October Suite Page 2

  “That’s Lonny,” Cora said.

  “Leon, my brother,” Ed finished. “I’m dropping him off overtown.”

  Mrs. Pemberton and retired Miss Dumas came out to the porch, too. “Hello there, mister,” Mrs. Pemberton said. Ed stepped up onto the porch and took Mrs. Pemberton’s hand.

  “When are you going to make one of your pineapple upside-down cakes again?” he asked.

  “Chile, hush up.” She brushed him away.

  But Miss Dumas, ninety going on forty, spoke up. “If Cora ain’t bakin your cakes, somethin’s rotten in Denmark,” and they all knew that she wasn’t talking dessert.

  Ed took a breath. “Wup, time to go.” October followed him and Cora down the porch steps, out the bricked path through the yard’s shade of pear trees, where no James could possibly have disappeared without her noticing what direction, past the very decent stone wall to the curb.

  “Hi,” Ed’s brother said to October, and, “Hey, Cora.”

  Ed introduced them. Leon shifted his black case. “Your name’s October? You must have a birthday coming up soon.”

  Rather than try to come back, October smiled. Ed held the back door for her and she climbed into the backseat.

  Cora waved Leon into the car. “Her birthday’s in April. Just get in the backseat and be quiet little brother,” she said. They chuckled; doors slammed and the Buick pulled into the flaming noon traffic of Oceola Avenue.

  According to long tradition the Du Bois Club—Negro teachers in primary grades—kicked off the school year at the Yates Branch of the YWCA Tudor house, immaculate lawn, impressive verandah, it buzzed that afternoon when the Douglass School group outdid itself with a buffet under the yellow canopy on the lawn: everything from shrimp salad to chocolate cream pies.

  The teachers met and mingled, auditioned their clothes and sampled the spread. Then they got serious. What real issues had been covered by the powers-that-be during the state meeting in Topeka last month? The word was that the white schools were getting funds for experimenting with a new way to improve reading skills. Reading modules, they were called. The women broke into groups, put brains to work on theme and project and came back with solid plans for their own reading modules.

  They would need wood: crates, perhaps. And they all knew somebody who could saw beveled angles and nail two pieces of wood together to make benches and tables. They could come up with cushions themselves. But they would need money to pull it off at all the schools.

  October thought that her group—teachers from Stowe—came up with the best idea for fund-raising. A fashion show. “And,” she tried to tell sixty serious teachers, “all the fashions can be auctioned off. That way ...,” and she went on to explain in detail how to make double the money.

  Eyes rolled. Nobody liked the idea. Instead they all went for the same old have-a-cabaret plan: sell tickets, sell food and drinks, raffle off a door prize. Next time, she thought.

  As the meeting wound down and they went their ways, October admired this group of women. They were dedicated, willing to take money from their own pockets to fill in the slight to their schools when the Board of Education turned its ever-deaf ear. Willing to sacrifice in unspoken ways, too.

  She went inside to call a cab. As she passed through the hallway one of the Douglass teachers called from the kitchen, “Want to take home some cake?”

  “No, thanks,” October called back. It was good to be a part of something. She found the little office with the phone and got in line, three women ahead of her. Mary Esther came up and asked why she wasn’t riding with Cora.

  October didn’t feel like explaining all the reasons why Cora and Ed didn’t need a third thumb. It brought up the married-woman-teacher stipulation in their contracts—that item that the superintendent had pointed to when he hired her. She had seen the dubious advantage that day and filed it away as one more thing to live with, one of the unspoken sacrifices. And here was Cora waiting six years for Ed, who had never gotten around to the ring and the question because—theoretically at least—if she got married, Cora could lose her job.

  It didn’t matter that the rule had been struck down in the thirties and was no longer practiced in most places; in Wyandotte County, it was the law. Superintendent Arledge’s law. Only single women for the Negro schools. Dime a dozen. If you marry, you must resign. Maybe you’ll be hired back as a permanent substitute. Maybe not.

  Rather than go into all of that with Mary Esther, October told her, “They aren’t going that way—you want to split a cab?” and Mary Esther said sure.

  Mary Esther should have understood. As the women had begun packing up, October had watched Albertine parade herself across the Yates lawn and climb into the front seat of Norman’s cab. Norman had looked far too pleased for a cabdriver merely picking up a fare. And Mary Esther couldn’t help herself. She had caught October’s eye and tapped her ring finger. Norman was a married man, and Albertine was settling.

  No wonder Mrs. Pemberton was such a housemother, keeping tabs, keeping the chicks in line, not so different from the way October’s own aunts had been. Aunt Frances, the take-no-prisoners general; Aunt Maude, the reasonable lieutenant. Frances and Maude Cooper, her big-boned, ginger-colored saviors, had always drawn clear lines that she and Vergie crossed at their peril. And hadn’t she and Vergie been a handful, tall like their aunts, but blackberries like their father. Not that black skin was a curse, per se, but who could imagine a blessing in anything from him?

  They had survived. She was twenty-three, making a life of her own. Vergie was married and happy in Ohio. October dialed zero for the operator, who would give her the number for a cab.

  Monday evening, not a week later, October had another little brush with James Wilson. She and Cora went upstairs together from school to find an RCA record in its brown sleeve propped against October’s door. “O.B.—J.W.” had been scribbled in pencil on the sleeve. October did her best to pretend Who-on-earth? What-is-this?, but she knew and knew that Cora knew, too. When it came to a man and a woman, Cora would never resort to tact.

  “What’s his problem?” Cora said. October had barely had time to see that the record was Billy Eckstine’s Orchestra, Eckstine featuring Sarah Vaughan.

  She said to Cora, “Wait a minute, let me see what it is.... We don’t even know...”

  “Why can’t he just give it to you instead of leaving it out here for everybody to see?” Cora said. “I know Mrs. Pemberton didn’t let him up here for this.”

  “It’s just a record, Cora,” October said. “I don’t know—maybe he thinks I like Billy Eckstine. Maybe he had two of them.” Lame, she knew.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you why he keeps showing up here without calling you?”

  Keeps showing up?

  “Cora, I just met him last week. He wasn’t ‘showing up’—he was installing storm windows. He left me a record to listen to. What’s wrong with that?”

  Lately Cora had been dropping hints to October that Ed had been dropping hints about a job he might take in St. Louis, teaching industrial arts and coaching the basketball team. Better money. Good opportunity. In Cora’s spillovers about Ed, October had heard her attempts to sound cheery—a sure sign of worry. Probably Cora worried that she had turned into a convenience. Ed might just walk away. So no wonder Cora would be irritated if any man was doing anything halfway hidden with any woman.

  October quickly stuck the record under her arm and slipped through her door, leaving Cora and her skepticism in the hallway. Once she was in her room, she put the record on the bed, weighing when might be the best time to play it.

  She slipped her feet out of her pumps, rolled down her stockings, and inspected her legs. Fine. No vitiligo. Once she had finally understood that it wouldn’t kill her, she had discovered that vitiligo was an ancient disease, benign for the most part. People said that even the B
ible mentioned it. Yet no one knew why a patch of skin cells would suddenly stop making brown pigment or how to trigger them to function again. At the moment, though, she had one visible spot on her left cheek. Perhaps there was something to the wives’-tale theories about nervous strain.

  Barefoot she padded across the cold wood floor and lit the two-burner, then filled her teakettle with water. When she turned to face the room again, she saw it anew, the way a stranger might see it. Her bed in neat blue chenille. Her worn-out record player near the window. The tapestry upholstery on the stuffed chair in the comer looked more steadfast than easy. A softening wouldn’t hurt. She dropped a few drops of Evening in Paris on the light-bulb, then draped her floral print silk scarf over the lampshade. When the tea was sufficiently steeped, she sat down with the teacup her aunt Maude had given her—real china—and wondered where she might get another such cup in case she ever had company in her room.

  Finally, when Cora did knock, October opened the door but didn’t get a word out before Cora said, “If you like him, make him take you out.”

  October stepped out and closed her door. “He seems nice,” she said.

  “You don’t know him,” Cora reminded her. They were going down the stairs. Cora hushed her voice a little. “Men can be very nice when they’re getting what they want, especially if you’re the chick on the side.”

  October touched Cora’s shoulder “Are you trying to tell me that he’s married?”

  “No, October, I’m just saying that you don’t know him. Ed has worked with him at Tobin’s Construction off and on. Seems to me Ed said something that made me think Shorty’s got somebody already.”

  “Oh,” October said. “You’re right, I don’t even know him. Why would I care if he’s got somebody?” And she flounced on down the stairs ahead of Cora. So, they call him Shorty.

  At the table that evening they had hardly passed the potatoes when Mrs. Pemberton got started again about how much electricity “you girls” were using, and went right from that into how they might think about getting their souls saved by avoiding “these honky-tonks I hear tell about” and doing more “in the church.” October had to listen to Mrs. Pemberton low-rate dancing and listening to lowlife music knowing that she had a record upstairs waiting to be played and that James-called-Shorty had left it there. She tuned in again to hear Albertine say to Mary Esther, “Oh, hush, Mary Esther, you don’t even know what a honky-tonk is.”

  Since forever, October’s Aunt Frances had worked out in the world as a licensed practical nurse, but church was her passion, too, just as it was Mrs. Pemberton’s. And Aunt Maude was no different. She had worked at the Meade Paper Mill, but all she knew was church.

  October believed in God, liked gospel music—but, listening to Mrs. Pemberton, she considered that that give-all kind of dedication to religion must have something to do with age. In the name of advising, threatening, and comforting her and Vergie, her aunts had always spouted religion. Even when she or Vergie was inconsolable, their aunts had offered the only solace they could: they would cook enough food to feed a city, set her and Vergie down to it, and feed them sowing and reaping, and Unto every thing there is a season—holy words about all things coming to pass, nothing coming to stay.

  Though she had never come right out and challenged her aunts, October had understood since she was five that some things do come to stay. Their mother’s unspeakable death, for instance, had come to stay.

  Wednesday, two nights later, at around eight, my goodness surely not, October heard a soft rapping on her door. He had never telephoned, and definitely had no business upstairs—handyman or not—at that hour. She was in her robe with her midweek hair shouting.

  In one move it was robe into closet, skirt zipped with no slip, scratchy sweater but it matches, bare legs are all right in house shoes but nylons are better in high heels, hair—Where is my brush?—hair back in a rubber band, no, ribbon, no, combs. Combs, Where art Auntie Maude’s combs? Lipstick, I need to buy some earrings, splash of Evening in Paris, and I wonder how I look?

  “Hi,” he said. Work clothes. White shirt speckled with paint, dark pants, work boots. Clean, though.

  “Mrs. Pemberton is going to have a fit,” October said, stepping back to let him in. She could see the strand of light under Cora’s door.

  “Mrs. P. is at church, but I came up on the elevator,” he said, motioning toward the fire escape door at the back end of the hall.

  He looked around the room. She saw the softness of the silk scarf that he might see.

  “You want to sit down?” she asked.

  “Um-ummm,” he said, shaking his head “I just wondered if you got a chance to listen to the record I left for you.”

  She could smell castile soap and something sweeter. She smiled “I did,” she said. “Billy Eckstine can really sing. Sarah Vaughan, too.”

  “Know what?” he said, eyes a little brighter. “You remind me of her.”

  It wasn’t the first time that anyone had mentioned Sarah Vaughan as a look-alike compliment and she had long since figured out the only possible resemblance was in the shape of their mouths and the dark of their skin.

  “Really?” she said, wondering how flattered she should be.

  “Well, I mean, you-all do favor. You might be a little bit bigger ...”

  She smiled brighter. “Bigger?”

  “You know, taller ...” He hesitated then threw his arm straight up and bent his wrist in an upside-down L. Did this mean that he would be self-conscious about her height over his?

  “... And pretty,” he said “Prettier.”

  October brushed the air between them. Pretty she didn’t recognize too well. Attractive, maybe. She was wearing Aunt Maude’s combs. It was nice to be called pretty. He was holding an LP. Her record player played only 78s.

  “I wanted to bring you this,” he said. “It’s one of the new long-playing records, Nat King Cole.”

  She motioned toward the window where her record player stood. “I can’t play it on that,” she said, sure that she sounded like a dunce who had bought the wrong record player.

  “Well, in that case,” James said, “you’ll have to come listen to it with me sometime.”

  He grinned and his ripe lips went flat across the top of his teeth, turning his mouth into a shallow bowl of pearls. He had almost asked her out. Almost. This was something she could give to Cora.

  “Until then,” he said, “I brought some of my old stuff over.” He opened the door and picked up the stack of records he had stashed there. “I’ve got a whole collection, more than I know what to do with. I collect LPs now.”

  He handed them over, each in its own sleeve. His collection. Something he cherished. She knew it would be foolish, but she felt like giving him her silk scarf.

  She said to him, “You sure you want to part with these?”

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “For a while, anyway. I never hear music up here. Thought I’d do something new and different for the teachers”—smiling. “One of them, anyway.”

  They were quiet.

  “Besides,” he ducked his head, “it’ll give me an excuse to be up here.”

  “Mrs. Pemberton will call the police,” she said, smiley-voiced, then braver. “Besides, who says you need an excuse?” And she slipped one of the Sarah Vaughan records out of its sleeve and took it over to her turntable. She pulled the changer arm over and watched the needle land gently in the groove Sarah Vaughan’s voice cried, “In my solitude ...”

  James was suddenly standing close behind her. “I’d ask you to dance but I don’t have on my dancin shoes,” he said.

  The yearning of Sarah Vaughan filled in the space. “That’s all right,” October said, meaning It’s okay that we don’t dance. But James reached around her, made her deal with the warmth of his body. Ungracefully she wiggled awa
y, stood aside to watch something she couldn’t name in the way his thumb and forefinger lifted the needle arm, something about the gentle placement of the needle in the groove. That and clumsy brogans.

  The arc of his arm caught her at the waist. “I promise I won’t break your toes.”

  It was all right. She breathed and breathed in again. He was a wave—castile and whatever sweet else, coarse stubble, hard chest—that made her hands want to fly all over him. His hand caught hers and inch-for-inch they stepped into the music. One turn and she found herself giving up her breath to the sudden softness of his mouth.

  But another wave broke like a trapdoor giving way under her feet. She wanted to say something, but one of those same flitting hands with its own intelligence went wild, slapped his face, and flitted to the shelter of her armpit.

  “No,” she said, pushing him away, and he was saying, “... Sorry, I just wanted to dance. Don’t think I meant to do that ...”

  “It’s all right,” she said. And in a way it was. “You just surprised me, is all.”

  He stuck his hands into his pockets, watching her. Pulled something—lint—out of his pocket and rolled it between his fingers, examining it.

  Probably she shouldn’t have let him in. She started to say as much, but he cut in.

  “Guess I’d better get out of here.” But he didn’t move. Instead, October moved, pulled the record off the metal stem of the turntable, traced the circle of hard shellac with her fingers, then slid it back into the paper sleeve.

  “Maybe you ought to keep these,” she said, and she held it out to him.

  He ignored the record. “Let’s start all over again,” he said. “What do you say we just go out sometime, get to know each other?”

  Why hadn’t he said this at first? She didn’t meet his eyes.

  “We could take in a set at Shady Maurice’s sometime. Like maybe Friday night—what do you say?”

  Chez de Maurice’s, but who was grading papers? “I don’t know...” she said.