Betsey Brown (15 page)

Mrs. Maureen sent Regina for Little John to come do Betsey's make-up. It was Mrs. Maureen's way of saying to Mrs. Brown that there's a growing girl here, lady, pay attention. The minister's wife left just in time. The other ladies were puzzled, but calmed when Mrs. Maureen went on bout stage-lights and bone structure. Little John just hovered with brushes of mink and fox hair. He was in his world. A face with no wrinkles. No blemishes. Purity. He was beside himself. Mrs. Maureen had to
remind him, “Little John, she a child playing a clarinet, this is not the Jewel Box Revue.”

The pedicure Regina executed herself. She wanted Betsey to feel relaxed and cared about. The way all little Negro girls should feel. Not cramped or out of place, or funny-looking or easy. Just lovely and well-loved. Gina gave Betsey a very special pedicure cause she knew she'd never have one, and probably her little girl wouldn't either. Not the way this world was bout folks born on the other side of the tracks, colored or white. You could forget it, the sweetness, that is.

Betsey could hardly believe it was her when she looked in the mirror. What a woman she was going to be! Regina gave her five dollars to take a cab home, cause dusk was falling and it was getting late. Regina made her promise not to come back or mention to her mama about the baby or Roscoe. Mrs. Maureen was more explicit.

“If your mother so much as dreams you were here before the shop opened, you gonna get a licking the likes of which you've never felt.”

Regina held Betsey real close to her. “Betsey, your life isn't gonna be like mine. Don't you grow up too soon. Take your time. There's something so special when you're really in love, let it come to you. Don't chase it. Okay? You be good, now. I love you.”

With that Betsey was sent down the stairs and out the door, escorted by Little John, who was still dabbing and brushing her face. “You are just too beautiful, my dear.”

Betsey felt beautiful. She felt brave. She knew it now. There was a difference between being a little girl and being a woman. She knew now. She'd never see Regina again, but they'd never be separate, either. Women who can see over the other side are never far from each other.

Betsey took her five dollars to a very special place. A Yellow cab carried her to the boulevard where the white folks had their parade each fall and crowned a queen of the Veiled Prophet, who was a white man no one ever saw. Then they had a big ball with pictures in the newspapers for days of this white girl and that white girl. The regular people could come and watch, even the colored. Betsey did it every year, looked at the floats of the ladies in waiting in their satin gowns and laced gloves, the clowns and musicians longside the floats entertaining one and all. The whole city in a Mardi Gras out of season and out of time, with young girls of every color wishing the man behind the jeweled mask had chosen them to ride about the city that night, a night the stars were sapphires, opals, and diamonds, a tiara for a queen.

Betsey paid the cab driver $4.25 and gave him the rest as a tip. She was feeling regal. Then she marched as grandly as possible to the middle of the street where she proceeded to stop traffic and create a great stir while she declared herself Queen of the Negro Veiled Prophet and his entourage.

The police only asked her her name and address, and went on about how St. Louis was a dangerous place to be roaming about alone at dusk. They didn't understand she reigned on her own streets for the first time in her life. She wasn't afraid anymore. The city was hers.

Jane's chandeliers were the hallmark of her move south. She had no winding staircase with mahogany rail, but she had chandeliers of every shape and size. The chandelier in the dining room hung down like a soft skirt, rows of crystal looping back to the center where the candlelight bulbs left a sheen of rose over the good table. In the first living room the chandelier etched a diamond shape, glistening tinkles reflecting the rise of the race, the status of the bridge players. The third chandelier was one large circle of hexagonal crystals coming to a point directly above Jane's head where she knelt in the midst of all her family praying for her daughter's safe return.

“Jesus, please let us have our girl back. My child knows we love her. We don't know what brought her to leave us, but Lord, Jesus Christ, please keep her safe until the very moment she walks back through that door. And we know she'll be coming
back to us, Lord, because You are a Benevolent Savior, a Gentle Redeemer, and a gracious host of all living creatures. This we pray, Dear Lord, please bring our Betsey back.”

Jane knelt silently with tears rolling down her cheeks. Sharon and Margot were afraid. They were praying, but not knowing the faith Jane and Vida knew, they feared the loss of their big sister to some evil in the city, a maniac. She might disappear like the children they heard about on the radio sometimes who went to school and never came back. Children who weren't even planning to run away. Allard whimpered every once in a while, “I want Betsey now, Mama.” Then Vida would hum “Pass Me Not, Oh Gentle Savior” and rock him till he quieted. Charlie was uneasy in this room saturated with pleas to Christ, but he knew enough that Betsey needed some power besides her own wherever in the hell she'd carried herself off to. Once the room was calm, Jane would begin to pray aloud again.

“Dear Lord, we don't know where our child is, but we know You do. Because You know all things and all the ways of this world. In Thy sight somewhere our child is wrestling with wrongdoing, Lord. Come to her aid and bring her back to us. She shall be received as was the Prodigal Son. We shall open our hearts to her, Lord, we promise to make her home a place she'll never want to leave again. But, first, Lord, please bring Betsey back to us, sound of body and sound of mind.”

Greer had called the police hours before and sat in the kitchen by the phone tying surgical knots to the ends of his conga drum, pursing his lips. Greer was a warm man, but not a churchgoing man. He was more worried about the police not giving a damn about a missing colored child than he was that Betsey would be mangled by some deranged stranger. Greer
had faith in his people, not in Jesus, not in the police, not in the pastor called to comfort Vida, already mildly sedated to prevent aggravation of her heart.

Not being a man of God did not make him a distant man. His hands fumbled one of the knots and the veins in his temples jumped, thinking what would become of his daughter in a city that might as well be below the Mason-Dixon Line, where plenty of colored made their way on the wrong side of everything. Now Betsey was out there with them. Greer knew she'd gone to one of the Negro neighborhoods, but he couldn't set his mind on which one. All the note said was:

I love you all very much, but I don't belong here. I'm different from you all. Take good care of Margot and Sharon. Charlie be a doctor. Please watch Allard and those fires. Tell Eugene he'll have to look for me when I'm grown-up. I love you,

Betsey

Greer had gone over the note again and again, trying to imagine what made Betsey think she didn't belong at home, that she couldn't grow at home, that her house wasn't as full of good colored as the next. He tried to tie more surgical knots, but as the tension and anger grew in him, his fingers began to beat a bomba on the conga drum.

Jane leapt to her feet, virtually flying into the kitchen.

“You goddamned black niggah! Can't you understand my child's missing and you have the nerve to be in here playing those stupid drums. African! Don't you have any sense at all? Are you out of your mind? You better get down on your knees and pray the good Lord doesn't strike you down. Heathen! Lowdown colored jackass!”

Jane fell apart in Greer's arms beating his chest as he had beat the drums.

“Where's my daughter? Where's my daughter? Where's my child? Make them find her.”

Greer held on to his wife. He wanted her to know he wanted Betsey back more than anything, but he couldn't kneel before a white Christ, trust the white police to do anything but ignore all his calls, the repeated inquiries, his description of his child. They all look alike. That's why Greer was always sewing up the wounds of Negroes shot “mistakenly” by the police.

He knew it was coming. He felt it when Jane pulled his hand to come to the room where the chandelier swayed from the lilt of Vida's humming and the children's building anxiety. Allard wanted to build a fire right in the middle of the room and throw precious things in it. That might bring Betsey back. Africans offered things up to the spirits and got their wishes. Indians danced and got rain. All Jane would allow was prayers to Jesus. Prayers her husband would not say. Prayers that filled his wife's very being.

Greer held back as Jane moved toward the rest of the family. Now the drumming had stopped, she was coming back to herself. She hesitated peculiarly, turned round, looked Greer straight in the eye.

“If you can't pray for your own daughter, maybe you don't belong in this house.”

And off she went to the praying children, the humming Vida, and the evening lights surrounding them as though the front room was now a sanctuary.

“Dear Lord, please, see us to the safety of my child and bring her home as herself, Lord, as You know her to be and we know her.”

Jane heard Greer's footsteps nearing them, she hoped he'd join them, but he turned and went up the stairs.

He'd decided to go out himself and search all the places he'd ever mentioned to Betsey, on a hunch she wanted to be an Ikette. How could he explain to Jane that Betsey wanted to be an Ikette at a time like this. Jane down there on her knees with Jesus. His whole family looked like a bad scene from
Green Pastures.

Greer came down the stairs with great purpose and abrasiveness. Jane turned to him.

“Greer, please, I can't do this by myself. Greer, I swear if you don't join us in prayer, I'll leave you. Do you hear me? I can't do this all by myself.”

Greer kept moving toward the front door.

“I thought Jesus was helping you. I'm going to find my daughter.”

Jane resumed silent prayer fervently. Now she'd lost not only her daughter, but maybe her husband as well.

“Oh, where's my favorite child?” Vida murmured from the other end of the room. The children had escaped to their individual mourning spots, asking Jesus and their private fairies to bring Betsey back. Who would they tell their secrets to? Who would have patience with Allard's shoes and his matches? Where would Charlie get girl tips from? Where was Betsey? They hadn't thought they'd miss her.

Jane helped her mother off her knees to a rocker where Vida kept asking for Betsey, which only made Jane feel more helpless now Greer was gone. But Christ was her rock, her solid ground. She went to her room to wait.

The car lurched out the driveway like a niggah gone mad, to Vida's mind. Jane dug her nails into her flesh, hoping Greer wouldn't be fool enough to drive like a jackass so some other
Negro would have to sew him up tonight. Police in St. Louis didn't take kindly to Thunderbirds with out-of-state tags and a colored behind the wheel.

Vida rocked in some netherworld of despair, her precious baby gone, humming “Come Thou Almighty King” intermittently, etching her hymn with verbal pleas for the safety of her grandchild.

Jane made herself a strong jigger of scotch on the rocks, sat by her vanity trying to play solitaire to pass the time, to do something with her hands, to stop crying, to keep this feeling of helplessness off her shoulder and her back. She swayed over the King and the Jack. She was blurry-eyed over the Ace and the Queen. She wanted her daughter back. She wanted her Greer back, with all his foolish ways and notions. She wanted her family to be a family again. The children were so quiet. They weren't themselves. No one was the way they usually were. All of them depending on the Grace of God and the good will of a city they still couldn't call their own.

Jane went to take a shower, steaming, then rushing cold. She washed her hair. She powdered her body till she looked like a damask mannequin. She fell asleep between two photographs: one of Betsey learning to ride a two-wheeler bike; the other of Greer in his favorite orange shirt, deep sea fishing off Atlantic City after Allard was born. She'd even done her nails. The palm of her left hand lay on top of Psalm 91:

Whoever goes to the Lord for safety,

whoever remains under the protection of the Almighty,

can say to Him, “You are my defender and protector.”

Greer wasn't thinking about any police. He was thinking about his daughter. Where would she go? What crazy feeling out of nowhere would come over her to take her out till all hours of the night? Maybe Jane was right. Maybe he was wrong to have filled her head with tales of Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker, let alone take her to see Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Tina Turner and the Ikettes. Maybe it wasn't right to wake up to Chico Hamilton, Lee Morgan, Charlie Parker, and Art Blakey in the morning. Watch the sunset with Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, and Little Willie John. But Greer didn't know what else to offer that was beautiful and colored and alive, all at the same time. He drove from one club to another, thinking Betsey might be crouching by the doorway listening to some music. He thought she might be hungry so he drove past the place where Little Richard liked to get fried fish, the spot where “Sugar” Ray liked the barbeque. No Betsey. No child of his to take home.

Somewhere in the frenzy of his search for Betsey, Greer realized he'd not made rounds at the hospital. He had to make rounds. They'd write him up. He wasn't their golden boy, after all. Everybody knew he took private patients. Everybody knew he liked foreigners and was committed to causing trouble for the Negro. He had to make rounds. He went like a man at the breaking point to Homer G. Phillips Hospital to see his patients. Their lives depended on him, like his life depended on finding his Betsey.