A Matter of Souls (6 page)

“Girl, I'm the luckiest man on God's green Earth!” JC grabbed both of Hazel's hands and swung her around as if they were already on the dance floor. Hazel felt warm inside and flushed outside. She didn't resist when JC looped one of his long arms inside hers.

“I gotta get to the grocery and back before Miss Clotille comes home!” she protested feebly.

“Let me walk you piece of the way,” he crooned into her ear.

Hazel slowed down enough to let him fall in step with her. On Tuesdays Miss Clotille had her teacher's meeting and some committee meetings, so Hazel had plenty of time to pick up the few items for her refrigerator.

For now, she could pay attention to how solid JC's shoulder was against hers, and how pleasantly manly he smelled, even though he'd been clipping hedges when he saw her. They strolled. Hazel wished she could be seen, but this was a working neighborhood and it was only three
o'clock. Even the old people were still inside listening to their radio programs or dozing at this time of day.

“Hazel, I gotta tell you something.”

“What is it?” Hazel didn't know him as well as she planned to, but she heard the romance creep out of his voice. She looked up sharply.

There wasn't a trace of dishonesty in his face. He stopped and swallowed. Hazel watched his Adam's apple slide up and down. He tightened his grip on her hand the same way she'd done to Baby George, and that was comforting.

“I took on another job.”

“That's all? I have to tell you, JC, that I do like a hardworking man.” She squinted up at him. His chiseled cheekbones glistened in the afternoon sun. “I'm glad. But what I mean to tell you is that—well, I know you're a real upright kinda girl—and—”

“You haven't broken the law, have you?”

“No! No! I joined a band, Hazel. A jazz band.”

Hazel sighed and smiled. “Well, honey, I know you're a musician! That seems natural to me.”

He grinned. His teeth were the straightest, whitest teeth Hazel had ever seen on a man. She figured they had never seen tobacco, those pretty teeth. But it was clear that JC wasn't through talking. Hazel waited patiently, and she could tell that he appreciated her calmness.

“I'm glad. The thing is, I worked last weekend. We did this gig, you know—that's what we call a performance—and it was at a private club.”

Hazel knew what that meant. It meant a restricted club. A White club. Why would she take exception to that? The money was still green, wasn't it? She kept listening. JC cocked his head to one side, almost like he wanted to see her better.

“This was last Saturday night,” he said carefully. Hazel nodded.

“These White men were having a party. They had some gambling and they were all liquored up and we played till two in the morning. The thing is, we weren't the only … uh … entertainment. Hazel, there was women there, women they hired to come. Jurdine was one of the women.” He took a breath. “I saw her leave with one of 'em.”

Hazel's knees went numb, and she felt herself drifting from the great height of truth down to the hard reality of lies. Last Saturday night. When Jurdine had worn perfume to the night shift.

“Hey, baby! Are you okay? I knew I shouldn't have said anything … Hazel, I'm sorry!” She was in his arms, but it wasn't the way she'd dreamed it would be. Her heart was racing, and she could barely speak.

“Hazel! Doggone it, I shoulda kept my big mouth—”

“It's all right … ” she forced the words out, though her stomach was fluttering and she was about to throw up. JC held onto her. She fought to get control over her body and her mind, which had seemed to go blank. “… Just … just don't tell nobody else. No one else, please?” She was weak, but she struggled to get to her feet. JC lifted her.

“Whatever you say, Hazel. I only thought that somebody in the family should know, in case …” he faltered. Hazel turned to look at him.

“In case what?” she asked, still unable to put all the information together and accept the real facts he had presented.

“In case something happens to her.” JC had lowered his voice, and Hazel was suddenly alert. Jurdine was living dangerously. “I don't think you're in the shape to go to the grocery by yourself,” he said. “Let me walk you over there and back. Maybe you ought to go home.”

Hazel shook her head vigorously, and the twist of hair at her neck fell. Waves cascaded against her skin, making her feel feverish. She couldn't go home. There would be questions, nosy questions. And she couldn't leave Miss Clotille's without putting things in order—there would be questions in that quarter, too.

“No, I can make it if you help me. When I get back to Miss Clotille's I can sit a while and get myself together. I have to figure out what to do with what you told me … I know you did what you thought was best, JC.” She managed to smile.

He lightly touched her hair. “Excuse me, Hazel Mozella Reed, but you are awfully beautiful with your hair down.”

An orange school bus swung around the nearest corner and surrounded them with screeches and screams. Hazel straightened her back and started to walk.

“You're excused, Johnson Caesar Johnson,” she said, reaching for his hand.

When Hazel stepped back into her house later that afternoon, she remembered that on Tuesdays, Mama and Daddy went straight from work to their deacon and deaconess board meetings at the church. So she took a deep breath of relief as she crossed the threshold. Laughter and girls' gossip floated from the kitchen to meet her, and the air was heavy with the smell of sizzling Royal Crown Hair Dressing. Hazel untied her shoes near the door and carried them toward the back of the house.

“Ouch! You singed me!” Baby George's complaint was muffled by the fact that her chin was pushed down against her chest. Velma Jean sat on a high stool over her sister; one hand grasped a shock of tightly curled hair, the other was raised and holding the smoking hot comb. Miriam sat at the table, flipping the pages of one of Hazel's borrowed
Half-Century
magazines
.

Hazel shook her head and laughed, for a moment forgetting the awful news that she was holding. “What are y'all doing in here, messing up Mama's kitchen?” She pulled out a chair and dropped into it.

“Trying to make a woman out of this sister thing we got.” Violet appeared with an armful of dresses, sucking her teeth. “George, have you
ever
worn a decent dress?”

George mumbled and scrunched even further down into the chair.

“I'ma hit you in the head if you don't sit still!” Velma Jean warned.

“Hazel, how come you got the words in this advertisement underlined with an ink pen?” Miriam was bending close over a page in the back of the magazine. Hazel swiftly snatched it away, but Violet's keen eyes had already seen.

“You using
bleaching cream
?” Violet shrieked.

The hot comb clinked onto the burner, and Velma Jean actually jerked George Ann's head up. All eyes were on Hazel.

Suddenly she felt accused and defensive. Her throat went dry.

“Oh no, Hazel.” Velma Jean's eyes teared.

“That's just crazy!” Baby George shook her head, and the smooth, already pressed waves moved like a black curtain.

“Don't tell me you takin' Mama Vee and Jurdine seriously!” Violet exploded, dropping her frown to the magazine. “Everybody knows how colorstruck they are!”

“Mama says a woman who tries to change her natural beauty is a fool! But you're smart, Hazel!” Miriam said. “You could be a teacher, you could be just like Miss Clotille.”

Miriam's little-girl remarks hit just too close to the truth. Hazel clutched the magazine in her sweating hands.
She wanted to leave the room, but her legs were weak again. Yes, their mother said that. Mama worked hard and mothered hard and prayed hard, and still had her looks and her devoted husband. Miss Clotille had money and creamy skin and respect. Hazel coveted all that. But what were her chances? She was milk chocolate in a world where that was the same as mud.

“It—it's just a beauty treatment. That's all it is.”

“Beauty, my ass.” Violet hissed.

“Hazel, you're already beautiful!” said Miriam.

Hazel gave her a shaky smile in return.

“Could we get off Hazel and get back to beautifying
me
?” George Ann pleaded, wagging her half-straight, half-braided head. Violet held up the two dresses she'd been wrinkling in her arms. Both were Jurdine's. Both were expensive.

Hazel shook her head, guessing how her sister had paid for them. Baby George's first social occasion couldn't be tainted with that.

“Don't nobody want to hear Jurdine ranting over those scraps of material. I have a nice seersucker, George, that I only wore one time. I know it would fit you. Let me pull it out.” Hazel dragged herself up from the table.

“Thanks, Hazey!” George Ann said.

Violet followed Hazel into the hallway toward their bedroom. She gripped Hazel's elbow once they were out of earshot of the kitchen.

“I saw that advertisement. You'd better stop messing with that shit. It'll kill you.”

Hazel gently pulled her arm away. “When did you get such a nasty mouth?”

On Thursday evening, Hazel locked herself in the bathroom after dinner. She sat on the closed toilet and turned the glass jar in her hands, reading the label aloud softly. “
Beauty Queen Complexion Clarifier … Guaranteed to brighten, lighten, and heighten your natural beauty
!” What was so wrong with that? She wondered. “
Manufactured by the Emerson Beauty Company, Emerson, Georgia.
” But nowhere inside the pretty scrollwork border did the label tell what, exactly, this miracle-working product was manufactured
with
. Her mind wandered back to her sisters' reactions. Everybody called it bleaching cream … but did it really have bleach in it?

She blinked at the jugs and containers of cleaning products lined neatly under the sink. Too much bleach could eat through linens and clothes. Surely they couldn't have put something like that into a skin cream, could they?

She thought of the smelly but fascinating experiments she had done in chemistry class. She could ask Mr. Goodman, the teacher. She had once confided in him about her self-invented cleaning formula, and he had gotten all excited, talking about how she had a head for science! She
had laughed at the notion, knowing that her lab grades had always been only fair to middling.

She had never read as many books as Miriam did. She read all sorts of magazines though, including that
National Geographic
when she could get her hands on it. She loved the feeling it gave her of traveling all over the world. And Daddy brought home his boss's stack of newspapers at the end of every week. Hazel pored over them. It never mattered to her that the news was several days late.

She was sometimes bothered that she didn't always speak the way educated people did; none of the Reeds did. In fact, it was Miss Clotille who'd pointed that out.