“But I wasn’t gon’ let it end with me. . no. And I’m sorry for it now. Sorry for what happened to you. ’Cause I’m the one who made sure rumors got spread. Didn’t want to give Annie a chance to lie and hide it. I made her confront what you did to us.
“Her husband Richard had to finish the matter when Annie couldn’t. He gave you away to Charles and soon your memories of Annie got erased. That was Annie’s fear come true. You quit asking for Annie-Momma. You only wanted Charles-Momma to hold you and feed you and teach you. And Annie was heartbroke from being Forgot-Momma. Alone-Momma. But I wasn’t gon’ be alone by myself. And now I got you.”
Sissy stops rocking.
“People need people,” she say.
Josey wipes her hands down her apron. She goes to Sissy and kneels down next to her chair. “If all we got is each other,” Josey say. “Let us be family once and for all.”
43 / FLASH, Conyers, Georgia, 1848
BAND MUSIC WHINES through here for her party. “A celebration!” Cynthia called it. “Bat Mitzvahed!” she said. “My old ass has come of age!”
I think that means it’s her birthday.
For certain it’s a fancy way to have a barbecue.
I imagine a diamond looks like this brothel.
A jewel, clear-white and sparkly. Cynthia took the whole week to clean this room out and wash it down. The thrown-away things she changed for white tablecloths, white candles, sheer white curtains, and the floor shines. We could be on the ring finger of Georgia.
Cynthia’s boy, Johnny, had a real birthday last week. Ten years old. When he saw me from the hall just now, he came running at me like I been gone for days somewhere. He hugged my neck and grabbed my head two-handed, pressed his lips on my cheek and a burst of slobber cooled there.
I love spit kisses.
They’re made by folks with a reckless kinda love inside of ’em.
Cynthia started letting Johnny come in the saloon more often. She said she marking the beginning of their fresh start. But he’s still careful with his permission, it’s why he went after his kiss and I shuffled his red hair.
Cynthia paid a rabbi’s son to teach her Hebrew and give her classes. She said she paid him for every vowel and every letter she learned. Cash money under the table and just between the two of ’em, ’cause girls ain’t supposed to learn. She told Sam she did it ’cause she “Can’t believe this body is all there is to me. I’m more than what feels good and makes me happy.”
Bullshit is what Sam called it but said he respected her decision anyway. Then reminded her she’s a woman of science.
“Exactly,” she said. “Emphasis on biology. Living’s a disaster with a hundred percent fatalities. None of us survive this. Maybe science should be more interested in known theories of what does. I chose this one.”
She’s completed her courses the way the boys do. It’s why she got her wedding dress on to party in her own honor and only invited the people she like: fifty customers, and less than half her staff. So everybody’s walking in and out here like they special. Chosen.
The ones outside are standing around the barbecue pit looking in it like Jesus is about to rise from the ashes. The only stranger here is the big white man guarding the door, asking Cynthia who can come in and who cain’t.
Bobby Lee and his two cousins have already been by two times. Got kicked out once. It wasn’t a mistake that they never got invitations. When they first came to the door, the guard said, “Cynthia. .”
She stopped dancing to see who was at the door. That’s when Bobby Lee took his hat off to show her it was him. “Only Bobby Lee can come in,” she said. “This is a private party and his cousins don’t wash their asses. I only want to smell barbecue pieces, not Henry’s creases.”
Since his cousins couldn’t come, too, Bobby Lee wouldn’t, neither. He put his hat back on and turned down the steps while his grumbling cousins put their middle fingers in the air.
Cynthia’s twirling around the dance floor now, grinding her hips like she got something to sell, even though the invitations say her girls ain’t working today. Maybe not ever. So they stand around the room in their party clothes, free.
This piano stool still feels like Jeremy’s spot even though he’s months gone and his piano’s been covered in a white sheet. Cynthia keeps her mail on top of it now and Sam keeps stacking it there, too. Sometimes he try to make her talk about what’s in the unopened envelopes, but she never do. A lot of ’em from the government.
This whole place has been decorated since yesterday but I put pink flower vases on all the tables this morning ’cause nobody would be able to see the small lit candles burning since it’s day. We took down the dark curtains and let the light come in bright and clean like this ain’t Cynthia’s saloon. Even the mahogany wood chairs look pine from the sunshine. The smell of liquor’s been traded for lavender. Streamers run down the walls, baby blue and white. At the top are paper-cutout stars, pulled open to a ball.
White men, dressed a little better than customers, make up the band at the front of the room tooting horns, twanging banjos, and sliding harmonicas. Except one man. He holds a wide-bellied bottle, got his top lip capped over the mouth of it, blowing. His deep base hums and gets everybody’s fast feet stomping including Cynthia’s.
In the middle of the room, tables and most of the chairs have been pushed away leaving space for Cynthia to throw herself this way and that way, dancing alone but wild in her wedding dress. Her hair that was all pinned up this morning’s been danced loose on the sides, parting her unbleached strands, showing it brown underneath.
Sweet-smelling barbecue is wafting through the door now, full flavored and hickory smoked — chicken, beef, but no pork. Not because Cynthia won’t eat pork ribs but because she’s fond of the pig she call Doc.
She starts some kind of jump-back dance in the center of the room, hopping backward all the way across the floor and behind the bar. I meet her there with a glass of cold water. She grabs Sam and grinds her hips on him, laughing. She say, “Can you believe I graduated to ‘woman’!”
Some old man behind her say, “You been all woman to me.”
“Why don’t you mind yer business,” Cynthia say.
“You look beautiful,” I tell her. “Better late than never.”
“That’s right,” she say. “I’m officially responsible for my own actions. Six hundred and thirteen new laws not to break. I should teach a class.”
A banjo player, his white face painted black with grease, takes a seat with the band. When Cynthia sees him, she grabs my hand and rushes us into two chairs already in the middle of the room. She starts hooting and clapping before our butts hit the seat. She smiles with all her teeth, tells everybody, “Ssssh. . Shut up!” then whispers to me, “This is for you. It’s popular in New York.”
Black-faced Banjo Man puts the pearly round part of his banjo on his thigh and bends one arm around it like he’s holding a woman, pulling her close. He slides his other hand up its neck, along the four strings, and plucks one with his middle finger for sound. With the thumb of his other hand, he searches for the first note of his tune and his flat heel taps the floor. He shifts in his seat and closes his eyes. His song comes. It rises from deep in his gut like he mean every note.
Applause explodes when he finish. Cynthia is jumping up and down and clapping and whistling. “From New York!” she say, then shakes me, “How you like your surprise?”
“Mine?”
“Your gift. . the Black-face man?”