“I don’t need no discount. This time next week, I’ll be making plenty,” Lizzie clucked. “Besides, you’re only four once, right? That dress is way too dull. My baby likes color. How ’bout this?” Lizzie held up a red taffeta dress with a fitted waist and a ruffle-flounced skirt with a huge fabric rose stitched to the hip, a dress more suitable for Carmen than Cinnamon Turner.
Elma laughed, “Well, it certainly is red! But it’s the wrong size.” Elma proffered her choice again. “I think Cinnamon would like this one, it’s more like a little girl. And,” she was surprised, “it’s cheaper.”
It bothered Lizzie to think that Elma knew her child’s correct dress size when she did not. It infuriated her that Elma believed that she knew her daughter’s taste better than she did. Lizzie rifled through the rack to find the dress she liked in the next size up.
“Lizzie, you don’t want to spend so much on something she is just gonna outgrow. You should be saving it for what’s important.”
“What’s more important than turning four? Here’s one. She could grow into it.”
“Cinnamon’s like a second child to me,” Elma mused. “I’d give her the world if I could.”
“Hell, let’s get both.”
As the salesgirl rang up the purchase, Lizzie knocked her leg involuntarily against the counter. She had not intended to get two dresses, but she was determined not to let Elma have the final say. Her sister was as good an aunt as she could ask for. She wouldn’t have been able to make it without Elma’s help, wouldn’t have survived a month in New York, but Elma’s closeness to Cinnamon made Lizzie downright jealous.
She knew her sister had her troubles. Damn straight Ray ain’t working no construction, but it ain’t my place to say. Ain’t my place at all. She knew Ray was working the streets, moonshinin’ like her daddy used to do. It pained her to keep the knowledge from Elma, but Elma acted as if she didn’t want to know, accepting every explanation Ray cared to offer about his hours and the nature of his work. Jolly too kept a tight lip about his tavern turned grocery store, the basement of false-bottom crates, the Canadian labels trucked in from upstate New York or the Jersey Shore.
The clerk turned to Elma with the receipt. “Would you mind telling your maid to stop banging the counter?”
“Listen, sistuh,” Lizzie glowered and put her elbows on the glass, “her ‘maid’ is payin’ for all this shit, so why don’t you just finish up?”
They exited the store, laden with their bounty from the day. “All I’m saying, Lizzie, is that if you comported yourself a little more—”
Lizzie cut her off, “Here we go.”
Elma closed her eyes to calm herself. “I’m just saying—”
Lizzie cut her off again, “If I was to look and act a little more white, people might treat me more like they treat you?! This is the modern world, El. New Yawk! I don’t have to take shit from anybody. ‘Your maid.’ She’s lucky I didn’t haul off and smack her.”
“Fine.” Elma stopped in her tracks. “Let’s just go home.”
“Nothin’ doin’,” Lizzie replied, walking ahead of her, “yoah maid’s got a Saturday off and we got one more stop. Come on.” Elma sighed and watched her little sister walk ahead, her two slew feet pointing east and west.
As they rounded Sixth Avenue, Elma followed Lizzie into a sparsely lit arcade off 34th Street. The corridor of small shops and booths smelled of kosher hot dogs, caramel corn, and musky bodies. Elma swooned, a combination of hunger and revulsion. My head aches and my feet hurt. Where is that girl off to now? Tucked away amidst the haberdasheries, tobacconists, jewelers, and fortune-tellers was Jolene’s Salon, marked only by a small painted sign. Elma followed Lizzie up a narrow flight of stairs and emerged to a cavernous second-floor beauty shop with rows of young women all busily at work. There must have been fifty women getting their hair done.
Since adolescence, Lizzie had been experimenting with her hair, mixing her great-grandmother’s jars of miscellaneous herbs and potions with various household items like eggs and milk and honey. Having inherited her father’s African genes, she was perpetually aware of the tightness of the strands and their length. Lizzie’s mother Dora ritualistically repeated the humiliating castigations to which she herself had been subjected. Yankin’ and pullin’ and cussin’ and screamin’. Holding that hot iron over Lizzie’s bobbling head like a branding rod—“Be still I say, be still.” “Ouch, you burned me!” “I did not! Now look what you made me do!”—an absurd, terroristic tango, complete with lyrics, “I don’t know why I married your father. Look at this kitchen! You hold still or I’ll get that switch!” To many, Madame C. J. Walker’s straightening comb was a stroke of brilliance, but the invention that appeared in a dream was for Lizzie a regular Saturday afternoon nightmare. Worse than the threat of physical torture was the verbal abuse. Her hair wasn’t good, so neither was she. While Elma possessed a crown, Lizzie was instructed to bring that nappy head over here. By the time she reached ten, Lizzie would stop at no length to escape her mother’s tyranny. A mad scientist in the kitchen. Dewdrops and rainwater, syrup, lard, butter, anything that would slicken.
So Lizzie loved the twenties. Suddenly, for the first time, short hair was the fashion, tight-fitting cloches and Valentino-inspired turbans were in. And she had discovered Jolene’s. Most of the Cane Break chorus girls had hair that ranged from silken tresses like Elma’s to crinkly ringlets, hair that one could wash and wear. To get her greased-down faux Creole took Lizzie a whole day and then another two for it to set. Still, when she performed, oil and sweat would drip down her neck and back, spoiling her costumes. A couple of girls had taken Josephine Baker’s lead and had followed the male musicians to the barbers and gotten conkolines. She was contemplating this move when a white singer at one of Vee-Vee’s throw-downs approached her. “Teach me some of them moves,” she said, “and I’ll turn you on to my hair place.” Before Lizzie could respond, the woman shook her head. Her blond tresses bounced. “You’d be surprised, sistuh,” she said, “how many Jewish girls got colored hair.”
Jolene was a white-haired, smooth-skinned Egyptian Jew, a former rug merchant who realized that the more reliable market was women and their hair. He ran his shop, employing mostly relatives, like a Ford factory assembly plant, passing customers along the rows of swivel chairs from assessor to washers, perm specialists, dye artists, pressers, and curl girls. For ten dollars, colored women, Jewish women, Puerto Rican women, springy-haired Irish, and Beethoven Germans could join the great assimilation and emerge with the page boy, bob, or tint of the latest American movie star. Jolene loved show business as much as he loved hair. “I love to do this, love to, love this,” he drooled as he removed the thick tortoiseshell clips from Elma’s chignon, the raven locks tumbling down her back. Lizzie sucked her teeth as the entire salon clustered around her sister to marvel.
“It used to be so thick,” Elma apologized as Jolene continued to run his nervous fingers through it, humming to himself as if he were anticipating a good meal or hot date. Elma looked toward Lizzie with consternation, then laughed shyly, “I’ve never been to a beauty parlor.”
“You know how long it takes her to wash that hair, Jolene?” Lizzie said, twirling herself in a salon chair. “Gives her a terrible cold every time. Can’t no colored woman know what to do with all that hair, talkin’ bout ‘It used to be so thick.’ I’m giving my sister a glamour day.”
“Your sister?” The Egyptian’s eyes widened.
Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Can’t you tell? I’m the modern one. I’m tellin’ you, JoJo, make my sister look modern.” Lizzie sat in an adjoining chair for a touch-up on her marcel as Elma disappeared into the back.
Two hours later, while Lizzie was bartering with a huckster for some bootleg records, Elma emerged with Clara Bow bangs and a neat clipped curl ending just below her ears. She held her crown and glory in her hand, waving it like a horse tail. “It’s called a bob, just like in the movies,” Elma smiled giddily.
r /> Lizzie was aghast. “Elma, I say, what happened to yoah hay-uh?”
“Miss Tavineer’s watching the kids. We better get home. Whew,” Elma swooned, “my head’s so light I feel like I ate a whole fruitcake.”
“Well you should. Have you lost your mind?”
“For sure and about ten pounds!” Elma laughed.
Jolene primped about her, smoothing each strand, cupping the now cropped ends of Elma’s new do with his palm. “Love this, love it. Gor-juice!”
Lizzie looked at him sideways. “How much do we owe you, JoJo?”
“Don’t worry about that. I took care of it,” Elma said. “We have a party to plan.”
They gathered their packages and this time Lizzie followed Elma, or whoever that was walking in front of her. The crown and glory, the woman Lizzie knew as her sister, was gone. She had been jealous of that mane all her life. Now that it was gone, all she wanted to do was cry.
20
“The bad feelin’ just got worse
Sometime I feel like I been cursed
I think my achin’ heart gon’ burst
And blow this blues away . . .”
While the Victrola played a scratchy bootleg tune, a Ma Rainey knockoff, Lizzie dropped another dollop of beer into her one and only specialty and frantically began to whip the batter for her deep-fried shrimp. Home-cooked sit-down dinner, conversatin’ about architecture and art? What in heaven’s name were you thinkin’? Lizzie’s marcel was not the only thing getting steamed. Ray had not shown up, all night. This suited Lizzie fine, but Elma bustled about banging pots, fretting with the decorations. The cake had fallen. The dress that she had worn at the church groundbreaking two springs ago was tight around her ribs and the neckline voluminous without the tendrils of hair. She kept her apron on to conceal the stretch in the fabric, how the buttons zigzagged. Elma iced the lopsided cake with a fury, punctuating the sprinkles of coconut with a low, unconscious mumble, “Gingham apron and my good garnet earrings.” Out all night, workin’ a tunnel. Where’s he diggin’ to, China? Her hair, which yesterday had curved her jawline, the fraction of the curl that used to be, now frizzled about her head, each errant strand with a mind of its own. She had missed church worrying about her husband and now had the Lord’s wrath on top of her own. The door opened. “Ray?”
Jolly entered without knocking. “Contribution to the festivities, bought a ham and a basket of biscuits.” Without speaking the women looked up and went back to their tasks. Jolly watched their synchronized frenzy with amusement. The two sisters were alike after all.
“You didn’t tell me you invited Jolly,” Elma whispered.
“I thought you invited him.”
Awaiting her big day, Cinn sat downstairs with Jesse and Miss Tavineer. Cinnamon was so excited. Already she had received not one, but two dresses. The blue puffy one from Mama El made her feel as if she were sitting in a cloud, even if the crinoline pricked her legs a bit. The red shiny one from her mother made her heart beat fast. It was a little big. The cowl neck slipped off her shoulder, but she didn’t care. A gift from her mother she was determined to wear. She had planned to use the blue one for church that morning, but they didn’t go. She didn’t want her Mama El to feel bad, her aunt was already so sad because somebody had stolen her hair. But her mother was giving her a party, her first birthday party. She would wear that dress. It reminded her of tulips, valentines, licorice, lipstick, and her mama’s red kisses.
Cinn sat in her chair, clicking her new patent leather shoes. Swiveling her neck, she didn’t dare move. Mrs. Jolly was just finishing up the three French braids with red bows, smoothing down Cinn’s baby hair with the end of a comb. “You should wear your hair like that every day,” beamed Miss Tavineer.
In her swishing taffeta dress, laced socks, and shiny buckle shoes, Cinnamon practically tapped up the steps. Little Jesse, his thick, stubby legs still managing only one step at a time, trudged behind her. They were met at the landing by the oddest assortment of people—a tall colored man, an Indian, a gypsy, and a buck-tooth ghost. Cinnamon clapped with delight. Mama invited the circus!
Expecting to find Ray, Elma opened the door instead to Haviland and his entourage, Vee-Vee, Anna, and the Indian, Chief Powahaton. “I know this address,” Anna mused in her thick nasal New York Russian twang, “this is where my driver gets our gin. I didn’t realize people lived here.”
Vee-Vee loped into the room. “Mayfield, sugah, you didn’t tell me you lived in a penthouse,” he chirped. “What a lovely view! So colorful, all the lines of clothes. What is that smell?” he continued, ambling into the kitchen, lifting up the pot tops. “Yummy!”
Then came Mrs. Jolly with Jesse by one hand and Cinn by the other. “Miss Tavineer couldn’t make it up the steps,” she said as she entered, handing off the children. “I’ll check on her directly.”
Cinnamon pulled away from Mrs. Jolly’s grasp and twirled around the room, her dress a whirl of color. “Look Mommy, Mrs. Jolly fixed my hair.” As the room shifted about her, she saw a flicker of anger cross her mother’s brow. What had she done?
The glower was intended for Haviland. “I didn’t expect you to bring all these people,” Lizzie slithered through her smile as Haviland pecked her on the cheek.
Haviland shrugged, “We’re always with all these people. Who’s ‘Mommy’?”
The group collected awkwardly in the center of the living room. “We didn’t mean to put you out,” Anna said. “Hav said you were having a party.”
Elma quickly recovered. “Of course we are. It’s a birthday party. On account of Cinnamon ’Ceola Turner is four years old! Pot luck, buffet style.” In fluid motion, Elma cleared the table of the six place settings and hurried to the kitchen to pull out the okra dish she was saving. “Lizzie? Lizzeeee,” she prodded her sister, who stood like a stone, “make the introductions!”
“Mayfield,” the buck-tooth ghost spoke again, “who’s Lizzie?”
“That’s me, or who I used to be,” clipped Lizzie. “Mr. Remick, Powahaton, and Mr. and Mrs. Hurskman, allow me to introduce my family, my sister Elma Minor, my neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Jolly, my nephew Jesse. And this is my daughter, Cinnamon. Cinn, say hello.”
“Sin? How delicious! How visceral and immediate and honest!”
“It’s a spice,” Lizzie sighed and plopped herself in a chair.
“How about some music?” Cinnamon’s eyes followed the tall dark-skinned man as he threw his scarf over the lamp and looked around the room. Music started up. The skinny white lady bopped across the room like a jack-in-the-box, circling the Indian. “Louis Armstrong, I love it! Oh yes, let’s. I’ve been practicing.”
Haviland, who had been sifting through Lizzie’s meager record collection, paused and turned to Lizzie. “Daughter? You did say daughter?”
“Yes. That’s what I said.”
The tall white man with buck teeth lifted Cinnamon high in the air. Specks of spit flew in her face as he spoke. “Oh, Vee-Vee. Just call me Vee-Vee. Mayfield, what a keeper of secrets you are and what an exquisite little human being!” His breath smelled of cigarettes.
“Down please,” Cinnamon commanded.
The new knock at the door was Sparrow, his elbow linked round Miss Tavineer’s.
“Uncle Sparrow!” Cinnamon ran to him. Finally a guest she knew had come to her party. Since their first meeting at the train station, she had often seen Sparrow when he came to the apartment to pick her mother up for a tryout. Though he would stay but for a minute, he never left without flipping a quarter over his knuckles and dropping it into her palm. “Hey, angel face,” he greeted the child with his hand behind his back. She clapped with glee anticipating a bright shiny new coin. He handed her instead a gift-wrapped box she had to hold with both hands. “That’s for your hope chest. Let’s hope yoah mama act right this time.”
Sparrow had been lurking outside the apartment, in case this soiree didn’t go so well. He was familiar by now with Lizzie’s tendency to disappear
. He couldn’t afford another slip like that, especially when Cappy Meeks was running the show. As Lizzie’s manager, he knew his place and didn’t want it to be in the East River. He had been jawin’ with Hurskman’s chauffeur, working himself up. Finally, when he couldn’t take it anymore he bounded up the steps and ran smack into Miss Tavineer, doused with lavender water, her cheeks rouged like cherry lollipops. “Come on, doll face, you can be my date.”
“Might as well come in,” Lizzie greeted him coldly. “Just like old times. Grand Central.”
Vee-Vee had decked himself and Jesse in triangular newspaper caps. Together the Norseman and the little boy were marching around the room playing soldier. Jolly squinted at the little boy’s hat. “Hey, that better not be my stock section.”
Vee-Vee shouted, “Halt!” and turned casually to Mr. Jolly, pointing toward the window. “Actually, I believe Havvy took that part.” Sparrow couldn’t believe it. Lizzie’s beau was standing outside the window on a one-foot ledge four stories up with a roll of newspaper and a bottle of ammonia, washing the window glass of its late winter soot with exuberance. Anna continued to attempt to coax the intransigent chief into a line-dance.
Sparrow glided over to Lizzie. “Clearly, they all high as kites. I don’t know why you bother to get stuff from me.” When she did not respond he sulked, “Never invited me to your house.”
“I didn’t invite you now. I didn’t invite any of these people but one and he’s standin’ outside, makin’ out with the winduh.”
Elma re-entered the room and announced, “In honor of my niece’s birthday, I have prepared a light supper.” With Jolly’s ham and biscuits, some leftover cornbread, and an extra can of tomato sauce in the okra dish, Elma had worked some magic. The table setting looked like a feast and unfortunately made everyone feel right at home.
The room settled into idle banter. Jolly and the Chief traded stock tips. Anna and Hav jostled over the art scene. Vee-Vee held court with himself, disgorging fractured poetry punctuated by burps. “Talent, piercing resonance of simplicity, music of our collective past. In a random order, ancient sounds melded and amplified, sucking up the past and spewing it forth in a prism of sound. That space between the familiar, the comforting, and discomfort, the perfect excruciating tension, the slap of a shoeshine rag like a slap to the face, reminding us of the dusty trail we have trod, alerting us to the choices before us, the path we will all walk in the future.”