Tambourines to Glory (8 page)

“And I’m Miss Laura Reed.”

“I know. How about your partner who’s shaking hands at the door? Does she drink?”

“No, she goes home like she ought to. Essie’s the serious type.”

“Essie looks it,” said Buddy.

Valance lights out over Eden, cluster lights out on the walls, all lights out except at the door.

“Essie, you take the bag. I’m going riding with this young man for an hour. Mrs. Johnson, meet Mr. Buddy—”

“Lomax,” said Buddy taking Essie’s hand which had—for him—no grip.

“Hey! Taxi!”

The cab stopped and they rode down to the Roma Gardens. Buddy went to the Men’s Room and when he came back, seated in her tiny booth Laura looked up, and there at the edge of the table stood a six-foot, a tower-tall, a brownskin, a large-featured, a big-handed, handsome lighthouse-grinning chocolate boy of a man.

“How old are you?” zoomed around the table. However, neither asked the question. But that is what Laura was asking in her mind of him, Buddy in his mind of her. In her mind Laura lied, “Thirty-two.” Of him in her mind Laura guessed, “Twenty-four.”

In his mind Buddy thought, “Forty—but
forty,”
which, accented, meant O. K.

“You’re forty with me,” he said aloud.

“Forty with me, too, baby,” said Laura. “Set down.”

Nice lights in the Roma Gardens. Cozy in the Roma Gardens. Out of the way, the Roma Gardens. Whee-ooo-oo-o! How many times in the Roma Gardens! Just as if it never happened to her anywhere before the Roma Gardens. Just as it had happened from there to the Shalimar to Eddie’s to the Champagne Bar on the Hill for Buddy.

“I got news for you, I’m married,” lied Buddy.

“Which makes me no difference,” said Laura.

But Buddy knew it did—older women liked younger men better if they were married—spice to make the pot more tasty, age to make cheese more binding, phosphorus the light more blinding—mellow.

No, not that rat trap where I live, thought Laura. It’s got to be some place fine, like the Theresa. Besides, Uly might be—

“What you drinking?”

“White Horse 69,” said Laura.

“You kinder mixed up there, aren’t you, kid?” Buddy grinned.

“Any kind of good Scotch,” Laura laughed.

“House of Lords,” the waiter smiled. “Chasers?”

“Ginger ale,” Laura said.

“Give her water,” Buddy laughed. “She don’t know.”

Laura didn’t laugh. She wanted to know. “Just straight might be safer,” she sighed.

“I always play it straight,” vowed Buddy.

Juke box not too loud. Bar not too full, no crowd, just right to be not lonesome-looking. Knees not too close, just possible to touch. Table not too wide for a whisper to drift across. If a woman were to whisper, it could drift across. Lights not too bright, yet
not too dim to see her eyes, his eyes. And table not too wide for what
what
to drift across?

The
what
that sparks the diamond in the serpent’s head?

That painter-boy, remembered Laura. Thank God, Buddy is not
refined!

Bang-bang-bang across the table the
what
that lights the diamond in the serpent’s head.

ENTER MARTY

“Y
ou could sell Holy Water from the Jordan on Sundays and get a Cadillac,” said Buddy. “Let’s phone down for breakfast.”

Below on Seventh Avenue the uptown traffic hummed through the morning sunlight.

“Bishop Lawson’s sure got a great big church,” said Laura looking out the double windows before coming back to bed. “How much does Holy Water cost?”

“Just turn the tap,” said Buddy, “that’s all. And I can get you a hundred gross of empty bottles for a little or nothing, with labels: H
OLY
W
ATER
—a green river and some palms, you know—about the size of dime store Listerines.”

“But you mean the water ain’t really holy?”

“It’s holy if you bless it,” said Buddy. “You can rename the Hudson yourself.”

“Essie would have a conniption fit,” cried Laura. “Hey, chocolate boy with the coconut eyes, what do you want for breakfast?”

“A little Scotch, a stack of wheats, and a little more loving from you,” purred Buddy.

Elevators going up and down. Voices in the hall.

“They got a radio station in this hotel,” said Laura.

“WLIB,” said Buddy. “Ever been interviewed on it?”

“Never.”

“Want to be?”

“What should I say?”

“Pray one of your pretty prayers,” said Buddy, “like you used to do on the corner. Sing one of your pretty songs. You might get a week at the Apollo on the Gospel Caravan.”

“Essie would drop dead,” said Laura.

“Rape Essie!” said Buddy.

Grinding of brakes in the street below as a too-fast car comes to a sudden stop.

“How much should we sell it for?” asked Laura.

“What?” said Buddy.

“The Holy Water,” Laura pursued.

“A dollar a bottle.” Thus the price was set. “A bottle and a label will cost you about two cents. See the profit? See the Caddy by Christmas? Hum-mm-m! Baby, you’re built—no false brassieres!”

“Naturally not. Ouch! Buddy, what I want is an apartment.”

“I’ll call up Marty.”

“Who’s Marty?”

“The fixer, the man behind the men
behind
the men. Get you anything.”

“Colored?”

“You know he
can’t
be colored,” said Buddy.

“I hear there’re six hundred applications for those twenty apartments in that new building on the Hill.”

“Marty’ll get your application on the very top.”

“I never did put in no application.”

“Then he’ll just get you the apartment,” said Buddy.

“Money under the table?”

“Marty don’t need money.” White sheet, raw chocolate-brown, that Buddy without pajamas.

I got to get me some nice silk nightgowns, thought Laura, at least to put on to take off.

“Marty knows about your church,” said Buddy. “You might never see Marty, but he knows about you.”

“Just
who
is Marty?”

“The man.”

“What man?”

“Behind the throne of Harlem,” said Buddy. “And sitting in your bathroom, too.”

“What?”

“All over your bathroom,” said Buddy.

THE DEVIL’S HAM

T
he winter prospered them. Their two-parlor church grew until so many people wanted to attend that it could no longer hold them all and when the new young leaves were coming out in the spring, Essie found herself standing at a window high up on the ninth floor of a brand-new apartment house looking out over the prettiest edge of Harlem.

“The park! And the river down there!” said Essie. “Laura, how in God’s name did you ever get this apartment for us?”

“Buddy—through Marty,” said Laura. “Don’t frown up—because otherwise we never would have had it. Now you can send for your daughter.”

“Thank God for this ham, even if the Devil did bring it!” Essie joked—an old slavery-time joke, it was about a black mother who
taught her son that it was a sin to steal; if you did steal the Devil was in you. But they were both hungry and the master’s smokehouse was full of hams. So one night the son took a ham from the white man’s smokehouse, ran back past their cabin, and threw the ham in the window. The black mother cried, “Thank God for this ham—even if the Devil brung it!” And they ate the ham.

Essie loved the apartment. All she moved out of her old place was her motto: G
OD
B
LESS
T
HIS
H
OME
. It didn’t go very well with the modernistic couches and things Laura put in the parlor, but Essie hung it firmly on the wall, nevertheless, and there it stayed.

It was a big apartment. Essie had a bedroom and Laura had a bedroom. There was a dining room, an alcove room, a pantry, and a kitchen. The alcove could be a bedroom, too. They paid cash for the furniture, all the fine new furniture, and it only took two weeks’ collections at church. They had six girls now passing tambourines, besides the marching-up collection at the end.

“The Lord has blessed us indeed,” said Essie. But the holy services were not unalloyed. For some reason, Birdie Lee was a nightly thorn in Laura’s side—and Buddy was a thorn in Essie’s. Birdie Lee could sing too loud to be a little woman, and the way she played the drums—they had a small combo in the church now—excited the worshipers to a frenzy and took the spotlight—had there been a spotlight—off of Laura. Without a personal spotlight, Laura was lost, whereas Essie’s sweet placidity continued to glow, even as attention shifted. She just sat like a rock to which the bird of public affection continually returned. That downtown columnist who had come to Harlem to hear their singing had mentioned Essie and Birdie Lee in the paper, and wrote not a word about Laura. Marty had sent the man up there
to do a funny piece about the Holy Water from Manhattan’s Jordan.

That was the rub with Essie—Buddy’s ideas came from the Devil. And Buddy was the Devil’s shadow—Marty’s Harlem handyman. Marty nobody had ever seen. That Holy Water had caused Essie to go into a series of pauses that lasted for days. It had happened long before they moved to the new apartment. When Buddy brought a dozen cases of empty little bottles with colorful stickers on them to their third-floor tenement, for some reason, maybe because Essie’s room was nearest the steps, Laura wanted to pile the cases in her room and fill the bottles from
her
sink. But, in Laura’s own words, “Essie pitched a bitch.”

“After you left, Buddy,” Laura related, “she pitched a bitch. ‘Take them lying vessels out of here,’ she hollered. And Essie would not let me run a drop of water from her sink. Essie said she wouldn’t have no parts of this Holy Water jive—when she knew it didn’t come from the Jordan, but right out of a New York tap. As for blessing it, Essie said she hoped the Lord would strike me dead if I blessed such low deceit. Oh, well, Essie’s getting old. So I got all them bottles corked up in my room, ready for you to take over to the church, case by case, as we need them. Essie says she won’t even set on the rostrum while I sell them, so I told her to go mediate in the backroom then while the selling ceremony is going on—it being
my
rostrum as well as hers. She allows as how she will not only mediate, but pray for my soul.”

“That Essie’s too holy for her own good,” said Buddy.

But that is exactly what happened—on the nights when Laura sold Holy Water for a dollar a bottle, Essie withdrew to the bedroom behind the Garden of Eden and got down on her knees and
prayed for the serpent to drop its apple of greed. In her mind Buddy was the serpent.

“How simple can people get,” scorned Buddy, “buying Holy Water from the Jordan at a buck a bottle! Ha-ha! Always looking for some kind of lucky stuff here in Harlem. I depend on
myself
, myself.”

“Me, too,” said Laura. “But Essie depends on God—and me. Without me and my ideas where would she have been? Still on relief!”

Yet Essie would touch none of the money from the sale of Holy Water. So Laura told her, “All right, then, I’ll put it on a Cadillac car.” And she did. She bought a car.

LIGHTS OUT