The House of Eve, page 3
As the door to the school building slammed behind me, I could feel Leap’s scaly fingers squeezing my breast and the memory made me walk faster up Lombard Street. Like I was trying to outrun a ghost. No matter how many times I had swallowed since the kiss, I swore I could still taste him. When I got to the traffic light on the corner of Broad Street, I coughed, then spit him out on the sidewalk, not caring that I wasn’t being ladylike and that someone might see me. All that nastiness had been for nothing.
I trudged north on Broad Street until my head cleared. It didn’t feel wise to go back to Inez’s fury—plus, Leap was most likely still there. I didn’t want to look at either of them, and I certainly didn’t want to hear the bed springs and moans that came after their fights, drifting through the thin walls as Inez gave up all her sugar. Instead, I hopped on the streetcar and then transferred to the bus that took me to 29th Street. As I walked over to Diamond Street, a breeze rustled through my hair and I pressed my bangs back against my forehead.
My aunt Marie’s apartment was two houses from the corner, a few feet from a paint store. At her front door, I glanced over my shoulder like she taught me to do before pulling my beaded key chain from around my neck. Her apartment was three long flights up, and I knocked twice to announce myself before twisting my key in the lock.
The old furnace burning in the middle of the room gave off a damp odor that was only partially masked by the cinnamon potpourri simmering on the stovetop. Aunt Marie’s eyes widened as she waved me in. She sat on the saggy sofa in her flowered housecoat, with the telephone tucked between her ear and shoulder. A pen and receipt pad in her hand.
“644, 828 and 757. And Joe? No jiving this week. Don’t make me kick your ass.”
Aunt Marie dropped the receiver back into the cradle and smiled, showing off the gap between her two front teeth. She was Inez’s older sister, though they were nothing alike.
“Your mother dropped your stuff off.”
“What she say?” I chewed my nail, and glimpsed three shopping bags by the wall that overflowed with sweaters and shorts, recognizing pieces that I hadn’t worn in years. It looked like Inez had swooped up everything I owned, regardless of size or season.
“That you been smelling your piss.”
Aunt Marie ran her hand over her short, gray-speckled hair, and asked me what happened. I loosened my shoes and told her about needing carfare to get to my program, and how Leap offered it to me.
“For a kiss?” She sucked hard on her teeth. “He a grown-ass man. That all he do?”
I nodded my head quickly, leaving off him pushing his thing against me. Aunt Marie was known to settle problems with the .22 she kept on the floor beneath the couch, and I didn’t want her troubled on my account.
“Triflin’ as shit. Inez over here talking about she done finally found a good man to settle down with. Ain’t nothing good about a man who got eyes for a girl ’bout to turn fifteen.” She pushed herself to stand and reached out her jiggly arms to me.
Aunt Marie was tall and stout like a tree, and I sank into her strong girth.
“Stay as long as you need, hear?”
“Thank you.” Relief made me burrow deeper into her embrace.
“Everything going to be all right.” She lifted my chin. “You eat?”
“Not much. Just a few bites of toast for breakfast.”
Aunt Marie started walking to her bedroom in the back of the apartment. “Some tuna in the fridge. Eat as much as you want.”
From the living room, I only had to walk two steps and I was in what passed as her kitchen, though it was really all one big room. I pulled down a plate from the shelf and smeared the mixture of tuna with cubed boiled eggs and diced onions on two slices of white bread. I took a big bite, and then carried the rest of it back to her bedroom. Aunt Marie dropped the needle on her record player, and out crooned Dinah Washington. From her vanity, she talked to me through the mirror while I sat on the edge of her bed.
“Gotta perform at Kiki’s tonight. Promised I’d get there early and help set up. You be okay here by yourself?”
“I reckon I’ll manage.”
“Your paint supplies still over in the corner under the bay window. Just don’t mess up my floors.”
Aunt Marie’s eggplant-colored bedroom always made me feel like we were backstage at a theater. She had wigs and mustaches, makeup and lashes, feathers and boas, top hats, ties and tails. I chomped down on my sandwich while she applied blush to her umber-colored cheeks and bright red lipstick to her wide mouth. She cocked her head, while I told her about Fatty being late and me not being able to go on the field trip next week.
“Do I need to ride down there and talk to someone about this?”
“No, I got it.” My jaw tightened.
I knew she meant well, but Mrs. Thomas wouldn’t take kindly to me siccing my aunt on her. Besides, Aunt Marie wasn’t the type of person Mrs. Thomas would understand. She’d probably faint at the sight of my big-boned, gun-toting, numbers-running aunt. People like Aunt Marie and Mrs. Thomas didn’t mix. Her showing up to fight my battle would only push me farther from Mrs. Thomas’s favor, and I was already barking up a thin tree. I just had to accept my punishment and move on.
Humming along with Dinah Washington, Aunt Marie slipped on a stark white men’s dress shirt that hung from her closet door, then handed me a pair of gold cuff links to fasten for her. After stepping into men’s trousers and a checkered sports jacket, she finished the look with clip-on chandelier earrings.
“How do I look?”
“Like you the big money McGillicuddy.”
She chuckled. “Only way to be my little money McGillicuddy is to keep your head in those books. I’ll straighten out Fatty. You just do what those people tell you and get that scholarship.”
I wiped the mayo from the corner of my mouth.
“Oh, and Shimmy coming by here to look up underneath the sink.”
“Who’s Shimmy?”
I followed her back down the hall, taking in a whiff of the spicy cologne she sprayed on her neck and wrists.
“My landlord’s son. Too cheap to hire a real plumber. Always sending that boy to do the work round here. And don’t nothing ever get done.”
* * *
I slid the metal chain across the doorframe after she went out, and left Dinah Washington playing to keep me company. Inez wouldn’t let me store my paint supplies at our house. Said seeing my stuff all over made her nerves bad, but all things concerning me put Inez on edge. At Aunt Marie’s, I kept all my art in a metal wash bin. My beige apron had splatters of dry paint down the front, and I slipped it over my neck, then clipped my bangs back off my forehead with bobby pins so that I could see.
The sun had traveled to the other side of the street, making the room dim. I yanked on the rusted string of the brass floor lamp, then spread the worn sheet I used as a drop cloth underneath my feet. My easel wasn’t more than a few scraps of wood that Aunt Marie had found and nailed together for me. Paint was expensive, so I had only the three primary colors: yellow, blue and red, but I was a master at mixing the right combination to create almost any color I wanted.
As I stared at the blank canvas trying to figure out where to begin, I could feel my shoulders slip down my back. It was always like that. To paint was to breathe easy. When I picked up my brush, all my problems magically washed away. I had started painting about two years ago, after my We Rise teacher took us on a field trip to the Philadelphia College of the Arts for a class on oil painting. Louise Clement, a young art student, was our teacher. I had never met a Negro artist before and found myself intrigued by the way her face lit up as she talked about her work. While Louise explained color theory and brush techniques, most of my classmates’ eyes had glazed over with boredom, but I listened with intensity. After the three-hour workshop, I produced my first piece of art. It was a pastel painting of tall willowy branches reaching for the light of the moon. Louise stared at my painting for so long I had begun to sweat, worrying that I had done it all wrong.
Then she touched my shoulder and said, “Art is the friend that you can always return to. It will always be there to heighten your feeling of aliveness. Keep going.”
As our class packed up to leave, Louise gifted me a tote bag containing a few tubes of paint, four brushes, and three small canvases.
Most times my approach to making art was to let my brushes guide the way to unlocking what was inside my heart, so I dipped the flat brush in black, and streaked it across the white page creating a tangle of darkness in the sky. It didn’t take long for me to get lost in the sweep of gray, then scatters of blue, disappearing into what I called Ruby Red’s World, where I had complete control over everything.
Dinah Washington was singing “I Wanna Be Loved” when a hard rap against the door snapped me back.
“Who is it?” My voice came out husky.
“Miz Marie, it’s Shimmy.”
I wiped my hands on my apron and swung open the door. A pale boy with curly brown hair stood under the fluorescent hall light. Our eyes touched and the air around me felt sticky and warm.
“Who are you?” His cheeks flushed beet, and his emerald-green eyes stared at me two seconds beyond politeness.
“Ruby. Marie’s my aunt.”
“Shimmy Shapiro.”
I stepped aside to let him enter.
He smelled like cedar with a hint of the potatoes I pictured him having for dinner. I felt unkempt in my splashed apron and wished I had left my bangs curled over my wide forehead.
His eyes lingered over my canvas and paints, then turned his focus to the kitchen. “This sink here?”
I nodded and he rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows and hiked up his dungarees. After placing his tool bag on the table, he got down on the floor. He pushed aside the makeshift curtain that covered the plumbing and pulled out a bucket. I could smell bleach, and see a bottle of vinegar and a small flask that probably contained corn liquor.
With his head underneath the sink, he called to me. “Can you hand me that flashlight?”
I looked down at the stick hanging from the top of his bag and unclipped it. Our fingers brushed against each other as he took it from me.
“Are you an artist?”
I blew out a nervous giggle. “Wouldn’t say that.”
He rooted around and then pulled his head out and sat up.
“Is it fixed?”
“No, I don’t have the right tools.” He took off his gloves and wiped the sweat on his forehead. “Can I have a drink of water?”
Each cup I picked up was either chipped or faded, and I didn’t want to feel shamed in front of this white boy. I chose my tin mug with the dent next to the handle.
He leaned against the sink and sipped, while taking in my homemade studio in the corner. “You look like an artist to me. What are you painting?”
I glanced down at my bare feet. The pink polish had chipped on my big toe, and I covered it with my other foot.
“Nothing really. Just passing time.”
“Can I see?”
Ordinarily, I didn’t show anyone besides Aunt Marie my work, but there was something about the way he asked. It had a sweetness to it that blotted away some of the sourness from my awful day. Timidly, I turned the easel his way. He moved in closer to me. Then put his hand on his chin and studied it, almost like he was at a museum.
“It’s beautiful but moody. What’s got you sad?” He stared at me with intense green eyes. His expression was thoughtful, and I could tell that he was actually interested in what I had to say.
“Who says I’m sad?”
“The contrast in colors, here and here.”
“You an art critic or something?” I turned my easel away from him.
“No, but I’ve taken a few classes at the art museum. And I know I like it.”
I wasn’t used to compliments. His appreciation of my work made me feel foolish for turning the easel, so I dropped my hands and allowed him to see. He took in the painting again.
In the middle of the page was a large head with grossly oversized bloodshot eyes. I had exaggerated the hair, making it wild and so big that it clouded and shaded out the sun. Down in the right-hand corner was an oak tree with a knothole in the center. Peeking from the hole was a small blue bird searching for the light. Shimmy stepped in closer, tracing the bird with his fingertips. After several seconds passed, he uttered the word “lovely.”
I wrapped my arms around my middle, suddenly feeling exposed.
“The bird says it all.”
The tiny bird was the only object on the page that was bright and in full color.
“Thank you,” I mumbled finally, having not realized that I had been holding my breath until the words left my body.
“May I?” He reached for my paintbrush.
I nodded and then he dipped the brush in my smear of yellow and dabbed in a streak through the big head’s hair. It added the perfect contrast to the bird’s blue.
“If you don’t like it, you can cover it over with black.”
“No, it’s nice.” My heart was thumping like I had just taken the stairs two at a time. Shimmy stood so close to me that we were almost touching. The way he stared at my painting made me feel like he was peeking at my soul.
He finished his water and then put his cup in the sink. Turning for the door he said, “I better go. Tell your aunt my mother will send someone by. Guess I’ll see you around, Ruby.”
“When?” The question escaped from my lips too quick for my brain to stop it, and I wanted to grab the word and shove it back inside. There was no reason for me to see this white boy again. Even if he did like my art.
“I work at Greenwald’s candy store.” He offered a boyish grin. “Come by tomorrow for a malt?”
“We’ll see.”
Shimmy hesitated in the hall. “If you come, it’ll be on me.”
“I can pay for myself.”
“Of course, I didn’t mean—”
“Thanks for looking at the sink,” I said quickly before closing the door.
Dinah Washington stopped crooning, and I replaced her album with Billie Holiday. “Lover Man” filled the room as I stood over the sink. Shimmy’s mug was the only dish in the basin. I picked it up, and without thinking, rested the rim against my bottom lip.
CHAPTER FOUR BLACK MECCA
Eleanor
Eleanor ran a tube of coral lipstick across her lips, and then dabbed her wrists and neck with a lilac-scented eau de toilette. She fixed her hair with two rolls pinned on top and left the back down in drop curls. When she stood back from the hanging mirror in her dorm room, she was unable to believe what she saw. The dress Nadine had laid out for her clung to her curves like a second skin. The low neckline accentuated her graceful shoulders, and the satiny blush material seemed to illuminate her face, giving her a healthy glow. Eleanor hadn’t felt beautiful in a long time, and she stared at herself in awe.
“What did I tell you, Ohio? Don’t you feel better already?” Nadine reached over and buttoned the tiny clasp at the back of Eleanor’s neck.
“We’d better get going before I change my mind,” Eleanor teased. Glancing around their room. “Why do you have to make such a mess, girly. You know things out of order wrecks my nerves.”
Nadine had gone through several frocks, nylons, heels, gloves, and they were all scattered about her bed, and some covered the floor.
“I have a hard time making decisions.” Nadine picked up her purse.
“I should probably stay back and tidy up. Your clutter is a perfect excuse not to go.”
“Please, not after all my hard work.” Nadine put her finger on Eleanor’s back and playfully shoved her out the door.
The hallway was filled with fragrances of fruity perfumes, talcum powders and hair pomade, as many girls buzzed about. Some had on their good trench coats, silk stockings and scarlet lipstick, prancing down the hall on their way out. A few sat in the lounge by the roaring fire, waiting for gentleman callers to drop by. Then there were the ones that were nowhere to be found, tucked in their rooms with snacks smuggled from the cafeteria, the radio turned low with a book opened. If it hadn’t been for Nadine and her relentless harassment, Eleanor would have been one of the latter.
As the pair signed out at the front desk, their dorm matron, a thick woman with gray streaks in her hair, pushed back her glasses and spoke through clenched teeth: “Please remember to conduct yourself like ladies at all times. Your future husband could be anywhere, and I wouldn’t want you to taint your reputation with bad behavior.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they replied in unison, scribbling their names on the night ledger.
The Coedikette, their handbook of rules, made it very clear: students were only permitted two off-campus passes per month, and requests needed to be made in writing at least one week in advance. When Eleanor asked Nadine how she could have possibly secured one for her so quickly, Nadine replied with a mischievous grin, “If I told you, I’d have to shoot you.”
The girls walked to the edge of campus arm in arm. Nadine insisted on paying for a taxicab, because her parents would be cross if they found out she was on the bus after dark. The cracked leather seats in the cab smelled like coconuts. When the driver turned onto U Street, Eleanor gazed out the window at all the well-dressed people in hats and long coats strolling up and down the brightly lit street. They passed the Murray Casino, the Ford, the Dabney Movie Theater and then pulled to a stop in front of the Club Bali at 14th Street.
“Have a good evening, ladies.” The driver stood on the street and held the car door.
The flashing red-and-yellow sign above the club, coupled with the song “Caravan” by Duke Ellington floating from inside, gave Eleanor a surprise jolt of excitement at the base of her spine. She had not spent much time off campus at all.
Eleanor followed Nadine down the skinny stairs into a dance hall lit dimly with Gothic wall sconces. There were square tables in a U-shape hugging the dance floor. The band played “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” and couples were shaking their hips, snapping their fingers and patting their feet to the rhythm. Groups of girls stood in safe clusters with their eyes darting about, hoping a boy would ask them to dance.
