“Right here, Birdy. Come in.”
The slim young woman in a nurse’s uniform stepped into the room. She was of obviously mixed race with a wide spray of freckles across her dark olive skin. Her tight red curls were bundled neatly to the back of her head, though stray strands coiled prettily around her cheeks and greenish, amber-flecked eyes. She wore a yellow cardigan over her uniform. “How are you doing today, Miss Louisa?” she asked.
“Not bad,” Louisa replied. “I just had a visit from one of those young voter registration people.”
“I give them credit,” Birdy said, putting down her purse. “The whites down here are giving them a terrible time. It’s like the Civil War is still being fought. There’s a bunch of them living down the road here in Arthur Adams’s grandma’s old place, the one that was empty for so long.”
“I know the place.”
“How’s the ankle today?”
“It hurts.”
“Sit down, let’s unwrap that Ace bandage and have a look at it.”
Birdy was a practical nurse working in the Colored Only clinic. One day when Louisa was there consulting with the doctor about her cancer, she’d struck up a conversation with Birdy while waiting. When Birdy asked why Louisa used a cane, she’d told her how her right ankle had never been right. Birdy had said, “I pass your house on my way home. I should stop by and check up on you to make sure you haven’t fallen. Now, with your other problems, you could be too weak to get up.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Louisa had replied.
“I’d like to,” Birdy had insisted. “It would give me some experience. If I can ever save the money, I’d like to go to nursing school for my RN degree and become a full nurse. Maybe I could go to Howard University.”
So now Birdy came to check on Louisa twice a week.
Louisa sat on one of her fat upholstered chairs and hoisted her leg onto the ottoman. “That looks a little swollen,” Birdy commented as she unwrapped the bandage. “Have you been on it a lot today?”
“No, but I had a fall earlier.”
“A fall?”
“I fainted.”
“The heat?” Birdy asked.
Louisa didn’t have the strength to go into the whole story. “Probably.”
Birdy stood. “I’m going to run you a bath and put Epsom salts into it. It will do you good to soak your ankle, and a cool bath in this weather couldn’t hurt you, either. Did you hit your head when you fell?”
“I don’t think so. It doesn’t hurt.”
Birdy rewrapped Louisa’s ankle and helped her up from the chair, giving her the cane.
“Birdy,” Louisa asked, “have you ever heard of dharma?”
“Nope.”
“Heard of karma?”
“Like, what goes around comes around?”
“Yes. How long do you think it takes for what goes around to come back around?”
Birdy laughed as she walked with Louisa to the stairs. “I’m sure I have no idea.”
“The young man who was just here was telling me about dharma. It means doing one’s spiritual duty, the thing you were put in this life to do.”
“This life?” Birdy questioned. “What other life is there?”
“Okay, say there’s none other. It’s what you were put in this one life to do,” Louisa said. Birdy was a practical young woman and a strict Baptist. The idea of other lives would no doubt be promptly rejected. “Do you feel you are doing what you were meant to do in this life?”
“That’s a big question, Miss Louisa,” Birdy answered with a smile. “All I know is that right now I am helping you up these stairs and attending to that ankle.”
That night, back with the other volunteers, Mike felt exhausted. He’d covered fifty homes after leaving Louisa’s place and had signed up only ten voters. The other volunteers had had similar experiences.
“I thought your brother was going to punch the cop who pulled us over,” said one of the girls who had gone out with Ray. “That cop was just plain hassling us, demanding the car registration and my license, wanting to know everything about us. It was harassment.”
“I wanted to deck the guy,” Ray confirmed. “I couldn’t believe it.”
“Now do you think I’m paranoid?” the handbook girl asked.
“I guess I owe you an apology,” Ray conceded.
“Apology accepted,” she said.
Wow, cool, Mike thought, impressed. Ray’s apologizing to someone — will wonders never cease? Of course, he was apologizing to a girl, probably trying to score points with her. Still … Mike wouldn’t have expected it of Ray.
“It’s important to keep your cool with the local law,” Dave counseled. “They’re looking for any reason to arrest you — and you do not want to get locked up.”
Throughout supper, Mike kept up social conversation, but his mind wasn’t really on it. Finally he got the chance he’d been dying for all day. After the plates were cleaned and the next day’s activities discussed, he was free to place the record of Delilah Jones singing the songs of Bert Brody back on the record player.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her — and it wasn’t only because of the strangeness of what she’d told him. It was the woman herself. She was much too old for him, but he found her lovely in a way he could never imagine himself feeling about a woman of her age. The idea of it put him off, but the actuality of her drew him in. She’d captivated him.
Delilah Jones’s voice drifted up from the record. Funny that she’d been afraid of fire, because her voice reminded him of smoke. He closed his eyes as it billowed around him. Could he really have written these songs? They were different from the songs he wrote now — in many ways better.
Ray strolled out onto the porch, letting the screen door slam behind him. “What are you listening to?”
“‘Delilah Jones Sings the Songs of Bert Brody,’” he replied. “I found it on the record player.”
Ray blinked twice, as though he was struggling to understand what Mike was telling him. He perched on the porch railing and looked out over the fields.
“It’s an old record from the thirties,” Mike explained.
“Del Jones has some pipes,” Ray commented.
Mike turned to him sharply. “Why did you call her Del?”
Ray tore his gaze from the field and, looking at Mike, shrugged. “I don’t know. Why are you so jumpy about it?”
“Something really bizarre happened to me today,” he began.
“Stranger than almost clobbering a cop?”
“Yeah. Stranger than that.” As the record played, Mike began to tell his brother about meeting Louisa — Delilah Jones.
“You met this woman, the one who’s singing now?” Ray asked.
“I was in her house. She had stuff around with the name Delilah Jones on it. She said I was Bert Brody.”
“What?”
“She said she knew me in another life.”
“That’s nuts,” Ray remarked, returning to looking out over the fields. “What a kook. Maybe she’s a witch. Did she look like a wrinkled old hag?”
“No … she was beautiful.”
“I’ll bet,” Ray scoffed.
Mike continued to tell him what Delilah had said. “What if it is true?” Mike wondered out loud when he was finished. “If she knew Bert Brody and I’m him, maybe she and I have unfinished business. Her husband might have been reborn, too. Why not?”
“Don’t be a sap,” Ray said.
There was a catch in his voice that got Mike’s attention.
“Is something the matter?” Mike asked.
Ray continued to stare out over the fields without answering, so Mike stood and went beside him. “You okay?”
Ray’s eyes were wet and his nose had reddened as though he wanted to cry but was fighting it. Mike had never seen Ray even close to tears. “What is it?”
He sniffed hard and pressed his arm into his eyes before turning to Mike. “It’s this idiotic record. It’s anno
ying me.” He slid off the railing and headed for the door. “Turn it off, will you? It’s aggravating.”
Mystified, Mike watched him go in. He shut the record off and took it from the turntable. With it under his arm, he got into his car and drove through the brightly lit night to Louisa’s house.
The house was dark but the porch was lit from above. Louisa sat on her front porch step, as though waiting for him.
“Here’s that record.” He spoke matter-of-factly, as if he had gone to his car and come directly back.
Louisa smiled at him. “What took you so long?”
“I got scared,” he admitted.
“I don’t blame you.”
He sat beside her on the step, handing her the record. “Yeah, well … I’m back now.”
She rested her hand on his. “I’m glad,” she said.
The next weeks were filled with highs and lows for Ray. The young woman he went out recruiting with was named Linda. He’d attached himself to her, thinking she was the best-looking girl there. In other words, his perfect partner. Along the way, going door to door with her, he also discovered that she had a way with people and was smart and well-informed. And he discovered that she had a boyfriend back home. But by then it was okay with him. He’d come to think of her more as a partner and a pal.
Besides, he’d met a young woman in town, a nurse named Birdy. He’d gone into the hospital for help with a badly scraped shoulder. He’d fallen on it when a protective dog chased him from the front porch of one of the rundown homes he and Linda were approaching.
The nurse at the admitting desk had sized him up immediately from his northern accent. “You’re one of those volunteers?” she’d asked. When he admitted it, she’d said, “Try the Colored Only Clinic. They’re your friends. We’re not.”
“Fine. I will,” he’d told her.
Linda had driven him to a run-down building at the edge of town. “It’s against the law for us to treat you in here,” the nurse there told him. “But I’ll send somebody out to you. Wait outside.”
Birdy came out and attended to his cuts, applying iodine that stung. They talked like they’d known each other all their lives. “How long is your shift?” he asked.
“I work until four.”
Ray dropped Linda back at the headquarters house and made it back to the clinic by four. “Want a ride home?” he offered as Birdy walked out of the clinic.
“I can’t be seen with you,” she told him. “It’s too dangerous. People don’t like to see couples of mixed races.”
“You don’t look like a Negro,” he noted.
“I’m half, and everyone around here knows it. Ma met my white father up North, but he ran out on her, so she came back home here with me.”
“How can I see you then?” he asked.
She thought about this, looking him up and down. “My house is way out of town. I live there with my mother and little brothers. If anyone asks — and I hope they don’t — you could say you’re trying to convince us to vote. We don’t want to have anything to do with it, but you’re not giving up.”
She scrawled directions on a medical pad and then hurried away. “We eat at seven. You’re welcome if you like,” she said over her shoulder as she departed.
Ray arrived that night at her simple, neat house with a box of chocolates and a bouquet of flowers he’d bought in town. “I’m thanking your daughter for fixing my shoulder for me,” he told Birdy’s mother to deflect any suspicions about his possible ulterior motives.
Her mother just sniffed suspiciously, nodding as though to say, You’re not fooling me, young man.
Her two smaller brothers were playing a game that involved hurling a straight branch over a line they’d drawn in the dirt. “All right!” Ray cheered. “A javelin toss! Let me at it!”
He gave the boys pointers that greatly increased their success. “I threw the javelin in college,” he explained as he went to fetch a stick that had gotten off course.
“Look out,” he heard Birdy’s mother warn her while they watched the game from the bench outside. “You’re asking for trouble.”
Louisa should have been feeling worse than she felt. At her last trip to the doctor, he’d told her he believed that she didn’t have much time left. “It could be months. It could be weeks,” he’d reported.
She’d nodded. “Okay.” This wasn’t really news. Her body had been telling her for some time that things were worsening.
On the way out of the clinic, she ran into Birdy. “How’s it going, sweetie?” she asked.
Birdy looked especially upbeat. “Just great,” she replied.
“Birdy has a new boyfriend,” another of the nurses blurted.
“Hush up,” Birdy hissed at her. “It’s a secret.”
“It is,” the other nurse told Louisa. “She won’t let any of us meet him. Rumor is that he’s a volunteer.”
“I said hush,” Birdy said. “He’s not.”
“I wouldn’t mind one of those nice college-educated black men to whisk me away from here and take me up North,” the nurse said. “That Julian Bond is quite handsome.”
“The young man with the NAACP?” Louisa asked.
“Yes, him,” the nurse said. “Are you dating Julian Bond, Birdy?”
“Be quiet!” Birdy pretended to be angry but her smile gave her away.
Louisa was happy for Birdy. Feelings of romance — both memories and new emotions — were very much with her these days. “Listen, Birdy, I won’t need you to come by this week,” she said. “I have a guest visiting.”
“Okay, if you’re sure you’ll be all right.”
“Absolutely. Thanks.”
Mike had been coming by every night for the last two weeks. She made him leave if Birdy was coming by, so as not to cause any talk. Not that Birdy would gossip, but Louisa didn’t want to take the chance that she’d mention something at home and her mother would spread it.
It would be shocking enough that she was keeping company with a white man — the fact that he was nearly thirty years younger than she was would be an outrage. No one would believe that they never touched each other, though it was the truth. Their age difference made them each too shy of it. But they loved each other, nonetheless.
When she got back to her house, Mike’s car was already parked outside. He came out from inside the house and helped her up the walk. “How did it go?” he asked, taking her elbow.
“The ankle is fine,” she said. She hadn’t mentioned the cancer. He thought her bad ankle was her only problem.
“I made us some chicken fricassee for supper,” he told her. “And a woman I signed up to vote gave me a tub of her homemade ice cream.”
“It sounds divine.”
The days rolled on like this. Louisa felt happier than she had ever felt. To her, the heartbreaking loss of her old love had been mended, restored to her. Her heart felt whole again.
Mike talked about all the feelings and thoughts that he swore he had never revealed to another person.
“Sometimes I don’t know why I’m here doing this,” he admitted to her. “It seems so hopeless.”
“You’ve always hated slavery,” she said. “I believe you’ve been dealing with slavery in one form or another for many lives.”
“You do?” he asked. “Why do you think so?”
She wasn’t exactly sure how she knew it, yet she knew. “I feel it,” she said. “This is what you must do to be right with your past.”
“I don’t have too much past at this point.”
“You have more than you think,” she told him. “Get me one of those registration forms. I think I will register to vote, after all.”
Then one day while he was playing guitar for her in the living room and singing her one of the songs he’d written, a car came up the road and made a quick and abrupt stop.
Ducking from under his guitar strap, Mike stepped to the window and pushed the lace curtains aside.
Louisa was already locking the doors and
windows.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s Dave from our group.”
Louisa followed Mike out onto the porch. “Come quick,” Dave said breathlessly. “Ray’s been arrested. He’s been seeing a local black woman and they tried to sit in the Whites Only section of the movie theater.”
“Ray?” Mike questioned.
“Yeah,” Dave said. “We can’t let either of them stay in jail overnight. I don’t want to think about what could happen. They’ve set a six-thousand-dollar bail on each one of them.”
“Twelve thousand!” Mike cried. “I can call home, but I don’t think my parents have that kind of money.”
“We’ve started a collection, but we don’t have nearly enough,” Dave told him.
“Just a minute,” Louisa said to Dave. “Let me talk to Mike inside.” Taking Mike’s wrist, she went back into the house. “Listen to me,” she said. “I have given away just about all that’s left of my inheritance for reasons which I can tell you later. But I do have one thing of value left which I kept for sentimental reasons.”
She opened the lower door of a china cabinet to reveal a safe. With deft fingers she opened the combination and pulled out a shiny wooden box. Inside was a thick collar studded with eight glistening emeralds. “You take this downtown to O’Hara’s Jewelry Store. Mr. O’Hara knows what it’s worth. I had it appraised there. He will want to buy it from you right away. He’s told me so many times.”
She wrote the address of the store on a piece of paper. “I’ll call to tell him you’re coming so he doesn’t think you stole it,” she said, handing him the paper.
“I can’t take this,” he objected.
“It is my dharma to give it to you,” she said. “Go.”
Mike raced into the police building behind Dave. A crowd of the volunteers poured in behind him.
“We have the bail money for Raymond Rogers and Bernadette Towers,” Dave shouted at the desk sergeant. “We demand that they be released immediately. If either of them has been harmed we will bring a lawsuit that will bankrupt this county!”
“Hold your horses. They’re okay,” the sergeant muttered, eyeing them all with disgust. “Come here and fill out the paperwork. You’re going to have to send somebody else in to get Miss Towers. You have to send a colored to go in through the colored door.”