The Wilful Daughter (3 page)

He had everything many of them wanted: the body of an ancient warrior bathed in eternal youth, the strength of an angry God forging the creation of man, a quiet un-domineering wife who never questioned him, and five of the most beautiful daughters many people had ever seen.

There was jealousy. Always there would be jealousy. You lay in the bed in the morning next to your fine woman whose coffee tasted like yesterday’s dishwater and whose cooking set like lead in your belly. The Blacksmith’s wife was the best cook in Atlanta. When she cut peaches from her tree and made cobbler she made at least five. For once it hit the oven and the smell hit the air of Atlanta everyone she knew thought of some excuse to come visit, come borrow, come return something long gone. They hummed didn’t that pie smell good followed by why sure you’d have a little piece. Just a taste. After all they couldn’t be rude.

Your children, while pretty to you and their mama, didn’t turn heads for beauty. But you saw the jealousy in your wife’s eyes as she stood on the street next to you as the Brown girls passed. You’d tip your hat and she’d shove you in the ribs.

“
Just being polite,” you would say to her.

“
Oh hush up,” she’d sneer back at you as all eyes fell on Minnelsa’s tall curvy figure, her hair shining and black as if kissed by the sun while rolled into a thick bun. Or on Rosa’s tiny waist, cinched even tinier by the whale bone corset that everyone knew was the best money could buy. Then you looked down at their dainty feet and realized your children had no shoes and these women were wearing brand new ones. Realized your kids wore hand-me-downs. Realized that you were jealous. And like every man in town, you thought of unlacing one of those fine expensive corsets and untying the ribbons in their silky hair and spreading that black fire across the bed as you spread their legs apart.

You were jealous alright. But these were the Blacksmith’s daughters. And like everyone else you remember the day when a man smelling of hard work, of sweat, manure and days of labor in the fields came to town and filled himself with too much of that “ice water” the old men made in their barns and sold in their wagons. He was standing rather drunk and proud on the corner of Sweet Auburn Avenue when young Miss Jewel passed on her way to the dress shop. Seeing this fine figure of a woman he smiled and tipped his hat when she passed him.

“
How do, miss,” he said not bothering to shield her from the scent of his breathe. This stranger told you that this woman would want him. After all, he said all the ladies back home did.

But when Miss Jewel in her starched white dress just smiled politely and kept going, he got insulted.

So he followed her, even when you warned him not to. You remember the gleam in his eyes as he looked her up and down like she was some farm animal. You remember the frightened look on her face when he touched her shoulder, then wrapped his arm around her waist. “I know what you got on under there. Come with me so I can loosen you up.”

The fist that hit him came out of nowhere. The Blacksmith stood over him and with a look of fury on his face snarled: “This is a lady, you drunken scum. You don’t touch ladies without their permission. Without my permission.”

From then on everyone knew what no one ever said. You didn’t want no scum touching your daughters but you could safely say no one would ever touch the Blacksmith’s daughters.

Still at dawn you wished for the Blacksmith’s daughter next to you in bed, for his strength to forge through the day, for his wife to cook your meals and cater to you when you came home. At dawn you got out of your bed so that one day you might be the Blacksmith, and maybe you might have that daughter.

Into this dawn came the Piano Man. Fresh from the colored cars of the 6:55 from the North, trying to pull himself together from the long ride from New York. With the other colored men, men dressed in faded old clothes and too big shoes, he followed the porter to a space behind the station to relieve himself, seeing how there were no “colored” lavatories on the train and he had refused to be rushed out into a field in the cold of night to take care of his business every time they stopped. Smiling, relaxed and now refreshed, he adjusted himself grabbing his bags and his portfolio of music.

Finally, he was in the South. He looked around him at the train yard. Colored on one side and whites on another. Porters carrying bags for white passengers, colored passengers carrying their bags themselves. He knew they didn’t fault the porters from the looks on their faces. It was money, it was business. He guessed the whites could tip more, the coloreds probably not at all.

From the rail yard he found the street where those from the train were getting into horse drawn carriages, and a few automobiles. He saw a colored woman that had been on the train with him climb up next to a man in overalls and hold her weather beaten valise in her lap. The back of the wagon was full of baskets of produce. He knew these people would be off to market before they made it home.

Across the street a frail white woman complained of the long ride, the smells and the heat then swooned into the arms of her husband. The older woman next to her fanned her insisting that they hurry the car homeward.

He grinned at everything he saw. The Piano Man was in the South.

He had been the Piano Man most of his life. The ivory keys were like extensions of his long, strong, brown fingers. He could hear anything and immediately he could play it. Back in New York, where his mother had been the servant of a very wealthy white spinster, he had sat at the piano with the old woman amazing her with the sounds he played from what he heard on the street and on the Victrola. She paid an amazed white man to teach him to read the notes off the page, this black boy that astounded her friends by playing everything in the universe when they came to call. He entertained the white woman, and she loved him, buying him fancy clothes and paying for his education until he was too old to be just any entertainment at their teas and was a refreshing masculine distraction. The old woman died and the others tried to suggest his presence in their circle was needed. But he needed them no longer, his mother long dead, he remained in Europe with the few pennies she had left him, only to find that the treatment might have been kinder but the feeling was the same.

Now standing on the sidewalk in the South, looking out of place in his suit and vest and tie, his shoes shined and wiped clean of the red clay with a rag he kept in his pocket, his scent not totally clean but fresher than the field hands and workers that had surrounded him on the train, he needed a place to stay.

A porter passed him walking away from the station with a carpetbag in hand. “Excuse me, sir.” The Piano Man said. The porter turned, surprised that the eloquent voice came from one of his own. He stopped and sized up the Piano Man before he gave an indignant “Yes?”

“
Sorry to bother you, sir. . .”

The porter looked intrigued. When was the last time a colored man called him sir?

“
But I’m new here and in need of lodging.” The porter stared waiting for the dapperly dressed man to say something he could understand. “I’m looking for a place to stay. I was hoping you might point me in the right direction.”

“
Why sure,” the porter replied happily now that he understood. “Your first time here?” he asked the dapper man that he remembered seeing on the train from New York.

The Piano Man nodded.

“
You from New York?”

The Piano Man nodded again. It was going to take him time to get used to these people, this accent. So he listened to the man talk on and on as they walked towards the sound of a clock that was ringing 7:15, a walk that ended in front of a rooming house in the colored section of town near the colleges when the clock tower rang 8 am.

That had been yesterday, and what a long day it had been. The porter, whose name was Jim something or other had left him at the rooming house and promised to be back that afternoon to show him around. But afternoon turned into evening and Jim something or other showed up with his brother Roy. Two men looking for a good time and hoping that the new man from the north would be willing to pay. Roy owned a large wagon and after a few deliveries the three men took the rig into the woods for a night the Piano Man would not soon forget.

Now he smelled coffee, fresh ground strong coffee. And he smelled meat. But he didn’t open his eyes. Just his nose, then his mind. Meat. Too early in the morning for meat. But the smell meant he was home. Home to the place his mother had told him to go if ever he felt truly lost in the world. To the south, where his people had not grown cold like in the north, the air was fresh with scents you didn’t get in New York City, and family meant not just parents and children, but aunts, uncles, cousins, anybody that had a limb on that tree. The Piano Man was home.

He knew it was too early for him to get up. The cock had just crowed and off in the distance he had heard a ringing, a constant ringing that he had been told was the Blacksmith at work. So early, too early. These country people up at the crack of dawn. Working in the fields, in the kitchens. Up so early they had to go to bed at sundown. On Fridays, when the eagle flew, they had to come to places like Emma’s in the woods. According to his mother, with the exception of church socials, funerals and hog killings, where else could they be.

He smelled baking bread. But the scent of the baking soda made him realize it wasn’t bread, not like they made in Europe. Not panne or brioche. It was biscuits. He hated biscuits. He closed his eyes and he was in the small apartment in coldest Harlem.

“
Try this, son,” she said. They smelled good but there was always something wrong with those biscuits: too salty, too hard, too flat. No amount of butter, jam, or jelly could help. How could a four-year old boy tell his mother she was the world’s worse cook?

“
I’m not hungry,” he had told her, his little skinny legs swinging on the side of the tall wooden stool where he sat. “Mama, when we go to live with the white lady are you gonna cook for her?”

Paulette Jenkins looked at her son and down at the dozen or so rocks that she had just created. She laughed. “Little Man, you trying to tell me if I cook I’m gonna kill that woman?”

“
No, Mama.” He had looked down at the floor ashamed. He loved his mama and didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

She had walked over to him and kissed him. “Little Man” that’s what she had called him, never Peter his given name. “I know I can’t cook worth a hill of beans. That’s what your great Aunt and Uncle used to tell me after I moved in with them when my grandmother died. They would say: ‘Paulette you clean up the bedrooms and you wash this and you wash that. But don’t you dare go in that kitchen ‘cept to eat.’”

She laughed again and that made it okay for the little boy to laugh too. She pulled him off the stool and handed him the pan of supposed biscuits. “Go ahead, toss them. Toss all of them in the trash. I got some potatoes that you like, we’ll eat that tonight. Can’t mess up potatoes too much. Besides, we gonna live with the white lady starting Monday. Your mama’s cooking days are gonna be over.” She rubbed his skinny belly. “Maybe eating some good food you’ll gain some weight.”

Little Man Jenkins had thrown them in the trash one by one. Then he climbed into his mama’s lap. “Is Daddy gonna be able to find us when we move in with the white lady?”

She frowned. He was an innocent child so she kissed him. But even a child could have seen that it pained her to answer. “Little Man, your daddy is with Jesus. He ain’t coming back to us. But. . .” She kissed him many more times as she told him this. “He can see us from heaven. God always tells him where we are.”

He opened his eyes. The coffee called to him. Mrs. Maple would soon be knocking at his door. She was smitten with his European charms. She would be dressed to the nines as she gently tapped on the heavy wood: “Mr. Jenkins will you be joining us for breakfast?”

His charm was natural for he was a most handsome man. The only thing he knew he inherited from his worthless father. He had lived in Europe with his mother and the white lady for many years before he knew that his father never married his mother and had been killed gambling away the money he should have used to pay rent. Left his mother not one cent, she couldn’t even bury him. Every man should leave something of value to his sons and daughters. The Piano Man had his father’s looks and nothing more. His children would have more, he was working on that.

He would have to go down this morning to tell Mrs. Maple that he did not usually rise for breakfast. He would tell her about the rich coffee they had on the continent. He would tell that he would, perhaps, start eating breakfast when he started teaching at the college.

The letter he had written months before in response to an inquiry for an instructor of the musical arts for the college named Morris Brown paid off, as did the letters of recommendation from Europe. They had received greater praise than those written by the people from New York who suggested him for the position. Colored writers he had met in Europe before the war who had taken up residence in Harlem, calling it “up south.” In three weeks he would be the professor of music at a college.

He had never even been inside a classroom, but what did these hicks know? They had been told he was the best. He was the best. And he had trained and paid for it.

The smell of the coffee was so strong he knew it was rich and black. Like espresso. The only thing Italian Herr Bogle liked was espresso.

He had handed the queer looking white man a cup as Mrs. Lathon Gross had requested. The old man touched the boy’s hands before he could pull away. “Strong,” he said in thick German. Peter could speak and understand every language of every country they visited with Mrs. Lathon Gross over the past six years. German was not new to his young ears.