The band, piano and brass, six lanky black men in gray suits, is tightly in synch: three-chord blues with no rough edges, measured, leveled, buzz-sawed to boring perfection. Between songs, the singer, Quo Vadis in wraparound shades, tries to hype the crowd. “And they say the blues is dead in Houston! Lemme tell you, tonight we all the way live!” But his voice is weary, his stage gestures lazy. The audience seems pleased, anyway, clapping, whistling, stomping.
Ariyeh quarrels with Reggie at our corner table. Seems Rufus Bowen will provide Reggie with computers if Natalie will work for him as a gofer/hostess, entertaining his out-of-town clients. “It’s not right, and you know it,” Ariyeh says, stirring her Tom Collins with a lacquered fingernail. “She’s going to school, raising her kids — ”
“A job right now won’t hurt her. When her year at the Row Houses is up, she’ll need someplace to go.”
“A year from now. Why rush it? I thought the whole idea was to give a young mother a break, some breathing space — anyway, anyway, why Natalie? Who is this guy?”
“He’s a perfectly legitimate businessman, and one of the few black CEOs in the city. I don’t know — when he dropped by the other day, he took a shine to Natalie. Which, I have to tell you, I count as a personal success. She’s really turned herself around since coming to us. It’s not like he’s forcing her to prostitute herself or anything — ”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Of course I am. He just wants her to keep some people company, escort them to restaurants, concerts … this could be a good, long-term thing for her, part of her recovery. He sees her potential. And he asked, honey. He doesn’t need our permission. Natalie’s an adult. But he asked. He wouldn’t dream of interfering with our program.”
“Since when did the Row Houses become a vocational school for computer training? You said the project was about restoring neighborhood pride — ”
“Exactly, sugar! And pride begins with education.”
Ariyeh shakes her head, sips her drink.
Reggie turns to me. “You gonna lecture me, too? Another dispatch from the mayor?”
I spread my hands.
“Yeah, but you thinking it.” He leans over and kisses Ariyeh’s cheek. “I gotta go sell myself to these wallets now.” He nods at a nearby table, where five or six men from the gallery laugh and pass around pitchers of Bud. “You may not like cutting deals, baby, but there’s honor in it if the goal is noble.”
“I know that, Reggie.”
“You used to be proud of me.”
She strokes his face. “I still am, sweetie. But I worry about Natalie.”
“So do I. I won’t let anything happen to her. Promise.”
“Go schmooze.”
“I love you, baby.”
“Go, go.” She smiles.
I reach over and squeeze her arm, the way I did when we were girls and Bitter had scared us with the Needle Men. We listen to the music, not speaking. She looks tired, and I don’t want to trouble her with questions about school or the missing kids. I want her to be able to depend on me, the way I’m counting on her, a self-possessed young woman, a confident, successful black woman who can show me how to be.
There again: race. Always, and ever, race. How sick I am of it! Even now, the frat boys at the next table eye me up and down. They don’t know what to make of me. Am I white enough for you, frat boy? Look close, Charley, do you see a hint of yellow, the shadow of a shadow, a leaf-tip turning in early fall? Do you imagine me naked? What do you think? Do you suppose my nipples look more chocolate than strawberry? Do you think I don’t know you, don’t despise you, don’t want you?
“Hey, honey.” Ariyeh pries her hand from mine. “Not so hard.”
We order another round of drinks. The band takes a break, and when they return I’m surprised to see big Earl joining them onstage. Tonight he looks completely different from the way he does at Etta’s. The purple suit is gone; he’s wearing a tux. Hair slicked back. The energy I’ve seen him put into flirting is channeled now into flattering the crowd. “Y’all doing all right? Sure is good to see y’all.” Masking in front of the ofays. Watering it down for the mainstream. Just another imbecile Negro. Goddam.
“Look. Earl’s moonlighting,” I say.
Ariyeh laughs.
“Ariyeh, you ever date a white boy?”
“Cuz, there’s more than thirty-one flavors. Why would I choose the blandest?” She rubs my arm. “They’re not all like … what was it, Dwayne? And forget Sister Davis.”
Clattery laughter rolls from the bar. Earl launches into a ballad, “Heads or tails, you lose.”
I listen closer. I’ve heard this before. The other night at Etta’s. Bayou Slim. But before that.
“… lose!” Earl shouts.
I don’t remember. My head spins. I finish my wine, pull a few bills from my purse.
“Party-pooper,” Ariyeh says.
I’d like to crawl into bed with her and hold her all night. “I’ll call you.” I kiss her cheek. “I didn’t want to spoil the evening with it, but I think we need a plan, soon, for getting Bitter to a doctor.”
“All right, honey. You’re right. I been thinking about that, too. We’ll work it out. Sleep well.” She glances sadly at Reggie. He’s several tables away with a group of men, adding figures on a napkin. I wave but he doesn’t see me.
I push through the door, past King Bee and Daddy Deepthroat, into the hot, billowy air. I drive with my windows down, humming the blues, trying to picture Slim’s face. I’ve not seen it well through the smoke in Etta’s Place. I pass the glass towers of Greenway Plaza, a few gated communities (military security as domestic architecture; money as gris-gris, casting a spell, or an illusion, of safety) then, back on Bissonnet, the CAM, the Museum of Fine Arts, several bistros and wine bars — white folks enjoying late dinnets at cozy sidewalk tables — then the new brick homes of gentrified Montrose. I miss the sound of my aquarium at night, bubbling steadily in the dark, the soft purring of my sweet old parrots.
Finally, I’m back in the Quarter: weed lots, broken windows, hip-hop pounding its way out of a Caddy. Somebody has pumped a boarded grocery full of bullet holes. A calling card. A warning. Proving who’s king.
10
BEST I LEAVE you craving mirrors, child, cold, hard faces giving nothing back to the world but the grim old world itself. Best I leave you with an empty purse so you’re forced to fill it with your findings. Your inheritance? Mystery and intransigence. Restlessness, your one and only ID.
My mama’s voice, in a dream. Not the sorts of words she ever used in life, and yet, somehow — on some level I never reached — they feel just like her.
Without vigilance, you’re at the mercy of the wind, a handbill torn off an ice house wall, scuttling past street signs none of the neighbors can read, scuffed doors bolted tight against the heat, truck exhaust, dust, cats pawing through broken bottles, used condoms, bloody Kleenex in a field, past the crying of left-alone babies, the chatter of television, which at least has something to say, the silence and stillness and don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass of everyone else, the cops’ empty promises, the morgue’s waiting boxes, the empty white-hot of the sidewalks chewed by the earth, the wasted basketball practice of a knock-kneed little boy, the wasted lessons of a gifted girl whose ma can’t keep paying for the family’s out-of-tune piano, the sludge in the pipes beneath a dead-grass patch, dead pigeons, wood splinters snagging the bill — snatched up by an old man wasted in the middle of the day, a hungry, grinning scarecrow squinting so the words’ll keep still, words he can’t decipher, words —