The Day of Small Things (16 page)

Me and Francine practiced the tango over and over, till I had the hang of it. “Just think of it as fucking while you’re dancing,” she said, showing me how to make my body follow hers. “It’s a story, see. At the beginning, you ain’t sure you want to and you try to stay cold, but as the dance goes on, you warm up to the idea till you’re begging for it. You’ll see.”

At first I couldn’t take hold of the notion, being as it was a woman I was dancing with, and I stayed cold when I should have been growing warmer. I come to purely dread the sound of “La Cumparsita” on the Victrola.

Then, it must have been the third day we practiced, Francine leaned in close as we begun and whispered with her smoky, minty breath, “Pretend I’m that fella you’re waiting for, why don’t you?” and she nipped at my earlobe. “Remember what it was like fucking him.”

It was almost as if I was back on one of them full moon nights. I had been missing him and our loving so bad and all of a sudden the touch of her hand was his touch and her long lean body, guiding me through the steps, might have been him showing me the way of love. And by the time we was done, I was in that breathless, dreaming place where everything seems just right.

“We’ll knock ’em dead, kiddo,” Francine told me as I followed her up the narrow box stairs to get ready for the night.

Those words caught at me. The swimmie-headed feeling swelled in my head and the buzzing began with Mama’s angry voice at the back of it. I leaned against the wall to steady myself and waited for it to pass.

Francine reached the top of the stairs and looked back. “Redbird?”

“Ain’t nothing.” I waved her off. “Just catching my breath. It’s awful close and warm here.”

That night, for once, Francine and me didn’t wait tables. The boss had said it would make what he called “a bigger bang” for us to come on the floor like we was new to the place. I didn’t believe anyone would know us—me
in that tight red dress with my painted face and my red hair falling in waves down my bare back, and Francine with her black hair slicked back except for spit curls beneath each ear. It seemed to me she was better-looking as a man, in that fancy pin-striped gentleman’s suit with the black shirt and white tie, and she seemed to think so too for she strutted like a turkey gobbler before all the girls, who giggled and flirted till Lola begun to scowl and say they needed to get on downstairs.

Before they went, all the girls give me a hug and told me how fine I looked. Flo even sprayed some of her fancy perfume on me, “for luck, honey.” Then off they went, clattering down the stairs, their dancing shoes making a racket that let the fellers down below know that they was on the way.

Francine reached out and squeezed my hand. “You look swell, kiddo; they’re gonna eat you up.” Then she put up a finger. “Listen!”

From the top of the stairs we could hear someone below hollering “Pipe down!” and then there was a shrill whistle. Everyone got quiet and the boss begun to speak in a big, important-sounding voice.

“Thank you, High Sheriff Hudson. We appreciate the assistance of the law on this busy holiday night and hasten to assure you that your efforts will not go unrewarded.”

There was a big laugh from the crowd but I felt my knees go weak for the sheriff had been at the house after Mama died. He had seen me up close when he tried to ask me questions about what happened. And he was the one who had the paper about fixing it to where I couldn’t have babies.

All I could think of was how I might get out of there.
The only way, apart from the stairs, was if I could somehow clamber down from the upstairs porch. I started for the little door that led out that way but Francine grabbed my hand again.

“Thirty seconds, then we’re on. Excited, kiddo? Boss said he was expecting a big turnout.”

I could hear feet beginning to stamp and the boss’s deep voice floated up the stairs. “… just in time for the Glorious Fourth, the flat-footing firecracker … a red-hot mountain mama … a tango teaser … let’s hear it for Miss Redbird Ray!!”

I had not thought I would like it so.

Francine pulled me down the stairs and, just like we had practiced, we burst into the public room like she was dragging me and I was afraid. Flo was at the Victrola and she set the needle at the beginning of “La Cumparsita” the very second Francine’s foot left the bottom step. All the tables had been pushed to the walls to leave plenty of room for our dance, and men was ringing the dancing floor, two and three deep, while others was standing on the tabletops.

Like we had practiced, Francine put on a fierce scowling face while she stomped all around the circle of watchers, pulling me like a prisoner after her as I took on like I was trying to get loose. When we had gone around once and the music had come to the right place, Francine stepped to the center of the floor, snapped me to her, and the tango began.

As we went through the steps, there at the center of all those eyes, I had a queer double feeling. First, it seemed almost like I was naked in front of this gang of men, with
my bare back and the long slit in the skirt that showed my leg to above my red garter and the thinness of the dress—so thin that my nipples stood out like cherries beneath the cloth. At the same time, it come to me that all of this paint and finery had covered up the girl who was Least as good as if she was dead and buried, for wouldn’t no one know me for that sad-faced somebody they had seen back in the spring.

And there was some in the crowd who
had
seen me back then, not only Sheriff Hudson, who I winked at as Francine dipped me backward right at his boot tips, but also a couple of the men who had helped to carry Mama to her grave. One of them may have been Lilah’s father, but I neither knew nor cared, for suddenly Least was gone and Redbird Ray had nothing to fear.

N
ight after night I danced, spinning from one man to another, for word had spread and more and more come to see the show and to have a dance with Redbird Ray. They bought tickets off a big roll that the boss kept—my tickets was red and cost twice as much as the blue ones that would buy a dance with any of the other girls. And most every one that danced with me would give me a tip for myself—nickels or dimes from the local fellers but now and again one of the big spenders off the trains would tuck a folded dollar bill in my garter.

More than one asked me to go upstairs with them, and there was several times that, drunk with the music and motion and missing Young David so bad, I thought I might as well, but the boss always shook his head.

“No, not yet,” he’d say. “You’re worth more to me as a dancer and a draw.”

Me and Francine still did our tango dance on Friday and Saturday nights when there was a big crowd, but the other nights I helped wait tables and danced with everwho
bought a ticket. It seemed a lifetime since me and Young David laid down together, and sometimes when I had danced with a good-looking, good-smelling young feller, I would find myself aching with wanting and thinking about loving.

But there was others I danced with who made me glad I didn’t have to go upstairs with them—old men smelling of tobacco and rotten teeth or brash young men with too much hair oil who handled me rough when we danced and tried to put their hands up my dress. And whether they was to my liking or not, none of them ever saw beyond the shiny clothes and painted face. Which was good, for I’d not have it known who I was. But when no one knows you, it can be awful lonely.

There is one feller who comes in now and again who is somehow different from any of the others—a salesman making his rounds who likes to sit and have a whisky and watch the dancing. The only time he comes in is Saturday nights, so I reckon it’s the dance downs he come for—quite a few of the customers wagers on who will be the winner and I figure him for one of these as he never goes upstairs nor even buys a dance.

He’s a foreign-looking, dark-complected feller who always wears a suit and a hat too, even indoors. I couldn’t say what age he is—not old, but not young neither.

“Why do you reckon that feller won’t never dance with any of us? You know, Francine says he’s a Jew—they’s a sight of ’em where she come from—but he ain’t stingy with his money—always tips good when I bring his dinner. Still, no matter how hard I tease him, he won’t buy a dance. I say they’s something strange about that Mr. Aaron.”

Sharleen is setting on the edge of my bed, painting her toenails an ugly purple color. The tip of her tongue sticks out as she bends to finish her left little toe.

I don’t know why but some devil makes me say, “I bet you a new bottle of Cutex Nail Crème
I
can get him to dance.”

He is there at the same little table where he always sits. The place is crowded and I have been kept busy with the fellers and their red tickets, but I’ve been watching him. He has eaten his dinner and now is sipping at a glass of whisky while he watches the dancing. Lola and then Flo both has gone over to him, but each time he has just smiled and shook his head. At last, when the musicianers are taking a break, I sashay over to his table and sit down.

He surprises me by standing up and lifting his hat. “Miss … Redbird,” he says, making a little bow, “I’m honored. What can I offer you?”

“A co-cola would go right good,” I say and have to smile as he raises a finger and Sharleen comes over to take the order. She gives me a sour look but goes and gets it. The bottle still has a piece of ice clinging to it and I take and rub it on the bare skin at my throat till the heat of my body melts it and a little trickle runs between my breasts. He watches like a thirsty man.

“Right hot tonight,” I say and lift the bottle to my lips. The first sip burns all the way down my parched throat.

His black eyes glitter and he takes a sup of his whisky. “As the hinges of Hell,” says he. “What can I do for you?”

I ask him does he want to buy a dance with me and he says no, he don’t dance. Then I tell him about my bet with Sharleen and about the Cutex Nail Crème and he laughs
and says he’ll buy a ticket and once again he beckons to Sharleen.

“If you’d be so kind,” and he lays a greenback on the table, “I’d like to purchase five red tickets.”

As you might guess, Sharleen is fit to be tied but she don’t have no choice other than to take the dollar to the boss and come back with a string of my red tickets. She drops them on the table in front of Mr. Aaron and swings around to stomp off.

“Young lady, this is for you,” and he holds out another greenback to her.

Sharleen is plumb flustered but she manages to make some kind of a thank-you before stuffing the bill into her stocking top and moving away.

I see the fiddler and the other musicianers coming back in and I stand up and hold out my hand. “Well, sir, reckon we best make a start on them tickets you bought so as you get your money’s worth.”

He draws back like he don’t want to touch me and nods to my chair. “Sit back down, Miss … Redbird,” he says. “I don’t intend to dance but I’ve bought your time. While they battle their way through five tunes, I thought we could have a conversation.”

“A conversation,” I say, lowering myself back onto the chair. “What about?”

He leans towards me, his arms folded on the table. “We could begin with names. I call myself Jacob Aaron; you call yourself Redbird Ray. And then we could talk about things we have in common, people we’ve known, places we’ve been. I could ask you how your mother is—and how things are back in Dark Holler.”

As the band lights into “Rye Straw,” the music and Mr. Aaron’s voice start to fade and get farther and farther
away. I hear the buzzing and see the lights flashing and when I push my chair back and go to stand, I feel myself falling and falling and falling

“She was setting with that Jew. Reckon he had anything to do with this? Maybe doctored her cold drink?”

There is voices all around me and I ain’t laying on the floor no more but on something soft. I keep my eyes closed and try to think what to do … if Mr. Aaron knows who I am … if he tells …

Someone is wiping my face with a cold wet cloth and the voices is just a-jabbering.

“Yeah, boy, she was right with him and he bought her a co-cola. He could of put something in it.”

“I remember my daddy talking about that Jew down in Atlanta—Leo Frank, I think the name was. Raped and murdered a white girl. Jury convicted him all right but then the no-good governor commuted the death sentence. Well, sir, the good people of Georgia rose up and hung that Jew their own selves. Reckon we ought to let Sheriff Hudson know about this?”

“Listen to you talking about rape and murder!” It is Francine right over me and I crack an eye to see her kneeling there with a wet rag in her hand. She is boiling mad.

“Don’t any of you fools know the difference between rape and murder and a girl fainting because of the heat? Stand back out of the way and give Redbird some air, can’t you?”

There is some muttering and I hear the one who had been talking about hanging say something about making sure the Jew didn’t get away before they got to the bottom of things. For a minute I think how that would take care
of my worries—if something was to happen to Mr. Aaron.

While I am thinking those black thoughts, I feel a shadow passing between me and the light and seems like I hear the croaking cry of the Raven Mockers—the soul eaters Granny warned me of.

“No!” I holler, struggling to set up. “Mr. Aaron didn’t do nothing. I was just too hot and couldn’t seem to get my breath. I’ll be fine.”

I see that they have brought me into the boss’s room. Just beyond the couch where I am is the half-open door. The dancing is going on as usual and through the jigging bodies I see that Mr. Aaron is gone.

In the back of my mind the Raven Mockers flap away, cawing and laughing at me for a fool.