Magic City (3 page)

“Let me go, Dell.”

“I'm a desperate man, Mary. Don't you know that?”

She didn't know anything about him. Not even his last name. Or where he'd come from. Dell's weight was suffocating. She couldn't
move. This was her luck, her punishment for thinking a man might really want her.

“Stay with me today. Forget about work.”

“Pa's counting on the money.”

He squeezed her buttocks. “You like taking fat men up two floors? Having them watch your backside? Thinking you're loose?”

Dell was becoming aroused. “You take niggers up too, don't you, Mary? No decent woman would risk it.”

“Stop it, Dell.” She flailed her legs helplessly. “Mr. Bates makes coloreds take the stairs. Only place they go is the washroom. On the fourteenth floor. 'Specially for coloreds.”

“But you walk by them shoeshines in the lobby everyday. How can you stand them looking at you? Thinking about you.”

“Those boys don't look at me.”

He bit her throat, sucking her skin into his mouth. “Marry me.”

She felt like crying. “
Marry me
.” This was what she'd been taught to wait for
—Marry me—
this was what a good woman wanted to hear.

“Let me go, Dell. Let me go.”

“Marry me.” He guided her hand down to his crotch. “Feel what you do to me, Mary.” She tried to pull her hand back, but he held it. “I know you can love me, Mary.”

“Stop it, Dell. Stop it.”

His hands pinched her nipples; he tugged her panties, his knee spread her legs.

“Stop it.”

She scratched him; Dell slapped her. She cried out—her head bounced against dirt.

“You don't know what's good for you, Mary.”

“No, Dell.”

“You don't even know your own mind.”

He sounded like Pa, dogged, grating in his certainty.

“You think you're better than me?”

“No. I'm not better than anyone.”

Holding her hands in one fist, he reached back, grabbing his silver-trimmed belt off the nail.

“Dell, don't.” He was going to beat her like Pa did. The buckle caught the lamp's glow and it glittered, the silver showering rainbows.

Mary fought—bucking, trying to free herself as he bound her hands in the leather. She felt cold silver cutting deeply into her wrists.

“Dell, please, let go my hands. Let go.” Tears drained into straw. She felt helpless, like Jody must've felt when they'd tied him down and sawed. “Please, Dell.” Hysteria choked her throat. “Let me go.”

“Not 'til I'm done.” He jerked her backward, stretching her arms over head, and caught the buckle on a nail. “Scream, Mary. Your Pa and brother might be heading back for breakfast.”

The silver buckle reflected her tangled hair, the shadow of Dell bending over her.

Dell unbuttoned his pants. “Go on, scream, Mary. I want you to. Your Pa will make you marry me.”

She wouldn't scream. She kicked; he caught her legs.

“It doesn't have to be this way.”

“I'm not a whore, Dell.”

“Look where you are, Mary. Look around. It ain't much. But it's a man's bed.” He leaned close, their lips almost touching. “I didn't drag you, now did I? Scream, Mary.”

He rammed inside her and she swallowed a wail. The narrowness of the pain surprised her, then it began spiraling outward, cramping her abdomen. She bit her tongue, tasting blood.
Lie still. Don't scream
.

“I didn't know you were a virgin, Mary.” He entered her again. “Got to be a grown woman sometime.”

When she'd started bleeding at thirteen, Pa had handed her worn sheets, telling her, “You're grown now. Don't let any man touch you. Your body's meant for a husband's use. Seeds are meant to bear fruit.” He watched her burying her bloodied rags behind the shed, admonishing, “Whores like doing it. Good women don't.”

“Mary.” Dell was thrusting deep, his mouth slack.

Blood speckled her pubic hair. What would life have been like if her mother had lived?

Like a revelation, she saw her mother, her lips pursed, eyes shut, lying beneath Pa's bucking abdomen
.

“Ma,” she whispered. Probably, Pa had made her mother feel guilty for every season she didn't harvest a son for his land. What good was a woman anyhow?

“Ma,” she whispered again, trying to comfort herself.

She felt herself hurtling to some abyss, turning into a speck of nothing—no heart, no feeling, no body. A good woman who really wasn't a woman at all. Just some hole for Dell to plow into, just as Pa plowed his fields, littering seeds which never grew strong enough or big enough.

The final thrust and she swallowed all her sounds.
No whimpers. No wails
. Dell's semen exploded inside her; his fluid mixed with her blood, draining down between her legs into straw.

Through the planks, she could tell the sun was well out of the ground. Pa would curse her for fixing breakfast late.

Dell laid his head on her breast and tucked a hand beneath her buttocks. “This is your fault, Mary. But don't it feel good? You'll marry me, won't you, Mary?”

Strands of his hair touched her lips.

“Yes, I'll marry you,” she said. Right and proper.

She was deep in the abyss.
When she closed her eyes, she thought she saw an angel, a woman with wings
.

D
read followed Joe down the staircase. First, there were the attic steps, rugged and plain. At the second-floor landing, the quality improved. Pine became buffed oak and the stairs curved, spiraling for a grand entrance, down to the half-opened doors of the dining room.

Nothing had changed. A huge table for ten. His family sitting in the same high-backed chairs. The same gaping mouths, the same forks scraping on china. Everybody focused on his father.

On the left, spreading a biscuit with honey, sat Emmaline. She'd been a twelve-year-old skipping off to school while Joe was still squalling, sucking on a bottle. Emmaline had never liked him.

On the right sat his mother swallowing poached eggs, glancing furtively at his newspaper-reading father, Douglass. Beside her was Tyler, his father's father, gumming grits in a cushioned wheelchair. Joe had never heard anyone call him Grandfather, Father, or even Pa—just Tyler. Tyler—stricken dumb by a stroke last year. Arthritis curled his hands into claws.

Yet, today, watching from the room's threshold, Tyler seemed spe
cial. Head rolled back, eyes closed, Joe knew Tyler was dreaming. Dreaming something bigger than a banker's family chawing on breakfast. Something bigger than his own son, who sat at the table's head, dominating his family with indifference and silence.

Joe patted the pair of handcuffs he'd slipped inside his jacket's lining. Inhaling, he slipped on the mask of contented son. “Good morning, good morning. How are you all this fine morning?” He kissed Mother's powdered cheek.

“You took your time coming down,” said Emmaline, licking her lips.

“Don't have to be to work until two. Might as well enjoy the bed's soothing grace. You might feel better, Emmaline, if you let yourself sleep in.”

“I feel fine,” said Emmaline, bristling.

“Good. Then you can stop worrying about me.”

Hildy pushed through the kitchen door carrying a platter of bacon.

“Hey, Hildy.” Joe snatched a slice, closed his palm, then opened it. The bacon had disappeared.

“How'd you do that?” Emmaline demanded. “Tell me how you did it.”

“One less bacon for you,” said Hildy. “Don't be complaining if you're hungry later.”

“You wound me, Sis.” Joe reached behind Hildy's ear, pulling out the vanished bacon, which he popped into his mouth.

“Tell me how you did it, Joe.”

“My secret, Emmaline. Yours to find out. Isn't that right, Tyler?” Joe asked, slipping into the chair beside him. Usually he sat on the left, beside Emmaline. But, today, inexplicably, he felt safer beside Tyler. In Henry's old space.

Hildy filled his glass with water.

“You too good to be sitting next to me?” asked Emmaline. “Seventeen years and on this day, you move to a new chair. You too good to sit by me?”

“Emmy, let it go.” He reached for his napkin.

“My name is Emmaline.”

“Emmy. Emmaline. What's the difference?”

“You lack the sensitivity to understand.”

“Fine. Then I can call you Emmy.”

Emmaline's lips puckered. “Turning eighteen doesn't make you grown, Joe. You're no different than any other Negro. Crazy and inconsiderate.”

“Hush,” said Mother. “I will not have arguing at my table. Joe, you know I don't like heathen games in my house.”

Joe marveled how his mother lost not a bite or chew.

Emmaline smirked.

His father turned to the stock pages.

“What do you want for your birthday, Joe?” Mother was smiling. “I thought maybe you'd like one of those new phonographs. Can you imagine? You can hear symphonies. Piano concertos. We could have a small party. We'd be the only Negro family that has a phonograph. Would you like that, Joe? Would you want a house filled with music?” Hands plucking delicately at her lace collar, her voice still rich with Louisianian cadences, Joe glimpsed the pale, proper beauty who'd won his father thirty years ago.

“I want…I want…”
What did he want?
He flexed his fingers and a rose appeared. “I want you to have this, Mother.”

“Joe, stop it.” Her lips pouted. “I want you to stop this mumbo-jumbo. I'll not have a devil's carnival. Not in my house.”

“Who've I hurt, Mother?”

“You've hurt me.” She slapped his hand. “I don't want a grown son engaging in magic. The Devil's game.”

Hildy placed a plate in front of him.

Emmaline twittered, picking up the yellow rose. “You could get a good price for a dozen, Joe. That'd be a fine trick.”

“Shut up, Emmy.” Joe stared at his plate. Four soft yolks, luminous with grease, lay beside a mountain of grits. Bacon, thick and rind-edged, crisscrossed at the top, jam-stuffed biscuits leaning off the plate's edge. A growing boy's breakfast. The same breakfast he'd eaten for years, but now it seemed disgusting in its lavishness. Joe pushed away his chair.

“You will not leave this table until I give permission.” His father's voice cut deep.

Mother and Emmaline, startled, fell silent. Hildy edged closer to Joe.

“May I leave?” Standing, Joe clutched the back of his chair.

“No.” Father lifted his eyes from the newsprint. Joe knew this was the moment his father had been waiting for. Father's eyes pinioned him like the preserved butterflies—Red Admirals,
taenaris macrops
, and a Blue Morpho from South America—he kept in a glass case beside his ledgers.

Joe stared back.

Father was awash in a back draft of sunlight. Joe could see his blunt frame, broad shoulders squeezed into a gentleman's suit, hands flexing, hands that were capable of spanning anything—a woman's waist, a sow, a usurious deal with no mercy for a man undone by gambling.

“Hildy, make some toast,” Father said, setting aside his paper, his eyes never leaving his son.

Everything about his father had to be outsized, garish—this house, the heavy sterling, even the chandelier swaying above. Needing toast when there were lard biscuits, demanding Hildy light the stove and cook bread beneath the broiler (careful not to let it burn), all to make a point to his son—that there was more. Always more.
I earned it. I paid for it. And you, like everyone else, will eat it
.

“Father, Joe's not feeling well,” said Hildy.

Joe quickly glanced around the table. His mother was twisting her napkin, Emmaline's mouth puckered like a beached fish. Even Tyler was restless, bobbing his head, his eyes shifting between him and his father.

“I'm all right, Hildy.”

Lips pursed, Hildy glared at Father, then pushed through the kitchen door, causing it to flap furiously on its hinge.

“Sit down, Joe.”

Joe sat and lifted his fork, thinking of metal, thinking he had the dexterity to escape anything. Houdini did it—escaped jails, straitjackets, a thousand metal bands. It was all in the hands. Strong, flexible.

“How's work?”

“Fine, Father.”

“It must take real skill to know which rag best buffs a leather shoe.”

Joe studied his breakfast.

“You don't do anything any ignorant nigger couldn't do.”

“But I do it better. I have all the advantages.”

“Don't smart mouth me.”

“He could go back to school,” said Mother.

“Booker T. won't have him,” said Emmaline. “Mr. George didn't like being handcuffed to his desk.”

“I can make them take him.” Father folded his paper. “The school owes me. I loaned them money for a furnace. Mr. George and that skinny ass principal will do what I say.”

“The school hasn't been built that could hold me,” laughed Joe.

His father slapped the table. “Do not smart mouth me.”

“I like shining shoes,” Joe said stubbornly, feeling a new recklessness. “I get to see my face looking back at me in the shiny leather. All you get to see is money. I get to say ‘Good morning,' to everybody. All you get to say is ‘Foreclose.'” He finger-stirred the ice in his glass. “Like you did to those Indians on Easton.”

“Indians are worse than niggers.” Father stabbed his fork into grits.

“The piano, Joe,” lamented Mother, her voice rising to the center of the room. “You were so good at the piano. Why can't you play the piano?”

At ten, Mother had introduced him to beauty, teaching him piano and the delicacy of Mozart. Chopin. Beauty wrung from his fingertips. While his mother had praised the sound, Joe had reveled in the motion, in the dexterity of his fingers.

“The boy might have been all right if you hadn't interfered. We never needed a piano. I never should've bought it. Joe needs business sense. Not your damn piano.”

Joe looked at his hands, imagining how they moved in a simple coin press. He was good with coins, but not the way his father wanted.

“You don't deserve to sit in that chair.”

A shudder passed round the table.

“That's it, isn't it, Father? I'm sitting in Henry's old place.”

“Joe,” Mother cautioned.

“He was a son. Proud to be my son. If he was alive, he'd be working in the bank with me.”

“How do you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean how do you know that? Did you ever ask him?”

His father was dumbstruck, caught off-guard by Joe's rebellion. The newspaper fluttered to the floor.

“I'll work, Father,” said Emmaline.

Joe cocked his head, surprised by Emmaline's boldness.

“I can help you, Father. I know I can.” Emmaline was pressing her chest against the table's edge, stretching toward her father.

“What do you know about anything, Emmaline? You've been in my house, how many years, and can't find a man? I didn't raise you to hang on, eating my food, sleeping in my house. At least Hildy makes herself useful. What's wrong with you, that you can't find a man?”

“Douglass!” said Mother.

“You never like any man I pick.”

“Not if you pick men like Gabe. Back from the war three years and won't get a job.”

“He's sick. Can't you see that?” Emmaline glared.

“I can see you're all a trial to me.” Father folded his hands. “I can see you expect a man to work all his days building something, and once it's built, you drain it like worthless sap. A house full of women.”

“Oh, leave them alone.” Joe stood, overturning his glass.

“You,” Father shouted. “You're not worth my name. Shining shoes like some buffoon. Playing magic tricks.”

“I like shining shoes,” Joe said stubbornly.

“Shine mine then. I raised my sons to be better than shining white men's shoes.”

“I'm the only son you have left. And this son
…this
son likes shining shoes just fine. I like it fine.”

“You're a fool.”

The two of them were standing now and Joe knew his father was furious enough to plow through platters of eggs, biscuits, toppling crystal and juice, and smack his face. His father was breathing hard, a wheeze beginning in his chest.

Astonished, Joe realized he'd grown as big as his father. He realized, too, there were things a man didn't have to take.

Joe remembered Henry arguing with Father the summer he'd gone to war.
Just thirteen, Joe had been sleeping, but near daybreak, voices woke him. He'd stumbled down the stairs, fearful of discovery, fearful of Father's strident voice turning upon him, and glimpsed Henry weaving from room to room, opening and shutting doors, screaming, “I need more gin.” Father had dogged his heels, bellowing, “Ingrate,” until Henry
turned, arms flailing, roaring, “I don't have to take this.” Then Henry opened the front door, stepped into the morning mist, and was gone
.

“You're an important man, Father,” Joe said softly. “But I like my work. I got it on my own. I didn't have to ask you or anybody.”

“You're going to throw away all my advantages.”

“That's right. 'Cause they're
yours
.”

“You don't deserve them.”

“Didn't think I did.”

“Others would kill for what I'm offering. It's more than my father gave me. An illiterate ex-slave still working the land.”

Tyler flapped his jaw, trying for sounds.

“I took that land and made something of it. Built a bank. Grew money instead of wheat.”

Tyler's mouth was wide open.

“I gave my sons a chance to make something of themselves. Carry on the business.” Father's breath came in short bursts.

“Is that why Henry enlisted?”
Joe remembered Henry returning sober, splendid in a private's uniform
. “Your money wasn't good enough for Henry.”

“Who do you think you are?”

Joe staggered, thrown back into his dream
. Eyes closed, he gripped the table for balance.

The kitchen door swung open. Hildy, holding a plate stacked with toast, stopped, arrested. “Joe?”

He was bare, hands bound, close to dying. He was nobody. His father had told him so
.

“Joe?”

Sounds assailed him: He could hear the asthma shuddering through his father's lungs; his mother's soft wail, “Don't fight. Lord, have mercy. Please, don't fight” Emmaline muttering, “I could work at the bank. I could.”
A roar off in the distance—the whoosh of gasoline lit with a spark
.

“Joe?”

Pale and wild-eyed, he looked at Hildy, then at Tyler.

Tyler's hands, no longer gnarled, ruthlessly gripped Joe's forearm. Tyler was trying to speak. Saliva ran down his chin.

“Joe!” Father doubled over, wheezing.

Joe shivered and began to walk out—one step in front of the other, hearing his father's wheezing snapping at his heels, his mother calling, “Come back, Joe. Get your father to the sofa.”