That woman, the one who came asking questions about Cleo Sherwood, she was up to no good. I could smell the yearning on her, too, but there was no sweetness to it. She was like a car engine, revving, revving, revving, making noise, sending sparks out into the world. She wants to get somewhere. Trouble is, she doesn’t know where she wants to go. That’s what makes her dangerous.
I enjoy my supper, a pork chop and string beans, let myself have a little sweet wine, which calms me down. I get ready for bed, for sleep, which I dread. My dreams are a burden because they sometimes come true, but I don’t know which ones will come true and which ones won’t. Have you ever had the sensation of being stuck in an awful dream and then you wake up, experience relief, because it’s not happening? I am denied that release until I can check to make sure that my dreams have not come true. Yes, my vision is a gift, but it’s not one I asked for and I long to return it. Take this from me, God, it’s not right. Make me ordinary, a woman who can live with a man, put her head on the pillow at night without fearing what might visit her in her dreams, what might still be waiting for her after daybreak, when the dreams and nightmares end for everyone else.
Green and yellow, huh?
Green and yellow, huh? You get what you pay for, Maddie Schwartz. You know what was green and yellow? The upholstery on the balcony seats in the theater where I sat, two weeks before I died.
My man had surprised me by taking me to New York, where he had tickets to a musical, Man of La Mancha. They weren’t very good seats and we were the only Negroes in the audience, best I could tell. And the music—well, to me, it was kind of trifling, old-people stuff, but it moved him, I could tell. I watched tears slide down his cheeks, only not during the song that everyone knows, the one that’s on the radio. (Again, that’s only if you listen to old-people radio.) He out-and-out sobbed at the end, when the woman said the dead man in the bed was not the man she knew, that the man she knew and loved still lived somewhere. I thought, in that moment, that he would be mine, that he would choose to be the hero, not the man in the bed. But, no, he was crying because he knew his limitations, knew what he would choose in the end. He was weak.
I watched him watching the show about the show inside the show. It reminded me of that infinity joke we tell each other as kids: I’m painting a picture of myself painting a picture of myself painting a picture. It gets smaller and smaller and smaller until you can’t see anything.
So I decided for myself: I’ll be the one who lives. Not the old man in the bed up onstage, not the wild, beautiful wives of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, and not the last one, the nurse, that no one really talks about, who died pretty soon after he did. I’d be Mary Boleyn, Anne’s sister, who fooled them all and had a good long life. That’s what I would choose.
It was too late. The choice to live had been taken from me and I didn’t even know it.
At three a.m. on January 1, I went to my closet and picked clothes for my date, taking time to make sure that none of Latetia’s clothes were mixed up with mine. We borrowed one another’s clothes, but mine were so much nicer. It wasn’t the first time I’d made a late date and I was always alone on holidays, that’s how it works. The second shift is how I thought of it. My man was generous, but I always needed more and I didn’t make the tips I deserved stuck behind the bar, and whose fault was that? Everybody knew I had late dates. Except him. I hope he never knew, but I’m sure that those who wanted to turn him against me saw to it that he found out.
I pushed that fur far back in my closet, making sure it was in a dry-cleaning bag, as if winter were over. It was for me. Everything was over for me. Mine wasn’t the nicest neighborhood, my apartment wasn’t that great, even with the view of the park and the lake. I suppose the buildings along Druid Hill were grand once, when white people lived in them, but it had been a while. That was the story of the neighborhood, the story of the world. White people always get out just in time. They have an instinct for when the plumbing’s going to go, when the wiring will fray and crackle. Look at you, Madeline Schwartz, leaping from your marriage when you did. You probably thought you were getting out in the nick of time.
I pushed my fur into the back of the closet and went out on my date, dread bubbling up in my stomach. But I had to go. The ending had been written, it was out of my hands.
Six weeks later, when my mama convinced the landlord to open the door for her, she found my fur and recognized it was something I loved. She carried it to the psychic, who buried her face in its pale pink silk lining, stroked the white pelt. It was rabbit, but she pronounced it ermine, which tells you everything you need to know about the woman who claimed she saw my final hours. Green and yellow, indeed. Sure, I wore a green blouse, but the real green was jealousy and there was no yellow—unless you count the cowardice of the man who decreed I had to die but would not deign to do the job himself.
June 1966
June 1966
“You did what?”
Judith Weinstein had been about to sip a spoonful of chicken soup with kreplach when Maddie told her about the visit to Madame Claire. As fastidious in her manners as she was in her appearance, Judith could arrest her spoon’s arc without spilling a drop, but she was gratifyingly amazed by Maddie’s recent adventures.
“I went to the morgue, to see Cleo Sherwood’s body. Then I visited the psychic that her mother consulted.”
“That dead Negro girl? The one who worked in Shell Gordon’s club?”
“She worked at the Flamingo. Is that the place you mean? Who’s Shell Gordon?”
Judith snorted, although it was more like a cat’s sneeze, tidy and contained.
“I told you, Maddie. Stewart ‘Peanut Shell’ Gordon. He’s a small-timer trying to be a big-timer, like Willie Adams, whom he idolizes and loathes in equal measure.”
“I’ve never heard of any of these people.”
“I told you, you should come to the Stonewall club with me. It’s interesting. Although I know most of this stuff from my uncle Donald. Shell Gordon wants to be a powerbroker, like Adams. He puts out a lot of walk-around money on Election Day.”
“Walk-around money?”
Judith sipped her soup, a strange choice for such a warm day. The Suburban House’s soups were good, but Maddie was treating herself to a full feast—a bagel with lox and cream cheese, accompanied by a Tab. She had walked so much this week. Besides, Ferdie liked her as she was.
“It’s how you get your vote out.”
“But it’s illegal to pay people to vote.”
Judith smiled, happy for the chance to be the wise one in their new, tender friendship. “You don’t pay people to vote exactly. You pay people to get out the vote.”
“I’m not sure I see the distinction.”
“In the end, there might not be one.”
Maddie wasn’t interested in a political tutorial. She had sought Judith out because she needed a confidante, someone to listen to her stories from work. Ferdie, she assumed, would be either bored or scandalized by her adventures—going to the morgue, venturing into a Negro neighborhood. Certainly, she could never tell her mother what she was up to. So she had looked for a friend—and realized she had none. She had tried calling Eleanor Rosengren, whom she had not seen since that fateful dinner—really, that was not hyperbole, the dinner had changed her life—with Wallace Wright. But Eleanor had seemed distant, odd. Lines had been drawn up in Pikesville and Maddie realized that her old friends would be on Milton’s side, as surely as they lived on the county side of the city-county line. Maddie had abandoned not only Milton but the whole neighborhood. Her new way of life was a rebuke to all of them.
So she returned to Judith, the eager young woman who always jumped when she called. And it was gratifying how happy she was to make this dinner date. She had even suggested that they go to a movie at the Pikes Theater later, volunteering to drive Maddie home in her father’s car.
Maddie had assumed their dinner conversation would be about her work exploits, that Judith had no stories to share. To her surprise—and, truthfully, to her annoyance—Judith had a confidence, too.
“Remember those cops, from the day when—” It was hard still, to talk about Tessie Fine, the silvery sole of that shoe, the red hair, the green coat.
“Of course.”
“Mine called me.”
Maddie took note of the word, mine. Had the other cop been hers? He had wanted to walk her to her door, but surely that was just politeness? At any rate, he had not called her or followed up in any way and she felt a tiny shock of jealousy, as if she and Judith were two girls who had gone on a double date, but Judith’s date had been successful and hers was not. Silly. She would never date a cop. Oh—she was dating a cop. No, not dating. That was not the word for what she and Ferdie did. She blushed, not that Judith seemed to notice.