A Toast Before Dying (17 page)

“I know what you’re thinking, Mali, but you must remember the times. We’re talking early forties. Dessie had stayed home for years. She wasn’t prepared or trained to work. And what options did black women have back then? The most practical one was to stand at 163rd Street on Grand Concourse in the Bronx in a crowd, and if you got lucky some white woman drove up and picked you up to do hours of backbreaking housework and at the end of the day put two dollars in your hand after deducting for a lunch sandwich so stale your own dog wouldn’t have eaten it.

“But Dessie didn’t go that way; learned quick
enough to pinch a penny so hard old Abe cried. That kept her together until the baby was almost two years old. Then one day, she was pushing the carriage down Seventh Avenue and passed the Half-Moon Bar, and the owner, who knew the whole story, offered her a job.

“At that time, it was mostly men behind those counters, but he put Dessie in there and business boomed. Dessie stayed even during the war, when she could’ve made more money in a defense plant, but she’d heard those stories about how the best jobs went to all the white folks first—even the old, crippled ones—before they would hire the blacks, and she said no thanks, she’d had her share of short change from white folks. Besides, money was flowing in Harlem in those days. The Moon was jumping and she jumped right with it.

“She made enough to send her daughter to boarding school, a white boarding school, because she wanted that child to have the education and advantages she herself didn’t have. Besides, the child, Marcella, looked white enough, so why not act white and be white.

“Marcella came home most holidays, but sometimes she visited or went home with her rich classmates. God knows the grand tale she must’ve concocted to keep that lie going.

“When Marcella graduated, Dessie went. I don’t know how she pulled that off. I mean Dessie was pretty pale herself, with straight hair, but … not enough to be
white
-white. Must’ve said she was Mediterranean or
the maid or something. I don’t know. Anyway, we spent the next six months laughing about it.”

“Was it that funny?” I asked.

Miss Adele fixed me with a stare, and from her silence I came to understand that it wasn’t real laughter at all but the sounds we make to keep from crying, what we do when we realize race has poisoned the core of this country, and the sound we make is the distraction that keeps us from killing somebody.

“So I laugh,” Miss Adele said, “when I hear white folks say they can trace their family to some village in Scotland or back to France at the time of Louis the Fourteenth. Fine, I say. Except they conveniently blank out that period of slavery when African women were having as many babies by white owners as they were by African men. A lot of those owners sent those white-looking children to Europe to live, marry, and have European children whose grandmama was black.

“Other children, who were sold away because the owners didn’t want to be reminded, faded into the larger population, their blackness bleached, in the chaos of the Civil War. So I smile because somewhere in the murk of miscegenation is the true legacy that this country refuses to address.”

“So what Dessie did with her daughter,” I said, “sending her away to a different life, wasn’t new. She was just following a certain pattern.”

“I suppose, but it seemed to me like too damned much work, and I told Dessie so. I mean the bottom line is we really don’t know anyone’s true pedigree.
Anyway, Marcella went away to college, and the summer before she was to graduate, she came home with a baby.”

“Thea?”

“Thea. Yes.”

“Was her father black or white?”

“Who knows? Marcella stayed exactly one day, stepped out to get something from the store, and never came back. A month later, Dessie received a letter from Nevada, saying Marcella was all right. Later, we heard that she’d been killed in an auto accident on the West Coast.”

“So Dessie raised Thea?”

“Yes. Thea never knew her mother or her father.”

“Did she ever ask?”

“I suppose so. What child isn’t going to ask about her parents. But how’re you gonna dig up the dead? Marcella was gone. Nothing you could do about that, can you?”

I sat back, cradling my cup in my hand, thinking how we’re all affected by death in different ways. I knew how I felt about Benin at times, but I couldn’t remember my grief spilling over into such a state where I wandered like a catatonic through everything, allowing everyone to do for me, care for me, touch me, and yet feel nothing.

But at times, Thea had indeed felt
something
. Anger, perhaps. Or jealousy. Probably had been jealous of Gladys and her close family. And she’d showed major attitude toward me when Dad had introduced us at the club.

Miss Adele leaned forward and picked up Dessie’s picture again. “When all this is straightened out and if this picture is available, I’d like to have it,” she said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.

“What do you intend to do with the bankbook?”

“What is there to do,” I said, “but get it back where it belongs as fast as possible.”

B
y the time I left Miss Adele, the rain that had been falling had stopped and a late-afternoon sun was edging out of the scattering clouds to bathe Seventh Avenue in a pale coral glow. The wind was cool and smelled faintly of fresh wet leaves. I cut over to Lenox Avenue, where folks with TGIF tattooed on their foreheads emerged from the subway at 145th Street, rushing home in order to rush back out.

Friday-evening party energy was in the air and I needed to catch up with Gladys before she left her office. I dialed her number and one of the brokers answered. “Miss Winston is with a client,” she said when I gave her my name. “Mali Anderson? Wait, just a minute.”

Gladys came on. “Mali. How’re you doing?” Her tone was edged with impatience.

“Sorry to bother you,” I said. “I wanted to know when we’re going back to Thea’s.”

“Probably next week. I haven’t had time. I’ll call you.”

She hung up abruptly and I felt relieved. She’d probably been too busy to go back to the apartment.

I walked down Lenox to 143rd Street, where two large oil-drum shaped barbecue stoves near the curb broadcast a smoking, sharp hickory fragrance into the air. The stoves belonged to Old Man Charleston, and the waiting buyers stepped back as he ambled out of the tiny take-out restaurant draped in a chef’s toque and glistening white apron.

He cut through the crowd like an ocean liner and opened the stoves to coat the meat with a spread of Charleston’s secret sauce. I watched and wondered, as I often did, where the secret came from, since Charleston had been born right down the avenue in Harlem Hospital.

After serving a stretch for burglary in the sixties, he’d come out and flipped burgers in a 42nd-Street greasy spoon until his parole was up, then started his street barbecue with a charcoal stove and an umbrella stand. In a year he’d made enough to lease a sliver of store so narrow that
CHARLESTON
had to be printed vertically on the window.

He cooked ribs and chicken outdoors summer and winter, and paid his fines promptly when he was ticketed. The take-out line grew longer by the season and often included some of the same cops who ticketed him.

“Fifteen more minutes,” he announced and wiped his dark face with the plaid towel suspended from his back pocket. “Good things come to those who wait,” he
reminded the few grumblers before he disappeared back into the store.

I followed him inside and he smiled when he saw me. “Mali, Baby. Long time no see. Whassup?”

“Nothing and plenty.” I laughed. “I need an order of ribs and a favor.”

“The ribs you got. Name the favor.”

“I need your picks.”

“Locked out again?”

“Again,” I said. He reached under the counter and pulled a palm-size case from the shelf.

“Mali, I can see in your face you ain’t locked out this time, but don’t tell me what you want ’em for. I don’t want to know. Just have ’em back here tomorrow
A.M.
”

“What’re you doing? Renting them out?”

He raised his hands and stepped back. “Mali, I’m
shocked. Shocked
that you—”

“Come on, Charleston. Are you?”

“Hell no. I may
look
like a fool but that’s as far as it go. Suppose I rent some dude these picks, he lends ’em to a crackhead, and I go home and find my own crib cleaned. Do that make sense? Only reason I want ’em back here is so I’ll know where they are.”

I folded my elbows on the narrow counter. “I’ve been meaning to ask you why you keep them.”

“Girl, sometimes you ask the damnedest questions.” He opened a stack of plastic containers and inspected them for flaws.

“Listen, I keep ’em to look at every now and then. Specially when things git a little tight, what with the
rent and all the other bills, you know what I’m sayin’? I pull this box out and gaze long and hard at my used-to-be life. Everybody has somethin’ they don’t never want to go back to. Me, I’ll take the cradle—die—before I see the slammer again. I keep this box to remind me how I got there and to let me know that no matter how bad things are, they ain’t never gonna git as tough as it was in the joint.”

As he talked, he filled a take-out carton with coleslaw, red rice, and yams, and left enough space for the ribs. He moved quickly and I marveled how someone so large was able to maneuver in such a small space: like the night I wanted a rib sandwich and walked in on the two stickup men who had him pressed to the wall.

I had been on the job then, and when I’d yelled “Freeze! Police!” Charleston slid out of sight so fast behind the counter I thought the wall he’d been leaning against had been oiled.

I had drawn my weapon and called for backup when one perp broke for the door. Charleston sprang up with a short-handled chopping knife—the kind you see being flipped in those Benihana restaurants—except that Charleston’s had something extra. Speed. The knife flew past me in a triple arc before landing in the perp’s shoulder blade. A witness later said the momentum pushed the guy down Lenox and right on through the revolving door of Harlem Hospital.

I would stop in on Charleston from time to time after that, but it wasn’t until I’d left the department that we became good friends. I had come home from a party one night and found I had lost my keys. Dad was playing
a wedding upstate and Alvin was sleeping over at a friend’s.

Ruffin was smart, but not smart enough to unlock the door. Plus, when he heard my voice, he’d set up a howl so loud I thought someone had died. So I went to Charleston’s to sit over coffee and a doughnut until Dad got home.

The coffee was so bad it talked back. I told Charleston so and he leaned on the counter.

“I see your mind went the way of your keys, but don’t come jumpin’ in my face. I didn’t make you lose ’em. Anyway,” he’d said, reaching under the counter, “take these and try ’em. See what happens. Bring ’em back first thing in the
A.M.
”

He’d opened the set and showed me how to use them. When I returned them the next day, I said, “You didn’t have to do this for me, especially after I talked wrong about your coffee.”

“Well, that’s why I had to git you outta here,” he’d said. “My coffee’s bad, but it’s the best in the neighborhood. You was makin’ me look shaky.” He winked and laughed and we’d been friends ever since.

Now he slid the case across the counter. “
A.M.
, okay?”

“No problem, Charleston.
A.M.
”

My nerves got the better of me, and before I reached 116th Street I donated my dinner to a street person. It wouldn’t do to have Charleston’s secret sauce lingering
in Thea’s elegant apartment, even though she was no longer there.

At Graham Court the wrought-iron gates were locked, but I hung around long enough to walk through with several people returning home. Some had stepped off the bus with large packages and others were pushing shopping carts. An older woman paused at the entrance of Thea’s building and I helped lift her cart and carry it inside.

I smiled and chatted until she rolled the cart off on the third floor. On the eighth floor, I stepped off. I looked around the empty hallway and it was so quiet I could hear my breath rushing in and out. My chest was tight and I wanted to move fast. Get in and get out again.

I rang the bell first, just in case, then selected the first pick in the box. It went in easily and I pressed my ear to the lock, listening, as Charleston had said, for the tumblers to fall in place. I inserted a second pick below the first one and eased it back and forth until I heard the click, then pushed against the door and it opened.

I made my way down the foyer and through the living room without turning on the lights, even though the daylight had faded. I went straight to the bedroom and felt for the zipper behind the headboard.

Don’t sit on the bed. Don’t leave any telltale impression
. My fingers were damp as I opened the zipper and slipped the bankbook and photo back inside. The sweat was running down my arm. I also needed to go to the bathroom, but in the dark my nervousness was getting in my way.

Don’t go to the bathroom. Just get the hell on out. Even if you have to pee on yourself in the elevator. Get out
.

I paused near the foot of the bed, trying to remember if the door had a slam lock or if I had to fumble with the picks again. Charleston hadn’t mentioned that part. I was about to step into the living room when I heard a sound and saw a sliver of light. Someone had opened the door and was coming down the hall.

I backed into the bedroom, quietly sank to my knees, and slid on my stomach under the bed. The sound of the footsteps lessened but a light crunching still told me the person was walking silently across the thick carpet in the living room. The crunch came nearer and stopped at the foot of the bed. A click sounded and a small white circle swept along the floor, then arced up and disappeared.

I lay still as the mattress above me made a soft groan. The zipper sounded almost rusty as it opened and closed. And I held my breath as the flashlight fell to the floor and the circle of light shone directly into my face. Before the flashlight could roll under the bed, a hand scooped it up, clicked it off, and the person left the room.