Thursday morning I met Skeeter at the employees’ entrance of the store and we went in. We looked good. The security guard looked over his list, found our names, and sent us up to the third floor.
The table we sat at was so big it couldn’t even have fit in Skeeter’s apartment.
“So, your wife tells me that you have a plan to increase the store’s business.” Mr. Reuben sat at the head of the table. There was a woman on one side and two men on the other. One of them was Mr. Carnation. “Tell us about it.”
“I can show you,” Skeeter said. “I can get some music going and people will come in and listen to it. People like music.”
“We don’t need dancers,” Carnation said. “We need people who buy clothing.”
“That’s true, that’s true,” Skeeter said. “But first you need people to walk into the store. Then maybe you have a chance of selling them something. They’ll come and listen and look around and see all the nice stuff you got.”
“What kind of music would you play?” the woman asked.
“In the morning I could play some old-school stuff,” Skeeter said. “Mellow, maybe even a little doo-wop. Then in the afternoon, when school lets out, I could swing into some reggae and a little soul with a touch of hip-hop.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a marketing plan,” Carnation said.
“Doo-wop?” Mr. Reuben said. “You remember Little Anthony and the Imperials?”
“ ‘Tears on My Pillow’!” Skeeter said.
“Yeah, yeah.” Mr. Reuben got a faraway look in his eyes like he was remembering something good. “What was that other thing they did? Shimmy something?”
“ ‘Shimmy Shimmy, Ko Ko Bop’!” Skeeter said.
Right then and there it was a done deal! The next thing we knew we were talking about how much money Skeeter expected. Me and Skeeter had agreed to ask for five hundred dollars a week if it got to talking about money, but when Mr. Reuben asked about doo-wop and Skeeter knew what he was talking about I spoke up and said we could do it for seven hundred a week. It just came out of my mouth.
“Well, that’s a little steep,” Mr. Reuben said. “How about … five hundred and twenty-five dollars?”
Outside Skeeter got weak in his legs and had to lean against the wall for a while before we went to the subway. I told him to tell Dulce that he had got the job. He looked at me and just smiled.
The next Monday morning he set up on the second floor, across from the shoe department, and started steady-pumping music to the world.
In a few weeks they put in a little music department and put Skeeter inside it and pretty soon the whole joint was jumping, especially after school. And Skeeter was so happy he was smiling all the time.
We had our wedding a month later on 125th Street and St. Nicholas at St. Joseph’s. I wore a white satin dress I bought and my aunt Nilda made me a lace top that looked perfect with it. Skeeter’s old group, the All Star Stompers, played and my mother didn’t bad-mouth anybody during the whole party, which was a miracle all by itself.
By the time Dulce came we had our apartment set up. We had it all looking nice, the bedroom with the crib right across from where I slept so the baby crying didn’t wake Skeeter. Even the kitchen was set up just right.
Dulce was a real good baby. While I was looking after her all day I kept making plans. One was that the other All Stars could do the DJ business in other places if they had somebody to pull it together. Skeeter could be their business manager if he thought about it.
I took Dulce in her stroller to the Chinese take-out place and while we were waiting for the sweet-and-sour chicken and the butterfly shrimps I told her all about Skeeter and my new plan. “You think Daddy’s going to like being a manager?” She smiled.
poets
and
plumbers
“Noee what are you going to do in the evenings if we start closing the shop earlier?” Abeni looked over the top of Ebony.
I knew what was behind the question. The hints had been coming in heavily casual comments, remarks meant to appear offhand, gentle words that crept into my sister’s conversation and my mother’s suggestion that we should all “get out more.”
Abeni had broken up with Harrison but had started up a steady stream of e-mails with him as his career as an independent filmmaker grew. It was me they were worried about.
Other girls my age seemed to know what to do. They came to the shop thinking about how to look better, and told elaborate stories about the mating game. I watched little girls on the street, jumping rope or dancing, shaking their hips as if they were born knowing something that I didn’t. I knew how the parts worked, that somehow when a man came near me, when he expressed an interest, I was supposed to know what to do, what to say. At the shop I had heard the talk, seen the smiles, the nods, the finger snaps. What I didn’t know was why it didn’t seem natural to me. I was seventeen and a lot of boys and a lot of men looked at me and offered up their word games but I didn’t know how to play them.
Abeni was taking courses at City College, inching her way to a degree, but she was more interested in the beauty culture business than anything else. As much as I told myself that what I wanted to do was to spend my evenings reading, to talk about what was going on in the world, not just who was sleeping with who, I was beginning to feel that there was something wrong with me.
At times I was lonely, but it was a bearable loneliness, the way I imagined that a star, brilliant in a Milky Way of other stars, would be lonely.
Taking the creative writing course was not an answer so much as it was a refuge. I knew Abeni wanted me to go with her to some of the clubs downtown, but she let it drop when I said I was taking the course.
There were eleven people in the class. Six of them were older women who had taken the course before. There was a young boy who wanted to write raps, an older man who had already published a detective novel, a severe-looking brother who wore a button that said BLACK MUSLIM and who wanted to reveal the Truth About the White Man, and Kyle Scott.
Kyle was six feet, maybe an inch more, and lean like some of the brothers who played basketball. When the instructor asked what we did he said he worked in the post office and was trying to get the money together to go to school full-time. He was serious-looking and I thought he really wanted to be a writer full-time but was shy about saying it. He also had a nice smile and a great voice. There was warmth in his voice, as if he cared about whatever it was he was saying.
One of the older women suggested we all stop for coffee after the class. Some of us did, including Kyle. We talked about films we had seen or hoped to see, the hot political topics, and books.
“Harlem has always had an amazing literary tradition,” said one woman, a retired social worker. “I think storytelling is an important part of our heritage.”
Kyle nodded. He knew a lot about the Harlem Renaissance and had read far more than I had. He didn’t talk much during the meeting but what he said made sense. I didn’t talk much, either, but I enjoyed hearing the others.
By the fourth week the after-class group had dwindled to just some of the older ladies, the man who had been published, me, and Kyle. It was on a particularly warm March night, after our coffee group, when Kyle asked me where I worked.
“My family has a beauty shop on a Hundred and Forty-fifth. We live down the block from the shop.”
“Do you walk uptown?”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“If you’re walking tonight, would you mind if I walked along?”
“Fine.” I felt myself smiling, and now the embarrassment came in a sudden flush.
The night was warm and Malcolm X Boulevard was alive with the early-spring noises of Harlem. Music blared from the small shops or from radios set up on fire escapes outside the old tenements. Children who should have been busy doing homework were still in the streets and on 139th Street a man and woman were cooking sausages on a grill.
“You write well,” Kyle said. “I liked the
character studies you read tonight.”
“Thank you.”
As we walked I realized that I should have said something more to him, but everything I thought of seemed wrong. He had read some of his poetry and I thought it was quite good, far above the others in the class, but I wasn’t sure how to criticize it and I didn’t want to just say that I liked it.
He asked me if I went to school and I told him I was a senior at Wadleigh. He said he imagined that I had already selected a college.
“I’m not sure if I want to go to college,” I said. “And you? You said you were saving money for school.”
“Somewhere I can learn more about writing.”
“Oh, I thought so,” I said. “I mean … you write well.”
“Uh, Noee, I have a poem I’d like you to see,” Kyle said. “It wasn’t something I wanted to read in class. Would you mind? You could bring it back next week.”
“Why didn’t you want to read it in class?”
“Well, it’s kind of personal,” Kyle said, nodding his head in self-agreement. “I was thinking about you during the week, wondering how I would describe you in words. The poem came from those thoughts.”
“Oh.” I hoped the flashing neon lights from Mable’s Bar-B-Que covered up my flushing.
We said goodbye at my stoop and I took the poem and went in. Mama was sitting at the kitchen table playing solitaire in her slip. I kissed her as I pulled down the blind.
In my room I unfolded Kyle’s poem and read it.
I wonder if the quiet moon
Brilliant in the cold and distant sky
Sees her own beauty
On the jet black lake?
Is she angered at the
East-blowing cloud
Covering her perfect face
Or is she content
With the image in her heart?
I read the poem again and again until I had it memorized. What was he saying to me? Was he saying it to me? He had asked to walk me home. He had asked me to read his poem and said it had come of him thinking about me.
In bed I tried to read the day’s paper, but my mind kept wandering back to the poem. I began to think of him. Foolishly. Like some schoolgirl wanting to have a crush on her hero. I tried to think of what I would say when I saw him in a week. Phrases came about the use of free verse and how the use of easy symbols, such as the moon, was very much overdone in poetry. Would I talk to Kyle like that? As if I didn’t know the poem was about me?
I imagined us having a conversation. First it was at the coffee shop, and then it quickly changed to Central Park with the two of us sitting on a park bench. He was the shy one and I the one speaking boldly about the poems I had read and how I would have improved them. Kyle, handsome and reserved, nodding in quiet admiration at the wisdom of my remarks. Then, just as quickly, the imagined Kyle changed to Burn.
Burn would have turned away, would have ignored my carefully constructed sentences. I moved away from my imagination and into the safer realm of ordinary thought. It was still Burn I was thinking about. Perhaps he would have looked at me with those narrowed eyes. Perhaps his face would have hardened, scaring me somewhat. Perhaps he would have put his hand on my leg.
I thought of Kyle again. He had given me the poem. He had reached out to me. And I was afraid. There weren’t that many eligible men in Harlem. Many of the ones my age were dropouts, not only from school but from life as well. The street corners were full of young guys who should have been working somewhere. Some of them already had police records. I didn’t know what I was looking for, a black Prince Charming perhaps. Abeni said that I needed to figure out who I was first.
“If you want Prince Charming it means you’re looking at yourself as some kind of secret princess,” she said.
Was I looking at myself as a princess? I just knew I couldn’t handle the easy-sex scene and I was a million miles away from Happily Ever After.
I wondered what my father would have said. “There’s this boy,” I would have said to him.
“Do you like him?” he would have asked.
“Yes,” I would have said. “Yes.”
The class was on Wednesday and I got there late after having to do two rinses in a row. Kyle wasn’t there and I was grateful. I hadn’t decided what I was going to say to him and thought of simply returning his poem without comment. Mrs. Baraf, the instructor, was reading from Chaucer in Old English to show us the poet’s rhythm when the door opened and Kyle came in.
The chat in the coffee shop was about how one of the ladies had had a critique of her story from a magazine and was asked to resubmit it after a rewrite.
“To me that’s as good as an acceptance,” another lady said.
“It would be if they sent along a check with it,” the rapper added.
We laughed about that and toasted the near success while I carefully avoided looking at Kyle. When the meeting was finally over and the group headed toward the 135th Street subway, I could feel Kyle’s presence as he neared me.
“Was the poem interesting enough to merit another walk uptown?” he asked.
I mumbled. I’m good at mumbling. Sometimes I manage to shrug as I mumble. It must look stunning.
We started uptown again. The air was heavy, and cool. Occasionally there would be a few drops of rain in the warm wind, big splashy summer drops that warned of more rain to come. We walked three blocks in silence before he asked me what I thought of the poem.
“It’s kind of romantic.”
“That’s what I had hoped for.”
“Perhaps a little obvious, though,” I added.
“Is that bad?”
I didn’t know what he meant by that. I never knew what guys meant when they talked to me unless it was just about sex. A hundred men had leaned in my direction on the neighborhood street corners and mentioned what they would like to do to me in bed. I didn’t like that, of course, and had learned to look the other way when I passed a man I didn’t know. But now I couldn’t tell if Kyle was talking about the poem or what he meant by the poem.
“The syllables are even,” I said, numbly. “I don’t mean that they have to be or anything.”
We walked in a familiar silence. I had been quiet with boys before. Looking down, listening as my brain made Right Decisions. Outside of Ralph’s barbershop there were two chess games going on and a small crowd of young people looking on. I liked that.
“Noee, can we go out sometime?”
“I’m very busy,” I said. “This is my senior year and all. Plus I have to work in the shop. It’s a family business.”
“Did you know I was a good cook?” he asked.
“Cook?” I looked to see if he was kidding me.
“I was going to make a dinner for two this Saturday,” he went on. “Something obviously romantic, most likely. I promise to write another poem for the occasion. Would you like to attend?”
“Come to your house for dinner?” My stupid heart was beating faster.
“For dinner and the poem,” he said, taking my hand in his.
Somehow, against all my instincts, I got out a “yes.” He lived downtown on 116th Street in one of those newly renovated places. At my stoop we exchanged phone numbers and he said he looked forward to seeing me on the weekend. Then he lifted my hand and kissed the ends of my fingertips.
It was so corny. I looked away as he released my hand and when I glanced up he was already backing away, headed back east toward the subway.
Thursday and Friday flew by. On Friday night I burned the back of a girl’s neck. It wasn’t anything serious but Mama was surprised. I thought that was the only thing that had gone wrong, but after we had closed Mama asked me if I was okay.
“You definitely had your mind someplace else tonight, girl,” she said.
“I’m going to have dinner with this guy tomorrow and I’m thinking about calling it off,” I said.
“Why, do you have to pay for it?” Abeni asked.
I told them about Kyle, how corn
y he was. “He gives me these poems and walks me home. He’s just so … transparent,” I said.
“All men are transparent,” Mama said, “men like women. Do you like this guy?”
“Yeah, in a way,” I said.
“Where’s he taking you?” Abeni asked.
“He wants to cook for me.”
Mama and Abeni asked a hundred questions. What did he look like? How did he dress? Did he have a job? They seemed almost more interested in him than I did.
Abeni loaned me a pink silk blouse to go with my burgundy slacks. She wanted me to wear her amethyst brooch but I didn’t.
“This is not a first communion party.” I was beginning to resent the attention.
“Chill, Noee, making people look good is our business,” Abeni reminded me. “Have you forgotten?”
I hadn’t forgotten. I just wanted to keep the date with Kyle in perspective. It wasn’t a big thing, even if the only other date I had been on all year had been the day working with Burn on the cruise.
The buildings in Harlem were being renovated at a great rate. Places that had been abandoned were now being rehabbed and sold for outrageous amounts of money as both whites and blacks were moving into the area. Kyle’s place had a security desk in the lobby with a round little man sitting behind it. He called Kyle to announce me. As the elevator went up to the seventh floor I felt my stomach tighten. When the elevator door opened Kyle was standing there with a big grin on his face. There was a middle-aged couple waiting for the elevator and they watched as Kyle kissed my hand. They smiled but I was embarrassed.
We made small talk with me sitting in Kyle’s living room; he went in and out while he finished cooking. There were colored candles on the end tables and I imagined him seeing them in a magazine. Everything was nice, the apartment was spotless, but nothing exactly matched. I did like the framed prints on the wall.
“Elizabeth Catlett,” he said. “They’re knockoff prints but I like them.”
Kyle served an avocado, tomato, and mozzarella salad that was very good. Then dinner consisted of chicken with sliced almonds, green beans, and baked potatoes. It wasn’t fancy but it was good and I was relieved that he wasn’t the world’s greatest cook. Afterward I sat in an overstuffed chair. He sat on the couch.