Marching to Zion (14 page)

He sat down all at once, his heavy frame near flattening the chair cushions. He panted, he beamed, overwhelmed by the excitement his vision inspired in his own heart and the unexpected, devastating pleasure of finally describing his paradise to another human being and his Minnie’s daddy, to boot.

Taken aback by his outburst, Fishbein stared at the man in front of him, measuring what it made sense to tell him. When any man is in a fever like this, he thought, a fever of delusion, it’s dangerous to argue with him. Better to chip away at his madness bit by bit. After a while, he said, I’m not so sure about Europe, the place where is Paree. You don’t know what is like for Jews there, my friend.

Bailey ignored him. I want Minnie to leave all her dirty money behind, he said. We will do this with what we’ve earned honestly by the sweat of our brows and the quickness of our wits or not at all. It’s the only way.

Then he asked if Fishbein could help, financially, telling him now that there was also Golde to worry about, they should pool their resources and fulfillment of his noble aims would come quicker. The Garden of Eden would be but a step away for all of them.

Fishbein sighed. My fortunes is gone, Magnus. The Depression ruins me with everyone else. I have enough to keep the roof over my head and to put a little food on my table, but that is all.

Then we’ll be patient, Bailey said. I’ll work harder.

Fishbein studied him with narrowed eyes and pursed lips. You knows you are sounding meshugga
.
Nothing is easier than to dream a life of perfection, my friend, and nothings is more impossible than to live one. There will be many obstacles, terrible dangers, in your path, ones you cannot imagine now in this state of mind. Listen to me, I know whats I am speaking of.
Vez mir!
Obstacles! The first one will be Minerva. Trust me.

It would have been easier to convince a man stabbed through the heart that the red stuff on his shirt was not blood but strawberry syrup. Bailey struggled not to laugh at the other’s caution. Fishbein’s a sad case, he thought, with no optimism left in him. He smiled, nodded his head, raised his palms level to his chest and patted the air as if soothing all fears.

I ain’t no stranger to peril, sir, and if your daughter will listen to anyone in the wide world, it’s me. Don’t you worry. I can bring her ’round.

He quickly gathered himself together to leave, telling Fishbein he would be back soon.

You can help me even without money, Bailey said. There’re places you can go, people you can talk to I cannot. Let me set a few meetings up. And you’ll see. You’ll see how easy seizing perfection can be!

Fishbein nodded. He saw no point in bursting the man’s bubble. That would happen soon enough without his help. Have it your own way, he said.

Magnus Bailey asked to see Golde again before he left. Fishbein summoned her. She entered the room this time more shyly than before, hugging a wall, her head down.

Sweet child, Bailey said, cupping her little brown chin in his great black hand, we are to become great friends, you’ll see. Next time I visit I’ll bring you a present. Is there something you’d like?

Her green eyes opened wide and lifted themselves to him. She chewed her lips then said, Peppermints would be very nice, sir. I surely love peppermints.

Warmed by the modesty of her wishes, Bailey laughed and said, Peppermints! Peppermints it is!

He left the house by the back door. His old swagger was back. He pranced lightly down the steps with an idiot’s grin on his face, tapping his head with a forefinger as new plots and schemes raced through it.

Watching him, Fishbein thought, Sometimes a dream is all that keeps a man alive. And once more he sighed, then turned to prayer.

During his walk home, Bailey considered that no matter what else happened in the future, Providence had given him fresh purpose at which he would not—he could not—fail. Now in his hot imaginings, a new face, that of the child, his Minnie’s child, rose up and shone brighter than his desires for the welfare of either her mother or grandfather. Oh, that darling Golde! he thought, that bright beacon of a life not yet spoiled by the violence of others, a life it was his duty to cherish, to protect, to help prosper. If he wasn’t her father in the flesh, he was her father in spirit, and that mattered.

No wonder Aurora Mae found him changed.

Look at you, she said a week later, how you bound out of bed these days. Ready to take on the world, are you?

He laughed. It was a robust sound from deep in his belly, where the flame of his sacred purpose dwelt, warming, energizing every aspect of his being. He snapped the suspenders he pulled up over his shoulders, grabbed his jacket off the hanger in the closet, then bent and squeezed her bare foot, which peeked out from the covers of the bed where she lounged thinking about getting up.

The world, the moon, the stars! Magnus Bailey joked. There’s coffee on the stove, ’Rora Mae. I’ll drop by the store later on today, see if you need anything.

And he was gone.

Aurora Mae wondered if he’d fallen in love with someone. That’s how he acted lately. Like a man in love. He’d sung hymns in the yard Saturday when he mowed the grass. He whistled while he shaved. He was more tender toward her, sweeter of tongue to the customers he met at The Lenaka when he chose to stop by and help out. She tried to determine how she’d feel if indeed it was the truth, that Magnus Bailey had another life, another woman, which would mean that sooner or later they’d come to a tipping point, possibly a parting of ways.

It was not a simple matter. Just as Bailey suspected, tucked away in her heart was a man from the past, a love born among the fields and woodlands back home, a virginal love that spent its honeyed passion in lingering looks and unspoken vows of ineffable delight until the night riders came, stole her away, and ripped her up. After that, she’d renounced the thought of enduring affection from any source. She was no longer capable of true pleasure. There were places in her that hurt every day of her life, not so much physically but in her mind, side effects of the wounds she’d suffered that night and in the months that followed, those oozing injuries that would never heal no matter how many potions she brewed or how much time passed. Why, she thought, would Magnus Bailey or any other man consider her maimed and damaged vessel a place to lay his own weary heart?

Aurora Mae Stanton was an honest woman. She enjoyed living with Bailey. His company kept her worst memories at the fringe of her consciousness, which was the best place she could hope to store them. He made her laugh. She could depend on him. Still, she would never love him the way a man ought to be loved, and it would be wrong, she decided, to hold him back from whatever love he managed to find elsewhere. But she was not going to press him on it.

That morning, she got going at a leisurely pace, lingering over her toilette, especially the pinning of her long, thick hair. She had a tendency to open her shop when she felt like it and close it under the same conditions unless someone banged at the door relentlessly, which signaled an emergency. Before unlocking the door that morning, she checked on her stock in the storeroom and went to the backyard to pick some mustard greens and licorice root. The dahlias in the hothouse looked peaked, so she set to nursing them on her knees. It was close to noon before she was ready to open her door to business, and when she did, the slumped form of a young woman fell across her threshold and into her arms. Aurora Mae gasped, thinking her dead. She examined her chest to determine if the heart beat, the lungs breathed. They did, but barely.

Aurora Mae put the woman’s arms around her neck and lifted her, lay her down on top of a display case, then rushed to close the door. There was an ashen tint to the woman’s cocoa skin, which was very warm. Her nail beds were turning blue, her hair soaked through with sweat. She wore a red dress heavy with the damp of her fever, and beneath it a corset of black lace. Long glass earbobs dangled down her neck and bangles draped her wrist. She had high-heeled shoes with worn-down soles. There was no doubt in the root woman’s mind that here was a whore come to die in her shop, and she would die quickly if Aurora Mae could not find something in a hurry to prevent her. First, she put a funnel in her mouth, lifted the girl’s head to a propitious angle, and slowly poured into her a tincture of foxglove to wake up her heart. After that, she administered a tea of powdered mistletoe, white willow, and hawthorn in case the foxglove failed. The patient’s head lolled. She moaned. In the next instant, she bolted upright and had a coughing fit. Aurora Mae put two arms around her and steadied her just before the poor gal fell back against Aurora Mae’s chest and passed out.

Aurora Mae had no idea what else to do for her except watch and wait. At times like these, she regretted her choice to practice her medicine for the folk of Orange Mound. If one went by the reputation she’d acquired and the sheer number of people who came to her shop, she had a successful business. There was only one alternative in town, the single medical doctor who accepted Negro patients. He kept evening hours for coloreds once a week. Everyone had to wait a very long time to be seen. By the end of the night, many were sent home and told to return the next week. He charged them what he’d charge a white man who walked into his surgery without an appointment in the middle of the day. Naturally, folk preferred to go to the always-available Aurora Mae, who saw the sick on credit she did not expect to collect. She excelled in ameliorating childhood illnesses, the cleaning and treatment of wounds, and the banishment of infections, but for those on the brink of death, she could offer only ease of pain and the promise of a swifter end. There was no hospital in Memphis or anywhere else she knew that would do any better for a whore in extremis than whatever she could offer. She carried the woman to the bedroom where Magnus first slept, the room she designed for visiting family, who never came. She stripped her and wrapped her in cold, wet towels. Several hours passed. Happily, the woman’s fever broke. Praising Jesus, Aurora Mae sponged her down, then dressed her in one of Magnus Bailey’s nightshirts and left her to sleep. When her man showed up at dusk, Aurora Mae was at the stove, stirring a potent soup to feed the whore when she awoke. She told him of the day’s extraordinary events and gave him instructions.

I need you to go ’round Beale Street and see if you can figure where she belongs. I know her name is Pearl, but that’s ’bout it. You might start at L’il Red’s. You know, Minerva Fishbein’s place. If she don’t use this gal, she’ll likely know who does.

It was the first time during their cohabitation that Minnie’s name had passed between them. The five syllables shot through Magnus’s heart like bullets from a Thompson gun. He put a hand on the kitchen table to steady himself. Fortunately, his lover had her back to him as she leaned over her pot, scraping at the bottom, turning down the heat. She noticed nothing. He swallowed his emotion and played along.

Sure. That’d be off on Mulberry, no?

No. South Third.

South Third it is, then.

Suddenly, Aurora Mae turned around, pointing a wooden spoon at him.

You ever see those two anymore? Li’l Red or her daddy? I recall you were close in St. Lou.

No, no, no, he lied. We went our separate ways almost afore I got ’em to Memphis.

She turned back to the stove.

I recall how sweet she was on you as a child. Oh, it was scandalous. Remember how jealous of your company she was at Mags’s wedding and that time you all spent the night at the big house with Horace and me? So bold she was! Maybe we all should’ve guessed how she’d turn out. Funny how time fulfills inclination.

Alright, I’m off then, Magnus said before he broke down and told her everything.

He went to the river walk. It was a warm night, but the river was cool and a mist arose from it. He walked with his head down, deliberating if he should go on to Minnie’s establishment. He could always lie later and say he did. It wasn’t the best time for him to present himself. He wasn’t half ready. On the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t be the worst time either. Now that he’d bitten the bullet and contacted her father, he’d no doubt she’d know soon enough that he was back in Memphis. Not that Fishbein would say anything, but Golde was bound to mention to her mama the black man she’d met with eyes green as her own and she’d know, she’d know straightaway it was him. Rather than let her stew on the thought, it made sense to seize the moment and make his call. Bailey lifted his gaze. The mist coalesced to take the ghostly shape of Golde’s face, which was also that of her mother. Alright, he said to the river, you don’t got to beat me over the head. I’ll go.

He knew from the many nights he watched over L’il Red’s which hours belonged to white whoremongers and which to colored. It was white man’s time when Aurora Mae sent him out, so he went to the back door. He stood on the stoop and took a minute to work up his nerve. As it was, his heart pounded so hard, his mouth went dry, and he feared he would not be able to talk. He clenched and unclenched his balled fists, calming himself by thinking, It’s a good day. This moment was writ large in our fates from the beginning of time. I’d feel like dyin’ whether it came on this good day or on one of my choosin’, a day still comin’, when I’d have the money and even the paperwork in order. But now will do, it’s a very good day.

He rang the bell.

A burly black man with a face crisscrossed in scars, one thick and running all the way down his neck, answered the door. Blue tobacco smoke surrounded his head in thin, forked trails giving him the look of a demon straight from the womb of hell. Bailey stared at him, helpless as a child.

You wan’ sumtin’? the brute asked in a jaggedy voice that suited his appearance.

It took a bit of a while, a period during which the brute looked as if he’d take a blackjack to him any moment, but at last Bailey said, I’d like to speak to Miss Minnie.

Why?

It’s a private matter.

Then go to hell, the man said, making to shut the door when Bailey saw, coming down the service stairs that gave into the kitchen, a pair of sensible shoes and two white legs encased in dark silk, disappearing up a navy blue skirt of modest length, and a voice he knew well, a voice that had echoed repeatedly through his mind while he was on the Mississippi, on the railroad, in Little Rock, Dallas, Wichita, and Des Moines, rang in his ears.