“He wanted to come then?” John asked.
“Yes,” she said. It was as if she was speaking from somewhere deep and mysterious within her mind, saying things she knew were true. “And he came for her in the end, didn’t he? He gave her earrings to promise his love.”
“In the end,” John said, “she went to him.”
“She wasn’t going to him. She threw the earrings he’d given her away. She didn’t love him,” Lou corrected him.
“The girl did love him,” John insisted. “Someone else threw the earrings. She was trying to get them so he wouldn’t misunderstand.”
“But the wild boy had seen the earrings fall and he was after them, too. He wanted to insist that she take them back,” Lou said. She could see it all. The glistening stone in the moonlight, like the prism on the wall — two hands reaching out for it. “Then what happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know how it ends,” John said.
“You must know. It’s your story,” Lou reminded him. “You say she didn’t throw the earrings away?”
“No. Someone else did. She loved him very much,” John told her. “She couldn’t stand to be without him any longer.”
“She did love him,” Lou repeated, turning the sound of the words over in her mind. She did love him. “I never knew that,” she whispered.
“Want that laudanum now?”
“No, this green light is enough.” Her eyes were drifting shut but she forced them open, not wanting to take her gaze away. “She loved him, you say?”
I am suddenly all better. Not only has the pain left my body but my mind is strangely glad as I step out of my lifeless shell.
I am done with this life of slavery, no longer a fugitive.
Leaving the tent, I walk around. Members of my regiment are coming to see me. They don’t yet know that I was female. I hope I can stay long enough to see the looks on their faces.
They are good men. I love them as brothers. In fact, I recognize one somehow. The name Ato comes to mind. And the name Aken, too.
It is this Ato now who stands outside my tent and talks to the doctor. He looks shocked at first. I listen in as he tells the others I have died. “Lou was a brave soldier,” he says to them, never revealing my secret.
The others bow their heads and murmur their agreement. Good-bye, Kansas First Regiment. I was proud to serve with you. Perhaps we will meet again.
I return to John sitting beside my cot, weeping. We have shared a strong bond, too soon broken. The story he has just told me is important. It has a meaning to me that I do not understand, but it has left me with great peace of mind.
I think it has to do with something I have forgotten. My mind struggles to remember what it could be.
I can’t remember. I wish he would tell the story again. I feel I could listen to it a hundred times.
But he is fading away. In a moment’s time everything has become blurred.
My regiment begins to softly sing “Swing Lo, Sweet Chariot” by my body.
Oh, I don’t want to go.
I’m afraid to forget all I have just come to know.
I was taught to fear God and to want heaven. I can’t want it now, I’m not ready. Too much of me longs for this green, green earth; all the beauty, even the sadness and heartbreak.
The tents of the field hospital are now faded, like a sun-bleached design on old drapery. I raise my arms. “I don’t want to go!” I wail, though no sound comes from my mouth. “Let me stay!”
The scene transforms and I am on a cloud. I am standing in front of a tall, white, gleaming gate. I knock but no one answers. I wait so long that I become tired and sit down in front of the gate, resting my back against it.
I sleep and crash through many dreams. Images flash in front of me: pyramids, statues, sailing ships, men in chains, people I have loved, those I have wronged, things I have won, things I have lost.
I answer questions.
Was this good? Yes.
Would you change that? No.
What did you need then?
Did you get it?
What do you need now?
What must you learn?
How can you get it?
Choose.
Choose.
Choose.
I awaken, still in front of the gate. I cannot remember my name or where I have come from or anything that has ever happened to me.
“When will I see the face of God?” I ask out loud.
I hear the answer almost as if a voice speaks in my head.
Not yet.
A column of white light appears before me. It soars upward and is accompanied by a deep, vibrating hum.
I have seen this before but cannot recall where or when I encountered it. I am familiar with this shining illumination, just the same.
The low throb of its hum suffuses me until I also reverberate with an answering vibration that emanates from my core.
“You are an angel,” I say, looking up into its translucent face, seeing its enormous feathered wings, and somehow knowing this is true. “What is your name?”
“I am the archangel Michael,” it replies in a voice so resounding I must cover my ears. “I am The Hinge of the Universe.”
It spreads its blinding white wings. I heed this invitation and walk into its light.
Boston, Massachusetts, 1915:
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Brody announced the arrival of their new bundle of joy, an eight-pound, bouncing baby boy, born yesterday. Baby and mother are doing just fine. The proud papa told us: “He’ll be Robert Brody the Fourth, but we intend to call him Bert.”
Delilah Jones stroked the panther’s sleek black coat. “You’re on in ten, Miss Jones,” the stage manager called to the Panther Club’s headliner.
“Thanks,” she replied, rising from her dressing room chair. She adjusted the straps of her tight red satin halter-dress so it would reveal more of her cocoa-colored skin. As she threw on her white, pleated cape, tying it at the neck, she set her golden cobra headdress carefully atop her black curls. She hooked a leash onto her pet panther’s emerald-studded collar. “Come on, Baby,” she said to it. “Let’s you and me strut our stuff.”
The panther strained at the leash as she walked through the narrow backstage hallways. Together, they waited in the wings. From the brightly lit stage, the club’s owner, a man with movie-star polish in a well-tailored tux, announced her: “All the way from the jazz clubs of New Orleans, here now with us in Paris — The Panther Club’s very own Miss Delilah Jones!”
The lights went out while Del silently walked Baby to center stage. Then the spotlight hit her face dramatically.
Del began her act with a high, sultry jazz whine as the light expanded to reveal her, along with Baby at her side.
The audience gasped slightly when Baby stretched her jaw, soundlessly showing off her sharp teeth as Del had taught her. Four years ago, when she was thirteen, Del had worked as an assistant in a big cat act in the circus. Baby had been the runt of the panther litter and would have been put to sleep if Del hadn’t claimed her as her own. Now she was as docile as a kitten, but the audience didn’t know that.
Once the audience had recovered from the sight of Baby, Del spread her arms, fanning her cape so that it revealed how shapely and stunning she looked in her dress. Her song began with a sultry glide across the stage. “If you find yourself on the River Nile and you’re sorely in need of a reason to smile … ,” she crooned as she dropped the cape to the ground. The headpiece came off next while the band kicked into high gear. “Just call me Isis, I’m the nicest on the Nile,” Del belted out, arms wide. “I’m a goddess with a great sense of style. We’ll find a little room in a great big mummy tomb. Desert sands may blow our way but entombed you’ll want to stay … with Isis, the nicest on the Ni-i-i-le.”
The song continued full of puns and racy jokes all centered on a comic version of ancient Egyptian life. The audience laughed at all the right places, and as she became increasingly assured that she
had them, Del’s voice soared as never before, growling down low in some parts and rising to a hornlike peel in others. She sang the next verses in French, which guaranteed that everyone in the audience would get the jokes.
When the song was done, the audience pounded the tables, clapping, whistling, and shouting her name. While she bowed and waved to them, she made sure to stroke Baby to keep her calm.
Delilah Jones has arrived! she thought, flashing the audience a brilliant smile.
Bert Brody rapped on the dressing room door. The name Delilah Jones was scrawled across it in black marker. He needed some background and perhaps quotes for the review he was writing for Traveling Abroad magazine.
“Come in,” a rich, alto-pitched voice responded.
Bert opened the door to find Delilah Jones wrapped in an emerald green satin kimono. By her side was the man with the great tux. Bert knew he was the club’s owner, Leonard Raymond. “Tell her she was sensational,” Raymond said.
“You were sensational,” Bert obeyed dryly.
“Don’t pass out from enthusiasm,” she replied.
He laughed. “No, sorry. I mean it. You were great. Honestly. With the right songs, you could really be a star.”
“What do you mean ‘with the right songs’?” she shot back, her pencil-thin eyebrow arched. “And I am a star! I love that song. The woman who used to sing it when I traveled with vaudeville was three times my size and she had an alligator on a leash. It’s even better the way I do it and with a panther. A panther is better than an alligator, don’t you think? They loved it tonight, didn’t they, Lenny?”
“You wowed ’em, Del,” he assured her.
“See? What do you know about songs, anyway?” she challenged Bert.
“Well,” he began hesitantly. “I write them and —”
“Oh, I can just imagine the kinds of songs you write! What are their titles, ‘All Hail Harvard’ or ‘Yippee for Yale’?”
“Actually, I just graduated from Princeton.”
She laughed in a way that made him glance at the bottle of champagne on her dressing room table. It was half empty and he saw that two glasses had been drained. “So I guess your song is ‘Pip, Pip for Princeton!’” she said.
“Maybe this isn’t a good time. I’d like to interview you, though. I’m a writer for Traveling Abroad magazine.”
“Are you calling me a broad?” she cried. He wasn’t sure if she was really offended or joking.
“No, I would never —”
“You’re certainly not traveling anywhere with me, broad or not, get that idea out of your head,” she went on, teasing.
“You’ve got it all wrong, I —”
“You’re blushing!” she cackled, pointing at his face, and then screamed with laughter, rocking back on her chair.
The heat at Bert’s cheeks told him she was right, and knowing it made him grow even redder. This was a disaster. “Some other time,” he mumbled, backing out of the dressing room. He heard them guffawing from behind the door as he retreated down the hall.
Utterly mortified, head down, he hurried through the cramped backstage area. He was nearly out the door when he heard light, running footsteps.
“Wait!” Turning, he saw Delilah Jones, barefoot and still in her kimono, running to him.
“I’m sorry.” Breathless, she laid her hand on his arm.
He pushed the door open. “It’s okay. Forget it.”
“It’s the champagne. It makes me think I’m a lot funnier than I really am. Meet me at the Parthenon on the Left Bank tomorrow at noon. I’ll buy you a croissant and a café au lait to make it up to you. We’ll do the interview then. Okay?”
He was tempted to say no; she had made a fool of him, and he didn’t like it. But he wanted this story to be good. If it was, they’d throw more assignments his way. If he got regular magazine writing jobs, he could stay in Paris and try to write more songs — maybe get them put into a musical revue like the one he’d just seen. He’d show his father that he wasn’t dependent on the family for money. He could make his own way.
“Please. I could use the publicity,” she coaxed.
“Well, I do think you could be great with better songs,” he said. “Did that woman really have an alligator?”
Delilah chuckled and looked away for a second and then up at him. “I made her up. I wrote that song.”
“You did?” He could feel himself reddening again. He would have been more tactful if he’d realized the song was her own creation. “How did you ever come up with it?”
She shrugged. “The song just came to me. So did the story about the fat lady and the alligator. Things just pop into my head. I really did sing in vaudeville, though, after the circus.”
“I can tell that you’re an experienced performer,” he conceded.
“You bet I am! And don’t tell me the audience didn’t love the song — because they did,” she insisted.
“Yes, they did,” he admitted. “The song is funny and you have a spectacular voice. You wowed ’em, as Lenny there said.”
“Oh, yeah, Lenny — don’t remind me,” she said dismissively. “He hired me to be the next toast of Paris, the next Josephine Baker. He was just opening the club and he needed somebody fast. I talked my way into the job because I swore to him I could do it, but between us, I’m not so sure.”
“You can do it,” Bert said, suddenly certain this was true. “If you sing my songs, it will definitely happen. If you keep on with only the comic material, you’ll always be a novelty act.”
He braced himself for another eruption of derisive laughter. But this time she only looked up at him thoughtfully, so he dared to continue. “I’ve written some love songs, real sophisticated stuff. It would give you some class.”
“Hey, I already have class! What makes you think you know so much, College Boy?” she asked defensively.
“I’ve been to Broadway and to the London theater.”
She nodded, considering his words. “I bet you’ve been to the ballet and the opera, too.”
He nodded. “Can you dance?” he asked.
“I can, but I have a trick ankle that lands me flat on the ground sometimes,” she confessed. “I don’t want to risk that happening on stage.”
“Did you hurt it in the circus?”
“No, I was born with it. It’s just one of those weird things.”
A chorus girl with a full mane of wild red curls, dressed in yellow tap pants and a short top, came toward them. “Del, Lenny is wanting you,” she reported in heavily accented English.
“I’ll be right there.” Delilah looked up at Bert at an angle that suddenly made her seem very young to him. He realized she was still in her teens, which he hadn’t thought before that moment. “See you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” he agreed as she hurried back toward her dressing room.
He noticed that the chorus girl who had come for Del was idling nearby, looking him up and down. “Want to buy a girl a late supper?” she asked flirtatiously.
He didn’t really want to buy anyone anything until his check for this article came in, but she was cute and he was tired of eating alone. “Will you be wearing that outfit?” he asked her.
“If you like, I will.”
“Sure, but you’ll need a coat.”
They went to a café he liked to frequent when he was in the Montmartre section of the city. It was simple but the food was great.
Her name was Yvette. It was easy to talk to her because she did most of the talking. She told him how she worked as a maid in a hotel until she had met Lenny there one day and he offered her a job at his club.
“How did he know you could dance?” Bert asked.
“I couldn’t. I think he just liked me. It’s better than being a maid.” She continued talking, telling him about her life while also asking him about his. He got the feeling that she was trying to tease out the precise status of his finances and it was confusing her. “So your family is rich but you are not? How can t
hat be?” she asked.
“Because I don’t want to run my dad’s dishware factory,” he explained. “It seems like a form of slavery to me.”
“It’s not slavery when you are the son of the boss,” she pointed out.
“It’s not about the money,” he disagreed.
“Everything is about money,” she said offhandedly, picking at her escargot shell with a small fork. He blanched slightly, watching her; he could never get used to eating snails.
“I could sing her part, you know,” Yvette said, drawing the snail from its shell with her fork. “You should interview me. Forget her.”
“You don’t like Miss Jones?” he asked.
“She’s … how can I say it … stuck on herself. She is not so much. I can be like an Egyptian girl, too. I have the feel for it. But not with that big black cat. No.”
“Well, when you have an act going, I’ll come and interview you. Can you sing?”
“I can do anything,” she said, wiping her mouth. “If they pay me, I can do it.”
Three men entered the café. They wore the uniform of the Nazi Party. He had seen them while on a trip to Berlin and had instantly decided they were not for him. He despised their arrogance and had heard stories of terrible brutality. He had been handed pamphlets in the street and the anti-Jewish slander they contained had repulsed him.
They took a table nearby. When they ordered, they spoke in voices he found overly loud. They continued their conversation in German, which he didn’t understand.
“Let’s go,” he told Yvette before she was quite finished. He was suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue and wanted nothing more than to sleep in the small furnished room he was renting.
He left Yvette at the theater and caught a cab back to his room. Once he was away from her and no longer listening to the Germans, his fatigue lifted a bit. He was even inspired to work on a new song idea. It was about a woman who walked a panther on a leash.
Someone knocked on his door and he grunted, annoyed at being disturbed from his song. It was probably the hotel owner looking for the weekly rent, which he now no longer had in its entirety because he’d treated Yvette to supper.