the money I’d already made for Last Stop, Harlem, which enough people saw to do me some good.
I unlocked and stood in front of the gun rack and picked up the .380 that I practiced with the most because my father said it would best fit in my handbag. It would, but I was thinking I’d carry it in the holster under my jacket.
Whoa. And do what?
It was a personality I could put in the space where safety needed to be. Safety had felt like Daddy and Obsidian, each of them, and both of them even at a distance, now neither of them. Facing the truth as it appeared in that moment gave me pause to think.
Okay. Was I really going to shoot somebody? Lt. Knight wasn’t even real. But neither was I, actually. It gave me a minute to consider that the permit for the gun wasn’t a carry permit, besides being expired. And then there was the matter of my primary residence being California. I put the holster and gun back.
I went to the kitchen and sat down with my coffee and a legal pad and one of the good pens. The way my memory works is it takes a picture. I retrieved from my memory some of what was stolen from the office the night before, including details I had lingered over but we didn’t print.
What came to me were the names of the people and companies who made withdrawals. Not so many addresses. There was something troubling there, but I didn’t focus. Too bad. I also sketched a grid of interlocking relationships to ask somebody about.
When I had gathered from my memory all I could, I emptied a red, black and green Harlem Week plastic tote to take with me so the newspapers I would pick up at Jocelyn’s newsstand wouldn’t get wet. And I put a small clutch in it rather than a big purse. It felt like I needed to be traveling light.
The phone rang before I could get out the door. It was Viola.
“I called the hospital. He’s stable. Tell me how you feel,” she asked.
“Like you would expect me to feel,” I said, impatient with her tell-me-all-about-it tone.
“I want you to come by this morning for some breakfast,” she said. “And Virginia wants to say goodbye in case she doesn’t get to see you before you leave. I’m doing her hair. Don’t make too much of Obsidian and Cecelia. I’m trying to keep from scaring her.”
“I’m going to see Elizabeth Miller now. But I can be there if we call it brunch in probably two hours. I have some things I want to ask you.”
“And I you. I’m going to Chicago, but I can catch a later flight.”
C H A P T E R • 19
* * *
There’s something wonderful about a rainy day on a Harlem row house block.
The house on the corner was for sale. The one across the street was in the advanced stages of renovation, backed by a downtown bank.
We are aptly named Strivers Row, except our block is not landmarked like the houses one block north. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs at the Miller’s house to look up at City College on the hill rising above St. Nicholas Park. Then I turned and walked up the stoop and used an ornate metal knocker to let Elizabeth Miller know I was there.
She was slightly overdressed for so early in the morning, in what I’ve heard described as good-walking-shoes. A brooch boasted an amber stone, the filigree repeated on her earrings. She wore an incongruous blossom of scarlet lipstick. But the makeup couldn’t cover the puffiness.
After we held each other, she asked, “How are you? Marcus told me Obsidian was shot last night.”
“The nurses tell me he’s stable this morning. But I came to see about you. Can I help you do anything? Take something off your to-do list today?”
“Let’s talk in the kitchen,” she said.
Her kitchen was a modern contrast to the stained glass and antique ornamentation in the parlor, and it had been painted a deep eggplant.
“I have time for one cup of coffee. But we are going to need more time than that,” she said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “I woke up this morning and started to feel who I was going to be in my world, in my story, without Cecelia.” I proceeded slowly, being careful of being clumsy with our shared grief. “Even though we were far apart, she was the best and dearest witness to my girlhood.”
She smiled a little smile. “I heard some music. It brought her to my mind when you all were I think 5 or 6 years old and you were both twirling like banshees so fast and your mother and I could not stop laughing. And last night, I saw a young woman walking and something about her made my heart stop.” Her voice caught but didn’t break. “Thank you. I like talking about her. But is that why you came this morning?”
“I came for two reasons, to see how you are, and also, if I can, to ask you some newspaper que
stions,” I said.
“It must be hard to sit in your father’s chair at the newspaper. Have you discovered any tools you can share with me about how to handle your grief?”
“I have a meditation practice. I’ve made myself sit down and been surprised by moments of acceptance. But now we’ve lost Cecelia and I’m feeling our grief all fresh again.”
“Yes. It is fresh and it is ours. Your father and I have been neighbors and friends forever.”
We took a minute to regroup, before I asked, “I wonder if you know why Cecelia would give Mister Bell bank secrets. Did he tell you?”
Elizabeth Miller had been avoiding direct eye contact, as if her attention was on some internal conversation, but then she linked eye-to-eye with me. “Yes. The bank has been receiving warnings this year from the Comptroller of the Currency and she felt the board was taking advantage of its vulnerability rather than supporting the bank.”
“Is that why she and Gary broke up?”
“She was calling attention to the bank’s trouble to arouse the community and move the board to take action. Gary does not think it wise to tell bank secrets.”
“I get that,” I said. “Bank board business needs to be secret.”
“There’s more to it than that. He’s playing for higher stakes than the souls of black folk now,” she said. “That kind of access can change a person. His father would be ashamed of him.”
“She gave some files to Mister Bell just before. I’m wondering if there’s more.”
Mrs. Miller went to the back door and took a heavy ring of keys from a hook. “These are Cecelia’s extra set of keys. Some are the ones to the house and these are to I’m not sure what all. Come back whenever you can. I’m on my way out and I’ll be out most of the day. Marcus wants to look around too. Maybe you two can look together when he gets here. He’s going to come and stay with me.” She smiled a small smile. “We haven’t lived together since Cecelia was growing up and he came to be her daddy.”
“I’ll probably take a few minutes now and come back later when Mister Bell is here. Would it be okay?”
“Of course. I have a lot to take care of today.” Her voice and attention trailed off.
I helped her gather her things and locked the door behind her.
∗ ∗ ∗
I walked up the stairs to sit in my friend’s space and to see what she might have been up to. On both sides of the staircase, paintings of musicians filled the walls in their separate frames. A framed front page of the Harlem Journal announced: HARLEM HISTORY REVEALED IN HOUSE TOUR. The Miller’s house was featured.
What I could see of the second floor sitting room displayed an air of over-upholstered calm.
On the top floor, a tall long-legged metal bird peered a welcome at me and seemed to be looking over the bedroom from the corner next to the fireplace. Out the window I saw the top of our ailanthus tree.
Cecelia had been reading a book of poetry, three weekly magazines and a romance novel and writing in a stenographer’s notebook that flipped from the top.
She was a woman who kept track of herself in a neat, tight, lefty script, and you didn’t have to be a handwriting expert to notice when the writing turned personal and into a scrawl: Damn. Damn. I do like a goodbye scene with words and pictures to chew on. Not these bits of sorrow and betrayal and the little nasty bits of greed.
When she worked herself up, she even wrote an occasional poem.
I put the notebook in my plastic Harlem History Week tote.
C H A P T E R • 20
* * *
There are people whose job it is to examine the dead, turn them over and turn out their pockets. That’s what I did when I was playing a cop in the movies. A reporter’s job is supposed to be a few steps removed.
Her closet looked like I would have imagined if had I stopped to think about the private side of Cecelia Miller all grown up. Her clothes were arranged neatly, dresses, slacks and skirts, blouses and jackets, each in their own territory. The shoes were mostly in their stacked boxes. I quickly opened the box tops and found only shoes, which was disappointing. That’s a place where I would have stashed a secret. I stood on the vanity stool, sweeping the space between the top of the closet and the ceiling, and found only dust and not much of it.
I wondered how she could afford the oils and lithographs in the sitting room in the back. They were exquisite. An assortment of masks was sprinkled across one sitting room wall and a carved stool from Mali sat next to the Duncan Pfife sofa. Another large metal sculpture, this one of an angel, stood guard in another corner. In fact, my friend’s space was filled with art and antiques.
I thought to myself, all conditioned things arise and pass away. I said out loud, “I love you, my sister.”
I sat down and I tried to think of someone to call for comfort and new energy. It was way too early in California and I hadn’t bothered with the New York crew in the three weeks since my father died, and now it would take too much to catch up. Then I smiled and called the floor nurse at Harlem Hospital.
“Baby! I needed you to call,” Obie said.”
He sounded like himself, only quieter.
“How are you?”
“Shot.”
“Don’t make jokes.”
“Sorry. My shoulder needs repairing. But they’re getting ready to do it. I could use a little company.”
“I’m at Cecelia’s. Can you have visitors later? Before the Apollo?”
“I can have anything I want. Why are you at Cecelia’s?”
“To see if I can find anything else she might have tucked away.”
“What have you found?”
“I just started. It’s a little overwhelming.”
“You grew up in one of those houses. Where did you hide things?”
I visualized it.
“Pearl?”
“Thank you, Obie. I’ll call you back.”
The cabinets in the dressing rooms of those houses are bird’s-eye maple and there was nothing of interest in any of them. I pulled out each of the drawers under the marble sink and kept pulling, remembering when I was hiding my junior high school secrets. Nothing. But I kept pulling and sure enough, on the back of one drawer in the place where I used to hide the key to my diary was taped a key.
It didn’t fit any of the drawers in Cecelia bedroom area. They were unlocked and I only tried them; I didn’t look in. I felt like I was intruding, but kept at it. I also tried the drawers in her sitting room space. They were also unlocked.
But under the window was a wooden Chinese trunk, carved with the contours of a journey, and it was locked. The key fit and I lifted the lid.
Inside, a manila envelope was labeled with her left-hand scrawl, “September to November 1990.” I pulled it out and found in it about a dozen sheets of paper.
The names of some of the companies inside were familiar. I found myself humming before I recognized many of the names included snatches of song titles or music makers: Louis Armstrong Associates, Handy & Son, Bottom Line Ltd., Satchmo & Co., Duke and Daughter, and simply Zing, Babylon and Louise. A dollar amount was written neatly next to each one. I love the imagination black people bring to our business, whatever our business is.
I put the envelope in my Black History Week bag.
Then I turned back to what was left.
Sitting at the bottom of the trunk was a Louise Vuitton speedy bag. When I lifted it, it was heavy and when I unzipped it, I discovered cash money neatly bundled in bank wrappers.
Twenty wrappers each bundled 100 dollar bills. I took out one bundle and counted bills at the corners. From the few I counted, I determined each bundle held 200 bills, for a pretty impressive $400,000. There were also bundles of twenties.
I realized I was holding my breath. This money was in Cecilia’s trunk in the Miller’s house. But it was not their money. How could it be? But it also was not mine. And now what? I couldn’t very well put it back in the trunk and I couldn’t very well put it back in the ba
nk.
“Damn,” I said out loud.
“Who is it?” somebody shouted from downstairs.
I closed the trunk and took the bag of cash with me to the wall connecting the top floor of my house to the Miller’s house next door and opened the square of wainscoting on the wall. Ceel and I read that during prohibition, gangsters re-opened the space between two connected row houses to escape when the feds came in downstairs. It was the opening the builders had used to pass things back and forth when they were building the houses and then had closed up. When we tried opening the space in the party wall, the resulting disaster moved Daddy and Mrs. Miller to install a lintel beam and open a portal, which we used to our advantage over the years.
I put the stash of cash through the space in the wall against the large cabinet on the other side, closed the wainscoting, and went to see who was in the house.
C H A P T E R • 21
* * *
It was Gary. And I met him at the bottom of the stairs.
“I was just leaving,” I told him and walked past him. Then I turned back. “But let me ask you something.” I took out my notebook and read his quote. “What is the truth behind the lies and innuendo surrounding Cecelia’s relationship with the bank and with the people who love her.”
“That’s nobody’s business,” he said.
He walked to the kitchen and checked behind the door. “Shit.”
Then he turned, “You were upstairs? What did you find upstairs?”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“I know this house from the time we were kids and we shared our spaces. I needed to sit with her things for a moment.”
“You still didn’t answer me. What did you find upstairs?”
I didn’t consider for even a minute telling him about the money.
“I’m wondering what you think I would have found? Why would Mrs. Miller say your father would be ashamed of you?”
“She said that?”
