Some Sing, Some Cry

  Sparrow was spooked. He paced back and forth in his flat, his hands, arms, and elbows gesticulating panic. “Why Homer Holstein’s head man, the one is married to his daughter, stalkin’ my apartment? I would like to know. Why? Deacon Turner? Holy shit! This his kid?!”

  “His brother’s.”

  “Brother, brother, brother, you got to be kiddin’ me. The third biggest nigguh in Harlem. The first be God, the second be his daddy-n-law!”

  “He ain’t who he says he is, Sparrow.”

  “That don’t mattuh one damn bit, Slim.”

  Deacon’s car remained parked outside. Near dawn, she snuck over the rooftops. Took Cinnamon to Elma’s. Elma had finally gotten her lawn and trees, in the Bronx of all places. They were just striplings held up by poles, but they would one day grow into a fine oak walk. The neat row of red-brick apartment buildings had a wide front lawn and, Cinn noted, a playground and a park.

  “Elmaaah!” Jolly had known the street but not the address.

  “Is that my Lizzie,” a voice said faintly, “is that my sistuh?”

  They found Elma squatting on the second landing of her apartment’s back steps, Jesse crouched beside her. She was holding her bulging stomach, a basket and clusters of spilled, damp laundry at her feet. “Just in time. You can help me hang this wash.”

  “Well, now, Elma,” Lizzie said with her hands on her hips, “I think we gon go upstairs and have this baby. Unless you wanna have it right here on the stairs.”

  “Oh no no nonono, it’s too soon. Lizzie,” Elma grabbed her by the arms and squeezed with a vise-like grip as pain surged through her, “Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie, I can’t lose the baby. I can’t lose another child, Lord have mercy! Got to fetch the Reverend. I want the pastor here to deliver last rites.”

  “Sister, you talkin’ crazy. Lizzie won’t have it.”

  “We got to get me to the hospital. Columbia Presbyterian. Three to uh room, room. Not that colored ward.”

  “I don’t think we’re gonna make it to Columbia Presbyterian this mornin’,” Lizzie said as she braced Elma and helped her to her feet. “You not gon lose nothin’ but a couple of pounds, come on,” Lizzie said calmly. “We almost there.”

  “That’s right, that’s right, th-th-th . . . A little bit higher, a little bit higher . . .” Elma began to sing, “I hear music in the air/ Just above my head/ Oh, oh, ohh, I hear music in the air/ Just above my head.”

  “Cinn,” Lizzie said slowly, “get in front of us, baby. Now, run upstairs and make sure all the doors are open.”

  “I’ll do it!” Jesse darted off.

  “That’s right, Jesse, you lead the way. Cinn, you go with Jesse and turn the covers down on the bed. One more stair, Elma. There we go. Come on now, come on. That’s right, I hear music, too. I hear it.”

  “I hear music in the air/ Just above my head/ Oh-oh-ohh, I hear music in the air/ Just above my head,” Elma sang. “Sistuh, I believe I’m havin’ this baby.”

  “And just when was you expectin’ to tell me? We’ll get through this together, you and me . . . pretty as a picture.”

  Cinnamon sat looking out the taxi window, trying to make sense of the morning. A glissando—stairwell, rooftop chimneys, sweet orange air at dawn, train, bridge, green trees, Mama El sayin’, “That’s my sistuh?” Her auntie had screamed, her face was all shiny and red and the clothes on the bed were soaking wet and red too. The ambulance came and took Mama El and the new baby away and Lizzie had taken her hand, hailed the cab and followed.

  “Baby doll!” Lizzie exclaimed as she sat back, hugging Cinnamon tight, rocking, “what a day!” The cab crossed the bridge into Manhattan. Cinnamon’s dreams rocked her to sleep, pretty as a picture.

  By the time Ray arrived at the hospital, Elma and her new daughter were sleeping peacefully. Both would be fine, the doctor assured him. Cinn, too, and Jesse had dozed off. Ray found them in the waiting room with Lizzie, Jesse leaning on one shoulder and Cinn with her head cradled in her mother’s lap. Lizzie looked up at him. Her eyes were sunken. Her voice cracked with exhaustion. “You got a girl, Ray Minor. I named her Memphis . . . I hope that’s all right.”

  “Why Memphis?” he asked.

  “I thought it was romantic. It’s where you and Elma met, right?”

  “. . . Actually, that would be Nashville,” he said as he picked up Jesse and sat down beside her.

  “But they’re both in Tennessee, right?”

  He chuckled with her. “Yeah, they’re both in Tennessee . . . I’ve seen her.” Hair like Gabby. Skin like Benna. Eyes like sky. “She’s kickin’ up her heels like you. A good strong girl.”

  Cinnamon stirred. She sat up rubbing her eyes. When her uncle came into view, she reared back for a moment.

  “Why if it isn’t the spice of me life,” he teased in his best “black Irish” brogue. “Hello, beautiful.” She smiled, relieved. This was the uncle she remembered.

  “Papa Ray’s got a new job. Anytime you want to see a movie, it’s on me. Projectionist,” he continued, now talking more to Lizzie, “union card and everything. Back to being the straight man, again.” He laughed to himself.

  “. . . Look, Ray,” Lizzie began, “I spoke outta turn at your house. I didn’t even know El was pregnant.”

  Ray put his hand up to stop her and, gently shifting Jesse in his arms, he leaned over toward Cinnamon. “You know, little bit, Jesse wandered around for weeks, looking for you.” Cinn smiled and curled up again on her mother’s lap to sleep. Lizzie stroked her hair, melody danced in her dreams, Woo-Woo, Chattanooga Choo-choo . . .

  “Listen, Ray,” Lizzie blurted, stoking up her nerve, “I gotta leave here. What you and El got, I won’t never have that . . . I gotta go. Soon! I mean now. Elma said she’d keep the kid. I got two-three hundred bucks saved and I can pay twenty-five a week. Even more when I start work. Whatever it takes. Whatever you need. She’s gonna be five in a minute. She gotta start school. She needs . . . a family. And I gotta go. I can’t stay here. When I’m settled, then I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I can send for her.” She looked at her daughter, curled up asleep, their fingers interlaced. “Tell Cinn for me. Tell her for me . . . Never mind.”

  Lizzie went to Cappy Meeks and asked him to back her for the socialite’s European tour. “That way you can keep Miss Roberts at home and still get a cut of the gate,” she said.

  “Why should I do this for you?”

  “Now, I already asked you nice. Don’t make me ask you naughty.”

  So Cappy went to the socialite and pitched Lizzie as the lead act and as a testament to her audacity booked her in a suite on the RMS Mauretania. Sparrow had decided to come with her. “Bath the size of my apartment,” Sparrow marveled. Glistening white tiles, white soap, white robes and monogrammed slippers, but he couldn’t enjoy himself. Lizzie had been crying behind a locked cabin door for two days.

  “Come on now,” he prodded, “open up the doah. I’m not exactly fond of this boat, you know. Colored people and boats don’t have such a good history, but you don’t see me cryin’ about it.” He leaned his forehead against the door. “Cappy Meeks, Deacon Turner, what is it, you just attracted to bad men? Bad man magnet!” Sparrow threw up his hands and started pacing. “Think I was gonna stick around for some six-foot, wide-angle nigguh to come at me,” he mumbled, kicking at the stateroom carpet, “got me out here in the middle of nowhere, open duh doah!” He plunked himself down on the couch, all knees and elbows, and poured himself a glass of flat champagne. “Least we legal now. Cheers!” The door creaked open. Her coat thrown over her slip, Lizzie ambled into their shared central room. Her eyes were puffed into slits, her nose one red shiny ball. “She lives!” Sparrow teased. Lizzie grabbed his glass, poured some more champagne, and left. “Good mornin’ to you, too.”

  The bow of the ship coasted atop the thick autumn waves, the slate gray contrasted by a thin strip of mauve and pink at the horizon line. Haviland appeared by her side. Haviland. Overcoat, silk scarf, and still no sock
s.

  “Hello,” he said. “Didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “I looked for you.”

  “Not too hard.”

  “I’m with a group. Off to Russia.” He laughed. “Going to make a movie. And you?”

  “Paris. Finally got my own show.”

  “Good for you! I’ll see you when I come to Paris, then?”

  “Perhaps.”

  He left her alone on the bow. As the ship coasted, all around her was nothing but horizon. Her weight seemed to vanish and her chest swelled with the tart salt air. No boundaries. A lone bird struggling against the headwind circled back and, trying another route, disappeared into tomorrow.

  Between 1919 and 1929, the world exploded, expelling grief, death, and rage. The highways bled and flooded upstream with refugees from Southern weevils, blight, and terror. Death Riders and riots swept St. Louis, Tulsa, Charleston, Chicago. Red Scare, Red Summer, Red—the age was hot! Burning the gut with liquor, feet slashin’ up the dance floor. A perpetual party and ticker tape parade—on borrowed time and borrowed money. With underground economies propping things up, the Depression came as no surprise to the criminal class. Their trauma came later with the repeal of Prohibition.

  They went down fast as the stocks on Black Friday. Asa Jolly got killed in a duel on 52nd Street. Paced off with a “customer” and they plugged each other. He finally made the New York paper, New York Age, page 22. You can’t run a syndicate from the dance floor, Cappy Meeks found out. In 1929, somebody put a pistol hole through the gullet of one of his colleagues in the middle of Lew Leslie’s favorite number. Word went out as to Cappy’s liability, and he was gunned down in a Jersey City phone booth. Three months later, the Cane Break mysteriously burned to the ground.

  Deacon Turner also died in a way. He retired from the numbers and adopted the name of his father-in-law. As Deacon Holstein and head of Holstein Realty, he became a noted Harlem philanthropist and Cinnamon’s patron throughout her days at Juilliard.

  Dakota Sparrow, when he returned from Europe, went out to Hollywood and because of his name was mistaken for a cowboy. Though he lost most of his fortune in a series of Ponzi schemes, his work can be seen in such minor colored indie classics as Dusky Sunset and Kid Ory Rides Again.

  “Why feel shame, when you should feel glorious?

  Why seek fame, when you could be notorious?

  So, come on folks, come on and join the band,

  All you boys bettuh settle up now,

  Cuz you’re in Yamma Mama La-and!”

  Mayfield Turner stood with her arms akimbo, a shimmering bronze statue of naked liberty, and launched into her signature.

  “Miss Lizzie Mae had her a way,

  Of walkin’ down the street,

  That would make the sidewalk,

  Sizzle beneath her feet,

  Yes, Lizzie Mae had her a way,

  Of walkin’ down the street,

  That could make a hungry fellah forget to eat,

  When she stepped in the lane,

  All the necks would crane,

  Just to name,

  That way she had of wah-wah-wahl-kin’,

  Baby, when she hit the street,

  Lemme tell yuh it was somethin’ sweet,

  When she what? Strut, Miss Lizzie, strut!

  Say what! Strut, Miss Lizzie, strut!”

  The club was a frenzy, the crowd wild, the air torrid with movement turned to vapor—another white-hot night of jazz—from London to Spain, from the Rhine to the Seine, Mayfield Turner had the world right where she wanted it, whirling and swirling around her.

  Lemme tell yuh all now it was a four-alarm blaze,

  The Joint was jumpin’ for days and days,

  Like water on a grease fire,

  Those flames just shot up higher and higher,

  Tell you bout the thing that started all the tawk,

  Meet me at the junction where Charleston meets New Yawk!

  The Jazz Age while it lasted was a blast! It was so hot—Pow! Pop! It sizzled/ Baby, just listen here/ It got so hot—Pzzsssst!—it fizzled. Hangover lasted nine years!

  22

  By now the photo album Elma pulled out was frayed and yellowed. She turned to the pictures of Eudora and Tom taken before the Great War. Then all of a sudden she came upon a photo of herself taken at Fisk and one of Lizzie by the sewing machine cutting out patterns for Eudora’s blossoming business. Though Ma Bette didn’t like getting her face “caught,” as she called it, there were one or two late snapshots of her in her daily garb as a soothsayer with all her beads and turbans. Elma turned back the pages again only to find an image of Geechee women weaving baskets for God only knows what reason and, toward the front, a silvery daguerreotype of Ma Bette in her silks and lace, ready for the Master to come see his “fancy gal” at the cottage he maintained for her and their offspring. It was there that Elma decided to inscribe Bette’s death, August 12, 1932.

  Outside her window Elma could hear a group of itinerant colored gospel singers on the street praising President Roosevelt, “Tell me how ya like Roosevelt, he’s our friend.” Her mind wandered from the photo album to more recent newspaper items. Dusky, pasty-looking brown-skinned children sat blankly on the porches of shotgun shacks; older women with no life in them, not even longing in their eyes, leaned against newspapered walls—tent cities taking over the parks. Elma wondered how much suffering would be multiplied in the South. She wondered how much the Great Depression was affecting her mother.

  Elma glanced away from the picture of her great-grandmother to take in the loss. Ma Bette had never seen any of Elma’s children. Some part of Elma wondered if Mama Bette’s spells might not have saved her two firstborn, as so many Carolinian women swore by those charms, but she immediately pushed this thought away as blasphemy, a moment of weakness, yearning for a healthy child. She should count her blessings. She had three. Jessie and Memphis had lived long enough to have personality, and Cinn had become a part of the family, her other daughter.

  Elma loved Jessie dearly. True, he had trouble learning to put words together to make sense, but her Jessie was a fine boy. If something was wrong with him, Raymond barely mentioned it. Elma could tell by the way Raymond ignored his son that her husband was still unnerved that Jessie had survived when their daughters Gabby and Benna had perished. Lookin’ at his son, seein’ his own failures.

  “Elma, what are you doin’?” Raymond snapped at her. “Got no time for nostalgia. If we’re going on this trip, you better get to steppin’. The trains don’t wait, even for you, my lady.” She closed the album and put it back in the drawer beside her bed. Raymond continued to pace and prattle. “I don’t even understand why we have to go all this way at a time when a Negro can’t rub two pennies together. Why, you were never that close to your great-grandma anyway, as I recall. You were embarrassed by her conjurin’ as you called it. Now in the middle of this heat you want to take us to Carolina, where it must be burning up, to see the old lady get buried. For Christ’s sake, she didn’t even believe in God, just spirits and haints. We can’t afford a trip like this now.”

  Elma softly responded, “Raymond, you’re talking about my great-grandmother who lived through slavery, Reconstruction, and the Great War. What else could you ask of a soul, and how could we not pay homage to her? Sometimes you forget the heart of a matter and get all smothered in the dollars and cents of it. Relax, Raymond. She’s only going to die once in our lifetime.”

  “Well, thank God for that. This is the Depression, you know. And when the white man sneezes, the colored man catches pneumonia. Thousands of people without jobs, more each day.”

  “Ray, what’s all this bluster?” Elma said sweetly. “You still have a job, don’t you? You make a decent living as a projectionist. Surely enough to see us through this little bit of mess. We’ve seen worse.”

  “Elma, isn’t there any way I can take that calm and tranquility of yours and bottle it? T
hen we’d be rich colored folk for real.” Raymond laughed. “We’d be goin’ down there in style. Show your cousins, the Diggses, the real thing for a change.”

  “Come on now, Raymond, don’t begrudge them their success. That’s not Christ’s way.”

  Jessie, who had been listening to this squabble, imagined that the family might not be able to go. He was a tall, rail-thin youth, two tones of color on his face as if his body after the infant fever couldn’t make up its mind about the shade. His long-limbed awkward gait and his guileless slow-talking manner drove his father silently mad. “Mama, please don’t argue with Papa,” he drawled. “Papa, don’t be vexed with Mama. She just wants to see her great-grandma and so do I. I never got to meet her.”

  “But she’s dead, Jessie. You won’t exactly be meeting her,” Cinnamon quipped. At twelve, Cinnamon was a wry pragmatist. Conscious of her plumpness and color, how distinctly different she was from the rest of the family, she compensated with a stinging quick tongue and a compulsion to be right.

  Elma put her arms around her son and niece. “Children, the dead just pass over to another world,” Elma explained. “It’s proper that we want to say good-bye.”

  “They don’t go to heaven?” Eight-year-old Memphis pushed her face between Jessie and her mother’s rib cage.

  Raymond tustled his daughter’s curly mop, his golden child. “See what you started, Elma? How you goin’ to explain where an old conjure woman goes when she passes over?” he asked.

  As jocular as her uncle was, Cinn never forgot that night of rage, the slew of invectives he had thrown at them, her and her mother both. As she watched her aunt and uncle bicker, she didn’t know who to believe. She knew one thing. Dead is dead. Gone is gone.

  “All right, Raymond, I’ve had enough. It’s none of our business where the good Lord sets my great-grandma in His glory. We’ve no right to belittle her. Why do you want to turn the children against my family at a time like this? This conversation is over. If you don’t want to go with us to Charleston, you don’t have to. But we’re going and we’re going today. Raymond? Raymond!”