She says, I. I'm maybe a little hungry.
Mandy says, Yjawl sure do look hungry, that's for sure! She slaps her hand down flat on the counter meaning sit down, sit and I'll feed you, no more nonsense.
Graice sits. Graice unbuttons her damp coat but doesn't take it off.
The cafe is just a storefront, a counter and a single row of stools, several small tables, a mouth watering aroma of barbecue, grease, French fries, catsup, and the air's thick with cigarette smoke and a scent of hair oil. Graice hasn't wanted to look directly at anyone except squat kindly Mandy, who seems to have taken a liking to her.
That morning Graice had gone out to classes without her purse or wallet as she often does but, good luck, she has some loose change in her coat pocket, enough for a cup of hot black coffee and a thick slab of pie, Mandy's proud to say her home baked pie for that day is boysenberry and it's good, and Graice sits at the counter of the Ninth Street Cafe trembling with hunger eating boysenberry pie so delicious its taste sears her mouth, drinking coffee sweetened with milk, as, by degrees, the voices of the other customers resume their low earnest talk resumes as if she isn't there.
So white skinned, so provisional. maybe in fact 5hA isn't there.
Mandy stares at Graice Courtney, concerned. You out walkin', or what?
You from the university up there? and Graice nods mutely, mouth filled with pie, and Mandy still staring, says, How're you gonna get back, then? It's a long way back and it's late. Adding, when Graice doesn't respond I was you, I'd take a taxi. Want me to call you a taxi?
Graice says quickly, I don't have any money for a taxi.
Can't you pay the man when you get where you're going? Get some money from somebody where you live?
Mandy is mildly incredulous, impatient. What's this white girl doing here, tonight of all nights?
There's a re d plastic radio on a shelf above the grill tuned to NBC News. unavoidable news. Graice has walked into a scene of emotion and jangled nerves in this cafe, it's unavoidable, nowhere to hide tonight in America, nowhere to escape. The latest from Washington D.
C. , the latest from Dallas, Texas. a rushed interview with an eyewitness Secret Service man. further information concerning Lee Harvey Oswald, the lone assassin.
Then music: Will You Love Me Tomorrow? by the Shirelles.
Mandy and her customers discuss the news in voices that range from thoughtful to vehement, angry to aggrieved. Graice listens, thinking, Why do you care that a white man has died? Why do you put your faith in any of us? What she most wants to do isn't cry but cradle her head in her arms on the counter, shut her eyes, vanish.
Mandy appears to be the most agitated. She's been crying, that's why her face is so puffy, lined, her big breasts rising and falling with feeling, the lenses of her glasses misting over. Oh Gawd, she's saying, ain't it the terriblest terriblest shame, that poor man, poor missis Kennedy left with those little children, how's she gonna tell those children what a cruel thing happened to their daddy out in plain daylight, and Graice realizes that it's she whom Mandy is addressing, she says, Yes, it's terrible but her voice is faint and unconvincing, as if she's thinking of something else or has something to ask of Mandy in turn Why put your faith in any of us? but thinks better of asking.
Just bites her lip, keeps her mouth shut.
The boysenberry pie costs forty five cents, the coffee ten cents, Graice carefully counts out seventy cents from the change in her pocket, adds another nickel, some pennies her last penny, in fact as if she's suddenly eager to get rid of all her money, meager as it is.
While Mandy is elsewhere, back to Graice, Graice leaves her little pile of coins by her plate, hurries out of the cafe before Mandy returns to see how much she's left and call her back.
'Bye! Graice calls.
She hears Mandy call something after her. As she leaves, the Shirelles are still singing Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
Not to police, not to the doctor in charge of the Syracuse Memorial Hospital emergency room or any of the nurses there, not to Alan Savage, not to any of the Savages will Graice Courtney make any attempt to explain why.. what logic, what purpose, walking alone at night in a neighborhood so far from her own, a part of her mind not numbed with fatigue but brightly alert, even hopeful, imagining she's in Hammond somehow. in Hammond, in Lowertown. the slow smiling eyes, the bared teeth glistening, Mmmmmmmmmm! hey girl. but you must never look, it's dangerous.
She'll say, I didn't see their faces.
She'll say, Yes they were black but I didn't see their faces.
Walking at the curb on Tenth Street to avoid the doorways, the mouths of alleys. Now the rain has stopped it's cold. Her breath is steaming. There's a tavern brimming with noise and warmth blinking MOLSON'S in the window where black men stand at the bar in a haze of smoke and someone calls, whistles, dances after her.. but she doesn't look. it's dangerous. Graice Courtney's studied, slightly swaying walk and her loose arms suggest she's drunk or drugged but her eyes are fully open, bright, intelligent don't talk to me, don't approach me, don't touch me and for several blocks she makes her way unimpeded like a dreamer in a charmed landscape until at Oswego Street and West Avenue a car with a noisy muffler cruises through the intersection, skids to a stop, backs up like a comically agitated insect its rear hiked, its back tires luridly exposed. A black boy's head emerges from the driver's window and there's a soft sliding call, Hey: you looking for a ride?
Graice stares at the pavement before her. Murmurs, No no, thanks.
Say what, honey? Huhhhhhhh? And, louder: You looking foraride?
The car, filled with young black men in their late teens, early twenties, is noisily idling in the street, spewing out clouds of exhaust It's a holiday! You can feel it! From the car radio rock music blasts and all the boys are talking at once, there's a car door flung open, long long legs springing out, black sneakered feet enormous as clubs. Graice Courtney turns quickly to walk in the opposite direction but somehow it happens she blinks: he's there one of them is on the sidewalk grinning, blocking her way basketball style and when she turns like a trapped animal there's another, gangly limbed and antic, reefer happy, blocking her way so she's transfixed, thinking, Don't struggle, don't resist then they won't kill you but when the playful black boys grab her and drag her into the back seat of the already moving car she loses control, she's weeping and hysterical suddenly, screaming, kicking, pummeling with her fists sprawled helplessly and gracelessly across their laps, three of them jammed in the back as the car guns off, tires squealing, and there's wild laughter as their hands run over her in amazed delight, fingers deft and hard, there's a smell of sweet acrid smoke and cheap wine and they're grabbing her breasts, squeezing, sticking their fingers into her, into her crotch, she's panicked, squirming like a maddened eel, screaming and sobbing. even as her consciousness detaches itself from her struggling body floating and suspended voiceless above it as if she has already died.
But she hasn't.
eppilog.
Here is the wedding dress Graice Courtney will be wearing at her wedding to Alan Savage in the First Presbyterian Church of Syracuse, New York: an Empire style gown sewed for Gwendolyn Savage's mother in 1904, lovely flawlessly white Chinese silk, a bodice of tight, tiny pleats, a many layered skirt with an illusion of floating, and a long graceful train, and a bridal veil of Brussels lace: an extraordinary costume the bride to be has contemplated many times in the past six months and now contemplates in silence another time, holding it at arm's length, reverently before, with the deft assistance of missis Savage and the seamstress missis Vitale, she tries it on again. This is the final, or nearly final fitting: the nuptial ceremony is scheduled for 11 A. M. , September 12, 1964, scarcely forty eight hours from now. The tailor's mirror is positioned to contain Graice's full height, top of head to hemline, and as the feathery parachutelike skirt, then the snug fitting torso, are eased downward Graice stares into the mirror in wonderment that it is her headher familiar head, hair, face that emerges from so much white silk. and not a stranger's.
The first time Graice Courtney was urged to try on this heirloom dress, back in June, she'd felt a wave of apprehension sweep over her palpable as a draft of cold air, but laughed to disguise her nervousness, saying, This is a work of art, missis Savage, it seems wrong for someone to actually wear it, and missis Savage said briskly, I think it's high time it is worn. what's a wedding dress if it only hangs inacloset?
Now missis Savage is all business, conferring with missis Vitale quite literally behind Graice's back as, cautiously, Graice lowers her arms the women are rapidly buttoning up the long row of mother of pearl buttons in back that's in mimicry of her spine's vertebrae; they puff out the dress's sleeves, straighten the skirt, far more brusquely than Graice would dare. For what if a fingernail snags in the dazzling silk, what if a seam rips? Silk is a strong, durable fabric, Graice knows, has been told, but doesn't believe it.
It was a disappointment to Gwendolyn Savage that her mother's wedding dress, this Empire style, simply didn't suit her, so she married Byron Savage in a very pretty but very ordinary dress she wants something finer for her lovely daughter in law, and this is it.
Softly exclaiming as she pinches the bodice, Oh, damn. is this loose?
Again?
And missis Vitale says, sighing, It's loose.
Evidently, since the last fitting, the bride to be has lost more weight. Another pleat or two will have to be taken in, another judicious tuck.
The bride to be is a tall, slender, high waisted young woman, inches taller than Gwendolyn Savage's mother back in 1904, her bust is inches smaller, extensive alterations have already been made in the dress.
But missis Vitale can certainly take in the bodice a little more and they'll try the dress again after lunch for a final time before the wedding. Then, says missis Savage, it's over to the church for the rehearsal including the Bach organ solo, and the soprano singing Schumann.. and a reasonably early dinner, just family though family in this instance includes six Makepeaces already north for the wedding and, missis Savage is going to insist, a reasonably early bedtime.
When all this is over, and you and Alan are off on your honeymoon, I am going to collapse, missis Savage says, sighing, collapse, but her jewellike blue eyes light onto Graice's eyes in the mirror, she's flush cheeked as a young girl and it's clear she doesn't mean a syllable of complaint or reproach Gwendolyn Savage never does.
missis Savage and missis Vitale help Graice out of the dress, lifting it from her in slow, careful stages.. over her head, her slender arms out of the sleeves then she's standing bare armed, shivering in her lacy slip, suddenly exposed. Her face without makeup looks shiny as if scrubbed, the scattering of freckles across her cheeks and forehead has long since faded.
She turns quickly from the mirror, now the dress has been taken from her.
The lovely Chinese silk dress is an heirloom, and so is the antique engagement ring on Graice Courtney's finger. A square cut diamond edged with smaller diamonds, in a finely wrought silver setting, not raised but recessed so the tiny prongs rarely catch in clothing or on gloves.
This ring has come down through the Savage family; Byron's mother willed it to Gwendolyn shortly before her death.
Now Graice and Alan have been engaged seven months, she has never taken it off her finger. Not once.
It's a perfect fit.
When, after graduation in May, Graice re turned to Hammond for a brief visit and showed this ring to Leslie Courtney, her uncle pursed his lips and whistled but the sound emerged breathy and melancholy.
He said, though, what was foremost in both their thoughts: Wouldn't Persia be proud!
Later, Graice visited with her father and her father's new wife Jenny Lou Guthrie. Spoke of her fiance, Alan Savage, and of the
Savages of Syracuse, New York, passed around snapshots, as if describing a re mote tribe of human beings in no way contiguous with the residents of Hammond, New York. Duke Courtney did not question this but when Graice showed him the engagement ring he too whistled, snatched up her hand in his, and brought it to the lamplight; he'd been drinking and so had Jenny Lou: a brassy haired good looking woman in her late forties, former widow of a Buffalo racehorse owner , and he clowned about pretending to be examining the ring like a jeweler, through his encircled thumb and forefinger, Honey, this is the genuine article, the re al goods, are you aware?
Stiffly, with dignity, Graice Courtney withdrew her hand from her father's.
She said, The ring is priceless. It can't be replaced.
Duke Courtney laughed, his tawny golden eyes flaring up.
He said, winking, Not without a lot of money, it can't.
Afterward, Graice wondered why she'd sought him out: her father and his new wife.
Her laughing charming silver haired alcoholic father, his big breasted big hipped showgirl looking wife Jenny Lou, with her half moons of bright lipstick smudged on glasses, cigarettes, Graice's left cheek. A gay easy laughing couple clearly fond of each other and determined not to acknowledge, not even to suggest, what possible link there might be between Duke Courtney and the twenty two year old woman who came to visit, what third party, not present, linked them.
