A Toast Before Dying (9 page)

“Great. I caught a lot of fish, but the other day I got stung by some jellyfish.”

I wondered if I should be alarmed. Jellyfish. Last summer he had talked about a sea creature called man-o-war that sounded like some battleship equipped to blow a hole through a fortress. Before I could ask, he went on: “It’s a clear blob but it holds a poison that can paralyze—”

“Oh, God! Alvin, are you all right? When did this happen?”

“Aw, Mali. It was a few days ago. I’m fine. Captain Bo and another fisherman pulled me out of the water and packed hot sand on my back and arms. The sand drew out the poison. I’m fine. It didn’t even leave any marks. You’ll see when I get home.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m okay. I guess I shouldn’t’ve told you ’cause you worry so much.”

“I can’t help it, Alvin. I love you.”

“Aw, Mali, I know. I know. Listen, lemme speak to Grandpa.”

“He’s at the club. Has a gig three nights a week now and loving every minute of it.”

“Man, that’s everything. Well, tell him hello, and Mali?”

“Yes?”

“Please don’t tell him about the jellyfish thing. He worries more than you do, except he doesn’t show it.”

“Okay, I—”

“Captain Bo’s calling me. Gotta go.”

“Be careful, Alvin.”

“I’ll call again, maybe tomorrow.”

He hung up. For the next few minutes, when I drew my breath, my chest hurt. He had not asked about Kendrick. Maybe tomorrow he will. Time enough for me to ask about the repertory group.

T
he house of detention loomed large on Centre Street in downtown Manhattan. Some folks said that the newer building a block north of the older Gothic structure was nicer, with its dorm-style details. I could see no difference between the old and the new.

In the visitors’ area, Bertha and I were searched, scanned with the metal detector, and given a number. An hour later we were led into the visiting area and seated at a long table separated by a wire-mesh screen. The seats were divided among cubicles.

Kendrick was brought in wearing a nondescript uniform of heavy gray cotton and rubber shoes. The uniform had no pockets and he wore no socks.

A faint gray discoloration appeared to have seeped into his chocolate skin tone and his eyes—deep-set and normally dreamy—now seemed to shift between listlessness and wariness. He sat down and smiled and
pressed his hand against the mesh barrier, and Bertha pressed her palm against his.

“How they treatin’ you, Kendrick?”

He shrugged and smiled, knowing there was nothing she could do about whatever went on behind the closed doors of cells.

“Okay. I don’t mess with nobody and nobody messes with me. They got some games people play in here, but my black belt let them know I’m not down with that program …”

“Elizabeth’s still trying for bail,” I said, knowing how important it was to leave him something to hold on to after we were gone. “She’s still trying.”

“Yeah. I know she is. She’s one smart sister. I like her.”

Then he pressed his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know, Mali. I don’t know. It’s hard to even guess what’s gonna happen from one day to the next. All I do is try to watch my back, and don’t walk away from a fight. If you walk away in here, you’re done. For some guys, there’s no difference between night and day. Both are bad. For me, the nights are worse. As soon as my head hits the bed, the nightmares come on. Real bad ones. Thea’s head is in my lap and I’m tryin’ to push that stuff back inside her. I see her face and I’m tryin’ to tell her I didn’t mean it.”

“Didn’t mean what?” I asked.

He looked at me and I thought he was about to break, but he drew a deep breath and blinked until the moment passed and he was able to continue.

“Earlier that night, Thea and I had had a few
words. I wanted to start … start seeing her again, you know. But … she shrugged and said it was too late, that she was pregnant. She was gonna have a kid. She was three months along. I heard that and I kinda lost it, I guess. Called her every name I could think of. Whore, prostitute. Said one man’s dick hadn’t cooled off before she was on another. Selling herself to the heaviest wallet.

“I was so mad I wanted to hurt her, to knock her down. But I didn’t. I could never’ve done that.”

“What did you do?”

“I called Bert and talked to her, asked her to come to the bar.”

“But you didn’t tell me she was …,” Bert began.

“I know, I know. Maybe because I didn’t want to believe it myself. I should’ve taken that night off. Just chilled. But it was her birthday. I wanted to hang in just to see who gave her the biggest present, then I’d know for sure who the guy was. I mean, I had some idea, but the way it turned out … By then, it was too late to take back my words, to tell her I didn’t mean what I’d said.

“I loved her, and she died believing that I thought she was a whore. In my dream, I’m tryin’ to tell her, but her face is gone. She can’t hear me. The only sound is those dogs howling …”

“Dogs?”

“Yeah. Like big dogs, howling right over my shoulder.”

“I heard them dogs myself,” Bertha added. “That
ain’t your imagination. You ain’t goin’ crazy. I heard them myself. First they was barkin’. Then a few minutes later they set up a howl.”

She turned to me, surprised. “I don’t know how I coulda forgot to mention that, Mali.”

“I know who those dogs were,” I said. “Flyin’ Home owns those dogs. He was out there. He told me so.”

They looked at me as if I had delivered the key that would’ve allowed Kendrick to walk.

“I’ll speak to Lieutenant Honeywell,” I said. “Maybe he can bring Flyin’ Home into the precinct house for questioning. Maybe he saw something.

“Listen, Kendrick: Maybe this has nothing to do with anything, but if you still cared for Thea and were trying to get back with her, where does Teddi fit in? Or should I be asking?”

He shook his head and smiled. “No, it’s all right. I met her when I auditioned, about three months ago. Has enough dollars to buy half of Broadway if she wanted to. We had a drink one night after rehearsal but nothing else happened. I was still thinking about Thea, hoping things could’ve worked out. Teddi and I are friends, that’s all.”

Two hours in this room flew by faster than two minutes, and before we knew it the guard was standing in back of Kendrick, tapping him on the shoulder. He looked up, then back at us, and raised his right fist.

“Be strong, Bert. Things gonna work out.” He smiled, a deep, heartbreaking, genuine smile this time, and was gone.

Bertha and I rode the elevator down in silence. At least she hadn’t cried or cursed or done any of the things I’d expected, given her short temper. But once outside, she grabbed my arm.

“Listen. When you gonna speak to Honeywell? How soon?”

“He’s out of town. I expect him back in ten days. Meanwhile, I’m going to look for Flyin’ Home myself. We go back a ways. He doesn’t actually owe me anything, but he’ll remember how I treated him when he was brought into the precinct house all those times. Maybe he’ll remember me calling him
mister
when some of the other law-and-order officers were tripping over their tongues calling him
nigger
. And maybe he’ll remember me telling him, after his accident, about SSI and the rehab institute.”

We moved toward the subway and waited on the platform for the IRT. I turned to Bertha as the train roared into the station. Above the noise, I said, “Maybe he will, Bertha, and maybe he won’t. That’s all I can tell you about him. But one way or the other, with or without him, we’re going to get Kendrick out.”

We boarded the train and rode up to 135th Street and Lenox Avenue. I glanced at her from time to time, thinking she had fallen asleep. She was awake, staring at the vacant blond in the Guess-jeans advertisement. Finally she said, “Thea was pregnant. Can you imagine that?”

“No,” I said. “I can’t.”

O
n Thursday, Dad and I attended Thea’s funeral, three days after Kendrick was arraigned. Teddi still had not called. It was so crowded at the funeral parlor that half the visitors were milling around outside in the street. But despite the confusion, someone spotted Dad who knew that Thea had sung with his band, and she escorted us in.

The narrow aisles were clogged and row after row was packed. More than one face had makeup melting, and I knew that if this service lasted too long, tempers would start to rise. Dad’s temperature had risen earlier when he objected to my outfit—the only black dress I owned, a sleeveless silk with a hemline hovering, he complained, just below my navel. “We’re going to a funeral, not a fashion show!”

“I have nothing else to wear, and I intend to be comfortable,” I said. The standoff had lasted almost a half hour and I had wondered if we’d make the service
at all. Finally I compromised and offered to bring a shawl to spread over my knees when I sat down. I also added a cluster of black silk roses to the brim of my yellow straw hat and pulled on an old pair of Mom’s crocheted yellow gloves. This seemed to calm him enough for us to leave the house.

Now the heat closed in and I tried to concentrate on the banks of flowers surrounding the closed casket. Gladys sat in the first row, shoulders rigid, looking neither to the left nor the right.

A young reverend who probably hadn’t known Thea did the best he could under the circumstances and managed to deliver an impassioned eulogy, concentrating on her talent, her ambition, and the tragedy of her death. Then a tall, straight-backed woman wearing a wide pale blue straw hat walked to the front and without introduction began to sing “Amazing Grace.”

Her voice, like a tide washing over grains of sand, lifted and carried us away.

I glanced at Dad and then put my arm around him. Sometimes, people attending the same service, and sitting in the same room, cry for different reasons. I didn’t know if he was mourning Thea or the memory of Mom and Benin. Or mourning all those dreams we never quite catch up to.

The last notes drifted and the singer moved away and then someone was speaking, focusing again on Thea’s talent. I heard Dad’s name called, saw him get up and walk to the front. His words drifted away from me as I closed my eyes and thought of the seriously emotional send-offs that black folks are known for. We
whoop and we holler to send the spirit on its way, make noise so it wouldn’t want to come back. But there was no falling-down-screaming testimony today.

Then Gladys was talking, every pleat and fold of her black silk suit carved in place, like her expression. She spoke of the Thea she had known a dozen years ago—the model and the beauty.

But there was no substance to the reminiscence and I wondered how close they had really been. Then again, they had probably been only as close as Thea had allowed.

Gladys’s voice rose in tears when the tall straight-backed woman came forward once more to sing, and again when a slim brown man of about forty, handsome in a pinstriped suit, approached the casket, rested his hand on the side, then turned and walked out.

And to my surprise, he was followed by Teddi Lovette, looking almost Victorian in deep black, down to her stockings. She also touched the casket, running her pale fingers lightly against the mahogany wood. Even her fingernails were painted black. She turned quickly and left.

I wanted to follow her, to ask why she was there, and why she hadn’t called me as she’d promised. I needed to know more than that, but if I had moved Dad would’ve reached out and probably nailed me to my seat.

I glanced at my watch and then at the program. It had taken less than an hour and less than a page to sum up Thea’s talent and beauty. What about her life? The one-paragraph obituary only mentioned the date of
birth and where she had gone to school. The Miss New York State pageant information took five lines of the paragraph, but there was not one line about her surviving relatives. What was going on? I thought about what Gladys had said: Perhaps Thea had indeed been dropped here from another planet.

We filed out into a relatively cool eighty degrees, and some of the pinched faces smoothed out. I scanned the crowd but Teddi was nowhere in sight. Why had she shown up with so much black on? Since she had been the only white person at the funeral, she couldn’t have blended in no matter what she’d worn.

Most of the mourners were the ones I had seen crowded into the Half-Moon for the wake. Now they gathered like flamboyant peacocks, shaking their ruffled feathers in the noon brightness.

I watched this parade of spandex and gold and wondered how Dad could’ve been so upset about my dress. As brief as it was, at least it was a respectable black.

I walked to the curb to stand near the tall woman with the voice. She had chestnut-tinted braids under the brim that softened her face, so it was difficult to estimate her age. She glanced at me and smiled as the crowd moved around us. People piled into cars and edged away, glad for the artifical comfort of the air-conditioning.

Dad appeared much more composed now and moved through the crowd, shaking hands and waving as if he were running for office. At sixty-two, with smooth gray hair cut close against his chocolate face, he
was an attractive man. He approached, smiling at the woman standing beside me.

“Miss Adele. Your pipes are as cool and you’re as beautiful as ever.”

She reached out to touch his shoulder. “Where you get off with this
Miss
Adele stuff, Sweetie? That ain’t what you used to call me back when.”

Her voice was wonderful and deep and she hugged Dad, laughing good-naturedly.

“This is Mali, my daughter,” Dad said. “Last time you saw her, she was in knee-highs.”

She turned to me, still laughing. “And look at the lady now. Legs long enough to cause a serious traffic jam. How’re you doing, Sweetie? And you have those pale gray eyes, just like your mama had. I remember when she toured with Katherine Dunham. You a dancer? God knows those legs were meant for more than walkin’.”

I smiled and extended my hand. This was Miss Adele. Gladys had said she was seventy-something but she looked at least twenty years younger. Miss Adele had been Thea’s voice coach, the lady I needed to talk to.